The heat of the summer sun descended down on him with a passion that almost transcended the border of normality. It was wickedly bright, shining in his eyes perpetually in glints of yellow-white gold and flashes of blinding paleness, pulling all he had drunk this morning from his body to darken his coat and dampen his muzzle until he looked as if oil had been rubbed into him, and he glittered bright as such a pale buttermilk horse could.

He abhorred the heat, which lay thickly and mustily over Helovia as an ancient, massive duvet would- bulky, smelling of dust and dryness, and scratchy. Each inhale made his massive lungs rattle dryly in complaint, and motes of silt drifted continuously up his muzzle, leaving him to choke and snort like a withered husk of a stallion. A thin line of snot dribbled from his nostrils, glistening wetly as it made it’s way down to his lip. It tasted sour on his tongue, bitter as sea salt.

This heat had far too often driven Ricochet to hole up in the trees where the shade gave him a bit of respite, but not today. Whatever madness that usually overtook his rational thought seized him again, and during the height of noon he made his trek, towards one of the hottest places in Helovia, one of the places he had yet to scour for recruits.

Guns too was suffering from the relentless heat, his paws dragging on the dry, brittle grasses, chest fluttering as he rasped and choked on the dry air, massive pink tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. Each step he took left smears of sweat on the dry ground behind him, little damp pawprints that soon disappeared in the pitiless heat, but he still followed, head low and nose dried up of all moisture, tail near-dragging on the ground, always lagging at Ricochet’s heels.

They were being boiled alive, the Incendiary was beginning to think.

“C’mon Guns,” Ricochet urged his rugged collie on, even though he himself began to slow as well.

As the sun inched towards its zenith, the sky darkened, shifting from crystalline blue to a steely shade of ash as they approached the smouldering cesspit of crimson red and dull charcoal. Maybe the sullen gray that cloaked the sky was simply clouds- or more likely, it was ash picked up by the faint stirrings of a wind. The grass, once green, faded away to be replaced by an unappetizing lining of clay, cracks jagging through it, a spider-web of needle thin scars. Whatever heat may had been alleviated from the somber silver returned in full force as the Incendiary and Guns made their way towards the simmering lines of heat not far along, the only audible sound the hiss of lava and the sucking of mud at their feet.

Ricochet’s mouth twisted scornfully, and he lifted his tail, releasing a steaming pile of dung onto the voracious soil that acted so like mud.

They meandered on, with no more purpose that a duck waddling about searching for food- but his food was not grass today, but the succulent fresh meat of an equine un-besmirched by horns and wings; a meal that was to be denied to him by Nieque.

The thud of wings became perceptible over the ragged heaving of their own blasted breathing, and before the couple appeared a mare glistening like an angel, if not for the feathered appendages. Skyrat. It was unusual to see them. They were rarer now than they used to be, an exotic species of bird- repugnant swine that occasionally flocked about harmlessly (except for being an eyesore.) Once one of such species had voted for him in the triumvirate when he had lived in the Foothills; but that made no difference to his opinionated view of them that had been beaten into him through the tireless workings of his father.

But he had learned, through lessons always hard and never easy, sometimes he should let them pick the fights, not the other way around. In any case, even he was not fool enough to think he could take on some pigeon-headed mare (even if she was only a mare and only a pegasus) when he was tired as he was, his mind beginning to crumble at the edges.

“Hey, YOU!” Ricochet shouts, his voice hard as his dick was when he first met Arya. Fucking skyrats. At least unicorns could fight decently; but all these bird-brains did were fly around and act like whores- or they bossed everyone around, thinking they were better than those grounded because of fucking wings. With a despairing shake of his burnt face, Ricochet picks up a lumbering jog, Guns swiftening beside him. The two of them make a handsome sight… until you begin to pick out the scars on buttermilk boy’s coat and the endless anger in his teal eyes.

Clay squelches beneath his hooves as he halts, bristling at the very sight of her. In a world where there were too many to defeat, he should try to work with others... until the time came when he could kill. But how was he supposed to work with fucking birdbrains?

Ricochet grunts, tail lashing once-twice, and settles with a familiar scowl. “Where are we?” He demands, in a manner bordering on aggressive.