ORIGIN - I AM NO MOTHER, I AM NO BRIDE

It has been cycles since this Cave— this faltering, flagging failure of a nest— last sang in a horrified whisper with her name, her praises and her righteous and holy terrors. But, she has not been simply asleep. No, no, nonononono, she has been busy traversing that aimless black, abandoning one blessed form for another in an endless cycle of destruction. Whatever world He sees fit for her to devour cracks beneath jaws asunder; beneath ripples of Void-lightning and fire and the very earth underfoot quaking and shuddering; beneath piercing, ear-splitting shrieks of laughter and twisting, malformed limbs that grasp and take.

With such dreams of grandeur, awakening to this iteration is never short of... disappointing, as pleasurable as it is to bask in the seething, burning warmth of His radiance until her skin and blood is just preparing to sizzle and slough away. His womb festers with squirming bodies and the scent of sweat— always working— and yet, it is so empty, so bereft of the saccharine taste of Chaos. The rotten taste and blood-scent of Order and nature clings to it all, and she hates.

She wonders how it is to watch as the Sleepless Chaos merely emerges from her wicked den beneath the Spire, nearly placid and unhurried; and to even return after days have passed, clean of her own blood and with no limbs appearing as a cross-section of themselves.

Hussaresque wings steady Draconua as her claws scrape the inside of her den, peeling away strips of pulsating, living stone and broken Oilstone remnants. Either brand of discard is hoisted from the hole and subsequently left in an ever-growing pile. On occasion, that pile is swept aside by the overly ecstatic thrashing of her tail as she works like an eager dog. Works, until her claws come away bloody and blunt and she's forced to acquiesce that what she has done will be enough.

They will make room for themselves, if they need it. They, her sacrilegious spawn with brilliant minds all their own, with a mere touch of her and His power. They, who will work in her absence, as she wanders elsewhere.

The Valkhound cackles with mad delight as she dips into the expanded den— her own, imperfect little hive of Chaos— and spits out the Oilstones held beneath her tongue; and again as they root into the festering ground and push her skull aside in their insistence to grow upward, toward the Spire. Teeth rip wide as she takes a passing snap at either forming chrysalis, and they spark in perfect resistance.

She laughs again, the noise somewhere between fond and manic and loud. A cracked tooth clatters onto the ground as she spits.

"Rest well, little Hounds, and await your third, once I have found one suitable," Draconua coos and growls as she backpedals from the hole, plopping onto her haunches. "That will be the worst punishment to befall you. None other than I will lay tooth or claw upon you, until you waken."

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

...All right.

Once was odd enough.

Twice, even stranger.

But now she was back, again not bloodied up or screaming, and beneath the Black Spire he could hear her laughing. This bore investigation, because quite frankly it was worrying as hell.

Vargas strode to the Spire's mouth, struggling to maintain the mindset and veneer of commanding authority. Truth be told he dreaded dealing with Draconua, because she was large, strong, and certain that she heard Him talking into her mind, or something along those lines--urging her toward true Chaos. To fight her was always a risk, and he hoped it didn't come to that. There was, of course, his Master's power...

I need to bear it in mind, he reminded himself. That he could simply... wrest control of her body from her. Or could he..? She was no mere Gembound. Whatever she was it was chaos-sacred, blessed by the Black Spire and touched by Him. Absolutely batshit, yes, but did her powers work the same?

But he was here, now, at the precipice, peering to where she'd dipped into the earth. "Draconua?" he called, and--half-dreading the answer--"What are you doing?"

@Draconua

Behind her, something large, assured— with only one title to befit such audacity, such unfortunate authority. Draconua whirls on him all the same.

But, for all her disappointment, no vicious coup d'état greets him. Instead, it's a hasty sidestep, a wheezing grin. "Leviathan," comes from jagged teeth as a pitchy, elated noise. Prideful. "Once again, I am returned to this nest." So exciting, isn't it? As much as he loathes her indomitable Chaos, she is both poison and a cure for this nest.

The heady crimson of her faceplate jerks toward the hole that Vargas is attempting to peer into, and— Ah! Too close! (Even with the distance he's maintaining, standing on high and dreadfully in more ways than one.) Hooked claws sink into the earth, tearing a shelf of it upward to close off the den.

Yet, save for that spasming motion and the twitching of both her grin and her flanks, she doesn't move from where she's standing. "This time, Leviathan, I think that I have learned the joy of creation. Not the mindless, easily-controlled sort, but that which we are."

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Well.

That was alarming.

Not the upward surge of jagged stone, but rather, her assurance that she'd ascended from destroyer to creator. "Branching out?" he found himself replying, with jaunty ease. Humor, even. "Moved from shattering everything around you to putting some of it back together?" One forelimb reached out, hook-claw tapping at the rock. "I am assuming this is what you mean. Following in Skahan's footsteps, 'creating' more cave."

He paused.

"...Because if it isn't," he added, his voice abruptly, ominously cold, "it means that either you are stepping beyond what you have earned... or you have gained the power of a Master to shape life. I am not sure which would be more concerning," he added dryly, after a moment's thought.

Then he waited. He had known that a 'casual chat' with Draconua would be anything but... but none of the options he could fathom from what she was presenting him with boded at all, in any way well.

@Draconua

Quick as the tide returns to sea, so goes the Sleepless Chaos's charitable mood for any passably "normal" conversation.

Draconua steps closer to her sealed-up den, and to Vargas with bristling hackles in mind and a widening grin. Hussaresque wings shuffle at her sides, tail and flanks twitching with anticipation. "Earned?" she wheezes, giggling. "I need not earn anything. Merely to claim it."

"Something many of your Forge refuse." The red of her faceplate jerks toward the Spire, glinting sharply in the hyper-contrasted light. "These will not be the same."

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

If she'd been aiming for conversation, Vargas had had no inkling. The raising of her rock barrier had said enough that she was on the defensive already.

"And did the Creator tell you that-?" he asked. "That you might come into His nest and disrupt His work as you see fit?"

But if she'd already given life to the stones... could he even punish her? Irritating, he thought. It was irritating.

"Do you think they will be different? Your design is useful, but," and here he turned, pacing a little to try and peer inside, "somehow I cannot imagine you raising children." A pointed barb but he had enough of an issue with it himself, and he tried to be reasonable.

That being said... "But you are right, in that so many of my own spawn have been wretched. Plenty are powerful, and useful, but some were not. Do you think you can do better? Do you intend to join them to the Forge, and prove it?"

He paced the other way, thinking. He'd tested 'kindness' with the hyena, but it had been only one spawn and he'd already ruined it. The other had never hatched. Could Draconua prove that her own methods were any better-?

The old Vargas would've had no doubt. This one, with revelations unfolded over cycles, held nothing but.

@Draconua

"Is it not in his very name? 'The Creator'," Draconua breathes it as if it were a quiet prayer, sacred and unholy. She must confess, though: "No, He has not decreed this to be in His grand plan." There is an unspoken "but" at the end of that— an upward, whistling lilt to her voice as she draws another breath and looks again to the Leviathan, unafraid of consequence. "This is no more a disruption than the shifting of the wind."

Another crooked grin, then. "You should only hope that it places you and I upwind of that which we pursue. That it brings forth perfect Chaos, in His eyes. Not that which we practice."

With that, there is an unexpected challenge brooked, and Vargas's own dismissal of his pride in admitting to failure— of several accounts. But, the Sleepless Chaos understands the imperfections of experimentation; and one would be startled to say that she nearly sympathizes with it. True Chaos is flawed and inconsistent, and in her own perfectly destructive nature, she is flawed.

Thus, creation.

"No living thing can hope to predict what form my ruin will take. Mindless Hounds make a pitiful army for the mindful. I find myself too enraptured by the scent of blood to impress command upon them." Draconua lowers her muzzle and her voice, then, into a conspirator's whisperings, "They should belong to His Forge and His name, and no further. Mine, and mine alone, Leviathan— They'll need not to be motivated by hopes for something as simple as a name, nor the permission to breathe. Only devotion to Order's rupturing."

Her tail lashes in her excitement, and again as an idea blooms at the base of her skull and she reflects upon it and so suddenly changes course. "Perfect things come in threes, do they not, Leviathan?"

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Oh, well, he'd try reason. "Draconua, how am I meant to show my 'pathetic spawn' or whatever you might call them consequences if you yourself refuse to obey them." It was a weary statement, more than a question, but he left it hanging in the air for a moment despite her offer. Or her... suggestion. Whatever it had been.

Which he was thinking over, but maybe not how she imagined it.

Her idea of a successful spawn was not his own, he could almost guarantee that. But he was curious as to what she might churn out, psychologically-speaking, after they had grown to adulthood. Did he want to subject one of his own spawn to such a thing-? Not particularly. But, still, another experiment such as this could only help things, could it not-?

And what of the gift Zoey had obtained for him, only the day before?

He tipped his head, studying Draconua, sitting on his haunches. The magic reached out, intertwining with Draconua and her chaos-addled heart. What returned to him was... well, it was oddly mild. He struggled to categorize it, outside her exuberance that was very much not directed at him. It was... an idle sort of respect? She was listening to him, but she did not, necessarily, like him. Hmm. Could he work with this-?

"Threes. I suppose it is time for negotiation." Obviously, he was not about to give her a part of himself to simply throw away to her madness, a part that would serve Chaos but not the Forge. Adding to Chaos in the actual nest benefitted nothing. "You might test them in Centaurus, when it is done. It is reopened. Awakened. -Do you know what it is?" He eyed her. Perhaps it would pique her interest, or maybe not.

"As for children... I need something to tell the rest of the Forge. Some reason it is all right for you, but not for them, to break our rules, Draconua." He spoke mildly, with a deliberately "reasonable" tone. "Creating spawn is something reserved for those who have proven their service to the Forge. Creating their own spawn, outside the Forge, is reserved for those who have proven it twice. You have ignored those rules completely. But I also admit curiosity. Is your way better..? If it is, I will gladly adapt to use it. Rather than a punishment I will indulge your concept of threes. If you agree. I grant my life--unshaped--to a fragment of your stone. I take that child back to the Forge to be raised among us. And we see which winds up most suited to..." He gestured vaguely. "Life. Chaos. Survival." It was that, or she'd get two, and he would have to find some way to punish her.

And that would be like trying to punish wildfire.

@Draconua