Home.

Her legs had driven her northern bound, to the arctic reaches she'd known all her life. The lonely, vast arctic region. One that had not been home to her, not really, for a long time. Her family had dissolved on the wind, and her purpose had disappeared. Scarred both mentally and physically, she had sought solace in wandering, a vagabond, shifting with the currents of the wind. In Erebos, she had found a friend. A distraction. One she cherished, one that gave her steps the strength they required. It seemed her life was dwindling, her purpose in the tangled world she'd fallen into too little, too insignificant. Sometimes, Asch wondered why she had been brought into the world. Surely everything would have been simpler if Wennie had been a sole foal? But then, who would protect her sister? Asch was a golden shield with bronze engravings, and she was malleable, folding over her sister to protect her from all the horrors of the world. It had taken her far too long to realize that in doing that, she had subjected her own mind to that maleficent knowledge.

Her innocence had been taken far too long ago. Far too young for her to move on.

Snow clung to her pasterns, cold but familiar as it seared into her skin. Her breath was warm and clouded on her whiskers, and she marched on without a care. Asch had no real goal, no destination, nor any set time to arrive there. She could die in the snows and nobody would realize she was gone, and her memory would carve itself into the bedrock, as lonely and forgotten as a wounded wolf separated from its pack. But she was a mere pup. It hurt to know that meant little in whether she'd be missed or not.

Loneliness gnawed at her bones like a particularly voracious predator, and she succumbed to the pain of its teeth, calling out in a feeble voice.

"Papa? Wennie? Momma?"

Her only answer, for many long, lonely moments, was the howling laughter of the wind.


@[Crowley] && @[Arwen]. This takes place right outside the borders, higher on the mountainside.

Asch had never felt as if the world liked her, and she had grown up believing that everything that happened to her occurred only to destroy her. Somehow, she had never been meant to exist, and for a long time it had been a burden on the slim girl's shoulders. Her lack of self-esteem had been shackles that kept her in her younger twin's shadow, a dog with bloody chops and savage eyes, ready to be told to attack at the nearest moment. So wandering around in the snow...well, she certainly had expected for her loneliness to weight further upon her soul, for nothing to come and answer her pitiful, plaintive cries for relief. For love.

Instead, a pale form that blended with the snow came running for her, an intent tigress. For a moment she stared stupidly, lungs constricted and breath gone in a gossamer cloud that warmed her cocoa kissers. "Wennie?" she whispered in disbelief, her vocal chords too tight and choked to give the utterance more strength. Her sister's wide grin only made her own lips tremble with emotion, eyes suddenly suspiciously wet. She shoved it away with a fierceness that had seemed to disappear with her time away from Arwen. No, she couldn't let herself go soft, like she'd been with everyone else. She couldn't let her sister see how broken she was.

Annoyance threaded itself into the chords of her sister's words, and Asch laughed softly, eyes forgiving and patient. Too old for her minor years of life. "Well, you've found me," she laughed, moving to embrace her twin in kind, feeling a sense of wrongness to see how they'd both grown, how their easy touches had been changed by their lengthening limbs. "I'm sorry, Wennie. I met a boy, his name is Erebos. We had fun at the Rotunda, and I helped him learn about his magic when he burned me," she stated with ease. Asch had never held herself in high regard, and so the idea of pain and bodily harm had never seemed to be very important. Still, she proudly shifted her burned shoulder as if to draw her sister's gaze. "You know I hate it here, Wennie," she whispered softly, more truthfully than her previous excuses. Partially, she'd stayed away because of their mother, but she need not have that fight once again with Arwen. They would never really agree on that particular topic, and Asch just wanted to stay clasped in her sister's light for a while longer. She didn't want to fight anymore.

@[Arwen]

Whatever haven she had acquired in finding her sister was short-lived, ruination and damnation on the horizon that they'd never really deemed safe. At least, Asch had never felt safe within the Basin. Not when she'd been stolen away from her lands so easily, submitted to the torture of her captors for half a season before she'd managed to run with Arwen, her mother's triumph a lapse of attention that they had all taken into hand and run with. She bore the scars of her herd's lack of care, of attention. She would never really feel safe, not even with countless warriors mere feet away in the borders of their home.

Long before words of response could touch Arwen's lips, a bellow came across the snows, lifting the hairs on the base of the child's neck. Body tensed, instinct that she should never have had warming and preparing muscles against an opponent she could never hope to win against.

Spinning on delicate heels, she whirled to face their attacker, faltering to see her Papa screaming and charging for them. "Papa? Talbot?" she called, voice wavering uncertainly. What were they doing? Her father's words were muddled and confusing for the slight child, white noise in her ears that drowned out the potential for real alarm. Only when Crowley advanced on long adult legs, never pausing, did she begin to react. Too slow, too late.

"Arwen, move!" She screamed, reaching for her magic and keeping an eye on her father as he approached. She unleashed it all at once, feeling sick to have to use her magic on her Papa, and tried to sidestep and use her magic all at once. His hooves kicked out at her and she threw herself away from it, seeing the crazed glint in his eyes as he swung his mighty horned head towards her sister, standing so very close to her. Her sister who wasn't moving.

There was an odd moment of peace, of suspended time, in which Asch realized that she was likely going to die. It was never really a question. When it came to sparing herself or her twin sister, it would have always been Arwen. It always was Arwen. Asch loved her sister beyond reason and doubt, beyond mortality and logic. She had saved her sister once, when they were mere babes lonely and afraid beneath the World Eater's claws. Asch had done nothing but protect Arwen her entire life, shielding her with love, with power and her own physical body. And in that long moment between movement and connection, she wondered if that had always been her fated downfall. Perhaps she had loved Arwen too much, regarded herself too little, for her to make it out of this alive.

"Arwen!" No time for endearments.

Oh if only Asch had more time.

Lunging forward, she slammed her shoulder into Arwen, shoving her abruptly out of the way of their deranged father's attack. For a second she felt no pain, just the horrific jolt of Crowley's head slowing, an attack hitting. Then her world exploded, in red and gruesome pains of agony that shredded her insides as effectively as the spiraled horn that would be her end. Her throat ripped on a scream, like razor blades and blackberry needles, magic exploding in a violent surge to encompass as much as it possibly could. Superheating all the blood in the nearest vicinity, sparing none of the trio who had come to rest around her, not even Talbot.

The horn was ripped from her, tormenting her with every filament that freed itself from her too tiny body. Her blood stained it, blooming carmine on the spiral of her sire's horn. Her insides felt churned and burning, as if burning coals had been dumped into the newly created wound. Asch's hooves failed to hold her the moment she was dropped from her father's horn, and she crumbled to the snow on deadened limbs, eyes wide and breathing in shaky gasps that stuttered out of her lungs wet and fast. Shock took over, and her eyes rolled slowly to gaze at Arwen, praying her Papa would turn and run away from her instead of turning to face her twin. "W-Wennie," her voice cracked, a mere whisper, begging her to run. Dying alone would be a torment she could face if it meant her twin lived. Blood pumped and gushed along her side, between her lower ribs where her father had struck her. Thin legs kicked and twitched idly beneath the pain, golden strands painting the snow and blood melting the surface of the snow. Gold and cocoa and crimson, as beautiful on the verge of mortality as she had been the moment she'd taken her first breath.

"Run," she croaked, tears budding and slipping down her face as the pain rattled and consumed her, cackling like a hyena and ripping her to pieces. Arwen had always called her brave, but she cried beneath the crushing weight of her own desperation. Blood bubbled to her lips, staining them and choking her, forcing her to convulse and cough beneath the liquid she needed so badly to live and yet was killing her slowly. She wanted so badly to live. She wanted to experience life. She wanted to love, she wanted to make up with her mother, she wanted to greet her Papa when he was sane and welcome him back into the open arms of their family. I want to live, she sobbed, the words trapped within the metal cage of her own mind even as her frame shook with the force of her agonized crying. But such a wish was too late for her to make.