ORIGIN - SEALED UNDER WAX

Being that she was still in Origin Cave hours after Lord Dhracia assured one of her hounds, This will only take a moment, her conscience brought her back to the endless valley of Pegasus. Distantly, plumes of grey smoke quenched the room's vibrant lighting, promising that the gremlin she'd delivered was already enacting its purpose here. There was a hot second where deep in the heart she fettered under heaps of oil and blood, her guilt intensified; but, like so many spoonfuls of morality, went down with a gulp and a thin smile--besides, it would be a lie to claim Lord Dhracia didn't enjoy a classic blaze.

It wasn’t this her conscience toiled over, anyway. It was the creature that caught her eye as she passed in and out of Draco, and whose face stayed with her even into her meeting with Aethril.

So few mundane things stirred her interest, it was undoubtedly with misplaced curiosity that she chose to pursue this one, now, by herself, while she was still here. Despite the request being for someone to tend to it (that is, anyone that wasn’t her.)

The lighting dulled and air sizzled. She would take shape once more from the oil, stepping forth in expectation of attention. Whatever the kaiju was presently doing, Lord Dhracia held in shallow regard. She was here and she was going to do as Master Vargas asked. An investigation was afoot, and Lord Dhracia was so versed in assessment.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

preemptive Mature Content Warning for this entire thread
i can't predict any post from alpha being clear of content warnings, as per usual—

While Pegasus shed its smoky tears, burnt once more, a monster lay in a fitful sort of wait—always with putrescent neon gaze set on one place: the shadow of Tunnel G.

Elbows hiked halfway past its own shoulders, it crouched amid the dense brush. The dim glow of its innards and quills cast itself upon the wildflowers. Shallow breaths quickened as anything passed by. It sank into darkness at every passing shadow; and, it fled from the largest of them. That was despite its intentions.

Alpha looked no better than it had, crammed into the foxholes and suffocating beneath its own prey-animal panic. The faint impression of starvation was no less obvious, and it quivered even as it crouched. It was a mere miracle the beast was even awake now—it'd been a day or so since it crawled its way back to Pegasus to— to—

It wasn't sure, same as it was not sure of the passage of time being days, weeks, or months. Whatever internal clock had kept it operating at peak efficiency had died off and rotted away cycles ago. It'd just merely seemed like... it'd been two weeks (and what an anomalous number that was? That unit of time, so clearly marked and yet so impossible to grasp.) A hunter's expedition to Eridanus, quiet escapades in an elf's ever-swelling camp, festering away in an alcove—it added up.

So, it'd been waiting for Vargas, for some indescribable reason. Halfway to cowering in the dark, listing between a peripheral haze and laser-sight focus, staring down the barrel of a rifle.

A sense of... crawling beneath its skin jarred it straight loose, sending it tumbling over the decks of its capsizing consciousness and into a blistering bath of magma. The taste of it in the air was sour, terribly so—and even more terribly familiar. It tasted of its own blood, the grit of sand on its tongue, saline washing down its broken carapace and into flesh torn asunder.

YOU BOW YOUR HEAD.
The monochromatic shadows fluttering over its hide peeled away in an instant as the orthoclase jolted upward from where it'd been hiding—but not from him, not from her! Only the faint impression of her manifested in its line of sight before its eyes flickered wide. Wide like spotlights, flashlights shining down a dark corridor.

YOU BOW YOUR ENTIRE BODY.
Branches crackled beneath Alpha's weight as it crouched low, lower, lower, until its overly trim belly was dragging thin divots in the soil. Its rear barely sat up behind it, and it nearly drove its own nose into the dirt. How pleasant it smelled, and how sad was it that it was mixed with the blitz of Chaos.

AND YOU BACK AWAY.
It obliged the Master's roar in its skull, backpedaling, not daring to turn its gaze anywhere but the sod beneath raptorian claws. Hardly a sound reverberated from it but the faint clatter of quills against cracked carapace.

In the moment she was recognized, Lord Dhracia's presence flattened the creature into the dirt (where it belonged, as of the intrusion that scandalized its identity in her mind forever) but she urged herself not to defer to such grotesqueries. Not for this errand that required her humanity to remain awake, however tired and fragile. She stepped closer, eliminating the distance between them as it was made; and she spoke, her voice commanding to see its chartreuse glare. “Rise, beast. I've come for you.”

To do what, exactly? She'd found herself a rare moment in which Lord Dhracia was, figuratively speaking, flying by the seat of her pants. She stood and stared down and scorched the air with unintended intensity.

Rise the beast did, and was it so correct to call that a chartreuse glare?

The whites of its eyes flashed even as they went halfway to shrink-wrapped into its skull, glancing through the newly filmy haze of its surroundings—like a sheet of cellophane overlaid everything. Or, was that its gaze burning hot with saline solution? It had yet to figure such a thing out. They were propped wide, glazed over, still pitching downward with a hesitating bow.

While its joints creaked to life after hours spent simply lying in wait (like rusty gears and pistons and spark plugs in an ancient engine) Alpha lingered on a mantra: whywhywhywhywhy—

Its gut curled inward, and it was not with its omnipresent self-cannibalizing hunger.

But, of course, there it stood waveringly. Looking more like a ghost than a living, mortal beast of flesh, chitin, far-too-many teeth. Each breath echoed just a little shrill through a broken nose that was never fully reset. A raspiness crawled from lung to throat. Quills bent here and there, often criss-crossing into a dizzying maze rather than forming flush waves. Pockmarks dotted its whole shell that clung perceptibly loose on its frame. Mementos of lighting and fire danced around its face, down its flanks—and, oh the face. A gaping wound of scarred-over purple flesh betwixt sunken spotlights with their hollow, frenetic gaze now searching anywhere but here.

How amusing that such domestic mortal quandaries should torment a creature so far removed from domestic life. Just the image of the creature was evocative of the emotional consequences Lord Dhracia had seen of higher intelligence--something she presumed in its infancy down here--and yet, like a human lacking the right chemicals, this creature let itself languish into disarray. She found it funny because circumstances afflicting the heart were absent in every nest except this one. The nests beyond were efficient and diligent, and anything that wasn't was slaughtered. Yet, given the opportunity to survive, these creatures remained predisposed to misery.

She'd almost think them ungrateful, almost, if she were not reminding herself of the importance of them. In their own little way, they meant something to someone. Even Lord Dhracia was known to covet mortals. And Master Vargas cared for this one, so she should think it less funny and more a misfortune, shouldn't she?

It took a great deal more than she expected to convince herself to muster empathy. For as powerful as she had become, Lord Dhracia was still rather graceless in her mastery of balance.

Lord Dhracia stepped closer, tilting her head in appraisal of the kaiju. Its skin gnarled of healed wounds spoke a long life of violence--and its presence now assured much of that violence was pursued by victory. It had served more than its time down here in the cave, training, guarding, honing its own body forever prone to the shortcomings of magic anchored in Life, not Chaos. It would never outlast the intended product of this nest, a mother valkhound like--Draconua, for example!--which inherently made the creature flawed at its core. But it lived, and now it sulked, so she had to assume the role it played left it wanting something more.

She'd start with that.

She stepped closer again, her head cocked the other way, her stare arrows feasting on flesh with morbid wonder. “I've heard you're an Overseer. Tell me, what do you Oversee here in the trees?” Accusatory, maybe--she meant to let it know that she was aware of what this was. Sulking.

In the way that a hunter dresses a deer deep in the pines, Alpha could imagine the knife fitting easily beneath its carapace; it could imagine holographic silver eyes peeling away chitinous plates and catching whatever mess lay within. The Lord wouldn't even have to lift a finger to do so, it thought. It was enough to stir its chest into quicker, quicker, quicker motion, send half-atrophied muscles tensing involuntarily. Joints locking into place, forcing its whole body into headlights-stunned rigidity.

Chartreuse eyes, so molten and gooey with the fear of prey, blew wider as Dhracia stepped forward. The orthoclase nearly stumbled over its own feet to match the footfall. It did try desperately to wrench itself into staying put, because God hates a coward, but the failure of it was met with cutting words. A biting reminder. A carefully laid trap in plain sight.

The fishhooks of its breath caught in its throat, tearing out a ragged sort of gasp. It fluttered from its mouth like a dove from crushing, white-gloved hands. Alpha averted its putrescent gaze, barely capable of keeping its head angled straight ahead. Limbs wobbled beneath it, but it curled its wicked talons into the soil and choked down rising bile. Each of its disorderly quills clacked against one another, telling of everything a simple, wincing grimace apparently could not.

Nothing would be the honest answer, but it would also be the pickpocket's hand caught in the bourgeoisie's coffers. A death knell, it thought (and wasn't there already enough of that? Thinking?) Alpha knew not of exactly how long it had been festering away from what it believed to be home, but—

It'd been at least cycles since it last managed to just... speak freely and simply, even before it'd vanished at the point. It... could not recall the basic principles of conversational pivoting and lyrical dances that Pride or any other had tried so hard to instill in it. They were never put to practice.

Lord Dhracia awaited.

Crooked-tooth jaws gawped at the air before shutting with a fruitless click!

Another issue, too: it'd not even spoken with regularity, not even to mutter to itself when rest abandoned its forthcoming ways; not even when it was irritable and frustrated and stressed in a way only a caged tiger in the circus could be, pacing and sulking within iron bars and shackles. A few days' attempts at humming and forming broken-up, crackling fires of sentences did not broker confidence. (Not that anything could particularly inspire it, these days.)

A forelimb hovered in the air, listing forward and backward as if it were on unstable ground trying to keep its balance. Its throat ran dry as it opened its mouth again to speak, but words forced their way past an airy wheeze, "w-waiting for... M-m-master Vargas." The orthoclase would've stifled its cough in its arm if it'd felt itself able to. "So—so I can s-start Overseeing ag-again." Every stutter, every repeated syllable made its whole body shudder with both anticipation and revulsion. Already, its gullet chafed against speech.

Was that too honest? Telling of its predicament? Weakening? It set its hand down, drawing it into a fistful of sod. "I-I've— been... a-away. H-he granted me a... va—" Alpha felt like its tongue was made of lead, flapping about in its maw. Swallowing thickly, it ventured again. "a-a vacation." Was that how the Leviathan had described it? He'd said so, that he wasn't just sending it away, but... it thought—

QUIT.

Its head angled back downward, shoulders hunching and making it seem impossibly smaller and pitifully vulnerable. Submissive. The picture of monstrous confidence, everyone.

@Game Master Madison

Lord Dhracia counted the seconds before the monster answered her, and to her surprise, the words it spoke were less words and more fractures of ideas, desperately cobbled syllables presented on a platter of apology. Such a disgusting flaw of a beast supposedly made to destroy--the reservations that stayed its voice shouldn't have held it back, let alone existed. But Lord Dhracia wondered if this, in some part, was her fault. Not the traumatic event that warped it into this stuttering mess (she didn't need to wonder--she knew she had something to do with it), but just the fact that it could be warped at all. Its absence of oilstone meant that the kaiju was never destined to be created in the first place.

She rooted around in herself for genuine empathy. It was difficult to muster for the equivalent of a sewer rat crawling the pipes below her empire. Perhaps it could forgive her lack of tact if it knew she was really trying.

She was, right?

“A vacation,” she repeated, the word drawled like it was bitter aftertaste. Lord Dhracia strolled around the creature, knowing she'd already imposed enough to make it cower; still, that couldn't stop her natural predatory gait, the instinctive need to oppress even those already obediently bowed. “For what reason?” probed Lord Dhracia.

She realized then that if she didn't wring answers out of this beast, she'd be tiptoing around a wound she had no idea how to heal. At least let her see the open cleft of flesh, so that she could avoid accidentally jamming her fingers into it.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Wasn't this a sorry sight? A shaggy, grimy terror twisted into a wild-eyed, shivering mass.

Two words—akin to the knife a butcher fixes between skin and meat—sliced through the air, but did little to ease the molasses-thick tension in it. Instead, the orthoclase flashed the whites of its eyes, tailing Dhracia's path around it; it was unwilling to move, pinned beneath the pressure of her existence like an insect beneath a magnifying glass and the blistering sun. Its head was angled perfectly forward. The anxious rattle of its quills intensified despite its best efforts. An involuntarily slackened jaw let loose huff after huff of air.

It was more than that slow, stalking loop around it, though, that prompted such a fluttering prey response within. "For what reason?" the Lord'd asked through the suppressive fire of talons in the pleasant-soft grasses.

For many reasons, that was a question that… Orthoclase-Alpha could not answer. Did not want to answer—no, no, it couldn't. Not without clutching at its cure and choking its bitter essence down with no chaser. Not without laying bare a bloody answer before a pool of sharks (because it knew what could happen at the flick of a dismissive hand, the offhand decision to prove something as disposable—not that it wasn't—) Not without making manifest the reality already in its thick skull. And, of course, not without lying to what was second only to the Creator himself—and He was always some untouchable presence on His own.

Alpha physically wavered in place once again, at a loss for words and cast to the wayside. Pegasus drifted in and out of muffled focus, as if all its perception were focused solely on the Lord. The ticka-tick-ticka-tick! of its mane counted off the precious seconds since the last spoken word, but it could not keep a meaningful hold on such a concept.

Time, that is.

It would never know a sun or moon, guiding lights and shadows to introduce a sense of time. It had long ago lost the internal feeling for it to countless hours of sleep and lying awake with burning eyes peeled open. It had long ago forgotten to count off how long it had been since it last set foot in Draco, since it last felt… aware. Perhaps not present, but aware at the very least. How long? it found itself asking once again, though the thought splintered into a million fractal-pieces: since Vargas came—since I left—since… horned-creature-orange-face-bloody—since—

Bile rose in its throat. The orthoclase blinked back to unsteady reality, head suddenly moving to track Dhracia's every movement. Hooked talons bit into the dirt. Every square inch of its body rolled through an unsuppressed shiver, and its snout tilted further downward. How long— its conscience started again, but aborted the thought.

Alpha instead opened its mouth. Looked as if it was preparing to dispense another mentally rehearsed line from the past minute or so of silence. Snapped its jaws shut again with a jagged inhale. It shifted its weight, swaying once again; a knee was preparing to give out beneath the pressure, and it compensated entirely too obviously. Barely-visible pupils stole glances to Pegasus at large, but every cursory glance found hardly anything of value.

How long— "I—I'm s-sorry," it blurted sharply, voice crackling around the edges. What for? Everything—

SAY SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING— came the wailing sirens in its addled brain.

"He…" (It didn't remember the conversation that they'd had before it left.) "H-he—" (It didn't remember that he had meant well, this time, that his words had never been anything but to be taken at face value.) "d-didn't—" (It did remember, if barely, collapsing in Leo, hiding away from the world.) "He—didn't h-have… anything he—" Alpha felt vomit rise in its gullet again as it stuttered, and when Dhracia was in front of it, chanced a step backward. "Di—dn't have any… he n-needed from m-me."

Stomach acid ate at its throat, for its gut was empty as usual and there needed to be something matching the putrid sensation creeping along its chitin and slithering down every cleft it could find. It was too close to admission, too close to falsehood. Toeing the line through mere ignorance, because it did not remember why other than it being weakened, a liability, a failure to hide from Lord Dhracia—

Alpha chanced another step back, recoiling with a quill-rattling shiver.

@Game Master Madison