Ahh, an argument.
This wasn't why he'd come, but Vargas leered down at the hyena nonetheless. She was always a little... rebellious. Oh, he'd put her in her place before. He'd scented the terror on her, despite her baleful glare. She could paint bones and carry bones and talk to bones all she liked, but-...
Well, he couldn't call her useless. Or even harmless. She did have some strange ability. A connection, perhaps, to Dawa's magic--despite her native element being Astraea's. But her words had come true, more than once, so to dismiss her outright would be unfair.
That wasn't, however, to say that Master Vargas had to listen to her bullshit. Right now, she was berating him--if mildly, and sardonically--for not having marched his armies here to clear out what she had so eloquently termed "that shitstain Order fungus all over everything." And truth be told, he... didn't really have a reason as to why he hadn't. He'd given the Forge permission to do so. Even offered rewards, but he hadn't ordered them. And why should he-? This was Astraea's domain, his magic. If he needed help with it he could damn well ask. Still-
The offer of a reward, however, was quite sarcastic.
Giggle flashed her teeth to Vargas in what was half a sneer, half a snarl.
Her heart was hammering in her chest, because he'd threatened her before and she had absolutely no doubt that there were some unseen lines--some vague boundaries she didn't know--that if she crossed, he'd kill her. That terrified her, and she hated being terrified, which just pissed her off more.
Which edged her closer, she imagined, to whatever those boundaries might be--and wasn't that just a lovely fucking irony? So she slinked around, hating herself, hating him, trying not to panic or to push too far.
She shook her head and plodded past the bones, eyeing them briefly. A tip forward of her snout seemed to help direct her magic, a flowing and rippling of power pushing the white mold away, replacing it with a thin line of bioluminescent blue-capped mushrooms.
She side-eyed him, then, suddenly afraid she might've finally overstepped.
Vargas did, in fact, debate killing her for just a moment. But he wasn't actually angered. He didn't answer her question, because it was none of her Creator-damned business,* but he did snort as he stared down at her.
Long limbs raked the carpets of white, tearing up mold by the handfuls, tossing it away. He could be infected--he knew that--but so long as he didn't eat or inhale any, or jam it straight into his bloodstream, he'd be fine.
Which wasn't entirely true, was it-? Somewhere along the line, the system had been... corrupted, for lack of a better word.
Their ignorance in this matter was shared.
* also those threads were never finished so the answer is in limbo hahaha
Giggle eyed him sidelong, and didn't say what she was thinking--that she'd far rather her own feelings as her 'master' and 'overseer', as opposed to some big purple oaf with far too many eyes. That, she imagined, would be over the line.
It was tempting, though.
As it was she bit it back, growled out a sigh instead, and turned the other way as if to escape him. To lose him, somehow, in her own work. But of course, she couldn't just let it go.
The rip of mold this time was a little violent: a rippling spread that tore Order away and left it in a dessicated half-pile a little ways onward.
Vargas laughed sharply at her. Not with her--at her, and the distinction was important, because his tone was mocking.
Of course, it wasn't all true, and that--that little lie--weighed on him. He was not a lying sort, and it was hard for him to even keep a secret (and oh, SUCH secrets he was carrying-!)... Not all of those on the list were 'happy.' Not all, in fact, were likely even still alive; certainly those Dhracia took away were likely to be killed, in the end. And there were those he did not mention.
Chaos-Two--well, he hoped that one was dead, but that was a prime and infuriating example of the one time he had decided to try mercy and patience with his weak new spawn. Their wretchedness had not been their fault, after all. But Chaos-Two had in the end turned toward chaos, after all--if of a petulant, pathetic sort. The kind that whined that everything was not their fault, rather than taking responsibility and finding courage. Their beloved sibling, though, Khavur-...
...Now there was a logic problem. Khavur had been Chaos through and through, had it not? Yet even now it was a mystery to him. While perfectly dutiful and bold, it held what he could only describe as a distant melancholy. Then there were Orthoclase-Alpha's children.
He had been... kind, to them. Zoisite in particular, but he had tried his best with Labradorite and the rest. He could hardly blame them for not being pure Chaos by blood, but they had shown deeper sensitivity than he'd expected. It had been difficult to work around, and even now he doubted that any of these could truly be molded into the destructive sort of beasts Rrevalk desired.
It was, then, with a vague curiosity--a desire to know the real answer--that he asked his next utterly mocking-sounding quesiton:
Something he could not understand.
So intent was he on the hyena that he did not really pay attention to where he was grabbing. He took another great fistful of fungus into his hand, yanked it up while turning--and, oh, it had not been anchored after all. His forelimb came too hard, and Vargas uttered a guttural half-roar as he realized he'd just slammed the mold directly toward his own face.
...Again.