It smells like someone left their dinner to rot, doesn't it?

Hissing. Horrible, horrible hissing. It follows the hunter like the sleet and the shadows. He hides from the weather under nature's heavy cloak but the sounds of darker, more sinister beasts are still there. They whisper into his ears, they are naughty, wheedling things.

Colt, is that you, colt? The voices snort and snuffle; Knox sees faint flashes of them in the dark, feels them behind his eyes as if they are scratching and clawing. They are a bad rash, a venereal disease that's traveled far north and turned the features of even the beautiful into sour, disgusting things.

Though he is the hunter, he does not appear as himself. He tosses his head to the side, shaking it first left then right, and Huric's beautiful silken mane is what follows with every violent thrash. And the smell, the smell....
 
He eats meat no more, she says quietly, wantonly. With a pained cry the hunter looks for her, pink eyes wide with the mad desire that is loneliness.

Manhattan? he thinks, the words seeking out a bond no longer tethered, the emotion left hanging on the end of a shredded thread. He is sad and desperate, his rose coat still shivering and wet from the sleet he has escaped from. Manhattan... please... empty words, spoken as he hopes for broken promises to mend themselves. Come back, he begs, coughing as the stench of a rotting corpse (where is it? Why can't he find it, with a nose so attuned to prey and the hunt? Is it under his very hooves, sinking into decomposition beneath the leaf litter and frost? Why can't he find it, it should be here, it should be between his lips, cradled around his similarly rotting heart...) tickles the back of his throat.

Hmmm... has he not considered ghosts? They have followed him his whole life, should he not be looking for them now? a few imps speak in unison, their voices growing louder despite the distance between here and the old country, despite the haunted miles between that ruined castle and the hunter who walks alone now.

He is the ghost, Huric responds with a morose sort of duty in his tone. The mind of the body, the mind of the dead now falsely risen, speaks louder than all others. In the distance, over the faint sound of the cold rain, Knox hears a crack in the woods. Is it thunder or the shattering of bones? A ghost or an opponent, an enemy, or... her?

He sees a shape, too large to be the one he wishes for, and a snarling neigh claws itself out from his throat. "WHO DARES ENTER THIS GRAVE?" The question rings out in the dark like an accusation as the hunter's eyes strain for clearer vision and his ears pin back with disgust. "FIGHT ME OR BE GONE, SHADE!"

""