ORIGIN - wait for the blackout

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Since meeting Kin-Kin, the reptile had aggressively combed the caves in search of the slime trails she had mentioned. Though her mention of it had activated a most basal intrigue, his curiosity and imagination soared the longer he spent searching, wondering what it looked like and more, what kind of creature would leave it behind. He was a relentless looker, crawling every inch of the rooms he chose to examine. She hadn't mentioned it being any place in particular, but she did bring it up when he spoke of Cetus, so that was the first place he'd gone to look.

Unfortunately, there was nothing there that would lead him to the creature. If it had left behind a slime trail, it would easily have sunk in with the rest of the mud and dirty water that filled Cetus, and after a few hours of picking through the trees Ghanyarah realized that he most likely would have seen the beast if it traveled through Cetus. He spent most of his time in Cetus when he wasn't out exploring the other rooms - Cetus was where he slept, rested, hunted. Surely, it wouldn't have been in Cetus.

So the next place he went was Eridanus. If not because it was closest to Cetus, connected by a single small tunnel, then because it was most similar to Cetus in that Ghanyarah believed that if the creature did like forested rooms then Eridanus would be the next best place to look. Ghanyarah by no means possessed any remarkable acumen on tracking a creature he'd never seen before, but he was pouring all of his resources into this search. It didn't take long for the curiosity to begin to eat at him alive. He had to find this thing so that he could prove there were more Gembounds, and to tell Kin-Kin what it was. And maybe just to meet the mysterious creature in the first place.

His long tail snaked behind him as he slipped through the foliage, his head static with each step, sunset pink eyes focused on the ground. The leaf litter was dry, crunching beneath his feet as he went; the greenery here reminded him again of Gracie, but maybe it was just because he knew she had lived here. He hadn't even realized that the trees were beginning to open up until he stepped into a clearing and spotted the glimmering, silver cap of the towering mushroom. Ghanyarah paused and raised his head, examining it. Hadn't it at one point been referred to something...? He couldn't remember.

Flicking his tongue, the lizard waddled closer to it and began poking around its base, searching for clues.

@Equinox

Nox's spirits had been lifted since she'd encountered Tukluk again, to the point where she didn't feel like she needed to press herself close to the ground anymore as she moved. She still wasn't... completely sure on how to go about this new journey, but she was getting there. She was slowly getting her head around the idea that perhaps it wasn't the best idea to be on her own forever. perhaps she just needed to find her place in the caves.

Now was the perfect time to contemplate as her friend Tukluk seemed to have disappeared. Where, the slimy being didn't quite know. But perhaps if the opportunity presented itself she could track him down and find out. She enjoyed the small creature's company, and found herself craving it more and more when she was alone. Perhaps she needed someone else to focus her attention on? Perhaps she should look for someone else, try to sharpen her conversation skills. The more she thought about it though, the more nervous ripples of texture began to spread from the top of her head to the tip of her tail. At 13 feet long, she felt like she shouldn't be afraid of anything at all in these caves.

Equinox wove through the trees of Eridanus even now, leaving each leaf she brushed against glistening with pitch-black slime. Fluid poured from her belly and trickled down her sides her sides. Her reptillian tail dragging on the ground smeared the puddles she left and created a clear and unbroken trail. all the while, her maw was parted slightly, a diamond-encased eye peering out at a world beyond her sharp beak.

Eventually, the trees and ferns parted before her, giving way to a clearing shrouded in shadow by the hood of a gigantic fungus. The caves never ceased to surprise her... Equinox slowly sat back on her haunches, maw opened wide as she gazed up at the mushroom... only to let out a startled hiss as it became suddenly apparrent that she wasn't alone here. Was that a tail, disappearing around the side of the stem? Was that the sound of a heavy footstep falling? The texture of Nox's hide became almost spiky and the spines hidden beneath her flesh visibly stood on end. With a quick motion she backed into the ferns once more, peering out to see if she'd been seen, and embarrassed by her own surprise.

"Speech looks like this."
"Thoughts looks like this."

tags: @Ghanyarah
notes: here

His snout lowered close to the ground, tongue flicking from his lips every couple seconds to taste the air and gauge if anything had passed through recently. Even dried slime would help point him in the right direction, and Ghanyarah was bent on succeeding. He hadn't even noticed the rustling of the vegetation on the opposite side of the mushroom, so engrossed in his search was he; the idle sounds of the forest around him faded in the wake of his inspection. He wouldn't have even known a creature emerged from the trees until it loosed a hiss, and that sound was loud enough to snag his immediate attention. Ghanyarah's head shot up and he jumped, standing tall on extended limbs with caution.

Whatever it was, it was on the other side of the mushroom. Eyes wide, the reptile shuffled backwards and aligned himself with the thick stalk of the mushroom, then leaned his head out from one side. At first, he couldn't see anything. The trees stood sentinel around the mushroom, bathing the ground below in dappled shadows and he searched among their trunks for a sign of the source of the hiss. His eyes roved over the ground and he'd nearly passed over the creature completely, so inky was it that it blended with the shadows. It was the gleam of its red gem that betrayed its location.

Ghanyarah's gaze zeroed in on the creature. He stared at it from behind the mushroom, trying to pick out its details, to distinguish its silhouette from the trees, but... he couldn't. It was all black as though comprised of a liquid shadow. He narrowed his eyes, tongue flicking cautiously. Was it a Gembound, or was it some malicious beast come from the unknowns of the cave, like the dragon? It certainly didn't look like it was a friendly Gembound. Ghanyarah felt it wiser to assume the beast was hostile.

Until he could prove otherwise, the reptile decided the best course of action was to prevent it from being able to attack him. He willed up his magic, feeling for all the moisture on the ground and in the air and attempting to condense it into a frosty prison. Water in the atmosphere instantly hardened into gleaming crystals as they spread around the general area of the inky black monster, attempting to close over it completely, save only for what Ghanyarah thought to be its head. If it had any intentions of attacking him, then hopefully this would stop it.

"Do not come any closer!" He called, still peering out from behind the mushroom.

@Equinox

Equinox thought at first that the other creature hadn't noticed her... she shrank down into the ferns accordingly, her mass spreading into the ground as though she was melting. But it didn't take long to realize that that was a mistake. At first there was little more than uncomfortable chill; then that chill became terrible, icy claws as the slime coating her began to freeze.

Without thinking, Equinox let out a bloodcurdling cry of stunned panic, what flesh remained unfrozen rippling and taking the form of spines. Like an angry, puffed out porcupine with spines as soft as muck, Equinox towered as large and threatening as she could. There was nowhere else to go, and with that civil introvertedness gave way to primal instinct. She had to get warm. If she froze completely, she would die here...

Then there was a voice. Calling out something. Her eye flashed in the direction of the voice where it had been focused on herself before. And for a mere moment, the animalistic fear in her eye turned into something a bit more... sentient. "I can't!" she shrieked. Even if she could have, she wouldn't have. She'd been retreating anyway, hadn't she?

Equinox had lost touch with her limbs, the formerly liquid-like flesh brittle and numb. The will to survive towered above all other emotions. Her eye lit up, sending out a light like an orb of flame.

She had no other choice.

In this moment of need, Equinox opened her maw, and superheated air streamed out. The ground at her feet burst into flame and followed her slime trail like a fuse. Now instead of frozen, her limbs, along with the world around her were on fire. With her slime as fuel the fire was burning.

And so was she.

Equinox cried out once more, bursting out of the undergrowth and into the clearing where the giant fungus grew. She was burning! The fire rapidly eating through her slime and into her flesh. Jaws wide and eye bright with despair, she threw herself to the ground and rolled, clawing at the dirt and thrashing wildly. She had to put out the fire!

"Speech looks like this."
"Thoughts looks like this."

tags: @Ghanyarah
notes: I didn't expect the post to go in this direction 0.o I'm sorry ;;here

Ghanyarah hadn't expected this to go so terribly.

It was only a safety precaution, after all. He had to protect his own hide, especially from beasts larger and scarier looking than he. He came into these caves as prey - a little lizard that had to be fast on his feet in order to escape the hungry jaws of beasts bigger than him. Over time he’d grown, he’d gained weight and heft and strength, and he’d turned into a predator, but his days as a fearful prey had never faded from his mind. Neither did the instinct to guard himself from other potential predators. He only wanted to keep himself safe.

So when the monster shrieked out that she couldn’t come closer, Ghanyarah raised his head and examined her cautiously. It was a feminine voice, at least that was how he interpreted it, and obviously intelligent and considerate enough to inform him that she could no longer approach even if she wanted to. He kept her secure and he was safe, and she had showed that she was smart enough to be reasoned with. He would eliminate the ice.

But then she took matters into her own hands - wings? Claws? - and a sudden flare of sweltering heat belched from what he thought to be her mouth. In an instant, magma-hot tongues of orange flame burst from the ground around where he had frozen her. The flame was quick to crawl up her body and run past her, into the forest, where he just caught a brief glimpse of a sticky black slime trail before it combusted in the heat. Before he even had a chance to react to the fire, it began to consume the jungle around them. Ghanyarah was met with a piercing dread deep in his heart. All it was was a safety precaution, a flaunting of ice, yet in an instant it had become a world on fire.

He could either attempt to extinguish the flames on the beast, or salvage the jungle. The jungle had always persisted, he thought. It had thrived here for an eternity. But he only had one chance to save this Gembound who he had unwittingly endangered - a mistake he made. A mistake he would fix.

Ghanyarah’s magic lashed out, searching for any moisture that remained in the air, yet to be sapped by the heat of the fire. Tiny vibrating molecules simmered above their heads and dragged down into a thin veneer of near-boiling crystal water, which he dropped the instant it coalesced onto the slimy, blazing beast. He tried to focus most of it behind her, hoping to cut off the feed of flame from her smoldering body to the trails that branched behind her. He didn’t know how much of the water would extinguish her flames, he just hoped that it would at least help keep her alive.

@Equinox

As she thrashed and rolled, Equinox felt a brief moment of relapse amidst the scalding heat and heard a loud hiss. The flickering flames died down almost immediately, instead steam pouring from her exposed limbs. Without slime, her flesh was wrinkled and grey, hugging tight to rubbery bones. Like a sad, sad raisin she slowly rolled onto her front, her maw open and panting, every inch of flesh steaming and stinging. But for all the panic she'd been through, the odd being seemed mostly unharmed... the flesh around her front paws was crinkled and dry and steaming, but intact.

She trembled, her sides quivering and reforming. Goosebumps rippled over her- everywhere but her shrunken paws.

And slowly, the great creature lowered her neck and began to lap her oily slime over her paws once more... shivers racking her form. She didn't seem to even notice that the fire was still burning all around her. The fire that she, of course, had started. However, as soon as she opened her maw just a sliver, and her tarry saliva cleared the realization hit her. With a shocked gurgle, the reptillian creature began clambering to her paws, her front limbs buckling beneath her weight after only a moment. As she sank to the ground on her chest for the second, and then third time, Equinox looked over to the other creature.

Weren't they the ones who'd put out the fire? they had to be. Equinox didn't think that a fire like that would peeter out all by itself, especially not when her slime was involved. It was just lucky that they'd caught it before the fire had spread to the rest of her body; at that point, she would have been in trouble.

At this point in her life, Equinox knew little to no magic, except for this... terrible power that had reared its ugly head yet again. She wished deeply that she knew something that would make this easier. Perhaps there was something that would make the burning stop and her limbs return to normal? right now all she could really think was that when her limbs were nice and slimy again, everything would be back to normal. If she wasn't slimy, she wasn't okay. That was the logic that this slug-like creature lived by. whether her slime was frozen solid or burned off, if it wasn't slimy she would suffer.

Nox hated this. She hated the burning feeling in her forelimbs, how incredibly vulnerable and self-conscious she felt. But she wanted to help so desperately. She couldn't let the entire forest burn down. If that happened, it would be her fault. Now was not the time to just sit here and lick her wounds and feel sorry for herself.

With a deep, rumbling gurgle forming in her throat, Equinox drew her forepaws over her chest to coat them in a thin layer of slime, before placing her paws either side of her chest.

But despite the determination seething in her veins, it just wasn't enough to conquer the pain. Her bones were rubbery, and the burning had left her limbs hardly functioning, for now. Perhaps as time went on, she would prove herself to be even further detached from the laws of the bodies most creatures possessed... her limbs turning out not to be burned but simply drained. But until that moment came, she was doomed to simply struggle and end up sprawling, again and again and again.

Eventually, Equinox gave up, and she closed her jaws to hide that diamond-encased eye that was full of shame.

"Speech looks like this."
"Thoughts looks like this."

tags: @Ghanyarah
notes: here

Ghanyarah kept his distance, watching the blazing creature - as soon as he dumped water on her, she turned into a massive, steaming inkblot, clouds of humidity almost rolling off of her body. He narrowed his eyes, flicking his tongue warily. Out of the corner of his gaze, he could still see the blaze among the trees, but his first priority was ensuring this Gembound was okay. She wasn’t a threat. Or if she had been, she wasn’t anymore.

Eventually, the steam dissipated fully and he could see her now for what she was beneath the thick, gleaming oil that oozed from her body. Her arms were a skin that was wrinkled and grey, naked, clearly indicating that she wasn’t just a pile of flammable goop. She seemed to be in pain, laying helpless in the dirt among the simmering trees, licking her wounds. He could see the gem within her jaws gleam every now and then, but he couldn’t see her eyes and he wondered how she could have known he was there.

But he didn’t have time to wonder. As soon as he realized he was dwelling, he remembered the blaze and how the heat continuously dragged its nails into his skin. Ghanyarah grunted and stepped out fully from behind the mushroom, peering at the still mounting wildfire. The slimy beast was incapacitated on the ground, but she was no longer on fire and therefore no longer his concern. The reptile galloped gracelessly past her, into the trees where the fire started to consume the greenery.

With a deep inhale, he attempted to gather water in his chest to expel, but now the heat was truly beginning to affect him. It made his throat feel like it dried up, his tongue shriveling, and he could barely spit a steady stream of water with his proximity to the flames. He only managed to douse a small bush before coughing, backing away from the mounting blaze.

"Speech"

@Equinox

When she lifted her head and opened her jaws, peering out past the saliva that dripped and oozed between her fangs, she saw the other creature watching her. She froze- were they going to freeze her again? she would be defenseless if they did.

But then, just as soon as she'd noticed their prescence, they were gone again, darting past her and towards the fire that she had started. Guilt swam inside of her, and she knew that she had to try again, to help. But what could she do? This slime was what was causing the fire to spread in the first place. she couldn't even go near her own creation. Her element was her own weakness.

Even still, she knew that she couldn't just sit here. Perhaps there was a stream, or a pond, or a spring nearby. Perhaps she could fill her cheeks with water and it'd be enough to help the flames die down, at least a little. She felt encouraged, but not by much. The fact was that this fire was her fault and so... everything felt heavy. She couldn't just sit by though, and it might have been humiliation that became her strength as she placed her paws beneath her again and began to haul herself onto all four paws.

But, as before, this effort was to no avail. again, her rubbery bones gave way beneath her weight and she was sent sprawling forward, much to her chagrin. For now, it seemed, the creature was doomed to sit back and watch in an ever-growing puddle of her own slime.

"Speech looks like this."
"Thoughts looks like this."

tags: @Ghanyarah
notes: here

No matter how hard he tried to put out the flames, all the effort he put into it was futile. The fire continued to rip through the trees around them, climbing up their trunks and igniting the fresh green leaves, casting a bitter and wet stench into the air. Ghanyarah hadn't even noticed that the slimy dragon was trying to right herself. All of his focus was on dousing this fire before it ate up the entire jungle room. So close to the mushroom, too, he knew the effects of the fire would be visible to everyone once they came around. Honestly, he was surprised that nobody had stumbled onto the fire yet, given how obvious the thick, dark smoke was, coiling above their heads.

He stepped back as the heat of the flame licked at his face, sunset eyes darting frantically in search of an answer. The air was always humid here, and there must have been water somewhere nearby to make it such a damp place. Ghanyarah reached out with his magic in every direction, hoping to pull the water closer to him. After a moment, he could see tendrils of crystal clear liquid manifest in the air, twisting ropes slowly winding towards him. He gathered it up into a large bubble and blasted another patch of fire, watching it sizzle with defeat. There were still a few more patches though, and Ghanyarah wasn't sure how long he could keep this up.

@Equinox

Equinox hated feeling this powerless. For such a strange and towering creature to feel truly powerless might have seemed hypocritical to the unknowing, but she did. She often felt powerless, in fact; she was powerless to change her frightening looks, powerless to change the fear that creatures often felt when they looked at her, and moreover, powerless to stop the effects of her magic. There was simply nothing she could do, she felt.

But she had to try. She couldn't simply watch the world burn.

For what seemed like the hundredth time, Equinox gathered her paws under herself and tried again. This time, desperation was replaced by a final, mellowed heave. If this failed, she didn't know what she'd do. Slowly, but surely, the great being rose up, dry paws trembling and pitch-black, oily claws sinking into the mossy earth. Slime slowly began to ooze down her forelimbs, hiding her dried out, wrinkled skin once more to give it a chance to heal beneath a protective coat. Then she was on her feet. Wobbling dazedly and unsteadily the dragon swung her head as she tried to work out a path to the nearest water source. there had to be something nearby, hadn't there?

The race was on, now. Her skin had begun to reform into waves of spikes again as the pressure mounted, making her back look like it was covered in spines that were ever-changing like the ocean. Swinging her head this way and that, she began to hobble after the large lizard, hoping that they would direct her towards some way she could be useful.

"Speech looks like this."
"Thoughts looks like this."

tags: @Ghanyarah
notes: here

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