ORIGIN

Gravedigger was mid-lick over the puncture wound when Eleven said that and froze, almost comically, in place. It slowly took its mouth today, retracting the glowing tongue. It had tasted a little funny, and its tongue felt tingly. It hadn't even considered that the spines might be toxic. Oops.

It quickly spit, hoping that it would clear some out, but it was probably too late. Oh well. It would just drop a little blood on the floor. "Thanks," it returned in kind. That was nice, that it would warn. It, too, decided to take a moment and see the damage that the fight had done to it. Not much, besides the puncture. They had spent most of it just throwing themselves aimlessly at each other, so the damage was minimal.

And here, apparently, was where the small talk began. It stared at Eleven after she asked and then shrugged, raising a claw to point towards the Womb. "I came from there." Simple, straight answer. "Hatched with uh....the Black....Tangle? And the....Vale-theer. Vala-there. Something like that. Master Vargas said I will wreak Chaos throughout existence." It blinked, like this was a normal thing to say to a newhatched child. "What about you?"

The Gravedigger perked up, just a little bit. "Valk-hand. Vargas mentioned one of those. Lord...Dhracia. She will take me away from here one day." It was so...casual about it. It didn't seem particularly proud or excited, perhaps because it didn't truly know what that meant. There was a curiosity and a faint anticipation. Very little had been fully explained, only that it needed to train and be ready. But nobody else here seemed to have the same urgency. It wondered why, what made it so special.

It glanced at the tunnel Eleven pointed out. "I have never been there. I have never left." Maybe it should, sometime. But the rules had been laid out - no wandering. So it had stayed here. "What is...Tunnel G like? Does it have a big rock thing too?" Referring, of course, to the Black Spire.

It shrugged, again so casual about the purpose of its creation. "A little bit. Vargas said I must train. I need to be strong. I don't have a long time. And then Lord Dhracia will come and take me to wreak chaos. I hope it means I get to break things." It assumed it did, because Master Vargas had created it to destroy. It was what it always craved and enjoyed the most, much more then sparring or hunting.

Gravedigger took a moment to remember exactly what Vargas had said. Had he mentioned other Valkhands? Besides the Dhracia one that would unleash him onto existence to sow chaos? "Hmmmm, maybe?" He didn't remember Vargas mentioning anyone else. "He just mentioned Dhracia. She is not always here. She sounds a little scary." But if he was actually scared of her was hard to tell - it was hard for him to tell either, he'd never actually met her and he also had yet to experience true fear so he didn't know what it was supposed to look like. He would just say he was scared if asked and move on.

"Oh," he looked a little surprised. He had only shared prey with others so far, or eaten rocks. They weren't super filling but they were something. "I don't know how to hunt. I just know how to fight." Kind of. Limited battle training. He figured that it was more important then knowing how to hunt, considering it was his purpose, for why he was created. "Um...four cycles. That's what he said. And he just said I would leave the caves. I might die out there." Again, he didn't seem scared and he didn't know if he was scared. What was death, anyways? He had not seen or experienced it. He had yet to bring it to others. He wasn't sure if it was something to be concerned about.

Eyes widened at the...inside out thing. He tried to wrap his head around what that would even look like, being turned inside out but unfortunately he just wasn't creative enough to come up with a reasonable explanation. He also wasn't properly experienced in the horrific, gruesome displays of murder and violence that were required to even think of turning someone inside out as a method of execution. Chaos did some pretty nasty things to people, huh.

"Wow, that must have been....cool? No...horrible. Uh, crazy." It wasn't sure how to categorize "turning someone inside out" in its brain. Chaos said that was pretty awesome, but not-chaos said that was pretty awful. Crazy was what it landed on.

It shrugged, not bothered much by the thought of learning how to hunt. "I mean, I guess. I assumed I would be eating my enemies." Oh that sounded a LOT worse saying it out loud, but it was in the air now and Gravedigger could not, and would not take it back. It wasn't...not true, but he assumed his enemies would be eatable-sized, and also that it was not morally incorrect to eat them. They were dying anyways. Hopefully they were edible at all. "Maybe I'll practice. It couldn't hurt."

Another shrug. "Yeah. I'm looking forward to that a bit. I don't know what it'll look like. Vargas said there's a "sky". I don't know what that is."

Gravedigger thought for a moment, trying to figure out if Vargas had ever actually mentioned a physical size of the things he would be fighting and/or eating, but that was something he hadn't elaborated on. "Um. Uhhh, I'm not sure. Probably not...huge?" Here come the logic gears spinning in Gravedigger's head. "I think if they were really big, he wouldn't send me along, right? And there are other not-us things in the caves that aren't as big? I haven't seen them," he added. "But hopefully not too big."

He wondered if he could turn them inside-out. That didn't really range in what he considered a specialty of his, but he wondered if he should try it. There was a tilt of his massive crocodilian head as he considered it. Maybe if he found something with a short body and large mouth he could reach in and pull the insides to the outside. Like a bag. Ugh, that was kinda gross to think about. "I could try. I don't know how to do that, though. Should I try and practice first? On a Lesser or something?"