“By the way,” Logue said, almost casual, twenty paces ahead of Asphodel already, “Don’t look in the water.”

“I beg your pardon,” Asphodel said. 

They did not stop — they did not need to be left behind here in the unfamiliar moors — but the weight of the words demanded a response.  Their milky eyes blinked as pale as moons in the darkness; Logue glanced back at them, twitching an ear in some equivalent of a shrug. 

“I mean, you can if you want.  Just, you probably won’t like what’s in there.”  His pause was affable.  Everything about him was affable — friendly with unconcern in a way that Asphodel resented.  “Won’t kill you or anything.”

Asphodel said, slowly, “I see.” 

---

The path that Logue took them on was long, circuitous.  Wet.  The smell of the moors, cloying earth, the faint tinge of metal under the green and the still water, clung to the dark feathering at their fetlocks.  Their hooves disturbed the thin puddles before they could look into them — and Asphodel did not try to, anyway. 

Not yet. 

Not yet—

---

“You should go ahead.  Leonard and I will catch up.”

Logue’s expression was inscrutable.  The bright shine of his eyes might have been approval or accusation or neither. 

“Stay safe, alright?” he said. 

“I intend to.” 

Logue hummed and turned away.  Asphodel watched him canter up the next slope towards dry ground, his tail flicking, his ears pricked forward, and did not move until the roll of the moorland had swallowed him again.

---

“Now,” they said softly.  “We shall see.” 

Leonard moved nervously behind them, clicking bone, whispering shroud.  The pale skull rotated to follow Asphodel as they bent towards the shallow pond, the mirror-still reflection of the dim, impossible sky— 

Something moved where it did not exist.  A touch that never landed on Asphodel’s sturdy neck.  A twitch of leather rein. 

And then all at once, everything moved. 

---

The thrashing of bodies.  Coursers, but dressed strangely in leather and cloth, flying banners that Asphodel did not recognize.  Their mouths fretted around headgear, slick with froth.  They were being ridden by creatures dressed in metal, hefting polearms.  Asphodel’s skin twitched where they should have butted against his flanks, his hindquarters, and did not. 

Behind them, a tent that was not there fluttered in the pitch of wind.  A lick of campfire smoke that had no smell.  A landscape scarred with the imprint of many hooves, many feet. 

Asphodel’s nostrils flared as if for scent, but there was nothing but the thin metal smell of the moorlands. 

In the pond, a Courser reared beside them.  Its cloven hooves touched sky, curved downward, and — in spite of everything — Asphodel flinched backward.  Away. 

---

“You alright?” Logue asked, looking up as Asphodel rejoined him.  He had begun to scrape the reedy grass into a sleeping patch.  His eyes were liquid and kind, imperturbable. 

“Fine,” Asphodel said shortly. 

“See anything interesting down there?” 

Asphodel looked sharply at him, but Logue tilted their head, open and curious, nothing about the question a trap. 

“Yes,” Asphodel said after a moment.  “I did.”