ORIGIN

He had woken up that morning and had immediately turned to the closest trusted adult and announced "I'm going to explode again." It had happened once already, and he had unfortunately toppled a number of trees in Pegasus and melted a good amount of rocks, but since then he had done nothing but grow stronger. What, were they gonna let him loose in their backyard again so he could tear up their vegetable patches and possibly disrupt the native wildlife?

No. Better solution: set him down in a cave that needed some good old destruction and let him loose. The only problem was the danger of being here alone, so he had been sent along with a chaperone - the hulking form of Azrael shadowed the Valkhound, eyes gleaming with interest, excited to see what chaos he would wreak upon Eridanus.

All the ways there, the stored strength and control within the Gravedigger mounted further and further, creeping ever-close to the edge as chaos began to cloud his mind. It wasn't that he hadn't stabilized, he'd done that before leaving, but simply a fact of his nature, that sometimes he just needed to let it out. Like a volcano storing its energy for years and years and then violently erupting, destroying, and going quiet again.

As soon as they stepped into the Maw of Mosses, the steam vent was thrown open, the tip of the mountain shattered, the Gravedigger erupted. It allowed Chaos to cloud its mind, rushing into places and spaces that had previously been either empty or gently warmed by its usually laid-back demeanor. It stood lower, predatory, eyes burning, and the glowing saliva began to collect and drip from the sharp edges of its jaw.

Azrael stood back and watched as the valkhound shot forward like a bullet and fell upon the poor jungle of Eridanus. Its maw opened, ripping leaves and fungus alike from their branches, claws scouring into the earth where the largest blooms emerged. A flurry of surface-violence and rage.

It destroyed in a small radius for a while before it moved onto the next. Something like a flash of reason came into its corruption-adled mind, reminding it that this was not simply an eruption, this was training. Its ultimate goal was not to become an fungus-destroying machine, but to level cities, rain chaos upon the ordered world beyond their caves. It should practice for those coming times.

A grin pulled at the edges of its mouth. Yes...YES. This was not a forest filled with white, this was an open battlefield and each speck of mold was another ant falling upon its feet in an attempt to fell its superior. The Gravedigger roared with delight and lifted its feet, bringing those massive claws smashing down upon the ground, ripping up grasses, fungus, and earth alike, quaking the ground with the strength of its steps.

Its head swung as its stormed forward, letting loose another roar as more of the forest fell to its rampage. Its maw caught a collection of infected ferns and ripped them right from their stems, crushing and boiling them in its acidic saliva before immediately spitting them out in revulsion from the horrific taste of the order-laced fungus. Glowing orange splattered the trunks of trees, half-chewed leaves dripping with it were spit to the ground as it continued this cycle for some time, the sound of sizzling rising from the trees as the acid ate away at bark, leaf, and grass alike.

Its head was pounding with corruption as it continued its rampage through Eridanus, leaving a trail of glowing orange acid eating away at the endless carpets of fungus, and patches of churned earth and stripped branches as anything that got into its line of sight was immediately torn to shreds.

The Gravedigger was almost blinded by its own fury. Very nearly, as part-way through a swing of its head, the side of its snout collided hard with the thick trunk of a tree, momentarily pausing its path of destruction. It stumbled back, shaking its head as it calmed for a second.

In that second that it wasn't overtaken by corruption, it wondered what it was so angry about. Why it reveled in this. Why this all felt so good. Chaos was burning hot in its veins, energy it had stored for the last cycle was bursting from its seams but...why? Did it need to know why? Did it even need a reason?

The hound in its heart told it NO. This was what it was created for - battle, war, destruction, CHAOS. It should enjoy it, it should find joy in NOTHING ELSE!

Yes, yes, the Gravedigger would let itself go once again and experience nothing but carnal, brutal joy in its own chaos. Reason and kindness were once again swallowed by an endless maw of inky black and iridescence that burned and poisoned and ripped through it like claws in its veins.

Its fury turned on the first thing it saw - a tree. Not a particularly large one, but any tree would dwarf the rather short, crocodilian beast. It took this as a personal insult, that something would DARE stand before it, tall and quiet and inoffensive while it destroyed and destroyed and DESTROYED.

With a deep snarl, the Gravedigger lunged forward, throwing its massive, bulky body against the trunk of the tree, but even with its mass and strength, the tree barely shuddered. Again, it shoved its shoulder against the trunk, but it was too thick, too stuck in the earth.

A howl of frusteration threatened to rip from its throat, but as it stepped back, trying to come up with something logical, trying to plan something out when its every cell blazed with chaos, dripped with oil, something like a chanting rose from behind the howling of corruption. Its name, echoing through its mind, not the designation V-Chaos-Fifteen, but that which Vargas named it.

Gravedigger. Gravedigger. GRAVEDIGGER. WHAT WAS I MADE TO DO? WHAT PURPOSE WAS I GIVEN? TO DIG THEIR GRAVES, TO OPEN THE EARTH AND SWALLOW THEM WHOLE!! Eyes widened minutely, burning again with the passion of its release of control, and it reared and stepped back, snarling again as its claws came down, not on the trunk of the tree, nor its roots, but the ground near its base. Gigantic claws began to tear at the earth, at the mold, and ripping out infested roots that got in its way at a rather alarming pace. Acidic saliva dripped from its jaws, helping along its tunneling.

It took mere minutes for the Gravedigger to dig itself into the earth of Eridanus, disappearing into the soil, surrounded on all sides by the roots of the nearby plantlife and white veins of mold that reached into the earth. But its target was ahead, forward, and it began tunneling beneath where it knew the tree to stand.

It tunneled its way forward, massive jaw working exactly the way it needed to, nostrils closed as it held its breath against the ever-collapsing soil tunnel. It was blind, too, powering its way forward with touch alone, and then its claws began to snag on the network of infected roots beneath the tree. It was in place, now.

The valkhound surged forward, massive jaws fighting against the soil to clamp down on the biggest of roots it could feel and ripping it back. There was a deafening cracking sound as roots began to snap and rip, not enough to knock the tree over, but the blow it had dealt and weakened the tree's foundations.

It was relentless, a frenzy of limbs and teeth beneath the ground. The soil churned on the surface as the Gravedigger ripped free root after root, claws shredding through climbs as the jaws once again clamped on a foundational root and broke all the way through. The force of its bite most definitely snapped a tooth, as it felt a sharp pain in its jaws. Either that or a splinter but WHO CARES.

The tree shivered, now, as its roots were literally torn apart from under the ground. It was weakening.

It clawed its way up, then, struggling to find grip through the sea of roots, but eventually it felt a wood ceiling - the thickest of the roots, their base, and it threw itself forward as hard as it could. The tree shivered again, violently, as the valkhound sabotaging its roots now tried to separate it completely from its legs, but still it held on for dear life, despite the Gravedigger's relentless attacks.

It did not relent. It did not calm or give up. The tree held fast to the earth, but its roots were breaking and snapping and the trunk was trembling as the Valkhound beneath fought to destroy it. With a final heave and a roar, it surged up, clawing at roots and hard soil, cleaving through white threads that had infested the earth, cutting away more and pushing harder and harder at the edge of the tree before it finally gave.

There was a loud groaning in the forest as the infected tree began to fall, the last of its connected roots rising from the earth as the Gravedigger pushed them out of its way in its eruption from the ground beneath the tree. Snapping, creaking, and a final crash echoed through the infested woods as it at last succeeded in felling the tree.