ORIGIN

Pride stepped delicately toward Polaris, his head canted a little as he listened to Amras. Ahead, he knew, the Spire would be shimmering, glinting, crackling with magic--and, in his mind, with the promise of new knowledge.

Amras had told him of being touched by a foreign consciousness, and of new magic glimmering forth in multiple Gembound all at once around the same time. He had feared it--but Pride had thought that perhaps the strange mind that had touched the gryphon's was in fact the mind of the Spire itself.

Was it sentient? Could it think? Was it in need of aid, perhaps?

He had touched things before to see brief and distant memories of them, and he wondered if perhaps the same could be used now. Too, he was able to link his mind to another's; would he find, if he reached out to the great blue crystal, a mind awaiting his?

Could it be?

Excitement impelled him, one ear toward Amras and one toward Polaris. His dainty steps held energy, an enthusiasm that hastened him along.

This could change everything.

Pride had listened with rapt interest as Amras spoke, filing away his questions and speaking only when the gryphon seemed completely finished. Too, he had made mental notes that he shared with enthusiasm.

"I had not heard of this--Monoceros, with its winds. I must visit it. Truly, there must be much of this world I have not seen! Many caves... I ought to spend some time exploring," he reflected thoughtfully.

"There was a time, then, when all was dark? Did the Gembound of the cave create these lights, then? -You had said you were, what, ahh--some twenty-something cycles old, yes? And this cat of which you speak--I think that I know her. I have seen her, once, with Envy--but you say that she was dying..?" Pride glanced quizzically to Amras as they drew further and further into Polaris. Had the gryphon saved Li's life somehow? "And these--humans? Human?" for Pride did not know the proper plural. Somehow, with furless and upright, he was picturing fish with long arms and legs that strode about as Amras was, their furless bodies glittering with silver scales. "They were Gembound? What killed them off, do you know?" He considered the ruins of Orion, and why they might have been formed. Shelter, perhaps..? Territory boundaries? If they were very small, each building might have housed a family's hunting grounds--rat-eaters, perhaps?

And blacksmiths, hmm? "Do you know where this Blacksmith--this Painter--is? I would be curious to speak to him, perhaps to delve into the magic myself."

So occupied, Pride did not notice that they had drawn nearer the Spire until he was virtually beneath it. Once close enough he paused, eyeing it, and cast out tentatively to see if he could sense a mind, and thoughts, within. As often happened in Polaris, though, he felt himself struggling to get a grip on his magic, and for a time, he stood quiet as he focused on it, awaiting Amras' responses.

Pride tightened his jaw in focus as he worked at his spell. At first, he was distracted by the idea that the lights had always been there, and was about to interrupt--to ask if Amras had not said a moment ago that they'd been out--when the gryphon explained further. Ahhh, so that explains it--the physical lights themselves were there? He thought, for a moment, about this Nemean--whether he hadn't heard the name somewhere before--but he could not entirely recall. He committed it to memory for future reference nonetheless, exhaling through flared nostrils as he concentrated.

"A parent?" he asked, by way of conversation. "I have heard that word--this does not sound like a very good parent." A sombre glance toward Amras, expression serious at the idea of a mother or father abusing or neglecting their child--and then he turned his gaze back to the Spire.

"I am going to try and contact it directly, with magic; are you able to do this, as well? Perhaps you can simply ask it if it attempted to contact you." He hesitated, unsure if his link was open--the magicka ebb and flow all around was a powerful tide, and he honestly wasn't sure if he had connected with anything, or not. Hell, for that matter, he had no idea if the Spire was even contactable, sentient.

This was but a hypothesis.

Err--hello? he tried, his mentality tentative, and polite, but his magicka surging--though it was not a consistent spell. He could feel it fluctuating powerfully; magic in this place was always so damned difficult to maintain at a steady level, despite all of his practice here. Is this the Spire?

When a creature is struck in the gut, it may flee, bloodied and in pain, stumbling for some frantic safety. When it is struck, though, so hard as to kill it--in the brain or perhaps the heart--it falls. Perhaps its limbs stiffen, kicking out; its neck twists back, eyes wide, lips peeled into a grimace. Its mind is already gone, the body going through those final throes; or it is the body that is gone, unresponsive in the shock of death to the frantic inner workings of the terrified brain.

This was how Pride reacted now.

One moment he was standing placidly enough beside Amras; the next he had fallen heavily to the ground, his white flank impacting dark stone with a thump, a single sharper rock cracking a rib and piercing the hide, antlers clattering against the floor. His legs jutted out, tight and trembling. His face was that of a dying thing, shock and absence both clear on it.

Wherever Pride was, it was not here.

By degrees--as death claims a body--he seemed to slowly go limp against the rock. But he was not dead; his breathing continued, shallow and quiet, his nostrils flaring rhythmically.

His mind had been shattered, a mirror crashing into spinning, glinting fragments that scattered into the darkness. He'd been everywhere, and nowhere; his very consciousness had, for a moment, been so overwhelmed and distant that he'd been--he had been not him. He had come back to himself quickly--or had it been forever?--and had found himself facing that lonely agony, the feeling of having failed. His own self had immediately felt as though he'd failed someone--had someone died?! Had he forgotten? He didn't know, he couldn't tell, but the chaotic whisperings in his mind... the nonsense words had been like a wound. Like blood, like hot flowing poison that clotted and coagulated, finally, into bleak and gruesome meaning.

Death is a lie. The pain is eternal.

Pride lay on the stone, only slowly coming back to himself, the feeling of the world around him somehow surreal. Pity stirred him, but did not make it, yet, past the haze of fear. He would, perhaps, try to figure this all out--once he was aware enough, again. But for now everything was a haze, a blank and foreign fog, as if nothing quite mattered. Nothing was real.

The phrase, though, as it had rung through his mind--this he clung to, gripped it as it tried to slip away into not-memory, holding it tightly with what little he had left.

This... This, he did not wish to forget.

All he wanted was to lie there for a few moments, to gather himself and his thoughts, and recover. As his breathing calmed, and his mind just barely began to clear, he realized that he could hear something in the distance--a loud drone, rising and falling, just beyond the fog of his shocked mind.

In a detached manner, unhurried, he tried to listen to it. The fog fell away, the voice piercing through, and abruptly--rather than a drone--it was sharp words. Amras, Pride thought, and though he was not blind, his mind wasn't quite taking sight in yet. He wasn't sure who the gryphon was talking to, and he was still unsure where they were or how they'd gotten here, but he tried to draw himself together.

And then he was flying.

He felt a sharp pain in his side as his body was lifted--by what? Some helpful force, intent on carrying him to safety? But then the world was spinning away, sickly-fast, and his sight returned only to fill up with the nauseating vision of flying rocks and crystals. It took him a moment to realize it was he that was flying, and with a terrified bleat the stag tried to scramble upright, with nothing to press his hooves upon. There was no surface below him, no sense of up or down, only a sickening spinning, a hell that threatened to drown his fragile mind-state. A brief scrabble for his magicka left him with nothing, no answer, no help. Am I trapped? he thought frantically, with what few thoughts managed to break through the near-blind panic. A brief memory of the sense of loss and failure, death is an lie, the pain is eternal, and a single pitiful thought--an orphaned idea in a vast, blank, dark world of near-madness--echoed through Pride's mind.

Is this forever?