How had he got himself into this mess?
It was of course a rhetorical question; he knew very well how he had got into this mess. Lucius turned from his inspection of the fruits to regard the corpse. She wasn't exactly fresh, probably five suns old; he was fairly confident of that estimate, as he had first felt the call five suns ago. He had come as swiftly as he was able, but he had been a fairly long way from Shrilal and there was only so fast he could travel.
Snorting the smell of decay out of his nostrils, Lucius paced around the dead mare. She had been a bright, brave little thing, barely standing seventeen hands but unafraid of anything in the whole world. A dare doer, a rebel. He would probably have got to rather like her had he known her for more than one day, but as it was he could only feel a little regret at her passing.
She had been quite thin at the time of her death, but not as thin as a lone mare would have been. She had had help then, a good friend in the world. Clearly she had also had enemies. Hunger had not killed her, nor sickness; she had been murdered. Many injuries marked her body, some he could clearly identify as having come from hooves and teeth but a few wounds were more ambiguous and could have been either. He could easily tell, however, that several individuals of differing size had been involved in her murder.
Most peculiar. His natural curiosity lead him to wonder who had killed her, and why. People from her past who had despised her wild ways enough to get rid of her? Maybe a spurned lover with friends willing to assist in exacting revenge. Had she been killed for a recent deed - maybe even for having been seen with a bone-clad monster - or had this come of something that had festered for many seasons?
In either case, it must have been quite easy for the killers. Once they found where the tree was, they would simply have needed to wait for her friend to leave and then moved in. This was assuming of course that said friend had not betrayed her to them or even joined in. Humm. Well, there was no sign of the friend now in either case. Just himself, and a pair of fruits. At least they were nearly fully grown, he would survive without assistance until they hatched. If his estimate was correct, he wouldn't even be weakened too badly; certainly he would be far from his normal state of health but he would be as fit as many of the lazy fools that populated D'ob...
Humm, it was interesting that the fruits had been left alone. Well, not that interesting, but it seemed to indicate that she had not been killed because of him. If she had, surely the killers would have rushed to make sure the spawn of evil - Lucius rolled his eyes - were never born. They had no cared about the fruits on way or the other... and that also seemed to indicate that it was not a past lover who had murdered the mare, hate and jealousy would surely have cause him - or indeed her - to destroy them.
Still, Lucius shook himself, he would have plenty of time to ponder all of this more later. For now, he had a body to dispose of; the last thing any foal needed was to hatch to the site of its decomposing dam. Moving her away from here would be an unpleasant task, but it was necessary. Sighing to himself, Lucius clopped closer to the corpse and looked down at it. Humm. He never had asked her name. A shame really, but there was nothing to be done about it now.
As he drew still closer, the smell grew ever more overpowering and he was actually going to have to touch the rotting thing. A small part at the back of Lucius' mind that was not as focused and logical as the rest of him said something along the lines of 'ew'. The bone-clad stallion snorted at himself and ignored the silly little voice. What had to be done had to be done, and if he was fortunate it wouldn't even be too terrible a task. Suppressing the urge to gag, he grasped a mouthful of the mare's mane and began to back away from the growing tree.
Fortunately for him, the hair was still well attached to its roots and didn't just come free in his mouth; slowly but surely the body began to move. The smell was so strong, so pervasive that he felt sure he would be smelling it for seasons to come. He didn't really mind the rest of it, he could be objective even about the plethora of wriggling things that feasted on the dead flesh, but that smell... The muscled stallion stopped, spat out his mouthful of hair and raised his head to take a few cleaner breaths. He had not been much in contact with significantly decayed corpses before, but it was clear to him that the air around them was not only unpleasant to smell, it was hard to breathe...
Oh good.
The body was leaving a trail of... stuff.
It was not like him to think a word like 'stuff' but he was tired, and revolted by the smell surrounding him. He hoped the substance had been washed away by the time the fruits hatched. He would of course explain their mother's fate to them when they asked, but he didn't want them exposed to reality quite so harshly so very early on.
Sighing out a heavy breath, Lucius lowered his head and grasped the dead mare's mane again. He had a long way to go with this body yet, not that he really knew where he was taking it other than 'away from the tree'. Perhaps a convenient gully would present itself; unlikely given the nature of the land around Shrilal but he would find somewhere to leave the corpse eventually. He just hoped nobody saw him. What a sight they would take in: a stallion covered in bones dragging the rotting body of some poor mare. Clearly he had killed her, then done unspeakable things to her, and was now taking her somewhere private to eat her remains or use them in a dark ritual of some kind. Rolling his eyes again, Lucius dragged the body onward. It was going to be a very long day.
