ORIGIN

Leaves rustled and thrashed as a heavy body trotted brusquely through them. Ferns and grasses were pushed aside, uncaring.

The hyena's lope was businesslike, her head low and her dark eyes grimly set ahead. She spoke to her companion--her son, the Painted Dog trotting along behind her--as they moved. Her words were abrupt, clipped, as if she were trying to keep them to the point--as if afraid to stray from her chosen topic--and her voice was hoarsely masculine.

"We will search Eridanus. Then if he is not here, yes--we will search Polaris. I will search the entire caves if I must. Azazel was my king, Bones. The king I chose to serve."

She wound her way down, a soft growl escaping her. She was still coming to the terms that her Bone King had been slain--murdered, even--without her ever knowing. And how many cycles ago had it been..? Had he looked for her, at the end?

Alone and murdered, murdered and alone, screaming dying feathers everywhere--who did it? I'll kill them, who did it?!

Overhead, the Hallowed Caller--paralleling her flight--called hauntingly, and for a moment she saw glimpses of the surrounding jungle through its eyes: trees slipping by, the ground far below. The hyena's muscled body crested a short hill, and she paused, standing on mossy rock to stare down.

"By 'serve,' I mean aid. Help. Advise. And by 'king,' I mean trusted friend, and leader." Depth of angered emotion leant her otherwise-jumbled thoughts the ability to make clear, fierce statements, firm in her belief. "He came to me just after I'd hatched--a lonely thing, chewing on dry bones, looking desperately for marrow that wasn't there. He brought me a fresh kill. He would come to me--for advice, for aid. He listened." Her voice held some measure of grief, now.

He'd been her friend. Her friend, and he was dead.

The hyena stared down for a moment, and realized they'd come to the Eyes: the twin pools of silvery water at the far end of the room. This meant they'd traversed nearly all of Eridanus already.

And no sign of the Bone King's supposed son.

She turned her head to look at Bones. She'd been going slowly enough for him to keep up, but still, she wasn't sure how healed his legs yet were. "Do you need to rest?" she asked him.

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ROLL THE BONES

Pain shot up the back of Bones' legs as the pair moved through Eridanus. His trot had slowed to a painful hobble about halfway through Orion, and even with Giggle slowing down for him, he still struggled to keep up. His jaw clamped tightly around the bone in his mouth to keep him from whining, and seeing as Giggle hadn't spoken the whole journey, he didn't have to loosen his grip and risk sounding like he was in pain.

He trudged behind her, letting the hyena push away overgrown ferns out the way for him to follow through, eyes half-shut as leaves swung in his face. He realised, as he caught a glimpse of the Mother, the giant mushroom, somewhere within Eridanus, how much he actively disliked this room.

The memories of Booker and his troubles-- specifically with Baratheon and Louie --ached more than his legs did. He wasn't even entirely sure if he understood the situation, he wasn't even entirely sure why, sometimes, Booker acted different and called himself different names. He never really thought to ask.

Giggle's abrupt words took him from his thoughts. He slowly loosened his jaws around the bone, speaking through it. "I know, mom," he said quietly, sympathetically. "No one wanted to serve his son." His uncle, if they were being very technical-- adoptive uncle, rather.

He huffed a little. "He was family-- we all were. I... miss him, and I hope there's something we can do to help our family. To help the Bonebound," Bones grumbled sadly, half-dropping the bone in his jaws. He missed seeing Azazel, and he had almost begun to forget his face, if he hadn't painted him on the walls of Canis a few dozen times.

Finally, Giggle asked if he needed rest. He flopped over at once with a groan, almost forgetting to give her even the briefest of nods before he dropped his bone and lay on his side, mouth open.

He couldn't smell anything-- not that he had been searching anywhere in particular, however --but that alone told him that what they were looking for probably wasn't here. Instead, Bones shut his eyes for a long time, catching his breath and waiting for the pain to dull to mere throbbing.

He hated this place. It was too different to Canis, and he always preferred his nest to the feeling of grass touching his face. "Have you been here before?" He eventually asked Giggle, turning his head towards her. "To Eridanus."

"Have you been here before?"

The words echoed in her mind, their innocence ringing a mocking bell that bit at her and laughed her down. Have I been here! This is where it all began, where it ate me, where it came for my mind and my thoughts and it went to our home--our HOME!--and stole me away-...

Giggle slowly lowered herself onto heavy haunches beside her 'son,' staring out and down at the silver Eyes. For a long while she was silent, gathering her thoughts, fighting them down, organizing them. The Hallowed Caller lit beside her, ruffling its feathers and nestling into her fur.

"Yes," she began at last. "Dovefeather wished to show me her source of Seeing. I believed that she could truly see--perhaps she could. I wished to look at her own method, her own--bones. She brought me here, but something was wrong."

Giggle shifted, displeased at the memory, cold fear and warm hate intermingling to form a storm of chaotic emotion. "Something happened. The Eyes, they called them--the water, down there. Don't go near them, Bones, not now and not ever; they are cursed, somehow. Touched by darker magic. They went still, and bitter cold, and you could see nothing in them. No reflection. They were empty, unnatural. There was a horrible smell--metallic, strong, so bad you could barely get close to the water. But Dovefeather stepped in, the poor fool. She nearly died, it froze her there and she could not think, I think. She tried to plea to her All-Mother to calm the water. Idiot cat," Giggle said, but her tone and her exhale afterward betrayed a memory of deep worry. Dovefeather had been the only cat she'd ever not hated.

"When we got her out, something--dripped, from above. Onto me. I looked up."

Giggle hesitated, looking up, again, hunching in on herself a bit, as if merely the memory drew her into a fear of what might be. But the ceiling was clear, only rock and leaf high above--and she didn't wish to frighten Bones. She glanced down at him, watching his exhausted form splayed out on the ground, and sighed before finishing her tale.

"The roof was filled with shadows, moving and living shadows. There were eyes--thousands of them, hundreds?--blinking down at us. It laughed, laughed at us, and then fled. That is when it went to our home, Bones. When I tried to return--when all of us did--that is when it took me. That is what took me. It started here."

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ROLL THE BONES

Bones turned his head as Giggle sat down beside him, briefly moving his head to nose at her side before he fell limp again, shutting his eyes. He didn't mind the silence, assuming first and foremost that Giggle was thinking, and not the fact that she might not have heard him.

Which, she had. He flicked an ear as Giggle began speaking, eyes still shut and listening quietly to her words. He hadn't quite known-- no one had ever really told him of it --but, somehow, he wasn't entirely surprised. Eridanus was home to terrible things and he wondered if the source of all of it were the Eyes.

He lifted his head, briefly, as Giggle hesitated, looking towards the silver pools. They seemed fine, now-- at least nothing seemed to be threatening to emerge from them anytime soon. "Maybe we should move away from them?" He suggested gently, then lowered his head back to the ground, peering up. "There's a safe place somewhere here. I used to sleep there with Booker."

That was while she was gone, but he remembered the darkness in Canis, and the caller. He remembered that no light that was created could break through it. He huffed a bit, hesitantly moving to nudge at Giggle again, gently. "I'm sorry," he said gently. "A lot of bad things happen here."

He started to push himself up again, with a faint groan, and reached for his bone again, half-questioningly beginning to move off and away from the eyes, as long as Giggle followed.

Giggle followed along in silence, round ears flattening back in thought. Maybe all the terrible things did stem from here, as much as it seemed full of cheerful life, of shifting green leaves in golden light and the constant singing of birds and buzz of insects. It all felt so healthy, so real, yet-... The memory of shadows would not leave her.

After a time, she did speak, trotting along slowly.

"Booker. I've heard the name, I know, but-... I can't remember much. Tell me?" she asked, then added--"If you wish."

It wasn't hard keeping up with her son's slower, limping pace, but she couldn't help but wonder if they shouldn't simply move on. Polaris wasn't far from here, and if the stranger they were looking for wasn't in Eridanus, she felt confident in Bones' assumption that he was likely in the Core instead. But then-... Her eyes flicked over Bones from behind. His limp was fairly bad; he was clearly exhausted. If this den was close, it might be best to use it, and rest there for awhile--a few hours, even, if he needed it. He had just hatched again, after all.

Overhead, Omen called, a quiet cry quite out of place in Eridanus's bright jungle--as if to remind them that it was still there.

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ROLL THE BONES

Once giggle turned and followed, Bones started slowly hobbling along through Eridanus. Exhaustion had a firm grasp on him now, and he struggled to keep his eyes open, to keep himself alert in case some shadowy thing came creeping by, looking to take Giggle away again.

He shuddered, but he kept moving on. He found that he still knew his way around Eridanus fairly well-- he knew the scents and the little details of trees and flowers, even if some of the familiar gembounds' scents were long stale. It didn't seem like all that much had changed since Bones fell asleep.

One ear flicked as Giggle finally spoke. He was quiet for a while himself, collecting his thoughts, remembering the numbat's face. "He was very small," Bones eventually said, a few ticks after Omen called out. "Like Skeena, maybe? Smaller than a rat, but he had longer ears and a bushy tail, like a fox."

Like a fox was likely an unfortunate way of putting it. As Bones came to the abandoned den near the All-Mother he briefly paused to sniff around. The tiny burrow in the ground still smelled a bit like numbat and fungus, though Booker had left it a long time ago.

He moved away, instead, to the bed of grass and ferns and lay himself back down with a quiet sigh. "He was like you," the painted dog continued. "I met him in Polaris, near the Spire, and he was talking about mushrooms and sitting on them. That was when I was exploring-- do you remember? Before the dragon."

A pause. "Which... happened here, too," he added quietly. Eridanus was truly not a place where nice things happened.

"That dragon, too-- he hurt Booker a lot, I think. Not in the same way he hurt me, and I don't know if I really understand it, but he was always... he always seemed a little broken, after he spent a lot of time with the dragon, and a lot of time with Louie-- the fox, do you know him?"

Setting his bone down by his legs, Bones peered up at his adoptive mother for a moment before his eyes flicked shut with a tired sigh, rubbing his face against the bedding briefly.

Giggle grunted.

"The fox. I know him. He's one of the last to have come to see me, before I retreated for awhile. Afraid. Broken. He'd fought someone he cared for, and he asked me if they would come together again. He asked of his future. He asked of the caves. What I saw-... He'd planted seeds! Seeds, like my magic, like the spores. And whatever it was he planted, was growing, and he had that to deal with. This, I told him. I told him this! I saw he wouldn't be with this... this other, until he'd learned, himself. Changed. He tried to give me a gift, I think. But it fell apart."

She didn't--entirely explain this last: an attempt at magicka, his quiet demeanor, sad, but whatever it was had failed. She remembered vividly the fox--intruding on her half-fragmented mind--asking for guidance. Asking what she saw in his future, and she'd seen the answer clearly--a new finding of self, and then, chaos. Destruction. She warned him of this.

She'd warned him, too, that he had to find himself before he tried to connect to others. He needed to change. He hadn't liked that, but it was the truth of it, and she hadn't seen him since.

"I remember," she continued suddenly, glancing sidelong at Bones--and with a softer tone--"finding out who had hurt you. Wondering if I should have killed Baratheon when he was a cub. A pup. He'd come to me then, and I warned him to find guidance. Perhaps I should have kept him with me until I knew for sure. I hope he is dead, now, or lost that madness; the fools in Monoceros used him as a weapon, do you remember? --I think it was this Booker? Booker, kept captive. A threat hanging over the idiot dragon, perhaps that's what made them sad. They said they would harm this Booker unless Baratheon obeyed them, and fought all of the Bonebound. I remember the Bone King consulting me about it, but we avoided it. We worked to avoid it."

How many tangled memories, years old now, now wound together? How many strands she'd only just plucked at, and now she realized that they formed one vast, fucked-up weaving. This Booker had been involved in so much--and Baratheon, too.

"Perhaps I should have killed him when he was just a pup, and saved us all a lot of trouble," Giggle repeated grimly, with a sigh.

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ROLL THE BONES

Bones huffed a little, wondering. Louie had fought someone he cared for and he half-wondered if that someone was Booker. He knew, logically, it didn't have to be-- he was a leader, once, of the Merrymen. It could be any of his people, or his family, if the Merrymen were as close to each other as the Bonebound were.

"Have you seen him since?" Bones asked quietly. "Do you-- think he's changed? I think he hurt Booker too, like Baratheon did. He..." Bones hesitated, briefly nosing at the femur bone near his head.

"When he broke, I think he found it easier to tell people he was someone else. He'd act a lot different, and he'd call himself by different names. I never asked why. I never wanted to upset him. I think I..." the dog paused, half-cutting himself off. A part of him didn't want to continue with this train of thought and another didn't want him to end up concerning Giggle by getting upset.

He abandoned the topic completely, moving on instead to Baratheon. "Maybe," he considered quietly. "He hurt a lot of people and I think he ended up hurting himself, too. I heard he accidentally took out one of his own eyes when he miscast a spell." Bones hadn't seen this himself, of course-- Bones had been in Canis at the time, recovering from the damage Baratheon had dealt to his legs.

"Kerberos might have ended up the same, if you hadn't guided him, I think," said the dog. "But if Baratheon is dead then the caves will be a lot safer. I... don't think anymore pups should have to go through what he did to me when I was a kid." Bones heaved out a long sigh, at this.

Giggle glanced over at her son, her expression somewhat dark--in a sad way, grim. When I think.No child should ever hurt like this, she thought.

A faint touch, mind-to-mind, the Caller intruding on her thoughts. But he is not young, Mother-Sister.

He was at the time--and he is still my son, Giggle thought back sharply. The bird retreated with a quizzical confusion, and Giggle looked back to Bones. "We do strange things, when we hurt too badly," she answered simply. "I don't know enough about any of them, except to say that pain creates pain. Maybe that's the plant this fox sowed."

At length Giggle lay down, crawling over toward Bones and then rolling onto her side. She idly began to groom him, noting the state of his scars.

"Maybe one day the caves will be safe. We will see, hmm? Tell me when you have rested enough. Take your time."

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ROLL THE BONES

The painted dog took another long breath. He tried to will himself to suck it up and to, more importantly, stop thinking about Booker. Having Giggle close and hearing her words helped. With an exhale, he shifted and nosed quietly at the hyena, briefly.

"Maybe," he replied in a murmur. Giggle would know more about doing strange things when someone breaks, at least. "I just wish I knew how to help."

He flicked an ear, quiet for a time. He concerned himself instead with what they were out here to do-- to find one of Azazel's many sons and ask him how his father died. Bones' eyes flicked shut, frowning.

He wish he'd known him better. "Can you tell me a story?" He blurted out abruptly. The intention had been to ask for a story about Azazel, but Bones realised, mid-sentence, that any story would do.

He missed his mother. He missed being young, when he could run without having to sit down and lie in agony for a while. He missed the stories she'd tell.