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?"

@Quentin

Quentin raised a shoulder to put his head against it. "Yeah- it's not something I like to do," he gave as a slight explanation. The morality was sound.

As the shade cast over the both of them, Quentin knew he should feel better, yet his senses screamed out in fear of oncoming danger. Nothing was there. He had to beg himself to calm down. That wouldn't happen any time soon.

He relaxed down above Warrior's shoulders. He needed to stop staring around. "They're further in, behind big.. Grey things," he whispered back, feeling the same thread of quiet Warrior had. It wasn't like he understood what metal was.

"We-we should see if she's here." He was talking about Oleander, but his words were clipped short as his wide eyes took in everything. "Can you see anything with magic?"

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.

@Quentin

Quentin's body ducked instinctively when Warrior's voice raised. Even if there wasn't anything, she had to be here, right?

"It's just wind." Quen's voice was shaky, further down the horse's back as he tensed in a crouch. It... It was getting colder, and it'd be nice, if it weren't for-

He froze in place, a lodge in his throat as his nails dug into Warrior's back. The bones were terrifying to see again, and he started dreading it as they kept going through the tunnel.

"I don't know," Quentin spoke low, barely able to be heard. His whole body was folded on top of Warrior's, eyes blown wide with white ringing his iris. "I don't think I want to know."

He swallowed, about to beg Warrior to go back when he called out again, this time even louder. "Warrior!" Quentin hissed out the name like a curse, trembling in his skin. They'd come here looking for her, but he truly didn't trust his own senses to not drive him back into the familiar danger he knew good and well. "Please- she's- We have to leave." He begged for salvation from this sight, closing his eyes and trying to block out his sense of smell being hit by the mustiness of this room.

@Warrior

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.

@Quentin

Quentin, unaware of Warrior's spiraling, simply held on tight to the young horse's hardy body. "I didn't- I- I couldn't." His voice mirrored Warrior's in volume, yet the pitch was high and squeaky.

He really wanted out. "Big-" His throat latched up.

"We need to go- I- I'm sorry I made you come here," His body flattened against Warrior's back in a string of disappointment. "O-Oleander may not have even come this way."

He watched as they made to descend back into Hydra. "We'll find her." That was a promise. He had to not think about the bones, not think about the dust clogging his senses and his mind.

He needed to go home and try to shove his innate fear down.

@Warrior

"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.

@Quentin

He never thought he'd imagine he'd be comforted by his homeland's heat. Here, though, at least he knew the dangers, knew what could be coming to him. "I don't know," his voice was soft, distant. "It feels old. Older than us." He didn't know how to phrase it- he didn't know how old things could really be, but bones didn't get that way without age.

"It's like... They're like the mice." He came to the conclusion quietly, realizing why it felt so wrong. There was so much death there than it hung in the air.

He tried to calm himself as he folded his front legs over one another. "Thank you." He could've hopped off on his own, but he didn't want to abandon his friend. "That's- good, at least. Did you see how many there were?"

His eyes set on the salts around them as they passed through them, trying to not think about the visions curling at the frayed edges of his mind.

@Warrior

"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.

@Quentin

Like the mice. He hummed- "Like... Like, how I hunt when I need to, so I don't make a lot of death, whatever... Happened in there? They don't care about the mice." That didn't make much sense as he listened to it, but it was all he had.

"Maybe there're little things in there s-still eating." His voice was low, and he tried not to bring it up as they walked.

What was that place? Why was it so big? He'd never gotten a true look at it, and he wasn't sure if he'd ever want one again. His mind rolled over various monstrosities that could live in there, each one worse than the other, and his face grew dim as he tried to shut it out.

Warrior's voice drew him back to the living. He hummed out a soft noise, looking around. They were safe. "This is fine, unless you want to know where I live. In case you want me to watch your back again." He made to push up before falling back down on the horse. "Actually- uh, just a little bit in. We're near a river, in a hole with a path up to it." He tried to triangulate the directions, and he pointed his muzzle to the far wall. "It'll be on the right. You should be able to climb up? It's barely big enough for Mira and me, though, inside."

They weren't far. "There's a sort of.. Split in the river, you'll wanna follow it to the left. It's kinda visible from there."

@Warrior