Something about the way the blue water refracted against chiseled crystal reminded him of a full moon. There was no darkness like this - and glittering beams entranced even the goldest of eyes. Vincent found fear in every dark corner of this universe, but a different kind of lingering, impending doom was unique to the Pit. It felt omniscient, yet somehow intangibly rhythmic. Otherwise, tantalizingly horrifying. Vincent's body shuddered from wispy charcoal mane ends to stark feather feet. The glowing eyes lit his face and spat their golden light about like twinkling stars. The nerves grumbled in his gut, twining in the pulse of his thoughts. He could make himself upset about anything, but at this point the fear was genuine - he always thought there would never be a time when fear could outdo itself, but he was certainly proving that wrong.

The beast moved down the corridors where he'd been lingering, awake, for the past three days. His skin felt greased with sweat that was waxy in its layers. Inky coat held salty foam under his neck and between his legs. There was no imagining his smell - salty, at the least. Vincent thought that Archibald, in all of his Dauntless wonders, would be in the Threshold, blade-like hooves ready for the skin of his brother's neck. Somehow, even in the heart of Helovia he was absent - lurking blackly in the shadows like always. Vincent grew a difference, linework over his right eye from his identical twin. The marking would glow in times like this, in simultaneous efforts with the golden eyes. The night sketched this rune into his face and now it blared like the headlights on a train.

The corridors echoed a stalactite's residue. It was a menacing dance that submerged dinner-plate hoofbeats under the raucous waves of sound. Vincent neared the entrance of the cave, out of loss of direction. He followed the waterline of the cavern, careful that he was far away enough from the bank, but close enough to see the glassy surface. It was a wonder that he didn't cause waves to dance by the thunder of his weight. Perhaps ripples trembled in his wake.

Vincent's glowing eyes lit the ground at his feet, merely turning the slate stone yellow. But somehow the light grappled the outline of a smaller horse, creeping into the cavern, in the distance. Vincent halted, totally alarmed, neck flexed, ears nearly brushed a ceiling stalactite. His body shuddered. "Hey," he began, stepping assertively with one feathered hoof. "H-ey, who are you?"

swimming through the ashes