ORIGIN

Crimson, gold-rimmed eyes darted to and fro. Talons picked at the edge of the ancient path, moving a bone here and one there. Each one received a brief whisper from a lowered head and chirp. He knew their history well, now, the constant state of being watched and hunted and destroyed. They learned not to trust the shadows, not to trust voices they could not see. Aure had seen into the past of many of them - and many of them met the same end. Acidic-green eyes and claws and violence and blood. At least their deaths were often quick. It did not make the sensation of a thousand haunted souls in Canis dissipate.

Monstrous things lurked in the dark, then - and they began to, once again. The Bone King - king of his own people and a guardian of his family - knew that preparations must be made. His confidence in his fellow Bonebound was insurmountable, but it had been, yet again, some time since he called them as one. Proper unity would be difficult to achieve without constant meetings, checkups, preparations. But, Aure didn't find himself as organized and fluent with the agenda as, say, Pride. Time often flew and slowed to a crawl with the happenings in the caves.

The least he could do, he supposed, was find a way to prepare his Bonebound and aid them in bonding. So, wherever he went, a persistent carpet followed. The fruiting bodies were rather diminutive, but potent enough to slightly inhibit any that happened to step in them. They emerged from the circuit in a five-foot radius around Aure, coaxed along by slightly-spread wings and the depth of some of the strange footprints.

Aure meandered for quite a while, pacing with mushrooms in tow around a quarter of the circuit's girth. The magic, feeble as it was, finally puttered out. Loosening his mental grip on his stone, the wyvern turned and peered down the fungal carpet. A brief sniff indicated that they were, most certainly, the type he had aimed for - mildly hallucinogenic and inducing of unsteady symptoms, but otherwise harmless. Just a slight consequence aside from docking points every time one grazed the caps and sent a cloud of spores rolling through the whole crowd. Worse come to worse, he would dispel the spores altogether with a sweeping breeze.

The Bone King took to the wing for a moment, seemingly abandoning his project to take a bird-bath.

He returned doused in coppery, iron-rich water and flinging it all across the carpet. His flight path wound side to side, bobbing and weaving in keeping with the pattern of stalactite bases above. Satisfied with his work and hovering at one end of the vast spread, Aure emanated a fierce arc of pure electricity. It jumped through each of his feathers before finally rocketing towards the carpet. The bolt shot through the path of water, burning it into place among the mushrooms.

Pleased with the path and test in caution, Aure turned on the spot, continuing some way down the circuit - it could be a dead sprint here, or moment to deal with any unintended effects of the fungi - in a low hover. Talons clicking as he landed again, he hummed. Next on the docket would, perhaps, be seeking. Clues. But, it was a matter of creating a hiding spot for whatever needed to be sought out (likely a bauble, but he'd consider that further down the metaphorical line.)

Quills rustling, spores scattering off of his feathers, the wyvern took to the air again. Each wingbeat cast down another spray of fungi, settling among the dust and bone-pieces ground into the earth by many ancient, alien creatures. Crimson eyes stared at the floor, willing the 'seeds' to magically fruit. And fruit they did, into a somewhat dense forest of five foot tall stalks and wide, light-stealing, and frilly caps. Silvery tendrils hung off of each end of their gills, swaying lightly in the breeze.

Well-hiding, but perhaps not enough...

Auré

Auré

Auré