Again she crests the white hillocks and traipses the winding pathway, treacherous and hidden. Through the crack they had meandered, a seemingly useless split in the stone effacements of the mountain that was truly a covert path upwards into their clandestine hold, a large portion of the admiration she already felt for the coven of unicorns; had Oblivion known of such a fortress, he too would have descended upon it, his knives gleaming and his teeth gnashing and sundering flesh with each grasping reach.

She had loved them, such agents of chaos, and she might love these ones too, but for their odd laws on what flesh was to be claimed and which was to be spared and offered benevolence. Beloved found it wasteful, for she had seen great prowess in beasts bred with mute animals of the wild, such as the wolf-horse or men who were both dragon and pegasus. She did not judge, she only appraised – and she had not the manual that these unicorns were reading.

It was no matter. Beloved could hunt elsewhere, and they truly had only shortened her targets by few withholding only one type of prey. Either way, they could not know what she did outside their watchful gaze, and she did not care if they defended her or not were she caught. Beloved had lived and fought alone before. She almost was better that way.

A disgusted glance is cast behind her to today’s catch, a taste left in her mouth that was so like blood it was difficult to discern if it was truth or merely desire. Would they kill her? Somehow, Beloved doubts this.

She has seen so little death since she has come here, only glimpses that promise their dark fingers to come reaching. She can only pray, she can only wait and hope like a child eager for Christmas morn, spying from afar the gifts that gleam and tease beneath the boughs.

The valley opens broad before them, the shadow of the Sentinel tall and oppressive and beautiful, his brother forming and half shelled nearby. She thinks she sees a figure there, a dark one with markings that match the standing guard, but one can never be sure with her eyes.

They have lied before.

Gently, a lulling call ushers from her lips, a summons to the Lord and Lady within, to those who served their lofty crowns.

Whatever decided who was worthy, anyway? Beloved would outshine them, Beloved could be glorious, too. It was only a matter of the falling bones, the tepid path of fate.

"New blood," she calls, a simple statement, not elegant or played out as that which she had procured for Crown of Blood – but she had liked him, even if he was equally stupid. He’d had enough sense to not threaten her with much more than masculine words.

@[Naira], @[Ulrik]

The dark shape is there, she decides as it moves towards them. She’d wondered still even as it stirred and took notice of their arrival, but now that its… his bronze eyes flashed and found them, she was certain he was not illusionary. Besides, none of her imaginings had ever been so whole and unsoiled, even if the man is physically filthy – he seems sound enough.

The odd one she’s captured today sings and prances, laughs and makes nonsense streak the air. Normally this is Beloved’s task, and it sours her further to be only one of two who glimmer and shine like tarnished gold at the bottom of a swift creek.

She is spared, though; the figure who came from beneath the shadowy belly of the second bronze contraption turns his attentions to her, not the new blood, not the fool who thinks she’s a God or something equally as bold and powerful.

Not that Beloved believes herself to be anything less, truly; she just knows that even immortals can burn, rot, fester among the bones of their mortal pets, and she’s not so stupid as to assume that she is wiser or stronger than the next holy beast which crosses her path. The woman with the white face dances and sings her way towards a doom which Beloved has watched hundreds of times, thousands, and she will be the one who stands laughing and framed in silver light while the idiot dies as all idiots do.

Only a matter of waiting, and waiting was best served when one earned tokens of appreciation for fetching the fish from the forest of fools… but it is not her Lord who has come to collect her, with his imposing stature and dark soul, or the gleaming Lady who is vain and callous and does not appreciate the dangers in the world around her as she should.

Laughing weed?

What in seven hells is that?

A confused sputtering laughter, nervous and twittering, breaks her lips at her lack of understanding.

She has never been the sort to care for plants. They don’t bleed.

"She thinks she’s a God," she replies instead, as if that is any less confusing or delusional than the pale faced one's laughter, as if it provides more aid than the rambling sing songs of the stranger had, "fell on her head straight from the womb."

A maker of poisons? How curious, she thinks with a giggle, leaning forward to hear more, her mouth poised to inquire just who and where this man was, her insults to the pale skull forgotten most abruptly (as many of the things she does are).

Suddenly, the white faced one is at her ear, her breath hot and disgusting as it bats the tender insides of the sensitive things. They pin instinctually, her face turns with swiftness cryptic and powerful as she lunges with ivories bared, no longer caring to maintain polite exteriors before the dirty dark one when her discovery was being so very rude. If her bite lands upon her or not, Beloved doesn’t bother to learn – for she quickly gains an exterior of stone and looks hotly over at the bitch, her eyes liquid metal that swim and twist and ripple in the light and in her disgust for the audacity of the foolish one, her pale tail trashing violently behind her.

"No, no, not untouchable," she hisses, the sound of a prayer as she slowly twists figurative fingers around the thick handle of a knife that drips blood from dozens of unknown shadows in the corner, drips blood that endlessly finds purchase on the steel, "but Beloved will rip your face from you should you try that again."

That the stallion has stepped forward only now catches her attention, her aggression lost in the bemused laughter that suddenly takes her as she realizes he had moved to defend her. Oh, oh goodness!

Even he seems to be swept away by the same shadow that poisons them all, and it’s so rich, it’s nearly too much for the little white one as she giggles and titters mirthfully in response to his defensive posture and his own words that usher warnings. "Perhaps we!" she gleefully howls, little hoof stamping for a good while until she can regain herself.

When she does, there are more things to be learned from the one with the dreaded mane who stinks of metal. He’s talking of Gods, Gods, and she knows ever so much how important those titans of idiocy and power can be.

He does indirectly challenge her, however – and she finds her ears falling back slightly as he claims she will never be truly worshipped among these mortals. It is no matter, really, she decides after a mad tousle of logic and madness within her mind that left her slack jawed and with the blankest of expressions while he speaks; all mortals come to love her, in time.

"Pale face," she says quite suddenly, turning her eyes to the other madwoman as if she hadn’t just assaulted and threatened her within seconds of one another, as if they are friends and she’d have any idea what the ivory one talks about, "do not fret. Perhaps this God is stronger than those who died before."

She giggles, a mad memory of a worn castle, of three divine beasts who fell with its walls. Such a pretty painting, this one, cherished as her images of the fish and the corpse of moonlight.