ORIGIN - Making Volcanoes Explode

Everything had gone quite. There were whispers, murmurs on the breeze but the Core itself was stuffy in its silence. Drawing in a breath, he exhaled and pursed his lips glaring up at the peak of the Spire.

Since Raheerah, he had gone back to Eridanus but saw no conquest in keeping Booker prisoner. They had faded, disappeared themselves and he had no reason to seek them out so they were free to continue their pitiful lives elsewhere. Much of what he would consider some form of stability and direction had deserted him. As Khloros had predicted, he had teetered on the edge for far too long, the plague pony himself could see he was diseased. Only now he had plummeted steeply off the edge, engulfed by whatever it was that lay within him. Days of sickness had followed, he found himself drawn to the Core. Comforted by the Spire as its presence continued to supply him with a source of life that he had found no point in living personally. His conscious had abandoned him but the primal instinct, the need to survive. to continue, had kept him alive.

An earthquake had shaken and disturbed his ostracism. Cracks and splits in the rock caused half the cave to come crashing down on him. It buried him without a trace, his gemstone almost cleaved from his throat. Death was a certainty, but his gemstone wouldn't let its host die as it used the earthquake's erratic magic to force Louie's body like a puppeteer out and through the the thinnest gap. Scrapes, cuts and his throat gashed open had Louie laying there. Bleeding out, there were no thoughts going through his head as once again his gemstone forced the bacteria to heal. A new energy, one that he hadn't experienced before was also called upon. Perhaps in the earthquake he had acquired additional. With this, his gemstone forced it to make a patchwork of the tattered remains of his throat. Coupled with fauna cleanse, it worked tirelessly at piecing together his broken body.

Laying there, his one eye staring out across the dirt he wasn't aware as the colour drained from it. What had previously been deep amber became replaced with dull grey. His spirit was gone, his autonomous self had been removed and instead replaced with nothing more than the husk of his gemstone as it persevered. Easily, it could be cleaved and find a new host but it wasn't worth it. It felt no feelings, its only desire was to keep glowing and not become just another crystal in the dirt. All the sickening thoughts that Louie felt remained, his warped mind was still there, but it had been repressed for his own self preservation. That arrogant cocky man he used to be had been wiped.

Ostracism had landed him in this situation, his lack of interaction had driven him to withdraw in on his thoughts. Now it had caused him to withdraw to the deepest realms of his subconscious until he was no more. All sense of morality and honour had disappeared too. There was no fear, no sadness, no joy.

As he glared up at the Spire, he twitched as he could sense the water speaking to him once again. Though it was all his insanity, he wouldn't comply by stepping towards it. Giving it what it wanted to mock him and laugh at his failure. Grey eye sweeping the area around the Spire, he began his daily rituals of moving the rocks from once side, to the other. One by one, he counted them. Exactly twelve were in the pile and he carefully picked them up in his jaws and moved them to the other side. Patting them gently with his forepaw as he placed them down, he moved back around once again to pick another one up.

Twice a day, he would perform this. By nightfall they always were in the same position. Nothing broke his focus. The gurgling of his stomach was constantly ignore. Everything tasted like ash in his mouth anyway so he only ate when the gemstone decided it was a necessity to living. So that was once a day, a small lizard, frog or rodent. It just worked out that way.

but the thought of fresh meat...

... it is making me ill

δεξιά . κέντρο . αριστερά

A sickness filled the massive host of a dog, one that left the cerberus' paws dragging as he walked. There was a curiosity about the room of blue and green lights, an energy that buzzed through him... But he felt nothing but exhausted as he hauled himself away from the mess of event after event in the deadly cavern of crystals and moss.

Kerberos paws led him closer and closer to the Spire, but a growing dread was building inside his heart. There were gembounds who thought him a murderer-- and worse yet, he was starting to believe it. His hunger for larger and larger kills had not faded, but his refusal to hunt was making him weaker and tired. His once glistening white coat was dull, his pink eyes closing and opening slowly, looking around with a lack of enthusiasm that he had once felt so strongly.

The truth of the matter was that the canine had no idea where he stood. From his standpoint, he had done so well, been such a good boy, but things were still pushing him down, holding him back, fighting tooth and claw with him. Was he a monster, really and truly? What did it mean to be a monster, anyway? Perhaps he was just in a mood. Perhaps he would get over it, eventually.

But there was something prowling by the Spire that caught his attention and so he lumbered closer, the distant smell of something familiar catching on his tongues. No, he didn't know this gembound... Or did he? A growl caught on his throat, his fur bristling, as an instinct to swat a fly out of his way came to the grumpy brute's mind. He fought it back and tried to make a gentle woof of greeting instead.

"Hello?"

There was nothing to indicate from Louie's stand point that Kerberos was by any means innocent. So the Cerberus creature was distressed by other situations in his life, it was of no concern to the fox. The woof rang out behind him, a confused greeting as he had obviously not been expecting a gatekeeper to the beautiful jagged point that made up the Spire. Head swinging around, he tilted his head, rock in his jaws, as he took in the newest addition to his previously solitary home.

Broken from his mantra, he wasn't sure what to do with the rock, place it down where he had picked it up? Put it down at his feet where it was supposed to go? Freaking out, he spat the rock in front of him and howled in anguish as though his own flesh had been torn from his body. Now trembling, the worn tracks of his cycle of pacing back and forwards was stepped out of. This 'new ground' was cool beneath his feet as at this time, at this specific time, he would not be exiting his usual walkway. That rock he had been holding, now lay a foot in front of him and he stared at it, his eye almost bugging out of his head at how it had gotten there in the first place.

Again, he felt that same sickening nastiness from within his core shake and rattle, his true personality wanted to show but his gem was keeping it subdued. Forcing it beneath the murky, grey and thick nothingness. Preservation was key here, he wasn't allowed to kill himself. He wasn't allowed to say anything too daring that would cause a fight. So instead, he just continued to stare at the rock, almost forced to spit out the words that he did, "Pass me. The rock... Please." Those words were venom to the lips of the creature he used to be, but the peridot magic giver understood that three heads meant more teeth. More ways for him to die. Louie had never ONCE apologized in his life.

@Kerberos

(forgot to mention that Mag has a cold now from almost drowning, so just... yeah. she's sniffly and gross)

She heard the strangled cry first, her ears instantly twitching and pushing forward in an attempt to listen further to the noise. It reached out into the vastness of the core, resounding, grasping the walls and crawling up into the silence if stagnancy. She recognized the voice. Even if she hadn't heard it in a long time, she still knew it. She'd never forget it. His was the first voice she ever heard, even if he held her in disdain for taking Diamondfang's side, even if he had since abandoned them, her loyalty would always be his. She hadn't known what became of him. Maybe if she had she would have sought him out sooner. Her loyalty would never falter, maybe she should have let him know that. It felt like a given to her.

The dog followed her paws slowly, long legs gracefully carrying her towards the sound, but he wasn't alone. Her compulsion had caused her to tread carelessly. She had to know first. Only she reached out, searching for the familiar pull of the bacteria. She very briefly felt Louie's, but it was convoluted, active, festering - and the second, she didn't know. Magdalena raised her head, swiveling her head left and right as she isolated the locations of the two Gembounds. The ghostly dog ended up approaching from behind the two others, pointing her nose just off to the right of them. It wasn't hard to detect her approach - her breathing was labored by crackled and heavy lungs, occasionally coughing and sniffling with sickness.

She hung back a couple meters, straw eyes gleaming with curiosity as she stared into the darkness. "Louie." Her voice, smooth and lofty, dropped into the air with the ease of a falling leaf, though it sounded plugged and somewhat hindered by mucus lodged deep in her nose. "Who is the second?" Magdalena asked, unmoving.

please won't you believe me?

... even if you don't agree

δεξιά . κέντρο . αριστερά

Kerberos had no idea what was wrong with the fox, but he saw the way the vulpine creature trembled and shook. He saw the marred face, and scars and wounds that seemed entirely impossible to survive through. The scent was still so familiar, but when the fellow canine barked a command (or was it a request?) the larger dog saw no reason not to do as was asked of him.

For some reason, the pup thought that this war-scarred gembound was easily an Alpha. At least, at some point, he had been. It was a strange sense, to see something that looked like it could barely stand and think it more powerful than himself, but he obeyed the instinct regardless. Bowing his heads, he stepped closer to the rock.

He froze when he heard another voice, speaking a short name and another... A question. The canine turned his three heads towards the ghostly, thin dog and for a brief moment thought that she was blind, like the white wolf he had met recently. If it wasn't for the shape of her plain, un-glittery face, he might have mistaken her for Ghost just the same.

The dog blinked and reached out his paw, placing it over the stone that Louie coveted, clutching it in his claws. The hell hound stared at the strange white canine, feeling as though he had walked into something he could not escape from. Something that terrified him, like being sucked down into a pit of tar.

"I am Kerberos."

His heads spoke as he took one step closer to Louie and gently placed his paw in front of the fox, releasing his claws from the stone and withdrawing-- handing over possession of the strange, seemingly normal thing.

And then, as the two didn't seem to want anything more to do with him, the big dog backed away, glancing between the two of them for just a moment longer... And then he slunk away, desperate to get away from the sensation of fear that was dripping in the air around him.

@Louie

;; kerb exit