ORIGIN - as a daffodil

She had come upon a new tunnel this time, and it was full of freezing stone. Desire had left the meeting some time ago in a bit of a hurry, fearing that the fighting would worsen. Now she slithered about aimlessly; she had no knowledge of the creature the flying ones wished to find and so she could not do much about it. They had motioned to this tunnel, sure, but to where did it lead? Was Pisces at the end or would there be more twists and turns to distract? She hurried as best she could, not made for the chill of such a climate.

@Aztec

Aztec bounded down the tunnel when he witnessed Desire enter. She was the only friendly face he recognized out of the mass of Gembounds back in Orion. Apparently, the birds had suggested where to look, but he grew impatient and left early. That was a mistake, but Desire had been there. Aztec had a hunch she had more of an idea where to start than he had. He had to catch up to her, though that shouldn't be hard.

As he entered the tunnel, a blast of cold air hit his fur and the cub began to feel shivers coming on. He wasn't far behind, he could see her white, slender body slithering over the icy rocks.

"Desire!" he called out to her. "Wait up!"

He dug his claws into the ice and leaped towards his friend. It was hard to find purchase in the frozen rocks, and he found himself clumsily slipping a few times.

"Speech"

@Desire

The sound of claws scraping on frozen rock was awful, but at least she could hear it a mile away. Her body was taut with cold so she hurried on, pausing only at the call. She turned her white head, surprised. "Aztec?" Had he been at the meeting? There had been so many creatures, it had all been so overwhelming for her young mind. Too many sights and smells. Desire watched as he grew closer, but all she wanted to do was move.

"Are you looking for the deer, too?" she asked as he reached her. She said "deer" like a foreign word; she had ansolutely no idea what it meant except that if was probably some kind of creature. An important creature.

The cub had some trouble on the slippery, frozen ground, that was for sure. She had been able to propel herself forward fairly well, but it was uncomfortable and far too cold than she could tolerate. She just wanted to go, but she wouldn't leave behind a nice gembound like Aztec.

@Aztec

"Is that what a stag is?" he asked, slightly out of breath. Aztec made his way to serpentine friend, eventually keeping pace beside her. "A deer?"

He did not wait for an answer, instead he brought up a the question he had been wondering about since he left."So, do you have any idea where to start?" Aztec looked down at Desire, careful not to trip over any rocks. "I mean there are places that I've heard about but never been too, what if he's there, and if so, how do we even get there?"

Surely the god-avians couldn't expect to send a few Gembounds off with out any suggestions and expect the search to go well. He knew he should have never left that meeting so early, but he was just so excited. He wanted to be like Mintaka so badly, Aztec didn't stop and think how he was supposed to go about doing it. Next time, he would be more patient.

"Speech"

@Desire

Desire stumbled over her words as he barraged her with questions. "Um - yeah - I guess. Somebody said it was, I think. I don't know what a deer or a stag is. They're just...the same thing?" She gave up on trying to sound knowledgable in any respect; this mission was based on things she'd been told or overheard and very little she understood. "The birds said go this way so that's what I'm doing." Desire had no response to the how of it all, she had no idea, but she certainly didn't want to disappoint the big golden flying thing, even if he had...disappeared?

She slithered onward, cold seeping into her serpentine form and rendering her progressively more uncomfortable. "It's cold here," was all she said, but it was freezing and she could hardly tolerate it. The ground was slippery and uneven and difficult to navigate, and she was worried about making it to the end. I want something else to walk on, she thought. She felt a fizzle of magic, but nothing happened, and she sighed a hiss, having hoped just barely that her magic could do something she'd never seen before. Trying to distract herself, she looked over to Aztec. "What kind of wings did you get?"

@Aztec

The cub's gem pulsed with excitement, he couldn't wait to impress Desire with his lovely wings!

"Here, watch!" He chirped.

Aztec squeeze his eyes shut and grunted, trying to wrangled Mintaka's strange magick. Unfortunely, all that mafensfested were small, blue wisps that fizzed out pathetically after a heartbeat. Red hot embarrassment began to flood his cheeks and looked away as a sheepish grin formed on his muzzle.

"Uuh.. th-that wasn't suppose to happen." He chuckled nervously. "Those were supposed to be Mintaka's wings"

Is wasn't long before Aztec go over himself however once he realized how cold Desire must have been. His poor friend had no fur! She would surely freeze to death here.

"Desire, you want to ride on my back?" He offered, bending down beside her. "I think I'm pretty warm."

"Speech"

@Desire

There were several things that demanded her attention, most importantly the storm—but the gembounds were looking for the stag, and this interested her too. She hesitated to leave Polaris, but when she did, she arrived at the Arena as the gembounds were dispersing. Of course, she would follow the feline.

She was his shadow. He would not know. His fur was sleek and beautiful, colored and soft. His companion was a snake, and its scales absent of color, pure. She did not like its scales. It felt naked. She was naked. She missed the days when she had fur, and lived in this tunnel. When her fur was thick and kept her warm.

Now she did not know warmth.

"I think I'm pretty warm."

Tendrils of shadow rose from his own, curling around in the air until they thickened beside him—opposite the side of the snake—and her naked leopard-like body began to manifest from the darkness, long tail curled at the end. A single eye popped open off-center on her face, floating loosely in the shadow that covered her whole body, its silver-white iris focused sharply on him. A second eye manifested on the wall behind him, where the snake was, so that she could see there as well.

"You do not need Pisces," she grumbled, her tail lashing. "Pisces is soft. The stag you seek is often quite busy. Why do you seek him?"

Both eyes narrowed on each of their targets. Bartos had his own research as of late, but he was still essential to their team; Senka's duty was to guard him, and Astraea was their medium for counsel. All in all, things had been going well, and she did not want things to be interrupted because some ancient suddenly sent the gembounds seeking Astraea.

(fun fact, daffodils are canon)

Desire giggled a little as Aztec tried and failed to make his wings. She hadn't been so successful with her magic, either, but there was something cute about his stutter. "It's alright," she said, but a chill ran down her spine and she was reminded of how important that moss would have been. Aztec bent down to offer his body heat to her. There was no embarrassment here; she was freezing, and things wouldn't turn out so well if she didn't warm up quick. Desire was partway around Aztec's shoulders when the blackness came.

It was a good thing she was cold-blooded. The tiny python watched in horror as something big and black slithered into its own space; it was something that hadn't been there before, she thought, but here it was now. Desire was petrified; the eye appearing from darkness, too far apart to be of the same being - no - surely - what was this? She would have clung to Aztec had she the will to move, but there fear was all-consuming. The blackness spoke, it moved like something alive but Desire had a feeling it was not quite. Its words hardly registered in her mind; all precautions had been for naught, she was dead already, and maybe Aztec was, too. This thing was a predator, one she could not smell or hear or properly see. It would get them, even as the words kept coming they slid off of her head and seeped back into the shadows. Now she was really frozen.

@Aztec