It is with a certain reluctance that Öde departs from the deep dwellings of the caves where his mother lay to rot and his tree took to root. The situation was still a puzzle to his death-addled brain, but survival was all about adaptation and he was swift to pounce on this opportunity of life. Besides, he was a colt now grown, he didn't really need his mother any more. It didn't change the fact that he wanted her though, or that he missed her. Stallion by age he felt no older in heart, particularly given how much of his life had been stolen away in the clutches of the nefarious. He was stunted, to some degree, which made him take to heart what few lessons he had been taught.

Still, he stumbled and staggered north, to the home he'd started to carve out in the snow. Lena was there, his second mother, and although the bloody sprawl of his damn was still fresh in his mind, which made it harder to feel for Lena, he couldn't deny that he took comfort in her. Comfort was what he needed now, that and her guiding songs. If not to heal him this time, at least to lead him, grow him, mature him. He liked Lena, and he wasn't the only one. She was a likeable mare, a trait he was desperate for in himself.

Something mother had once said he was.

Ice crunched under foot as Öde moved over the permafrost, though Tallsun was evident, even here in the frigid domain. Weariness ran through his body, causing him to waver as he passed the sentinel. He leered up at it, unsure if it would recognize him after all this time (where did he go?), but he took a breath and stepped past it untouched. It filled him with a new-found vigor, that silent acceptance, and so it was he drew upon the colts at play in his search for his Songbird.

He paused at the outside of their pairing, close enough to see, but not hear. They were younger than him, but he felt the same excitement and wonder. "You should approach," October urged him sweetly. It surprised him, because mother had always been very domineering in his younger days, lording over him with her shadows and her stories. She laughed in his head. "You need friends! The DemonKing had lots of friends." She said exactly what he needed to spur him on, so he slipped in behind Erebos, smiling just at the thrill of meeting them.

"Hi!" he announced cheerily, so easily shedding his misery with this new discovery of camaraderie. "I'm Öde. What are you guys doing?" He craned his head around to see what held their fascination, red eyes scrunched up in a frame of black as he saw the hovering needle. "What's that?" he asked, curious, awed, even slightly jealous. He always wanted to have more than everyone else, because mother told him he could, and would.

Meanwhile, he hadn't even realized the awakening of his own inner magic, although that could explain the dull buzz droning in the back of his head, and the heaviness he felt inside of him - although that could also be from the act of revival after weeks of death. Either way, he was gradually leaking out an ability. It crawled like an invisible smoke in a radius around him, snuffing out the magic of the other boys, though it had not the strength to quell the properties of companions or items, instead tugging at the strands that hummed inside horses.