ORIGIN - SLEEPLESS NIGHTS.

Tiny entry for Beginnings, but open to anyone interested
in intercepting and interacting with Draconua ... on purpose ...
Just remember that prolonged proximity to the Black Spire
incurs Corruption points for non-corrupted Gembound!
For two weeks now, Draconua has been sleepless. Unable to wander Elsewhere in her dreams, sleeping on defiled earth. Her own den, infested with sweet wretchedness like a tar pit is too small for her to fit within anymore. Her restraint is known in that she does not simply wrench the earth apart to fit.

No, no... The burgeoning chrysalises within can rest easy, taking up a space that was once hers. As His Spire had once nurtured and destroyed and irradiated this body for countless eons, it would dote on these two bodies and feed them all His warmth and fire and cold and raw, beautiful entropy. She would dote on them, as motherly as one of her ilk could be: Bringing to them carcasses dripping with Oil and whispering to them sweet nothings of what they would become—

Dream, dream, dream. Her skull clatters against the Oilstones, her mind against their surfaces a feather-light touch. Teeth twitch into a grin, and she knocks them into the jagged rock. This pit was my birthplace, given to me by Him. Her gums bleed. And I have given you to Him. Honor He and I, and dream sweetly of what ends you will bring, of what you will take for your own...

A chattering laugh punctuates Draconua pulling away, then a screech of claws drawing down either shell. "Cherish His gifts, when you come," she croons in her own voice, a rasping wheeze at the edge of every syllable; a backstep from the nursery at every note. "I will return to you, again and again."

The Sleepless Chaos heaves as she turns to Draco's full breadth, licks her bloodied teeth and returns to her post simmering at the foot of the Spire, watching the Forge from behind her mask.

The Zoisite knew well to stay clear of Draconua and the Black Spire. One did not live in proximity to either without knowing the threat the posed. The two had never exchanged words to the Zoisite's memory, though they-- it-- It remembered Draconua's bellowing voice, booming across the gathered Forge, moments before...

But it was not the Zoisite, not the grub or worm, who hears Draconua's sing-song hiss. It is Zoey who hears the not-lullaby, pulled from her quiet thoughts as she drags a hollowed gourd full of fresh harvest from the gardens. Bringing food to the Forge before she leaves for Canis on her patrol with her siblings.

Zoey had been... if it could be said... almost neglectful in her avoidance of Draconua. It was out of fear; a safe, healthy thing. But the days when she brought food and lights and flowers to the rest of her family were skirted carefully around the Black Spire, as though she could simply ignore the black sheep of the Forge.

It was, ostentatiously, the correct move.

But Zoey... well, she did like to be a messy, lived-in mistake of a living thing, didn't she? And the sound of Draconua's voice drew her attention for the first time in all of the cycles they had spent as neighbors-instead-of-family, and before she realized what she was doing, she found herself in the oppressive, burning light of the Black Spire, standing before the crater that two chrysalises nested within, crouched in Draconua's shadow.

"... Draconua," Zoey greeted with a soft click of her mandibles. "Are those your...?" Children. Daughters. Spawn.

@Draconua

Draconua does not move for the thing crouching in her shadow.

No, she merely observes as she— more a soft worm than the spiny, terrible thing that she can be to have— makes her unceremonious first approach; willfully, and not in lockstep with the rest of Vargas's ilk as they moved to meet the infestation in Leo. Not with mandibles bared, but gently clicking. Asking a curious question.

So tragic that the Sleepless Chaos had been too troubled by dragons to know that those shears were just as effective put to flesh as they were delicate stems. Nor to know that the Zoisite has earned that so-called right to be so gentle and nurture a garden that the Leviathan himself has so specifically and strictly urged her not to ravage, if she must destroy any part of Pegasus at all.

Nor to know that the Zoisite is not like her creator, whimpering and spoiled and wasting.

Draconua's opinion of Zoey, then, isn't of a mighty sort. It is merely a contribution to her own disdain for all that the Forge does not represent; Zoey is but a poor, unknowing follower among many.

She grins even though she does not so much as lift her head to greet the little sheep. "Is it a garden of my very own? Indeed, it is." Talons curl into the earth and her tail lashes from hook-shape to hook-shape, both gestures stifling the pride that wells up in her breast as she coos, "Mine curious, wonderful little seeds of Chaos."

@Zoey

A garden? The phrase was electrified surprise, biting at the tips of her talons. Zoey craned her head back, her bright golden eyes alighting upon Draconua's towering, brooding form. It was quite possibly the exact opposite of a response that she had expected from the monster that tore off throbbing, oil-soaked tendrils from her own body and swallowed them whole in a display intended to... intimidate, the rest of the Forge.

Zoey felt foolish, immediately. She had made judgements of Draconua, despite-- despite knowing better. Of course, the Valkhound was dangerous, deadly even, but... Draconua lived and breathed just like all of them. The Zoisite's quills rattled softly, a contemplative sound like falling rain.

"... That is a very poetic way of putting it," Zoey's voice strengthened, a confidence filling the vibrations between sharp clicks of mandibles. To not be shut down, but instead humored, it reminds her of Master Vargas. "I imagine they will grow like weeds," Zoey contemplated, and added as if to assure the mother that she meant it as compliment: "hardy and tough."

She shuffled in place, wriggling down on to her belly. The oppressive light of the Spire, so close, was enough to distort the world around them. There seemed to be a whisper on the wind, as though the black crystal breathed, but Zoey's attention was focused upon Draconua and her spawn.

"But they will surprise us, I'm sure." In part, being things of Chaos, but... that was the nature of new life. She wondered if Draconua expected them all to come out as little mini-clones of herself, or if she wanted them to destroy every expectation ever placed upon them.

Zoey didn't know Draconua at all, much less enough to make an educated guess. "What do you hope they'll be?" Words carefully chosen, but filled with genuine curiosity. Hope. Even monsters had dreams.

@Draconua