ORIGIN - A Game of... Bones?

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She couldn't see Pride stepping away through her tunnel vision, her whole body shaking out of control, still reeling from the intense magic. At last thought was beginning to creep back into her head, but it was dark thoughts. The fragmented memories solidified something in her head - that lizard really had been a monster. Throughout everything she'd seen, spanning the lizards childhood to the day she'd died, not once did Asimona see a lick of kindness, selflessness, or any kind of hint that she was anything more then a monster.

She tried to steady her heart, breathing deeply, but her senses continued to evade her. The world was still far away and unreal. For a moment, so filled with fragments of memories, she wondered who she even was - the dragon, Asimona, or the lizard, Reseda?

Her claws curled into fists, pressing against her palms tight enough to draw blood and the pain kept her anchored to this reality, to this body. Her eyes shut and she tried not to be ill. She was completely unaware of Garnet's capture, nor would she probably have cared if she was. She needed little bit of time to recover from this.

"Can you hear their voice?"
"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Pride
notes:

Pride hesitated. The creature he'd snagged was small, but still, at first glance he'd thought it to be a Gembound. It didn't look like any Lesser he'd ever seen; it wasn't a deer, or a rabbit, or a bat, but it did look like some sort of strange hybrid between the latter.

He came to a trotting halt close by, reaching out his mind quizzically for the Lesser's--intending to soothe it, and to double-check that it had no coherent thoughts.

It did. Pride blinked, startled; his arcane grip on Garnet was already letting go, what with his focusing on this new magic, but abruptly he dropped it altogether. Its thoughts were a frantic flood. Act stupid, act stupid--Am I being lesser enough? Should I kick some more?-Live through all of the trials to die because I touched a pebble the wrong way? Shit. -Oh, if I end up on the throne, too!" There was more--all of it jumbled, and now something about an Eyehook vulture, and Pride's thoughts, baffled, bled right back into Garnet's mind.

A foreign invasion of words, accidental, would slip: What in the caves is an Eyehook vulture? Pride shook himself, blinking, and then called after the Gembound, baffled. For a moment he maintained the link, trying to twin his message mentally, along with confused reassurance.

"Who are you-? Come back, I shan't harm you-... Did you animate these bones?"
"Who are you-? Come back, I shan't harm you-... Did you animate these bones?"

He glanced back toward the Throne, and hesitated. Half of him wanted to follow the stranger--to further unravel this mystery--but Asimona still hadn't responded. His mental link with Garnet slipped away.

Pride wavered, for a moment, then turned back, again shaking himself, and lurched into a swift trot back toward Asimona. If Garnet fled, then it fled. It was, he thought, likely a trickster, nothing more; it had undoubtedly used something akin to his wisp for illumination (it seemed much the same color, to him) and simple holding-magic, just like he'd used on the stranger moments before, to lift and move the bones. His magical detection spell must have simply failed.

"Asimona," he called quietly, hooves clicking as he drifted back around the corner. He slowed as he neared her, tilting his head, but he was careful not to crowd her; something seemed... off. "Are you all right? Is something happening?"

He fell still, one ear rotating uncertaintly, peering at her blank stare and the tension that seemed to be running through her.

@Asimona

Unaware of the mental invasion, the garnet continued to kick at the invisible hold - not so much, though, that it would tire it out if it did manage to meet the floor. When it did start to reacquaint itself with gravity, wings spread slightly to catch itself and it bounded away. Among its slurry of frantic thinking came the deer's voice, first singular and then almost doubled - the first of the twinned voice much more distant than the second.

Animated - no! it thought back, not consciously or directly at the invading diamond.

It squealed, sprinting hard for cover. The stag's link cut off before he could catch its next flood of frantic thinking. Garnet didn't need to listen - not really. It could do its spying from a safer distance, where slight noise-making couldn't be a problem and it could properly calm down.

Once a fair distance away, leathery wings snapped out. The spiralling tower seemed like a good place.

;exit Garnet unless stopped
@Asimona

Asimona was still laying on the stone, panting, the tunnel-vision starting, at last, to fade away, but she was still shaking and her head was still spinning. Still, her blurred eyesight shifted enough that she could see Pride walking up to her, stopping a few feet away. Her breathing was at last coming down, but it was still shaky and labored and she was obviously still a little delirious from the magic. "I'm...uh..." well, she wasn't going to lie and say she was alright. She shook her head, as if to clear it.

Should she tell Pride everything? No, she wouldn't, but not because she didn't want to, but because there was just so much to tell and a lot to think about as well. Still, she had promised that she'd tell him what she saw. "I saw...her. Reseda. Everything. Her whole life, or pieces of it at least. Lots of pieces. Most of them. I don't know." Trying to stop her body from shaking, she moved her front claws underneath her body and staggered to her feet, but she didn't look very stable. "Sorry, it was...a lot. I didn't find anything out about the caster...or really anything...but I know it wasn't her that did it. At least I didn't see her do anything that would cause this."

That was enough that her lungs could handle and she broke off, gasping, trying to catch her breath again. She blinked and remembered that Pride had just stepped away for some reason. There was a scuffling farther into Orion and she looked up, asking as soon as she had the breath. "Was someone here?"

"Can you hear their voice?"
"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Pride
notes:

Pride listened with a politely attentive demeanor, but there was genuine concern beneath the veneer of aloofness. He peered at Asimona, grey eyes flicking over her silver-shining scales, his brow drawn in.

"Hm-? Ahh--" He swivelled to peer back toward the Throne, nodding toward it. "There was someone back there, something like... a rabbit-bat, perhaps. I have never seen it before, and it fled, but it was not a Lesser--it was pretending to be, I think? I suspect it was animating the bones. A mischief-maker, perhaps, though I cannot be certain," he added. Granted, there'd been that brief moment of denial from the stranger; but the innocent didn't flee.

Pride looked back to Asimona, his gaze again travelling over her, that same pensive stiffness to him for a moment. Then he exhaled, as if in thought. "I may be able to--offer some steadying, to your mind--if you wish it? It is my sphere of magic," he explained; "but of course I will not do so if you do not want it. I can imagine that seeing an entire life in one blink--particularly hers-... must be, ahh. Unpleasant," he offered, his tone one of grimacing sympathy. "Alternatively, feel free to rest here, by all means."

Realizing at once that Asimona likely had no desire to linger in sight of the bones, he turned and swept his mind for them, intending to quietly and carefully lift them back out of sight, for now, behind the Throne. He was even considerate enough to block the sight with his body as best he could. A couple seemed stuck, at first, by ice, though; these took a moment of powerful mental tugging to break free, but soon enough they, too, were hidden out of sight.

He turned back to Asimona, peering at her, a little worried at what she might have seen. Reseda's life, he knew, had been one of violence; but in truth, he didn't know the half, even, of the things she'd done.

@Asimona

She was trying to listen to Pride, but thoughts and sounds kept intruding into her present memory as her mind tried to compensate for the heavy influx of information she had just taken in. She managed to catch that there'd been some kind of "rabbit-bat" that was most likely the perpetrator and she definitely caught Pride's offer to steady her mind. She nodded wordlessly and glanced over at the Throne behind Pride. She blinked. Had Pride just moved the bones away or had they walked off on their own? She sure hoped that it was the former and found that she was too exhausted to really care.

She took a moment to get her voice back and managed to rasp out, "When I'm feeling better, I need to think about it but...I think she was every bit the monster you saw." And that was certainly a hit. She'd always assumed that there was a reason that she was like that, that there was some kind of story to the bad feeling she'd gotten from the lizard. But there wasn't. Unless she was missing something, but what could she have missed? She'd gotten bits and pieces of everything and nothing told her why.

She shook her head and slowly sat herself down again when the world began to spin. "I could use some steadying right now," she responded, gratefully.

"Can you hear their voice?"
"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Pride
notes:

Pride gave another dip of his head, a polite incline, and then slowly lowered himself to the ground. Knees folded, head bowed, eyes closed: he seemed to fall into meditation, for a moment.

In truth he was clearing his own mind. This wasn't something he'd done before, though he hoped that it would work. He put himself in mind of Mercurius's glade: of the silver half-light of midnight, its dark peace lit here and there by golden lace where the baubled stones lit the dew that traced along the leaves. It had a magical feeling to it. Calm, serene; tranquil. As if nothing bad could happen there. And Pride felt the memories even calming his own nerves.

Everything will be okay, he thought to himself, and once he was firmly in the thick of this belief, he opened his silver eyes--and his mind--to Asimona. To her, the same thought, slowly, gently: All will be well. Everything will be all right. He extended out that sense of well-being, the imagery of the peaceful glade: and now came the soft sounds of rainfall in the pleasant dark, pattering down among the ferns. The hum of insects was quieted by the weather.

It felt slow; it felt like some other place where danger could not tread. And, as Pride offered this image out, he offered the idea of quietude of thoughts: blankness, for a moment. The pushing aside of words, the deep breath of nothingness.

He kept this imagery open, his eyes closing again as he focused on maintaining it--and softly, he spoke into the dragon's mind: Stay here as long as you need. And if you'd like to see the real place, and rest there, I can always show you the way.

@Asimona

Asimona closed her eyes as well as Pride began to concentrate, but it wasn't much better. She could still see images passing across her eyelids and she felt a streak of embarrassment that she's ruined their investigation of the bones so thoroughly. It was pushed out of her mind quickly, though, as something gently brushed against her mind. She welcomed it in and felt the glade gently building itself around her. She couldn't look up and see it, but she could remember it as if they were her memories, as if she had experienced it only moments ago.

She forgot, for a short time, about all those memories that had been shoved into her head as she left herself be lost in the glade. She sighed deeply and focused on Pride's voice. Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay. But when you wake up they won't be. It was sudden and intrusive, deep and close to a snarl, but Asimona had gotten so good at ignoring him now that she barely even heard.

She was exhausted, more mentally then anything, and the serenity that Pride had offered her coupled with his gentle voice and the soft sounds of the glade gently lulled her to sleep. She caught the tail end of what Pride was saying before she passed into a dreamless sleep.

*exit

"Can you hear their voice?"
"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Pride
notes:

Pride had expected the dragon to calm; perhaps, even, to rest. What he had not expected was her falling so rapidly asleep. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen anyone drop so quickly. By the time his spell faded, he was already cutting off the magic himself so as not to wake her up.

He had noticed, too, the brief and jarring thought--her own, he believed, and on the tail-end of his own. It was as if her own mind had tacked it on, and it almost hadn't sounded like her own. He mulled it over, for a moment--feeling the shared tension from Mischief, who was now sitting on all fours, on the Throne, watching him with furrowed brow. She had heard it too, or at least, knew what he had heard.

Was it only Asimona's own thought, worried after all she'd seen? Hers, or has seeing Reseda's life affected her this deeply? -I hope she has not somehow absorbed Reseda's spirit, he thought, worriedly. That could be problematic. Could a spirit linger-? Haunt, possess? Could the lizard be in Asimona's mind even now, prodding, influencing, controlling?

He considered slipping back into the dragon's sleeping mind, but he didn't want to wake her--and he knew that Reseda, at least, knew of his powers. If it was her soul, somehow lingering, she'd be smart enough--he hoped--to hide. And in any case, he wasn't sure what it would be like to read the mind of a sleeping creature. It might harm him; now wasn't the time to find out.

Resolving at least to keep a close watch, the white stag stepped quietly over to the throne and curled down on the rock against it. Mischief leapt off the seat to lay against him, tucked against his flank, and she quickly fell asleep.

Pride, though, remained awake--half-dozing, at times, his ears loosely back and eyes half-shut, but always at least vaguely aware of Asimona and the cave around them. She slept soundly enough, though--for now--and soon his worry had mostly faded.

As far as he was concerned, the mystery was solved. The stranger had come, manipulated the bones to frighten them or to toy with them, and had now fled. He'd keep an eye open for them but there was little else to be done, for now--little to be done but rest.

exit Pride

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