Eventually Grey unroots himself from his place on the bank of the river, tearing white eyes away from the reflection he sees. After awhile it had stopped looking like him, though does he truly look like himself anymore at all? The blurriness encompassing the edges of his vision encroaches and then retreats with every step, fluctuating in intensity. The black shadows are beasts, clawing at his skin and begging for his blood. The unicorn thinks he starts to feel a pounding in his head, like a giant bashing down the walls of his mind. Boom, boom, boom.

He follows the river’s winding path through the trees, listless, ears twisting at every sound. Oh, he is still a soldier somewhere deep inside, and though he walks almost aimlessly, he is still too alert of his surroundings. Too aware of the stillness and every sound that breaks it. Part of his expects that there should be more noise in the night, and yet the forest is almost sedate. It unsettles him, a strange pressure settling between his shoulder blades and brushing across his nerves.

Ahead Grey thinks he sees where the river breaks the canopy cover. Perhaps, he thinks, this river will lead him somewhere afterall. Perhaps he might find someone capable of telling him where he is and where he should be headed. His chest expands and then releases and slow, heaving breath, and still his sight swims and dances and still his head pounds and pounds and pounds so that when one of the shadows seems to rear out of nowhere to Grey’s left and he turns to face it, his hoof catches on one of the rocks claiming the edges of the river. His heart crashes and falls as he, too, begins to fall. He throws his legs out in front of him, scraping against stone, in an attempt to catch himself.

Grey's footing is quickly losing ground, the rush of the water reaching up for him from the river. He thinks, for a moment, that he is going to fall in. But, he thinks too, that he has already felt once what it would be like to freeze to death. How different can a frozen funeral be? Perhaps only the drowning part. How ironic it would be for Amaranthus to have saved him from death and sent him here only for him to die anyway. Fate is truly a cruel thing.

It seems, however, that fate has not come for him tonight as he feels the press of a shoulder against his own. His vision is filled with darkness, then, but he realizes its not all shadows, but a body. Another equine, and they are speaking. Snapping out of his thoughts Grey manages to scrabble backwards, further onto level ground. His hooves feel dirt and grass and then the world rights itself and he's no longer falling toward a watery grave. For some reason, nothing in him rejoices at this revelation. Regardless, his white gaze settles on the stranger and regards him cooly.

Even if it weren't dark, he is sure the obsidian of the stranger's coat is so consuming that he would not look wet but for the water dripping off the feathers of his wings and down the length of his legs. “Thank you,” he manages to say, shortly but not entirely unkindly. He knows he would have ended up in the river without the younger man's help, but then again if he didn't go around startling others in the middle of the night then it likely wouldn't have happened. Or maybe it was all the magic's fault, for it had cursed him and left him unable to easily discern between what is real and what is simply shaodws of the night.

A frown deepens on Grey's lips. Perhaps he could at least get some vaulable information from this winged stranger. He still doesn't know where he has ended up, of course, and to be in a new land with such a bane inflicted upon him, he probably should not continue to wander around hoping to stumble into something other than a frigid autumn river. “Can you tell me where it is I am? I have been traveling for some time, trying to locate a place called Novus.” It is, he thinks, has good a place as any to start. He wonders how much longer he will have to journey. From this land to yet another? Hopefully this stranger can point him in the right direction

Grey grunts noncommittally at the younger man's exclamations of luck. Their definitions of luck are quite different, he assumes, for the unicorn does not feel very lucky at all. Cursed by this damned land's bizarre magic that makes glowing pools in the middle of nowhere. Nearly landing himself in a rushing, freezing river. If this is luck, then Grey has been lucky all his life and he doesn't like it all. Perhaps if he had been born unlucky his lot in life would be different.

None of the places that the pegasus speaks of mean anything to the older equine. Only Novus, and even then it is the only name Amaranthus gave him to go off of. So. Now he is here, but what is he meant to do? A frown turns down the corners of his lips. Clearly it is too much to hope the answer to that question will come easy. “A pleasure, Mateo,” but there is nothing particularly warm about him that says it is indeed a pleasure, “I am Grey.”

“Just Grey,” for while his companion might be a scholar and a songwriter, the unicorn is nothing. Not a warrior, not a brother, not a friend. Perhaps he had been these things in the past, but now he was a broken man, with a whole world of regrets inside and behind him.

Mateo turns away from Grey and begins to lead him, he can only assume, to this court proper. The Dawn Court, he had called it. Oh, but Grey is so unprepared for the question that the younger man asks that he nearly stumbles and stops walking. If Mateo were to look at him he might see a shadow pass over his expression, not unlike the ones still lurking at the edges of his vision. He frowns again, and when he speaks his voice says he is decidedly not interested in continuing this line of conversation.

“I am merely searching for something that a… friend said I would find here.” He thinks of Amaranthus and the emptiness inside him grows ever deeper and wider, a chasm impossible to cross. He thinks of the way the god has held him and loved him and knows he never deserved any of it. Still, he has let so many down in his life that he cannot bear to do it again to the man who had tried so hard to warm his long-frozen heart.

'Mr. Grey,'

And the pain Grey feels at that moment is so acute he forgets to breathe and his chest stutters and stumbles and his lungs are tightening and choking him. His failures are here in this world, nipping mercilessly at his heels, flooding poisom through his veins.

The unicorn is not his father, could never stand tall to that title. Could never shoulder it with pride and strength and honor. And Grey is grateful for the chill constantly there in his skin, as the racing of his heart cannot betray him with a sheen of sweat.

Mateo is young but proper, respectable and respectful both. Things Grey has never been, not even in his own youth. But his brother, ah, how he had been. The man grits his teeth until his jaw aches. "I don't know, exactly," he says, finally filling his lungs with breath. "He only told me to find Novus, that I would know when I found it."

Did Amaranthus know, and simply not tell him? Could Amaranthus have known what would happen to him once he arrived here, how this world would threaten to bring him to his knees on the very first night.

Grey wonders if Amaranthus would be waiting for him if he chooses to return back to that mountain seemingly in the sky. "And no, I don't think I've found it yet," he says preemptively, shooting a look at the young pegasus.

They walk in silence for a time. Blessed, sweet silence, despite its blanket heaviness draping around their shoulders. It does not last for long, however, as the young pegasus speaks again. ‘Best meet with Somnus, then. The sovereign of Dawn. He'll know what to do.’ Grey nearly stumbles, nearly comes hard to his knees there on the dirt and the grass. Somnus. It couldn’t be, could it? A coincidence, it had to be.

But then... had Amaranthus known?

Somnus, Somnus, Somnus.

His heart cannot breathe and his lungs cannot beat, and all he can hear is a man sentencing himself to death and the smell of burning and blood and damp. He thinks the shadows in his vision aren’t just shadows but ghosts. Ghosts of the dead and demons of hell, coming to drag him down to his death for all the wrongs he has made in his life. And Somnus is there, a bright beam of light, knowing, judging. Whatever is there of the unicorn’s heart wrenches, and he grinds his teeth against the wave of pain rising inside of him.

It cannot be, no, it must be a coincidence. He has not come all this way just to be faced with a reminder of his past. His continued existence is already enough, that he lives while so many he loved had died, and many more gone, abandoning everything. They stop inside the walls of the court and Grey’s hooves chink against the cobblestone streets like they are made of ice.

He doesn’t pay attention to Mateo’s greeting of the guard, doesn’t even look at the young man. His white white eyes are swimming in shadows and hauntings. He is drowning but desperately clinging to some preserver, hoping above all things that his worst fears are not true.

Somnus cannot be here.

“There is no god on your mountain that I want,” he says, swimming, struggling, and he wants to go back to his own mountain and find Amaranthus and never come down again. He wants to scream until his god comes back to him, and explains everything. He wants to fall back into that wintery embrace and just let go, at last. “I will find my way from here,” Grey mutters, and takes his first steps further into the streets.

Oh, he will wander for hours in the night, until he cannot see straight and his legs are as exhausted as his lungs. He will wander until the sun comes up, lost, floundering, aching, but he will not be anyone’s problem but his own, as he leaves the young pegasus behind.