ORIGIN

He hadn't realized how intensely he'd been clenching his powerful jaw until the spider had stopped struggling, and he no longer felt the need to force its head down on the ice spike. It began to finally cease resistance, and already he could feel the nerves in its legs begin to retract its appendages inward, some kind of death response. Ghanyarah released the head, huffing, taking the time to relish a deep breath of air. His own heart was racing, his eyes wide, his blood thrumming in his ears, and all he could do was breathe. He had defeated it. He won. "Told you I'd fuck you up." Ghanyarah wheezed and let his clawed hands relax. He allowed another few seconds before attempting to struggle free of the spider's grip.

That was when he'd come to realize the certain difficulty in his movements. Ghanyarah wriggled, and then he noticed that his hind legs had begun to feel numb. While his vision remained spotty, his lower half was starting to tingle, and his motor control was decreasing rapidly. He panicked again, turning his head back to see why exactly he couldn't move his legs, and he hadn't even felt it before - the adrenaline must have blinded him to it - but there was a deep gouge in his right flank, where the spider had broken free of its icy binds and sunk its fangs into his hide. Scarlet smeared the scales, and he came to understand with creeping dread that its poison was now coursing through his veins.

"Oh..." Ghanyarah blinked. He struggled again, pushing with his front half to try and free himself from the mess of silk and the spider's corpse, but his front half was growing numb as well. Before long, he was too weak to even hold himself up right. The last thing the komodo had managed to do was roll his head towards Eve and Tal'at, his eyes fluttering with a drowsy paralysis. "I've been... bit..." He slurred as numbness too crept into his face. And then, the dragon dropped out cold, collapsing in the arms of the spider.

For a while, all there was was blackness. Blackness in his vision, in his limbs, in his mind. He felt like he was barely alive, or maybe just sleeping - but consciousness was strange and fickle when one was nearly completely paralyzed and flickering in and out of awareness. The sound of Dragon's concerned bellow was foggy, as though it was coming up from beneath the water and Ghanyarah was grappling for an understanding of it. Despite hearing it and knowing the voice, his brain was sluggish to pin a face to it or even make sense of the noise. He willed his eyes to open, but nothing happened; he willed his legs to move, to shift and turn his head towards the noise, but he couldn't. Somewhere, if he should delve into his consciousness, he wondered if it was a threat and if he was really going to die.

The sound was gone, but he could sense the Gembound nearby. Whatever was going on, Ghanyarah was unable to react - he was, for all intents and purposes, down for the count. He just... hoped... somebody would get his prizes back to Aquarian's pile.