"Why didn't you wait for me?"

Ears laced back against her poll and the mare snorted. She had tried to wait for Huinne. She had even run behind him, nipping and biting at his legs and flanks when he began to slow during their mad dash from Isilme. She had tried to save him and there he was blaming her for not waiting for him. He was the one that had slowed down. He was the one who had turned and gone in a direction opposite her when she had finally taken the lead. It wasn't her fault.

"It's all your fault.

"Shut up!" The mare snapped. Her head shot up from the position she'd been carrying it, her pale eyes wild. Sweat had broken out over her sides and her tail lashed at her scared legs. "I tried to save you. You were too slow. You went the wrong way. Don't blame me!" She had tried, but the escape from Isilme had been the blind leading the blind. She hadn't know where she was running and neither had Huinne.

"You're not even looking for me."

"I already looked for you." Her tone became bitter as she spoke because she had looked for him. She'd wandered Helovia looking for him. She'd gone to that bitch that called herself the moon goddess and tried to strengthen her magic to help in her search for her brother, but that had backfired. She'd even traveled back toward Isilme in search of him and found nothing. No trace that he was alive and no trace that he was dead.

He was dead. Dead.

She didn't have proof but she knew it.

Histe waited for Huinne to speak again, but the voice remained silent. The mare snorted, her body relaxing slightly as she looked around the all too familiar forest. Back in Helovia. "Hm." She grunted before continuing to wind her way through the forest.

Mauja the FrostHeart
ice cold man watches earth die, eternal winter takes its reign

"Shut up!"

Mauja hadn't been heading her way, really - she was hornless, and he had no reason at all to approach her. The frosty steed had been content to glide along in another direction, pacing the tall forest and searching for others who were of pure blood, but her words carried to his alabaster ears and they twitched, amused. He hadn't smelled another, so who was she talking to? Intrigued he crept closer, tail whispering over the ground and each breath soft and steady. "I tried to save you. You were too slow. You went the wrong way. Don't blame me!" The FrostHeart's eyes narrowed, dangerous blue slits, and he took yet another step forward. She smelled vile, like they all did, but he was drawn by this. He had to know. Was she alone? Who - or what - was she talking to? His ears were alert, listening, adrenaline seeping through his blood and temporarily heightening his senses. "I already looked for you." It definitely sounded like she answered a question, but no one had spoken, and as Mauja stepped around a handful of trees he saw, with his trusted eyes, that she was alone. Talking to herself. Reddish bay, black stripes, pale eyes, black mane and tail. Hornless.

She started to walk again, and Mauja was rooted in the spot. He should withdraw. Caution and logic screeched at him to backpedal and abandon her, find a unicorn to bring into the fold, run away, but the other half of him stood frozen with rigid hatred. He played a dangerous game with the politicians of Helovia, pretending to be a rather amiable sort, keeping a herd of unicorns while claiming to not be a racist. It was a necessity, few leaders today were racists and if he went out there and shouted it to the world, he guessed they'd come in like the tide and try to smash him. For what reason, though? Just because he was racist? Probably. The non-racists had as little tolerance for racists as racists had for other species, and the hypocrisy of it made him want to curl his lips back and shoot a spike straight through someone. He had fooled them for long, but how much longer could he keep going if he just pent it up all the time? While violence did not lay in his immediate nature, frustration kept piling it up and making him volatile. He needed release.

This equine mare was obviously off her rocker. If she ran around Helovia claiming to have been abused by cold Mauja he could put it down to her insanity. After all, weren't ghosts white? He smiled, coldly, and stepped out to block her path.

"Has the sun melted your brain?" he asked in a smooth voice, but it was obvious that he mocked her. It was in his cocky posture, in the cold glint in his eyes, in the chilly little smile that played so brazenly around his mouth - Mauja was a cold, cold creature, and frost sparkled upon the ground where he stood. The smile widened a fraction, became something more of a predatory grin, a dark, wicked glint in his gaze; his head slowly tilted to the side, long forelock sliding off his face to hang freely in the air. The tip of his horn hung like a threat between them. "But alas, I fear you were simply born that way, hundkvikindi." And Mauja's eyes glittered coldly.

Mauja's appearance and his question made Histe stop. Her pale eyes focused on the king, though showed no hint of fear. Only her burning hatred for his kind could be seen reflected in them.

"He thinks you're crazy."

Huinne's voice had come back and echoed in her ears as she looked at the unicorn. "I know." Maybe she was just a little crazy. Any wise mare would have taken off running when such a large stallion made his appearance. Any sane mare would have taken the threatening aura as a signal to back down immediately and find protection. Histe was not sane. She felt the threatening aura rolling off the stallion, but she took it as a challenge and she never had been one to back down from a challenge.

"Are you crazy?"

"A little bit." At least she could admit it.

A twisted little grin curled Histe's lips as she looked at Mauja, very obviously sizing him up. She never had been one to back down from anyone, not even her mother, and her mother had been a scary mare. "You mean born superior." Of course that wasn't what he meant, but Histe didn't care. "Yes, I was born that way."

"Kill him."

It wasn't Huinne's voice, but the voice of her mother that echoed in her head. The command had Histe's muscles tensing.

"End him."

Her father's voice now, and at their command her grin widened into a maniacal smile. The tilt of his head, the threat of his horn, was reason enough for Histe to access her magic. The wind began to pick up and thunderclouds began to roll in. Lightning split the sky and thunder roared as the storm quickly grew in intensity.

Histe began to laugh as the first drops of acid started to fall down on her and the unicorn.

      Rain comes - quick and unnatural, the outpouring of some dark hate from a secret heart. Wind thrashes in the trees and screams through a bruised sky. The world becomes pain, dark with threat and passion, and even the ice king shouldn’t shrug it off. Rain, Vincent thinks. Bad rain. His ears paint the barest frown upon immobile features and he moves, hooves thrusting a heavy body out across the last inch between him and them, whoever they are.

     One is a unicorn. It laughed an ugly laughter and it made the girl do this - this rain - and made her burn so dark and pitiful against the larger world. The other, the girl, is just a horse striped tiger-fierce in the false twilight. It is beside the girl Vincent decides to interpose himself - he, also dark and fervent but too bound up, wrapped in shadows tighter than the loose bands running inky dark across her ribs. He ought to speak but the rain falls, burning, in his ears and what is there to say? To children mad with grief or rage or just drunk with their own supposed impotence, there is no answer. There is no cure.

     But death, he thinks, and golden eyes lock only on the frost giant in front of them. Death needs no voice; it needs show no fear in the face of storms and clouds and little shadows stained with black. He thinks of his brother’s easy strength and stands like that, tall - bigger than the unicorn. Strength needs no words to speak. It need only be a bulwark strong enough to ignore burning rain.

     It is. It will. He doesn’t speak, but he looks - at Mauja, and the girl - like there is something he knows and they don’t. He towers, silent and immovable. It’s easier than speaking - the easiest lie. So Vincent tells it, but outside he is a monolith of black muscle and white chrome, a mask of ears laid back and nose wrinkled in obvious disdain. You’re trash, says the silent lie. Hundkvikindi, but he doesn’t know the word, just the tone, and he doesn’t know if he’s saving the girl or what - because he doesn’t save people, because that’s a bigger lie than he knows how to tell. But he can threaten violence all day, and if they believe it maybe he can, too.

     Or maybe he’ll melt.

Mauja the FrostHeart
ice cold man watches earth die, eternal winter takes its reign

[ I went with über-dry Helovia + Histe's magic setting surroundings on fire = .. much fast-spreading fire. Shout if you disagree. xP ]

She was definitely mad, and the dislike that had been seeping through Mauja solidified into raw disgust and hate. As if it wasn't enough with her simply being an equine, she had to be a mad one too. Beast, his mind whispered and the cold snarl held itself upon his face as she talked - to the air, it seemed. It certainly wasn't directly at him, and with distaste in his eyes he watched her. She was, in a sense, ignoring him, but he could see the smoldering hate in her eyes whenever they alighted upon him, and winter leaped out of his gaze like a panther each time their gazes met. He wanted nothing more than to charge and run his horn through her thick neck, but that'd be a bit too obvious. He needed to drown her in a lake and let her bloated corpse leave no trails to follow, no stories to tell. She was short, she had guts, but it wasn't pure courage. Her eyes unnerved him, she wasn't there, and it made him want to grab her and fling her around like a predator snapping the neck of its prey. She spoke as a black giant drifted up to stand next to her, staring in cold silence at Mauja; Mauja stared right back, the chill of winter in his eyes.

Two against one was unfair, one a black behemoth that seemed robbed of speech. Could he communicate? How large was the risk of staying here? Pride and anger kept him from backing down as caution bid him, and the sky seemed to agree; rain fell, but it was not natural rain... One drop fell and the tuft of grass went up in flames, dried out by the harsh summer. Another fell, another small fire starting; more fell, and where they touched Mauja himself, they burned like small fires. This was no natural rain. Frustrated, orange flames licking at his eyes and reflecting there, he backed in under the thickest tree he could find. Rain was already eating up the sparse, dried foliage, but for a while he would be safe there, safe from the hot and hungry beast. He loathed - feared - fire, but he couldn't let it show, couldn't let it be known. He hardened his gaze and hid the fear behind walls of ice, and in a harsh voice he spat out over the crackle of flames: "Þú ert hundar bæði!" And his voice promised death. He could always claim they had attacked him first.

The fire. The fire was spreading rapidly, each second causing the rain to increase in strength, each drop fueling it, and Helovia had been a tinderbox just waiting to catch fire. Now, it had finally happened in the Threshold, the meager protection of his tree being eaten away much too rapidly for his sanity. Each breath quivered and tasted foul, his hide twitched each time a drop of rain found him. By the sound of it, the limbs of trees would soon give way and fall burning to the ground, and by then, he didn't want to be here. Amidst the chaos and the growing fear, Mauja sought for clarity, and with a wrench the ground beneath them groaned; a near-metallic noise split the air as the ground itself parted, two spikes of ice breaking through the dry crust and speeding upwards. One beneath Histe's tender belly, one beneath Vincent's thick barrel. "Hundkvikindin!" he shouted at them, backing a step involuntarily; his hind end scraped against the bark of the tree, and nearby a branch broke and fell, burning to the ground.

The forest was turning into an inferno.

Flames licked along the ground, spreading, consuming, destroying. She had caused it. He was certain. He knew it and he hated her - but he feared the burning forest more. Die, his mind shouted as the flames flickered hungrily. Die now, for I can't stay much longer. Mauja hated fire and the fire hated him; it hungrily crept closer, pain flashing through him each time it fell upon him, leaving charred, sore spots. He couldn't hold his ground much longer, not when it was burning. The whites of his eyed glowed orange, and backed up against a burning tree, on the edge of breaking, he roared, "DEY!"

Irc

Another equine showed up and moved to stand next to her, but Histe merely sneered at him. She didn't need anyone's support other than Huinne's. She didn't need some meathead stallion thinking he was going to protect her because she didn't need protection from anyone. They needed protection from her. They all needed protection from her.

The white unicorn was shouting something unintelligible again, which just made Histe smirk. Flames leapt up from the ground and licked at their hooves. Histe stood firm, watching and laughing as the frosty unicorn panicked and tried to get away from it, still shouting in his screwed up way. There was another noise just beneath the roar of the fire and the unicorn's shouting. Instinct had the mare thowing herself to the side. A spike made completely of ice shot up from the ground, the tip of it scratching her rather than impale her as Mauja had wanted.

Histe screamed in anger and the rain began to fall harder around them. The unicorn continued to back away until he was pinned to a tree. Her front end lifted into a half rear before she dropped back down to the ground, her hooves striking the earth and pawing it viciously.

The mare moved forward as the unicorn was driven back by the flames that nipped at her heels and singed her hair. Branches cracked and fell from the trees around them as they went up in flames. One crashed down between them, blocking her advance on the unicorn. Histe snorted angrily at it before turning and bucking. Her hind hooves caught the branch just right and it flew away from her and toward the stallion the whole fire was meant for.

Mauja the FrostHeart
ice cold man watches earth die, eternal winter takes its reign

She must've sensed it, or she was just skittish it; through the heat haze he could see her jump aside, the hard, cold tip of ice standing beside her. A little red trickled down from its sharpened point, but not enough, and with a maddened shriek he allowed them to fall back into the earth, accompanied by the same grinding, metallic noise. The dry soil swallowed them up and Mauja tried to breathe deeply and not at all at the same time; the air tasted of sulfur and acid, of death and decay, it irritated his throat and his mind but he needed to calm down but how the hell does one calm down when standing in hell?! Snorting shakily he kept dancing on the spot, trying to lull himself into not moving away and yet wanting to run away. His native language bubbled in his throat but what he was about to say was cut off - and forgotten - when a burning branch thundered down between him and the equines. Sparks danced before his eyes and Mauja shied backwards against the untouched bark of the tree. Flames raged above, but they were distant still, only scraps of burning debris floated down to singe his hide. The tree itself was safe. For now.

She turned around to kick at the branch and caught it, scooping it up on blackened fetlocks and tossing it in his general direction. Mauja flinched but instinct saved him; ice powered up from the ground in front of him, shielding him. The burning branch slammed into it and veered off, coming to rest somewhere to his right.

He didn't care.

He was tired of this game.

Not too long ago, the Moon had come to the Edge in all her glory, gifting her two strongest mortal allies; he had never used his gift, he'd nearly forgotten about it. Unlike the ice, which he had been born to, this magic was something he wasn't quite sure how to call upon, and in any other situation he would've had to stop and think, and if he'd had to think about it, he likely wouldn't have figured it out. As it was, he was feral, his mind blocked by the hungry flames, and instinct had purged him of all barriers. Rage swam in his blood side by side with fear, and it rose like a crescendo in him, tingling, until he turned that barely contained fury on Histe; his mind focused on her chest region, on her heart and lungs, and the blood in her veins began to crystallize. It would cause pain, a sensation of freezing from within, a chill that was inside her, like a skinwalker, a nightmare - and the crystals, if growing, would turn their sharp little edges onto the walls of the blood vessels themselves, seeking to shred. To kill. But it would take time. Theoretically, she could still save herself. He didn't want her to. He wanted her to die. And at the same time, he knew that killing her would jeopardize everything he'd tried to do for his herd.

"Break the off the rain," he rasped, then realized she could likely not hear him over the hiss and crackle of flames. Perhaps the sound of her insanity would drown him out. He drew a shuddering breath, keeping the link of cold streaming into her body. "Break off the rain!" he shouted at her, feeling steadier - sounded steadier. But he still wanted to run away. He still wanted to flee. But he couldn't. Not yet. Pride kept him where he was, pride and the chance of making her stop; if she just stopped... then he could walk away and pretend he hadn't lost. Then he could walk away and soothe his stinging wounds and scream the aftermath of fear someplace no one would hear. Even though the root of fear would go away, the screams would still be trapped in him.

Mauja the FrostHeart
ice cold man watches earth die, eternal winter takes its reign

For a few moments, he thought she hadn't heard - or that she didn't care. The crazed mare gave no indication of having heard his words, or of heeding them, just kept staring in that mad manner of hers, but.. she seemed less focused on him. Mauja ground his teeth together, ears slick against his neck while he stood his ground under the tree. Every once in a while a drop of acid would splatter against him, burning, but it didn't properly catch on his sweat-drenched coat. Each time he blinked, the areas of fire grew dimmer, smaller; reality took over his warped, phobic perception of it. Small pockets of it burned around the clearing, and a couple of trees were slowly catching, dry as they were, but he was in no immediate danger of burning to death. He released another shaky breath, focusing on the link of cold, holding the bond to her body.

Then it stopped.

He didn't notice it at first, for the fire was still spreading at its own leisurely pace, but the arcs of raining death had stopped. Mauja blinked, then snorted. A shiver ran down his spine. "And don't start it again," he spat at her, before turning his back to her. He didn't trust her to not attack him again, but just in case she didn't, he'd be glad to get the hell away from her and the licking flames. As a precaution, he held onto the steady feed of ice into her blood, knowing that distance would weaken it and eventually the water would melt, removing the danger of getting her blood vessels shredded. Fire was a surefire way to turn him off. He had no desire to fight her. He had no desire to linger here. All he wanted to do was return to his home, and forget about the sight of flames. Too bad it was burned into his memory, flickering with hungry, orange light just behind his eyelids.

[ Mau tries to walk out, if Histe will let him xD ]