Inside of the beast, there is a monster, and within that hollow creature resides a small and frightened child.

It is strange, how hatred can take its roots in love, and how very similar they are after all when broken into microscopic fragments and studied from a magnifying glass. It is even more mystifying that, while we are the ones who feel, we often don’t really know what it is that races and beats its way through our hearts until we reflect on it – if we reflect at all.

The monster gave leeway to the transformation, the black coat over a broken and infected emotional wound that sold the soul within to the disease that rides its black steed across the land – but the child held the beast at bay, gave room for her kin to escape a fate cold and ruthless as this prison she now found herself trapped in.

The Lady Illynx is here, watching the world through gleaming red eyes.

Her lips are sewn shut with rough twine. She cannot scream. She cannot move; her legs have been encased in stone. There is only the darkness, and the narrow beam through which she knows she has attacked any and all who bore light on their hearts which dared cross her path. She knows that she will not stop. This body will not let her rest until all life has been feasted upon and the world is nothing but the dead and the dying.

The child only cries, softly and without end, as she always has.

The Lady Illynx, as usual, does not hear her.


Her talons slice into the hard packed earth of the Heart, the air cool and still under the deathly chill of winter, a thin veneer of drifting, powdered snow tossed aimlessly about the surface by a wind that buffets her shining, ebonite locks about her monstrous head.

She is a body of feathers and pitch, streaked in blood, mostly ruined flesh that has been burned and singed by the fire magic of the earth bound living she has challenged. Most fled, but the one.

A brave male, but the darkness would take him too. She had imparted too much of the infection on that shining silver flesh, she had tasted blood and fear. It was only a matter of time. The whining voice within her remembered that part of life before Divine strength, life before an unending cycle of murder and dismay. The whining voice had not been able to keep her from rising from the weak flesh that the disease had captured, and the unicorn of prey now paced about the rim of the den of the living.

There were too few on the surface for her to remain here.

She will challenge them within.

A cawing howl breaks the stillness of the air as her wings tuck to her sides and she is sliding ever so quickly down into the bowels of the earth, her lips curved in a dark and menacing smile as she arrives in a cloud of dust and unsettled stones that deflect off of her battle worn flesh and crackle against the stone boundaries.

The living sprawl before her, in an array much like a buffet, and she steps forward with one normal rate step before attempting to burst with full speed into the center of the foray.

The whining voice laughs, joyfully; the beast has no magic below the earth.

She only takes many stumbling and useless steps deeper into the cavern, a sputtering and hideous sound of dismay slipping from a maw stained brown with dried blood.

It’s too late now to escape without them surrounding her, even the beast knows this without the mocking drone of the bitch within her head, but the stench of the water oozing from the fountain in the center of the area now seems all to distinct and nauseating. She prepares herself to face whoever will come to challenge her, nostrils broad and quivering as her blood toned eyes roll psychotically in her gore marked face, a path of escape sought as she attempts to make her way back out of the hole into which she has fallen.

[ OOC: Open for healers or someone to chuck her into the fountain. :'D ]

As all suspected, the beast is confronted within moments of arrival.

She has no hackles, but her flesh bristles, her chest proudly presses itself outward, and the vast wings rising from her spine rise and broaden outwards in a threat as her head snakes lower, lower down to his level.

What has come to challenge her is so small, and it reeks of life.

She eyes his painted frame with bloody eyes, putrid blackness swirling about the stillness of her body as she braces for the challenge that is sure to rise. The moment sound is made they will fall upon her like wolves, just as those above would do to them. It is the cycle of things, a snake eating its own tail.

The whining knows his name, is equally as horrified that this is the one that will come to challenge her black prison, and the wraith smiles, a fine line of drool slipping from the corner of her mouth as she wetly rattles her breath.

He wants her to yield, his magical armor clinking into place.

The beast is as offended as the being within her would have been.

A barking sound of outrage escapes the monster’s lips as it moves to lunge at the winged fool before her, ignoring his call for peace as one would expect something so mindlessly hungry to do. But even as she spreads her wings perpendicular to body and takes her first savage step forward, the earth is moving beneath her, trembling and rupturing.

She screams, an echoing sound that bounces of the stone and down around them, but even her cacophony and her panic to remove herself from the falling earth will not save her from the chains that rise to grasp at her ankles, biting into her putrid flesh and holding her in place.

Her massive black wings beat against the air, horned head thrashing with such savagery that its red tinted tip slams upon the stone floor before her and nearly cracks, and though her body almost rises from the ground in her exertion, the spell is cast.

The creature is bound, no matter how bloody she makes her wings or body beating it upon the earth.

She is being pulled forward, though does not wish it to be so. She plants her haunches, her tail draping across the ground behind her as her fore limbs back peddle hard and uselessly before her, the talons scraping and scratching with a tremendous noise that is swallowed by her shrill and growling cries of protest.

The chains chime in mockery of her struggle, their laughter a sweet song to the prisoners held inside the devil as she is being drug to the water.

While the pegasus was not her friend in life, the Lady Illynx might reconsider when she wakes in the waters, cleansed and whole as if she had only dreamt this black streak in her tale. All things in life lead one down a path that will better them, or so she once assumed – the child within her heart dances in celebration of the stallion that saves them, his wings a staunch disapproval of the broken notion within in heart that she can only rely upon herself.

He is not even kin, and while she wears wings in this form, there is hope that he will not shun her when he discovers the soul buried beneath the smut of disease, that his efforts to save her lost spirit would not be considered a waste of his time when the most grand mask she has worn in all her life is peeled away.

No matter the small elation in the tiniest corners of her ruined mind, the beast rebels, topples to her side the final few feet to the pool; the water smells like vivacity and starlight, and she will have none of this. She can smell the stench of the Earth God’s magic pouring out from it, longing to steal away her power and fearsome guise.

The monster has come to love flight, the expedience of the skies. She is loath to part with this aspect of herself more so than herself in its entirety – the beast is mindless. She only longs for more, more and more until all the world has nothing left to give her.

Bless the Armored Saint who tosses her into the water with a splash, his tremendous heart that saves the world from the bitch and all who would have been born from her.


She dreams of the misty wood as her body reverts and heals, the monster culled and writhing as its spirit leaves her.

She is small again, a bundle of flowers from the meadow that overlooks the sea clutched in her teeth, and her pace is bright and bouncy, a smile lingering on her lips that was once always there, pure in its intensions and full of golden light. The flowers are for her mother, and they are all her favorite colors; violet, and yellow.

Violet is the color of her father’s eyes, and even so young, Illynx knows that the golden yellow is for her. She has gathered them to show how much she has grown in the past year that she does not need them to watch over her all the time as they used to; after all, she is a yearling, and has been so for at least a season. Should she not be seeking out whatever path her destiny lies upon? She has not even seen the artisans at work, utilizing the Moon’s glass to mold objects, or seen a true spar, and it is all because mother will not let her “interfere” with their practice.

She knows there is something wrong before she ever reaches the clearing her parents have chosen as their place of residence among the herd. She can smell the blood and fear on the air, hears nothing where there should be the soft rumble of her father’s voice and the chiming ring of her mother’s laugh.

The flowers fall to the earth as soon as she steps within the circle, her eyes falling upon her parents entangled in each other’s frames, still as stone.

The tears fall shortly after.

No one comes to dry her tears. No one comes to save her from the image of her life in ruins.


Her eyes snap open when they realize the wetness that touches them is not that of her remembered tears, the water well over her head, and while she has only been in the pool for a brief moment, panic sets in and sends her surging back through the surface. She sputters and gasps for all of a few seconds before setting her eyes upon Midas, her gaze broadening (if such a thing is possible, the poor dear is terrified) and remarkably innocent for once, the lingering traces of the girl she had been in her dream clinging to her exterior.

If a unicorn is capable of feeling nude and ashamed, she feels so now as she stands there with her soul so open and bare upon the stone, her spirit the only thing more sodden than her bodice.

Try as she might, she cannot recall how she came to be in this water, or why it is Midas of fucking Dragon’s Throat who stands and glowers at her as if he has shoved her in its depths.

She cannot understand why she knows that it had to be done. Why did it have to be done?

The confusion makes her head spin, and her knees wobble momentarily before she shoots a leg forward to balance herself as she looks about her at the fountain and the caves. Hoping he is not here to kill her, her voice makes its way from her lips with a frail and delicate sound that is unlike the usual crisp and cool feminine tones she speaks with, golden eyes searching and find the face of the painted stag with a wonderment as to why and how she has come to be in this dark and cold place, so disoriented she can barely recall her prior journey with the tiger into its depths, or that her whole herd has fled here.

"Why have you thrown me into this fountain?" sincerity lines her face as she looks dubiously and with much confusion about her, the child slowly slipping back into the shadowy corners of her mind that she has forced it to remain in, a gentle smile still set upon its lips, "I…how did you get me all the way here from the forest?"

Someone had come to save her after all, hadn’t they?

Not the forest, I live in the mountains now…I think, she thinks, shaking her head, "The mountains, I mean."

Why did you bring me here? Why you? she wants to ask, but it seems cold, unworthy of what he has just done for her and her people, whoever and wherever they might be.

The memories trickle in slowly as if through two tightly pressed stones, logical reasons why it is that she feels as if it is so terribly wrong for her to have been saved by this man of all men. The water seeps down her face from her dunk in the cool waters, and while the draft of the cave causes a ripple of a shiver to cross her body, it is more the thought that she was so consumed by the power loaned to her by the spell of shadow that causes her skin to quake, the fact that her own had not been sent to find her.

Her golden eyes search her surroundings as the kindly pegasus explains her predicament, her whole ear cast in the direction of his voice while the other explores the myriad sounds that crash against her in this hole. To her surprise, the sound of his mellow and masculine tones is soothing, a gentle undercurrent to the cacophony her heart as it beats against her ribs, the undulations of her thoughts; the child clings to him, strong Midas, as many women have done in the past and surely will in the years to come.

Illynx does not understand where her belly full of loathing has waltzed off to, as the links of her memory and that which he shared with her clinked together to form a palpable line of who she was, leading her back to the Basin and the caves and her splendidly beautiful, perfect herd.

"Thank you," she says quite sincerely, severing her gaze from the steep entrance into the caverns where it had come to settle to look upon her savior, her wonderment at still not understanding the final moments that the beast had walked within her leaving her with the same slightly baffled expression. She clears her throat as she glances down at her hooves, shimmering beneath the water that has her submerged to her belly, pulling herself from the water with sleek, black tail in tow, her pendants and golden back glistening with the residual liquid that clings to her flesh.

"You are called Midas, are you not?" inquires the sodden Lady, adjusting her body into one of relaxation to invite the man into a rare moment of nonviolent interaction from the usually not so welcoming bitch. She has heard of a painted stallion of the Throat who wears magical armor by such a name – it is her duty to know such things, after all – and finds it would be too odd for such a coincidence even in her state of temporary and light amnesia for two such males to exist.

The nuances of conversation flutter past her, and lazily her ears followed them as if they were notes of sound carried on delicate, papery wings. It is all a part of decent conversation, this exchange of niceties, and while she is not entirely sure, she has a strong feeling that she does not enjoy them on a normal day either. It is a game to her, even now, the way the words bounce and bend as he tosses a kindly but mostly meaningless statement in reply to her thanks.

She nods, perhaps too late to be truly polite, but does not know what else to say; restored from what? she might ask, but the truth was surely horrid, and either way, he may mistake her question and answer again that she had been possessed by evil. I feel as if I have always been possessed by evil, she thinks, looking at him in the tender moments that stretch between the dead notes of their words, even before whatever darkness this is; it is no surprise that I had been consumed by it.

Why has he saved me, though, if I am damned? Has this water saved my soul?

She takes note of his wings, the way her mind recoils from them without any bidding, and knows precisely why he should hate her. She is starting to recall well enough of herself to know that the man before her, agreeing that he is Midas, should probably have killed her while he had the chance rather than saved her – at least for the sake of his people, his flying daughters.

Just the memory of the sound that those particular appendages made when breaking was enough to remind her that not all of the beast had been born with the disease she had contracted from the dead.

As he asks her for a title of her own, the question of why dies out in her mind.

I was not saved, at least not truly, she thinks, somewhat disheartened by the thought; she should have known better. Even in this state of hazy recollection she knows that it would never be so.

Still, the memory had ended much more pleasantly in this repetition, and it lingered in her. She hesitates for a moment before she answers, loathe to watch the ease and warmth slip from the man’s features if he is the sort to condemn her for her associates. As far as she knows, she’s personally brought no harm to any of the Throat.

"Illynx, of the Aurora Basin," she says with a smile, partially because she cannot remember at this moment precisely who she had heard the man’s name and description from, though mostly because she is already putting back on her long adorned mask, "I heard of you through some conversation or another… I can’t precisely recall which, at the moment."

Sending a ripple down her body, she shakes loose the remaining water with care not to splash Midas too terribly, desiring no sort of tussle in this encounter and not wanting to give any reason for there to be one. "Your armor makes you easy to pick out," she giggles with her head still lowered as the shake subsides and the pitter patter of Illynx made rain hushes into nothing.

He is honorable, despite his malformed body, she takes note of; it is something to remember. If she is to ever need this Midas, he might be counted on, for the golden nature of his heart – and that same gold could be manipulated under the right circumstances, the sort of men that would do anything for the sake of goodness and justice. Even the child within her mind, still more present than usual as the plague slips from her body and her mind restores itself to sanity, balks at these notions. Illynx has enough truth in her life to disprove either theory – goodness was in the eye of the beholder, and justice was dictated by the idealistic plots of leaders who, perhaps, had no right at all to make such decisions.

Psyche had trusted her to lead a herd, after all. Not all leaders were cut from perfect molds.

She returns his smile, the same shimmering expression that is always pretty and almost always means nothing. In this instance, it is not entirely empty – she does owe him her life, after all, at least one in which she controls the path, but her hate scared heart cannot let it be as true as those she might have shared with him were she someone else.

All she owes him, as far as she is concerned, is the faith that his death will not come by her hooves.

She cannot promise that the Reaper will not find him, or proud Zuriel; she may be the Lady of the mountain, but only so much control could be kept over wolves, a lesson she had learned many times in her years among the horned people of the Basin. All she knows is that Midas is safe from her, so long as he does nothing to devalue his service to her; perhaps, even, the painted stallion might come to be considered a strange friend of sorts, an animal she allows near her when the act is of mutual benefit.

He is not surprised that he has been heard of in the Basin, and she smiles softly again in response, perfectly timed with the easy cadence of his words. His chuckle fills her ears and she finds herself caught in its light, for though she does not remember how he was spoken of, precisely, she knows it wasn’t pleasant.

At least he shares the same joke with her, judging by that grin on his face.

"We speak naught but good of our neighbors outside the vale," playfully retorts the minx, her smile light and girlish on her face as she allows herself to fall into her own giggling, lured by the sound of the stag’s own tender laughter. He is not so bad, really; she only hates him for his wings and the way he is so much better than her, able to forgive the gracelessness of her kin when she herself would not have done the same for him.

That she can only vaguely grasp that he annoys her with his knight in shining armor act is all the more frustrating, and she finds that the ring of her own sounds of elation are hollow within her head, and the notes fall into silence.

She nods as he offers his farewell, not truly sad to see him go just as she is not truly enamored with him for saving her life. Had he worn a horn, she might have insisted that he stay with her and share more of his company; he reminded her, in a way, of sweet Ciceron that she had met that evening along the foot of the Steppe, but more matured and rounded. Midas can see the shadow of the world where Ciceron had seen only the misty changing of light to darkness.

It nags within the back of her mind, as well, that it is likely few went to find her after she had gone missing. After all, the last who had seen her was Deimos – and Deimos was no more a friend to her than the man before her, and perhaps thrice as dangerous, for he ruled alongside her and could keep pets much closer than the Throat could.

"May we meet again, Midas," she says softly, standing to look about her after a momentary pause and choosing where she would seek out her kin first. A final look is cast to the armored stallion before she drifts away from him, crown held proud in defiance of the muddled mess her mind is currently in.