One body belonged to something that might have been a bird once — enormous, wings folded under a cloak of dark feathers that had spilled loose the way a losing side does. Teeth had gotten to it first. Gouges opened along its flank where the feathers gave out into bare, ruined skin, viscera spilling forth onto the stone.
There were headless bodies of enormous snakes, some split clean apart along their length, spines torn out whole. Severed legs. Gouged-out eyes.
Some had dried out entirely. All of it lay scattered across the ground like nobody had ever meant to come back for it.
The retch climbed my throat before I could stop it, and I turned away from the dark, refusing to look at the rest.
"What in the—"
The rest of the sentence never made it out. I doubled over instead and lost what little was left in my stomach.
"Uhh? What are you doing here?"
The voice came from above. A heartbeat later, he dropped down after it and landed without a sound, easy as a drifting wind.
