It had been too long since she had last seen her sister in arms, the Dark Empress with her devious smile that lingered subtle as a whisper on her features and the deep ebony rivulets of her hair, the stark whiteness of her markings against the pitch of her skin. If Illynx can feel love, then this is it, the hot pulse of her heart beating with riotous intent against the ribs of her chest, this will to serve a fallen queen when she herself wears the crown of ice and her lover is nearly without a horn to even claim having a crown in the first place.

For any other, the lips of the golden bitch would hold only insults, and there would be no piteous whimpering within her heart for the broken sister who failed herself and her people by loosing her most prized possession to a hornless blight. But for Psyche, Illynx feels a sorrow that is deepened only by the thought of what would become of her, should she fall into the same steps that her dearest Empress had; it are these thoughts that draw her from the confines of her mountain and southward, though she wanders never far from her home since the invasion of the shadows.

She will make no such mistakes again; her heart will beat alongside the mountain or it will not beat at all. Let her sister forgive her for luring her so close to the splinter that festers in her heart, for it is the same ache that gives the Gilded Blade her confident step and the gleam to her eye. It is only in this that she and her beloved differ – at least she hopes. She can accept the fact that Psyche has been jaded against the splendor of the palace of the north, for it is only a home; Illynx knows that their hearts beat alongside another’s even if the continent seeks to drive them apart.

After all, who had found her when she had first come home? Who had managed to pull her from the depths of her despair with a few simple sentences and a gentle touch?

Not sure how she knows her love will be here on this night, Illynx follows a path that she is sure will end with the Empress for no true reason other than impulse. However, she can see the jagged lines in the road that have led to the turn of events that have left her without her emotional guide for the first time in too many years, and she knows that they can dawdle no longer when it comes to appeasing the thirst of the wolves who skirt their doorstep and the shadows within.

Psyche must come, on this night. There is action to be taken; the secret keepers of her fold had come to her with news of recent kidnappings, one of which involving her handsome and possibly coveted new General and the fair Arah and her daughters.

One of the names involved made her heart curl into itself, and spit.

Confutatis. I should have killed you when I had you pleading on my doorstep.

Psyche! she calls over the clicking of her hooves across the ice, choosing a side cavern some yards off from the opening to her usual and preferred place to venture, the place in which she had shared a rare moment of casual conversation with Deodat. Her dark tail drags along the glistening ground behind her, amulets clinking almost merrily against her black hearted breast, the Lady content to pace and call out for her dearest as long as it took for the neighboring horses to grow agitated and bring her to the source of the pleading – though she hoped it would be only the lure of her desire to speak with her that would draw her friend north, back towards a place she had once forsaken.

Perhaps the sight of the ice will refreeze her heart.

@[Psyche]

The voice that ripples back towards her is not the echo of her own, but the supple dark lull of her dearest’s voice, the pitch shaped to the mold of the name her parents had given her at birth, a name that never sounded so lovely as it did when it came from the satin lined lips of her Empress. Her ears rise, her eyes burn with an overwhelming happiness that her assumption that they would meet on this night was not wrong, and while she does not entirely discredit the return of her call as a simple ghost of her hopes, she does make way towards the entrance to the cavern, her own voice calling out in greeting to the dark mare with the broken crown.

”Sister,” she croons with a smile, her golden horn breaking into the cavern that held her beloved queen of shadows, every inch of her frame expressing the sincere pleasure in finds in merely laying eyes upon her oldest and only true friend. That her friend lies to her and hides the softness of her heart behind a thin and morose veil of shadow slides past her, the illusion given strength by the Lady’s desperate need to find love and appreciation in the eyes of Psyche when she gazes into them.

She is not sure if she herself feels it in return for the woman who had saved her from a lonesome and brief existence; she only knows that she feels whole when standing near her, infallible and with endless grace and power.

Her dark hair sweeps across her features as she strides close to her friend, seeking to brush her shoulder against the black silk of the Empress’ body and to rustle the mare’s mane with her lips ever so tenderly should the subtle signs of her affections be allowed. Illynx does not usually touch others so openly, with such tenderness or such exposure of her compassions, but the recent events that have tried to sever their bond only seemed to strengthen it. No longer will the golden bitch recoil from her feelings of fondness towards those who have adequately proven their usefulness beyond mere manipulation, another step higher on a social ladder or agenda; whatever this warmth is she shares with Psyche, it is something that the woman is coming to understand as a thing to be proud of, to jealousy guard.

She remembers Torleik’s words of comfort, how he had been such a bleeding heart but one which hadn’t caused her usual reaction of violence or disdain. It had been such a fine display of the strength of his soul that the mare could now recognize her emotional reactions, in part, to be that of envy. She wished to be this consoling brute, a dark lined figure that prowls the boundaries of the home and seeks to guide and protect both the physical and spiritual well being of that home’s inhabitants. She sought company and things only for herself, and while she had made no secret of it, it was nothing she was truly proud of.

Who could be, after all? The woman was quite content with washing the blood away from herself so long as it was justified by her racist ideals, but that she could turn her blades so quickly from the hornless to her own should it suit her was something she wished to remain a cleverly disguised beast of prey in their mountain meadow. It was a part of herself that she believed Psyche understood, one that, if she was assuming right after heavy thoughts on behalf of their last conversation, had begun to die out in the heart of her dark counterpart as well.

”I had hoped you would come here this evening, she says, sweet and innocent as she has been to Psyche since they had first met all those fateful years ago, ”the lights should be growing overhead soon.” Above their heads, she gestures to the thin layer of ice over this particular cavern, one which during the day would let in the bright white beams of the Sun’s light as he watched over the day. The glow was currently the silver allure of the Moon, but soon the Lord who watched over the keepers of the mountain would paint the heavens with a million colors that rippled and weaved like a ribbon through the sky, and the glacial cave in which the two dark hearted women stood would burn with the myriad tones of his power. ”Almost as if we were back in my cave, hiding from the others.”

Her smile is amused and full of a sweet nostalgia, a mask worn to hide the sadness she feels at the distance that has held them apart; she has more to say, but withholds it for a sweet reprieve from business, a gentle stroll down the lanes of conversation with little to no purpose. She does not wish this to be a meeting of sorrow and dramatics as their last had been, after all; she has much to discuss with her dearest, namely the restlessness of the black iron souls running though the white spirit illusions of their vale, but also the consequences it is sure to have on her rule.

One must throw the wolves a scrap or two from time to time, lest they forget you ever fed them at all and turn their teeth towards your throat.

Melting into one another, the sensation of belonging nearly overtakes her, a feeling that she has not truly had a chance to examine since she was very small. Always an outcast, even in the years she had walked alongside her dark companion, her heart was alone even when she stood among a thousand figures with familiar faces, except in these precious, stolen moments. With no eyes to judge her but those which she wished to truly see her for all that she was and could never be, the Lady lets herself slide into the quiet complacency of simply touching another, drawing from her well of internal strength what she can to fortify her own quaking soul. In this embrace lies so much more than a pleasant exchange of body heat, so much more than even she can understand or recount, for it symbolizes that even if the world falls down around her tomorrow, she will still have somewhere to run.

The ebony queen pulls away from her and she is left with a sickening emptiness where the warmth of her friend had once been, an emotion she quickly discards as useless and ceases to acknowledge. It is equally as fair, anyway, to gaze upon the pale, silver light that dances along the curves of the Empress, the soft curve to her back that marks her baring the gift of life, a daughter called Sno. Illynx has never met her, this girl born of unknown loins, only seen glimpses of the filly before the golden wench had slipped away one evening and out into the wilderness. It had been a long time before she’d come home.

Sno was already gone.

Was it cold of her to admit that she had been glad to not have a challenge confronting her selfish possession of the black queen?

She matches the former Lady’s smile with her own, reminiscent and gentle on her pretty face, though she wonders to whether the times had truly been good at any point in time for any living soul. Life ruined what goodness they were born with. She supposed that the children might love the mountain, find great peace in its white shawl and stride fearlessly through the beginnings of their lives; but the Lady Illynx was jaded by the passing of time, she suspected all of treachery against her and most of them failures to comply to her standards. The only thing good of those times had been the ease in which her life had flowed, and that Psyche had been near and capable of baring this ridiculous weight that had been left on her shoulders.

She had already blamed Psyche for that, once. It was time to complain about other things.

She let the mare search her face, where she would find lines grown into the flesh that had not once been there and the first few white strikes of grey leaking their way into the darker parts of her coat. Her golden eyes, boundlessly glimmering, were darker in their depths than they had ever been, and she still was not of the most glamorous physical condition due to the time she’d been forced to bare underground and as a wraith… but overall, she was well. It seemed most of her plans to create friendship and strengthen bonds between herself and the rest of the herd had been working, albeit slowly, and she felt more secure with both Torleik and Ulrik guarding her from the fiendish ways of the Reaper.

”The lights are always pretty. It is only our eyes that grow dark and unable to observe their gleam," she speaks with a smile, necklaces jangling as she tilts her head and neck playfully towards her friend. She wants to say so much, to delve into every small facet that has led her here with the ideas she holds in her mind, the new way she has come to view the portrait of this life she has been cannon balled into. Instead, she tries to make sense…for once in her miserable existence. ”Part of me thinks the Lord Time wears on the soul of whoever leads his herd, as punishment for our plans,” a laugh follows her words, short and bright, a sign of her good humor towards the God no matter the truth of her assumptions, ”it is good for Deimos he has nothing left to forsake. A pity for such gentle women as ourselves...”

She looks out into the star flecked horizon she can view from the opening into their hidden place, sighing softly and watching the white cloud dissipate into the air. ”You and Mauja changed everything, for us,” she continues, ”there is no going back. Not now. No matter how afraid you are of the consequences of our rise to our rightful places above the others or how thin the Storm Lord has stretched your soul.” Knowing that her dearest is not in the place to willingly confront the dying creature she has left behind in her flight from the mountain, Illynx delicately places the writhing corpse of the Plague back before her sister.

It is something that must be done, for the golden bitch’s sake, if nothing else. The wolves that prowl in the snow do not forget the promises cast to them so easily.

”I grow weary of it, the endless game of deceit and how to balance it with politics among such placid kinds as World’s Edge, the Merciful’s fold of misfits,” elaborates the wench on her own opinions and standing, ”but it is essential to my success, to any leaders success, on that mountain. I will play it alone, my sister, but…”

”but I would rather you fortified my strength with your own. My angel in the darkness, keeping watch over all that I cannot see from the throne you so graciously bestowed upon me. Show them their failures, their foolishness – rise, rise with me. We can have the world as we always wanted.”