The lake's tundra dry sand-scape housed a minute but focused local biome, scurries of glass-scaled monitor lizards no bigger than a human's thumb hurrying from gorse bush to bush, high flocks of raptor-vultures, wings tipped in razor-pinions, talons like nexu-fangs, trembling bulbous songs from inflated goiter-sacks in their swollen diaphragms cartwheeling until they shot like sling-stones to the lake-floor. They passed through intermittent copses of light-hardened, petrified pole-cholla, over partially sunken cacti pits needling their booted ankles. Sound was a wind-moan tuning through parts in rickety ironbark methusam trees, to fill the dead lake with a hollow choir and orchestra.
Eerily, they could hear the wind but not feel it. Seydon kept pausing, eyes snapping over at some strange, hairy shadow mimicking a crustacean outline hurrying out of sight. Loneliness kept them company, despite the small, minute line of bullet-point shades watching over up high on the shore-crest, against the village's rust-shanty backdrop. He reached and wiped a line of perspire off his brow and nose. Seydon was following a spoor-line tinted with imitations of egg-shell rot and methane, subtly masked by blooming creosote flowers stuffing their nostrils with a smell like hard cologne. At their feet still was that meandering trail snared up from the stone and mud-flaps. Not necessarily a difficult path to follow, but the Dunaan kept up his reading of the details.
Stocky, wide-set at the hips, at least two hundred man-pounds, walking with a shoulder-first caper occasionally scraping bone-smooth knuckles against the ground. Seydon stopped a moment and knelt, picking at a balled sand clump. It broke in his fingers after some gentle pressure, feeling the moisturized consistency through his glove before taking a short whiff by his nose. Spittle. Drool. Hints of escherichia coli, staphyloccus, bacterial providencia and proteus. Septic-natured pathogens that hinted at a regular diet of necrotic meat or at least some digestive system that produced the bacteria in lymph-glands.
Following the claw-prints, it took them to the jamb of the naked doorway. Closer inspection labelled the sealed over entry with a further mote or two of heavily faded splendor. Seydon stared over scattered chain-leaves of polished jade hanging with some temerity off old, old nails. Iron spines driven into the sandstone were caked with hoarfrost rust. Inspecting closer couldn't reveal an obvious entry mechanism; lacking hinges, analogue servos, it looked immovable. But so close, the Dunaan was almost gagging from ethereal scents of animal-vicious corruption. Touching his knuckles across a breeze worn glyph excited daemon-pain up his arm.
Seydon drew Winterfang. It's steel looked avalanche-white in the beige light. Something in the stone loosed a ragged groan, the Dunaan feeding his blade tip into the hatch-seam to gain purchase and leverage.
[member="Jorus Merrill"]
