The Lady patrols again, her heart ever restless and the stone too slow as it slaked away from the metal that they needed to continue with the Engineer’s designs. Either way, she was not much for the work involved, or the dust, never the sort of woman to put a job ahead of her appearances and truly not the sort to ever start, even if she was attempting to turn over a new leaf in the eyes of her numerous subjects. And so she kept to what she was good at, and what she was good at was violence, and watchfulness, her golden streaked frame a dark and gleaming smudge along the white curvature of the glacial pass.

Boundlessly proud as always, she clings to the shadows and the nooks of the stone as she wanders the footing of their proud mountain, metallic gaze flashing inside of her dark features which are raised so that her namesake points its spiraled length towards heaven and the home of the Moon and her newfound master of Time. She is a broken woman, beneath all her exterior armor, but she has broken in such a way that she refracts all the light that touches her and maims any stray appendages which dare to touch her too often or too long, and she knows this of herself more completely than even she dares to admit most days.

To the caverns she wanders, the solitude of the slick and opaque walls, the allure of frozen kings and lost artifacts drawing her into their heart as she ponders her life; it is a subject she finds herself on all too often, with little to dwell on other than the numbers that had been lost to the shadows, the alliances that had bled in the absence of a strong willed, capable leader. The days of condemning the Reaper for he and the Engineer’s foolishness were over for her, the small mind of the woman not able to hold such a grudge for too long when little bad had come of it other than her loneliness, and that emotion was one she should just grow used to and wear about her neck as if it was gleaming and enchanted metal. She now sought to repair what they had broken, to delicately lay into place a design that would allow her Dark Empress to return to her side, a crown (even if it is not one of ice, or snow, and merely black barbs that bring pricks of red, pure unicorn blood into the sunlight) placed back upon her beloved’s head so that they might be the queens that Helovia has cried for.

She realizes that her hooves are not the only song sounding out in the ice, and slows her pace so that her own limbs create the most minimal of sounds across the hard surface of the cavern, slipping along in the hidden confines of crystal coated stalagmites to observe that which prances and hums so close to her castle.

No monstrous snarl rises from her lips, no lunging of her slender frame towards the woman who sings into the cold heart of the tundra, for the Lady Illynx peers about a column of ice to discover the source of the sound is a woman of proper lineage. She stands still as the sharp toothed pillar alongside her, observing for a long while the dance of her sister and the sweet song of her milky hair as it whistles along behind her.

How long has it been since she danced, like this? Too long, she thinks, so long ago that she was not even properly dried from her mother’s womb and the subsequent blood that had shattered their bond. Her heart had withered, no room for such boundless joy or self expression left within her, and she watches the other woman almost sadly from her position, mourns the things that she had lost too young to ever hope to earn them back.

@[Sheba] [ OOC: Illynx came to be a creeper. :'D Hope you don't mind! ]

The creature paused in her enthralling dance, the Lady smiling softly at having been discovered in her nostalgic observations of the other female. She grows less irritable at such failures the older she gets, the more she is forced to forsake and leave behind, perhaps because she has come to understand that life is not lived without loss or that one cannot change the flow of the river once it has set its course in stone. Perhaps it is because she understands that she is only a mortal, after all, and that all mortals eventually fall.

Still, it does not seem that the stranger is pleased to have been watched as if by some spectral countenance. There is no apology writ on the Lady’s face as the braided mare berates her for observing without permission, her cold heart already knowing she has nothing to say sorry for when the dancer is so near to her home and that, if push comes to shove, she can quickly prove her rights to do whatever she damn well pleases with this opalescent woman. She has fought far more fearsome warriors than this one, with her delicately laced mane and pristine coat, so delicate and feminine in contrast to the mangled ear that sits atop the Gilded Blade’s head, her mane singed and shortened in random places from battles that had left her less than whole.

It was not that Illynx doubted she was beautiful; that was undeniable. In fact, she was far more elegant and divine than this wretch for the simple truth that she wore her pride on her flesh in marks earned through pain and conquest. She wears a crown of ice, and the smirk on her lips in reply to the words of the offended dancer says all that the stranger needs to know of the golden laced bitch.

She does what she pleases, especially so near the outskirts of her home.

Preparing a short verbal repertoire to tell the stranger such things, her words are forced into silence by the arrival of a familiar scent and figure that arrives alongside her, the same man she had recently passed by without a word while he tinkered on the prized statues of her people. Turning her head to lay golden orbs upon his unkempt features, the wilderness that permeated his soul reading in every inch of his body language, and she finds the same fire she feels anytime she looks upon him returning to her breast.

For a mere creator of mechanical baubles, he is so fierce, so savage. His words are domineering and commanding, the same tone she imagines he had used when he’d chased her darling sister from the mountain, and it sends chills along her spine.

Oh, these northern men, with their thick coats and tangled beards, their hair like thick falls of black water over dark and thoughtful eyes. Even the bright colors of the Engineer’s orbs cannot hide that within his bewildered shell there is a monster that lurks, fangs bared for the kill, just as there is within herself, and it intrigues her that such a man can coexist with such creative brilliance as he has displayed in prior meetings they’ve shared.

”Aye,” she agrees, her smile still sweet and sickly on her pretty face as she returns her eyes to the white ballerina, ”and I am it’s Lady Illynx.” Tilting her head almost as if to mock the pretty white mare, her eyes twinkle with a false merriment, belying the undulations of her ego as she titled herself as such. It never grew old, to tell others of her power, of her army held within the stone confines of their vale, and it was all the more fun when she got to explain the reality of her life to those who had treated her as if she was nothing at all to be concerned over.

”I did not mean to startle you, darling,” she states, not an apology so much as a statement of truth; she had meant no offense by her actions even if it was quite obviously the outcome of quietly stalking one’s private moments, ”you are quite safe to walk the snowy fields. I merely came to ensure you were worthy of an…uneventful afternoon.”

Her sneer is self satisfied and plastic as sin across her features in response to the easy way that this one’s will bends beneath the weight of a crown pressing its gleaming eyes into her. It never grows old, the study of the way an ego wilts before her or rises with rancor against her superiority, fangs flashing, and that this one wilts allows her to slip into a more comfortable field of conversation, one that does not involve a quick ousting from the borders of her home. That she is new to this land, unwise to the inner workings of its boundaries, and that she wears a horn have drawn the wicked queen’s interests in her to quick a mighty threshold, golden eyes sparkling in her face as she nods in concession to the apology, never truly all that offended to begin with.

She was more than willing to prove the worth of her name, insolence repaid with bloody parts.

The sound of hooves approaching draws all conversationalist’s eyes towards the source, a smile alighting on the mare’s features as she comes to recognize a prize that she had found wandering the Threshold just before the wraiths had begun their assault. That the mare escaped the predicament they had both found themselves in unscathed and had also seemed to find a companion (no matter how small or… scraggly he might be) along the way. A darkened tint overtakes her eyes for but a second as the mare calls her by a shortened version of her name, dislike of the lack of respect discarded as quickly as it arrives.

Perhaps it is a good thing, to be called by pet names. Perhaps it means that the silver mare likes her, at least a little bit.

Bemusedly smiling at the awkward introduction and subsequent flight of the hound, she takes in the words of the Engineer in silence, eyes moving from figure to figure as the words slip by her ears.

”As Ulrik says,” she nods in agreement, ”the things we got to examine briefly in our last time together are moving along well. The herd prospers and the land is healthy, despite the snow; Lord Time protected our home well from the onslaught of the monsters.” Realizing that none of the members in the conversation truly knew one another, she laughs and directs her eyes to the wild looking stag, nodding towards him to introduce all parties involved. ”He’s Ulrik, of course,” she glances to the white mare, more laughter tinkling from her lips, ”we never got your name, did we? But this is Tangere, a healer of the Basin. I do not know if you and Ulrik know each other already.” She finishes her words with her eyes on the grey and white mare, a faint smile still loitering from the ghost of her giggling.

@[Sheba]