>>6118494>>6118490[A Short While Later]
The path is winding along an old dried out riverbed. Zivka dipping into it to avoid profiling herself against the flat landscape. A loyal bird comes diving out of the high skies with a shrill thrilling of alarm and hovers, nearby, as the Scraghound sniffs the air and paws the dirt and whines twice. And then, out of the darkening night, a scene resolves itself:
Zivka has indeed found some Windsworn, though they are long dead and their skulls have been ripped opened by a colony of Cerebovorando ants. Their greymatter has already been subsumed by the voracious insectile empire. But the Windsworn seem to have died from piercing instruments, punching through bodies. It in the dark it is hard to ascertain what entirely but given the lack of arrows here, a good guess would be bullets of some kind. The air has a faint, faded trace of powder discharge. Though that could be a mental mirage. Might be the old river-bed. . .
It's strange, though. They look dead, of course, but not as if they struggled. They're dirty, dusty things, little scraps of meat thrown down a way.
It's almost as if someone shot them and threw them into this place, knowing they would be slightly out of soon and eventually consumed whole by the active insectile emperors in this little winding place. But why go to such lengths? Or is that perhaps your mind speaking things it has no grasp of?
The Scraghound rolls a low growl over the army of cerebovorando moving. They form a soft perimeter by rote instinct. A lot of creatures flee when the Scraghound growls. Cerebovorando ants recognise no sovereign but their council of queens. They are not dissauded by adorable four pawed friends.
Probably best to go around and not encroach on their territory. Zivka knows enough about animals to see *that* trap for what it is, emnity with an entire civilization of little hungry things. Well, at least the detour will be walking and not riding. Horses are the gods curse on man. No equine can be trusted.
>1/3