It was bright and clear and open, for once. There was knee-high grass swaying in the breeze all across the massive clearing. He had cut a path of trampled grass and had nearly reached the other treeline. The ground pulsed with tremors.
He turned and saw it. First, he saw the bulbous purple shoulders. In the sunlight, he could clearly make out the hand-like foreclaws on rippled, thick, bumpy arms during each bound. He was already backing away. Its bulbous purple neck had white lines moving from its base to its blue head. Its eyes were still yellow and it snout was a light tan and still filled with teeth and covered in tight clumps of muscle. A long, thin, pink, sinewy whisker extended from either side of its black nose and up. The torso was purple, wide, and solid. Behind it, a long tail swished around, end pointing generally forward. It was roaring a low, loud, long, rumbly roar.
He ran into the treeline. The cover felt thin, now. It was the same as it ever was. He continued straight into the forest as quickly as possible, but before he was far enough in to even get lost, he could hear the thing crushing bushes. He turned and ran in another direction. The pulsing tremor got closer. It got further away for a second before stopping. He found a short, steep drop and ran along its edge before turning around. The pulsing started again. He jumped down. He ran along the side of the wall. The light touched everywhere. A loud thud shook the ground. There was no bush any better to hide in than the rest. He ran.
He could hear the paws slamming into the ground. He could see the leaves shake. When a hole in the wall appeared from around the next unassuming bush, he dove in with no hesitation. The path was bendy and he hid behind the second corner, pressing himself against the stone wall. He slowed his breath. The tremors had stopped nearby. As quietly as he could, he moved along the dim cave.
His eyes adjusted and he entered into a surprisingly bright chamber with a ledge just ahead of him. To his right was a downward rock ramp against the chamber wall. He approached the ledge and looked down. He found a pool. It took up the center of the chamber. The ramp curved around half of its border, ending in a stone floor that wrapped the rest of the way around the pool. On the lower floor, on the far side of the pool, there was another tunnel entrance. It could have lead out. It could have lead deeper into the cave. He could not see under the bright, blue water surface. There was no reflection of the cave itself. Yet, his bloody, dirty, torn-eared and bag-eyed body was looking back at him.
He looked back the way he came. Two yellow eyes looked out from the dark. This behemoth thing was shifting and lowering its body. It was pouncing. He did the only thing he could do. Heart pounding and grey rocks still shimmering, he bucked. His hooves caught the neck of the behemoth, slowing it by nothing at all. His forehooves scratched along the cliff edge and then over it.
He and the behemoth dropped through the air and into the pool. Under the surface, they slowed. Their images distorted and their colors bled. The behemoth swung as its arm dissolved. It struck his abs, causing him to empty his lungs. The shimmering on the rocks spread into the water and the rocks themselves melted and dislodged from his body. The water around the rocks boiled and the rocks slowly shrank. The behemoth was now a cloud of murky color. His fur was fading from purple to pale purple to light grey as the colors spread into the water in dense lines and then diffused. His legs wobbled and his nose stretched out and bent. His vision blurred.
The pool blackened. The surface bubbled and steamed, releasing black mist into the air of the cave. Pastel pulses of slight shimmer claimed small sections of the cloud, and those sections faded away. Soon, there was no water in the strange pool, and, soon after, there was no black cloud in the air.