ORIGIN - [CoR] Rotparty

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It... may have been more than the planned "day" since Dragon had arranged a meeting with Fahl. In his defense, the Children of Rot were difficult to find--by design, really. They lived dotted around the dark of Cetus's mire, safe in all that gloom and murk.

It made arranging a meeting sort of hard, though, and Dragon had finally given up and started shouting about a "party" instead. He'd hunted, and instead of feeding Aquarian, for once, he had a couple fresh Swamp Deer carcasses piled up here (and it'd been a pain in his ass finding stoneless ones that didn't just disintegrate into Oil). "Here" was a fairly generic section of the swamp, but every now and then he bellowed with that alligator rumble, trying to make it clear that the Children were meant to gather.

Maybe the free food, at least, would entice them.

On the agenda for this "party?" Introducing Fahl--if Fahl found his way back to Dragon, that was--for the most part, along with arranging a little bit of training among the Children. Fahl had, possibly accidentally, made Dragon realized how woefully unprepared any of the Children probably were for combat, should it ever arise. Sure, they threw themselves into battles now and again, but his entire survival strategy had relied on "sitting so far in the depths of the swamp that nobody will care if you're alive or dead." If someone did start to care, well...

...Training would probably be a good idea.

He'd tried to summon a wisp to mark his location, but it had decided to up and wander off before hissing away into the mist, so he'd given up on that. "CHILDREN OF ROT," he roared again, before clapping his boat-face-jaws shut and resting them on one of the dead deer.

He'd see who'd turn up, he supposed.

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@Eve @Fahl and possibly @Brandle @Skein @Revenant @Merrow and anyone else

Party? No, Eve had not heard of any party.

The most likely culprit was that the crow had either not been here (she had spent some time flittering around the caves, searching for word of her children), or she had been in her chrysalis (trying to recover from one (1) exploded eardrum).

It wasn't very often she sought to check in on the other Children of Rot. She occasionally worried about them-- as worriers are wont to do --though, she was rather confident that they'd be fine as long as they confined themselves to the depths of Cetus. The crow was not all too sure what was happening outside the room, nor did she pretend to understand, but she was certain that none of it was particularly good.

So, it must have been luck or fate that one day, while ripping into the decomposing flank of a deer, she heard Dragon.

Little head lifted. Her beak angled to the ceiling, and she spent a moment gulping down the last strip of soft flesh she had carved out. There was no fire that came from the alligator's bellowing jaws; Eve marked this both as unusual and troublesome. She'd have to spend time trying to find Dragon against a mostly Dragon-coloured landscape.

Her beak clicked-- once, twice, and with a burst of magicka came a shimmering orb of light. Briefly, she tested it: the light shifted rapidly in front of her as she looked one way and the other. When content, Eve took flight with the orb darting around wherever her gaze went.

It shone through the surface of the waters, first, illuminating mud and filth in its wake. Eve found herself studying logs that had fallen half-into the marsh for longer than she would have liked to admit, unsure if it were Dragon or not.

Then, patches of mostly-dry land. It was there that she found a carcass-- and then another, and then the alligator. The orb lingered by Dragon's body for a spare few seconds before it vanished into glittering flecks. Following it was the arrival of Eve like a shadow, noisy wings fluttering overhead.

Delicately, she slowed, and landed on the crown of Dragon's head, talons clicking gently against his scales. "Long time no see, huh?" The crow rasped, folding her wings and ruffling her feathers before settling. "What's up?"

"Oh, shit. Not again."

Although yet to officially blunder onto the scene, the typical gloom of Cetus doing well to conceal him, somewhere in the distance, amongst the trees looming in the fog, a familiar rasping voice made its presence known. Muttered cusses followed the previous exasperated groan, and the unmistakable splashes of a Gembound hauling himself onto land were accompanied by the squelch of soil barely dryer than the water it touched.

Just as Fahl had dreaded when embarking on this little mission planned between him and Dragon, lengthy travel had proven far from an experience he was keen to revisit soon. True to form, muck had been his enemy each time waterways had given way to spongy ground, a situation all too common in a place known for such features. Clumping between claws and gathering within the folds of the finned tail he was cursed to drag along, often the winding path he'd struck out on had to be put on pause so the entire swamp couldn't weigh his body down. Minutes had been wasted over and over again tidying himself in order to properly resume his trek, and as could be expected, those repetitions added up.

Minutes grew to hours. Hours extended into days. And who knew many of those had passed since he'd decided to lose count after noting the first few, his flagging patience only further chipped away by paying attention to how much slower he was than the vague original deadline they'd decided upon.

While he hadn't doubted the word of the alligator, Dragon's statement of the Children's elusive nature proved no exaggeration. For great stretches, this cave seemed far emptier than it ought to be, intelligent conversation nonexistent except for himself if he dared to voice his thoughts aloud in standard halting fashion. A few too many instances passed when a darting figure had drawn a startled croak from him, turning out to be either a mere Lesser or, more embarrassingly, his hurrying reflection in a channel he'd happened to run beside. Once he reached the Crags, his luck had fared no better. Within those trenches, not a single being dwelled there that wished to be found.

Much as, unaware to him, his teacher's father had resorted to shouting to anyone possibly within earshot about a "party," Fahl had then been forced to reconsider tactics on the long way back to where the two of them might meet again. Instead of idly calling out to hidden strangers, asking if any friends of Dragon could hear him and whether they would show for an important gathering, his message had to be broadened to appeal to whomever might bother listening to a lone reptile they had no reason to care about. A preacher in the wilderness, he expounded on the virtues of survivalism and how the Children of Rot exemplified them. To those more ambitiously minded like himself, independence gained through power and determination was emphasized in passionate, though plodding, tones. He sold the meeting to come like a good deal unable to be passed up and prayed he had enough charisma to pull the pitch off, despite his leaden tongue.

To sum, Fahl was exhausted now that he'd reached this final shore—even more so after he'd had to backtrack due to Dragon's roar sounding a ways from his original destination, the old glowing map where they'd first arranged their plan. Taking time to catch his breath, he picked at the mud collected between fins, calmer than in previous similar moments but nonetheless annoyed by the fact he needed to attend to the task yet again. The motions gone through dull, thoughts drifted to more important matters. Worries arose over the reception to his company of zero.

Dragon had warned him. He would understand, the iguana reasoned. Still it didn't banish the apprehension knotting in his stomach.

Finishing at last, he heaved himself up from where he lay and trudged off in the direction the last echoing shout might have originated from.

Was he relieved to see one other than Dragon waiting for him beside a pile of deer? Perhaps a little, mainly because it meant he hadn't been as complete of a screw up as he'd assumed. Mostly he was a bundle of nerves, ready to flinch and flee if first impressions didn't go well.

"Some masters of disguise your Children are," he jokingly remarked with a polite dip of his head and a sigh. "You sure they don't know how to turn into trees too? Cause that's all I managed to talk to, sir. Unless they were listening somewhere and didn't want to answer back."

Purple speckles scattered over dark scales. Fahl's eyes wandered from Dragon to the bird perched upon his head, a silent question residing in their murky depths: And this would be?

It wasn't that he'd been deliberately hard to find.

Khloros had just been... absent, that's all.

Wandering in other caves, mainly, lost in his thoughts and oblivious to the goings-on around him. Now, though, he was back, and the timing was accidentally perfect; the call came just in time to catch his ear as he lifted slender black legs from coating muck. Those ears flicked toward the distant voice, and he shifted his path toward it. It was slow going--so much so that he arrived after the guest of honor--but he was here, if slicked with mud.

He eyed Eve, none the wiser as to her identity; and Fahl, whom he could not remember meeting. Had they met-? His memory had never been good. But Dragon's Children certainly seemed to have a high turnover rate.

"I am here," he offered, softly; "Is something wrong?"

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