The horse-thing was tireless in its gallop, crossing the dusty ground pockmarked with the bones of ancient ruins with speed and swiftness. The sky had changed from the sickly green of a newly born dawn to be painted instead with pinks and oranges. It was like the bloody sky of the night had just been a nightmare. Idony was again squished between the neck of the horse-thing and Rui Yifu, looking down at the ground with dried grass or strewn rubble, or glancing out to the bones of towns or strange lone buildings.
They passed through shattered villages where only the remnants of ancient wooden foundations and poles still stood with their rotten bones exposed to a distant fetid breeze that came from the north. Or they passed through remnants of villages built with stone, the exposed craggy bones eaten away at. In these areas where more house stood than void, a creeping sense of something lurking in the hollow doorways and empty eyed windows filled Idony and she resolutely stared into the back of the horse's neck.
But no monsters actually came into their path.
They saw the remnants of battles from the red night, catching sights of chopped up corpses in all sorts of forms that were left exposed to the elements. Flies bigger than Idony's thumb buzzed around some of these things as the horse-thing leapt over them or galloped straight through the reddened mud.
Her chest continued to feel scratchy and increasingly full. If she sat still for long enough and focused on it she thought she could feel something brushing against her heart. She reached up to rub her chest, wondering if she would feel something moving around under her skin. The thought disgusted her.
"Is something wrong?" Rui Yifu asked softly, leaning down enough that she could feel some of his hair tickle her neck.
"...Hmm, no," she lied, looking down at the fast moving hooves as though they were really interesting. She could not let anyone know, she thought. Rui Yifu and Bo were already stressed and tired, so it was better to just be as small and unbothersome as she could be. She did not want to get slapped again. Idony reached up to touch her cheek expecting to flinch from a bruise, but felt nothing but cool skin. "...Can I nap?"
"If you can nap on horseback, little sister, I'll be genuinely impressed," Bo commented from behind Rui Yifu.
"Bo are you trying to crush my ribs? Stop holding me so tightly," Rui Yifu grumbled.
Idony felt some movement behind her, but Bo grumbled something low that she could not hear. She briefly directed her attention ahead of them rather than listen to the hissed retort from Rui Yifu to peer onto the ruined road ahead. After a moment she spotted four large statues standing alone, their stone bodies covered in pieces of green-blue rusted metal. The horse-thing slowed to a brief trot as they came closer, revealing the ground to fall into a very steep slope. It was the remnants of a river, polished smooth stones piled up at the bottom along with pieces of trash and more surprisingly a very large spine. Idony watched as it snaked through the river bed, its remaining ribs jutting out from the dry river stones.
The four large statues themselves were chubby dog-like things, although Idony could not be quite sure, all of their faces had been worn down with time or smashed off. They had collars around their necks with thick chains that wrapped around pillars before extending downwards to smooth white stone slabs that extended over the empty deep riverbed.
"Oh, a drawbridge," Rui Yifu said with mild surprise, "I've only seen this in a few other places."
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"What does it do?" Bo asked warily.
"Those statues pull the chains, and the bridge goes up," Rui Yifu answered, "what did you think they were for?"
"I didn't think-"
"I know you don't."
Idony pointed to the spine, "what's that?"
"Hmm," Rui Yifu spurred the horse in a trot across the stone bridge, the thud of hoof against dirt replaced by a clopping of hoof against stone for the moment. "It looks like a dragon's spine. It was likely a young dragon that had died before the river dried up. Dragon corpses sink."
"Wait, you said this is a place without death, so why hasn't it come back?" Bo asked, there was a hint of smugness in his voice.
"Of course you can die here, you just don't stay dead," Rui Yifu replied. "And I think this fellow likely died before... all this happened. What I mean is that he likely died sometime before the Last Emperor. His death probably caused this river to dry up as well, some rivers are deeply connected to dragons in some way."
Idony remembered the scarred and burnt dragon that had emerged from the water, along with the much heavier winged dragon from before. "Where do dragons come from?" She asked, the distant moan of the wind following her words, stealing them into the distance.
"The First Dragon," Rui Yifu's hand rested on her for a moment, moving her so she sat with her back against him rather than clinging to the horse-thing's neck. Like this she felt a little more stable on the bumpy ride. "In most stories, it's said dragons are all born from the Last Prince of the Yellow River, who tore himself apart to help make the world. Every kind of dragon debates on who came from what, and who is a true dragon and who is just a copy. The dragons here insist themselves to be the eldest, but dragons like Anitherin, whom we saw earlier, claim to be the oldest. They come in all sorts of shapes, but every dragon has the same pride."
Idony listened with as much attention as she could spare between watching them pass the other two stone statues and back into a depressing field of scraggly trees and lumpen towers that leaned dangerously close to the ground.
"Yifu, aren't sharks a kind of dragon?" Bo asked in curiosity. "I worked with a fisherman for a little bit, and he said that you shouldn't eat sharks because they're cousins to dragons and if you hurt a dragon's kin, you'll get six months of bad luck."
"What's a shark?" Idony added.
"Rui Yifu's a shark," Bo answered. Idony found this confusing and shook her head in disbelief.
"No, we're not," Rui Yifu replied with a sigh, "we're mistaken for such but we're quite different creatures."
"Are all sharks people?" Idony turned her head upwards to look at Rui Yifu's face. He remained resolutely staring ahead at their path, the air began to take on a coolness to it, but Idony only barely felt it.
"No," Rui Yifu shivered lightly. "Some of us gained Self through K'un, a long time ago-K'un is the Lord of Thought before you ask, Bo. K'un looked upwards in the Ancient Ocean and saw the gods and thought, 'I wonder', and thus became the first of us all. In some counts, he's the first immortal despite not being human. K'un disappeared after the war, and all of our children were born without souls. But rather than simply return to beasts, the bodies were entirely inert."
"And that's why Fish People steal souls?" Bo asked, stifling a yawn. "Oh, I'm tired."
"How can you be tired? We rested earlier," Rui Yifu grumbled. "But yes, but we don't steal, usually. I can't speak for everyone. But I know I came from a drowned infant."
Idony lost interest in the morbid conversation and chose to look ahead again, after a few minutes she caught sight of a strange skeletal shape ahead, and much further away she could barely make out great strangely shaped hills. "Look!" She pointed forward. They approached the skeletal thing first, which simply turned out to be a strange willow tree. Its roots dug deep into the ground, worming like veins into the dark soil while its silvery green leaves swayed lightly in the wind. The bark itself was the color of bone. She got a strange bitter phantom taste on her tongue and immediately recognized what it was. Gross leaf juice.
"Bo, do you want to hop off and grab some bark?" Rui Yifu suggested as they went past the tree.
"What? Why?"
"You said your ass was tired, and bone willow bark has medicinal properties. You could chew on it to relieve your ache."
"Oh I thought you were going to suggest I shove it up my ass."
"You can do that too."