His limbs snapped up in a steady jog, and though he had traveled vast distances, fatigue did not tug at his hooves or yank at his legs. There was the muffled thud of his hoofbeats on the damp soil, the patter of paws as Guns slunk along at his side, eyes focused ahead, the rasp of great lungs expanding against the confines of Ricochet’s ribcage. Nostrils flared red, teal eyes narrowed in their focus, neck arched; he makes a striking image as he trots through the emptiness of the Thistle Meadow, the sunlight warm on his neck despite the frigid air of autumn.

A cool wind slithered through his mane and sifted the locks of his matted tail, smelling of damp and mold and rot.

The stallion’s pace slows, ears flicking forward, and his step stutters; he was not familiar with the Spectral Marsh, the treacherous mud that sucks at his hooves and tugs at his legs. His audits slant back with uncertainty, his tail stinging across his buttermilk flanks, muzzle wrinkling. It smells of fetid meat and rotting carcasses, and something sings a warning in his ears, a whisper of encroaching darkness. He cannot remember if it was this desolately grim the last time he came here… when he found the hybrid with her outspread wings and glistening horn.

In silence, the stallion picks his way through narrow paths, and every so often a shudder crawls down his spine, as he glimpses pale corpses and bloated faces. Last time, they did not bother him. Today, under the shifting light of the angry sky, their eyes seem to glisten with malice, and the still water seems to ripple with the expansion of their lungs. Shadows turn Ricochet diseased gray, his eyes becoming hollow pits, and his scars are black as sin, and even over the sinister growl of the rumbling storm, the muffled thud of his hooves are loud among the eerie quiet, knocking at the door of whatever evil has come over the land.

The Incendiary flips up his head, shaking his neck, letting his knotted mane settle on his dunskin neck. He tastes electricity in the air, pulsing through his skin, and lightning bolts down from above into the gristly swamp waters.

With a whimper, Guns turns tail and flees, ears flat to skull and eyes wild. Lips part and the buttermilk boy calls for his dog, but his shadow does not return. Coward, the stallion thinks to himself.

Brows knit into sharp scowl, lips form into a line sharp and straight, and Ricochet advances deeper into the marsh on the perilous path. In the stallion’s chest, his heart thuds frantic warning, alive with primal fear; to his undoing, the Incendiary ignores it, alive on reckless courage. There is nothing to fear from the dead, he tells himself. They cannot come alive… but the shades of Isilme did. They wandered and walked and they killed his father, fuck the bastards, but these are just normal corpses, put into the water by long-forgotten battles.
Unwittingly, his ears pin to his skull.