He'd not gone back there, since the day he came out of it. Yet now he found his frosted hooves picking the unfamiliar path, his heart knowing where it lead even as he refrained from thinking on it. Some superstitious, fearful part of him was afraid, that if he went into it again, the illusion would be shattered, and he would go back to the lonely Steppe he had come from. No matter that time, and Faelene in particular, had convinced him that he was real, that the Basin was real, that he was truly back — something about that dark cave played on his fear, and kept him away.

Until now.

His hooves shuffled over the rocks, his tail flicking at his hocks in its customary manner. He could see the mouth of the cave, dark and foreboding like the maw of a monster, but he forced his faltering legs to keep moving, to take the next step, and the next, and the next, until his head entered its shadow. Once there, blue eyes adjusting to the relative dark, he paused, knowing that he was not alone; he'd thought the scent upon the track had been too old for the owner to linger, but it seemed that he was wrong. Turning his regal head, Mauja's eyes fell upon a mare he did not know, but she smelled so strongly of the Basin that he assumed she'd been here a long time — longer than he, the time-lost, anyway.

A sturdy structure, covered in what seemed to be black, with a formidable horn upon her brow. In silence he watched her, half in the cave, half outside, before giving his head a small shake. The Frostheart found his feet, and moved closer, nostrils quivering as he breathed in, and out. The air was warm, like it had been just outside, and not the deathly cold it had been upon his return. A small, humorless smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. One thing remained the same, though. He was alone in it, with a black mare. Still silent, he drew up nearer her, peering into the smooth surface of the mirror. Nothing but blankness stared back at him, much like it had looked when he'd stepped into it from the other side, though not like it had been when he had come back. Then, it had shifted, stirred, cracked even, with dark tendrils of unholy magic seeping out. What great beast had swallowed him up, and spit him out again? Narrowing his eyes, he sought for a scar of the rift, but found nothing, only its slate surface staring back without his face in it.

Slowly, Mauja craned his head to the side, lifting one 'brow as he peered at Chernobyl instead.