The interrogation begins before she arrives, coniveniently, gliding forth through the underbrush as her child audibly regects the concept of the Dark Mistress's rule to a stranger; placing a bitter taste within her mouth as her temper flickers with the threat of white-hot rage. However, the questionaire is over before it begins; insults are thrown and the stranger retreats, and the wraith emerges. "Well done," She speaks without looking to her child, optics trained on the retreating figure of the regected subject. Perhaps the obsidian child had been too opposing, ridiculing the other to a point where their worth could not have been shown. "But not good enough," It is her own spiteful emotions that clouds the girl's logical thoughts. Any wolf of any standing would have been able to tell that Astrid did not carry the scent of a leader; it was her own words that became the catalyst for Merrigan's opossition. To truly be someone who's very presence made other's quake in uncertianty, to be someone who walked with an air of superiority that others could not mistake, that someone had to have a head on their shoulders. Astrid lacked in the finess of supermacy and thus was looked upon like the child she is. 


But those who knew her well enough, knew that Nemesis always had critisim on her mind as well as venegence within her consious, something that none were relieved from. "Insulting those who Mephala has brought to our borders is childish, no matter how cunning you think it makes you seem," Her voice is void of emotion, truly detached as she speaks to the least impressionable of her offspring. Perhaps her words were far to harsh to conspire between mother and daughter, however, it was wholly apparent that Astrid had never and would never feel a string of emotion for the one who birthed her. If it was the girl's wish that Nemesis never hold a maternal instinct over her, Nemesis had little problem in making that so. In the place of what could have been, she speaks with a distaste reserved only for those whom she held zero responsibility for, severing what remained of a broken bond that was destined not to be; just the way the self-proclaimed Goddess of Night liked to pretend it was.

The wraith has learned to deflect the hate Astrid shows to her, a hate born out of misinterpretation, and she finds that she cannot bring herself to care. Instead, she scoffs, turning in her own time as Astrid moves to eave her presence. But she is still the Dark Mistress, and formost, the girl's superior. Astrid did not need to love her, but respect would not waver if the girl cared to continue living within the dark forest at all. "You are a child hiding behind the false pretence that you have any authority in this woods, you have no idea what you're doing," Her curt reply comes out with more amusement than intended, for it is the concept that the child thinks revolting against her to cozy up with Damien will get her anywhere. It is the fact Astrid feels she needs to consort herself with the only one within the woods to match the Dark Mistress's rage to become only his Queen, that brings Nemesis such embarassment. At least the wraith had made her way to the ultimate top without using her sexuality to do it, no matter how short lived her reign would be. Astrid woud forever be latching on to other's power because she did not have the ability to get it herself, and it was the driving reason that Nemesis felt such little incilination to teach an unwilling heir. She would concern herself with the children who had the charisma to earn their own justification within a pack that was so highly competitive, not waste her time with the insolent ideals of a girl too stuck inside her own fantasies to grasp her own goals.

Astrid speaks with a simmering fury that Nemesis knows all to well, a trait that will undoubtely be prominemt in generations to come; Astrid was no acception. "You speak of my illusions but there you go again, spitting out your childish fortells of what you think you know," Her words came with a sharp tsk tsk of a nod, but the vivid movements were riddled with something dark, something that assured havok that was not to be toyed with. Her gaze as sharp as knives befalls upon the girl, staring at her with an unparalled intensity and disgust; a hair-raising feature the dark woman had come to coin as the early signs of bloodlust. "And I suppose your clear view is becoming Damien's whore while you pick around the fantasies of his power," It was an insult to everything Nemesis had hoped she would become, and disgraced everything she had hoped to give. Little did the obsidian girl know, the catalyst of Damien's bond with her was something other than love: a deal. Nemesis had little problem in making the case known, if Astrid dared to push her to that level; revealing that all that Damien would ever feel for her was not born out of passion but a contract devided and brokered by the Dark Mistress herself. Astrid's one true love, devised and culled by the ever-impending mother she would never be able to shake free; it was a fact that brought her more satisfaction than it should have but satisfaction worthy for the semi-barbaric title she was associated with. The girl would learn, no matter how many bridges Nemesis needed to break in order to bring some humility to the mistake she made.

There was a flicker of hesitation in her voice, one that Nemesis had caught. Doubt. Doubt that what she says is real, doubt that she would ever become anything than what her sexuality had to offer. Nemesis seethes in the back of her mind, her canines grinding together as each self-degrading word slips from the girl's mouth. "Poor Astrid, you really have no idea," Her tone verges upon mockery, but she is retrained, something at the back of her mind reminds her that, that is her child. Shaking her head, she casts her eyes to the clouds, debating what could be said and what would be the outcome. It would only take a few short words to unravvel what little hope the wayward girl had for her future, to crummble and reform what she was into something that Nemesis would cease to recognise. It was the idea that her one true love was born not out of passion but of a souless plan, devised by the wicked bitch herself.

And Nemesis would not even need to convince her.

Once the seed was planted in Astrid's mind, the dangerous whisper of a flickering idea that what little happiness she had left was born out of an emotionless contract, it would grow. It would fester and mould into something so catatonic that even the girl herself would not be able to control it. It would spread to the deepest reaches of her consciousness, infiltrating a doubt that would always stay with her. The final gift from mother to daughter. It was raw cruelty at its finest; Nemesis balanced of the precipice of right and wrong, the only time in her life she could say she had. Instead, she gazed at the retreating form of her child with a fervor as burning as he severity of the sun, daring, ebbing the girl on to give it all she had. To push her beyond what she was able to controll. Maternal instinct would not hold her back this time, and she doubted she would try. 

The girl took her leave, as did the wraith, shriking back into the shadows from which she came. And as each step took her farther away from the girl, she reveled in what she had caused, and what she had not. Perhaps it was too early to tell, perhaps Astrid was too far gone to truly mould into what could have been. Whatever the verdict, Nemesis was no longer interested in making amends with a child so hateful and with so little reason, not to mention the betrayal Astrid had instigated in the first place. At least, this time, she was able to say she had not been the one to bring it all down. She had carried, birthed, and held the girl close, promising that as the only survivng daughter she had, she would give her the world. But betrayal and false accusation did not sit well with the instinctively vengeful woman. Not even her forgotten love for her only breathing daughter could save the very last string tethering the two together. That being, the secret she held of the origins of the only thing that made Astrid happy. She could cut it with ease and move on the next day, for her wrath was safe from none. It would have not been saved from Atshen when he had laid a claw upon his sister; Nemesis had been willing to do it for her daughter. And while deep down, she knew she could never truly shake the instinctive love she felt for the girl, that girl was and never would be her daughter.