Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
And the unicorn evils run them through;
There has always been this sweet and fermented tang that belongs to death, and Thana, and everything that the ground is rising up to meet. She can smell it on the wind now, that iron tang of old death, almost hidden by the bitter smell of herbs. Every drop of her magic laced blood leans towards the coming death in the same way a root might reach for the current of a river in a drought.
And if she's surprised to see the silver mare peel out of the gloaming mist Thana does not show it. The hungry lines of her features remain hollow, and wanting, and tinged with a lilac longing.
“Hello Corrdelia.” She says the words between one firework and the next. Her heart thunders with the echo of them as she steps closer to the dead thing perched on the mare's shoulder. The magic in her blood trembles like a starving thing. It reaches out across the ground. Moss blooms with the fat heads of warms. Rocks break down to glittering dust as her tail drags across the ground. Roots curl inwards beneath the too heavy weight of her shadow. For all the beauty above them, and before them, there is an inverted mirror of it below her feet. Decay and glory, death and celebration. Thana's teeth ache for the feeling of it.
Eligos presses through the darkness to join her, his lips curling back at the memory of violence clinging to the grotesque lines of the dead crow. The sand below his paws vibrates faintly with an echo of the violence leaking out into the smoke and ash floating down around them like pillowed clouds of suffering. He steps closer to the pegasus with a look of terrible curiosity in the tightness of his spine.
Perhaps if she had been born instead of made she would have understood the madness of the mare. Perhaps if her blood wasn't racing towards the dead thing like a river she would have understood the ways of empathy. Perhaps if she was any else but a unicorn made for rending the cells of this world apart she would have offered comfort.
Instead all she says is, “your crow is dead”, with her teeth still aching behind her tight lips.
Thana steps closer, close enough to see better the lines stitched between sinew and feathers. Her magic roars furiously in her skin at the perversion. The dead belong to the rot, not to the bitter and sweet magic of herbs. “Did you not notice?” Her violent crown of bone trembles on her brow with the need to rip the corpse down into dust and loam. She restrains herself—barely. Fury is flashing unchecked in her violet eyes.
And then ground around them turns black and hard, and the trees start to wilt and bow their crowns towards the curl of her spine.
