Vargas made his way down the tunnel, using both eye and magic to find the precise divide between life and Chaos. Within clutched palm, clasped between six hooked claws, the Leviathan held three stones.
Two of these, he had retrieved from the newly opened Andromeda. The moment The Sentinel had reported back, Vargas had journeyed there to see it for himself. He'd nearly forgotten its existence. Dawa's magic still lingered there, strong, and the echoes of those who had come and gone drifted like ghosts seen between one blink and the next. In its shadows he had hunted stones, hoping to find those of Valkhounds fallen here--to be the first to locate useful pieces of the dead. He hadn't found them. He had, however, found the gems of a few of the more useful Lessers, here--Lessers that came imbued with one form of magic or another.
Vargas shifted those two stones up between his thumbs to peer at them. One, a hunk of cloudy yellow diaspore. The other, a somewhat iridescent pink corundum. Both, he thought, from Mystfoxes--judging by the shapes, a fang and a claw. He couldn't be certain, but the magic radiating dimly from both did suggest it.
Though, then again, they all shared that magic. Hmm.
Well, he'd find out soon enough.
The first push of magic entered the pink stone in a trickle, a thread of power rather than a surge. Still-... it would do, and Vargas settled this one in on the side of Life. It--like its twin--would bear his element. Unlike the last.
The second stone--the yellow--he moved a little ways away. Far enough that, should it bear his size, the stones wouldn't intersect. (That could occasionally get... messy.)
This one had been weak, he noted. Near death, or rather, the final exhale of magic that would have left the stone wholly lifeless. As it was, he had to force his power through it, jaws gritting shark teeth together as he brought it back to life once more.
Of course, whatever it had been before, it would be Chaos Forge now.
He just hoped it would be useful.
For the third stone, Vargas paced back beyond the Door of Life. The light shifted around him, plunging into voidlit darkness, and he felt the trickle of corruption seeping in.
There was, after all, no way to improve upon perfection. To do so might be dangerous.
He held this gemstone in his thumbs: an old shard of Oilstone, barely left alive. He would manipulate its form, as a Master could; generate something he desired, rather than the natural melding of life and stone.
He'd been thinking it over. His creations had been leaning on the designs that he had liked: cats and dragons, primarily, with hints of whale or other behemoth. But another design, he had noted, cropped up with surprising prominence among the Gembounds.
Canine.
He had yet to truly experiment with it, and so now he forged a warhound of immense proportions: collared by spines, its short bushy tail and tiny ears quite accidentally reminiscent of the poorly cropped- and docked- appendages of a battle mastiff. Disease, he'd decided upon; aesthetically that of course meant black, grays and greens, sickly yellow-browns and the like. A grinning maw would glow yellow-green, as would its eyes. And it would stand fully nine feet tall: a beast that would eclipse a village, able to rampage through it and leave behind a swathe of deadly pestilence that would kill any who dared return.
He studied the stone, imbuing it with his magic, wondering at what havoc it might wreak.
The magic wasn't... perfect. He was better, now, but it would--though he didn't realize it--come out a little shorter than intended. Ahh, well.
Lesser of two evils indeed.
Vargas settled it to the stone, watching it take root. He checked on the other two--and then paced away, intending to set Sentinel to guard them.
exit Vargas