[PRP] More Than Bargained For [Barraccus, Korev]

[FallenThroughMidnight]

This was not a place he should be.

Silence rang in his ears as he picked his way slowly through the spread of what could only be wasteland. It smelled bad. Not just unpleasant, bad. As if the fumes themselves might be hinting at something evil. He'd already startled himself when a small lump on the ground had turned out to be a rotting bone, partially buried in the crumbling dirt. There was no one else here, no one alive at least. No one would see him turn tail and run. But he would know.

Korev snorted, eying the broken bit of bone as though it might attack him. He was letting his nerves get the best of him. What was there to fear about a bone? It was already dead, all it had left to do was become a part of the earth once more. And it had already been on its way to doing that, buried as it had been. The silence ate at him, and the young stallion cast his eyes about again, looking for something, anything, some sign of life. But the only sign he could see was the bone. And it was only a sign that life had been here, but wasn't anymore.

Well maybe the water was bad to drink. It certainly didn't look or smell like anything he would want to put in his mouth. That would explain why nothing lived here, water was critical to life after all. There wasn't anything scary about bad water except getting sick from drinking it. He was being silly. Foalish. It was the quiet that was getting to him, probably. But it was just a sound, or a lack of sound really. And the bone was just a bone.

He paused a moment, nudging it back into place and pawing some of the dirt over to bury it again. He didn't know what sort of creature it had come from, if he wanted to guess he would have had to clean it enough to tell what sort of bone it had been, but whatever it was he might as well leave it to finish resting in peace. No one was around to see him being dumb and burying a dead thing that couldn't possibly care after all.

Finished, he glanced around again, then snorted at his absurd notion that he was being watched. By who, the bone's owner? Yeah right. This place was nothing to be afraid of. He would not allow himself to be afraid. There was no reason in particular that he needed to cross the area, but he had wandered into it and there was also no real reason in particular to go running back the way he'd come. If it proved too wide to cross without poisoning himself on the water, then he could justify flying back the way he'd come. Until then, there was no reason whatsoever that he should leave. After all, what threat was a little old bone to him?
 

[Faithofthefallen]

Barracus had draped himself lazily across the boulder that camouflaged the side entrance to his home, a series of shallow caves nestled deep within the bowels of a dormant volcano, they were dark and warm and the paths leading down there were so confusing he didn't have to worry as much about his pets escaping every time he let his guard down. Every once in a while they managed to slip past his sleeping form into the warren of interconnected caves and tunnels that honeycombed their way through the dead mountain, but he almost always managed to track them down by the thick scent of fear that permeated the corridors once they fully realized that there was nowhere left to run, that they were trapped in the dark being tracked down by a creature from nightmares who would be more than a little irked by their escape attempts. It was almost more exciting then capturing them in the first place, systematically crushing every hope before he took their lives and freed them from their hellish existence. His cruel and timeless golden orbs swept across the wasteland laid out before him, the withered husks of plants and animals alike that had folded before his might, the very water befouled by the evil of his presence. He took a deep breath, the foul odor of sulfur tickling his sensitive nose, rotting and decayed flesh, old blood, fear sweat. The bouquet of scents was a delight to his senses, but there, something fresh, something new, something that didn't belong here.

His gaze sharpened on a lone figure far below him, slowly meandering his way through the bone garden, he had recently deposited his latest house guest's remains over the side of the cliff and into the bleached jumble of remains that had begun to accumulate on the ground far below his lair. It felt like ages since anyone had dared to travel within his domain, most avoided it based on instinct if not outright knowledge of the creature that had claimed this area as his own.

His cruel laughter reverberated within the rocky corridor, bouncing and reverberating down the side of the mountain, multiplying in pitch and frequency as it spread the fractured sound of his unholy amusement across the land below. His muscles rippled under his silky ocher pelt as he heaved his body off the rock and began quickly descending, his eyes never leaving the traveler as he approached on silent paws.

FallenThroughMidnight

 

[FallenThroughMidnight]

His instincts were telling him to be afraid. To leave. To run, to fly, to do anything to escape this place. But Korev refused them, dismissed them. The fear was silly. Foolish. Only a little foal would hide from an old, sun bleached bone. He was no little foal. He hadn't been a foal in, well, in a long time anyway. He would not go running home because of a little bone, or a rotten smell. He didn't need to go crying to mommy, not that he even knew where she was. Not that he was worried about her, or thinking of her, no, no he didn't need them any more than they needed him. And they needed him like a kick in the teeth if the look in his mother's eyes was anything to go by.

This was an unpleasant place. It was, he was not arguing with his silly feelings on that. But even if it was what his nervous thoughts whispered anxiously, if it was a 'dead place', then so what? What would the dead do? They were gone from this world, no more to trouble the living. They did nothing, whatever drove them far off into wherever the life goes when it is gone. A bone might at most be sad, laying alone and unmourned, but it was not frightening. It was a remnant, a reminder, and there was not a harmful thing it could do besides maybe trip someone clumsy enough to step on it. And that, that was a decided matter. It was. He didn't need to continue thinking about how unthreatening a lonely little bone was, because there was nothing else to think about, nothing about it to be worried because of. Nothing. He would be fine so long as he didn't eat or drink whatever it was that smelled so horrible. It was disgusting, not 'corrupted'. That was just another silly thought. Pathetic really, how a nasty smell and a sad, lonely little bone could spook him so badly.

Ah, not that he was spooked. Nope. Not him.

Long ears swiveled towards an unexpected sound, though Korev did not jump like a startled cat or filly, no. Of course not. Turning, he peered up at the mountain from which the sound had come. And it had definitely been a sound. Not like a sliding rock or a roll of thunder, more like a voice. Like a... laugh? “I see nothing funny about any of this,” the young stallion growled, stopping himself from taking a step back. As though the mountain would move- Well, no. No it couldn't, but something on it definitely was. A flash of shadow that couldn't have been cast by anything, something moving where there had been the lifeless stillness before. There and gone, was it a trick of his eyes? Were his nerves finally getting to him?

This was nonsense, all of it. He had better things to do than stare at some crazy's mountain, because if that had been a laugh it was certainly not a mirthful one. It had been all twisted up in itself, like an echo maybe? Psh. Maybe it was a freak gust of wind that got all bounced around in the rocks or something and he was standing here staring at the mountain like an idiot because of a little wind and echo. Snorting, though with a backward glance or three, Korev turned to keep doggedly pressing on. Maybe there was some sort of fascinating oasis waiting on the other side. Or maybe there was absolutely nothing. He'd only know when he got there-

Okay, now seriously. Was something moving out there? Because it seemed like there was, except it was probably just stupid nerves. Korev paused again, looking almost angrily around himself as he turned in a slow circle. It was too dark to get a proper look, and the only thing he could smell was whatever that awful stuff was. “What?” he finally growled, just in case someone was really there and his imagination hadn't gone totally wild. And if no one was there, well, then no one would hear him talking to himself. Or see him spooking at shadows. How pathetic.