ORIGIN

The lights in Orion dimmed, signalling the time of sleep. The time of quiet, where there was nothing for Ashtoreth but haunting stares of her memories, whispering into her ears and plaguing her with comforts gone sour. She had thought, foolishly, that she could suffer through the pain as long as she had the gentle words in her ears, the remains of a life she had left behind tracing in the vibrations on the wind.

That all had died the moment Kingsfoil, her royal superior-- the toymaster of her broken, battered wind-up husk-- had come home with a remains of a stallion. The dusty grey coat was smeared with blood, his eyes dead, barely conscious. As bad as she was, as thin as she was. Ever since she saw that stranger, wearing the skin of her Eos, the songs stopped coming to her. In their stead, a dull, haunting refrain echoed in her heartbeat and her paws felt cold.

It couldn't have been her bard, her hero, the valiant steed she had rode when she was just a baby. The one who, after witnessing the horror of the shadow cat during her birth, had made her realize the world wasn't terrible and awful. He had brought her a light, shown her the world, and given her a hope. Even after losing everything, his tone-deaf songs sang to her, giving her a reason to live. To try.

Eos would have known it was her. He would have looked at her, despite his pain, and he would have called her name... He would have tried to reach out to her, instead of giving her that empty, dead stare. He would have... But her mind whispered to her, told her it was him. That it had to be Eosphoros, who else could it be? She whispered back, sobs in her heavy, hallow chest-- he was so thin, so hurt. That wasn't supposed to happen to him. He was a bard, no one would hurt someone who smiled like he did, who sang so bravely. Who had hurt him? Why? Why?! It wasn't Kingsfoil-- Kings had saved him. The bratty child was many things but he had no experience in lying. He was truthful in everything, even if his mind was warped and cruel.

So Ashtoreth's mind hummed, buzzing with the quiet reminders that Eosphoros had been broken, and he didn't love her, and he was gone forever. He would never know her again, only see her as Kutu, as nothing more than dirt. She fought it, teeth gnashing, refusing to believe that the shell of a horse was her Eosphoros. Just like Euron, they were similar but all so wrong. Euron was too young and the dusty, broken stallion was too thin, too shrunken and old. Her Eosphoros was still out there, singing his proud, wonderful song, tall and fleshed out, powerful and wonderful. He was waiting for her to escape, to race away and find him, so he could show her just how perfect the world still was, even after all of her heartbreak.

The child did not have the strength as she rose to her paws. Her flesh was a sickly, unnatural green from her desperation to survive on nothing but light and what dew she could lap from the stones where Kings left her. Her eyes were hazy and her vision swam every time she moved. By now she was certain one of her wings was broken, though when she needed to she could force part of it to move to summon her magic, when she needed to land. Her feathers were grey and filthy with dried blood, but they hid the thinness of her fragile form well even now.

She stumbled, unsure where she was going. She already knew that she wouldn't get far enough to escape. She could never escape, never find safety. The feathered fisher didn't even dare try anymore, though she did wander in the darkness to try and escape her own thoughts. Sleep would only bring nightmares-- of her father plucking skulls from babies, of her sister turning to ice and shattering, of the thing with hundreds of eyes peeling her layers away with the sound that made her ache, of the hundreds of hooves that raced through her ears when Kings decided he wanted to fight and hurt something other than her. There was too much sickness here, in the caves, in her, in her, in her.

Ashtoreth stopped, or rather, stumbled and fell when the land dipped unexpectantly. Her lungs let out a puff of a whimpered gasp, wheezing to get the air back in. The child stared at her own forelimbs in the darkness, her haze eyes seeing the green and her mind screeched. This was wrong. Her skin wasn't supposed to be sickly verdant, her flesh wasn't supposed to be stretched so thin on the bones, those claws were not hers. She stared, shaking, as she realized that something was horribly off and she felt herself staring down at her own self staring down at her own body.

Abruptly, the child couldn't breath. Her chest rose, but no matter how hard she tried the air just wheezed right out before she could use it. The foreign claws dug into the earth and she felt nothing. Tears came to her eyes as she watched the stranger hyperventilate, so consumed by the fact that it was all fake. It was all false. This wasn't happening. Terrified, the thought that she wasn't even real clung to her mind and it wouldn't go away. Over and over the words cycled through her mind. She wasn't real. She didn't exist. She wasn't here, this body wasn't hers, and she was dead. She was dead and she wasn't dead, no, she wasn't even real. She had never ever existed. No one would know if she just vanished, no, she already had. No one knew and no one care.

Pain came sharp and hot to her as her teeth sank into her own leg. She didn't taste blood, though she felt the milky texture wash into her mouth. The only thing she processed was the pain, and how real it was. She was alive, she thought, panicked. She was alive. She was here. She dug her teeth in deeper, forcing back the numb sensation with pain. That's what she needed... Pain. It made her feel alive again, and she shook, sobbing, until her body convulsed and she let go, dry heaving. Blood dripped from her teeth, spilling on to the stone, and she stared at the crimson colors in the dull light.

Alive. Alive. Alive. She was still here. It was okay, she told herself, shivering. The hybrid curled up on herself, pushing her forehead into the bleeding wound. She smeared the blood across her face as she nuzzled into her own arm, not entirely control of her own body. The pain was the only sensation she recognized, the only thing that kept her anchored. The panic started to fade, replacing with exhaustion, but even still she knew she couldn't fall asleep.

Her ear picked up a sharp sound. A hoof on stone. Her eyes snapped up, her body compressing into the hard ground, a cold dread replacing the shaking, uncontrollable fear.

She was wandering, and she had come across someone. She could taste their pain and their madness from a mile away, and it called to her like a song from all the way across Orion, and she followed it like an addict caught on the smell of her craving. She needed to find this, this pain that was so like Booker's. She had never tasted anything so sweet before or after his breaking, and just the thought of enjoying it again made her mouth water.

She reached out to the little mind, hoping to sample this, to drink of it deeply. She caught it in her breast, in her stomach, her throat, of everything this little one had suffered and was suffering, and it was so good to her she could barely stand it. She even knew the little girl's father, had met him and made him afraid.

Her black heart was singing. This was heaven to her.

"Oh, little one," She cooed, her hooves clopping on the stone floor. "You poor, poor thing. How much you must've suffered."

And when the little fisher would turn, she would see Belladonna in all her glory, her cloak writhing like a mass of snakes from her back, making sick sounds of ecstasy, and the gore that always slid from her eyes trailed down her cheeks and into her smiling mouth and onto the floor with soft little drip drip drips that sizzled as soon as they touched the floor.