ORIGIN

In times such as these, Fahl found himself reminded more often than usual how little he truly knew and understood. The Masters. The depths of Nemean's depravity. Games disguised as tests, though never had he encountered one, unless the tunnel he'd ventured through cycles ago qualified. Even magic was outside of his grasp, the nuances incomprehensible to his own teacher as well. But this—gazing down at the water's reflection—was its own frustrating conundrum.

What in all the blasted, shit-stained caves was he to make of this?

This, to be clear, was the new fins he'd trailed behind him all the way to Pisces. Spurred by urgency, the knowledge of their existence had not fully registered during the hurry home; the colors, his other "gift," had preoccupied him more, so disorienting in its shift at every stray thought that crossed his mind. Stumbling along ice, feet turning from black to blue to red, a dragging tail could have well been a physical sign of his own exasperation. But now, settled down and without a blur of confusion from escaping a stone trap he'd inexplicably been stuck in again, reality at last rapped its knuckles on his skull.

Yes, Farina had mentioned fins, he did remember. Still, how? What sort of power did she have to make him... part fish?

"Imp?"

Though he called out, the bizarre possibility of hybridization proved a distraction. Tail suspended over the pond so its dangling tips barely touched the surface, tiny fish swimming beneath its shadow, a lump built in Fahl's throat. Algae had always been a more significant part of his diet, the taste less bland than that which he observed below, but fish had been the go-to when he couldn't find anything else. If they possessed similarities to him through a Master's will, then would that mean he'd be devouring kin of a sort?

"Agh." Brain boiling, it felt like a heavy cloud of steam had gathered around his head. A shake banished the idea. "No way." Too strange.

Just then a fish took the unintentional bait. The iguana gasped at a sudden nip. His withdrawal of the tail swift and violent, what could have been an unorthodox catch released its bite and flopped back into the pond. White cascaded over scales, followed by bright yellow blotches. Eyes wide, he curled in on himself, claws tugging fins in close for their protection.

While the situation was a first for him, he didn't dare repeat it.

"Ah, fuck. Imp. I'm back from helping that Master. You up there?" He glanced around. "Down here?"

Reeling from how the natural order of things had turned upon him—fish biting the fisher, and not the other way around—Fahl was slow to recover from shock. Even as yellow faded away and left him a lizard of a singular color, his pallor remained, refusing to darken no matter how measured and calm his breaths were. Huddled beside the pond, from afar he might've struck an observer as a marble statue, paws kneading fins in a fantastic depiction of distress.

Multiple seconds passed before he shifted from this position, a bluish-gray shade finally having bled into his complexion. But no sooner had his body unfurled to a more dignified posture than an interruption reversed the change. Feathers streaked past vision in a meteoric plummet to the stone floor. Face drained pale once more, Fahl scurried backwards, stumbling with a pained hiss as feet treaded in their hurry upon his own tail.

At first, shoulders tensed, preparing to stand ground against the newcomer. If not for the booming assault of a greeting that caused him to wince, they would have eased almost immediately when Imp's familiar figure was recognized.

"Yeah, it's me. I'm right here." Ordinarily Fahl would have tapped into his magic and summoned a signature swell of heat to point out his location. However, this time, eyes shut and already willing away a budding headache, the usual demands went unanswered. "I finished that Master thing in Fornax I told you about, and, well..."

The slew of information was difficult to articulate. He hesitated, then exhaled.

"I learned some crazy shit over there. About some of the Masters. About"—a grimace accompanied the name—"Nemean, that you've really got to hear."

"...tired?" As if it were an enchantment, eyelids flickered at the word. Dusk purple and silver streaks shot through temples, and Fahl, disbelieving of what he'd been asked, shook his head. "No, I—I'm fine."

In truth, he couldn't quite say. Everything seemed all right by ordinary standards: body uninjured, if somewhat strange, and out of harm's reach for the time being. But despite that, a feeling of wrongness persisted. Though the moment had long past and existed now only as the ghost of a sensation, stone crawled out from his mouth, like an eldritch being he'd been host to, slithering its slick and suffocating touch over nostrils. Voices—Farina's? Nemean's?—rang without a physical presence.

Overwhelmed, by exhaustion or whatever else, his knees quaked and threatened to buckle. Fahl braced against the ground, tail firm against it. Then, certain a fall would not happen, he slumped into a seat where he stood.

Imp might not have been aware, but he'd caught the iguana with the curtain between personal thought and public presentation drawn wide open, too absent of mind to shut it. Mind his insecurities had never been the best concealed, the cover gossamer-thin. Nevertheless, without the divider in place, the pretty trappings of positivity and go-getter attitude couldn't distract from the mire of confusion behind them.

"I'm just, uh, a little confused? Had my head knocked around a bit. In battle, y'know, so it's probably that." Certainly not having been swallowed by his stone and spat back out a new creature. Nor being caught in a feud beyond his ken. "We went up against this brute," he said, a description forthcoming alongside a bubble of hollow laughter, "called the Kraken. Real ugly sucker. Big, lots of tentacles, covered with a bunch of gross sores."

"Think I was about—" Fahl lifted a set of claws to try and model his size in comparison to the formidable foe. Remembering Imp's blindness, face and throat flushing red, he blundered onward. "—a speck on its behind, it was so large. Couldn't exactly roll it to death, but I got a couple of good hits in anyway."

Undivided attention could be a little intimidating, but not for Fahl. It meant that he could relax and, while storytelling took center stage, sweep mental clutter off into the wings and away from concern. He addressed the questions received with awkward, genuine attempts at answers, juggling them like an amateur during a first performance.

"No, if it was just me there, I'd have... well, shit, I'd have been a snack for it. And there wasn't a few guys either—more like a dozen? Couple dozen?" Invested primarily in his own success and survival, taking a head count hadn't been highest on his list of priorities. "Let's say a lot. We'd all gathered up in Fornax before, per the Blacksmith's instructions. And he, uh, palmed us off on this nasty-looking creature that guided us deep underwater to where we were supposed to go: the Black City. All the way down there is where we saw that Kraken thing. It was in the way of what we had to retrieve.

"The Kraken attacked us first. We should have seen it coming with how gigantic it was, even with all the darkness around us. I swore I felt it... moving... in the water. But somehow it came out of nowhere. Tossed us around, hurt those of us at the front of the group. And then absolute chaos, everyone doing their part to attack from every side.

"Me... I already said most of what I did. Swam fast and hit fast." Calm had dulled his scales down to gray similar to the surrounding stone. But now as eyes narrowed, contemplative of experiences, bursts of light blue spotted his hide. Hindsight available for use, some events seemed stranger outside of the moment. "I think that scumsucker did something to us too. Because after a while, I got queasy, and things looked... not quite right. Saw stuff that wasn't... couldn't have been there. That's when I got knocked around, and when Master, uh, Farina intervened."

There was scrape of claws from Fahl shifting around, a brief pause before he admitted, "Everything gets fuzzy after that. Farina finished the Kraken off from what I remember. Then she gave us a 'reward.' I was bleeding or it felt like I was. And I tried to talk to her. But then my mind... it just cut off. Next thing I know, I woke up all healed and with these weird fish fins on my tail. And... and colorful."

Those changes, talking about them, could be an entire story alone. They were strange and baffling and so difficult to wrap his head around. However he needed to trudge on to the other details, the ones that burdened him the most. Heavy wheezes replaced words, replenishing lungs with air, and Fahl prepared to speak again.

"Once I woke up, Farina was still around. She asked me why we all helped her. I didn't know a lot about why the help was wanted to begin with when I came to see you, but after... the Blacksmith told us more about Farina before we went down there. And you know how Nemean screwed you over and a bunch of others? Well, she screwed her over too.

"Farina was close to another Master, and Nemean separated them. She took the other Master's, Artio's, stone and hid it away in that city. Then she trapped Farina someplace in Eridanus. And wherever she was, it tortured her, for a long time.

"So when she asked why... I said because of Nemean of course. Because she sucks. And she accepted that. But that's where it gets weird. She told me to tell everyone in the caves that she'd 'favor' whomever serves the real Masters. I'm guessing that means her and Artio? I said I would, but..."

He sighed. "I haven't a clue what she's talking about. And she was raging about Nemean and something to do with tests too. All that torture... I don't know how sane she was before that, but now... I don't know how much of this shit makes any sense."

The confusion had returned in full force. His appearance no longer reflected the placidity attained by relating his tale; it was plagued by motion and color, emotions marked all over him in pulsing cyan, scarlet, and purple. Gaze focusing on empty eye sockets, a plea to untangle the mess he was stuck with tried to be conveyed to Imp through sheer willpower. Though Fahl hated the idea of laying all this at his teacher's feet, he simply didn't have the knowledge or experience to sort this out by himself. He needed input, a different perspective on the puzzle he sat on.

"Your family... knows about Masters, right? Would any of them know about Artio? Farina? I want to do something, and they're not friends of Nemean, but I don't know how much I can trust about them either."

"The constants of life: food, sleep, and hating Nemean." He'd refrained from contributing comments during Imp's own, breathlessness more of a factor than any lack of a desire to say them, but with ideas now floated to him, Fahl began with a weak stab at humor. After a pause, he coughed and continued on. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

As for the actual proposal...

"I've been there. Cetus. Not very often, but with both of us... it should be fine." There was a shrug of shoulders following the statement. If it could've been witnessed and his scales didn't excel at betraying his thoughts, the gesture's execution might have appeared properly untroubled. No lie dwelled in what he said: more than once he'd traversed the swamp. Those occasions had not been the best, however, and certainly not recent. His magic had been a mere spark then, not nearly enough to banish the mist pervasive there, and so mostly he'd wandered, fortunate to relocate the entrance each time. Older and with Imp, though, this excursion could be an improvement on those past.

Sitting around discussing it would do nothing to confirm that possibility. They'd have to try, the potential information to be gained too important to dismiss.

Fahl surged to his feet, heat licking up from where he stood. "If you stay close, I can guide you along. Once we get there, would you know where to go if I described everything to you?"