Individually, we are one drop
Together, we are the ocean.
- Ryunosuke Satoro

Riekahn's brain was rotted more deeply and blackly than fruit sitting on a table in the summer, and Paladin had a hard time believing that he would be proud of any of them. He nor Donovan, nor Giselle, nor Psyche stayed to fight his bullshit war against the high-nesting pegasus nomads, but maybe he would welcome them back with a sick smile and a severed head on a stick. Paladin had no idea anymore. After blood rituals, war and inhaling ash, he wanted none of it anymore. He had gone back once to try and discover the secret of his dam, but he still was in the dark as to who she was, where she was... An entire half of his lineage was blotted out entirely.

That was true power. Riekahn held the ability to obliterate history as if it was nothing, and the black dun knew the dangers of never knowing truth, patterns, and family. He who writes history controls the future.

Psyche teased that she was not trying to find him, so he found himself wondering just what she was doing slinking across the beach in such darkness. Well, darkness seemed to be her own welcome-home hellhole, so he figured that she might feel right as rain wherever she chose to plant her ass with the sun gone. He should not be so bitter. In all the times he could remember, the stallion had never once had a real conversation with this mare. Paladin had spoken with Giselle, but never Psyche. The right thing to do would be to give her a chance, but the DarkEmpress was leading an all unicorn band along side Mauja and a myriad of other creeps.

No Mr. Niceguy. No Mr. Perfect.

And so he only grunted a little in response, trying to not be the entire stereotype of cranky old man. "Then why are you skulking so far from home?" he asked plainly before catching sight of some strange creature trying to come at his half-sister. While letting her get mauled to death and have her horn taken from her skull would be... divine, she at least deserved a better end than "dead on beach as the chew toy of hell's pet demon lizard". What even was this thing?

After he felt his body shove Psyche's out of the way, he ignored the half-spoken demand and shoved his pearly horn into a dead maw. With a disgusting, visceral "shlick" it detached from the rest of its body, getting stuck on his horn. The stallion wondered what he had done to deserve this torment, but without taking too much time to lament his current situation, he tossed the skull from his horn, eyes narrowing back in on the scaly creature. Something inside of it... or around it... seemed to take on a strange glow.

Paladin saw Psyche aim her ivory jaws for a tentacle, so he joined her side in a dance he had danced many time before. The stallion's mind calmed into a state of logic, action and reaction. Any commentary he might have had disappeared into a white void as he watched his prey through crimson orbs. As the scaled body tries to wrap around Psyche's head, he leaps forward, hooves aiming to crash down on the part of its body still resting on the ground. Narrowly, he avoided clashing with the strange, equid faces it bore and tilted his head, aiming to scrape his white weapon along the side of the creature and perhaps get the tip up under one of the jaws and pry it loose.

"Duck your head, Psyche," he said, though his words were not a command. He spoke while he fought, keeping her informed as they now were in this fight together. "Try and dislodge it and help me with this... face... thing... the part with the eyeballs..." he said, trying to even think of how to begin to describe the head of the monster.