The winds flowing within Monocerous appear to have picked up in velocity today. The connecting corridor fluctuates rapidly between a sensation of pulling and pushing, as if some unseen force cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.
Meanwhile, a tiny creature jostles free of Orion's entrance, lured forth by the churning dust and chorus of metal-on-metal. The remnants of warriors abound here; swords slip upon the dirt, tarnished shields buckle and sway where they have been rooted, and the creature runs between each pile of debris, hoping to make it to the other side without too much damage.
It is tiny - nothing more than a mindless lesser gembound. The creatures eight legs make swift work of some distance, while its light-weight body seems to be buffeted by the winds whenever it breaches cover. It is rodent-like, but feathered with iridescence, like a hummingbird.
The winds do little to help the tiny mindless thing, although they seem to calm once the critter ducks beneath the massive altar at the end of the corridor. Monoceros awaits.
She swept into the tunnel, stealing away from her home of Orion to journey elsewhere. She had listened, she had heard. Currently, there was a rumbling elsewhere, but something deeper told her it was nothing to be worried about. She suspected the Gembounds would be away to investigate it and felt relieved at the idea of an empty place, a lonely time. But ah, there were things she missed. With Bartos busy with his research and stones, he had little time to visit with her. When they did speak, they spoke of a return, a visit; and Senka thought of this now, her mind drifting even more distant than the reference.
Something scurried past her feet and an eye manifested near her, following the feathered critter as it skittered onward into the windy room. Bored and intrigued, she decided to follow it, pouncing at its body from one place of cover to the next. Whether it moved to dodge her or moved because it was ready to press forward, she didn't know, but it always was just beyond her reach! Her tail lashed angrily at her failure and her body fell into the shadows of Monoceros, slipping and turning around the darkest corners until she nearly had the rodent, manifesting herself just before the altar—only to have it scurry beneath!
Senka crouched, spying into the space beneath the altar, and let a wide, toothy grin greet the shadows there. Her body melted once again, following the lesser gembound as the shadows beneath its paws.
The little creature does not know it is being hunted. Or, rather, it is constantly avoiding being a food item for many of the beasts here - but it does not suspect its own shadow. It is quick enough and nimble enough to dodge the shadow's unseen assaults, but is aided by this unseen wind.
When the creature reaches that bowl though, things change. The air stills. It is as if the rushing pulse of Monocerus has stopped. The creature lifts is pointed snout and stands as still as a stone, as if it is listening, or watching for a signal.
Without any notice, the howling winds pick up again - back to its usual gusto - and the tiny creature spontaneously finds itself uprooted from its perch. With all of its spindly legs reaching for the ground, the lesser beast realizes it cannot reach anything. It has been lifted up by the wind and is forcibly thrown the opposite direction. The little thing coughs a small noise as it is slammed against the wall of the corridor; there is a small popping sound beneath the crunch of its bones, but nothing to indicate it has fallen to the floor of the massive hallway.
Jutting from the wall is a blade-like shard of brilliant yellow cymophane. The creature's body has caught upon it completely by accident. Beneath the gleam of its exposed bodily fluids, the shard's scimitar-like edge appears to glow with an off-white accent.
From where has this stone come? How long has it been embedded in this wall? As silence falls upon the corridor and the wind resumes it's whistling, the gem sits - and the blood drips to the floor.
She continued to follow it curiously from one place to the next—until it was gone. She let an eye manifest somewhere above her to see that she hadn't been imagining it, having never lost something so quickly when following right under its feet, and finally located its body impaled on something sticking out of the wall of the corridor. For a moment, all she could do was observe its end; she hadn't expected that, but she supposed many things were abrupt, especially if He wished them so. She pulled herself from the shadows and began to stalk over to the creature. Perhaps it was mercy for her terrible hunting? Did He not want her to starve? She would have laughed at the idea had she not noticed, then, the color of the object the lesser gembound had been impaled on.
She had never felt so frozen.
"Vathrahi," she whispered, letting a second eye take shape as she positioned them on her face, where she might have once had eyes, "...my sister." Gently, she embraced the bloody tooth of cymophane in her more tangible shadow, cautiously and lovingly pulling it into herself, into her world. She once used this place as a way to torture and scare the gembounds, once even keeping a hyena for so long it changed the creature forever—but she had learned to control much of herself since then, especially usage of the strange realm for herself. And so she was gone from Monoceros.
Back in her den somewhere in Orion, she had placed the gemstone on a raised piece of quartz that stuck out from one of the walls. She honestly didn't know where to start, but she wanted to do something. She wanted desperately to see her sister again. But did her sister want to see her? Like this?
"I don't know how Bartos does this with his stones," she said quietly, staring at the cymophane as she spoke. "But you created us as a pair, and I would very much like to have my partner back—my sister. I do everything you ask of me," she continued, glancing toward the thick shadow of her room, "so please lend me the power of creation, even if it's this just once, for Vahi." Then, cautiously, Senka turned toward her sister's blade-like stone and kissed it with her nose, unsure of what she should be doing to give it life at all.
"do not ever grovel ignorance to me." echoed a voice in her den.
With a rush of shadow and the sound of cracking crystal, the yellow cymophane was lifted and turned, cracked with a darkness yet still it held its brilliant yellow shine. And in the back of Senka's den, her sister's chrysalis began to grow once again; only this time, with the flair of something more.