Desreal: this may be a booty call; ETHEREAL

Why her, some might ask.

She has no part in his many blood feuds, is not yet a Legend and there are certainly other bronzes, more relevant bronzes, that Kurai could take an interest in.

Why Ethereal?

It was not a moment of rationality – or, perhaps, it was more that kind of hyper-rationality that has come over him over the years, cold calculation intertwined with the reckless ferocity of the nachtmere, the dragon-steed. He saw her, once, heard her name upon a breath of wind, felt her Fire mixed with the barest traces of his own familiar Lightning. And it was then that something occurred to him – Future, it said.

Baraqel was a dismal failure, near-disowned were it not for the alarming Lightning which binds Baraqel and Kurai.

There must, then, be another.

And so, he called her – a true-life nightmare, in the dead of night.

“Ethereal,” he says, and a play of moonlight glimmers off of the preternatural metal scales that line his entire body, sharp and jagged and plating the impossibly elegant equine limbs that capture him in this paradox of terror and beauty. His pale eyes hold her steadily, and though nothing on his countenance betrays emotion there would seem to be the fleetest traces of a smile in those eyes beneath the oil-black mane that spills across his dragon-head. “After a certain amount of time, the distinction between dream and reality becomes much fainter.” Not having to sleep anymore certainly helps, too – immortality leaves one with a lot of free time, which may or may not have some role to play in the incredibly intelligent but entirely sociopathic Nightmare we see today.

“It’s good that you came,” he takes a step toward her, and his Lightning – his great, terrible, Stupefying Lightning – seeks hers, shuddering forth from his metal, gleaming body to reach out to her own infant Lightning, embedded as it is in her predominant flames.

He takes a step past her, his shoulder brushing hers – softly, starkly cold against the tremendous heat of the warrior-mare – and in passing one of his wings slides carelessly across her back, mayhaps by chance (if only she knew better!) before settling again against his plated side. “Come,” he says, pausing, “I’ll show you all of Desreal.”