Anger boils beneath his sleek mahogany skin. He can feel its warmth spread from his chest and across his body, into his tense shoulders and muscles along his crest. He had returned to the Dunes to find Shaydowfax had magically returned at the precise moment and made a claim on them. His ears lace against the sinew and muscles of his arched neck as he moves with grace and ease across the expanse of the desert sands. He easily ascends each dune and descends down the other side with a spray of sand around his legs.

He will evict this evil from his home and insure that she never returns. She is a snake. A cobra that slithers on her belly with a split tongue. He slows at the top of a dune when movement draws his dark eyes. An unfamiliar shadow in a land of vast sands. Immediately his hooves are set into motion, sand sprays out from beneath him as he launches into a thunderous gallop.

Her nicker is met with one of his own and dark eyes take in her features before he slides to halt near to her, his tail flags over his haunches. "This land is filled with dangers, let me take you to a place where you will quench your thirst and find substance," he whispers to her. "Hurry!" he says with urgency in his voice.