I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather be a superb meteor,
every atom of me in magnificent glow,
than a sleepy and permanent planet.
– Jack London

Blood-red eyes open into slits.

They stare into the gut of the darkness, where the night met the shadows and they enveloped each other, together cutting off and choking out the feeble light from above that created them. The pitch of the darkness was so black that it seemed to congeal before his very eyes into something corporal; a wall concealing him from the rest of the world. However, an important situation loomed beyond the dark ramparts of his mind; he knows that his presence will not affect the outcome but if it wasn’t too late, he was determined to be there.

As for now, he tarries in a little nook of the Oasis and sees nothing.

No pegasi, no shapes, or even colors, just black – the deep velvety black of the forest and he revels in the feeling of being surrounded by such unbounded, unlimited, unrestrained black that, appears so absolute Cineviam would have believed that it had no end had he been a dreamer. It was his favorite time of day, the dark before the dawn when most of the members of Dragon Throat are bedded down or far off patrolling the boarders and he is left to his own devices. There is a rustle in the palm trees and a familiar sultry bouquet is roused from the wilderness, allied with a gentle north wind. Delicately, as only a lover knows to do it, wind-fingers tousle the stained black hair along the slope of his neck. The night stilled again, leaving a name perched on ashen lips – Lotus.

It is enough to spur the cinder beast into motion.

Languid steps, black leg over black leg carry him through the darkness that was less substantial than Cineviam previously imagined. He is bound for Dragon’s Blood. The ancient tree with the curious red sap he had stopped to admire during the Olympics. It is a good memory, a precursor of triumph, that he hoped would continue to lend him good fortune. As he reached the tree - its branches stretching like white-knuckled hands towards the sky - he sang his warrior cry like the wolf howls its midnight song to the absent moon. It is eerie and haunting and bid Hiroko, Kri, or someone who could do something about his situation, to join him.