your post was not terrible! -shakes finger-
The darkness is all consuming, the lights having dimmed to nothingness around them. They seemed to be devoured this far into the wood, and he wonders what could be out here. The ash is a thick fog burning his eyes, though he preservers. It too threatens to hinder his breathing, creeping in his nares most unwelcome, he grits his teeth to bare it. Others might be frightened, he too should probably consider being so, but he is not. He had been numbed to such things, there was little that chilled him to the bone anymore. He learns a little more now, as they make their way between the shadows, he can just discern Engels footsteps over his own heavy plodding. Her voice but a whisper, creeps through the night to enlighten him. Atrox. The name is unfamiliar though most here was, it held no meaning to him. Should it?
His barrel brushes along the timbers, what charcoal did not adorn his pelt, added its soot to the smoke that crept up around his pillars. The sounds grew ever louder, the rhythm a steady continued thump thump thump. The closer they neared, the more he could scarce discern the beatings from his own heart, though he was sure it was safely encased in his breast. “Alongside his living body?” he asked just to be sure. How was that possibly without magic, if the Chamber truly possessed none? How was it everything around him had turned into a question, a riddle, to make his head throb trying to connect the dots? After hearts she asks? He had hoped not, he was rather fond of his own, it being a pretty important part of keeping him alive. Though if what Engel had just divulged were true, perhaps a heart was not needed to survive. Though that did not mean he would like to volunteer either. He did not desire to toy with the Chamber, simply to know it, like it seemed to know him. Give his heart? Perhaps someday, but this is not that day.
Was it coincidence now? Now that his thoughts had turned to what things he might give to the Chamber that steadily, the darkness began to recede? Plodding through the pines, eyes clearing, his breathing becoming much easier. The ashen fog becoming less opaque and more transparent as he continued to push forward, making his way to the heartbeat. Sooner, rather than later, the trees became less suffocating. Spreading further and further apart. He could see ahead now, and what green eyes beheld was much to his surprise as any. The painted silhouette of his Queen stood near a blackened and burned tree. It was a rather prominent piece of bark, compared to the rest it seemed much more significant. The beating had grown stronger beneath his feet, and he cocked his head, part amused. There she stood aside it, waiting, expecting. Had she called them? He wasn’t sure, but he snaked his head around to Engel, “Head down.” He said quietly, before lowering his own dial to a respectful height. He didn’t particularly care to be caught off guard, not that he had thought he had been doing wrong.