ORIGIN

Warrior shook his mane, a little--short as it thus far was--and thought about this.

"I guess if you have to eat, you have to eat, but--what I meant was, maybe it's okay to feel bad anyway. It's probably bad not to," he reasoned, though he was too young, too inexperienced to delve too deeply into the morality or the question why. The consequences, perhaps, of shutting off certain emotion.

His attention, anyway, was now on the tunnel ahead. He cast out his magic, focusing on the land around them with a focused expression, in silence, while Quentin clambered onto his neck. He wanted to be sure nothing was lurking near the cave mouth, or inside--and thus far, he saw nothing. He felt the red thread of life through the fennec fox, but nothing lay in wait, at least; no ambush was on offer.

He couldn't see too deeply into the tunnel, yet, but they'd get there soon enough. Hooves punched sand into the air in gentle plumes, his sweat-streaked red coat coated in it now, and the hoofbeats slowed as he drew up to the mouth of Tunnel P.

They passed into the shade of it--the relative shade of it--and though it was still red, still hot, still sandy, it wasn't the hell that Hydra was. Warrior slowed to a walk, peering ahead and around warily as he went. Softly, as if afraid of being overheard, of drawing unwanted attention, he spoke; "Where are the bones?"

Warrior nodded quietly, wide eyes taking in the tunnel at large. He paced carefully through, peering left and right. It was steeply uphill, at first, and the thick and shifting sand blown in from Hydra began to quickly give way to shelves of sandstone not unlike the Crucible's rock.

At Quentin's question he cast his magic outward, feeling, reaching; but he saw nothing here, and nothing ahead.

"...I don't see anything," he said very softly, afraid to alert anything to their presence. As he stepped higher, he looked around, here and there--hoping beyond hope for some sign of Oleander. "...Oleander?" he called out, at last, uncertainty about this place keeping his voice a tentatively-quiet call. But there was nothing, and as he stepped up higher through the eerie silence, broken only by the rush of hot wind into cold, he grew a little worried.

"It's so empty. There's not even any spiders," he near-whispered, on edge now that he'd called out. He stepped sideways, moving to walk wide around a small, weak dust devil tossing sand every which way. "-Is it me, or is it getting cooler?"

Warrior was careful to keep Quentin stable, not jerking about too much--he feared dislodging the little thing, and wasn't sure if the fox might be harmed by such a fall. Yet when he carefully trod around the curve in the short tunnel and spotted the Canis gates ahead, he nearly stumbled, himself, checking and starting.

The longer he stared, the more he saw, and his eyes and nostrils widened. "Are those the bones..?" he whispered.

He could see the cave stretched out beyond the tunnel mouth, all boulders and stalagmite-spikes of stone, but scattered across the floor to ankle-depth at least were bones. A quick glance didn't identify any of them, but they were often broken, or charred black, and Warrior took an uneasy step backward.

"Are these the bones from Hydra-?" he asked quietly, as if expecting Quentin to have somehow figured this out in the space of the last half-hour or so--or perhaps just thinking aloud. "Or-... Was this another place, and it got destroyed..?"

Worry laced his tone, and his instincts urged him to flee back the way he'd come.

And yet... One last urge, the grief for a friend, left him calling out. "OLEANDER?" He cringed as his words echoed over the dead bones, and came back without response.

Warrior hesitated, Quentin's nervousness feeding his own but reluctance fought it. Would he never see Oleander again-? What if her bones were in here, with the rest--and what would happen to them if they went in and tried to find her? His gaze swept over them, wondering how they'd become that way. Maybe when something left Hydra, when something went into there... maybe the air was bad, or magic would zap them-...

"Did you go inside?" he asked, and his voice had again dropped into a whisper. But his mind substituted, Does it matter?

He hesitated one last time, and--prancing in place, a little, a nervous young horse in stereotype--he reached out his magicka. ...Nothing. There were tiny heartbeats throughout Canis, reaching out, and it was larger than he'd thought, and there were bigger ones, too.

"There's... things in there. Big things. But they aren't answering." He didn't realize they were out of hearing range--the idea alone was enough to terrify him.

The young horse wheeled, still careful about Quentin's balance but fear now driving him, panic barely restrained from rushing over and taking control. He broke into a trot, and then a slow canter, snorting softly with fear and with his hooves kicking up sand.

"I'll--I'll take you back. Thanks for showing me-..."

Distantly, past the fear, disappointment edging on grief lurked in his mind. Once the moment had passed, once he could stop and think, he'd mourn for Oleander. Perhaps she wasn't dead, but she hadn't been there, and he didn't know if she was even still alive.

He didn't think it likely.

"Maybe. I'll try to find her," amended Warrior, quietly. He doubted that they would. "But... thank you for showing me this place. It's scary," he added, softly; "I wonder what it is? how it got there?"

He shook his head, a little, and quickened his pace. Briefly, he tried to tighten his skin again, to pull in moisture--but perhaps the air was too dry; he felt nothing really happen. With a soft snort he pressed on. "I'll get you back, now." he assured Quentin. Warrior was disturbed by all of this, to say the least, but not so self-absorbed that he hadn't noticed Quentin's worry, too. "We'll be safe. Whatever's in there, I doubt it ever comes into here. They weren't near the tunnel." It was said in a soft, reassuring tone, but Warrior wasn't sure of it, himself.

A moment later they were back out in Hydra's heat, his hooves carrying them at a near-floating gait back across the Flats, and the horse's mind was trickling with nightmarish ideas.

What if they did come in? What if an army of bone-creatures rose up and stormed Hydra, unaffected by the heat, roaring to add to their collection..? Despite the sweltering air, Warrior shivered just a little.

"Like the mice?" Warrior asked, a little blankly, as he trotted along. He half-squinted against the bright light and the sand, and found sweat springing out on his coat afresh.

This time, when he pulled on his magic, he felt his own sweat drawn back in; enough coated him to drop his body temperature but it seemed to recycle itself, in a way. He felt faint relief.

"There were... lots of little ones. SO many but so faint that they were kind of a blur, all over. Maybe mice, like you said--is that what you meant? And maybe... I don't know, a dozen, two dozen big ones. The magic wasn't that strong and I think the bone-place is big," Warrior added, dread still lingering in him from the sight of Canis as a whole.

He moved at a fairly good clip, weaving up at the very border of the Crucible, avoiding the broad sands of the Dunes as best he could. Grim memory of what lay beneath left fear of sand in him. He wasn't about to test them any further.

"How far should I take you?" he asked--and beyond all expectation, he still didn't seem all that tired. Panting, sweating, yes; nostrils flared and ears loose, absolutely. But he was built for this hell, and he'd had plentiful water that morning. A couple hours on the sands wasn't going to kill him--at least, not alone.