shine bright like a diamond; any

[Skeleton Ghoul]

He walks.

He feels like he has been walking for years -- maybe he has been, and his awareness towards the passage of time has simply gone by the wayside. All the titan knows is he is a long way from the place he once called home.

But that is fate, isn't it? A former king, a monarch of yesterday, bested in combat and driven from the home he had once viciously protected. Skeleton Ghoul never should have taken the throne from Gilgamesh, even if it had been offered. He had not done it justice, and in the end, a pair of fractious youngsters had bested the beast and wrestled the monarchy right out of his blood-stained teeth. 

The sound of his march is slow and methodical. The ground has been left soft from recent cold rains; white feathered legs are soaked black as dinnerplate hooves sink to the fetlock in mud that can't possibly hold his weight. Skeleton Ghoul is a whisper of the stallion he'd once been. The winter has been cold and harsh and unfamiliar, and food too scarce. Beneath a thick and bedraggled coat, his ribs flash when he breathes, his hips are sunken and his waist line tucked. 

He is thin, but spring's breath is on the wind. His days of ripping bark off of dormant trees are coming to an end.

A goose honks nearby, flapping its wings on the riverbank ahead. Absently, Skeleton Ghoul wishes he could eat meat -- in his months of travel, he'd seen far more meat-things than plant-things. The eighteen hand behemoth pauses, feet sinking into the muck as he watches the goose, only to note a horse not too far beyond. He smells her now, a small, dark colored thing, grazing on fresh spring shoots. Water is more up Skeleton Ghoul's ally at the moment.

Moving to the river's edge, the black titan plods into it up to his knees, gulping the frigid liquid as fast as he could. Thirst is a powerful motivator, but so is pain; his gut twists, reminding him that patience is the better part of valor. 

He swings his great shaggy head, empty white eyes staring at the mare, and his voice is like shattered glass. "What is this country called?"

SKELETON GHOUL

the black tyton