The humor that Illynx had intended to inject into their rather dark predicament was responded to with a sharpness that only her dearest friend could pull off so elegantly, the keen edge to her words as she rebutted the notion of a single one of them starving broadening the smile that already lingered on the corporal's lips. She had no faith in the gods anymore beyond that of their undeniable power, unlike her Lady, the golden marked mare having felt their lack of concern for the mortal plight on one too many occasions to believe any longer that the immortals of the world cared anything at all for the squalor moving about on its surface. To Illynx, the unicorns and hornless of the world, the creepy crawlies and fowl, all those in between, were simply toys used for a game that their short lived minds could not understand; the only reason there was ever intervention in mortal lives by divine influence, as she had observed so far, was when a toy was broken and burned without their say so, or when the pawn had invented a game more amusing than what the divine beings had previously planned. Perhaps they would mend whatever wound ailed Helovia, but those that died in their absence would surely not be missed by the creators; there was simply no purpose to weeping over a fleeting speck of life in the long, endless strands of their own existence.

Still, Illynx did have faith in the leaders of the Basin to provide until there were no provisions to give. But what if the light never returned? Psyche could promise her only what she herself could give, and while the chocolate woman wanted to feel assured by her oldest friend's words, she found that the truth over wrote all of her emotionally laden interjections; only time would tell whether or not they would starve or not, and no amount of words shared between two women in the midst of a blackened world could change that. Illynx also knew the trinket baring mare before her well enough to understand that it was best to let her logical argument die within the confines of her brain, and so she was glad when the whispered words of the Empress met her ears and drove a new chain of thought into her head.

Her golden eyes followed Psyche's back out into the darkness, her ears alert and muzzle unleashing twin plumes of frozen air as she breathed deep upon the wind. So Psyche did not fear the hornless taking advantage of their plight, but rather the land itself, and the powerful secrets that it kept hidden. She wished now that her queen had never mentioned it at all to her; a menagerie of horrible monsters suddenly came to mind, each one exceedingly more grotesque than the next, and the question itself of how to deal with the unknown was almost as daunting as the thought of having to battle one of her imagined terrors. "You cannot know until they come," resolutely stated the corporal, her warrior's brain observing the perplex problem and coming to as simple a solution as she could, and though she had never been very good at refining her ideas to be easily understood by those she tried to share them with, she attempted so now. "It will be much like facing a new opponent for the first time. You cannot know how they will chose to attack, the strength of their bodies or the power of their will, but one must adapt or lose." Her head was raised proudly, a toss of her darkened muzzle throwing a chunk of her forelock out of her vision as she continued to scan the bleak and black horizon.