The dry, brittle summer months that reminded him of his homeland were no more, fading into the crunch of leaves beneath his hooves, dew clinging to the armored plumes along his shoulders. It still struck Emrys as strange that water fell from the sky regularly in this country, no fanfare or ritual involved. Rain in the desert had never been guaranteed, always a matter of celebration. That first downpour of the season had proven cause enough to bring even the most reclusive creatures out of hiding; if not to join in with the festivities, at least to bask in the moisture.It'd taken ages for Emrys to understand the locals' ambivalence toward such events, longer for him to begin to share in it. He cast one amber eye wryly upward as the sky opened for the second time in as many hours, pelting him with stinging cold droplets. A shiver carried itself along his spine, and he loosed a deep sigh, squinting at the surrounding rock wall that reared up beyond the tree line. He'd followed the perimeter of the ridge for days, skirting around the nearby herds in case they reacted poorly to an outsider presence. Pure habit at this point, to make himself scarce after the last stallion took exception to his efforts at idle chitchat. Still, better to search for shelter in earnest now than to wait until he couldn't find options beneath the cloud cover.
He spotted the lip of the cave first, jutting out at an angle that would have concealed it if he hadn't been approaching sidelong. Relief surged through him, and he ducked inside without hesitation, horn clearing the space with centimeters to spare. The second he lifted his head, his entire frame tensed, ears pinned flat to the mop of his mane. Wrong, a voice in his hind-brain whispered, the reptilian scrape of it impossible to ignore. His nostrils flared, and it took all his willpower not to blanch at the stench, fetid meat and something sour, harder to pin down.
Fear, he recognized after a few rattling heartbeats, mouth tight with it. The reek had soaked into the cave itself, the damp, concave walls holding it in like unspent breath. Little by little, his vision adjusted, and he made out the vague, amorphous lines of the place, roomier than the outside hinted at and leading downward at a slight incline. Letting his tongue trace his fang in a bid for calm, Emrys considered retreating into the storm again. It was obvious a predator lived here. Ate here. The crunch underfoot changed its tone, and he knew without looking what he'd find, the tiny, white carpet of bone fragments spanning in every direction.
Buried further within the interior, he saw a pile of indistinct outlines, the bare light from outside casting them in heavy shadows. Shuffling noises caught his attention, and he stepped forward without thinking, scanning the blackness with hope straggling through his chest. Survivors? Two feet from the mound, he realized it was the source of the smell, stomach giving an unsettled roil. A flash of movement near the floor startled him, a dark figure detaching itself from the mass to scuttle across the ground. Rat, he surmised when it squeaked indignantly in his direction. But the thought felt delayed, unimportant compared to the sprawling monument in front of him. Bodies; a lot of them. Their limbs had grown jumbled together, dismembered and tossed aside with what read like malice. More than one skull peered at him from the heap, familiar, eyeless, littered with cracks and lingering traces of flesh. The one nearest to the pale gleam of his hooves looked small, too fragile to belong to anything bigger than a foal. Its horn lay beside it, the tip crushed into a fine, opalescent powder that bore the stamp of a paw print.
His attempt at composure cracked, split down the middle like a seed. Out of it grew that terrible, droning buzz that started in his teeth and radiated through his head. No no no no. He closed his eyes, gritting his jaws as he withdrew. Not now, when there was nothing to fight, no one to help. Just the sad, haunted sockets bearing witness as he fought the tide. The dim light pierced him when he finally backed all the way out, waves of fury and panic lapping at his resolve. It was telling that he couldn't feel the rain where it pooled along his scales, parted around his horn. But he smelled it, wet mulch and pine layering his lungs as he breathed, slow and deep and even.