ORIGIN

With Giggle mostly unresponsive, Kera began to get quietly concerned. Her gaze flicked between the hyena and the wall as Giggle hauled herself up onto the wall, confused for a moment.

She had no idea what the hyena was trying to do. She had no idea what she should be doing in this situation. She did not want to speak or touch the hyena in fear of startling her, but with her saying nothing Kera found it necessary to announce her presence somehow.

Knowing Giggle would be happier seeing light than being frightened by abrupt speaking or a sudden nudge, Kera turned her head to the ground and began to quietly focus. With her gem glimmering under a mane of ragged white fur, more blue-green mushrooms began to sprout in a circle around her, supplying more dim light into Canis.

With a faint sigh, Kera lay back down near the wall, watching Giggle with lingering concern, but did not speak. Not yet. She only waited for the hyena to finish... whatever she was doing.

When Giggle slowly sank back down from the wall, she did not at first notice the new light behind her. Instead she settled onto her haunches, staring intently up at the carvings, and spoke in a deep, absent voice.

"It was dark. Not this dark--but dark. 'Get back to work.' 'Get back to work,'" she growled hoarsely, and though it likely sounded mad, she was merely committing the phrase to memory."'Stop messing around.' Servants. Slaves. Bumping in the near-dark. Not this-dark but dark. Dark. Why?" She began to sniff at the wall, placing a paw on it for a moment, and then turned, looking around in a lost, absent manner, as if she'd forgotten where she was.

At length her gaze focused on Kera. Kera, lying in more glowing mushrooms--ones that had not been there before, Giggle thought.

Just how long was I there..?

The hyena paced over in a still-absent way, gently nudging behind Kera's ear in a vaguely affectionate gesture, as she might have done long ago to family.

"I saw behind, and not ahead, I think. I saw the dark and the shapes in the dark, and they were slaves who carved, or servants, but they held a master. We must spread more light. We must find more light-makers. Here--or elsewhere. Come."

The hyena stared, waiting to see if Kera would come with her. To help her, of course, spread light.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera's eyes had begun to shut again as the hyena brought herself back down from the wall, drifting off once more, but she jolted awake at Giggle's voice. "What?" She blurted out, taking a few seconds to process what she had said. "What do you mean by slaves? What were they doing?"

Kera knew fine well that the response she would get would likely be more half-riddles and answers that only raised more questions. She held back at least a dozen more, currently, as not to overwhelm the hyena. They were things she could either ask later, or try to figure out herself.

She bowed her head as Giggle came closer, allowing herself to be touched, before she pushed herself back up to all fours. "I don't understand why someone would need slaves to make things in the wall," she said carefully, following after the hyena. "I can find more light-makers."

She knew plenty already, even. There was Kin-Kin and Zevruu, though he might be evil. There surely must be more out there.

Giggle listened, large ear rotating. Abruptly she hopped up, turning and galloping with a lopsided, lolloping gait, vanishing into the darkness.

A moment later, like pale, blue-green stars, fungus began to spring up all around her. She could be heard chattering madly in the darkness, and then, as the glow increased, seen: a dark shadow frolicking--there was no other word for it--along between the fungus that was sprouting between the boulders.

"Make light, make light!" her voice carried back, gibbering almost cheerfully. "All the night, none of the orbs, the void may come, the eyes may come but I will bring light, light is here! Light is here!"

A moment later she bolted back out of the darkness, staring intently at Kera.

"The Lorekeeper told stories. She knows what others do not. I do not know where she is. Bones was with her. Bones stayed with her. But they're gone, now."

She turned and bounded off, again, leading the way deeper into the darkness, where the glowing fungus had yet to be sown.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera wasn't sure if Giggle had heard or not, but she didn't want to repeat herself. She briefly lost track of the hyena as she turned and ran into the darkness, confused for a moment, until she saw the dim bioluminescent mushrooms sprouting in the distance, supplying gentle light in the black.

She wasn't entirely sure what Giggle was talking about now, either, but she didn't seem to be particularly sad or distant. Perhaps it was an improvement-- but Kera did not know. Instead, she moved forward, preparing to spread more mushrooms of her own, until Giggle came galloping back.

"Should we find her? Them?" She asked. It didn't seem particularly good that people were getting lost. She wondered if bringing back the lights would help Giggle find her family. "Can they bring light?"

And then the hyena was off again, and Kera had to run after her before she lost sight of Giggle once more, half-limping on her wounded leg.

"Find! In the dark!" Giggle scoffed.

Still, all things considered, she was finding her way along fairly well, dark or not. She wound along the western wall and then broke off, making her way by the faint fungal light they'd together created to look forward and judge which way was best to head in toward the fortresses.

With a huff she started off into the deeper pitch black, pausing only once to try and raise another crop of glowing light: a beacon for those travelling within Canis.

"She is anywhere. Anywhere!" the hyena explained, glancing over her shoulder and chittering in what was probably annoyance. Not at Kera, but at the dark, and everything going missing within it.

Above, her Hallowed Caller circled, crying out in mournful melody; Giggle appeared to ignore this, instead glancing down to check the state of her crop of 'light.' The mushrooms were springing up firm and bright, and so she lolloped ahead, again vanishing into the dark.

"Come! Come! I will show you what was. Where do the bones come from, where? So many dead, yes? Before!" With this rather ominous question-and-statement, the spotted hyena ran off into the darkness.

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ROLL THE BONES

Perhaps Kera had hit a soft spot, but she was not entirely sure. She was entirely sure that someone cannot be anywhere, they always had to be somewhere. That's just how things worked. "When the lights are back on, you can find them," she offered. "I can find them while looking for light-makers, too?"

She paced along, pausing as Giggle did, turning her head to focus on making light. Nothing happened, forever, as just when Kera was beginning to focus she was startled by the call of the one-eyed raven above, turning her head sharply to observe the bird, squinting in the darkness.

And then Giggle was moving off again.

Stumbling to keep up, Kera padded behind the hyena. "Bones come from the dead," she answered knowingly, recalling the dead rats and fish. Her mouth opened to speak further before a realisation-- a horrible realisation --dawned on her.

The piles of bones lying around Canis were the bones of slaves. Probably. "All of them?" She asked in horror, voice soft. "All of them came from before, all of them were slaves and had to make carvings on the walls?"

She turned, briefly, sniffing at a stray femur, then grimaced. She did not know what the bones of dead probably-slaves were supposed to smell like, but they didn't smell too dissimilar from the rest of Canis-- dusty and kind of gross.

Turning her head back to Giggle, Kera realised she was running off into the black again, having to run up behind her to follow, limping through the darkness as she tried to keep up.

"Don't know," Giggle answered almost cheerfully. "But I will show you something."

There was a quiet skittering of bones as Giggle came to a halt again, and then a quiet sniffing.

After a moment, the glowing fungus began to bloom--and, slowly, it crept up the side of one of the Fortresses ahead.

A fortress--a shelter, a stronghold--made of bones.

Giggle turned, eyeing Kera slyly. "Do you see..? The Great Door at the black tunnel. Then in here. So many dead. The cave carpetted with their bones. Darkness. Darkness came; and who were they and why did they die? Why--" and here, Giggle turned to face upward, at the now dimly- and eerily-lit bone fortresses ahead--"did they hide in the bones of the rest? What were they hiding from? The dark. I think. All the darkness."

She chittered again and turned, staring wild-eyed at Kera, wondering if the wolf understood her; the Caller let out another haunting cry before landing amongst the bones, hopping and picking between them.

Giggle was likely unaware of how mad her conspiracy theories actually sounded, but there was something undeniably morbid in the bunkers made of bones.

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ROLL THE BONES

The realisation that these were the bones of slaves-or-otherwise didn't seem to deter Giggle, which send a chill down Kera's spine. She moved after Giggle with a faint feeling of dread, waiting to see what the thing she wanted to show her was.

She slowly sat back on her haunches, watching as the mushrooms spread up the fortress. It didn't click at first, what it was made of-- it only reminded her of the crumpled buildings in Orion --but once it did, her eyes grew wide.

She did not notice how mad Giggle sounded, currently. To her, it made sense. "But why hide here?" She asked. "There are a lot of other rooms, they didn't have to hide in the bones. Were they trapped here with the darkness? That would mean someone trapped them here with the eyes and the blackness, doesn't it?"

A shuddering breath and Kera was leaning forward to the entrance of the fortress, focusing. The sensation of magic flowing through her and her gem, creating eerie green-blue mushrooms along the bone fortress briefly turned her attention away from the horrible thoughts of the ones before, of their death and of the eyes.

Briefly.

The dim light supplied only made her realise that to make the structures, it required more than one gembound. Several of them had to have died-- how many deaths had been dealt here, she wondered? Was it truly because of the eyes, of the blackness, or some other unknown creature?

Kera didn't know, nor did she want to think about it, but the thoughts wouldn't stop. "What were they?" She asked, gesturing towards a twisted, broken bone. "What kind of animal?"

Giggle listened, watching Kera as she sat, as she absorbed what she was seeing, as she spoke.

She understands. She understands! At last! The hyena chittered softly, turning to pace to the white wolf pup, staring at her intently.

"No one knows. Lorekeeper maybe. But I don't know where she is! If it goes, and it goes--if it happens and it happens again. The bones are from all things. Little bones, big bones, friendly bones, thick bones. The things come here and they die and the dark comes, over and over. I don't know why! What happens?" The hyena then leaned in, and spoke with slow, precise clarity. "We must find out, or we will also be lost among the bones."

She then turned, pacing quietly alongside the twinned columns of glowing fungus, staring up at the fortresses. She paused, there, a shadowed silhouette in the dim light, before turning to stare back at Kera, her dark eyes pits in the blackness.

"Go and bring your lights, wolf, or there will too much darkness, too fast, to find our answers."

She cackled again, stress and madness, and it echoed among the bone fortresses; Omen took wing once more, calling hauntingly as he circled above.

She would listen to whatever Kera had to say; and then she would depart.

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ROLL THE BONES