_{Some say you're trouble, boy Just because you like to destroy All the things that bring the idiots joy} Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

The prince has come far; the flight away from the tunnels, upon the sun-kissed, snow-covered surface carried him on the warm breath of his own fatigue; he felt the innermost layers of his coat drenched in the carefree sweat of his excursions. Now, however, the trade-wind of his triumph is stunted; he grows cold in his bones; something flutters within his breast. He gasps; the wind has been taken from his lung. Whatever ambrosia sustaining him has finally drained from his chalice, and he is as weak as ever, for the breeze drifts across his back and he feels it trace his coat, the subtle lumps of his spine that etch into his hide. Rapidly, he feels the cold he cannot stand; he feels the clinging snow on his fetlock when before he ignored it. He scowls, hard; he turns and there is a metallic stench, a fell, curious wind that descends upon him.

It is a shadow that stalks, a specter who dons the skull of an equine creature. He blinks passed the blinding white of sun-soaked snow; no, this is no shadow. All that stands before him is a mare as black as the darkest night, her face tattooed with a foreboding image indeed. Something slinks from the mare’s back, and the grey eyes tear away from the ruined vista of mare to discover it; a flea-bitten runt of a creature, gnawing on some insignificant. Reginald snaps his gaze back to the mare; his breath freezes as he surveys her. She smiles; he recoils from such an abomination. Her mouth is destroyed; a foul odor drifts toward him, something cloying and unhealthy; his knees tremble.

He backs a step away from her as she speaks a rattler’s voice. “Brave”, he calls her. He furrows his brow; considers her words; shakes his head. “No,” he mutters, unable to tear his gaze from the hide of scars, the pale, clouded eyes of decay. “No, I’m not brave…I just do what I like.” He does not think himself a hero for sneaking passed his family, for wandering away from his mother, dodging his brother, and escaping the shadow of his father. He shrugs his thin shoulders, suppressing a grimace as her scent assaults him again; it slides down a restricted throat, and he feels his chest tighten in a way he has not felt in some time. It is detestable; he cannot stand this feeling of faintness—it is an unbreakable thing.

Reginald turns his back on the mare, steps carefully over the golden, frothy pool of his claim stake. He stalks the perimeter of the brilliant rotunda; the marble underfoot is free of snow, and he is able to investigate it further, to see the brilliant artistry in the polished stonework. Stone pleases him; it fails to capture his interest in this moment, however. “This is mine,” he says suddenly, and grey irises tear from the floor and back to the mare who surveys him, returning his own calculating stare, “and when I’m older, everyone will know it’s mine.” The mare fascinates him—he cannot fathom his attraction. In all ways she is detestable. She smells of a carcass, she wears the scars of a mad berserker, she is female and there gambols a rat of a companion creature, a mirror of its mistress in every grungy way.

“….Who are you?” he asks suddenly; his curiosity bursts forth in a stronger voice as he turns toward her, ears forward, eyes burning with that voracious demand for discovery that he possesses. He stands as proud as always, head held high, tail curled behind him as far as he can will it to curl, breathing in her horrid stench and swallowing it for the time being, for he is not weak, and she interests him.

"talk talk talk"

_{Some say you're trouble, boy Just because you like to destroy All the things that bring the idiots joy} Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

Little lord she calls him, and he decides that his interest is justified. His body weakens in her presence, and he feels the pull of her shadow on his bones and marrow—yet he preens in his breast, smug and satisfied with her and her rancid words. He is proud; his shoulders are thrown backwards some, his neck held higher, his obsidian crown raised in the light of the beautiful rotunda. He does not know the danger of her shadow, the threat of her acid on her tongue; he is a child; he does not comprehend it. The need for his mama crumbled in the dust in the sunlight and the cold plague wind and danger does not touch his heart as it once did, for screams have drowned it.

Grey eyes skirt about once more, but the landscape is featureless in his mind, erased from notice, for the vagrant mare spits from her maw, and he listens intently, ears cocked and swiveled to carefully catch every word falling from that pitted tongue. It is an intriguing wisdom that reaches him, exciting him, for it’s a knowledge he has been unable to comprehend fully. Oh, how the darkling colt hates his limits; the vices of his flesh, the confines of his age, the prison of inexperience. These things he cannot simply destroy--no. He must wait for them to decline, and hate only festers with time.

*“..A cub cannot defeat a herd of deer by himself..."*

He watches her again, his persona of aloof breaking with the childish voracity of his curiosity. His gaze bores into her, the eyes born of his witch’s blood, listening to the words and wondering their meaning. For he knows to speak does not necessarily mean to divulge; does he not speak daily to his own kin, speaking and talking and jabbering and never saying a word? There is wind; it howls through the architecture, bringing with it more cold and more foul air from the….the demon lady, as she named herself. The spawn of some deposed warlord, perhaps? The unlicked cub of a shadow’s crusted, curdling scum? He inspects her again, a different light in his iris; she would be pretty were it not for her mangy hide, that awful odor and the scars about her form. He does not know what she’s for; he does not know demon mares.

*“..I can share my name, but only after you give yours."*

He snorts; his molars grind, and he watches her filthy pet in the dirt. His eyes skirt away from her—return to her face—dart away—bear into her again, seething orbs of molten lead, and his body seems to swell. He does not like this; he cannot stomach a female of any size giving him any sort of order or instruction. It’s not right to him, and again he curses the weakness of his flesh, for no mare or ugly filly should be able to stand up to the typhoon of his furious passion. He wrestles with himself; the puddle of his golden stake spreads, trickling down from the raised platform of the rotunda. He swallows the fire in his throat, and he is in control of himself; he has passed this test. “I am Reginald,” he whispers, a ragged croak in his throat. Son of a warlord and his warrior. He does not like saying his name to her, but she spews poisonous wisdom, and he is enthralled with it. He watches her still, waiting, expecting her name now that the conditions have been met, for he will not be denied. He will learn her name, or he will name her and be done with it.



[WOW SORRY FOR THE WAIT D:]
"talk talk talk"