ORIGIN

Khloros listened, and watched, staring emptily at the creature that touched his stone. It was curious, and strange and unearthly, and Khloros had the instinctive feeling that it did not follow the social and moral rules laid out by most Gembound by nature.

But then, neither did he.

Still, he had no reason to deny the creature its answers. He watched it, and he spoke, choosing his words wisely. As always, his voice came out hoarse and hollow, with a strange and echoing quality to it.

"I know the place. Red stone. I was there, once, and there was fire. All of us have different color stones. And I come back to look at it, to think. I have no need to return to the darkness, though I will, in time. We all will. I come only to think, to remember where I have been, and how long it has been, and all that has happened in between. To reflect on how much different," he rasped, "I have become."

He stared, for a moment longer, then took a step toward the other creature--a single long, sudden, sharp-clicking stride. "I am called Khloros," he told the other; "and I carry Death. What are you called?"

Somehow, he didn't think that this creature had a proper name, either--more a title, or a long-forgotten thought.

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BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

There was a new emotion. Content? Happy? Relaxed? Veil did not know the exact word nor did it particularly matter. He lay on his stomach, quietly touching the remains of the chrysalis. He had since pulled his eyes away from Khloros, some watching the chrysalis quietly and others shutting over contentedly.

A second claw joined the first, touching and gently brushing sharp, black nails against the stone but never hard enough to scrape or damage the surface. He liked the feeling of the stone beneath his fingers, the cool touching the skin.

Only half-listening, he rasped, petting the chrysalis. "There was no fire," he said in a near-whisper, just audible enough for Khloros to hear. "Darkness and wind and things that skitter and crawl and squeak and die."

He ran his nails across the edge of the chrysalis with a shuddering breath. "I am the void," he replied. "Darkness and blackness and a Veil." He was-- as always --completely unaware that he likely made little to no sense.

One silvery, glowing eye briefly flicked to Khloros, curious. "How does it carry death?" The creature wheezed quietly as it continued gently touching and feeling the chrysalis.

Khloros stared, for a beat. The creature's grasp on language had already slipped away, back to where it had been, and he knew now (and much more firmly) that its mind was not... its perspective, wasn't what others' were.

In fairness, though, neither was his, was it?

He thought about this, and thought about Veil's question. For awhile he was silent, motionless in the darkness, staring down at Veil; but his mind was working through his response, and at length, he spoke.

"The others," he rasped, "in the cave, they are not like us. They see one another, they see joy and pain, hunger, fear, happiness. We see beyond. You see other things. You see the darkness, the before and the after."

Khloros stepped forward, lowering his long, thin head and exhaling toward the stranger, drawing together a cloud of his inner magic and expelling it toward Veil. The intent was to give him but a taste of what Khloros could carry: the illness, what would make him sick, what could kill.

"Those who live, die, in time. Those who die, return, in time. Those who suffer... Suffering is a terrible thing," Khloros explained in his hoarse and echoing voice. "If there is disaster, pain, lingering suffering--I end it with the magic within me. Do you feel it, yet?" he asked, tilting his head as he stared unblinking at Veil with his lamplike eyes.

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BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

As Khloros went silent, Veil's eye darted back to the remains of the chrysalis, staring as he felt it under his claws and quietly ran across every bump and little crack with his nails, breathing hollowly.

He knew he was being stared at. Some chill deep in Veil's spine told him that it could have-- somehow --been a threat. A thing to stare at, to watch, to ensure that he would survive. All twelve of his eyes, however, were enthralled in staring at the chrysalis before him.

Even after Khloros spoke, it still took several moments for an eye to flick back towards the horse as he thought, briefly, about the words that had been shared. "Yes," he eventually wheezed as Khloros stepped forward.

Six eyes immediately darted towards the diseased horse, quizzically, as he got close-- but for a time, he did not move. Even as the horse's face got close and even as he breathed out a cloud of something, a something that Veil could not see, but that he was aware was there.

He breathed, and he listened.

And he breathed again.

"Does it..." the creature began, trailing off with another low rasp. He began to notice that there was a something within him, now. It weighed down his head and his eyes-- all twelve of them --felt bleary. It must have been in his chest as well because he could feel it there, lingering near his throat.

At first, his head had only felt heavy but within seconds it was pounding painfully and the creature let out a soft, wheezing groan. "Is it death?" He asked quietly, eyes flicking back to Khloros as he stopped petting the chrysalis, half-forgetting about it and half-not having the energy to continue touching and exploring it.

"Yes," Khloros answered indifferently, his voice quietly hollow. "But not for you." Another exhale, another moment of drawing on his magic, and he was instead breathing a cloud of life toward Veil. He waited a moment, lifting his head and neck and staring down, knowing that the symptoms would very rapidly clear.

"I carry death," he explained, "within my body, on me."

He stared for a time longer at Veil, considering. It was clear that this creature was not... like the others. The same as he was different. Perhaps it had its own purpose, its own strange name--as Khloros had come to him upon his birth. Yet it knew itself only as darkness, as void. Perhaps it was the darkness that had befallen the caves? Perhaps this creature had been birthed by the blackness itself?

"You say you are the darkness," Khloros rasped, "And I have never seen you before--and now the lights are gone. You came from the place of wind. But are you darkness? Do you bring it, and carry it, as I bring and carry death?"

He wondered many things.

He wondered what it ate; where it lived. Was it a hunter, or a grazer? Did it sneak up on the living and tear into them, and consume them; or did it clamber through the trees, and take fruit?

Some strange, small part of Khloros' brain decided, for some reason, that it probably ate fish; and, again prompted by this vague and detached curiosity, he chose to simply ask. "What do you eat?"

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BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

Although Veil knew that Khloros was speaking again, he could barely hear him. The weight on his head and the pounding against his skull were far too important for him to bother listening anyway-- they were too distracting for him to focus on anything else.

His eyes flicked shut as the horse's head came close again. For a time, he lay there on his stomach in silence. Every wheezing breath, it seemed, began to hurt. Every little noise was torture-- the skittering of rats, the dripping of water somewhere else in another room --it was unusually loud and unusually incessant.

And then it stopped.

He did not notice at first. He only did when he felt that it was easier to breathe. He noticed his head had cleared and it felt as though a huge weight had been pried off his shoulders. For a while, he was still silent as his eyes opened again and he stared at the chrysalis before him.

Then, as if nothing had even happened, he began to trace his claws along the remains of the butter jade chrysalis again. It felt colder, somehow, and Veil wasn't sure if it was his imagination or not. It could not be certain if Veil even had much of an imagination to begin with.

"It is darkness," the creature repeated softly. "It was born in darkness. It lives in darkness. It becomes darkness. It is darkness." He spoke as if he were explaining everything, though slowly. He was thoughtful, for a time.

"It may bring darkness," he added. He was not sure. There was not much more darkness to bring-- not anywhere. Veil had never even seen a light before bar his own glowing hide, though he knew what it was in the back of his mind. It was the opposite of the dark, and it was something he would rather stay away from.

He must have been thinking about this for a while because Khloros was changing subject, now. He thought again, quiet for a moment. "It eats things that squeak and skitter and die," he explained quietly. "Things that breathe and bleed and think and see, and they come and they die."

And then he was quiet again, petting the chrysalis.

Khloros stared, for a time.

Things that bleed, that was fine. And skittering, that was all right. But thinking? That was generally frowned upon, so far as he could tell. Best to explain it, then; a few simple words might spare a lot of pain down the road.

"Things that think and speak..." he began, then paused, considering his words. "The rats, and the smaller things which scurry, and cannot speak--those are eaten. But the things that can speak--the others in the caves will turn on you, hurt you, kill you, if they find you eating those who can think, and speak, Darkness."

The warning was given with, for the most part, indifference. He was unsure whether Veil had been preparing to eat him, or intending to attempt to--and it hardly mattered, now. If it attacked him, he could kill it, probably.

At least fight it off, or so he hoped.

Hopefully he has heard my warning. Hopefully he acknowledges it. He doesn't seem to be paying very much attention, does he? Why is he so fascinated with my stone..?

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BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

For a moment, Veil thought to himself. He had not had many meals, yet-- he only recently emerged from his chrysalis, really. Of those that he had eaten, they had been small prey animals that had done exactly as he described: they skittered and they bled, and they squeaked and ran, and Veil assumed that, like most other things, they had thought.

They had thought enough to run directly into his mouth, at least.

But, did they speak? "No," he answered this question aloud. "It squeaks and it cries and it skitters, but it does not speak. It has not found many that speak." He sounded distant, head lifted and empty sockets were eyes should be stared at the wall above the chrysalis, thoughtful.

"Every thing can think, Carrier of Death," he added quietly. "But it fears not the others of elsewhere, and it fears not pain nor death. It has not yet eaten things that speak."

And then he was quiet again for a time, eyes staring at the chrysalis for a moment longer before they moved away and Veil's claws removed themselves from it. "What does it eat?" He eventually asked.

"Not everything," Khloros rasped slowly, "can think. But most things can feel. They can feel pain, and fear, but they do not know the words for them. They cannot think, 'I am in pain;' they can only feel this pain. It would be kinder if those who were eaten could think, but not feel. But it is not how it is."

A dark world, but perhaps it is best that the rats do not know what death is, or their fear might be far greater. Or would it? I do not know.

Khloros watched the creature, for a time. Its words, its implication, seemed to be that it intended to kill, in time. "If you kill those who can speak, you will in turn be killed. I will kill you," he added, but it was with utter indifference that he said this. He even wondered, in a vague sort of way, if Veil would do it. If he would turn out to be a cold killer, a predator pure in mind as well as form, or if he were young, yet, and might mature into something else entirely, warm and kind.

Somehow, he doubted this.

"I eat plants, when I must eat. Grasses, mostly; but it is not often that I eat." He grazed, yes, but more often than that he drew upon the bacteria of a room, or drew the life directly from the plants. "I can feed from the plants without touching them; I can draw life from them, and add it to my own," he explained.

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BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

Khloros stared for awhile, but when the Veil creature just remained absorbed in his own shattered stone, he gave a soft snort. He tried one last time to sense the creature, but this time drew only a blank; and abruptly realized he would rather be elsewhere. This creature was predator; it might turn on him at any time.

He had no desire to continue conversing with it.

"I will go," he informed it abruptly, and turned, pacing back the way he'd come. He left the tunnel dark and empty, bar the black non-light alien being behind him, and made his way off away from Canis and its piles of bones, its dust and its post-death.

He had other things he had to tend to.
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BRING OUT YOUR DEAD