ORIGIN

Dragon was not far off. He rarely was, when it came to the Heart, and when he heard the voice calling, he grumbled. He tried to call upon his magicka--to take flight, and wing his way over there. And this was a magic that had never failed him, before. But it did now, and with a heavy sigh, the reptile resigned himself to plodding through the swamp on foot.

His twisted hind limb slowed him, some, so it was a few minutes before he came to the place, before he saw the star-spangled fox glittering there, staring at him from beneath her halo.

"What?" he demanded, irritably--and then, bellowing, "CHILDREN OF ROT, come to me."

The call came, and he answered. Or rather, he approached.

His mind was still gently curious, still half-lost in dreams and musing, and nightmares still lingered at its edges in a confused and hazy way. But Dragon had taken him in, agreed to hide him here, and so when the alligator called, Khloros--despite his wandering thoughts--came.

Hooves carried him through mud, and his dark body slipped through the mist. The fog parted, and he found others already there.

Curious, he studied the blue creature; something told him that she was important, but how--and whether good, or bad--he couldn't say.

"I'm here," was all he said, softly--and with a brief, faint nod toward Pallas, too.

horse stock by venomxbaby on deviantart

He had planted his piece. He had tended it, dutifully bringing fish and rabbit, torn-up rat. It had grown, where he'd nestled it in amongs the roots of the trees; now it was a fuzzy white clot the size of a cave deer. It spoke to him, but he was the only one linked to it. All his being had been consumed by the need to plant, nourish, and defend Mother. Slicked and matted with foul-smelling mud, his own weight a little lessened, the bear was clearly not caring for himself so much as becoming a servant of the fungus.

The call, though, rang through the swamp, and Sergei lumbered to meet it. Mother whispered for him to go, and so he did: he did not know if the others still felt her touch, but he obeyed.

The bear splashed his way to the gathering, but he remained silent, lingering uneasily on the edges of the clearing, his small eyes hooded with suspicious unease beneath his heavy brow.

The buzzing mass of mites was a little distressed. It had planted its samples of Mother, but they were all too small to properly--so they felt--tend to her.

Legion had, at first, tried to separate its swarm, to send some out in many directions to scout and to gather, to leave the rest close to defend her. It was the very first time they'd tried to split apart, but found--to their horror, and dismay--that those mites flying too far from the small speck of Titanite at their core, at their Queen, had lost magic and, in some cases, even life. This was a terror, and though it was busily forming replacements, the fact that they could not operate as a true swarm had been a terrible shock to them.

They were forced, then, to move as a whole, and they had decided (after a humming self-consultation) to carry Mother with them in her tiny samples, at first. They'd brought her along as they sought bits of carrion, or edible foliage, and had fed her as they went. When at last her particles were too heavy to carry, they had found a sheltered rock crevice with moss within, and settled her there. She'd consumed this, spreading and growing, and now the swarm busied itself desperately trying to bring her enough food to keep her alive. Enough to grow her was nearly (for the swarm) out of the question, and it had come to realize that it might need to hunt Lessers to do so. This hurt it, in a sense--none of the swarm liked killing, especially given that their method of feeding was to strip flesh from bones with a thousand tiny mouths.

It had yet to bring itself to do so, and Dragon's call was a good excuse to put it off even further; the swarm swept in, taking its quadrapedal form, blinking two large eyes as it caught sight of Pallas, Sergei, and Reji.

Ahh-... so they were here, too! -Good! This was good. The hive hummed, pleased, hoping that the other portions of Mother had survived along with them, too.