ORIGIN

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He barely took notice of the beauty of Pisces. After the ice and the darkness--all that he had known--the black mastiff puppy's entire being was focused solely on pursuing the brown wiggly creature bounding off ahead of him. Panting, Black struggled to keep up, slipping and stumbling on rock, here and there, with his ungainly puppy legs.

He did not have time to gaze in wonder upon the crashing waterfall or the crystal-clear water. Likewise, there would be no awed exploration of the little paths and ledges running along the sides of the massive cavern. Instead, he seemed to be following Fisher from one tunnel to another, heading from the icy corridor behind them toward the tunnel ahead which led to Cetus.

Wherever this dog and the fisher were going, it was something important, that much was clear--there was not even time to greet those who dwelt within this cavern. Instead, tongue hanging out and blue-grey eyes fixated on the Fisher's tail (which often disappeared behind this plant or that boulder), the dog would barge past anyone who didn't directly try to get his attention. He didn't seem a rude beast--rather, one extremely concentrated on the task at hand.

Though the dog did not seem particularly afraid or even concerned, there was something urgent in his headlong gallop toward Tunnel H that said it all:

Something was very wrong.

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Several hours after his initial rush through Pisces, Black found himself limping back through, nearing total exhaustion.

He had joined a score of others in attacking and then communicating with some giant guardian, and now it was time to pursue that which had fled down the tunnels.

But first--rest, and food. The Black Dog made his way slowly, picking his way over stone and moss. After a time he paused, lifting his head and peering around, bleary-eyed. He spent some time standing and sniffing the air quietly, trying to get his bearings so that he could plan his next step. There was a waterfall crashing some way off, and the pleasant scent of green came from somewhere in the other direction. He could also smell, somewhere, the scent of slightly stagnant water, and the unfamiliar but pungently tangy odor of fish.

He was hungry, and the fish-scent called to him, but his exhaustion threatened to topple him at any moment. He turned toward the smell of "green" and made his way a bit more swiftly, the lure and promise of a good long rest drawing him in and giving him that last bit of strength to make his way.

I am tired.

That's all he knew, for now. It overrode all else--the ache in his muscles, the weary soreness of his feet, the mental exhaustion of so much thought and learning and magic--and indeed the slow dull throb of his magic having been so heavily used on his first day of birth.

He clambered clumsily up onto a shelf of fluffy green the moment he saw it, immediately deciding that this was the resting place for him. This was the Warrens, though he did not know that--he knew only that there were green hills beyond, and he didn't care. He just curled up, a puddle of velvet black in all the soft green, and was fast asleep in moments.

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The Black Dog woke in the early hours of the morning, or what would have been morning with a sun--he woke at a time when much of the cave still seemed to buzz with the sounds of insects, more audible here now that the roaring waterfall was somewhat distant.

Black rolled upright, yawned and stretched, thick mastiff puppy legs reaching forward in the green bed of moss which he'd made his bed for the "night." He had slept for many hours, or so he thought--he felt well-rested, anyway, the events of the day before clear in his mind but somewhat distant.

More immediate was the rampaging sharp pain that ripped through his abdomen. He had never known hunger, not really, and not like this--he was ravenous. He could tell that it was something natural, not some previously-unnoticed injury from the Aquarian, but nonetheless it drove him to immediate action.

The Dog picked his way down the mossy slope, and hopped off the ledge to the rocky pathway down below with a clumsy "oof" and the light slap of most of his body hitting the stone as he lost his balance. He scrambled back up, looked quickly around and--seeing nothing--straightened up and made his way down the path toward the scent of stagnant water that he'd noticed the day before.

It took him some time to get there, but when he did, he found sure enough that there were silvery things in the water that made the whole pond give off the odor of food.

First, he drank, lapping at the water with a wary eye, as if expecting the massive guardian of Cetus to suddenly erupt from the tiny, still pool. Never mind that one of the creature's fin-paws would have been too large for this.

Then, Black sat, and watched the fish for awhile. They had been disrupted by his presence, by his shadow over them, but now they danced and flicked beneath the surface once more--both beautiful, and, he realized, enticing.

They were alive. He had no desire to end lives. Yet he hungered, and without food, he would die. He immediately decided that they would die, so that he could live. Or, rather, some of them would. But he also knew at once that learning to catch fish would take time, and require patience. His heavily-wrinkled face sagging toward the water, he watched, brow furrowed, for nearly an hour.

He tried to memorize how they moved, how their skin flicked off the light in silvery bright-sharp-blades of light, how they gulped down bits of air or insects from the water's surface now and again. He also noticed how they panicked, how they shimmered down and down when he loomed over them for a closer look, how they quick-flicked off to one side, surprisingly fast and agile.

It was not only to learn to hunt them--but to honor them. If he were to take a life, then he wished--on some deep level of his being quite foreign to his working consciousness--to know and to remember that which he ended.

At length, the Black Dog slowly stood, and crept forward in an almost catlike fashion, low to the ground and stiff, very slowly, before pouncing into the water with a massive splash.

However, it wasn't through any skill that he caught his first prey. In fact, he was so heavy and clumsy that he flinched as he entered the water, forgetting how cold the shock would be, and succeeded only in scattering the small school of fish. Luckily for him, however, the enormous splash he made actually tossed one hapless silver-fish right out onto the rock, where it flopped and flailed frantically.

The Dog looked down and around, noticing that the fish had all fled--then looked up and saw that grounded flopping one, and quickly clambered out and do it, seizing it in his jaws.

He held it only a brief moment, hesitating, feeling a sort of guiltless regret, before biting down and ending the thing. He then dropped it on the floor and shook out his thick short coat, his velvet fur sending water flying every which way in a fine mist.

Now, to eat it.

He stared down at the fish, pondering how to begin. Then he leaned down, stripping a bit of flesh away.

It was good. Juicy. Fishy.

He took another bite, and then crunched down the bones, too, and the fish's head, and found himself licking his jaws, wanting more. He glanced back at the pond--but no, it would be cruel to take many from only one pond, when so many pools lay dotted in the rock.

Black turned, instead, making his way off toward another, leaving soaked rock and a small patch of fish blood behind.

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Black was still very hungry, and the little fish had done little more than whet his appetite. Frowning (or furrowing his brow, which resembled a frown about as much as a dog can frown), the dog made his way with soft and delicate steps along the narrow band of stone between several shallow pools of water. They smelled--strongly--of stagnation, rank algae, and fish. Like food.

He peered into one, and then another. These fish had a brownish hue to their scales, like rusted rock rather than glinting quartz-light silver. And this other pool had fish that shone like the pale golden light from the hanging orbs.

He paused at another, where the fish were a deep grass-green mottled with dull brown, with pale cream-gray bellies. They were a freshwater bass of some sort, though Black did not know that--he just knew "fish," and "food."

He made his way over, peering down at them. They were slower, and much larger, and there were only a few that he could see. Instead of little flicking bits of light, they looked more like slow, drifting pieces of wood--sometimes hanging motionless in the water, sometimes slowly swinging off to one side, or popping up for a languid gulp of surface air.

This. One of these would surely make a meal.

Black crouched, for awhile, watching the fish with rapt concentration. Then, more like a cat than a mastiff puppy, he pounced.

He impacted the water hard, and dove his large, square head beneath its cold surface, this time prepared for the temperature shock.

Jaws snapped shut over wriggly cold, and he came up padding strongly; he pulled himself onto shore and immediately sneezed. He then blinked, and looked down to find the fish thrashing back toward the pond.

He'd dropped the bass.

He scrambled, wuffing and panting and pouncing on nothing until finally he managed to catch the fish in his teeth once more. Then he shook his head rapidly to and fro, trying to snap its neck.

Black then lay down, panting, and started on this second juicy fish breakfast.

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After he'd eaten and, more importantly, rested, Black sat for awhile at the edge of one of the pools, thinking.

His pale grey-blue eyes were on the drifting fish, their scales sometimes reflecting shimmers of orb-light over his dark coat. But his mind was elsewhere.

It was a thing that ran down the tunnel. The tunnel went two ways. It went this way. Or it went the other.

He immediately resolved to search all of Pisces first, sniffing and looking for any sign of some mysterious creature that may have fled. He'd have to search all of the cave, and then down the tunnel he'd come from, to wherever that might lead.

He stood at once, slowly but with purpose, and began to stride over toward the water-slicked rockledges at the far end of the cave. Once his muscles were loose enough, he quickened his pace to a trot, loose and ungainly but good enough to propel him up and away toward the distant wall.

Once there, he slowed long enough to sniff along the base of the stones and peer up at the rock. He had to wince a bit against the spray of the water from the falls, and he could see that the ledges themselves were quite wet with it. He furrowed his brow a little. He would have to be very, very careful climbing them. Still, a fleeing creature might well take refuge up such a difficult-to-reach area, assuming the ledges actually even led anywhere.

Looking around to try and gauge his path, Black sat for a bit, peering up and around, picking his way first with his eyes. Finally he stood again, after several long, silent minutes, and made his way to the lowest and first of the ledges, hopping up.

It is not too difficult. For the cautious.

He made his way slowly and deliberately, sticking to the wall where he could, and the dry spots where possible. Now and again he had to climb slowly from one ledge to the next, scrambling up; or then he'd have to jump a small gap, sliding a bit. Once or twice he found himself on ledges so narrow that he had to place one paw just in front of the other, each step a delicate and dangerous risk.

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Black picked his way from ledge to ledge for some time. Eventually he had to stop to rest, and laid down so that one forepaw and his head hung at the edge. He looked down; he'd come up some distance, and he was very high indeed.

The dog eyed the waterfall at the cave's center, watching it for a time. It was very clear, and pale; its spray was what made the entirety of this cave cool and damp. He would climb as high as he could, here, and then go there.

For awhile, he did just that, cautious and deliberate, placing each paw with care. Then one particularly steep path, which wound up to the last ledge that he could see, gave him trouble.

He slipped, scrabbling his claws helplessly on the stone, sliding backwards; fear thrilled through him as he fell backwards off the edge. He landed on another just beneath, but tumbled off that, and the next, until he came to a stop a few ledges below, panting and struggling to stand back up.

It was lucky that the ledges had been so closely-spaced, or he could have been very badly injured, he realized; some of the others were, indeed, sheer drops. As it was, even, he had to test his limbs one by one. He was sore, very sore, battered; he'd bruise, he knew, even though he didn't quite know what bruising meant.

He made his way down the rest of the ledges in overly-cautious silence, and the going was very, very slow, from both his newfound excess caution and the pain.

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The Black Dog had made his way back down the ledges. His back and his left leg were very sore, and as he walked doggedly toward the waterfall, head low, he found that he was limping slightly. He had to favor the left leg; he couldn't put his whole weight on it. He pushed the pain away--it was minor--and carried on, working his way down toward the crashing waterfall at the center of the Pisces cave.

It was huge, as was the deep, clear lagoon beneath it. He stared, for awhile, then stepped forward quietly to drink, lapping at the water. It was cold--very cold. But it was good, clean, sweet water, and he drank his fill before slowly turning and padding along its shore. He peered down into the depths; he couldn't see anything except that the water was very deep. Did another guardian live here, like Aquarian? Perhaps Nemean, the other-name that Aquarian had roared?

But after awhile of watching, of pacing, of viewing the pond from a dozen different angles, he'd still found nothing of note within the waters. He backed away--hesitant to turn his back on it, just in case, and made his way back up toward the Warrens where he'd slept.

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Black trotted slowly and somewhat clumsily up the soft and mossy slope, over the hill and onto the next. Here lichen crunched underfoot and there he had to push through chest-high long grasses; the whole place still smelled of "green."

His back and leg hurt, but the softness beneath him cushioned the impact of each paw-strike on the ground, and he found this pleasing; too, he enjoyed the gentle waving of the grass and the occasional cold twist of spray that drifted down through the air from the waterfall. It was peaceful, here.

He moved over the mossy slopes, sniffing and snuffling here and there for any hint of a scent that seemed strange. This was instinctive--nobody had taught him how to use his nose, nor had he ever really thought about it. He just... did.

It didn't help, though; all smells were new to him. He was barely two days old, so the moss, the "green," the rocks, the water--even his own odor--was still taking some getting used to.

Still, he thought he'd find something notably strange about whatever might have led a giant water-monster to eat a group of Gembound. Somehow he expected the smell to be sinister, instantly recognizable as "something bad," "something enemy," or perhaps most apt, "something alien."

But there was nothing like that, nothing here that he could find: all seemed natural, calm, and at peace.

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The edge of Tunnel M was cold. Pisces was cool, distinctly cool--perhaps it might even be cold if it weren't for the strange warmth that emanated throughout the Origin Cave lately. But in the tunnel, it turned to ice. This, Black knew, for he had been born there--or rather, hatched from a gemstone.

The slopes would be steep, slick, sharp, and hard to return from. He would sniff along it, along the edges where Pisces fell away into the dark, and he did not wish to enter until he was certain he didn't intend to return. Or not soon, anyway.

So the dog decided to sniff slowly and carefully along the edge of the tunnel, picking up what scents he could. If he found something strange, something that might be the odor of the scurrying-thing, leading into Pisces--then he would turn, and explore the cave behind him once more.

If he found nothing but the smells of him, of Fisher, of the lynx--then he would press on through the tunnel, and search the cave floor for scents... all the way to the other end, if needed.

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