A distant but penetrating light slowly begins to lift the utter darkness of the passage. Soft outlines of the stone walls around him begin to materialize, giving the old stallion clear reference points to straighten his path and encourage his step, but still he moves with caution, ears and eyes swiveling, his muscles taut with the fear of unknown dangers. His nostrils flare with each muted echo that reaches out from the other tunnels, too muffled to make out details, but clearly markers of intense activity. He shivers, blinking away imaginative horrors. All he wants at this point is to get back outside where his natural speed and proclivity to nope-the-fuck-out might save him from harm. Still trailing halfway down his bonded’s face, tongue flicking wildly as ever, Strom’s mental hum of disappointment weakly answers.

Here, in the dark and the quiet, he feels useful, able for once, his thermal and scent mapping replacing the old stallion’s weakened senses and temporary lack of vision. Outside he’s little more than parasitic. Limbless, voiceless, and very nearly expressionless to an observer, he might as well be another article of clothing, albeit a talking one.

"You’d make a fine pair of boots.” His bonded teases, pressing an image of snake-skin cannon guards through their shared consciousness - black of course, and with an auburn stripe down their fronts. ‘So thin. Make cape.’ The python heckles back, imposing his own image across their bond, a paper thin caricature of the old stallion, all but his greying face disappearing when he turns forward, drawing an amused huff of breath from the real one. "But who would harass me so cleverly without you?” He poses, affection softening the words.

The pair round a corner then, entering a chamber filled with water. Immediately the stallion feels uneasy, eyeing the broken ledges, the makeshift bridge, and the obvious bait at the center of the pool. He hovers at the edge of the lake, sniffing it’s black surface and snorting, ripples expanding away from the tip of his beard where it dips into the water. It’s impossible to tell how deep it is, and more worryingly, impossible to see anything through the murky depths, but from the other side of the chamber shines the light of day, an exit at last.

Swallowing his apprehension, the old stallion steps onto the fallen stalactite, slowly inching forward until all four feet are on the slab, his ears pricked sharply forward for any noise or shift of balance that might hint at the thing crumbling. For a moment he’s frozen there, and to his relief, nothing happens. The stone room remains quiet and unchanged. With a sigh of released tension, the old black picks his way forward and across, snatching the glowing pebble from it’s pedestal as he passes and tucking it into his scarf as he goes, his eyes hungry for the opening beyond it – for freedom – vowing to examine the newly acquired trinket and what it’s magic entails later.


"Talk."
OOC // Thank you!

Albrecht

If all is fair in love and war, I can't do this anymore