She knew he no longer sat here - that much was obvious. She could see the thing from the distance, where once it was like a bloody red beacon against the dark walls, gleaming under the artificial lights. Now it was nothing but a gray speck among gray specks, just the shadow of where a temple once stood, among forgotten ruins thought of as nothing but ruins.
She had been avoiding it as if it was something she could deny. Where her master once sat, proud and eternal, in an age that was never supposed to end. Never could end. The rebels had only been a bump in their road. That was what she had convinced herself back then and what she convinced herself now. Perhaps if she tried hard enough, she could get things working again. Catalogue enough gembound and assign them jobs so she could Oversee.
Struggling for purpose. Desperately holding onto the past. What had the great Overseer Tectus come to?
She barely noticed herself climbing the steps to the Throne, but once she stood in front of it, it was like a finality. The affirmation she needed to know that it had all gone to ruin. Never would he have allowed his beautiful blood-red throne to fall into such a state. And he would never allow such...filth to mar its seat.
A large arm came up, claws gripping the skeleton, half-encased in stone. Whoever had dared to vandalize it would be in so much trouble. She wondered if he knew already, if they'd already been destroyed. Perhaps if he didn't, he'd give her the honor of doing it herself.
Pride was picking his way around the garden, grazing here and there. It wasn't far from the throne, and it was hard to miss the giant blob of purple with its glowing turquoise making its way closer.
He was wary, alert.
They were always... not trouble, exactly, but something to be watched with caution. Maybe they were here about the offer he'd given Vargas: a question of whether the Forge wanted to help reclaim Eridanus from Order. But it didn't look like Vargas himself. Maybe a new child..? Grown, before Pride had met them?
He picked his way over, the diamond armor that sheathed him gleaming, his hooves clicking delicately on stone.
@Tectus
Her head swung around at the sound of hooves clicking against stone. Eyes narrowed as she took in the sight of the pristine stag, armored in perfect diamond, looking so proud and confident, and beautiful. UGH. She couldn't stand his type.
She snorted, releasing the skeleton to face the stag proper.
As for this one, she made a split-second decision to prod carefully instead of up-front as was her nature and instinct. She knew too little at the current time.
She'd turned her attention to the Throne, and he glanced up, then back to her as if disinterested. He took a few steps closer, coming almost into normal conversation range rather than standing at a distance.
@Tectus
Her eyes bulged.
These children had no respect. It was...weird.
Tectus, as far as she could remember, wasn't one that demanded the same kind of respect that many other Overseers liked. If her workers were happy and productive, then they could treat her as they pleased. If they slacked or rebelled, that was when the tough guy gloves came out and she ground their skulls into the dust. But now she didn't know what to do - because obviously everyone was slacking now, everyone was rebelling, if things had fallen so far into the dirt. But what was there to enforce, what respect could be earned when her title meant nothing? When everything that had put her on a pedestal and given her rank was now a ruin, an antique, something lost to time?
A moment of indecision, and almost a twinge of doubt, ended with a quick shift from casual, cocky Overseer to something more formal although still authoritative, still intimidating, perhaps the way she would address a higher rank valkhound. She stood up taller, prouder, looming over the stag.
A heavy breath, not quite a snort, released from her nose as her head turned just a little so she could peer better at Pride, eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
Irritation flickered through him as she finished.
He studied her for a beat.
If not, he had little more to say. Though perhaps she'd try to prove her claim. As much as he didn't want to be on the receiving end of those claws, he hadn't stood up to the likes of Astraea and Vargas to kowtow to a new 'Overseer' now.
@Tectus
Tectus was silent for a moment as she glared at Pride. Oh, she wanted to attack him so bad, he spoke like a rebel. Refusing allegiance with her, refusing the fealty he was obligated to swear. But she had to admit that he was right in one regard - she was freshly awakened. Things were different and it was utterly terrifying. An Overseer, lost of her position, used to full confidence and unwavering respect, now with nothing but a hazy memory and a bunch of gembound that didn't know her name.
For a moment, her muscles were tense and it truly looked like she was going to lash out at Pride. Silence stretched until suddenly, one of her back legs kicked out, shattering whatever parts of the skeleton were exposed against the crystal.
She raised her head back up, rolling her own shoulder back.
Rage rose in him, black and cold, and the urge to simply lash out with his magic in an attempt to utterly obliterate her for what she'd just done was immensely strong.
He struggled against it, showing nothing of it on his face, though internally it was that dreadful battle for self-control.
He didn't want to fight, exactly. He also didn't want her attacking the rest of the crystal-settled bones. He would have liked--genuinely liked--to answer her questions and perhaps ease her confusion; even moreso to bring peace rather than conflict, which seemed inevitable otherwise. Yet her violence irked something primal in him.
@Tectus
She seemed to have stoked something in that gembound with such a little act. Were they so easily shaken? What being had fit to put them into the world so weak and stubborn? She snorted, one ear twitching with the mild annoyance that a single show of superiority had completely closed off their conversation.
And with that she shifted back towards the throne and slid down, turning her haunches out, almost dog-like in the way that she sat in front of the Throne. She even casually set another forelimb over the other.
He almost laughed, at that first.
But Pride was, well, a prideful sort. His immediate surge of anger at all of this pushed him toward simply lashing out, and that was an impulse he had to restrain. It was a messy, confused sort of fury; that of old injustice and hatred of tyrants fusing in utterly ironic chaos with personal ego. There was some lingering melancholic part of him that knew his son was dead. That he himself was now chosen as a guardian against precisely these forces, and that he'd never see his son again, in any form of afterlife. Or Nassir, or any of those who'd already passed. That part of him had to pause, to struggle to focus and remember what it was he was meant to stand for. To extricate that--that noble protector he wished to be--with a tyrant-in-the-making.
Pale eyes shifted to the throne itself.
The fury that had set ringing through his ears was fading, but the cold anger had not. He could think past it now, though, and he wondered: what would that deer, the one he wished to be, do right now? Tectus was... being reasonable enough, if she was freshly awoken. She hadn't attacked him, and no doubt she could have, easily.
But the Throne.
His tone changed, by the time he spoke again. That faint melancholy leaked through. He sounded thoughtful, speaking to himself, and not to Tectus at all.
His gaze shifted up to Reseda's bones.
She'd served as a symbol for long enough; but that Throne still stood, and it was a greater symbol still. Tyranny upon tyranny.
His gaze flicked to Tectus. He'd almost forgotten her there, so lost was his mind on the Throne and its symbolism.
He would melt the Throne.
He would destroy it; turn it to burning plasma and nothing more. No more symbol of a fallen king, there to be picked up, propped up, by a returning monarch. He was careful not to spread that fire farther, to lash it toward Tectus, or toward Livius's long-dormant chrysalis.
He cared not for the bones atop it, though. No doubt they would fall into the fire, and burn.
@Tectus