The cacophony grew after a peaceful beginning; the instigator was a stallion of pegasus decent, his body of similar tones to Ricochet but for the grotesque and wrong image of his wings rising towards the heavens. He wouldn’t have cared that much for one man raising his voice against Mirage – he believed she could handle this well enough herself. But, as was often the case, the initial uproar created a ripple effect, and soon many voices were being slung out into the open. Some chastised the man for talking negatively of Mirage’s decisions or of Lace, while others seemed to side with his opinions that the arrangement was faulty.

Dragomir cared nothing either way (though Vikram did receive a long and drawn out stare during the duration of his speech, quickly identified as the mystery “father” of which Semira had jested), except that the beautiful mare who was to teach him of crafting was now hiding under the wing of a mare he had come to know as Alysanne, and he was highly displeased with all this carrying on about things that, as far as he was concerned, was none of their business. If they had wanted the position, should they not have expressed their desires to Mirage?

Should they not be expressing these concerns privately? He was young, but he knew better than to air his dirty laundry in front of a whole gathering of peers. The rest who’d driven into the conversation as well as the black, while he found himself siding with those who rose to the defense of their ebony queen, were looked at now with disdain, for the normally quiet young man had seen quite enough of all this arguing; stepping aside to stand on the other side of the trembling Kahlua, he gives her a soft and long glance as the painted unicorn stallion presents and interesting question.

Where was Lace?

"Remain calm, miss Kahlua," he whispers to the girl who has earned his eye, the girl who his mistakenly believes to be a brilliant philosopher and who is rightly the most beautiful creature he has ever seen, "Mirage will set them right." Of this, he firmly believed; of all the things he held doubts in, his chosen leader was not one of them. Was it not for her that he strove to be better than the racist bloodlines from which he had come?

The memory of Ricochet is a splinter in his heart he’d rather not linger on at this moment.