Själ

There was a moment's pause, enough to give the girl time to flick her gaze from Deimos to Erebos and back again. She wondered if she reflected Psyche in the same way that the prince reflected the lord - there was no mistaking the kinship of the two. There were differences, too, though, noticeable even to a relative newcomer - Erebos held mischief as a candle to navigate the darkness that embraced him; Deimos, on the other hand, was the stoic death that threatened to come for them all. What had Psyche been like, when she had been in her prime? Was her daughter anything at all like her? And, more importantly, did she want to be?

The prince mentioned the Edge, and the girl raised a brow. She had heard of the World's Edge, though she had not visited it. From what she knew, it was a land of mists and darkness, the kind of land in which she imagined (now that they mentioned it) her mother might have thrived. She would have asked what the distant herdland had to do with Psyche, but it was at that moment that Deimos began to speak and the young mare settled into a kind of stupor, her gaze no longer wavering from his as he began to tell the tale of the DarkEmpress and her loyal followers. She listened greedily, soaking up the history that he offered her, grasping onto it desperately in an attempt to truly know and understand her mother.

Mauja - the name was vaguely familiar to the girl, as though perhaps she had heard it half a lifetime ago but could no longer place the source. It was a ghost, a spectre from a time that the girl could no longer remember, raising a momentary pause in her mind as she tried to remember if she had ever heard it before - if anyone here had mentioned the name, if perhaps Mother... but the girl came up empty-handed, and she quickly gave up on what was no doubt some odd case of deja vu.

"... allied with the Dragon's Throat..." Wait, what? But that was where Zekle was from - did he mean to say that they might have been enemies in the past? The girl remembered Tae, the daughter of the Sultan of the Dragon's Throat, the daughter of her mother's murderer. At the time, she had been nonchalant about the realization, thinking it silly to hold a grudge against an entire civilization just because one idiot stallion had been puppeteered into murder. now, though... perhaps it wasn't that simple. Perhaps she should be angry with the Dragon's Throat for their role in her mother's history.

But pride blossomed in her chest as she heard that her mother had risen from the ashes of defeat to build the beginnings of an empire. There was something enticing about the concept of revenge, and the girl found herself pleased by the notion that Psyche had found a way to exact vengeance on those who had wronged the Edge herd. "My mother knew the Time God?" she asked before she could stop herself, realizing that he was the very deity that she and Erebos had been about to try to summon. Would he have recognized her, if they had succeeded? Would he have welcomed her back, invited her to stay?

But that wasn't her most pressing question; no, she was still haunted by the newfound knowledge that she had almost followed Zekle to his home, to the Dragon's Throat, almost become one with her mother's former enemies. The girl knew that alliances shifted with time, but she was too young and stubborn to just let go of a perceived wrong - particularly when it was such a great one as forcing her mother from her home. "Would the Edge have won, if not for the Dragon's Throat?"

"Speak."
--Ansgar.--