ORIGIN

The Agate was a tired straggler keeping up the very tail end of the pack, but they hadn't given up. They would never give up.

They stuck along side Mayngo, for better or for worse, through it all. They had seen signs of the other competition-- dead corpses, blood, sweat, tears, phantoms and pawprints and shadows-- but they truly could not tell if they were imagining these things or not.

Thankfully, their throat had gone completely dry by now, and no more squawking came out to bother the fossa's ears. They merely kept rank with their companion as they crossed the hot and dry land, though they wanted to tell Mayngo not to trust their eyes through this stretch as much as the last. Their voice was gone, and they had only their mind left to occupy them.

Gatto had a reason to reach the end. They did not know if Ru and Asimona, or any of the others, truly survived, but they would not let the survivors be without one obnoxious cockatrice, that was for damn sure.

agate is staying at the back.

Imp watched Reseda fade into the distance. He didn't really care. He sort of, vaguely, hoped she'd die, but not in a really emotionally-involved sort of way. Back behind him, the other group seemed to be doing well enough. One of them had been struggling, and Imp turned, intending to let them catch him up.

Another had rolled in the mud, and that seemed like a good idea--so he did the same, wallowing for a moment in the rancid muck of the Dead Marsh before setting out over the Salt Flats.

What lay ahead was shitty. Hot--WAY TOO HOT. He felt like his wings were burning, even past the mud, and the glare of the salt flats on his eyes--well, if he wasn't half-alligator, and at least a little evolved to handle water-glare, he'd have been near blind by now. As it was it was hard to see anything but "white" and "vague shapes that shimmered too much and made him feel sick." Or was the "sick" bit coming from the heat..? It was hard to tell.

Imp also couldn't seem to decide between walking, and trying to fly. He'd plod on for awhile, feet burning, then take to the air. The air was hot enough that his wings could mostly support him--but there were no thermals to ride. Instead, it was just dead heat, wholly still air that seemed motionless, more a picture than a real cave. He hated that. But then again, he was a good, sandy color--not a white that would burn, and not a black that would draw in all the heat. He was mostly furless, with big, broad ears, so he was dissipating heat well. And his jaws were broad, so parting them for even a few moments dispersed even more. But the outside was still hotter than his body, and he was weary from the prior battles and struggles. All things considered, he was doing pretty well--but this place still sucked.

The swamp had been wet, treacherous, but at least it'd been cool. The heat ahead was extreme.

He, like Shango, knew how to summon bananas. And he didn't intend to try and rush off ahead. He wanted to fall behind, to stick with the other group. That meant that going the distance was more important than going for speed. He paused, working on creating a fruit of his own--wholly unaware that not far, someone else was doing the same thing--and sat for a few minutes to try and let the others catch up. He ate it, as he did so, banana goop coating his face--and when a nearby scorpion sat staring at him, he even lobbed a tiny bit of fruit at the thing.

"You eat fruit? Have some," he offered. The scorpion waddled forward and started to pinch at the offering, though whether it was actually eating it, Imp could not tell.

The banana and a rest gave him the energy, so he hoped, to finish the "race"--and soon the others were coming up behind him.

"Heya," he offered. "That lizard was an asshole. Not you," he added, toward Amazon.

Imp was unaware that he was sparkling, glowing and glittering, rather fabulously, with the banana's magic--which looked even stranger, really, in the hot desert light.

Vargas had left the Merchant and the rest. They would likely go ahead, around to the cave mouth--awaiting the winners--while he, Vargas, picked up the stragglers.

The act of "picking up" stragglers was not as kind or helpful as it sounded, though it was generally, if one were to be honest, a mercy. A slow heat death was perhaps not preferable to a quick shake and a snap of the neck. That being said, Vargas was not out to drag down and kill those who simply moved slowly. That was not his goal. The trials were, in his mind, just that--the trials. He was there to clean up, yes, but even the slowest among them--so long as they did not collapse on the baking salt flat--would find him only lingering behind at a distance. Ominous perhaps, but not particularly dangerous. It was those who fell, unable to continue, dying, that would feel his teeth in their throat.

Even for him, the heat was searing. He disliked it; he liked prowling Hydra at night, when the temperatures dropped so far as to be cold, when coils of ripping air tore through at twilight and at dawn. He enjoyed hunting in the darkness.

Ahead of him, he could see a few test subjects. The cockatrice was first, and the fossa with it--its skull fallen away. Both seemed to be alive, well enough, but he'd seen them both struggle badly in the marsh.

Slowly he paced along behind them, his massive bulk and long forelimbs spiderlike as he lurked--but he kept his distance, for now.

Beyond them was the spotted creature, with its black wings--it had been a strange one, at times casting magic that seemed rather unrelated to the situation at hand, and now it definitely appeared to be faltering. A possible failure, Vargas made a mental note. If Shango fell, he'd be on him in a minute or two--he was not so far behind.

Past that--and near-lost to the haze of shimmering heat-waves--was the largest group, one that had chosen to stick together. The dragon certainly had much to do with their survival--the rest had rallied around her, and she'd rescued more than one of them, as one had rescued her. He was, in his own way, proud of them: a successful trial spoke only good things, and those that managed to band together and survive were those he always somewhat-grudgingly admired. Though he'd never have told Astraea or Nemean in such words, he did root for them, in a sense. Survivors meant success. Success was good. Failures were to be torn away, yes, but the ones who pressed on were winners.

So far, none of them had fallen to the heat--but Vargas knew that as the group went on, there was every possibility that he would find--as he so often did--one of them fallen by the wayside, left to die in the dust.