Her hooves pinged sharp pains up and down her ravaged limbs with each step, the battle with the dragon and subsequent raptors having taken it's toll on the lithe corporal, who moved with extra grace in each step to avoid putting unnecessary weight down on her damaged legs. She didn't imagine it would take too long to heal, having denied any assistance from the healers of the herd for the time being to allow for scars to begin to form upon her body, a mark of her status; while she was vain, the blemishes would serve as badges of honor and prestige, a concept she had only come to appreciate in the later years of her life. All other battles before this, Illynx had gratefully accepted the healing magic and herbs of those within her herd, but the mare had come to find that her pristine and unmarked condition more often than not led only to doubts as to her true capabilities; she would be changing that, beginning with these marks of the greatest fight that she and many of those she shared the Basin with had ever been fortunate (or unlucky, depending upon one's take) enough to take part in. Sure, she had seen war - but those were only small, regular mortals, not great titans like the storm drake had been, nor deadly creatures like the slender and quick raptors that had been born from the fallen beast's gut.

The silhouettes on the horizon drew her attention almost immediately, the mare pausing in her route about the perimeter of the herd-land to cast her gaze in the direction of the solemn figures, seeming at first glance to be a unicorn with it's bonded wolf or hound, though a test of the air gave her a metallic scent blended with the male odor of the unicorn, as well as the faint odor of a hellhound; that there were only two figures she could make out from this distance was perplexing, the combination upon the wind suggesting that the stallion was in a company of three, and so she drew nearer, curiosity writ across her features.

As the darkness fell away, the corporal moving much slower than she would have on most any other day, she found that the figure was indeed in the company of two others; a hound lay curled atop the unicorn's long, tufted tail, a metallic wolf lingering some distance from them both. It was curious, that was to be sure, the golden marked mare announcing her arrival with a soft nicker of welcome, as the stallion had faint evidence of membership to at least part of the various activities at the top of the mountain, the smell of the Empress and her kin light upon his otherwise wilderness drowned pelt, and she seemed to recall having seen him before, though she could not give him a name. There were far too many permanent residents within the Basin for her to keep track of those who led the life of a vagabond, calling the wilderness home but providing their services to which ever herd lands suited their fancy. Still, it was within her interest to know him - he was, from what she could tell, rather handsome, in a woodsman sort of way. His coat was shaggy and covered in a veneer of white snow that stood in stark contrast to the bronze and black of his coat, and she admired the tribal markings as she drew closer upon war-torn legs, finding those of her kin to wear adornments of obvious magical heritage to be the most visually pleasing and also most worthy of her attentions.

His face was also troubled, however, the mare casting a gaze to the metal bits strewn across the snow laden earth before him, curiosity growing all the more as she wondered precisely what had the outcast so down trodden as he looked upon his trinkets. Illynx gave little thought to the current state of magic in the realm, having none but that which she had received with her rank, and so she was left only puzzled; she found the pieces of metal craft to be beautiful, their motionless forms catching the various light sources of the Basin and glittering almost jovially in the eternal night, and were she him, would have found solace in that simple fact alone. "Has the metal done something to your feelings, sir?" she asked, coming to a halt and taking pressure off of her right hind leg by resting it upon it's point, that leg in particular rather sore from having been drug through the static infused goo of the monster, her face friendly and genuinely curious.