"Em-pire?" Loque echo, tilting their head at the name before the slow setting of cold began to seep into their scaly hide. At once their tail wrap about themselves and they hug it tight to their chest, tucking their nose against it to shield from the sudden biting cold. What was this place? All white, but not all stone? It was not ash that drift from above, then what? The thin, ragged pants and shirt that hung loose from that tanned hide was scarcely made for such environment. "Th-this-s-s is-s...." a pause, glaring down their own snout as the cold began to take into reality for the otherwise tropical native. "s-s-NT! Q-Quacia.... N-nowhere n-n-n...." With a soft grunt they surrender any attempt to speak, listening to the others and trying not to shake their own claws off as the whitewashed world began to nip at bare feet.
Loque was far from the swamps of home, with desperate want to shout, to call out the master's name in futile hope he would hear and come charging through with the face of the great mammoth creature, or ferocious bear he had worn once before. Yet even if they were to lift their snout to the air and at last pry their maw open, no sound would come forth, hitching in their throat to the bitter sting of this strange dry chill. Curiously they tilt their head, looking down to clawed toes-- damp yet no water was to be seen, there was not the squish of saturated ground but the crunch of this horrible biting... fluff! Ice? Snowing? Were these the names of such things, as spoken by the student that had remained in company from the start of such madness?
Near as stark to the winter scene as their own orange flesh that single emerald eye snap up to the others as Wald shift the smaller to his back. Capitol of... knowledge? The thought of returning home, to a place where the most dangerous thing was the man the ithecal served brought a knot of sickness to their gut, a longing and lost feeling that only tightened with the cold. Still... Loque had made an oath within the manor; I follow you. Even if Sybil did not own the paper that binds Loque, they were still in need of care, and even as Wald spoke the lizard turn their eyes downward in respect, even turning their head enough to keep the nasty scar and blind eye from sight. A short nod to the apology, though it was unnecessary, if the two of them were willing to keep the lizard in company, then company they shall keep. A gulp, a swollen tangle within the throat as Wald turn not to the side or away, but to the very mountains ahead. Climbing was not a foreign concept to the ithecal, but the chill, the winter wind, the unforgiving frost-- those were all completely alien to them, even making them long for the softer chill of the stone floor where they once slept within the slave keeper's home...
