ORIGIN

The thin hyena staggered along, sniffing here and there in the darkness. Somewhere behind her was the white wolf puppy, Kera, and the two were on a mission: to bring light to Canis.

The orbs were out--and the wolf insisted that she would get them turned back on. The bones had told Giggle that the pup would indeed be a bringer of light, and she had already brought light, of a sort, with her: bioluminescent mushrooms that she spread in her path.

Giggle, though half-mad from trauma and malnourished, had seized upon this idea. Fungus was her element--quite literally--and she would be able to help. And, perhaps, teach the younger creature a thing or two.

"Some do best," she explained, voice hoarse from shouting the night before and, as always, deeply masculine, "in darkness and damp. Others need it more dry. Some need manure, or dirt; some need meat to grow on. Some like wood." She'd been trying out the bioluminescent fungus with various types of substrate, and she stopped near a damp patch of ground near a pool of stagnant water, where only a little moss grew.

Above, her familiar, the one-red-eyed Hallowed Caller, circled. Now and again the bird let out a haunting, peacock-like cry; but the others of its kind were in Cetus, and it never received an answer, here. Still, it called, its eerie voice echoing across the stone.

Giggle glanced up, then focused, trying to spread the bioluminescent fungus's dander, here. She'd had a mistake the night before--in her rage, she'd tried to attack another Gembound--a new hatchling, no less--with fungus. It had backfired, and she'd infested herself. She'd managed to shed it before it had done too much damage, but the flesh along her back still ached and, at times, pained her sharply, and she was being far more cautious, now, with her magic.

Take root. Take from me, and grow. Light our caves. Grow, and grow, and glow for us.

Softly, slowly, the little blue-green caps appeared, and grew, in miniscule amounts. The light they gave off was dim, and soft--but it was light nonetheless.

It glowed.

Giggle turned to Kera, grim triumph in her eyes, and waited for the wolf to speak, or to move on and add her own, or to ask a question, if she might.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera had not slept.

She took her new-found duty very seriously-- as a hero should, of course --and stood guard over the hyena while she slept. It had been a very long time. Perhaps the hyena slept for days, or weeks, or months, but it wouldn't have made much of a difference because Kera had absolutely no grasp on the concept of time.

The pup liked to think that Giggle looked better when she woke up. She didn't. She was still thin and loping and broken, and she was still paranoid. Kera didn't blame her. Kera had a faint idea on what had happened to her, but she wasn't sure if she fully understood. She wasn't sure if she was capable of fully understanding.

Now, she was being taught. That was a good thing. Giggle had told her that the bones said she'd bring light to the caves, but not alone. This was a good first step to getting help so that she can turn the lights back on.

Kera did not know much about her own magic. Having someone there who was more experienced was what she needed. "How can you tell what they prefer?" she asked, eyeing over the one-eyed raven above, briefly.

Her gaze then flicked over towards the sprouting mushrooms. Kera lowered her head down to the ground, focusing quietly for a moment, but nothing happened. Not wanting to admit defeat, Kera quietly sniffed the ground instead, as if this had been her intention all along.

She wondered, briefly, if she was too tired to grow things now. Perhaps she should have taken a moment to take a nap, but she couldn't risk leaving Giggle to sleep unattended-- hell, she could have scared away the black-creature-with-eyes by standing vigil while the hyena slept.

You never know.

Lifting her head again, the puppy looked over the mushrooms. "How many different types are there?" she asked cautiously, quietly. "I know there's some that don't bring light. What do they do instead of bringing light?" Everything in her head, of course, had to have a purpose. Things couldn't exist simply to exist.

Giggle paused to ensure that the fungus had taken proper root, and then moved on, padding quietly toward the cave wall. As she went, she considered Kera's questions, and answered them as best she could.

"Many kinds. Many many kinds. Brown and grey and black and red and squishy and firm and tall and squat. There are ones that smell bad--here--..."

The hyena turned abruptly, snuffling, and leaned her own head down near the floor, focusing.

For a moment, there was nothing--and then a rippling carpet of red-orange fungus sprang up, misshapen and smelling strongly--deliciously--of carrion. But Giggle was quick to voice a warning.

"Do not eat it. Take some with you, if you can. Carry it. It is good, to defend yourself--or others. There were beasts, once--snatching, slashing, ANGRY things," she snarled, chittering madly for a moment at the memory--"that came here, and then they tried to kill others. The bear--the great brown bear of flame--he tried to defend, but they tore him. And so I covered him in this--and when they bit into him to eat him they fled. It tastes bad," she added, and then--as if to clarify just how seriously disgusting it was, added the amazingly creative addendum of, "Very bad."

She considered the other questions, one by one.

"To learn where they grow you must watch where they grow. If you find it growing on mud then it wants mud! Things on wood want wood!" she cried, pacing restlessly to and fro now, lost in her own thoughts and in teaching, lecturing. "Or you can try it yourself, if you do not know or if you want to try to find a better place, maybe there's a better place, you can try to grow them everywhere. And see. And learn. Listen! Speak! Learn!"

She cackled shrilly as she turned, but again it was a hyena's sound of stress--even of grief--as if these words represented something long lost to her. Head low, she started out into the darkness again, still speaking.

"There are some that destroy what is rotting. There are some that can be eaten. There are those that give you visions. There are some that you can fling its spores upon your enemies and they see things of madness. It drives them mad, for a time, and then you may kill them, or run away."

She paced on at a steady, unhurried (if uneven) stride. "I can share with you the ones I know. You can even leave the spores on another. And check on them, always, no matter how far, until it falls away. If they jump into water it it is gone!" She paused, and stared out into the darkness, to her right, calling out suddenly and loudly.

"KERBEROS?" But of course there was no response; and after a silent few moments where the hyena waited, one ear flicking, hopeful, she turned and paced on, muttering irritably with head again held low.

I lost my link, to him. I don't know what happened to him. Where are you, my son? Where are you?

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ROLL THE BONES

Following, Kera listened with perked ears, attentatively. She'd seen some different types, but not many-- nor did Giggle give a very straight answer, but she supposed she wouldn't question it further in fear of overwhelming the hyena.

"You shouldn't eat things that smell bad," the puppy offered, wisely, turning her gaze down to the newly-grown fungus. It didn't smell entirely awful; it smelled nice enough that Kera bowed her head down, even after Giggle's warning, and sniffed cautiously.

"Does it have a name?" she asked, referring to the fungus rather than the brown-bear-of-flame, whose name, for all Kera could have known, was actually Great Brown Bear of Flame. "I won't eat them."

After adding this, Kera half-shut her eyes and exhaled quietly for a moment, focusing. More of the stinking, red-orange mushrooms began to sprout in a half-ring around her, adding to the blanket of fungi already created by Giggle. Her head remained low for a long moment, sniffing and watching the mushrooms for a moment, before she raised up again and nodded.

She listened still, drinking the hyena's words, but she did notice that Giggle was beginning to... lose it, if she had not completely lost it already. There was concern rising in her gut as she watched her pace, then moved forward and gently pushed her face against Giggle's flank, briefly. The last thing she wanted was for the hyena to become overwhelmed, but she likely already was.

She recoiled as the older gembound jumped, startled, and kept a distance. She made a mental note to take the spores all over, to different places, to see where they liked to grow. She'd find good places for them-- and good places for the light-mushrooms, too.

She was thoughtful for a moment, though it was broken by Giggle braying out into the darkness. For a moment, Kera thought that she was about to yell for her, as if she had somehow lost track of her, but it was a longer name. There was a pause. "Who is Kerberos?" she asked hesitantly, quietly, afraid to overwhelm the hyena further.

Giggle flinched, Kera half-forgotten until she outright pressed against her flank. She in fact leapt to one side, staring for a bit. She then shook herself rapidly and tottered forward once more, a mixture of grimly angry to have to answer this new question, and mournfully full of grief.

"My son. One of my sons. I think. He saved me, once. I--saved him, once? He was a guardian. He was brave. I lost him. He was a protector." She let out another mournful cackle--albeit more quietly, this time--echoed eerily in a strange mimicry by the Hallowed Caller still shadowing them from above.

Giggle started down the longer, slicker, narrower path that headed past her feeding grounds--another pile of far smaller bones and threads of flesh. The path wound to where she hunted rats among the boulders near the western wall, but for now, she paused once she reached where she often ate. There were some scraps here, too, of foliage, and a small and stagnant water pool from which she drank.

She spoke, as she stopped. "My other son, too. Lost. Bones. He was small but he marked blood on the walls, and it was beautiful." She sighed mournfully, then picked her way into her sleeping area.

Here she focused again, trying to again summon up the glowing mushrooms to take root here and grow, providing yet another source of light to Canis. She touched her nose gently to the ground as she did this, closing her dark eyes and feeling her spirit's link to the myriad fungal life around her.

Join them. Join the rest. Grow, here, and glow.

They didn't take, though, and after a moment she grumbled, nudging the other mushrooms that grew there. She paced around behind and lifted her head toward the wall; she had ledges, here, a veritable overgrown fungal garden of many kinds of mycelial growth at many stages. There were varying substrates, too, on the different levels: an old and rotten half-log dragged in from who knew where; some manure, dirt, wet stone, moss. She turned back and peered at Kera in the very faint, very dim light provided by the patch of growth they'd left behind.

"Can you spread the light, here? In my garden? I cannot." She paused, glancing over her barely-visible collection. "And perhaps there is something you would like to take with you. There is this black stuff--you can grow it and it chokes and smokes and slipperies. Things can't bite you, if it's on you. And there's this--this is the mind-render. The thing-that-makes-waking-nightmares." She stepped aside and stood, staring at Kera, hesitantly, suspiciously protective of her garden--as if afraid the wolf might harm it.

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ROLL THE BONES

I lost him. Kera wondered if Giggle meant literally lost, or if he had died. She did not know-- she did not dare to ask for fear of making Giggle somehow worse. Instead, she followed, quiet and padding after the hyena.

She did not, in fact, touch anything in Giggle's garden. Instead, she took to carefully sniffing the ground, eyeing over each type of fungus from a distance. With a flick of an ear, her gaze snapped back to Giggle.

The Lights? Oh-- right, yes, the lights. Of course she could. "Here?" she asked cautiously, gesturing towards the patch Giggle had just turned away from before stepping over and bowing her head towards the cave floor.

She was getting very accustomed to growing these mushrooms, now. They sprouted almost at once, as soon as Kera's gem began gently glinting under thick white fur. They pushed out of the ground in a wide cluster, supplying eerie green-blue light to Giggle's garden.

Moving away again, keeping a distance from actually touching anything, the puppy turned her head back to Giggle. With a flick of an ear, she considered-- not being able to be bitten was generally a good thing, and it would stop from things like the Goose Incident from happening again, possibly.

She wondered how that fight would have gone if she couldn't be bitten. "What's the black stuff?" she asked, glancing around. "Does it smell bad?"

Giggle stared, for a beat.

But I just told her.

She wasn't sure what more the pup wanted to know. Surely "it chokes and smokes and slipperies" was enough of a description for anyone?!

With a huff, the hyena plopped down--but she couldn't be angry, no, not with a beautiful, soft, green-blue void-killing light here. She eyed over the new fungal growth fondly before looking back to Kera, thinking.

How could she describe this..?

"It is not the smell. It has a smell! But if it is bitten it comes off in the mouth. Like biting old-blood. Slippery-thick. Then if a thing bites you--it has a mouth full of sticky-black, and you are safe." Then, as an afterthought--and in case it was a name Kera was after--she added, "I do not know its name."

The hyena gave Kera time to take samples, if she so wished, and then she stood pacing onward, down further into the darkness--toward the western wall.

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ROLL THE BONES

There was silence for a long moment, in which Kera only stared at Giggle with increasing concern. Had she somehow offended the hyena by having no idea what 'smokes and slipperies' meant?

But Giggle had stopped staring, and was looking at the light-mushrooms again. Had she... had she forgotten that Kera was even there again? The puppy half-opened her mouth, hesitantly, but before she could gently remind the hyena that, yes, she did indeed exist and was in fact standing there, Giggle spoke.

She stared a moment, blinking, then nodded. Deciding it was best not to question the hyena further-- or, for that matter, question the hyena's word choice ever again --she cautiously approached the black, soft frills that 'smoked and slipperied.'

Taking the spores and growing them on her was exhausting in itself, but she had managed to do it with little to no problem-- there were now soft black frills burying themselves into her thick pelt, half-hidden, but definitely there.

It was only mildly uncomfortable.

Shaking her fur a bit, she turned around and started to follow Giggle as she moved down along the wall, bleary-eyed. She needed a nap, soon, or perhaps something to eat first. And then a nap.

Giggle paused at the western wall, staring up.

There, barely lit in the faint and distant glow of the mushrooms, were the strange designs and carvings she remembered--and, old-stained and brown, like ancient tea, were the paintings Bones had done many cycles ago. She eyed them over, and glanced back at Kera.

"There were things here, before we were. Long before. There are thrones and bones and places, places we do not know or understand, in the caves. There are dangers from Before. I believe this place tells of them, but I do not know where the Lorekeeper is." She should check on her, really. Try to find her in the dark, and ensure that she could find food.

Perhaps when they were done, here.

Giggle paced onward, to the boulders that stood hulking and scattered a bit more distant. Here the rats' odor drifted, and she lowered her head, sniffing along.

"The rats live here. It is a good place to hunt, if you get hungry."

She paused, eyeing the area, wondering where was best to further spread the glowing lights.

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ROLL THE BONES

Turning her head to gaze up at the carvings and the blood-paintings, Kera was faintly surprised. When Giggle said one of her sons had marked blood on the walls, she thought it was some kind of metaphor for a fighter or a protector or something like that.

She didn't expect actual markings. Sniffing the aged, dried blood, she recoiled faintly. It certainly smelled like blood, and the thought was mildly unpleasant. She wondered where Giggle's son got the blood from, and how he was alright working with blood.

She wondered why he did it in the first place, but Giggle was already moving on. "Shouldn't we make lights here?" she asked, following, then paused for a moment. "Who is the Lorekeeper?"

Following further, Kera slowed down once the scent of rat hit the roof of her mouth. She didn't realise how hungry she was until then. "Are you hungry?" The puppy asked again, despite probably full-well knowing the answer by taking a single glance over at the thin hyena.

"I'm a good hunter," she added. "The lights make good traps for rats when it's dark, and I'm good at catching fish. Have you ever tried fish before?"