Her feathers had been fought for and earned, even if she had used others' weaknesses to promote her own success. She thought of the family she had slaughtered: the peaceful father with no hope against her war-trained ways, the sobbing mother and her pleas for mercy, and the wide-eyed foal with no understanding of what was happening. The parents had seen their death coming in the form of the shadow-mare with the glowing orange eyes; the foal was more fortunate. He had not known, even after seeing his parents cut down before him, and as she came for him she noticed the glassy calm of shock. Perhaps another fae would have felt some sort of pity for him, but she had cut him down with the same cold indifference that she had shown his parents.

Now she wore them all as a trophy, three matching feathers, varied in size, woven throughout her ebony banner. They were brown, speckled with ivory and black, and they certainly broke up the solidity of her blackness. But they were more than just trophies, more than just decoration - they were reminders, memories of what she had done and what she still had left to do. Wherever she walked, they spiraled in her mane as a warning to all those who saw her, all those who dared bear their wings proudly. They were vermin, all of them, and it was her job to show them their place.

She could not say when her beliefs shifted from an agreement with her father's teachings to a sort of divine providence, but when she spoke now to those that might follow her, she often spoke of it in just that way. A horn, she would say, was a crown, a mark of one's station in life. To wear a crown was to be deemed the cream of the crop, and among the horned, all were equal. The hornless, on the other hand, were no better than slaves, for they lacked the mark that made them more. And the pegasi... well, they were rats, even with their wings. As such, they ought to be exterminated. Mutants, they were, perhaps, or a joke of the gods. In any case, they would not be permitted to live.

Crash Course lowered his head to steal a feather from the detached wing; the jackal smiled coldly, but there was also pride in it. "Where will you put it, darling?"

@[Crash Course]
"Talk talk talk."