The world was not black or white.
It was immersed in shades of grey.

She stood overlooking her herd land, eyes raised to watch the first drops of warm rain break upon the water of the lake from the straight curtains of her forelock, attempting to decide if she should retire to her cave to let the storm pass or if she should remain in the open and take the beating from the Gods. Within herself, she was contemplative as usual, though her face read only boredom; as hostile as she'd been lately, it was a nice reprieve to be able to quietly reside within her own mind, and even the tears of the sky weren't as terrible as they normally were to the woman. She'd found that she had grown and changed quite a lot since the failed rescue mission of the children, truly since she had returned to Helovia after her unspoken leave of absence. It wasn't that she had tried to do so - Illynx wasn't the sort to take note of faults within herself, and thus didn't seek to improve anything about who she was. As far as she could be concerned, she was fabulous and the rest of the world would bend around her; or at least, that's how she had once thought of herself.

Now, she wasn't so sure.

The loneliness that had seeped into her heart since discovering that she had been left alone, again, had made her rethink a lot of her cold and impersonal tactics. Surely, she didn't regret any of her previous actions but for a few fleeting memories that were easily enough swept under the rug, but she had come to understand that having but one friend in all the world meant that she was far more vulnerable than those she had once believed to be so piteously weak for living their life in the hearts of others; if all it took to wound her spirit so deeply was to remove a single soul, she couldn't be very strong at all.

Her mind slides away into nostalgic memories of the Edge, the place where she had tossed that stupid colt from the cliffs and into the tossing ocean for insulting her pride. To be honest, she couldn't even remember what he had actually done to deserve it, but as she was with most of her violent reactions to the hornless, she didn't suppose she had needed a reason to begin with; what remained most firmly in her memory was the way the leader of the herd had discovered the broken body of the pegasus child floating like a bloated turkey in the water below, the wrath with which she had been accused though she had been seen by none and left no clues that could lead them to believe it hadn't simply been an accident. That it had been her wasn't the point - it was the shade of grey, that middle ground between the truth of the thing and the visual evidence, that had condemned her.

She had been born to be loathed, and part of her accepted this even now, surrounded by those who followed her for reasons she was unsure of.

She was pretty, that was damn sure - a quick glance to the slightly disrupted lake water at her hooves verified that, and surely not as stupid as many of the others she had run across. The woman could hold her own on a battlefield (unless it was a bitch and her damn dragon) and she was not afraid to speak her mind; but none of these stood as valid reasons to her for them to trust her, if they even did at all. After all, what had she ever done for anyone other than herself or Psyche? Hell, her crown had been accepted for the sake of the Empress, not by any true wishes of her own, despite her need for importance and endless vanity; the weight of it all had steadily been pressing in on her since she had departed the Basin for the fateful battle that had been the end of her beloved's extended reign over the valley of the unicorns.

Pulling out of the full force of the rain that had now begun to flood from overhead, she lingered beneath the trees and felt the occasional spill down her spine, though the conifer she had chosen was old and broad, well suited for cover until the pathways described by Kelec could be finished. Suddenly realizing that she was moping quite piteously, she shook her head as if to rid it of a cloud of invisible flies that ate away at her eyes, replacing her thoughts with pleasant ones of conquest and blood shed - no matter that she and her kin seemed to have accomplished exactly the opposite of all their nefarious desires.

@[Torleik]

Torleik
A lone man loved by none:


How long can he live?

Handsome, she thinks to herself as he approaches, admiring the lines and build that sang out the same lyricism that Ulrik did; a true man. Perhaps Deimos held this aura, also, but to the simple bitch, his atmosphere of pride was overwhelmed by the pervasive stench of death that clung to him, unlike the mad engineer and this other particularly fine piece of male flesh. More so than the bronze laden stallion she had met so many seasons ago in the bleak darkness of the endless night, however, this man nearly choked her with his presence, the sheer pride that carried each of his steps, the high tilt of his dual horns gleaming under the grey light of the cloud obscured sun.

He was no Deodat, to be sure – that gentle nod, his sweeping stoicism all lost in the romantic perfection that had been the tri-colored man in the tunnel of ice, but she had not seen him since that fateful, rain strewn day, and so she let herself absorb what physical blessings (so numerous, among this mountain’s people!) could be had on this new male figure.

She had noticed him during the meeting; one of the faces who had raised to grasp hungrily at the space vacated by the savage black stallion that now, much to the Lady’s chagrin, led alongside her. The wounds he’d worn then were mostly healed now, and she couldn’t help but recall similarly aged sores on the Engineer. Curious, she muses with an arched brow, delicately adjusting her position as she ruminates so that she may gaze more fully on the inky stag’s features.

It still had not ceased to amaze her how hesitant others had become in her presence since her simple title adjustments.

"Kind sir," she racks her brain for a name, but can remember nothing but something about Bloodskalders…Bloodskats. Ack. Either way, it is not his name. "I do not believe I know your name." A statement she was getting used to making; one could keep track of faces all day long, but without constantly talking to the underlings held upon the mountain, she could not keep up with their callings anymore than she could the number of rain drops that had touched her since birth. She tilts her crown playfully, attempting to let the sadness wash off of her like the water from the overhead boughs, but it is difficult; such a heavy burden, she feels it’s weight shift and groan across her back, but she does not whimper or stall in her efforts despite it’s urging her to fall to the ground.

"I am Illynx, the GildedBlade, Lady of the unicorns in the vale," but you already knew that, her gaze deviously gleams, "duocorns, also, in your case." Such lovely embellishments, the easily allured woman taking note of the runes scattered along their lengths now that she found herself more fully in the present; she finds them pleasing, a sign of the magic that flows through them all here upon the holy peak of the horned, their leisurely pillars of power. So fulfilling is the sight that she returns her pristine version of a bow, delicate features nodding to the earth before rising once more to their full height - still slight in comparison to the silver laced stag.

Torleik
A lone man loved by none:


How long can he live?

For as much bantering on about the trouble of the job she’d been given by Psyche, she was quite proud of her new title and the power that came with it; she hadn’t fully accepted the responsibility yet, though she struggled with the concept. It was partly why she was out here in the rain – that and the damnable Deimos.

He graces her with his name, which is replayed several times in her head. She could have guessed soldier; he’d be a waste in any other vocation, truly, what with those natural lines and all that muscle. She herself has risen from such a rank, a slow climb in the hierarchy that took an unnatural leap during a time when she was needed. That the friend who had built her the ladder was no longer around was yet another hole that seeped openly in her heart.

That she had no other friends to discuss it with was perhaps the deepest wound of all.

She is not empty, simply broken; and no fractured jar ever held much of anything.

Her smile is gleaming and appreciative as he makes note of both the feathered creature’s name and interest in her. Arching her neck just a little bit more, she tilts her gaze to better look at the young griffon pressed against his body, absorbing the warmth of his muscles. At one point in her life, not so long ago, really, she had disdained the idea of splitting her soul to give a part to another creature that may or may not be worthy of her.

She learned, rather quickly, that a companion could be far more devastating than the horse it rode in on, during the invasion that had earned her a place on the glacial throne of the mountain. The fact that this creature, small as it might be, is regal and one designated for her people, in particular, is especially warming. If she was to choose an animal to be with her for the rest of her life, she would have such a beast.

"She is also quite fair. Fate has treated the pair of you kindly, so striking your company for the rest of life's reach," muses the mare of the soft grey creature and her bonded stag, the warmth of her grin meeting her eyes despite the chill coating her heart. Her ego purrs under the amber glow of the beast’s eyes, drawing strength, as she always did, from the awe she could inspire in others with her mere presence.

The most dangerous thing in the world is a woman who is both beautiful and capable of thought. Irelyn provided her with proof of the first requirement; she would see if she could convince Torleik of her abilities in the field of conversation next.

As the stallion playfully tossed her own words back into her face, her lips formed a false and pouting frown, one that she hoped would transpose the same sort of message that the inspiring joke had carried into her expression. Despite her attempts to remain humorous, the man prodded at things that really did make her wish to frown, and the additional realism that was given to her fictional grimace would have made her rupture with laughter had she only been in a better mood.

One thing that Illynx has not been, and never will be, is simple.

Begin subject one.

"He’s an oaf," she replies quickly, crown rising slightly and looking out over the rainy valley indignantly, "surely I don’t appear much better after what has transpired during that meeting." Indeed, she didn’t. Not only had she been blissfully unaware of what her minions had been doing behind her back, she had also succeeded in coming off like a perfectly dimwitted sixteen year old girl caught sneaking out the window.

Your Lady's ass hanging out of her miniskirt is not something that the whole herd needs to see.

How deeply she feared for her own position in the minds of her herd was the least of her worries, however. That she could not manage to get the new Lord to even talk to her was the most dismal fact of all that plagued her over taxed mind, and she could press figurative fingers into her temple and rub until her vision turned black over it. Or, she could do as she was doing now, and attempting to move forward without taking out too much of her displeasure on the man.

How very hard a task this has been.

"At least I can talk, hold a conversation," waspishly hums the woman, mostly streaming thoughts aloud at this point and not entirely sure why she is being so open with the mostly strange man, "I came to him in hopes of healing some of that disaster, and rather than hearing me or attempting to ease my concerns he strode off into the shadows like some glorified sociopath."

So dismal was her pouting at this point, that I am laughing.

Turning her gaze to look fully at the stallion who has walked in on an unopened can of female emotions and ever so delicately popped! the lid of, smiling most sorrowfully in apology before she returns her sights to the lake and the rain rippling its surface. "The Lady Psyche was my best friend," flatly come her words, the true reason for why she is so disgruntled with the former General and all his social inabilities, "and Deimos has always been a distant figure, someone I would never have chosen to be alongside. Perhaps this is the source of much of my… isolation."

She smiles warmly as she can manage as she turns back to Torleik, re-positioning her body so as to more fully view him now that she has aired out far too much of her dirty laundry before him. There is sad laughter falling from her lips, laughter that is aimed at her self and all the others who seek to always be alone on this mountain. "I am just now learning that I am not any good at being on my own," she admits, and her eyes are smiling but for the dark shades of sorrow that hide behind the glitter she has covered it with.

Torleik
A lone man loved by none:


How long can he live?

[ OOC: omg this is forever long I'm sorry :| totally didn't realize i'd gone novella until i posted it and was like o____o ]


Others had held their tongues?

Temporarily she wishes they would have shown themselves to her by now, so she might have taken the tongue from them that stood still as stone while a purely militarist male replaced the royal wit and strategic might of her friend. Her mouth was the only one not lined with rot and guilt, and may the Gods bless those who felt as if their former Lady had been unfairly removed from office or improperly replaced if she ever discovers that they were standing there at the meeting, softly choking on their own cowardly ineptitudes and watching as Illynx made a complete idiot out of herself.

She was their Lady, god dammit, and whether or not she was any good at it didn’t matter. It was the principle of the thing. Why give anyone the rank if they were just going to be loud mouthed statues that gather the herd every season or so? Weren’t they supposed to respect and honor her?

They at least should not have let her stand alone when their hearts beat in time with hers.

Perhaps Torleik was right, though, and she nods in understanding as he explains his own silence. What good would words do? She had proven that they were only hot wind in front of them all and perhaps even snuffed out the embers of rebellion in their chests that might have ruptured into flame had she only been more tactful in her placement of blame. "It is probably the case with them all. The treachery had been committed and all there is to see now is how or if we will suffer from the brash idiocy of some of our men."

She really should learn to bide her time, learn of what there is to know; had she been gifted the knowledge at that moment that she will know in a years time from now, things would be going very differently. She may even have kept silent herself – after all, it has been for the best.

She simply does not know that now. Perhaps that is part of the issue, as well; that she fears her friend is abandoned and broken in the wild and that not a one of her “brothers” cares for her plight at all, that Illynx cannot look into a seeing glass and know what the future may bring.

She is terrified of what life has brought to her, the simple little bitch that she is, and too proud and too stubborn to even admit it to herself.

That he laughs at her jab at the character of her co-leader brightens her spirits slightly, and the reasons for her random decision to vent to this man of all men are illuminated; he could be a friend, if she had such things. Neither of them truly care for the current political situation in the vale (because, believe me Torleik, we’re all well aware she’s not cut out for this sort of thing) and they both seem to enjoy one another’s company well enough.

He even manages a smile out of her, meek as it is, with his jovial response to her humorous (albeit truthful) name calling.

Was? he asks her next, and it rings in her head like an echo trapped in a very small room, making her mouth fall out of its temporary amusement and back into her dwelling pout. She is not really sure why she has worded it so; surely she still loves her Empress, and hopes that their friendship is not broken as their herd has become. But Psyche had left without a word to her oldest friend, and while Illynx does not generally become overly involved with the way others treat her, it has never been so with the black queen; she longs for the mares approval as one desires air, and in the absence of her company Illynx had never been as much as she might be alongside her.

Or so she believed.

"I… I just don’t know where she is, or if she is alright," she hastily interjects, not wanting to appear cold in the face of the love she feels inside of her chest for the woman who has seemingly been torn out of her life.

Torleik had continued speaking, however, so there was no time to explain further; she listens with raised ears and her gaze glowers with fury when it is laid open exactly what she has assumed.

Deimos had been there, and so he’d been selected in the haste of her friend’s departure with no other choices eminent. Psyche was a feisty woman, her heart a nest of starving vipers, and surely there had been little conversation after her pride had been wounded – it almost draws a smile to the dismal Lady’s lips in memory of her dearest’s burning rage, how savage she could become when provoked while normally so composed and pristine. It sickens her that she has been forced into this new life by a foul play of cards, but what is even more interesting is the observation that Torleik has made on behalf of Ulrik.

She ponders on this for a while, rain water dripping over her eyes.

Her dark conversation companion does not know all of the truths of the mountain, she instantly assuages. Ulrik’s condemnation of the Lady Psyche had not stemmed from her failures to the people of the Basin, but rather to the dark veins that ran through her; she had become obsessed with being a good queen to her people and had forgotten the true reason she had risen to power. Illynx can only assume that the absence of Mauja, an ever present support for the Empress, had led to her failures to be able to keep control of both stations.

The machinist was an outcast. He made his bread and butter off of the activities of the Plague, every other creature in the Basin be damned; it was the same for Zar’roc and Belial, the guardians of the pass, horned and savage men that would kill on site and without mercy.

They were among her favorites, to be sure; the outcast men were tempting in their wildness, the animalistic way in which they existed. It defied the way she lived her own life, so confined to rules and regiment and cleanliness, it tempted the shadow in her heart that had driven her to the path of war over all the other options available. Looking over Torleik, she wonders only briefly if she will inquire what she already believes.
"Ulrik has not spoken much of our culture on this mountain, has he?" she asks with a raised brow, an irritated fire still lit in her eyes for the stupidity of the mountain electrician (and a mental note to send him on a quest for a better replacement across the continent should he piss her off again – however well received that notion may be by him). There are the usual thoughts crossing her mind when she broaches the topic of the hidden society among them to those who do not know of it, of whether he will understand the idea or rebuke it, if he will turn his back to them as many others have or embrace and attempt to heal as Lena does.

She wonders, mostly, why it is she seems to care if he is bothered by the truth or not.

He draws nearer to her as she admits her loneliness, her eyes quickly darting towards his frame to observe his intentions; she refuses to be groped by any man she doesn’t know, no matter how handsome he is or how sweet the companion that rides his broad, muscled back. He pauses almost immediately, however, his own awkward wonderment writ throughout his body language as she stands still as stone and watches his attempts to console her.

Their gaze meets and his blue eyes hold her own golden ones steady and still, a stare that is mostly uncomfortable for the steel hearted wench; she knows what lies behind the glittering lenses of her orbs and she is not sure she wishes for him to see that much of her. It is this way with most, she has discovered, a thing she had studied in her youth after hearing the phrase “the eyes are mirrors of the soul;” if you looked long enough, you could see the being there, in the deep lights that burn and flicker within their eyes, and many times it had helped her manipulate more soft hearted individuals.

Torleik’s heart was not one of these.

”You don’t have to be alone…” he tells her, with those eyes still holding hers as if a gaze could become laced to another, and she sees the rolling sadness and contradicting warmth broil through their sharp blue depths for only a moment; for some reason, she feels as if hers have reacted much the same, an unbidden reaction from the tender tension of the moment.

She does not rebuke as she usually does, a stoic silence and a mind full of opposition that denies she will ever have anyone near her for long enough to truly feel a part of something. Her mind doesn’t seem to be working as quickly as it normally does and she finds that she, too, is stepping closer to the stallion, though she does not recall asking her hooves to move.

Except for Psyche, she has always been alone. Why is it so hard to admit this to others? The last time she had tried the man who’d heard the words had presented her his back and a cold indifference, and she cannot recall any time before that other than her small allusions she had fed her friend. Her parents were dead, this her dearest knew, but how or why was only a mystery that could be assumed; that her loneliness had nearly killed her before Psyche had come into her life was something she would never share.

It showed too much weakness on her behalf, and that was one thing she definitely wasn’t.

"And you would accompany me?" she asks, sparkling laughter rippling behind her eyes that does not breach her lips which curve upwards in a bemused expression, "I am much more work than I appear at first glance."

Torleik
A lone man loved by none:


How long can he live?

That he could so quickly understand her was something that simple Illynx would be slow to catch onto, so used to others only seeing her as whatever preconceived image they had contrived from rumors and hear-say that she rarely expected one clever enough to read the book before relying on previews. It was not that she assumed him to be stupid; she never assumed such things. She simply assumed him to be ordinary, like all the rest, just with a much more attractive physical arrangement than most of them could boast.

After all, he was a soldier, potentially only muscle and an athlete’s delectable build, a stoic exterior disguising a plain and lifeless thought pattern.

But no soldier held such fire in the depths of their eyes as he did, and while she reserved the notion that some men had learned tricks to mislead (for surely, it was taking an effect on her, gazing deep into those oceans of his) and most men were unworthy of a second glance. He reminded her, in ways, of Ulrik, a hint of savagery tamed by an icy persona, and in other ways, of the moon flower stallion, Ciceron.

Ciceron was no Ulrik. He was a gentleman, a man of kind words and simple truths, few and far between in this hate ridden world. That Torleik had landed himself somewhere in between and was strikingly attractive was intriguing enough to lure her into any conversation he desired of her, no matter if his head was full of gleaming brilliance or goose down.

A girl had to have some standards, after all.

She laughs at the jest thrown at the Engineer, a soft and delicate thing that is true and dampened by her sadness. Casting him a playful glance she retorts. "Staring at bits of metal on the ground?" she draws from her own memory, an added gleam reaching her eyes as she remembers the outcome of that meeting; he had scurried away from her as soon as they’d reached her cave, as if entering the moss gateway into her abode would curse him.

Looking away and gaining a more serious expression to her features, she is drawn back by tender promises that tug at her broken soul.

Even as she slips into Torleik’s gaze, longing for his words of eternal companionship to be true at least in the smallest form, she desires to see him walk away. She does not believe that he is as she is, or that he ever will be. Moon flower could not be as wretched a creature in his worst hour as she in her greatest, and the gentle depths of those eyes sold the dual horned man before her out.

He was not hard, and brittle as she was. He was steel, unbreakable and flexing with the blows of time. She would only leave rust along his blade.

His next words leave her knees feeling bloodless and weak, though she does not fall and they do not tremble and somehow manages to hold his eyes with her own with minimal reaction. It isn’t the first time she’d been wooed by words (Tolio, Deodat, Ciceron, how many others that she cannot immediately name?), and its perhaps the only reason that holds her, for she is deep in a well of pity and abandonment and is so easily manipulated by such wit and charm blended with the consolation she had found in his company. Silently, she thanks the Gods as he changes the subject, her hormonally blitzed mind taking a moment to process what it was that he had said.

Her eyes grow wide, her smile quick to follow suit once she grasps that he is serious.

"Then let’s go," she says, quickly, a blur of a syllables in the wintry air, "as we walk I can tell you more of your chosen home." She pauses, eyes growing broad once more, but for a secondary reason, her ears flitting back atop her head and smile wry as she apologizes for her immediate desire to go. "Or… whenever you’re ready to go. I don’t mean to rush you."

TORLEIK
Long is the winter of a man's soul