She had finally made it. The ache and burn in the hollow of her chest reminding her their heart was once more in danger, as it has been and will continue to be until they succeed. For her many suicide attempts since this two way agreement had begun, she had never once truly reflected upon the desire she had to die. Her demon writhed, shadow exploding and taking the husk of a hollowed- out shell of what once may have once been a man into the depths of inky darkness with it. Evaine flickered with the candlelight, barely there as she neared her goal. So near, she could taste the rot and blood in her mouth as she inhaled stale, rank air through her nose. It would burn a human, she knew. Would be one of the many factors she had already passed designed to drive a mortal mad.

As she slipped through a wall much like a natural vault, she was glad they had prepared. Prepared for darkness that no light could siphon through. Prepared for voices that screeched and screamed within one's head, and echoed as though in a stalagmite- riddled cavern. Prepared for rains of toxic blood and hands that tangled in her cloak from beneath the river it created. Her skin had already healed the pustules and holes bored through by such, but when she turned her gaze from the shimmering red stones before her, the matron knew she had not prepared for this.

He was, without doubt, long ago a man. The curve of his bloodied, dirty axe and surrounded her throat, and she was still as long as he kept the lethal weapon still. She only stated, in silence. She could not see his skin, for he was covered from the waist up in silver- red armor she was sure he had never removed in his time here. So, instead, she looked upon the rest of him. The part of him she could see, could bear witness to, was crudely warped to merge with that of a horse; a disgusting bit of barbaric magic she had not yet mastered in her infancy of this arrangement she had managed. There was no finesse in his corruption, tufts of silver, grey hair sticking up above a belt modified to cover the messy joining of hip and shoulder. A poor, corrupted creature. Destroyed, she knew, by the very stone she was destined to steal.yet he, unlike others she had ventured past within this repulsive tomb, had not only been harmed by an unsentient, corrupted rock. Leather bands around his legs above his hooves kept him tethered to the room they were within, and told her many things that words could not. And so she trained her gaze upon his face, allowed him to pull her slowly closer with the blade placed at the most sensitive place upon her neck. And without asking, when he stopped, she dropped slowly to her knees and began to work upon the chains.


For his part, Hecarim had never seen a mortal make it to his chambers with any semblance of sanity. And this, he was unprepared for company that was neither screaming mad, nor crawling mewling upon the bloodied cobble.

This woman was neither.

She was but a woman, and one he could not recall the words to quite describe. He had long since forsaken the right to speak the common tongue, and the voices in his head spoke another tongue entirely, long since dead to the world around them. Behead her. Behead her. Feel her blood splash upon the floor. Those voice sang and chortled within his mind, gasping and choking upon the blood they drowned upon. She was transfixed upon the monstrous stones within his chambers, for of course that was what she had come for. That was what they all came, and died, for. And so it was too easy for Hecarim to line the inside curve of his axe at her petite, and pretty, neck. That was when she turned, and he knew he had been incorrect in assuming he was unprepared for her. Nothing could have prepared him for her, in one hundred thousand years. She gazed at him, with golden eyes he had never seen, and edged closer with a willingness as he yearned to pull her closer. And as though she were seeking his permission, she slowly lowered to her knees upon the dirty floor. Too dirty, he thought silently, for someone like her to touch upon. He was curious, bending back to watch her as she reached her hands toward the heavy bands around his forelegs, as her slim fingers stretched and turned as she spoke a tongue foreign to him. And with a pop and a clang, he felt the weight of rusted, blood- soaked chain relieve itself of his legs. She rose, as slowly as she had descended, and moved her dark- colored hair to the side of her neck, placing it once more at the blade of his axe.

He was unprepared for a woman he could not kill.

The axe was suddenly too heavy for his hands, and he carefully removed it from her, standing it at his side as he towered above her, transfixed. He could not kill her. But he could not allow her to touch the stone.

The stones turned men mad, warped and corrupted their humanity into a screaming writhe of dark and hate. He had become half man, half beast, and those that walked this halls were often worse. Yet he had no voice to warn her with, no words she would understand to convey what would happen to her should she take what she had come for. And despite, when she moved, it was not away from him and toward the stone, but towards him instead. He lowered his head, collapsed his hulking figure, to look closer at her. To memorize the shape of her face, the way the tattoos upon her cheeks framed those golden, unblinking eyes. He wanted to remember her, so that instead of her becoming one of the wretched husks, he could release her back to the worlds above. Someone there, the horseman thought, must love her. She shook her head slightly at this, as though she could hear his thoughts, and reached her hands forward towards him. He wanted to stop her, to tell her what would happen should she touch, yet his insides twisted with desire to know what it was this woman's hands felt like upon his skin.

She pressed lightly against his chest, and the change was instant. The smell of burning, melting flesh reached his nostrils through his helm, and he expected her to scream or recoil. She did neither. She did not so much as blink as the skin around her hands began to wear away and melt. It was in that moment that he knew, with little doubt, that this was no mortal woman, no child of man. But he knew not what she was. He could not let her be destroyed. And though he desired to touch her face, to know if her lips were as soft as they appeared, he dared not to touch her, to mar more of her than already had. She stepped away from him, a half step, and lifted a bloodied hand to the clasp at her shoulder. Her cape fell away in a pool, and she nodded at him silently, as though she understood.

'Come.' She finally spoke, but though she still gazed at him with an odd expression upon her face, he knew she spoke not to him. 'Let us go. We have no business here.' And in a circle of smoke, she was gone.

He found he missed her, immediately.

It was some time before the horseman realized, the voices had become quiet in her presence.