[M] The screamed lullabies of swans

[Laric]

The Screamed Lullabies of Swans
Written by Valoura, 370 EOD​

Table of Contents

• The Early History
• The Bloodline
• Threnodyn
• Animal Companions
• Fenestra I
• Fenestra II
• Fenestra III
• Aftermath of Bremen

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The Early History

As the son of a Viscount, Laric had a privileged childhood. He was wanted. Loved. He had every opportunity made available to him - right at the fingertips, if only he would reach out and grab it - and should have desired for nothing; he had food, clothing, shelter, an education. But he was deeply unhappy. And he carried that unhappiness through life like a curse.

The family lands were home to ancient ruins. The imagination of youth had turned the ruins into a sort of sacred religion for Laric. He rode his pony through the misty, rolling fields, to place lighted candles in what he presumed to be the remnants of crumbling windowsills, and daydreamed about the people who may have walked the halls when they were whole. Occasionally, a breeze killed the flame, and when he returned the following evening, he found that the candle had partially merged with the ruin, and he lit it again, repeating the process until rivulets of wax ran down the worn, lavender grey stones. This same breeze stirred through the knee-high grass, causing it to ripple like silvery waves in a verdant sea.

Laric's great uncle - an evil man, a greedy man - saw no value in the ruins. He parceled them off to the knights and to the commoners, and worse. One day Laric rode out and found one of the ruins had been toppled and buried. He mourned for it. Raged for it. And he began to have a reoccurring dream of his favorite amongst the ruins. In this dream, he would walk through the rolling fields, until he crested the final hill. Stretching out before him, he could see a vast expanse of fields sporting the stubble of agriculture. To his right was a building he did not recognize, and to his left, the ruin was being demolished. He had sobbed for the ruins in this dream, with the sort of guttural, wracking cries reserved only for the most exquisite of losses: the loss of a dearly beloved one. These sorts of cries were not meant for the loss of an inanimate object, a pile of stones. But night after night, he mourned in his dreams for that which had not yet been taken in the waking realm.

Throughout his life, one by one the ruins fell. With each, Laric's father counseled him that he should not resent his great uncle and should especially not resent the peasantry for what they did. It was important to keep peace with the common folk, and to allow them to work the land so they could provide for their families and survive. But Laric did resent them. His ruins were sacred.

Sometime during his teens, a building was constructed in that field, precisely where it had been in the dream. And it was around this same time that Laric fell ill with the fever which was attributed with scrambling his mind. He recovered but was never truly the same.

Many years passed.

His great uncle died, and Laric was said to have burst through the church doors with a torch in hand - the funeral service having been concealed from him - and lit the church ablaze. The screams of his first cousin, once removed, rent the smoke-filled air, the desecration of her father's corpse furthering the divide within the family. Nobody spoke of this event afterwards. No one dared confront Laric. His Lord father didn't have to threaten any of his people to garner their silence, either, they simply knew.

Recently. It was summer, the corn was high. This wasn't like in the dream. He wasn't cresting the hill, but riding from the other direction, towards the hill, and saw it to his right. Destroyed.

Laric didn't cry. He didn't rage. Instead, he withdrew silently into himself and the horror that was his own thoughts.

In Laric's mind, he had nothing. Technically he had his parents, his cats, and his inheritance, but life had long ago taught him that everything is eventually reduced to dust... naturally, some who had lost their own precious figureheads scoffed at his anguish, pointing out this very fact and warning that he would regret his lack of appreciation later, but this wasn't the Misery Olympics and Laric wasn't exactly rational.

To Laric, the ruins were the only truly eternal thing, and now they were gone. He was utterly and completely alone, forced to confront his own mortality, and the lack of fear he felt towards it, having outlived that which was sacred.

 

[Laric]

Aftermath of Bremen

Lord Delirien stood at his bedroom window. He worried for his son, Laric. For his mind. And for what would become of him when he only had himself. Andreas Delirien had become an old man, and old men do not live forever. Through the window, he could see Laric astride a horse on a hill far below, the distance causing the duo to resemble the carved figurines with which children act out their fantasies.

The stallion had reached that perfect shade of dapple grey, the coat a downy white accentuated by soft, silvery grey rings. A gentle breeze stirred through its long, heavy, salt and pepper mane, a mane that matched Lord Delirien’s own venerable locks. The same breeze tugged at the long black cloak that hung from Laric’s shoulders, the fabric seeming to come alive in the breeze, writhing and billowing, and ran its cold zephyric fingers through the black feathers at the shoulders of the cloak, causing them to flip and glint with an exotic beetle sheen of blues, greens, and purples.

Behind the pair, a vast canvas of grey clouds stretched endlessly above, and grassy, wildflower stippled fields below. A cold rain had begun to fall, large raindrops painting the animal’s neck and back like drips of molten steel, cooled. This was the hill where the chapel had once stood, now reduced to a ring of ash, and at its center, Laric and the horse standing, faces to the incoming storm.

The Lord’s most loyal men had intended to clean the mess, to make it as if the fire had never happened and the chapel had never existed. But Lord Delirien had stayed their hands. He would allow his son this one thing.

Below, as the animal moved its shod hooves, delicate tendrils of ash rose into the air and were carried away by the wind. The stallion began to extend its forelegs, until its entire body was elongated in an elegant stretch, the tail flagging and cascading down one side of the muscular hindquarters like a tumultuous, frothing grey waterfall. Laric sank his weight into his heels, standing in the stirrups to lift his weight from the saddle, just as the old riding masters did to free the horse’s kidneys. Or so they claimed. An old wives' tale. The animal urinated.

Lord Delirien sighed. Pettiness was his son’s poetry.

When Laric came stalking home a few early mornings prior, bereft of his usual black horse and stinking of blood, Lord Delirien had said not a word. They sat across from each other, at opposite ends of the long wooden dining table - Lord Delirien eating thoughtfully and Laric picking at his food with the hand of his uninjured arm - and Lord Delirien had not pressed, although his eyes had passed over the clean cut on Laric’s face, and the deeper cut on his arm. Their healers were skilled, so both wounds should knit together without complication, and the face would probably not scar.

Afterwards, Lord Delirien had queried his men and learned as much as the Thornleys had allowed anyone to learn about whatever debauchery Laric had placed himself at the center of. Most men had fragile egos, and a lesser man than Lord Delirien would have been justifiably enraged by the disgrace and humiliation to the family name, and struck out with words, or even fists. But Laric’s father was a stoic man with an unshakeable self-assurance: the actions of his son were Laric’s alone and did not define the father.

Below, the animal’s fifth appendage lolled and began to retract into the sheath, and Laric applied his calves to the creature’s sides. It sprang forward into a powerful canter from a standstill, and then he urged it into a gallop that greedily devoured the damp ground beneath.

Galloping to only the Gods knew where.

 

[Laric]

Fenestra I

Dearest Fenestra...

Laric struggled to hide the tremor in his hand as he held the letter. Scrawled across the creamy parchment was an ornate handwriting that he did not recognize. Neither was he familiar with the signature that drew the mysterious correspondence to a close. He had not known Fenestra to keep secrets, and the discovery of this apparent secret darkened the figurative storm cloud that already hung over him, threatening to release a torrent of hot tears from eyes that glowed with a passionate rage like uranium glass. Tumultuous emotions were on the verge of shattering his composure, a mixture of anger and sorrow, not at the letter or its contents, but at the loss of his only true friend.

Fenestra had welcomed death for as long as Laric had known her. They had spent innumerable hours laying beneath the rustling boughs of old shade trees, a kaleidoscope of sunlight falling across their faces as it filtered betwixt the shifting leaves, discussing the topic of death. She quipped about it with a smile and a gleam in her eye, as though death were a warm friend they both shared. Laric had never tried to dissuade her, but he always made a counteroffer: I will kill him for you. She always refused. The detestable man in question wasn’t the cause of her melancholy, besides. He was a symptom. She stayed with him because of what was already broken within her, rather than being broken by him. She had a sort of sickness of the soul.

One night, Laric arrived to find her in the clawfoot bath, which she loved so dearly. Her lifeblood spilling from her. Laric had a different definition of friendship than most. He wasn’t one to force life for the sake of his own wants and loneliness, not when that which had caused her to seek death had not been fixed. No, that was selfish. He could not fix her, so he would never condemn her to a life of misery. That condemnation was not love. Instead, he knelt beside her and asked her if she was ready to die. This time, she said No. He removed a leather belt and used it as a tourniquet above the exsanguinating vessel. Then she wound her arms around his neck, and he carried her to her bed and leaned out an open window to call for the healer who waited patiently below.

Right now, however, was not Fenestra's doing.

Laric burned with an intense fury he could barely contain, his self-control threatening to slip, so terrifyingly visible that the physician and the guards who shared the room felt uncertain of their own safety. Whoever had done this had deprived Fenestra of orchestrating her own end, a crime Laric viewed more grievously than basic murder.

Her lifeless body, now just a cold, porcelain husk, had been left sprawled supine on the bed, lustrous golden hair still lifelike, forever frozen in this moment, reduced to something no more than doll's hair. Milky thighs exposed, intentionally spread by the killer in a final act of humiliation. Laric had pulled her gown down to preserve her corpse's dignity, although none of the men in the room dared to lift their eyes from the floor, fearing Laric more than whoever had done this. Laric, who teetered at the precipice of sanity on a good day.

Laric's family were supporters of science, donating their dead to the anatomists prior to burning of the remains, but Laric couldn't stand the thought of their cold scalpels penetrating that perfect skin which he had known so intimately. "Not this one," he said quietly, his voice smoldering. The physician nodded, and without a word, turned and was escorted from the room by the guards.

The letter was cast into the ashes of the room's marble-bordered hearth, the embers beneath igniting the parchment.

Art Credit: Commissioned by Yours Truly, brought to life by JHUffizi

 

[Laric]

VISCOUNTY | THRENODYN (WIP)

Threnodyn is large for a viscounty, consisting of five major areas: Pantheros, Lamenta, Luminos, Old Threnodyn and Torment. The ocean, the Radiance, the Mheara Mountains, and the Emberlights form its borders.

(Temporary Image Placeholder - Created by Murderess using the Devil's Artist)​

Before any known written records, the horned goddess, Pantheros, was carved from the cliffs, and upon her shoulders, a castle erected. This castle has gone by many names and has known many inhabitants, now it is a curious landmark, home only to mice and ghosts. The rocks, a soft storm gray in color, bear thin striations of a pearlescent mineral that spiderweb like veins through the stone. It is believed that many of the ruins were salvaged for these beautiful stones.

At the paws of the goddess far below, a seaport of the same name arose over many centuries, although the origin being the namesake goddess, long forgotten. The seaport of Pantheros was built, destroyed, and rebuilt, many times over. Today, the carving and the castle remain, although the latter is no longer inhabited, many sections crumbling, and the former is weathered and broken.

Pantheros, the seaport, however, thrives, the bustling hub of all trade in Threnodyn, its current incarnation considered a delight for the senses. Higher-end merchants and vendors are attracted by the relative safety for which the seaport is known, and the seaport is now home to some of the most skilled artisans outside of North Ilica's cities proper.

Most of the buildings are constructed from stone, although a few colorfully painted wooden houses with masterfully crafted gingerbread trim are lovingly maintained by their stewards. Slate roofs are found in a variety of greys, purples and teals, and the vendor stalls boast a rainbow of brightly colored canopies. The cobblestone streets are wide and airy, the air fresh and fragrant.

Beneath the Bay of Cats lies the sunken city of Artaxias.

(Temporary Image Placeholder - Created by Murderess using the Devil's Artist)​

Lamenta is a vast expanse of gently rolling fields, dotted with farms. At its heart is the village, and the Keep that protects it. Lamenta produces the sheep whose wool, hides, and meat Threnodyn is best known for. They also have vineyards and orchards, from which they ferment a variety of wines and ciders. Site of a former plague pit, from the Second Age, now long forgotten except in vague passages in dusty old books.

(Temporary Image Placeholder - Created by Murderess using the Devil's Artist)​

Luminos is a village within the heart of the Emberlights, the enigmatic forest that forms one of Threnodyn's borders. This forest is home to a small population of piebald stag. Both village and forest get their names from lanterns hung along the roads, bioluminescent polypores that grow on the trees, and from ancient statues of animal-headed beings that are carved from black stone with thin bioluminescent striations. The statues are so worn that it is sometimes hard to discern the intended shape; sometimes an arm is broken off, or only the legs remain. These statues have suffered the same pillaging as other relics in the area. The architecture of Luminos is similar to Pantheros. You will see and hear strange things in the Emberlights at night, but it is truly a safe place, only what its mysteries could conjure within the wrong mind is truly dangerous.

It is speculated that the Radiance is a manmade river, although its existence has spanned so many years that it is now indistinguishable from natural rivers, having carved its mark through the land. The Radiance constitutes another of Threnodyn's borders. At the approximate halfway point, the Radiance verges sharply into a crescent shape, this land is Threnodyn proper and wherein was erected a modern-day castle more like a mansion, where the Delirien family reside.

The Radiance originates at the foot of the Mheara Mountains, and empties into the sea. At its origin, the very mountain is carved into the body of a skull-headed tiger, though difficult to discern after so many centuries and overgrown by plant life. Small springs bubble up from the earth, forming the tiger's stripes, which converge at a pool between its front paws, and from this pool the Radiance flows. A terrifying yet beautiful sight for the uninitiated.

Tormet was the territory originally held by Laird. It is now wholly abandoned except by commonfolk who use its land for foraging and grazing their livestock.

 

[Laric]

Content Warning: Gratuitous violence & fornication

Fenestra II

Laric had never been the sort to frequent the brothels, because he didn’t need to. This meant he could move about them now with some anonymity, recognized not for Who he was, but for What he was: a pretty lordling with coin to spare.

Lustrous golden hair fell past the nipples, the last few inches of the locks framing his face coiled softly into big, loose ringlets. Some of the courtesans put in quite a bit of effort to achieve the look, and Laric had simply fallen out of bed that way. A hard day of riding? No problem. Laric rocked the wind-tousled look. Just killed a man? Fret not, he could make disheveled seem alluring without trying.

In the brothels, he drew only the gaze of those who wanted his coin or his cock, and then was promptly forgotten. Here, few people knew the name Laric Delirien. It helped, too, that the courtesans prided themselves on their discretion in the way that blacksmiths prized the strength of their steel and potters the symmetry of their vases. Today he used these to his advantage.

He recognized the copper haired twins, one male and one female, from their description in the burnt letters. Young certainly, too young to comply with the laws of decency perhaps, but with the sort of faces where precise age was impossible to ascertain. They got off the man’s lap when Laric, robed, walked through the door, doing well to hide the confusion from their faces. They had been anticipating something today, but Laric was not it.

At first, the man objected to the sudden and unexpected interruption, but then Laric dropped the robe, revealing not a single thread of clothing beneath. A risk, not knowing the man's tastes. But the man leaned forward with interest, and a slow appraising look which swept from Laric's face to his feet and back up to about halfway, was followed by a voracious smile. The man’s hand fell to stroke the appendage that strained against the fabric of the pants, in tandem with his gaze that remained somewhere below Laric's waist but above the knees.

The bait had been taken.

Laric approached, climbing onto the lap formerly inhabited by the copper haired twins.

Laric’s fingers wound around the man’s throat, fingertips exploring the pulse in the neck, then sinking to the chest, pushing the man back against the chair with an obvious self-control that clearly relayed his restrained strength. Fingernails lightly traced the journey from jaw to chest, eliciting a little moan from the man. The man stopped stroking himself, now moving his hands to Laric’s hips, as Laric pressed his mouth to the man’s mouth, his lips conveying a hunger for the flesh that he did not truly feel. It was all an act. Albeit a convincing one. Practiced so many times before on men and women alike.

The copper haired ones had moved to flank the chair, staring straight ahead, faces blank and hands folded in front of themselves, like the masked statues guarding mausoleums, emotionless. Laric had run his fingers through the man’s hair and taken a firm hold as he sowed a trail of kisses from lips to neck to chest and back up to the lips. What started as slow, sensual, gentle, had become fervent, impassioned, forceful. Then, suddenly, he bit down on the man’s lower lip, sinking his teeth into the thin tissue, canines piercing the whole way through. The man let out a strangled yelp, which crescendoed into shrieks as Laric violently dismounted, ripping the man’s lower lip entirely from his face.

The man clawed stupidly at his now exposed teeth and gums, a severed vessel spurting a tiny red geyser in unison with the man's frightened heartbeat, until the copper haired male handed Laric a knife, with which Laric split the man’s belly open, one long horizontal cut, which the man immediately grabbed at his stomach, fearing the bulging swell of intestines which threatened to spill out. The screams, although muffled by the continued oozing of blood, were still coming. “Shh, none of that!” Laric snarled, clamping a hand over the man’s mutilated mouth. With the other hand, he pulled the head way back by its hair, and the two copper headed ones each scooped out an eye, which they deposited in Laric's palm.

The man’s screams faded to gurgles, and Laric released him. He slumped forward in the chair, still holding his belly. Laric wiped the dagger clean on the man’s hair, and handed it hilt first to the copper haired female. “Your freedom has already been paid for. Take my horse. There are enough provisions in the saddlebags to get you started in a new life. Might I suggest riding as far from here as you can get, and cut your hair and change your clothes, as they will be looking for you.” The girl took the knife and the two did as they were instructed. It was not lost on Laric that he had truly done the pair no favors. Victims though they were, how lost were they beyond the shores of redemption to aide him in the artistry of such suffering?

The man had begun whimpering, and Laric hurled abusive, taunting words at him, the gist of which were he should shut up before Laric carved out his tongue as well. The copper haired ones had gone, and now Laric was alone with the man, who had fallen silent, the body going cold but not yet dead. Laric knelt, pushed the man's knees apart, and disembodied the now flaccid appendage nestled between the legs.

Two of three deviants named in the letters had now been erased.

One to go.

 

[Laric]

The Bloodline (WIP)

One might be surprised to discover that there is no feline in the coat of arms belonging to the modern stewards of Pantheros. Instead, a unicorn and a swan are locked in eternal battle.

The motto: "Great storms announce themselves with a simple breeze." *

There were many powerful women in Laric's bloodline. *

Laric was named after his maternal grandmother. Perhaps an odd choice, considering Lyric Harbringer was believed to be a common born Devahni and ultimately burned at the stake for her insanity. The history books got a lot of things wrong about that one. Neither common nor insane; the last descendant of a long-forgotten house whose holdings lay flooded far beneath the Bay of Cats, and an extremely precocious and talented weaver.

Laric's mother, true to trope, was a woman known for her kindness, intelligence, and beauty. She never allowed Laric to train in shroudweaving, fearing a fate similar to her mother's.

His paternal grandmother, Vivien, descended from the families who had been rulers of Threnodyn, specifically Lamenta (Threnaults) and Luminos (Wilhelms), since time immemorial. It is said that she ultimately submit to Laird to spare her people and their lands from his army and his wrath.

The Wilhelms were believed to have been skilled builders and stone sculptors who erected many of the structures standing throughout Threnodyn, their magic and their blood infused within the stones. They were as well known for their stone magic as they were for their architecture. Maharet was the last of her line as well.

Levan and Maharet had refused the marriage between their daughter and the much-feared Laird Delirien, so Laird had conquered their lands and taken their daughter by force, although the pair eventually reigned as equals, leading to the creation of a new sigil. He spared Vivien's brother, Threnodyn's true heir by blood, possibly a grave mistake, and forbade him from marrying another noble in an attempt to end the bloodline.

The son of Laird and Vivien, Andreas, would become a noble and beloved leader after the early passing of his father.

Pantheros would be added to Threnodyn last, a sort of wedding gift from the Leoncours, another old house waning in power and prestige. It was said that Stamen had more beauty than brains, and in the far distant future as the truth about his wife would surface, some would come to believe that Lyric used him to regain her ancestral home.

Marius was the last true powerful Leoncour, a valiant and respected warrior who was favored by Altalusia's Crowned Sovereign. Not much is written about his wife, Avarine, although it is said their union was one of true love, the stuff of fairytales.

Abraxas and Zellia were said to be ambitious and bloodthirsty, although fair in their severe justice. Zellia was the last of her line as well, and she another talented weaver.

Laird's prowess and success had come from a deal struck with a shroudfiend. The fee was use of each firstborn in the bloodline until the next replacement came of age, and all the energy it could consume from the shroudstone in Tormet. When his wife fell pregnant, his own mother, Zellia, and his wife's mother, Maharet, conspired against him to protect the unborn child. Powerful weavers though they were, their magic alone could not protect the child, and they sought the help of the young Devahni prodigy, Lyric. Together, the three weavers bound and trapped the shroudfiend, drawing all the magic from the shroudstone in Tormet and spreading it throughout the structures and ruins of Threnodyn.

They successfully saved Andreas from the shroudfiend's curse. In doing so, Laird lost his power. He would wither away over the next decade and die. All three weavers lost their lives when casting the spell, and full knowledge of what transpired was lost with them. The protective ability of the spell would weaken with each generation, and any disruption to or destruction of the ruins within which the magic was imbibed meant the binds on the shroudfiend weakened too, and that magic returned to the drained shroudstone in Tormet, which enabled the shroudfiend to affect the youngest firstborn (Laric).

 

[Laric]

Fenestra III

Laric wasn’t usually so rough with his animals. There was no need to be, especially when one considered how expertly this one had been trained. But as the domestic horse knew so intimately, human hands are the extension of their soul. Rarely was cruelty for the sake of cruelty or even the result of innate wickedness, more commonly it was the consequence of some powerful emotion: fear, anger, anxiety, sadness, ignorance, even a sort of misdirected concern as in the case of the parent who strikes the child for climbing too high up the tree.

The long, curled shanks extending from the bit on either side of the horse’s mouth, where leather reins formed the connection between man and beast, were not intended for communicating a request for lateral movement. Rather, the reins themselves were supposed to be laid across the animal’s neck in tandem with the rider’s leg on the animal’s side. True engagement of the shanks was reserved for stopping when seat alone did not suffice.

But Laric had an almost brutal grip on the rein, and the animal gaped its mouth in protest, shaking its head. Unnecessary. The animal wrung its tail and attempted to obey the confusing commands of the master, but it conveyed its displeasure with a kick that could have shattered bone. Ancient writers had a word for it: praus. Praus had eventually reincarnated into the word meek, which is truly ironic, since the original definition was meant to portray the powerful stallion who willingly submits, and seemed the very opposite of weakness. Laric was such a fan of the word praus, that he had once stood in a tavern for six straight hours, leaning against the polished oak counter, ardently pitching its use as new slang for ‘bottoming’ to anyone who would listen. His fellow bar patrons did not, however, share his enthusiasm for wordplay.

The cage that was Laric’s skull finally released his sentience and allowed it to again inhabit the rest of his body. He pulled the hood of his cloak over his head to obscure his face and relaxed his grip on the reins. The horse dropped its head gratefully, eyes softening. They had reached their destination. He spun the animal in the street with a bit of flourish, horseshoes igniting small sparks as they struck the cobblestones, which extinguished immediately, so that they faced a three-story building. The front was decorated by two balconies – one directly above the other - framed with lacey, painted balusters, spandrels, and post- and cornice-brackets. Higher up were intricate, finely crafted wooden friezes, and scroll-sawn vergeboards ornamenting the gables and eaves.

There was no mistaking that someone of wealth lived here. New wealth, ill-gotten wealth, Laric knew.. The pair stood motionless in their spot before the house, traffic flowing around them as water flows around debris in a river. One by one, each window darkened, until only one lighted room remained in the house.

On the street, a short, bent figure approached, the thoracic vertebrae curving forward beneath the weight of many years subjected to earth’s gravity, this figure had not been short once.

The gruff voice of a man: “Be gone, devil.”

Laric ignored the command. The man knew who Laric was. Here they all did. But the stooped man was not one of the bleating sheep - too consumed by their miserable lives to question the status quo or the idiocrasy of a ruling class - who allowed Laric’s status to absolve him of all misdoings.

"Would you defend the man in this house?" Laric finally asked the bent one in that melodic accent of his which sounded the way gothic script looks. The old man shook his head; lantern boldly held aloft by a hand knotted with arthritis. "Neigh, m'lord. But two wrongs do not make a right, as wiser men say. Be gone from here. Lest your soul be soiled further. If it's not irredeemable already," the old man spat on the ground at the horse's feet and continued to stare Laric boldly in the eye, his own blue eyes glassy and faded, probably they had been beautiful once.

Laric smirked, impressed by the mettle. "As you wish," he said quietly, and turned the horse away.

 

[Laric]

Animal Companions
​

Commissioned by yours truly, brought to life by halloweendonkey​

Commissioned by yours truly, brought to life by Rin-ki​

Commissioned by yours truly, brought to life by halloweendonkey​

Brutalis (Bru) is Laric's warhorse; an unusual red roan with primitive pseudo-dun markings consisting of dorsal stripe and leg barring. Her eyes are an equally unusual shade of amber. Although at a glance she may be mistaken for a stallion, you probably have figured out that she is indeed a mare. Although unwarranted, she has a loyalty for Laric that goes beyond her training.

Shadow of the Colossus, Artist Unknown​

Agro is a more usual example of the horses bred in Threnodyn.