EREBOS

On a flood of juvenile bravado, he wandered through the murky world and crossed into heavenly plains, where even the unholiest of moments conspired together and forget about christened deities; dragged his eyes over to the fallen corpse just nearby, pale, bloodied, tangled with famine, and most certainly dead. Was this what Aithniel and Adelric discussed, beings found, linked, with some otherworldly event, smothered and stifled, clawed and extinguished, barren and soulless? He was lost in the midst of silence, others drifting in and out, wondering and pondering, studying the lifeless form; had he ever seen one before? Death had not yet had an effect on his young mind; he was neither rattled nor deceived, thrown into fits or suffering from paranoia, lacking a fundamental understanding of how one could be there one moment, and gone the next, never to return, never to breathe, never to infuse their lives into others’. He inched ever closer, lowering his maw towards the puddles of blood and the drained moments of ichor, staining glorified, hallowed fields full of crimson (would everything be red if this wasn’t stopped?), staring over the ivory figure, the rise of a horn, a rapier, the loss of a wiry sage, searching and looking for clues. His sharp, keen gaze spotted one moments later, a clipped, ebony feather, as if the old, barren, frail beast had carved one last scythe hack into another’s shoulder, left them hurting and wanton as he fell. The distinction of the black plume left an interesting, intriguing notion: it certainly couldn’t be the King of Spies, Sacre, for he had held a cutlass, just like him, with no wings in sight. It still didn’t rule out the Throat though (and he shifted a little when he spotted a massive Pegasus drumming around the sights, the sounds, the open, aperture of the old man’s grave), for their world must have been full of fliers hastening over dry cliffs and rocky deserts, descendants of dragons and towering fires. Quickly, swiftly, he bent out of sight, tangling into the shadows, running back over hills, insistent on reporting his findings to the rest of his beloved musketeers, longing to take down whatever ill will threatened to plague over them.