Did the woman of the night know of her apparel, the dagger that jutted forth from her brow, the endless depths of her gaze, had turned to sanguine? It leaked forward, gleaming, glittering as the vital fluids that pulsate through the tremors of veins beneath thin skin. The warmth of the flames have painted her awash in vivid, vibrant hues of incandescence fueled flame. If she was aware of the change in hue, the nightingale's mind would whir with distaste. She is meant to be cool, cold, the reflection of the seas, not the reflection of a long dead ghast that haunts her dreams with cries of righteous infuriation.

She slides the shutters upward from her pearls once more. Snow lashes catch the orange hue of the fire.

The Ice King and his Queen remain by her side as she gazes into the crystalline pane of glass, and she recognizes the rumbling hum of agreement with a flick of a delicate hark. The lull between them, mixed with the roar of the dancing flames, is oddly soothing in comparison to the screams and squawks of her homeland. She loves her brother's and sisters with a ferociousness akin to the fury of the ocean against the rocks, a endless movement as old as time itself, and yet she can relish the disappearance of them— (if only for this short time) the lack of Plaguebearer's bumbling frame and the nonexistence of the Blood Empresses' glacier gaze upon her soul itself.
She does not know the memories that may disease the mind of the alabaster and obsidian coupling, does not know if he too suffers from the disorders and addictions her kin do, and yet at least he does not speak with such bellowing that it gives the nightingale a migraine. Is the mental decision, the appreciation of this, selfish? A betrayal of those whom she gives loyalty and affection? She does not know, and does not think any longer on the matter.

The stranger and she float amidst constellations and stars, invisible as they may be, the existence of the milky way and the skies unreachable in some world above their domes. For this time, they have disappeared from the world, and perhaps in a different world, they may have fought one another, they may have become enemies. Blood may have split at the edge of the opening into the darkness, she recognizes the infinite number of universes that cannot be seen behind the veil of her mind with immense interest. In another universe, the two stranger's may not have been stranger's, in another universe, in another universe they may not have dawdled with their thoughts in the judging stare of the pulsing artery in front of her optical zones.
In another universe, perhaps, she would not be as cracked and drained as she is here. And in another universe, perhaps, she would be worth that of a dime.

That is not this universe.
She feels pastel blue dig into her very bones, and overactive mind backtracking but a few moments prior, she recognizes the Ice King has spoken to her. It is but a word, and she searches the bank's of her mind with meticulous inner eyes, finding what she believes to correct in meaning based upon the Ice King's frame and fact. Vibrant hued, she examines him once more with her gaze, a tiny dip of the dome in acknowledgment and approval. "A fitting name."
The woman steps but a hoof beat away, the heat washing over her frame from the glass wall perhaps a little too much for her (the bones within her very core seem to be aflame—) and allows a smile to grace her maw. A genuine smile.
The nightingale finds it surprising that she means it. "It is a pleasure to meet you both."

Mauja— the Ice King, queries her now with wonders of that which they have stepped into. She recalls, calculations and gears that turn within the expanse of a craving mind, knowledge and the voice of a long-forgotten memory, a blessing unto her and her kin from what might have been a Goddess.
"My kin and I came here upon chance. A spectral came to us." Lyrics echo, soft, against the cavern's walls. "They told us they had long awaited the day in which the species that dwell within these lands found a place of the.. Ancient's." Mild confusion rises as smoke from within her melodic tones, for what the specter had told them offered little knowledge into the history of the past. "She told us they came to this maze of cavern's during a great storm. That many rooms were lain beyond this entrance, of life and beauty strange and marvelous to the mortal eye."

A soft sigh escapes her maw, allowing the remainders of her lyrics to sink into his bones. "It seems it has been deemed the Sanctuary. It appeared to us in the summer, and I know little more of it, much to my chagrin. The woman blessed us, and was gone to the world once more."
The nightingale falls silent once more, a swaying leaf in a wind that was nonexistent.

What was the Sanctuary here for? What were the divines preparing them for?
She could but assume it was nothing good.