ORIGIN

The alligator growled in thought, moving his limbs very slightly, one by one. The wounded one still hurt, naturally, but the others still felt intact; his weight had fallen on an unfurling back, luckily, or he might not be alive.

"They're fine. I'll live. Just let me rest. I need sleep. ...Tell the others I will return once I have climbed this spire." He spoke matter-of-factly, and grumbling, firing an irritated glare up with his right eye at the blue summit.

He'd get there yet. Some day.

"I'll just need to rest first. And-... I may need a scout to find a better path," he admitted irritably, before laying his head back on the rock to rest.

Dragon was seething once again. Once the initial pain had worn off he found himself brimming with rage, so that as he lay quietly on the scorched rock, smoke occasionally twisted up from his broken hide. He tilted his head to bite at the stone, hissing, growling.

It wasn't that he'd lost control of his emotions; far from it. He was simply, finally, allowing himself to feel some measure of his frustration.

First, Raheerah had fought them--and been oblivious to his presence. Oh, at first he'd fought Dragon face-to-face, fire breath to fire breath (though the true dragon's flames had naturally been far, far larger and more grand). But when Raheerah had fallen on him, when he'd truly damaged Dragon's hindquarters, the dragon hadn't even known he was there.

"Insssignificant," Dragon hissed to himself, bitterly.

He bit at the ground again, grinding crumbs of dirt and flakes of stone from where Raheerah had bled, snapping it all up and gulping it down as if consuming the lost, dried parts of the dragon would somehow empower the broken-bodied alligator.

Then Nemean.

Aquarian had told them, by now, not to aggravate her; not to pursue her, nor to let on that Aquarian had been speaking ill of her. But he warned his children, too, not to trust her. So their chance to kill her--which had gone when she buzzed out of Polaris--was now gone for good. She was off-limits.

The alligator thumped his tail on the ground, irritable, glancing about. He should go back to the water, but truth be told, he didn't have that in him right now. It hurt when he breathed, and he felt the need to cough, but it never came--just a slow trickle of blood from his nostrils and jaws. Though his magic had stemmed the worst of the damage--and continued to do so--it was still painful, and he knew he'd be here for some time.

The alligator turned to regard the Spire's heights with a glaring, baleful eye.

He'd climb it, before he left here.

He'd return to Cetus triumphant, or not at all.

It was just a rock. It wasn't worth his life, or death. He couldn't justify it in any way; he only knew that if he left without trying again, he'd regret it for the rest of his life.

No; he'd rest, and recover, and in a few days' time, he'd try again. Hopefully Eve would be back by then, or another of the flying creatures, who could find him a safer route up and over the crystals.

Briefly, bitterly, he envied their flight; even more briefly, he glimpsed a memory of his dream, of soaring on broad wings. A dream he'd never live. It didn't matter. Recovery, first. He couldn't do anything dead.

Weakly, irritably, the alligator closed his eyes and focused, concentrating on the magical energies of Polaris all around him--and those within his own flesh and bone. He willed it to heal him. Willed himself to heal. Satisfied with the sensation of faint warmth that responded, he lowered his chin back to the rock, to rest.

He woke some twenty-four hours later, the pain somewhat abated.

He flexed his toes, inhaled deeply, and wriggled a little, testing his injuries. He could feel the tingling magic of the previous evening still lingering, albeit barely. He was hardly healed--he was still mending, and would be for some time. Still, he felt he wouldn't die, at least.

The alligator huffed softly, and for awhile, as he lay there, he felt almost content.

He'd not made it to the top of the spire, no, but he'd tried, and for now, at least, he was warm, not starving, and not in agonizing pain. These were good things--and he'd learned, over the last few days, to count such seemingly simple blessings.

Dragon was not a creature easily bored. As an alligator he could lie motionless for hours, his mind drifting off into some in-between space--sometimes lost in daydreams, sometimes merely blank, empty--while his instincts kept watch. Right now, though, he still itched for action, and soon enough he found himself a little frustrated. He wanted to try to climb again, but he knew damn well he simply couldn't--he could barely walk.

So what could he do?

He turned his head slightly to regard the Spire. He'd spoken to Eve and Willow of possibly striking it with magic, to test the results; he decided that now would be the best time. He was quite close to it, after all, lying just at its base, beneath it. It would only take a few crawling steps to be in range.

The alligator huffed and turned, heaving himself along on his three good legs, wincing as the broken fourth struck the ground. His ribs hurt much more, now, he noticed--and he felt a sharp pricking in his lungs with every hauling step. He'd have to be careful not to let the broken ribs rip into his organs again.

He lay back down, heaving to catch his breath, eyeing the Spire closely. He didn't want to outright assault it; he wanted to test it, to see if it reacted. If there was a power inherent in the stone, as Willow suggested, then perhaps they could find a way to harness it. To find a way to use it against monsters like Raheerah--monsters against whom they had no other fighting chance.

He inhaled deeply, concentrating, feeling the guttering fire within him glitter and surge as oxygen fed it, fuelling its heat.

He wasn't aiming for a massive blast of flame, but instead a small surge of heat--who knew how badly it would react?

His intent was to let out a smaller blast of flame, of the sort he'd use to char shut open wounds, to see if the crystal resonated with his power. Unfortunately, the deep inhale brought his wounded rib back to pressing against his lungs, and instead of breathing flame, the alligator devolved into a painful coughing fit, instead.

By the time he finished his coughing fit, the fire in his gut had banked back down. The alligator hissed, a thrumming rush of air pluming out from between pointed teeth.

For awhile he lay and rested, even briefly closing his gold-glittered dark eyes and resting, for a time. His lungs didn't hurt any more than they had before, so at least he'd not repunctured them, he thought. Finally he took another breath, inhaling again--just not quite so deeply.

He remembered his practice with Ghanyarah--and it seemed an age ago, now. He'd learned not to inhale too deeply in the icier tunnels, because the instant the bitter cold air met his hot lungs, he would immediately break down into coughing. He supposed that his wounds would be something like that: he'd have to remember not to take too-deep breaths. He'd just have to also remember to start inhaling deeply once more after he was fully healed.

This time, he inhaled more slowly, and not so deeply--and to his surprise, the fire seemed to respond even more strongly than usual. A few stray embers flicked right down into his lungs, and Dragon let out as close a hissing sound to a shriek as an alligator could make, abruptly spinning over like a rolling dog on the rock with great thrashes of his powerful tail.

It hurt, by Cetus and Aquarian and a good rotting fish, it HURT. He felt a faint searing in his lungs, and then a tearing as he rolled, and when he landed upright again--angry and in pain--he could feel that yes, he'd undone all the healing of the night before. A faint trickle of blood came from his wounded lung and out of his jaws, and as he lay there and recovered, he cursed his foul luck.

The alligator lay for some time recovering, directing his magic over his wounds rather than into the fire that burned in his belly.

He could feel the small puncture in his lung mending for the second time, could feel his tired ribs aching a little less, could feel his muscles feeling just that bit renewed. Soon enough he was breathing easier, grumbling to himself, turning to watch the Spire with a tired eye.

"I only want to keep my family safe," he rasped to it wearily. "Why does the dragon claim you...? Why you? Why do I feel so much more... energized, here? And yet, there's nothing alive," he added slowly, noticing this for the first time. He turned his head to scan the cave--no grass, no ferns, no trees, no moss--nothing. He'd noticed that there were no rats, hardly any fish--maybe Raheerah had simply ate and bitten and burnt the life away, but Dragon didn't think so. Thinking back, he couldn't actually remember a time where he'd seen life in this cave.

Huh.

He turned his gaze back to the Spire, contemplating as he rested and rejuvenated. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. He'd still try to blast fire at it, of course--that's just what he did--but perhaps by discerning the thing's purpose, he could discover its power.

The question was, who had made it? Nemean? Aquarian had called her the Creator. And judging by what he knew of her--she didn't care about them, yet she'd led Raheerah away--well. Maybe she hadn't been saving them, at all.

Maybe she'd been liberating the Spire.

Maybe that's why that moth had come.

But why would Raheerah want it? Dragon eyed the dam, wondering what it did--if it was perhaps related to the spire. He wasn't sure. He realized, in that moment, just how little he knew about the caves. Sudden frustration lashed through him.

We'll never survive without knowledge. Yet without surviving long enough, we'll learn nothing. Damn it all--how are we meant to live?!

It occurred to him, briefly, that Aquarian's promise had been a lesson in futility, rather than a promise. They couldn't live forever without wisdom--and they'd never learn what they needed without living longer than was possible. He sure hoped that hadn't been what his father meant--but... he couldn't rule it out.

The alligator was still caught up in his thoughts about Aquarian as he tried to summon his magic for a third time.

He pressed his worries back and away, concentrating on a gentle inhale, an only slight intake of breath--yet immediately he was coughing again, choking on his own embers. He bit down hard and fought back the urge to suck in more air, to roll about on the ground in pain. This time he let it suffocate itself, and simply backed up, glaring up at the Spire, mind lost in his own failure and pain.

What the hell was going on?!

He'd been able, repeatedly, to use his magic to heal himself--but his fire, he couldn't summon. For a moment, he wondered if the Spire itself was causing him to fail--perhaps it dampened offensive magics cast too close to it...?

Yet as he thought about this, he realized abruptly that this couldn't be the case. Raheerah had been spewing flame from on top of the Spire--unless it was his? Unless he worked with it, and it strengthened him, somehow? A spark flew off in Dragon's mind. The dragon's flames had been extraordinarily powerful--had he found a way to reverse some kind of dampening powers from the Spire?

Don't be fucking stupid. He's just enormous, he snapped at himself.

At length he settled back, grumbling. He'd get a little distance, and try again, one more time, to cast fire on it. If he failed, he'd know--the Spire didn't allow itself to be touched by flame.

He'd tried three times to gently lash at the Spire with a tiny tongue of flame. Now, frustrated, he'd backed up to a distance of several meters--the maximum range of his most powerful blasts. He'd let loose on the thing--from as far as he could. If the Spire itself was what was dampening his magic, he'd know.

If not, he'd hit it with the barest brush of the edges of his fire--hot, magic, but not anything too powerful. He was afraid to superheat the stone, afraid of what it might do if it cracked. Of what might come out.

Dragon had no desire to be vaporized by a blast of pure magic, no; he just wanted a weapon, something he could use against Raheerah in the defense of the caves, of Cetus and its children--and his father. Willow had suggested that the Spire might be this weapon. It hadn't reacted to touch, and it hadn't reacted to being resonated by a vibrating, magically-enhanced shriek like a shaking gong. This was the last thing he could think of.

Gently, remember. Gently.

Inhaling too sharply with his broken, mending ribs would press them right into his lung again, even pierce it. The blood was still tacky on his jaws from the last time. So he took a shallow, slow breath, feeling the fire sputtering up in his gut--and this time, he let loose. As far away as he was, now, it wouldn't make much difference.

He could feel the exhilaration race through him, the triumph as a torrent of flames finally plumed from his jaws, the air before his eyes trembling with bright heat as the fire licked briefly at the underside of the Spire's pale blue crystals. After a moment his fire died back down, guttering away, and the alligator closed his jaws once more.

"That's more like it," he growled, satisfied--and then he waited, resting as he watched to see if anything would happen.