ORIGIN

Khavur had fled immediately. Taken to the sky and left without a trace. To the nearest room which happened to be... Canis.

Khavur hated this place. Loved it. Oh, how it burned their insides, smoldered their skin... He couldn't feel burning unless it was internal. Internally, now, he felt sick as plague, full of termites and evaporating blood. The sweltering heat in his head beat down on his ego, pulverized him into something thin as paper. Isn't it supposed to be harder than that? Wasn't it supposed to be easier?

What remained was bad thoughts.

'I should have killed her,' they began. 'But she reminded me of you.' Khavur did not conceal its bitterness, knowing well who might be on the other line. He didn't even want to think about the source of that overwhelming, demolishing anguish coming from his sibling's side. These were his thoughts. This was his time, now, the moment he had missed. His denouement.

It picked up another bone. Held it in the hands that gripped. That could have held, or throttled. But no, he had tried to spare her. To be better than that. So much for peacefulness. 'So much for a successful hunt.' The venom began to leak from his clenched maw. What good was it, if he never put it to use?

It couldn't help feeling bitter. It couldn't help blaming Maximus, the one who encouraged this kind of weakness, the one who taught it about strength, for its own downfall. Khavur had failed, because Maximus had failed it. Held it back. It couldn't help feeling that way. It couldn't help anything, anybody, least of all itself.

What would Vargas think now? How had the others done? Better, most certainly better, better than Khavur, Khavur was the runt now, the weak link. How was it supposed to return, to prove to Master Vargas that it could survive, thrive, guard, fight, teach? What could it teach? How to be of two minds about everything? How to be divisive, unloyal, how to love? You can't teach a robot to love. If you're not a robot, you're an Orthoclase-Alpha, you're a Maximus, you're gone. Loyalty? Loyalty? What was Khavur then, if not a traitor for continuing to love, or a deplorable runt for being incapable of hating life adequately? Khavur did not belong among the factories of the unfeeling pristine, nor the mosh pits of the loving unholy. It was too different. Too much. Too flawed.

Khavur attempted to snap the bone in its hands. Failing or succeeding that, it would toss the remnant(s) away. He would hear, in return, a splash that whispered softly to him. He would go to retrieve it.

And in that stale, calming water he would see himself, even as he reached in to grasp the bone, to pull it out. He would see himself, and the things he learned, and the internal war of raiders in the pit of his belly. And then he would notice... the spots.

White was not unreasonable for Khavur's hide, but spots and patches were... uncommon. It tried to bend and shift to see them better. They ran down the entire spine... perfectly white. The rest of him was a stupid, silly purple. He tried to manually change the color, to concentrate... Of course it didn't work, but something else did. Something contorted in Khavur, twisted out from a patch of white flesh. It was supposed to be painful, but Khavur wouldn't know that. It was supposed to be bleeding as well, and it was, but Khavur wouldn't know that either at first. It could only feel the sensation of liquid dripping down its hide. What Khavur could feel — the pressure, the fluid like perspiration — startled it enough to break its concentration. What it had accomplished? A small oilstone spine amidst a patch of pure white, like an obelisk in the snow. Was it leaking something...?

Khavur reached over to the spot, seeking out what seemed like a viscous water, or sweat. He pulled his hand to the front of his face, not sure what to expect. The substance was clear as soon as he saw it. 'Blood?' Red hot iron leaking from a patch of pristine white. Khavur looked at it in the reflection. Where the non-white skin was next to red, it began to turn a bright, sickly green. Disgusting- did it always do that? But the white went unchanged. Khavur tried moving to a darker space to see if they would change colors with his hide, and while the hide might have changed slightly... the white did not.

What did they do? Mark the spots where oilstone could grow on Khavur's body? Oilstone could grow on Khavur's body? There was some shock, some horror, and some experimental, twisted glee, and that poltergeist of shame and wrath and self-hatred that motivated Khavur to accomplish its next act.

For a while, a long while, maybe a little over a cycle? Khavur flew around and sought out... life. Except, not just any life. In fact, counterintuitively, Khavur avoided the gaze of passersby. He sought out a specific kind of life. The challenging kind. The situation felt so familiar, to a time when Khavur had not known or understood strength or loyalty. In the attempt to understand, he had experimented. This had driven Khavur then, it was driving him now. The chrysalis could change his flesh but not his heart, unfortunately for Vargas. And back then, Khavur's experiment had been fighting trespassers... poorly. Now? He would fight whatever else showed up. It was better that way... to enter Valhalla through battle than Hell through idle solitude.

He had often flown into the dark crevices of Canis, the ceilings. He sought smell, a taste in the air, the presence of heat. This was his domain, the "dark above". It tried fighting pitch rats, that was a bust. It couldn't hold its heads down in water long enough for that to work. It tried to break its own bones, and it was getting a lot better, but... the worthy version of danger was so much harder to come by without pain, with such a massive and deadly form. Still, Khavur would make the effort.

The emotions continued stewing, for a cycle, for more than a cycle. Eventually, he made his way into somebody's nest. Dragonbats, who bore some similarity to him. He bloodied himself on a jagged edge to attract them, and perhaps that inspired them somewhat, but the size of the beast was evidently discouraging. Disheartening. Disappointing. Khavur skulked amongst them. They watched. He waited. They watched. He laid down. They watched. And finally, when he simply couldn't take it anymore, when his flesh craved heat and his belly burned cold and there was no other choice but to succumb to the fury, the enmity, the violence, he raked a killing claw through the air, forcing all his power into that one swipe.

And missed, severely.

But the bats didn't care.

He continued to thrash, and snarl, and they fought. For their lives as he fought for his. At long last. Swarms such as this were enough to kill smaller Gembounds and chrysalize Orthoclase-Alphas. Khavur wasn't either of those, but he was close enough... now closer than ever.

Oilstone clustered, surpassed him. He lost his sight, he reeked of iron, and all throughout his chrysalization he would dream...

Dream of the Deathmatch, of the claws snatching Pollen, of his fangs crashing down, the venom, the execution... and in the end, finding Maximus dead on the floor.