She shudders, a soft moan rippling forth from dry, cracking lips. As she attempts to place a hoof daintily on the ground before her, she finds herself reeling sideways. Her right shoulder rams into a tree, bringing tears of pain to dull, bi-colored eyes. As she rights herself, the bark of the tree becomes lodged in her skin, another addition to the odds and ends sticking out of her tender flesh. Everything she touches seems to sink into her, tearing yet another hole in her frail hide, causing yet another yelp of anguish. At first, she prayed for it all to stop, for an end to her suffering, but as the days past and no end came for the little slave-girl, she became host to a new emotion: anger.

They did this to her, those ungrateful masters, those high-ranking beasts that wouldn't bother to give her the time of day. They had left her for the darkness without a care in the world. Even her beloved angel had disappeared, leaving her to fend for herself. Where was the seraphim now, though? Where had she been with her loyal servant had needed her? Another groan fights its way into the cold winter air; the sound seems to carry for miles in air this thin and brittle, and suddenly the little buckskin realizes that she doesn't care. She has spent her entire life serving, staying quiet, being the perfect little slave - and for what? What did it all matter now that she was alone again, wandering among the dead trees, her golden pelt soaked in blood?

Maybe she should make them all pay.

The thought would have shocked her, and perhaps when she is in her right mind, she will look back on this moment with horror. But for now, the sickness has a hold of her mind and she cannot seem to break free. The soft-spoken, withdrawn slave-girl has retreated into the deep, dark recesses of the wraith's memory, hidden away behind lock and key. She is no longer a stepping-stone to glory. She is lovely in her own right! She deserves to make her own way in the world! She deserves recognition! And with them in the way, with the royalty holding her back, she will never be at her best. She will never be all that she can be. And so she has decided: they must all die, every single one of them.

She cries out, inviting them to try and stop her.

[OPEN TO ANY! Come heal her!]

"Talking"

Kaiylia

Irma had been very right. A traipse across Helovia in winter, with torrents of freezing rain to steal every ounce of warmth from his soul, had not done him much good. The illness he'd more or less cast off had returned full-force, with all the heat of mind and shortness of breath that came with it. And, to make matters worse, his breath rattled like a death-groan through his throat. Still, Mauja was far too dumb and restless to remain in one place, and paced the sanctuary halls like a zombie, unrest itching along his white limbs. The sound of his footfalls rang hollowly along the walls, and the air grew hotter the closer to the entrance he came—a paradox, given that it was here the cold air streamed in, but it met the panels of heart-fire instantly, and warmed. The golden glow churned out from its prison, slow blood coursing through glass veins as the heart pumped and pumped, forever turning in its prison.

He was just about to pass the entrance when a wrathful, vindictive cry rang out. The sound slid like an avalanche down the path, bounded through the empty first room of their haven. His restless pacing ceased, ears playing atop his head, and he slowly turned his head to gaze up at the world outside. Not that he saw much from where he stood, anyway.

Drawn as a moth to harmful flame, Mauja set one frosted hoof and then another on the skyward path, slowly climbing out from safety and warmth into the bitter chill of winter, and the grasp of shadows. The climb was torture, sick-tired plaguing his limbs and every breath a burning-cold gasp through a swollen throat, and when he finally stuck his nose into the outside world, the harsh wind bit through his fur and made him shiver. Damn this weakness. Bleary eyes scanned the shady horizon from his perch halfway out, and there—there in the distance stood someone with an oddly distorted shape.

Friend or foe? If it was the source of the call, he'd bet his tail on foe. Quietly he glanced behind him, down the path. The room seemed a dizzying distance away, a beckoning glow. Still empty. Gritting his teeth, Mauja peered back into the outside world, and the shape. He was tempted to just go back inside, let it be, pass on, but Ampere's words rang through his mind: have we given up so soon? Mauja, unaware, mauled and sick, felt somewhat excused from her brash accusation, but this thing out here didn't seem half-wolf. And Lena, poor sweet Lena trapped in this nightmare along with everyone else, had spoken of healing powers, and of a spring blessed. In his amblings, he'd seen quite a few.

He could lug the monster around the sanctuary until he pushed her into the right one, or someone told him where to go.

"HEY!" he cried, throat raw and thick; the cold air snatched the breath right out of his lungs. "Over here!"

And let's hope to hell I can do this.

"HEY!" the cry comes, and her cranium revolves slowly to the left, her gaze honing in on the distant, white figure. His voice is brittle, and she thinks that he may become her first target. If she fails, there will be no harm done, after all - resentfully, she remembers how her myriad owners had passed her along, as though she were a new trinket gone out of style. They don't care if she lives or dies, and that knowledge, paired with her newfound hatred, drives her into an indescribable fury. The little buckskin stalks forward - or tries - and ends up stumbling anticlimactically into a large rock. It slices into her hindquarters, but does not come away; instead, her own flesh seems to congeal on the stone, leaving a gaping hole behind. She gasps with pain as she rights herself, but on she walks, determined to make her stand.

As she nears, she becomes vaguely aware of the long horn perched on the stallion's head, and her courage quails as that long-lost slave girl in the recesses of her mind remembers that unicorns are higher than she. If she were in her right mind, she would drop her bi-colored gaze to the ground, bow to the steed and await instruction; as it is, she forces her eyes to bore into his, refusing to give in to old habits. And she presses on, adrenaline assisting her in staying upright, stumbling only every few steps rather than constantly. A pale apparition appears beside her (a new ability that would have made her nervous, had she been normal) and charges for the steed; it carries her infection, threatening to take him to the same darkness that holds the buckskin under its spell.

"You," she rasps, closer still, her vocal cords scratching against one another in her rage. "You and your kind. You deserve this, not me." There is hatred, a hard mask upon her face. Later, she will remember this moment and cringe, hating herself for the weakness that had loosened her tongue. Later, she will run from this stallion, terrified that he will take her to task for her cruel words, for stepping out of her station. But for now, she hopes that he will try, hopes that should he kill her, she will take him down, too. "You deserve to die," she hisses, and lunges forward, teeth bared, attempting to balance herself and bite him all at once.

"Talking"

Kaiylia

[ Sorry for the slight wait. :/ ]

His sick heart was pounding painfully in his chest, the silence a weight upon his ears. There was no vehement cry to answer his demand for her attention, no swift charge of otherworldly feet—barely any reaction at all, just the slow turn of a small head. The shape lumbered closer, slow and unsteady, weaving drunkenly; it should've been less terrifying than the fleet-footed child with his slavering jaws full of sharp, sharp teeth, but.. something in the swaying rhythm of her movements, in the slow, deliberate approach, chilled him to the bone. The determination of her pale eyes. Death comes slowly, his tired mind hummed, and Irma started yelling something in the back of his head. Roughly it translated to your stupidity never ceases to amaze me do you plan on giving me a heart attack I'll kill you so you better survive you idiot. He drew a deep, cold breath. It stung his throat, it stung his lungs, but if this would be the end, he'd want to have taken one good, last sip of winter air.

Ah, brother...

Closer and closer the unsteady girl came, and she was so small; if it wasn't for her distorted shape, for the dull hunger in her eyes.. would she have been frightening at all? Step by step she dragged herself closer, and more and more Mauja saw of her details, of the odds and ends sticking out of her soft, rotting flesh, of gaping holes bleeding dark liquids he had no desire neither to smell nor identify.

It was, in all honesty, its own brand of horror show: not the quick, messy death of a wolf, but slow decay, torture and agony, the promise of a long, long wait until the rotting flesh fell apart, nothing but bones and a mess of meat...

He shuddered. Steeled himself; ears flat against his muscular neck. Adrenaline breathed a semblance of strength into him.

Something pearly white formed by her side, a stray ray of moonlight in a darkened world—it could be nothing good, summoned by the side of hell's own creation. Like snow in the wind it rippled forth, so much fleeter than its dark shadow, leaping straight for him. Mauja tossed his head up, brain rattling around painfully in its fever-warm cranium; the dull ache of fever dumbed him, and a blessing saved him. The blue light of his holly branch flared up, pulsed forth like a gentle shield of all things good and of light. The only sickness there was room for in him, was nature's own.

He'd backed half a step downwards, hind hooves planted firmly among the pebbles and rocks, widened nostrils breathing out defiance just as his heart pulsed life. Come, come, come he whispered under his breath, repeating the mantra, trying to figure out what she would do—this was no lumbering charge, and once she was down in the caves.. how on earth was he going to get her anywhere? Why had he thought he could be in control of this?

Shit, I'm an idiot.

You're dumb, Mauja. Thanks, Irma.

"You," her voice said, all darkness and rough edges mingling along the edges of her words, "You and your kind. You deserve this, not me." Her presence was a menace to every sense, sight and sound and smell, and he glared at her with icy blue eyes. Does she know how extremely easy prey I am? The thought rang through his mind, somehow blinding him to her attack; she'd been so slow, so cumbersome, that he hadn't expected the sudden lunge and promise of death.

They couldn't fill him with their sickness, but they could bite his flesh all the same.

Mauja, stupidly instinctual, began to rise on his hindquarters to protect himself, lifting towards the darkened sky above—but it was a mistake, an idiotic reaction when on a sloping path. Her teeth, her hot vile breath, was against his tucked forelimbs, biting at his sweat-gray pelt; he struck out, once, to smash a front hoof against her shoulder, and then, in some odd way, it was over, because he fell off the face of the world.

She wasn't there for just a nip. She was there for the destruction, the mayhem, his demise, and balanced so precariously at such an angle to the world, he had no chance to save himself when her small mass crashed gracelessly into his bared abdomen. The world spun around his head, the air rushed past his down-turned back; he tried to sit down, but he was already falling, and his drained muscles wouldn't obey.

There was nothing to catch himself on. Just him and the air and nauseating feeling of nothing all around him.

Then he, sort of, slammed the upside of his left shoulder into the rough wall, and then it was his withers being scraped raw against it for the barest moment; his right side touched down, barrel first, on the hard path, and finally, he slammed the length of his neck and head onto it.

In that moment, he wanted to die. His spirit plunged ten feet through the solid ground, swinging right back up again, back into his body. If he could, he would die, to escape the nauseating ringing in his head, the throbbing of his entire side—the way the world spun, mercilessly. He wanted to lay in the dark forever, certain that if he opened his eyes, his guts would turn themselves inside out and his brain would fall out through his ears.

If only he could lay there, forever. If only there wasn't some deformed pony nearby wanting to kill him.

Oh, the things I do...

With a death groan rattling out through his chapped lips Mauja did the unthinkable: he opened his eyes. The world was a blur; the floor spun just beneath his eyes, a dizzying display of shadows and different levels of depth. To him, it seemed he lay half in the ground already, a hazy outline of the rocky floor cutting through his knees. Maybe he should recommend hitting his head really hard to d'Artagnan? This seemed to be his kind of thing, and maybe he'd have something to avoid the damn headache with.

So far, so good. His head felt as if it was about to split open, and his vision was full of swimming black dots, and his right ear was actually ringing. It was a small miracle he hadn't cracked any bone. Gasping, Mauja found he still had four legs, and somehow began to right himself. He heaved himself up on his front feet alright, but found he had no balance, and his descent was very unceremonious: he crashed his sore right side along the wall for balance, feet skidding over loose pebbles and rough edges, and when he finally came down on the fairly even ground he nearly stumbled and fell on his face. Instead, he just sort of crow-hopped until he found some semblance of equilibrium: all four feet planted wide apart, tail out, head low, nose nearly touching the ground. Breaths rattled in and out, and the world kept spinning alarmingly.

And he'd lost the pony. Damn, where was it? His nose was full of its morbid stench, but if he moved in the slightest, to flick and ear to listen, to turn his head to try and see, he knew he'd fall over.

And then, he'd be in even deeper shit.

Somewhere, deep in her mind, she is surprised by the fact that she actually hit him. There is an adrenaline rush, a thrill, one that she never would have thought to have in her previous life - but the darkness lives in her mind now, has taken over her thoughts and desires. She longs for his blood, wants to see him suffer as she has suffered. How does one so pure and innocent become so hateful? Perhaps it is that he is a stallion, and she is afraid of their gender; and in her deadened, hateful state she hides her fear with anger and brutality, perhaps hoping to regain some sense of courage and honor through beating them to a bloody pulp. (Isn't that nice?) In reality, the spotted steed's death would do her no good. In fact, she probably wouldn't remember him with the darkness eating away at her mind. But she presses on all the same in her attack. Her teeth clack together, somehow missing his flesh. She imagines that she comes away with a few hairs off his hide for her trouble, but perhaps that is only part of the illusion. His hooves, though, strike her squarely, chipping away even more of her broken body.

She is reminded of her Master and how he took pieces of her that she can never get back.

Bile rises in her throat as hatred clouds her gaze and her judgment. She does not remember falling, but she supposes that she must have to end up on her back on the path. A low moan registers, and she doesn't know if it is from her quarry or from herself, but she knows that she must get up. He will kill her if she lies here, she is sure of that, and though a part of her longs for the blissful nothingness that would accompany her demise, she finds that the darkness will not allow her to give up so easily. Up, up, UP, it shrieks in her mind, until she finds herself rolling through the gritty rock, taking some of the ground with her in her pelt. Her hooves scramble beneath her and she finds purchase, heaves herself to her feet (with quite a bit of stumbling, might I add). When she finally finds herself upright, she is leaning against the rock wall, looking much the worse for wear and panting with exertion, for the struggle of rising in her dilapidated stated is more than she can bear.

She gazes at the stallion with the glassy calm of shock, and her pale eyes show, for a moment, the little slave girl hiding inside her mind. They are pleading, pained, as a cornered animal asking for death, for salvation, for anything but the nightmare they are living. Please, she almost says, but she doesn't know what she is asking for, and the darkness is taking over again, anyway. Slowly, her gaze hardens, her breathing slows, and after a few moments, she forces herself to stand on her own four legs rather than depending on the wall. She has toppled down to the steed's left, and she takes a step at a time, steadily gaining ground (or so she hopes); but upon reaching his side, she stumbles, falls, precariously sprawling at his hooves. Again, there is a silent plea as her eyes lock with his; and she closes them, waiting for what she is sure will be the last blow of their little spat.

"Talking"

Kaiylia

He didn't have to wait long to find out where she was. The sound of her steps rang through the cavern, the blazing warmth from the crystal panel washing over him, a sickening contrast to the cold air outside; and then, as he was just starting to think that the world had regained some stability, his attacker fell down by his feet. Just like that. Totally out of the blue.

This close, her rotting stench was overpowering, and he could see every gruesome detail of her deformed body. Odds and ends, bits and pieces, stuck to her soft flesh, covered in dirt and grime and black blood and heavens know what else; and from that dark, slimy mess, an eye stared up at him. At his own nearest, blue eye. It was pale, clear, like a star shining from the depths of a midwinter sky, all alone in her broken face. That eye staring into his was pleading, pained, as if beginning him for something—it wasn't an eye of madness, of the harsh voice who had declared him deserving of death.

Then, it closed. She lay still by his feet, underneath his towering frame.

The room had stopped spinning. His head pounded abominably, and his right ear was still inventing noises, but he found that he could crane his head to the side without falling over. He let out a breath, and drew himself together. Pulled his head up to its normal height, instead of just skimming the rocky ground. How long did he have? Before the pony heaved herself up again, and came after him? He ground his teeth together, but the pressure by his eyes threatened to make his skull explode the moment he did, so he let his jaws fall open instead. A bit of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, where some sharp rock, or something, had struck him in his fall.

Where to go? One eye darted down to the mare again, but it looked like she was content to stay put there. Well, all the better for him. Still, for safety's sake, he forced himself a step or two sideways, before looking at the walls. Two tunnels led away from the churning magma; one left, one right. To the right was that glowing, soft, mossy-mushroom-fluorescent place, full of innocent horses, his owl, and their egg. It seemed a bad place to start. To the left.. he turned to peer down that dark tunnel. Frankly, he had no idea where the left led, but it seemed better to go there than barge straight into the main "living" room with a shadow-creature in tow. He was pretty sure they wouldn't like his company after that.

"Get up," he snapped, the command crackling through the air like a whip. He'd expected to have to run and dodge his way to every spring, and then dunk them in and hope it was the right one; he'd expected to take a battering like the one the wolf-child had given him. He'd expected a monster, ready to kill, willing, able, full of supernatural strength—not a soft, decomposing pony that fell at his feet and seemed to think it was fine to lie there like a dead carpet.

It is interesting to consider the depth of the training offered in the slave academies of Th'orqui. Even under the influence of an illness that left her bloodthirsty and angry, when it came time for her to act on her feelings, she had been assuaged by memories, overtaken by the training that had told her for so long that she was to be meek and powerless, that she was to be at the mercy of her superiors. She was nothing, no one; she was but a humble servant, destined to spend her life at the feet of those who would claim her. She had no name, or had she forgotten? Kaiylia was the name given to her by her first masters, nothing more. She had been renamed many times since, and prior to that she had been known by only the serial number still stamped into the gold bracelet that she wore. Of course, the trinket also held her given name, and an inscription proving that not all masters were bad masters, but there you are.

She cannot smell her own, decomposing body, but if she could, she would flinch away from the stench, her eyes rolling, whites showing with fear. Of all the emotions that had been beaten out of her system, of every feeling she had learned to push deep down and hide, death brings out something in her that she cannot hold in. And she smells like death. She looks like death. By all rights, she should be dead now, what with the amount of blood and flesh she has lost to her surroundings. She would weep, if she felt it; but she does not feel anything anymore. Not physically, anyway. The curse that has befallen her has given her that gift, at least. Hatred still bubbles in her breast, but it is a petty thing now, blocked by the training that had taught her to bow to the likes of this stallion. A part of her longs to rip out his throat, but mostly, she just wants him to kill her, or tell her what she is supposed to do. Either way, she will no longer be in this miserable state of existence.

"Get up," he says, the command harsh and grating. She shudders, remembering the touch of another stallion whose voice had been similar to that, and heaves herself to her feet, resisting the urge to move away from the unicorn. She stares at him, her orbs betraying no emotion (except perhaps some kind of suspicion), waiting for the blow that she has come to expect. A part of her feels like a disappointment, for he regards her as though she has done something wrong. To be fair, she makes a poor wraith; should she attack him again? Is that what he wants? Her mind is cloudy, and she hesitates, shifting her weight from side to side, trying to decide what she should do - what he wants her to do.

"Talking"

Kaiylia