The precise justifications for her presence here she had forgotten, as her thoughts were instead consumed by her being and this world around her: dark, brittle, and black, a complementary palette to her ponderous mood. And savage, she thinks, unbidden; there are signs of war here, of struggles and slaughter, slashed into the trunks of trees and seen in snapped branches. Who were they? Here and there she can discern the mark of a spiraled horn against wood, but sometimes the meaningless gouges could be bear, wolf or hawk-made for all she knew. Even Lilómiel had no smart-aleck answer for her; he, too, was silent, enraptured by the shadows.

The ocean was her home, but this was her heart painted onto a landscape.

Nymeria lengthens her stride, taking the well-trodden path through the woods. I should be afraid. Her own conceit would be her downfall; her chest was too full of air, her neck too arched. The confidence in her burly step would deliever her to her doom—because for all her self-carriage, there were things she could not battle, and beasts she could not defeat. Yes, humility was key to security, but she couldn't muster it, not here where she belonged, and thus vanity prevailed where common sense should take hold. It would be her doom.

The shadows unwind ahead, retreating against their masters to expose a something in a glade. Her ears prick, snapping to attention to gather the seeds of dubious sound.

Sounds of madness.

Against her audits the whispers surge, bouncing off drifts of snow and collecting to drip upon her eardrums. Eerie, isn't it? The way it falls and hisses, the murmur of an unknown voice, the sibilant and sinister curl of saliva and tongue-against-cheek. Forth she strains, tremulous in her tenuous efforts, ears pinned upon the origin of the sounds and eyes scanning for a sign. Lilómiel, cradled on top of her withers, rustles his wings, the papery sound thin and decaying against the forest's vastness. Concern precipitates through the membranes of their bond, worry unassuaged by Nymeria's palpitating curiosity. His talons hook tighter against Nym's taut flesh; their bite, their sting, forces her mind back towards their presently vulnerable state.

The filly breaks into a trot, knees rising high and hips swinging, intent and unswayed by her companion's increasingly vehement protests. She had to know. Whatever was there, in the forest, was a flavor of adventure she had yet to test.

And then the whispers transcend to a shout and Nymeria jerks as if a gun has been shot, heart banging against her ribs and the whites of her eyes gleaming in the darkness.

It was only a stallion.
Brush rustles and scrapes along her flanks as she approaches the strange unicorn from the forefront, Lilómiel springing from her withers into the forest canopy to observe from a safer distance. His wings, flaring and dark, fans her mane and stirs the miniscule hairs upon her face, momentarily obscuring the stranger.

The wolf halts.
"Fucking dare who?"

There is a wolf—no, not a wolf, but something other, black fur scarred with amber and devilish eyes gleaming like a nightmare. She has never seen anything quite like it before; not even in the wilds, not even under the light of a shrinking moon. And she, in result, is unnerved, unhinged by the presence of the undefinable and unknowable, the very worst kind of danger there is. How do you fight a monster you've never heard of? Her red eyes flash upwards, whites gleaming, skipping to Crowley and then returning to the imminent threat posed between them with bristling hackles and thorny horns.

Promptly, Nymeria recoils, muscles surging and flexing and re-arranging beneath her iron coat, and Lilómiel rustles his wings, feather crest flaring upwards in his outrage. His claws rattle against the frost-kissed bark, the racket meant to ricochet and distract the predator from his bonded but instead being swallowed by the depths of the forest around them.

What hopeless folly, and her thoughts pulsate with a barbaric anger, grating against the edge of Lilómiel's mind. The dragon snarls, tail whipping and haunches lowering as he edges out and forwards, nearer to the end of the branch. Beneath him it bends and sways, dancing to get away from the incessant hook of his talons; he rides it like a boy born in a saddle, balance hitched and careful even when his lips peel back ever farther and his fury is a storm unhindered, awakened by the thunder of his goddess's fear. Smoke trickles from his nares, gossamer gray twirling upwards in omen of a burning.

The filly's thoughts grip tenuously tighter on Lil's growing insolence, sweaty fingers sliding on his dominating temper's reins. She knows she cannot do this forever—the backlash of their forced bond and her exerted control will snap eventually, pulled too tight by a stretch of wills yearning for freedom, but it is necessary. Her coat dampens, darkens.

... You.
Those were cold eyes, empty gold and fragmented calculation; she sucks in a breath, sharply, and fought the urge to run. Lilómiel hisses, the knife-edge thin sound cutting through the velvet night to expose Nymeria's fear hidden beneath her supposed "confidence"—she jerks, head snapping upwards and neck scrunching, arching, to protect her throatlatch's vulnerable curve. Their eyes were the same. Yellow and yellow, quadruple suns suspended in backdrops of soot streaked with ash. Swiftly, almost frantically, her gaze jumps from beast to stranger, stranger to beast; companions, yes, it all falls into place now!

If the horse was rabid, was his dog?
No—no, the wolf, the helldog, whatever the fuck it was, seemed queerly at ease where the unicorn's words (while posed on a platter of ratinonality) were distorted and illogical.

Except his possible paranoia would justify his illogical nature.
Wouldn't it?

Uneasy, she is; struck and rubbed the wrong way by the shininess in his calm voice, his lips' abhorrent twist and his ears' sibilant twist. It is only with great force of effort that she calms the quiver in her limbs (while feeding her insecurity and gaping lack of confidence with a trickle of Lilómiel's offered vanity) lowering her head and arcing her neck to meet Crowley's eyes without terror.

"I'm not a child," she says to him instead of giving answer to his madness. Something burns in her breast.

Why do they always say I'm a child?

"The only one who sent me was myself."

The brindle is snagged in the throes of dementia—his smile, a festering sore on his lips, grows and widens, thickening into a sardonic hyperbole. She aches to edge away; she quivers with the need to flee. The forest did not feel like her heart's reflection anymore. Shadows had become too grim, the night too grainy, and the stars too distant, their lacquered light colder than snowflakes drifting in the breeze. Here she was dragged into night and nightmares, into a sense of non-being interrupted with the flutter of her heart and the thrum of blood through her burning veins. I am alive—and yet she walked the edge of becoming a corpse. Didn't she?

The arachnid's head snaps towards the hellhound, unease reverberating through the sinuous coil of her body, paralyzed by the what-could-be's and what-might-be's, eyes locked upon the wolf's beseechingly. Fear and dread skitters through her bond's neurons, making their foray into her dragon's head. Acid. The hellhound's mouth was venomous, sickly green and oozing, and she is reminded, forcibly so, of her mother awaiting her freedom, of her mouth with her poisoned teeth and wild amber eye—thus forth Lilómiel screams. The drake's black wings snap and flare, lifting him aloft from his perch upon the branch. His neck curls, nostrils haranguing wide to release a smoke streamer, his eyes aglow with murderous light. Branches crack and shatter, tumbling down to the forest floor and the ice and the snow, burnt by the heat of his monstrous talons. There they smolder and hiss, steaming with their own sullen and contrary rage.

And what does the stranger do but laugh?

How can he—how—?! Nymeria grits her jaw together, the swift motion betraying her disgust, her fury. Again her companion screeches, suspended above her, all embers and prepared slaughter; and she, too, wants to shout her exhaustion, her bitterness, and show them what she can do. She is not lesser than them! She is not NOTHING and she will never be nothing. Of all of them, she and Volterra were born to greatness, to conquer and rule, reaped from the loins of a reaper and warmonger, raised and suckled on willpower, her morals and lessons beaten into her coat.

It grows inside her, slams and thunders against her skin, roaring and raring for a way to get out get out get out—her legacy, her curse and her blessing. This is what she was given; and she will use it.

But not today.

Instead her jaw tilts up defiantly, her lashes sinking together and lips twisting upwards into a knife-thin smile, and she matches him step-for-step, cold and couture, features frigid as sin. There are stars in her eyes and in her pretty, naive skull time seems to slow. "You would burn first."

Canine lips sink and peel back over feral fangs, the foaming green and yellow-stained enamel of a black mien. It is a hasty promise of savagery, and it does not go unnoticed. Fear is struck unto Nymeria—fear of that acidic mouth, a white slash scribbled with green—that which reminds her so tediously of her mother, gone and disappeared like ash in the wind. Would it always haunt her? This failure, as a daughter, to ignore Confutatis' fate? And yet—it seemed to her, in that foolish moment, that this was what she had been working towards: the omnipresent threat of violence, the idea of desolation and destruction, warfare, not jailbreaks. Would her mother not be proud of her for inciting passion, even if only in a broken man? Dangerous thoughts, these were. She knew, for all her fanfare, she was small and young and frail, and those canines were sharp, and that acid was potent. Were that crude threat to follow through on its promise, she would not be on the winning side.

Time slows to a halt and she is suspended in her disbelief, in her shock, that she was here, in this moment, and that this was her reality: that she might be destroyed. That she could become another set of bones on the forest floor. That flowers would spring up beneath her ribcage and would bloom in her eye sockets, that decay and life would strive for claim over her body.

Poetic as it was, she did not want that.

Nymeria arches her neck, and Lilómiel beats his wings, coming to hover beside her head. Their eyes are glowing sets of coals, embers pulsating red, grimy with their exhaustion and their traveling but bright with something falsely named as hope and faith. Together, they are young and invincible, and they cannot yet feel the tightening noose of mortality around their necks—and tonight, even after a moment of clarity, it is so easy to slither back into a safe state of mind, one where Nymeria could not be touched, let alone harmed. Conviction repeats in a feedback loop between the bonded pairing, throbbing confidence and arrogance—the kind that would get them killed, the kind that would allow them to end up with cut throats.

They are unprepared for Crowley's charge.

There is no warning, only the thunder of black hooves on wet soil. Panic like a caged bird springs into life in Nym's chest. For all of Confutatis' teachings, for all of her warnings, she hasn't the faintest clue what to do when confronted with reality. Everything, all her knowledge, evades her, evicting house when she needs it most; her instincts scramble, bite, but she doesn't feel them beyond the shiver in her limbs. She cannot tear her eyes away from the stallion; as his huge horns lower down, conjuring up further terror and wild fear, all her screams cling behind her teeth, hunting for a way out but not given the opportunity. Nymeria stands, frozen, paralyzed—

Fast as a striking snake, Lilómiel darts ahead of her, jaws unhinging to release a jet of red flame aimed towards Crowley's head. In her ears rings his scream, a screech of warning shattering through Nymeria and Lil's telepathic bond. Flee, it shouts to her—and she turns on her haunches, hastily, ready to bolt.