Paradiso's cloven hooves awkwardly traverse ruined stone stairs, the mare doing her best to remain as careful as possible as she tries to ascend to the top of the spire. Her guide, Fetch, had so easily trotted up ahead, as though they had been walking on the most even of grounds. They had made it look so easy... could there ever be a point where she herself was capable of running through places like this with such practiced ease?

With a lot more effort on her end, Paradiso eventually reached the top. What greeted her, frankly, left her stunned right at the very end of the stairs.

For the first time, the blue Courser could see the scope of the Moor's tragedy. The wreckage spans as far as the eye can see, the mare left utterly astounded by just how endless it seemed to be. Something about it shook her to her very core- perhaps it was because these castles and parapets felt so close to home, a home she constantly worried would be doomed to such a horrific state. Would this be the fate of the kingdom that had nurtured her? Left eventually to be eroded by time, nothing remaining but the shattered vistages of what had been and the long-dead remains of those who had lived there?

She shuddered. Paradiso remains paused at the top of the stairs, though finally notices Fetch. Her companion was stood a distance away from her, surverying the damage on their own. They didn't seem as phased as she had been. That... was another trait of their she admired. How one could seem so stoic, so at ease in the face of such a mortal reminder.

Hesitantly, the mare breaks the silence.

"Do... do you think all empires crumble in time?"

Fetch regards her with that signature uncanny stare, turning that eerie gaze that she'd become so familiar with. The Courser speaks, their words as haunting as their eyes.

"All things do." A measured pause. "That is the nature of life. Impermenance."

Paradiso withers. That was far from the answer she had been hoping for, longing for some semblance of comfort. But, she knew still that those words held truth, a point of view from a source far different than herself. She slowly trots from where she had stayed frozen and moves to Fetch's side, taking a look out at the Moor from where they stood as though trying to interpret their perspective as her own. A literal way of attempting to put herself in someone else's shoes, if even for a moment.

"...I suppose you're right. All things die, eventually. One- one of my tutors, she'd speak about entropy and inevitability. How all things find their end eventually." Admittedly, she isn't sure where she's going with this, realizing pretty swiftly that she's just rambling. But the look Fetch gives her is almost encouraging, inviting her to continue forth. With an awkward swallow, Paradiso relents. "But... I just don't know. It feels in the moment like everything is eternal, that kingdoms stretch ahead to distant futures we can't even fathom. Even a second feels like a lifetime, sometimes."

"You have an interesting view."

Fetch speaks up, their tone even.

"I wonder- what sort of life have you lived, where things seemed so stagnant."

Paradiso snaps to look at them, shock visible on her features. A read that acute, as blunt and simple as it was, still felt like quite the blow to her. She sputters for a good moment before being able to speak clearly again. "I- well- it's- I don't know. I had one large moment of change as a foal, but not that I'm grown I never anticipated things to happen. Especially so... rapidly."

She sounds downtrodden, dejected as she laments. When she set out into the Moors to try and find supplies, she hadn't expected to come face-to-face with a personal, deep reflection. Sure, she'd heard tell that the landscape carried an air of death and finality to it, warnings from other travelers that it might be far more than she'd bargained for. Though to see it all for herself, a strange and distorted mirror so close yet so far to where she had come from... it felt strange. Nigh sickening. Paradiso forces herself to tear her gaze away from the scene before her, instead looking towards the wall. Her eyes widen as she notices something new, beginning to trot towards it.

Fetch looks over to her as she does this, tilting their head slightly. They open their mouth as though to ask, but their question is answered long before they truly felt the need to speak up. The blue Courser they'd been guiding had stopped in front of a painting, old and torn, ravaged by the elements for untold years. They watch as her ears tilt back when she processes exactly what she's looking at, and they pointedly walk towards her as it truly dawns on her.

The portrait depicts some strange creatures, posed together in a work of art that must have surely been quite the craft in its time. There's a strange sense that they must have held some sort of social standing, if not have been outright royal themselves. They're cloaked in outfits that remind her somewhat of the Wizard and the Ranger, clothes made for entities of far different proportions than her own. She can identify one clearly adult figure, and in front of them two smaller, likely child ones.

She felt her heart sink.

This was yet another image that hit startlingly close to home. The three reminded her starkly of two important people in her life, one who had raised her from foalhood and the other she had been raised alongside. She thought back to the man she had wound up calling father, how he took her under his wing after she had lost her own to an event she couldn't quite recall the details of. It had been so long ago, and she had been so young. The King and his young son had become the only family she'd known, yet she'd still chosen to run when faced with choosing one or the other. Part of her still screams at her to return, to go galloping back to a man who had been harsh, yet kind all the same. Just because they didn't see eye-to-eye all the time, didn't mean that she'd had a right to leave.

He had discouraged her from seeking out the Crown Prince when he vanished, sending out his own Knights to try and find the young stallion. She didn't listen, of course. How could she, when in truth she was the last person he had spoken to before his disappearance? How she had told him that he could no longer stand the confinement of the castle, the strictness of their father, and his cruel laws on those who practiced magic? He had vowed to return when the time was right, when he was mature enough to stand on his own and confront the King himself, but she just could not wait for him. She wanted to find him, help him, talk some sense into him and...

Did she want to bring him home?

She wasn't sure anymore.

"I-" She cuts herself off, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. "I don't wish to dwell here any longer. There is clearly nothing of... usable... value up here."

"I am just your guide. We go where you desire."

Paradiso grimaces, but nods solemnly. "If you saw a place that likely has supplies, please take us there."

Fetch, strange as ever, merely begins to lead her away in silence. The blue Courser takes one final look at the ancient painting, before she finally follows.