There is an abyssal space that lies empty behind her reflective gaze, a curling chasm that could never be filled within the brief flicker of her meaningless lifetime. She is a blight on the face of the earth, she thinks, an empty canvas never to be fully illustrated. She has no purpose but the accumulation of knowledge, to penetrate even unto the greatest depths of understanding, yet she knows that unless she gained omnipotence and immortality, the secrets of the world will remain ever elusive, ever growing, ever unknown and impenetrable by her dark mind.

Knowing this, however, she has decided to ignore it, to allow herself no corner for insecurity or despair. The excitement she feels at this, the conclusion of her journey, is a cold and thrilling thing, something so immensely intense as to send her into a state of relaxation rather than agitation, to overwhelm her other senses and heighten only curiosity and satisfaction. She rolls into the mode of pupil with comfort and ease, letting the words of this one called 'Nótt' fill and fulfill her, the motions, the implications; all is part of her wondrous purpose. The dark steed materializes before herself and her companions; Kali is startled, and Mirage jumps, but the mind of Rishima is somehow left unscathed. To her, it seems natural. Nótt holds control over the wealth of dark that stretches below them, and that she might conjure up either horse or man from the depths is a mere thread in the fabric of her ability, her control over the element of night.

The mare offers a comforting touch to her smaller sister, calming and protective; shoulders brushing one another in a practiced motion, even as her gaze remains fixed on the pair before them. That the pale Nótt rides on the back of this spectral beast is strange to her, especially the apparent comfort in her seat atop the stallion's back. At an earlier time she would have found this partnership incredibly strange; but now, with the pale gryphon perched atop her own shoulders and a golden dragon slung comfortable atop Mirage, she cannot make any such judgements on what borders upon the realm of bizarre.

She follows the pair, her sister close beside, trailing in silence until they step onto the beach. Night has fallen in their time between the walls of the sea, and now they stand beneath an endless array of stars, silver light catching in her mane and bouncing off Kali's pale feathers, soaking into Mirage's ebon hide. She listens to the question of Nótt, flutes picking up the cold tones, the challenge in her voice and eyes. I catch my sister's gaze and smile at her, confidence matching her uncertainty, determination in the night. Mirage replies first, her light vocals hesitant and quiet; I nicker softly to her, a call of reassurance and approval even as I reflect on what the Lady had told me, that fateful evening upon the roof of the world. The validity of my sister's statement could not be discredited, but I had a different answer, a parroting of what the moon had told me. "Those who truly wield the darkness understand that, as an element, it is not as evil as the stigma that surrounds it; they do not fear it, but embrace it, and can understand the wealth and expanse of its mystery."