At first, glancing at her features, he thought he’d asked too much. The beast had always been one of demands – he expected strength, abomination, and irreverence from himself, and so, always interpreted others capable of the same. The possibility that he’d done it again, forced his way into brambles and thorns, and waited for another to follow him into open flame, into ancient warfare, into blood and hollowed, primal iniquity, gave the cretin pause. But only a few moments later, she gave into his inquiry, and his ears became rapt vessels, swinging like pendulums on the center of a molten skull, a fiendish crown, attempting to grasp what other worlds had been like, where Zyanya had come from, how empires could rise and fall (because he’d seen it before, over and over again, and he had to know if those endless patterns were eternal to other realms too). The language was unknown to him however, foreign, unfamiliar, drenched in melodies his mind couldn’t contemplate or embrace, but he listened anyway, puzzling over the complexities of other times and places, of heroes (something he’d never been, something he could never be). She translated the ballad, and he nodded, unsure, uncertain, of what to say. For a snippet he wanted to ask what happened to the monster, if it was sent into oblivion, if it was consigned to hell, and where the hero went thereafter. Did they fall apart too, later on, as their realms and castles changed, as axis’ tilted and immoralities collided? He understood that champions were revered and devils were feared (and a portion of his throat swallowed down the inquiry if he was considered anything other than a fiend, if he’d be remembered for something beyond the scope of his magic or the cold, raw, nonchalance of his exterior), but he wanted the aftermath, the legend after the rising of a tempest and the restoration of a people (and perhaps it would give him the slightest bit of hope that it could happen again). “So Seren was saved?” The beast thought of Isilme again, beyond salvation, consumed by shadows, by darkness, by threats and threads, locked in a constant, consuming veil of darkness and indignation; a palisade fallen and never to return.
 
An idea prompted him next, a response to her prior inquiries, brow arching almost shyly, as if the presumption was too out of line, was too untoward. “Perhaps you might come up with a ballad for the Basin.” The cool depth of his eyes searched hers, shoulders almost conceiving a shrug, fixated on giving her a path, on setting her down strands and trails not battered and lined with brambles and thorns. “We have ample history.” The last statement almost caused a bitter laugh, a trace of rancor, a hint of humor, at the way they’d erred, at they way they’d faltered, at the way their determination laced almost nothing but failure. There’d been other times too, not so long ago, when they’d been on the top of the world, casting their noses at the weak, at the inept. Now they were just alike, fallen from their wintry grace.