It smells of death.

The reek is palpable in the goliath's nostrils, a heady stench of decay and demise. He smells soil, disturbed loam and overturned maggots, rotting wood and rotting flesh and blood and piss and filth.

Vérzés - his companion today as Vadir reaps the Labyrinth of its prey - twists his wings and angles through the air, sharp crimson eyes hunting for the source of the reek. Volterra bulldozes through the undergrowth behind his dragon, a battering ram of blackened flesh and muscle that carves through thorn thickets and broken twigs as though they aren't even there. His mind reaches out to latch onto Vérzés', shamelessly snatching the dragon's sight to gain an aerial view of the maze-like green forest. What he sees makes his heart soar; Öde!

He's fond of the man, the brother he never had, the distant relative who is just so similar to him that they have a common ground of self-confidence and boundless desire for sex. Volterra rarely gets along with other stallions unless he has to, because men are simply competition for the mares and the glory, meaning the black colossus is honour-bound to try and dominate them. Öde, however, is different. They are kin, they are brothers in arms, and he has never felt the raw need to express any kind of superiority over the older male.

They are friends, or as close as the Indomitable can get to such a relationship.

So with a grin on his face, Volterra alters his path to follow his dragon's instructions. Worryingly, the closer he gets to his cousin the more the stench of death hangs in his nostrils, but Vérzés' visions of the unicorn show him very much alive, albeit staggering slightly. Finally the Basiner is within Volterra's sights, and a great warm bellow of greeting erupts from the leviathan's lips. "Öde, brother! It is good to see you." The familiar figure of Myrrine is nearby and seems to be getting her flirt on with his cousin - Volterra flashes his herdmate an amused elevated eyebrow, and gives Öde a look that says you're well in there, mate - but she is largely background noise as the stallion focuses on his cousin.

His broad grin slips slightly into a frown as, close up, he can see the state his relative is in. He looks like mere flesh hanging across a loose scaffold of bone and sinew, matted with filth and blood and earth as though he's risen like a zombie from his own grave. Vérzés twists in the air and lands with a dull thud on his bonded's massive hindquarters, and he too scrutinises Öde with interest. "He smell like bad prey," remarks the red, and Volterra is inclined to agree. Something wrong has happened to the unicorn, something evil. "What happened to you?"