ORIGIN

Some weeks ago, a golem came clambering out of the gorges of Monocerous; a ponderous boulder in the wind storm, its footfalls like the rumble of a distant storm. It climbed, step by slow step, up to the tunnel to Orion, and settled as a monolith not far beyond the offering-bowl statue. There it sat, silent in the strange flickering tunnel lights; and after some time, passers-by took no notice of it, for they could not see what (if anything) it was guarding.

So the weeks went by. The lights blinked, turned off, turned back on, and dimmed again; the mouth of the tunnel howled from the wind.

Presently, something tiny stirred just between the golem's great paw and the stone wall--hardly noticeable, a glitter in the dark. A fragment of--gold? no, the cuboid formations gave it away--it was gold, fool's gold, a walnut-sized chunk of pyrite; and thus the golem's intentions became clear. A hairline fracture crossed the hunk of mineral. The golem shifted, looking down to it. The fracture spread, spiderwebbing out--the stone split. A--mouse?--rolled out, shivering. The golem did not care. It reached down and plucked the crystal from the ground with unnatural delicacy and, satisfied, wandered away to its strange mechanisms. The mouse--was it a mouse?--blinked and shuddered in the dust and dimness, then shot away, altogether too fast for something so small and new.

He knew himself immediately to be Cycad, after the most ancient of green things from what would have been his homeland; Vastilagus, the runner form the desert. He knew also that he was not a mouse--not really. He was a marsupial mouse, a voraciously predatory little kangaroo-shrew from a dry, hard land; a kultarr, full of hunger and shining needle teeth. But so, so very small.

Cycad zipped along foot of the wall in rapid, awkward spurts, his toothpick legs too fast for his newborn brain. He was about half of his adult size, a joey; shaking, newly furred, and just beginning to see and hear. He paused and stood up on his hind legs, taking a moment to groom his delicate whiskers and have a look around.

The dimmed lights flicked on to full power, and he froze, grasping both the scale of the room and how exposed he was within it. The little not-mouse suddenly dart down the wall, taking cover beneath an old piece of armor. A strange feeling welled up inside Cycad's chest, and he willed himself to turn a dark shade of grey--almost disappearing into the shadow, assuming no one had observed his mad dashing.

Since her emergence and meeting with an ethusiastic painted dog named Orion, Sìleas was off wandering once more. She was in hunt of something to sate her appetite, as her stomach gnawed at her insides. The feline was pretty sure that her insides were planning to eat themselves if she did not find something to eat, and quickly. Of course, she could've asked Orion—someone that could actually see in the physical world—to aid her, but she felt like it would be asking for too much after all he'd done to help her. Although, it wasn't like Sìleas hadn't repaid that debt. Together, they had made it through their first few hours of life and existence.

And now it was onwards with Sìleas.

There was no set destination with Sìleas, as she had no idea where things were located or where prey could be found. Once again, she was just wandering, trying to sense for gems every once in a while to try and find anything that she could attempt to pounce on. The Norwegian forest cat found herself within a corridor that held a particularly strong breeze from an unknown source (Monoceros, of course), and she cast her spell once again to find that her otherwise dull sight was illuminated with one miniscule speck of color, painted in shimmering golds. Of course, she lacked the knowledge of words to describe hues.

Without missing a beat, Sìleas dropped into an instinctive hunter's crouch, approaching the point of light that she sought out and assumed was something to hunt. Everything felt just right as she approached. The winds of the tunnel were carrying her scent away from her target and she could hear nothing but the breeze above. Everything was going exactly according to plan as she came right upon the gem she was hunting down. Pinning her ears back and swishing her tail, she attempted to pounce on her prey.

@Cycad

Cycad huddled under the old rusted metal. The lump of pyrite in his sternum seemed to throb, but it was only his heart. The throbbing ebbed away, and his fur faded back to it natural dusty grey. In the way that children do when they have been terrified, he may have slept for a short while, recharging. Time passed. The lights dimmed and went black.

He woke again, some time later, and looked out at the world: It was still black. The little not-mouse stood on his hind legs, listening: Nothing but the murmuring wind. He couldn't see anything, surely nothing could see him. Cycad was suddenly restless. He slipped out from under the ancient armor and started prowling down the edge of the wall . . .

And was promptly pinned down by some terrible weight. The kultarr squeaked and thrashed, utterly stuck. "No!" he yelled, his first and perhaps last word.

@Sileas