Honeyed Pasture dread it, run from it.

His surroundings did not matter to him, but once upon a time, they would have. Had it been just as it had when the pallid creature had first entered the wilds, he would have taken a great interest to know just how far away he was from the sea – to know the surrounding lands as though his life depended on this knowledge. Instead, he could feel his distance from her with every step that was taken. It was as though the space that he put between himself and the water was like a knife being wedged between his ribs. He would not have been able to venture much further without faltering.
 
’There’s something watching,’ Sandpiper warned him in a sputtering voice. The pale pirate turned his attention toward her and frowned. Her lifeless sights were pinned on something behind him. Smokestep turned his head around and fixed his gaze on the image of a dark hound with eyes the color of the most pitiless winter. The pirate’s hackles rose and bristled along his backside. He lifted his crown upward and revealed the thick scars that marred the underside of his throat. Then, he approached the stranger on swift and rickety limbs.