”Had,” he says, as if allowing her to believe even that tiny shred of happiness is too great a lie. That’s all Asur dares voice on the subject though; bound not by secrecy but ignorance, he can say little of siblings now lost. No doubt the notion of those other princes made him seem less distant, more real... He used them that way before but now only feels sickened by the memory of each face - a different sickness for each one. They gather, silent, at the bottom of his chest. He thinks the scar is just a warning - the only physical description he can manage for the things inside him, too. Maybe that explains the soothing presence of the dark mare with the liquid blackness in her eyes and the moon in waning brilliance struck across her hips. She is a mystery, a thing to think of and enjoy, a thing untarnished by these beasts inside him.

   Unaccustomed to this weight of dancing around touchy subjects, giving here and taking there, Asur follows the course of conversation just a little slower than Rishima does. The sound of her laughter draws a broad smile, though - he has always found the noise highly infectious. A low chuckle rumbles in his chest then, radiating warmth already present in his healthy eye. Her next reaction is a strange one though, and without even noticing the tension Asur stands a little taller when she drops low to prowl about, voice hissing like the best of storytellers. His own ears flicking curiously, Asur stands tall but does not move - opposed to movement, in fact. Something in him, tempered by six years of honest training, screams when struck just hard enough and bleeds sparks but never gives. It is the first he’s shown of an iron spirit since arriving here. It is less anger though and more a wariness tucked in behind amusement, a sudden reminder that he knows nothing of her beyond a charming wit and a love of beauty.

   For a moment, while she speaks, he feels the weight of.... something - pouring down on them. A heaviness, a headiness, like magnetism - pushing them together and thrusting him down against the weight of the earth and his own demons and whatever unknown mysteries await beyond. He is a splinter lost in the black sea of her gaze, an old oak groaning in the wind of her voice. He is impervious and vulnerable and drawn in so the liquid warmth of his own gaze is something hotter than the sunbaked earth - something intrigued, something hot enough to forge the iron strength of the will that brought him here, half dead, to this place.

   Helovia.

   The spell breaks and the mare reels back. Asur lets out a breath he’s suddenly aware of holding, and the air around them both seems lighter suddenly, and hotter. Somehow his posture has become a thing contorted, twisted down and arched up, roiled like hot glass to meet the crooning of her moonlight speech. He gives himself a hearty shake and snorts, and deep rumbling laughter shivers in his chest. ”My legs carried me miles when I craved for sleep,” he boasts. ”They don’t tire so easily.” With a flick of his tail, the stallion moves now, curling around her in a wide arc, hesitating when he stands facing nearly the same direction she faces. ”Let’s explore,” he decides, emboldened by his days of rest and memories of worse things - far worse things - that he endured with little to show for it. ”I’d see the places you know first, before I find Mirage.” Asur breathes a snort. "I have had enough of dragons."