ORIGIN

Stygian laughs sharply at the mention of birds' feathers. "When I was a kid, those damn feathers were the worst part of bird hunting. Least they're pretty—though the gemmed ones' never seem to last…"

It's funny. He doesn't think he's had a conversation this long in, well. Ever. He's a little out of his element here, if he's being honest, but it's… interesting to learn about other 'Bound's lives. He doesn't think he'll start seeking company out of habit, but he can't say he wouldn't turn down the opportunity if it happened again.

Especially not with Blight. They seem different from each other, the two of them, but he thinks they might have more in common than either of them might have realized.

Or Blight's just real friendly. Either works.

He gives a noncommittal shrug at the thought of killing deer. On one wing, he's never tried hunting one of them before, though the thought of picking the weakest link in the pack off does appeal to his sense of destruction. On the other wing…

"I like to think anything can be killed if you find its weak spot," he says, thinking of his sharp fangs biting at an unfortunate bird's neck. "The lightning's decently strong, figure I can give it a shot from a distance and if it doesn't work… suppose I'll just have to practice."

He's distracted by the anticipation of the hunt, chirping in the back of his throat to scan the treeline himself, when Blight says something else and Stygian turns to him, slightly alarmed.

Well, at least it wasn't the sickness that went wrong this time. He's not interested in becoming collateral.

He is surprised, though, that blindness might be a problem for Blight in the first place. "You can't…?" he asks, before the words just stop on his tongue as he realizes he doesn't quite have a word for the chirping sound that is as much his sight as his eyes are, if not more so. To him, Blight is more a blurry, vaguely green shape in the dark than the sharp, leathery figure he might see himself as in a theoretical reflection. It hasn't occurred to Stygian that other creatures might simply see the world in a different way than he did—especially when Blight had just described bats as dragon-rat hybrids!

He tries again. "You need sight?" he asks, tilting his head this way and that as he tries to figure out what might be wrong with Blight currently. What spell did he try? "You can't… chirp?"

Stygian sounds more baffled than anything, though there is a note of alarm in his voice at the thought that Blight might have permanently blinded himself. He's not completely heartless.

Mutual confusion, then. There are few words for the look on Stygian's face as Blight asks a question about his eyes, of all things. "Well—yeah? Kinda? But they're not... really..."

He waves a wing awkwardly as he tries to settle on a word. "...important," he decides to say—quickly following it up with a, "...to me. I guess." Apparently eyes are very important to other people.

Hm. Maybe that should be something he thinks about next time he refines his hunting skills. There is a rather large trench in the jungle cave—maybe with a well-aimed spell while chasing ground prey, he could...

...he's getting off topic. The dragon's magic has finally stopped acting against him, thankfully—for both their sakes, as Stygian has no intent to catch a cold right now.

At Blight's callout, Stygian's head raises; both ears flicking forward as he switches to his higher seeing octave once more. His sharp chirp rings out in his ears, echoing. It's easier to catch their shapes against the grass with Blight pointing out exactly where they are.

A smile touches his lips, toothy with anticipation. "I got them."

The snap! of Blight's wings is startlingly loud, throwing the world around him into sharp relief like a lightning bolt. Stygian is quick to follow, fluttering into the air on his own leathery wings.

It's weird as hell to fly with someone else. Each downbeat of Blight's wings produces a current in the air that Stygian has to account for. He stays a little beneath Blight himself, needing to be slightly closer for his whole 'seeing' deal to be accurate, but he makes sure to stay within eyesight out of courtesy.

Briefly, he admires the elegance with which Blight flies. There's a resemblance there he can see in the wings, yeah, but while Stygian flies with rapid wingbeats to keep himself aloft, Blight moreso... glides, cutting through the air with the same sharpness as a fish might skim through the water. There's weight there, power.

And then Stygian thinks about it no longer, because there are deer to hunt and there's a power of a different kind he's chasing. Another chirp to double-check, adrenaline pumping sharp in his veins as he catches the shape of the herd below, long-legged and oblivious.

The adrenaline resolves, tingling, into the storm surge of his magic beneath his skin. He gathers it at his chest and focuses, pulling.

An explosive crack! rings out through the cave. For a moment: the sound of all the cave spread out around him, the dark shape of Blight above him and the rolling shape of the meadow below. So often, Stygian can only hear a little bit of the wide, wide world at once. It's only when he casts the magic that it resolves; it's only when he casts the magic that he's swallowed in the beauty of the world.

The beauty, too, of destruction. The hit is dead-on; the rest of the herd scatters, startled at the thundercrack of red lightning, but one stumbles to its knees in the grass and lies there, unmoving. Dead or dying—or merely badly injured? Stygian can't tell from this distance.

Still, it was a clean hit, and he's proud of it. Never hunted anything that big before.

Downed, but not dead, Stygian realizes as Blight's strong wingbeats circle over and dip down in front of him. He chirps, fluttering lower to the ground and circling as he gets his bearings.

The deer wasn't dead. Emphasis on was, because what Stygian started Blight quickly finishes. Chaos instincts sing subtly at the squelch of cutting flesh and fresh blood, and it's this that finally tempts Stygian to land, settling on the nose of the downed deer. (Still wet, still cool, as if the deer had licked its nose recently before being killed without warning.)

"Not bad yourself," Stygian compliments, seeing the value of having such a large and strong hunting partner. "Doubt I'd have been able to finish it off without your help."

Even without the aid of his magic Blight was able to split a deer tip-to-belly with the flick of a claw. What Stygian wouldn't give to have inherited the 'talon' part of his supposed dragon heritage!

Deer's a new taste to him, he notes as he digs in, tearing a chunk of flesh off with a shake of his head. If he had to pick a word—it's rich. More filling than the birds he usually hunts, and so much more convienient. He doesn't have to pluck feathers or pick his way around the caves-damned bones; he just has to pull, and take, and no matter how far he goes it just keeps going.

How is he supposed to go back to birds after this?

Stygian swallows another chunk of meat and tilts his head back to lick the blood off his fangs, satisfied. "I see why you like hunting deer," he says, fluttering a few feet away in order to give the dragon space to finish off the rest of the carcass.

Stygian nods—not like it's easy to see against the night-dark, but, hey, habit. Body langugae comes easier to him than words, most of the time.

Easier to talk about hunting, though. It's in his lifeblood. "Think the lightning kills the little ones easier, yeah. Ones my size? Once I nail 'em with a good hit it's mostly about searching the ground to see where they fell." There's a trick he uses sometimes; swooping through where he guesses the birds are perching to get them to take wing. He finds they're easier to hit when they're midair, away from any brush or camouflage.

"One time I got attacked by this... this fuckin' monster in the swamps, don't even have words for it, kinda bird shaped but covered in goop and two, three times my size," Stygian says as an anecdote, gesturing with a wing. "I hit it in the chest with a bolt and it didn't even drop, just kept coming. Might've been the battle rush, but..." He trails off.

He considers Blight's second statement for a moment. He's never hunted with someone else before, he considers himself solitary, but it's... nice. Really nice, to have someone watching his back. "Wouldn't mind hunting with you again," he admits. "Harder for 'em to get away with two sets of eyes watching." He's had his magic fail before, or else focused a bolt in the wrong spot and only grazed them. Caves, look at Blight, he managed to blind himself for a good bit there with his magic! They can cover each other's blind spots when they're hunting together—not so metaphorically speaking, hah.

He gives a little shake of his head at the mention of fish. "Never tried. I mean, they look my size, but they're all... slimy. Didn't think I'd be able to haul one out of the water." A little curl of his lips amused. "Sounds fun to try, though."