The child is an impudent little wretch that manages to draw my eyes from the roan angel to her diminutive, ivory frame. I had sought to simply let her exist among those much older than herself with the ignorance that adults give the young (I was a foal not so long ago, standing in tall shadows as if the dust beneath their hooves, and I paid my dues, why can’t she?), but the fact that she calls her elder (and a princess, none the less) stupid makes my lion’s tail swish behind me in irritation.

With golden eyes narrowed, I physically lower my head to impress upon her that she is small, and should perhaps be more couth towards strangers who are more experienced in life than she is.

"She’s a Princess, you foul little pest," I warn her, my voice level, calm, a promise that there will be more than words the next time she dares violate the respect due to two of her superiors, superior in every single way a being could be, "I’d be more cautious who you flippantly insult."

Rising back to look upon the fair damsel with the milky crown, she inquires as to the battle that ensued in the background of where we now stand, my smile a dark one which tells of the screams and the blood, the magic crackling through the air, the dust of crystals pulverized by hoof, horn, body, all in the red, red water.

And yet again, the child interrupts, her shrill little voice interjecting from where she has wandered off to like a sulking child.

It earns her another scathing glance.

Surely, I remembered her presence in the field. It was hard to miss such flippantly awful parenting – even my mother had tried her best to shield me from violence and battle in ways that the mother of this wretched babe had not, and she was generally considered throughout the realm to be a queen of war and a murderess. And, while I could commend the child’s bravery, I also wondered how she dared call anyone else stupid, having charged into a fight meant for adults, when she was barely old enough to count to five.

I had no use for spawn of irresponsible whores, especially when the offending offspring wears wings and has a mouth larger than her stature.

"The Spark pulled this forest from a land elsewhere, called the Rift, a realm corrupted by magic in some fashion, as I understood the Storm Lord, and those I have met from the land of the Beast Gods," I explain with more grace than the filly, letting my eyes fluidly slip back to the queen of flowers to sip upon the ambrosia of her image, my features taking on the air of remembering great violence and power, almost giddy with delight and fringed in the heavy cloak of what it had cost (the child was partly blind now, after all, he had seen her milky eye, and there were others even less fortunate that he recalled laying in what could only be the bloody pools of their death), "the God the imbecile of a child speaks of was a great bear, wearing the same boils that she does, a vile beast who tormented his people in order to gain in his own strength. Most of those here fought for the Spark, though some turned upon him…"

I think of these fools with a smile, wondering what sort of torment would befall them at the God’s wrath.

"Eventually, the beast was worn down. Alongside me, Erebos struck with his blade, diving in unison with my own while Aithniel held the heavens above with her fire; a third colt pressed its final leg from beneath it as my rapier split its tendon. At the crown of the Divine Bear was a brutish woman, black, white, with an metal object which sliced the head of the monstrosity clean away from the rest," I remember the death of the God with a shudder, how the power of the thing had ushered through the air in crackling waves of magic and energy in its last moments, "and then, the most unbelievable of things happened. Princess…

"Gods can die."


[ WHY SO MEAN TO ERTHE *kicks him* ]