Permian wandernaut

The hellish furnace of Pangaea claws at his feet and the leaden sun pulses angrily above his head.
Like so many synapsids before him, he left his home behind when the ash began to fall, to wander through the Permian kiln in search of water and light. With each passing day, he could feel his body decaying, exhausting and consuming itself in the feverish hope that the next dawn would bring salvation. That anything other than scalding, hideous sand lay beyond the next dune.
He falls to his knees to rest, wincing as his fragile bones howl with anger. He shakes the creeping blindness from his eyes and tastes the stale fingers of drought on his tongue. The rain would come soon.

The mantle plume festering away beneath the Siberian crust continued to stir. The gaping wound in the Earth's skin widened, and breathed a foul wave of death into the sickened air. The climate's shift was only beginning as the creatures of the desert fell to a fitful and thirsty sleep, their minds grasping at the shadow of a dream that would not come.