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.