Mauja the FrostHeart
ice cold man watches earth die, eternal winter takes its reign

Tired, weary, but he refused to break beneath the weight of it - instead, he pulled upon his reserves, and in front of the audience he regained more and more grace with each passing second. His haphazard posture refined itself as he stood more firmly, neck arched, his body speaking of quiet pride despite being mired in ashes upon a dry, barren plain, a ghost in his own charred forest. Mauja refused to break, neither under the weight of the sun nor under the weight of burden; exhaustion. His cool eyes glittered softly, drifting off from the monochrome stranger and onto Kou. She was as worn as he, he could read it in the lines of her familiar body and see it in the way she moved, the planes of her face, the tip of her horn pointing towards the stoic beast. He felt much like doing the same and running him off, and then leaping off the Edge into the arms of oblivion, but it solved nothing. "Kou," he said, gently chiding her as a small, tired smile played upon his face. There was warmth in his voice, but an undercurrent of authority as well. "It does not do to threaten strangers." Especially not those of our blood.

That this Deimos, son of Ignatius, was a unicorn was beyond questioning. His horn was the longest Mauja had ever seen, and he wondered if his neck was thicker and stronger than most to balance such a weight. The tip of it was cobalt, matched by his eyes, but there was something about him - something reckless, wild, dark, it seemed to lurk in his eyes and in the depths of his voice, as if he didn't bother hiding it. Who are you? Was he a creature of evil, to pull the wings off flies and the horns off unicorns, or was he compassionate towards his own? Could he pull the weight, serve under another, become a valuable resource, or would he become a threat? Being stoic wasn't a defining feature of trouble - Ulrik was the proof of that. Though the engineer was a stallion of blunt honesty and little social skills, he was content to serve as long as Mauja didn't stray from their path. And when the King did err, he was alerted to it, and all was well. No ruler had ever been perfect, and he knew that mistakes would come at more times in his life. It was only natural.

"What skills would you bring to your would-be home, Deimos, son of Ignatius?" he asked, not yet hinting at whether or not he would be inclined to accept the dusky stallion into their ranks. The chance that he wouldn't was very slim, because Mauja hoarded unicorns, be they racist or not. His herd was diverse in that sense, but they were still content to follow him. Some knew of the Plague, some knew not of it, and that was the way it should be. Those who would oppose it were kept in the dark, and if they cried when the day of reckoning came, their voices would fall upon deaf ears. The unicorns would rise, and sweep the world clean - dreams nourished him in this time of despair, and the frosty stallion watched the gray one. Who are you? he wondered again, gray-striped tail slapping nonchalantly against his hocks.