ORIGIN

Pride eyed the mud slicking his slender white legs with distaste. He did not like this swamp. Oh, it had an ethereal beauty to it--something ancient and mysterious, with its drifting pale mists and the menace of a potential something lurking just beneath the black. But poetic license aside, it smelled rank, and it stained him and sucked his legs down with distinctly improper noises.

But he had business here.

Beside him, and behind him, walked a black horse. The creature moved with surprising silence, its steps as carefully-placed as his own, though its broader hooves seemed less inclined to... well, sink.

He paused, glancing around.

"I doubt that he's very far, but I am unsure as to quite how to contact him," he informed Khloros. Ahh, but he had magic for that, didn't he? Magic for any situation, really, and detecting Gembound had been something he'd taught himself, and been practicing at. "Let me try something." He paused, there, closing his gray eyes and letting his magicka slither out in tendrils, feeling, reaching, searching...

It wasn't easy. The cave, to his surprise, though on the surface appearing ominously empty, was rife with life. It was a little overwhelming, and it took him some time to sort through it all.

There were myriad fish, and--frogs? Were those frogs?--and lizards. Bats, rats, cave deer, and too many spiders (ick) to count. There were greaters, too--and some of them, he realized (with a not-so-faint sense of horror) were something that pressed at his mind with unfathomable alienness. He'd never met Nox or her brood, but had he been confronted with them here and now he'd have immediately recognized them as the gems he'd just picked out.

There was the butter jade just behind him--and he didn't know how he knew that, nor quite what the gemstone's name even meant. There was his own diamond. And--ahhh. There was Dragon, a muddy, flat Jasper lying not far off, pressed into the muck.

Pride let the magic fade with a soft sigh of relief--the sensation had been overwhelming.

"This way, I think," he murmured, turning to pick his way toward the Heart of Cetus.

When they came to the vast expanse of pitch-black water, he stopped. He'd sensed Dragon lying in the mud, and this--most certainly wasn't mud, but looking around to find him was virtually impossible. He realized only now that the swamp looked remarkably like... well, alligators.

Or rather, he supposed, alligators looked a lot like swamp.

That--no, that was a broken log; and that was a mud bank... With a sigh, Pride lifted his head, calling out with his melodic voice, so out of place in the monstrous, misty dark. "Dragon--of the Children of Rot? Are you here?" he called out. And then, after a pause--"I bring news-and I've someone who wishes to meet you."

Khloros picked his way behind the far-smaller stag. Where Pride was pristine and delicate--despite his scars--Khloros was black and strong, a quiet, larger shadow lurking behind the deer. He held no menace to him, though; he was distantly thoughtful, his eyes gazing at the swamp without truly seeing any of it.

He was still seeing the White Creature, in his mind--its gentle face, its kind expression. He was still hearing its words. He was still wondering what it all meant. Khloros didn't know what his place was, anymore, really--but he was bearing a growing sense of loyalty to this new apparent master, one who had returned him from the dead to continue his task, albeit in a different manner entirely.

When Pride paused, Khloros stopped and waited patiently. He assumed that the deer was casting some sort of magic--he himself had lost his own, all of it, and no longer felt any affinity with his own element. It was still something that shook him... the knowledge that he had no way to defend himself, to strengthen and to heal himself, or to harm those who would harm others. It frightened him, in a way he'd been unable to feel, before.

He didn't know what to do about it.

Pride moved on again, and Khloros followed; and when Pride called out he again fell still, looking slowly, quietly, around him. Like Pride, he knew that the alligator would be near-impossible to spot--but he saw the faintest glimmer of eyes in the reeds nearby, and he turned toward them.

"There," he offered softly, and was rewarded when the alligator's shape shifted out of the murk, peering their way.

The alligator was indeed close by. Upon hearing the stag call out, he turned, peering. Ahh, the white stag--he was the Kingdom--no, the Seven, wasn't he? And who's this coming--I don't recognize him, the alligator thought distantly. No matter.

Dragon was partially-crippled, his right hind leg ruined in the long-ago fight with Raheerah, so he began to haul himself over to the pair. It was partly practicality--no use shouting at one another from twenty yards away--and partly out of politeness. This was Cetus, his home, his domain--which made them his guests, and he, the host.

Still, why walk when one could fly--?

A flicker of magicka joined his glimmer of mischievousness, and spectral black-red wings lifted from his back. It would have been lovely to say that he could sail through the air like a true dragon, but in truth he sort of dangled, his heavy tail straight down, as the wings beat with echoing thumps (like they weren't really there--which they weren't) as they carried him over to the pair. Closer still, it'd be visible that the magic had also grown draconic horns twisting back from his head. It looked a mixture of demonically impressive and comically silly, but Dragon liked it that way. What was life without a little dramatic effect--and a dash of humor?

With a splash he set himself down before them, the magic lingering as he spoke before eventually fading away in wisps of jet and crimson.

"Pride! Welcome to Cetus. You were looking for me; you've found me. Who's this?" he added, looking to Khloros. "I am Dragon! --You are my welcome guest here, so long as you're a friend of this one," he went on, nodding briefly to Pride.

Hopefully Pride wasn't here to turn over a prisoner, then, or something--it'd be very awkward to call a new enemy one's "guest." Dragon's ridged tail swept slowly side-to-side through the muck as he considered this, and hoped for the best.

Whatever they were here for, it had to be serious. Though he preferred that the Children be left to safely survive, and never harassed, he also knew that the others in the caves rarely bothered with them unless they needed something. No one ever turned up in Cetus to ask how Dragon was, or offer some useful help--it was always to ask, to request, to borrow.

He doubted that this time would be any different.

Pride turned as Khloros spoke, just in time to see Dragon shifting into movement. He glanced at the horse, and then to the alligator--errrr.

Could alligators. ...Do that? He squinted, a little, as the bulky reptile rose up like a hover-lizard, nearly wholly vertical, his face seeming to leer at them and are those horns--ahhh! I know this magic, this is the spellwork that Envy uses! Pride blinked in recognition, and then bowed his head at Dragon's greeting. Silver-tined antlers brushed the air as he swept low, nearly kneeling, for a moment.

"Dragon," he greeted him, his fluting voice muffled in the mist. "It is good to see you well. I bring you news of two sorts, and a--request, of sorts, or perhaps an offer, depending upon how you see it. I do not, however, wish to impose upon you," the stag went on politely.

With a glance at Khloros, he continued. "The first bit of news is to do with Wilder--from what I understand, she is a member of your group, as well as the Bonebound? Aure--of the latter--has been warned of this and I will inform you as well. And secondly, I would like to introduce Khloros, here. He has... information, you may find useful. And he may be of rather--ahh, unwanted interest to the Elders..." The stag trailed off, glancing again at Dragon. He wasn't certain how the alligator would take this. He knew the creature wanted information--knowledge--but he also seemed to value subtlety and survival, and drawing unwanted attention might indeed be something he would react poorly to.

Pride didn't know Dragon well, didn't know how quick he was to violence, or anger. He wasn't sure if the alligator might react quite reasonably, or with interest, or might grow irrational and drive them out with blasts of infuriated flame for daring to bring danger to his home swamp.

Khloros listened quietly. He had very little to add--the alligator's draconic entrance had left him slightly nonplussed, but he'd seen far stranger things in the cave. He-... liked it, though, in a way he couldn't quite describe. Something about it seemed irreverent, as if Dragon--despite the display of sinister-looking power in the magic--didn't quite take himself seriously. As if there was humor in it. Khloros found himself warming to the stranger, a little. He didn't expect that, and found himself at once reevaluating Dragon.

The alligator's reptilian face was wholly expressionless by no fault of his own. Anatomy had given him a rigid, permanent grin, not unlike a dolphin's, if a little more toothy; it was impossible to tell what Dragon was thinking. He seemed to be either thoughtfully attentive--involved--or annoyed, judging by the slow, dragging lashes of his tail through the mud, but beyond that Khloros could glean little.

He bowed his own arched neck, head briefly dipping, at his introduction.

"It is good to meet you," he said softly, and he couldn't quite remember if perhaps he'd met the alligator in cycles past.

Other than that, he let Pride speak, his ears flicking as he glanced toward him. The stag had been agitated about this "Wilder" incident, and had quickly gathered Khloros up to accompany him, at last, to Cetus. And Khloros, for his part, was finally well enough to leave Mercurius' garden--though he had to admit that the dismal murkiness of the swamp was a far cry from the soft, bauble-lit delicate fairy tale that the white lion had so carefully cultivated.

Khloros wasn't sure where he felt more at home--the small, magical glade, or the stench-filled black marsh.

Wherever I am safer, I suppose. And wherever I am less likely to bring harm onto others until I figure out what it is I'm meant to do.

A pang of worry struck Dragon at the mention of Wilder. The cat had been small--naive and helpless, even weak--last time he had seen her. Had she come to harm, somehow..?

"What has become of the cat?" he demanded at once, a little more roughly than he should have.

The stag's message regarding Khloros would undoubtedly be fascinating to him, normally--on any other day he'd have fixed the black horse with a hungrily attentive gaze, and sought immediate knowledge on just what the horse knew, what had happened to him, and why the Elders might be after him. But first and foremost he cared for his people, and the idea that Wilder might be harmed somewhere had him at once deeply worried.

Pride shook his head, a little--in a reassuring fashion, as if to immediately suggest that all was well. "She is perfectly safe, or was the last time I saw her. But I must warn you of what has happened nonetheless. She came to me in Orion some days ago, asking about the Bloodberries. I presume that you know of them? -I know Cetus is somewhat far out from the center of the caves' activities, but-..." He trailed off, seeing the alligator impatiently nodding this away, and moved on. "Right, well she came to me asking for information, so--presuming it young curiosity--I told her all that I knew. She then rather slyly segued into asking of the gem of Blueberry--that is, the moose mate of Blackberry, their goose leader who was still at large. Their group attacked Eridanus recently, forcing several innocents into their chrysalises. They were barely defeated, driven back, but the black wolf Jayberry, and the goose Blackberry, both escaped. Now, Blackberry's primary tactic, so I gather, was to--I am sorry, I promise I am coming to my point--was to kidnap or create and raise more powerful children, brainwashing and savaging them into doing her bidding. Many have grown up terrified, traumatized."

"In any case, when I asked Wilder of why she was asking about Blueberry's gem--the moose, I remind you, and one who was used to make several of her larger 'weapons'--the cat eventually admitted that she'd found Blackberry alive. The goose was seeking his gemstone, I presume to begin it all again. I assumed, at first, that Wilder was simply being naively innocent, what with her insistence that the goose had changed--but when we decided to go and retrieve the goose for a fair trial, and the cat agreed, she then immediately broke that agreement. It became obvious that she was utilizing magic," Pride went on--and Dragon, he could see, had gone from impatient to sharply, keenly attentive--"and when I touched her mind, I could sense a conversation she was holding with the goose herself. She was asking Blackberry what should be done about us, in essence--and when we asked her why she had suddenly gone limp, she kept the same, precisely innocent, naive face as she so gently told us that she was merely tired." Distaste showed on Pride's face now, and faint derision in his tone. "Thus, I come to warn you--as I warned Aure--that she may well not be so innocent as she claims."

The stag paused, glancing at Khloros--feeling a little bad at having to recite all this with the horse so patiently waiting for his own 'turn'--and then looked to Dragon once more. "Do as you wish with this information, of course--we are not so crass as to go around making demands, it is only a true warning that she may not be what she seems. But I will say that she is no longer welcome among us, in Orion--as a result of her actions we had to race to end Blackberry's threat, so she is now dead rather than having faced any trial. We feared that there might be an ambush waiting."

Pride fell silent, waiting for Dragon to give his opinions on this, before moving on to the task more at hand.

Khloros listened quietly.

None of this had anything to do with him, and yet.... Yet he couldn't help but feel a faint tug of involvement. It was as if some faint instinct, some premonition, told him that all of this was important, somehow.

Perhaps he was simply still addled from the long rest in his chrysalis, but it almost felt like echoes of something he had heard before.

Or had he..?

He ran through his memories, slowly, groggily. Vazi..? Perhaps. The stag had been an evil influence-... Perhaps that had been it. He, too, had kidnapped children, brainwashed them, beaten them to join his cause. "Your description of this goose reminds me of the stag Vazi Hasira," he murmured softly. "Long ago, he styled himself a King in Orion, as does yours--but he kidnapped the young, and twisted their minds, and harmed their bodies until they believed his goals. He brought war to the caves, and he was eventually killed." Khloros was quiet, for a moment, before rather indifferently adding--in the same mild tone--"He called me his God. I took one of them from him-... she was harmed. I did not find the others."

He stared off at nothing, as he spoke, lost in his own memories. Carrie, had her name been-? Three-legged, and terrified. He didn't know how she'd lost the leg--he'd only known then that she'd wished to escape Hasira. He remembered letting Vazi think everything that he believed--doing nothing to discourage the idea of himself as a god.

But he, himself, had never believed it. It had been an act--an elaborate one, a lie taught to him by the master of bastard liars and manipulators, the fox Louie. It had been a lie staged to steal an innocent back from a tyrant.

Strange... he'd never remembered himself doing good, before. But there it was, nonetheless.

Were the caves fixed in some sort of cycle? Was Blackberry merely the newest incarnation of child-kidnapping tyrants, destined to be torn down from their self-appointed pedestals? Had she, too, found her place in tyranny through past torment, and trauma?

Khloros did not know, but something, again, told him that this might all be important, some day. He just did not know how.

Dragon listened, his open mind hardening a little as Pride launched into his long-winded tale (GET TO THE POINT) and eventual accusations. He was far more likely to trust one of his own than the stag--family was important to Dragon--yet he knew that Wilder wasn't... all there. She had fits, she clawed herself up, she spoke in garbled nonsense-tongue. Was it possible that she was loyal to someone other than she claimed?

He considered, for a long moment, and found himself of two possible minds on the subject. Wilder had pledged her friendly loyalty to multiple groups within the caves. She might be a spy--perhaps for Blackberry, perhaps for someone else--trying to gain information on everyone. She had turned up to the meeting, after all, and that had been surprising; she was hardly intellectual. The cat hadn't been present in Cetus almost at all, and yet had turned up almost suspiciously flippant about the topic at hand in the meeting.

On the other hand, she might just be that stupid, he thought--that innocent, that friendly, that she genuinely blithely pledged herself to literally everyone she met. Slowly, carefully, he began to speak.

"The little cat is prone to fits, and her judgement could be called into question. I doubt you have much to fear, as she has not returned here since--but if she does I will bear your warning in mind," he informed the stag non-committally. If she did come back, he'd ask her about her motives. He, unlike some, had no method of testing or proving honesty; the subtleties of the magics of the mind were quite beyond him. But he deemed himself a good judge of character--and, that being said, Wilder hadn't struck him as anything other than over-eager, and a little foolish.

Dragon then turned his attention to Khloros. His first thought was that the horse must be mad; his apparent rambling seemed rather unrelated to... well, to anything. Or rather, the first part made perfect sense, but, Dragon thought, Khloros had rather lost the thread of his own story near the end, and the plot had become convoluted and trailed into nothing.

For once, he gave up his normal attempts at at least somewhat-eloquent dignity and stared at the horse. "What?" he responded, bluntly.

Pride glanced at Dragon, then to Khloros, then to Dragon again.

The horse had mentioned Vazi before. In fact, Pride knew of the other stag from stories--he knew that Vazi Hasira had been quite entwined with Mercurius' life, once upon a time. But he hadn't known--and wouldn't have ever thought--that the black horse had the power to be called a "god," nor to simply take away one of the tyrant stag's child victims.

He'd have to tell Mercy about this, if for no other reason than to ask if he'd known of other children the stag had taken.

He then turned back to Dragon.

"Khloros is--old. Very old. I do not know how old, and neither does he--I do not think he is an Elder, but I might be wrong, in that. He has spent some time in his chrysalis," he went on. He hoped--with a glance at the horse--that this explained his strange demeanor... but honestly, he had no idea what Khloros had actually been like before. Somehow, he imagined that someone called a "god" had never been quite... normal.

He looked to Dragon again. "I brought him here because he's found himself at odds with the stag, Astraea." Awkward. What was with all the other stags being evil..?

Dragon seemed to sharpen up, noticeably, and Pride eyed him and went on. "He has been speaking of--" and here he paused. He tried his best to summon up his magicka, to create a small, visible light show of what he'd seen within the horse's mind. It was a little trick he'd picked up while harmlessly story-telling with Mercurius, but he'd found that it had its other uses. He concentrated on the mist before him, but the images swirled only briefly, faintly, before fading altogether.

He grimaced and went on without them. "He has been speaking of going to Polaris. There he viewed the Spire--I cannot recall if I have mentioned it to you, but I have touched it with my mind, and there is something sinister within it. Something mad and chaotic, full of regret, of a goal unfulfilled. It repeats, in a voice barely-comprensible, 'death is a lie; pain is eternal.' And whatever this thing is, I believe that it struck out at Khloros when he struck out at it--it may be better if he explains the rest of his actual tale. But I am here to see if you are interested in taking him in, Dragon--for safety's sake, if nothing else. I think he is... important, somehow. The short version of the story is that he wished to destroy the Spire--he claims that we are all souls bound here in some grim cycle--and that the stag Astraea turned up, attacking him, saying that we belong to him, or some such. That we serve some other purpose. He drove Khloros' body, with some magic I do not know, into the Spire--and it disintegrated him. He then had a vision of another creature--I will try and show you, if my magic does not fail me again--and this being reassured him that he would be reborn. That his views--I presume on souls, and the Spire--are correct. Now, perhaps all of this might mean nothing--but when he awoke, we saw with our own eyes Astraea lurking, watching the chrysalis. It was in the middle of the races, however, and perhaps attacking him in front of so many would have been... I do not know, bad form? Too revealing? He left, regardless, and we took Khloros away." And now we do not know what to do with him, came the unspoken addition.