The four horses looked back. Like some kinf of horseman, in complete synch. It frizzled, and smoke came out of it like in preparation for continuous cascading chemical reactions. They didn’t carry torches or lights but if they had it would certainly have extinguished them in a hiss.

The horses couldn’t help but get closer and stare into a trance at the abyss, it felt like their beings, emotions and afterthroughts were suddenly sucked by it with that one step closer to it.

Beetle has had it. He’s patience is done for. He strikes a look at Freidor across the hole, and as if he’s challenging him, he says, “If you jump, you jump this one alone.” You can see his muzzle wrinkle. He was not one for confrontation, but he was not taking anymore risks.

Freidor blinked, taken a back by the proposition of a courser who had never imposed himself as such. His demeanor anew. A moment of silence cutting through the air and the other two coursers now awkwardly present in the room. The tension, rather than rising like a bursting volcano, was more like the lava already descending the mountain and burning everything in its surroundings. It was like they were communicating through the irises in their eye sockets now. And it was intense, but no one was breaking the stare.

Freidor replied, “I know better than that.”

And before anyone could add onto it the stones shut close, as if answering to Freidor’s command.