ORIGIN

Pride brightened visibly at the suggestion.

"A competition, a sparring match--a war game, perhaps?" He sounded enthusiastic, almost childlike, his eyes sparkling with interest. "Perhaps two teams, and a goal to compete over? It would be a good way to get to know one another--some friendly competition, magic in action--though it would of course need rules, for safety's sake," he went on, having taken the idea and run (perhaps too far for Aure's liking?) with it.

"And as far as claiming Canis, I wouldn't suggest such a thing--but guarding it, protecting it, well. It is your home. Not the cave itself, is what I mean, but those within it. If another group were to attack you--and I think there are none, at the moment, who pose a threat but one never knows--it is best to be prepared."

Granted, the Seven were hardly as active as he'd like, or as numerous--and he said as much. "Optimally, I would like the Seven to be a force capable of defending themselves, but I suspect we are too few, and many of them are somewhat reclusive. I am working on that--but I have heard mention of the Bonebound nearly since my own hatching. Surely there are enough of you?" Pride's tone was politely, if somewhat concernedly, inquisitive. He actually had no idea, he realized, how many--or how few--they were.

Pride's enthusiasm remained unwaning. "The coliseum! Ahh, if you wish it, that could be quite glorious. It is the perfect place if spectators wish to watch--and easily-defensible should the training come under any real attack, though I feel that might be foolish. Still! I could ask the dragon. His aid is easily-bought. All of that sounds, good, truly. I am sure the Kingdom can aid in plant-barriers and terrain? Grow the Coliseum full of foliage? And they do have a medic or two, I believe?" To the rest, Pride listened sombrely. He had never heard of the Marrowbound Kingdom.

He also did not notice Aure sitting on his (subsequently escaping) tail.

"I am sorry, then, that I did not know them. Though I feel experienced enough, at times I realize just how old these caves are, and just how much there is I do not know. Speaking of which," he added, tilting his head a little and blinking. "Do you know of Khloros?"

Pride was aware, briefly, that he might have overstepped his bounds as Advisor. He could not actually agree to hosting something like this without first consulting Envy--err, Livius. He felt fairly certain that the weasel would agree to it, but he would need to clarify with them first, and it was best to tell Aure as much just in case.

"I will need to clear it all with King Livius, of course--but I think they will be interested."

As for the rest... oh dear. Sometimes there was conversation; other times, a wholly one-sided info dump. Now was the time for the latter, and Pride sighed, lowering himself to settle on the smooth pebbles. The sea-soaked air rushed softly over his fur as he closed his eyes, for a moment, focusing on his magicka. He tried to relax, this time, while casting; the illusions of light never seemed to work well for him. They were fickle and seemed resistant to his touch, and so this time, rather than forceful, he tried to imagine it as a gentle story he wished to tell: an act of creation, rather than coersion.

...This, if anything, made it worse. Quiet pops of darkness accompanied his attempts, as if little bits of light were being sucked away, and he stared at them with dull irritation. "Also not what I intended to do," he grumbled. "My illness acting up, it seems." Not his illness, though, was it? At the memory of Amazon's glowing health, some of his grumpiness faded. Despite his weakness, his soreness, and his chaotically-backfiring magic, another life was worth it.

"Right, well. I wished to show you examples of those involved but I need to wait, a moment, for that. My magic is not being... at all cooperative, though that spell in particular is often--well. An asshole," he went on, firing Aure a darkly-amused glance.

"So, from what I can gather, Khloros was a very strange creature in the caves. I do not know how old, though I know he is far older than myself. He was a black horse, in a way, though rail-thin and diseased, a host of bacterial magic. His eyes glowed green-white. His speech mannerisms were--and are--stilted and strange, as if he is not quite all here. He held a belief," and here Pride eyed Aure very levelly--"that we are all trapped in these caves, that we have spirits--souls--bound to stone. That in the act of returning a stone to life, it binds them again to these caves. He believed that he had been sent by 'death' to put a stop to this, and free our souls, and so he set out to plague the caves, though I have no idea if he ever actually killed anyone." Pride paused, eyeing Aure with dark, somehow serious amusement. "It sounds mad, thus far, does it not?"

Pride nodded, taking a breath and summoning up his magicka again. This time it came so powerfully that he nearly lost control--Khloros, the diseased version, walked up alongside and behind Aure as if he were really there.

The stag blinked. That was... better than expected.

The horse seemed to drip with pus, as he'd seen in its memories; it was rail-thin, ghostlight eyes echoing a shimmer of yellow-green (an aspect of the magic used for the illusion, Pride suspected) that shrouded it.

"Ahh--this is just my magic," he hastened to say. "But this is what he used to look like. In any case--he came to believe that to free all our souls, he would need to destroy the Spire, instead." False-Khloros turned, and lifted a head to regard a large, shimmering, very faint and unstable image of the Spire itself. It was far smaller than the real thing.

Yet Astraea--clear as day, though shrouded in a sinister red, like his ruby--stepped forth out of thin air, to face him. It was strange, how Astraea seemed to mirror Pride--the same precise shape, the same elegance and dignified stance, the same branching antlers. Yet the colors, the gemstone, the coat riddled with fungus... the glowing red eyes... all set him apart. He was as a strange, dark mirror to the white stag. "This is Astraea--one of the elders of the cave and, so far as I can tell, long-considered benevolent by those older than I. Yet as it turns out he has lied, manipulated others, as you heard mentioned in the meeting. I did not know what he looked like until I delved into Khloros' memories. But what happened, in the end, was this: Khloros moved to attack the Spire. The Spire lashed out at him. Astraea appeared, and told him things--that we are, all of us, but 'results of failed, purged experiments.' That we 'belong' to him, and to some unknown group including him. That our goals must align. He then told Khloros that souls were a lie, and that the horse did not have freedom--and challenged him to a battle, to 'earn' it. With his magic--far more powerful than ours--he then drove the horse into the Spire."

Astraea faded from the image--too difficult for Pride to keep up, though the white stag was now so deeply immersed in the story that the rest was still crystal-clear. Khloros jerkily walked into the Spire, clearly fighting his own movements--then brief thrashing, flailing, the body shredded--torn apart by magic, disintegrating into nothing.

A chrysalis formed.

The images faded altogether--to be replaced by the vision of a gentle-faced, white being--somehow centaur-like, but alien in all aspects--peering down, one hand shifted as if to cradle the onlooker's face. "He saw this. In death. White nothing, all around, and this being; it told him, kindly, to be reborn, and to tell others--to spread the way he thought, or some such, to the rest of us. And he was reborn. Perhaps it is only yet another elder--trapped, perhaps--or even a disguise of some sort, something more sinister, using this face and Khloros' inevitable rebirth regardless. But his rebirth was... different."

The new Khloros appeared, the gentle face now faded. A plain black stallion--strong, swift, clean in limb and with a powerfully-arched neck, lean and with warm, brown eyes. It looked healthy, and wholly typically normal for a horse. "He was healed--and his magic is entirely gone. When he woke--when he hatched--it was during those Olympic games. Astraea was watching, waiting--we all saw him--but I suspect he could not act with so many present."

Pride let the images drop, exhaustion gripping his mind.

"This has been exhausting, I am sorry--but important. Do you see the implications..? If Astraea himself--who has been known to lie and use others in the past--came to stop Khloros, it means that Khloros' beliefs, even if wrong, are somehow a threat to him. Perhaps he only wishes to keep the Spire intact--I do not know. But then, how does this other being fit in? A dream, perhaps? The lie of another elder? Again, I do not know, but given his dramatic change--his healing--and his now lack of magic, assuming it is not purely due to trauma... well. So far as I see it, the best case scenario is that Astraea is good, but ruthless, and defending the Spire; that Khloros simply mutated in death, and his visions were merely dreams. In the worst case, Khloros is right, this other being has truly sent him back... But the thing is, Astraea's words were real. Khloros did not dream those; I saw them in his memories, do you see? Astraea claimed that we were essentially slaves, playthings, with no free will, no soul, existing only as the byproducts of failed creations--existing to serve."

Pride paused, his gaze distant, before adding--"I find this worrying."

It was, perhaps, the understatement of the century.

Pride eyed Aure, thinking, for a moment. It wasn't a manipulative expression--or manipulative thoughts--but he was trying to think on the best course of action. He didn't want to put Aure or the Bonebound into a bad position, or worse, for one of the Elders--Astraea, perhaps--to harm the small hybrid for his knowledge.

He was uncertain how badly Astraea wanted Khloros, if at all, but he didn't want to put anyone else in the way. And it wasn't that he didn't trust Aure; he did. Rather fully, in fact. He held no suspicions about the young, earnest, seemingly-honest Gembound. He truly didn't want to put him in harm's way.

"I suggested he take one of the larger caves--somewhere easier to hide--and wait alone. Perhaps--though I doubt it--Astraea's anger will pass. Khloros knows where to find me, if he needs me. I do not know what will happen if Astraea looks for him," he went on, speaking a bit too much to cover this white lie, "but I truly hope that he has no way to track him. I have no suggested course of action for any of us... I don't know what to do about this. Even if we had some way of verifying his story... I do not have a clue what to do about it."

His tone was worried, and he shook his head. "You are right, Aure; it is beyond worrying. But for now, all any of us can do is be wary, I think--perhaps warn your people, so that if one or both of us are killed, the story is not lost. And now, I must rest, I fear. The illness... and magical use. I beg your pardon; you can remain if you wish, but my mind is failing me." Pride bowed his head, and then--knees half-buckling beneath him--he abruptly lowered himself with a thud to the pebbles. He was exhausted--helpless, in fact. His focus had remained, and he felt safe enough where he lay, even out here in the open--perhaps simply too tired to care--but his body left him little choice in the matter. Pale grey eyes lifted to Aure, once more. "Just be careful, Aure, and be careful who you trust. We none of us have any way of knowing where this will lead... or when."