Själ

Something was happening in the cave of the Haruspex, something that the girl was struggling to understand. The shadow-king had entered, wroth with their childish antics, bringing with him the enveloping darkness of death, giving the pair of them a taste of the nothingness that lay beyond - and then it retracted, and she could breathe again. The princess would not - could not apologize for her actions, not when it felt like so much was riding on this moment. This was her mother's successor, the Lord of the Basin, the ruler of all that should have been hers. This was her chance, her opportunity, perhaps the only one she would ever have, to show him that she was a child worthy of her mother's lineage.

And so she forced herself to look him in the eyes, refused to allow herself to drop her gaze and act like the chastised child that she was. And, much to her surprise, the fury that had enveloped the shadow-king seemed to melt away. Her ears flicked backward ever-so-slightly as she considered this strange facade, this odd trick that he seemed to be playing on her. Suspicion flickered warily in her eyes as the great stallion lowered his head as though to regard her more carefully; still she held his gaze. Somehow, this moment felt important in a way that she could not explain. Somehow, this felt like the beginning of everything.

Deimos, she repeated silently, filing away the name and titles. Her mind wandered over what little information she had gleaned from her mother before the DarkEmpress's untimely demise. The queen had been cast out by those who had once been loyal to her (or so she had told the child). And yet she had seemed quite sure that some of those very unicorns would welcome her daughter back with open arms, having realized their idiocy and cowardice in sending their Empress on her way; that they would perhaps even assist in her ascension to power. Which are you, Lord Deimos? she wondered. The traitor or the craven?

"What do you wish to know?" he asked her, and suddenly she was falling through all of her old questions and insecurities, and for a moment all she could do was regard him coolly with that signature amber gaze. Everything she had ever wanted to know was tumbling through her mind, laying itself at her feet, building a long, golden road to her inevitable future. Why had she been running for so long when everything she had ever wanted - everything that she could have known - had been right here, just waiting for her to stumble in?

"Everything," she told Deimos, the passion of Psyche present in her amber eyes.

"Speak."
--Ansgar.--