"I don't think it can see us," the guard said, stepping quietly and carefully forward with his eyes glued to the monster up ahead, busy digging a hole in the ground with its claws.
"Are you sure?" the other guard with him asked, leaning forward to whisper but not moving otherwise.
"No," the first guard admitted after a moment. "But we can't just stay here." He spoke quietly, very quietly, lower than the wind blowing around them. "The farther away from this thing we get, the better."
"Couldn't we just go the other way? The way we came from?"
"Not if we want to actually find anyone out here."
The second guard chewed on an answer for a bit, but then just nodded and carefully began to follow the first. The less noise they made the better, and there was no point in arguing. The other was right after all, they had to go that way. She just wished they hadn't run into that creature while on their way.
She looked at it, while carefully following behind her companion. She didn't only look at it, she split her attention between that and looking where her steps fell to make sure she didn't make any noise, but she did look at it. From a distance of course, they wouldn't get too close to it, and of course she only saw its back properly, as its head was luckily turned away from them.
It didn't much look like it anymore, but they knew it had at one point been a pony. Its hair appeared to be gone, its skin was a sick blueish tinge and pulled taut over overgrown bones and muscles. Its front legs looked much closer to arms and its hooves had split apart into hands like those of a dragon. It was intent of digging through the crystal, with no clear purpose.
The ponies held their breath as quiet as they could. Their hooves moved quieter than the winds blowing around them, and the creature's claws against the ground were louder than those winds. Still they were afraid of being heard, of taking one wrong step and drawing its attention. They hoped every moment that the wind's direction wouldn't change, and it wouldn't carry their smell towards the creature.
They saw part of its face as they walked farther. All its eyes, too many of them, were focused on what it was doing. Its skull's shape still had something of a horse's anatomy, but it was somewhat like a wolf's as well. Long and almost pointy, with many sharp teeth poking out of thin stretched lips. Two flat nostrils at the tip. Eyes along its length in places where eyes shouldn't have been, some bulbous and like those of an insect, others closer to those of a pony.
It breathed slowly, regularly. Tendrils spread over its chest grew and shrunk in tandem with it, like they were part of its lungs, filling with air with every breath. They could be, the guards supposed. It did not look at them as they walked past it. It remained focused on its digging. The ponies walked away farther, until it was too far to see, always careful not to make a sound. After a while, the two looked at each other. "Do you think it's far enough?" one asked.
"Maybe," answered the other. "There could be others nearby. We better keep quiet."