THOSE TWO SKELETONS, LOCKED FOREVER in embrace, aren’t the only ones.

    As Cervus and Markas cross this section of the battlefield, Cervus stops occasionally to inspect the long-deceased, powered by morbid curiosity. They know so little of humans, strange as they must have been. Even dead, this is the closest they’ve ever come to seeing one.

    They don’t find similar – no other human embraces the bones of a courser, but some humans are tangled together. Old, rusting weapons sit on the soggy ground next to them, or jut through the bones of a foe, as if they had dealt the killing blow with the last of their energy and slumped forward into each other, forever gone.

    The further the two coursers progress, the more traces of humanity long gone reveal themselves. Through tattered fog, stone outcroppings become visible, resolving into the forms of fallen buildings and battlements. One still stands, and Cervus pauses. It’s a tower, reaching ever upwards. The stone bricks that make it crumble in spots, and it leans a bit to the left.

    Cervus turns their ears towards it. “Anything good in those?”

    Markas perks up. “We can go see,” he says, voice edged with a hint of excitement. Moving into a trot, he leads the way. Cervus lets out a huff and follows.

    The two coursers circle the tower when they reach it, and Markas leads the way through the doorway when they find it and squeeze through. The stairs are narrow and winding, and the stone gives way under some of their hoofsteps. Cervus navigates it more slowly than usual. Nimble as they are on cloven hooves, Markas doesn’t have the same advantage, and his hooves slip a little more often than Cervus’.

    The last turn of the stairs spits the coursers out onto the roof. Markas noses at stone and other discarded goods, and Cervus watches him for a moment before turning to look at the view. Immediately, they suck in a sharp breath.

    “Haunting, isn’t it?” Markas murmurs when he joins them.

    Up here, the battlefield they just crossed is visible in its entirety, and it’s just a small slice of the whole. Around them, as far as the eye can see, stretches a graveyard forged by war. Battlements dot the landscape, as do the crumbled and rotting remains of war machines. Great gouges scar the earth. And between everything, stretching for miles, are the pale bones of the deceased.

    Cervus has fought many battles in their life, and some of them were even amongst many furious coursers, but never have they considered a full-fledged war. The chaos. The noise. The dead and the dying. They shudder, starting from their hooves all the way to the tip of their tail. “We should go,” they murmur, unwilling to look at the battlefield like this any longer.

    Turning, they lead the way back down the spiraling staircase.