ORIGIN

He picked his way carefully over the scattering of old bones, his nostrils flared at the stale scent of stagnant water somewhere near.

Pride moved as silently as he could, his ears rotating to listen. He was looking for Giggle, the Bone Reader, whom he had briefly met in his youth. She'd told his fortune, back then--back when Reseda had been trying to "prove" Giggle's insanity and thus the need for her to die. It's ridiculous, really, how manipulative that lizard was--and how terrible she was at it, he thought grimly. Willing to kill innocents to achieve her goals. I am glad I warned Envy of her.

He shook his thin mane as if dismissing this thought, and maneuvered around a few half-intact old ribcages. He wasn't sure where the hyena's bone pit was--he knew it was somewhere near here, but it had been many cycles since his single visit, and its location wasn't clear in his mind. He did remember, rather abruptly, Giggle's fortune: a warning against engaging in unnecessary violence. A warning that it would be its own punishment.

And he hadn't listened, had he? He'd forgotten; excusable, perhaps, given his young age, at the time. But she'd been right. He'd allowed himself to be drawn into fighting Blackberry, setting off a chain of events that had only ended in violence, and in near-death for Envy.

Does she truly See, then..? he wondered. It wasn't why he was here--he was here because he'd noticed, and remembered, the black bird by Giggle's side. It had seen them, he knew, and she knew what it had seen; she'd called out to them before they'd even come into her sight. The bird, with its single crimson eye, had seen for her.

Given the theories he'd developed with Amras regarding Lesser and Greater Gembound and the link between magic and sentience, Giggle and her familiar were now of sharp interest to him. He'd tried to infuse Lessers with his magic, and it had always failed. Deer, snake, bats--he was doing something wrong, but he didn't know what. Maybe it just wasn't possible.

So he was here to ask Giggle--how had she befriended this bird? And more importantly, how did she see through its eyes? ...Eye?

"Hello?" he called out at last, hopelessly lost. His voice was a musical trill, fluting through the piles of bones and echoing off dead stone.

Only after a long moment's silence did a haunting call reply--wordless, the cry of the bird, and he recognized it at once.

Shifting his direction he set off again, angling now toward the Hallowed Caller's eerie song.

Giggle was sitting not at her bone pile, but at Azazel's shrine. Her muscled body sat motionless, dark eyes fixed on the skull of her old friend, rounded ears rotated as if listening to unseen wisdom passed on by his spirit. Really, she was just lost in thought--and she was finding, perhaps unsurprisingly, that sitting near what remained of Azazel brought her some measure of comfort.

Of peace. Something far-too-often denied her.

When Pride called out, she was actually too far to hear. It was Omen who heard, the bird perched--still recovering from Eythan's attack, and still unable to fly very far at a stretch--near the bone pit. The alert query, tense and alarmed, came along the tenuous thread between their minds. Giggle flicked an ear, at once alerted, and turned to pace swiftly off toward the pit. If put into words, Omen's thoughts would have been something like--Mother-Sister, someone comes! Her own thoughts returned reassuringly along the line, yet not relaxed--I'm coming. Stay safe. An urge for the bird to stay quiet, and hidden.

When she came loping into sight of her pit, she found a great white stag standing there--peering over the bones and to her ledge, his branching antlers glinting silver in the light of the bioluminescent mushrooms below, and orb-light above.

She didn't recognize Pride--she hadn't seen him but once, and that when he was a tiny fawn. She came to a halt a couple dozen yards away and stayed there, warily watching this stranger. Giggle never turned anyone away from the bones, but she'd also been attacked here before, and the deer was large and very-... sharp.

"Hello?" she rasped, her head tilting to one side as she eyed him over. Some distant part of her, some part that lingered from her trauma and strengthened when she was worried or stressed, whispered into her mind. It was bitter and illogical, nervously tense.

Too clean. Too pretty. I don't like him.

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Pride turned, taking a few shuffling steps to face the hyena as she spoke. His attention went to her fully and at once, polite; he had nothing but respect for the dog. ...Cat? Creature. She had offered her wisdom--such as it was, be it madness or magic--freely to him, and to Reseda too. Now that he knew Reseda a little better, he couldn't help but wonder whether it had been the hyena's insanity, or Reseda's lies, in their earlier conversation; had Reseda truly threatened Giggle..? He pushed the thought away, and instead, he bowed his head a little, careful not to make it look as though he were about to charge. He didn't realize that Giggle was wary of him; it simply seemed as though it would be impolite.

"Hello," he fluted softly. Every word was precise, carefully-chosen and -enunciated. "I do not know if you remember me. I was here, once before--several cycles ago--as a fawn; my name is Pride. I came with Reseda," he added, by way of explanation. He took a breath.

The hyena remained silent, staring at him, waiting; and he spoke further, deciding to simply be fully honest. "At the time, she was trying to prove that you were mad, and your 'kind' ought to be purged--a silly grab at power in an attempt to gain the loyalty of a mere fawn. As it turns out, she was wrong: you were correct in your bone-reading," he said mournfully. "Were I not a young fool, I would have listened, but I forgot your words. But that is not why I have come. Rather, I wondered if I could ask you a few questions--not of the bones, though I confess curiosity--but of your bird? I remember it, too, and I wanted to ask of its relationship to you."

The hyena seemed quite tense, Pride realized. Had he said too much..? Was she a little mad, and had his words perhaps set her off? Her coat was certainly a little scraggly, and the odor even from here was rank--he could see fungal blooms all through her pelt.

He hoped he had not drastically misspoken. He had never had to deal with anyone--bar Blackberry--who was entirely parted from their sanity, before.

Giggle listened, and as Pride spoke, she remembered with a jolt. The tiny white fawn, barely able to stand, legs trembling as it had determinedly made its way forward. She tilted her head, eyeing Pride over again, remembering now the glinting gemstones at his throat.

Yes.

So Reseda had been out to kill her? Faint suspicion washed over her as she eyed the stag; why would he tell her this? Or perhaps it was a "friendly" warning. Regardless, her demeanor did not change, and with her suspicion growing, she pushed the thoughts aside. The white deer was asking of Omen, and that put her further on edge.

"My relationship to the bird?" she rasped at last, voice hoarsely masculine. That faint, illogical part of her was growing more resentful: it hated this deer, hated his white perfection and prim cleanliness. The world wasn't white. The world wasn't clean. He had no right to be so flawless.

Giggle winced and pushed her thoughts away savagely. Stop it, she snapped to herself, firmly. The stag was--so far--not being unreasonable or impolite, and she had to treat him at least somewhat neutrally. What sort of mother would she be if she couldn't even set the example of "be polite to others" to her children, after all?! ...Still, an attempt at gathering herself to recount to the stag--not everything, but enough--had her twitching and half-snarling at her own memories.

Slowly, she sat down, and more slowly, she began.

"Tell me why you want to know. I will tell you that... I was lost, lost in another place, all darkness and eyes and nothing else. No screaming, and no eating; no breathing and no dying. It was eternity like that. The shit-cat did it, the one with no fur," she spat. "Only Omen can go in and out. Only she found me."

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Pride had felt the need to warn the hyena of Reseda's less-than-noble intentions, but her reaction surprised him. She was not, herself, surprised--or didn't seem to be; she didn't ask any questions about it, nor even ask what part of her bone reading had come true, or how. This immediately struck him as... abnormal, to say the least. Surely a sane person would have immediately wondered these things? Yet he found himself struggling to drag his mind back to the present as--rather abruptly--the hyena began to answer his question.

At her brief explanation, he found himself more confused than enlightened. Is she mad? ...A dark place, full of eyes? Pride held back a grimace. Whatever the case, he doubted that there had been someplace that only the bird could reach. Perhaps she had fallen into a crevasse, where only the bird could fly in and out..? Maybe it hadn't been Giggle to befriend the bird at all, but the other way around?

Wording himself carefully, glancing to the bones and then back to the hyena (and only briefly wondering at all the lives that must have once been, all now nothing but bound-together calcium), he spoke.

"May I ask... what you mean? In answer to your question-..." He paused, tilting his antlered head to consider his phrasing, before speaking carefully. "A friend and I were pondering the link between magic, and sentience. There are deer who can speak, and cast magic--and then many who can do neither, and serve, sadly, merely as prey. Birds, too, and bats--and nothing seems to separate them, no pattern that we could see." He paused again, taking a breath, then continued. "We wondered if perhaps a magical infusion might grant them intelligence and ability. We were also seeking the source of magic, and the Spire seems to be the origin point--but tapping into it revealed a sentience. Whether its own or another I do not know but it very nearly shattered my mind. It made us--or me, at the very least--wonder if perhaps magic itself is not an elevating force for intelligence."

He still wasn't sure where he could take this knowledge. Even if he figured out how to elevate Lessers, should he? What, then, would serve as food for the carnivores of the cave? Was it not cruel to make them aware of their fates? Or would they then need to fight the carnivores, just like Giggle herself, here? And what of them? Would too much magic shatter their minds--or could they use it to further elevate and empower themselves? Was it what raised regular Gembound into Elders..?

Pride exhaled, voicing none of this aloud. The important thing was to gain some baseline information. First things first. He could then work ahead from there.

Giggle listened, silent, her mind slipping back at Pride's question. Back, and back, to the time she'd been in the fractured black, the unbroken darkness, herself shattered and spinning away in a thousand triangular pieces. Cold horror laced along her nerves as her mind balked at the memories. Memories of broken memories. Memories of voices in the darkness, of those she knew coming and going in grim hallucination. Memories of her gnawing at her own flesh in an attempt to end it all, but it never worked, never worked...

She shuddered and pressed her eyes closed, hunched in on herself, and in that moment she felt again the tentative touch of Omen at their link. Relief shot through her and she did her best to pull herself together, dark eyes opening as she turned to look up at her ledge. Come here, she thought quietly to the bird--a summons, a beckoning.

After a moment the black Hallowed Caller appeared from behind the ledge, eyeing Pride warily with its single crimson eye. The stag regarded it back placidly enough, and so it hopped down to Giggle, its mind questioning. She leaned down, giving it a nuzzle, a lick, and then--after another long moment of silence, in which she sat with eyes again squeezed closed--she at last looked up at Pride.

"I don't know what to tell you about magic, and... intelligence," she rasped quietly, and there was a stark difference now in her tone and her demeanor. There was fear there--real fear--bitter and distant. The humor was gone, evaporated as if it had never been. "I don't know why you'd want to know. Seeking knowledge, I suppose. I could ask the bones," she added, her mind half-absent. "But I'll explain to you what Omen is, and maybe you'll understand a little more. With her, it isn't only intelligence or magic that keeps her. That makes her different." The words were a little jumbled, a little nonsensical, and the hyena could feel her own heart racing as she tried again to shove her memories away. "One day, many cycles ago, this whole cave was plunged into pitch darkness. We couldn't find one another--none of us could." Quiet. Hushed.

The stag was watching her intently, listening in attentive silence, but her eyes were closed.

"There was a cat, no hair, and in its darkness were a hundred silver eyes that watched. I was dragged-... out of this world," she continued, unsure how best to describe this. "I've since met that cat, I've watched her and I've been in he dreams. She is only mortal, tormented, tainted, controlled. She was mad, perhaps, as I was. Maybe the intent was to turn me into another 'her.'" Giggle paused, hesitating. She wasn't sure if she was explaining this properly. If she was explaining anything. With a deep breath, she gathered herself and tried to rally, to continue with more... structure, to the tale.

"The attack put me into... what I can only describe as another realm. A place void of everything. There was no light, only blackness. There was nothing to stand on, nothing to see, or hear. There were no others in this place. I was there for-... Bones, I don't know how long. Weeks. Cycles, even, More. Or perhaps only days; I don't know. It felt like an eternity. I couldn't-..." And here she paused, opening her eyes, looking to Pride--and there was nothing but pain in them. Pain, and fear. "I could not even end myself," she growled hoarsely, and she felt Omen's fearful reassurance at her own fear at her memories. She reached down and roughly licked the bird's head, behind the eye, once before going on. "My mind broke and fell into pieces. I couldn't get it back," she added, matter-of-factly. "I hallucinated. I saw many things--friends I had known, though I couldn't remember, then, if they were friend or enemy. My mind was shattered from the nothing, from having nothing for so long. But in all the hallucinations there was one that didn't-... fit. A bird, this bird--black, with one red eye. It wasn't anyone I knew. It came into my dreams--into my reality--into my void. It landed on me, and it picked at my fur, or it slept. I think-... I think that it was her home, and I was in there where I shouldn't have been. In time, our minds linked, I think through magic. She is not more or less intelligent than other birds, I think--but I feel her thoughts, or her-... emotions, and state of mind. And she feels mine. I see what she sees, and when I was stuck there I could feel when she left that place. I could feel life, light, warmth, colors--through our link. It was her who brought Kerberos to me-my son, one of my sons. He found me and woke me. My-... My body was here, too, even though it had disappeared. I don't understand it, before you ask," Giggle finished, both wry and gruff. "but that's the answer to your question. Omen came and went from the Void--she still can. I've been there once since, and she can come to and fro freely. A different kind of magic, perhaps, though I think Senka can do it, too. The cat."

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