ORIGIN

The dragon's landing sent the black dog stumbling back, wincing and scrambling to keep his footing. The heat was incredible, a searing blast of air followed by the crackling of molten stone: behind Raheerah's claws, from his teeth... Black stared through the immense beast's hind legs, for a beat, at the tracks he had left behind him--and then craned his head back to stare up at the speaking dragon.

Though his voice was deafening, vibrating through Black's body with a terrifying bass, he could feel the emotion in it. Pain, rage. Dull surprise struck him: he had not realized that the dragon felt. The only time he'd known him, it was a gloating dominance, a catastrophic rage, a careless delight in wanton destruction. He staggered purely to stay upright in the winds of that roar.

Black hadn't noticed Throne following: the sound of small hooves had easily been drowned out by the bass thump of leathery wings and the screeching bellows that rended the air. But somewhere in all this the lamb had leaned to him, murmuring, and Black glanced down in horror.

He let the shadows fall away, but at the same time, he suddenly felt as though he'd failed. The point had been to secure Throne's safety: now the child was in the most possible danger. Black looked up at Raheerah--Raheerah, who was staring, frozen for a beat, at the lamb--and carefully, protectively, pressed against Throne. Meanwhile, his mind was flicking back to Raheerah's words, struggling to tear through his memories for a stone to which he had been entrusted (for he assumed, somehow, that the dragon meant him). The only stone he could think of was the topaz--had that been a Master? Had Raheerah felt its revival, somehow, and come flying back here from--from wherever he'd gone--and only just arrived?

"The only stone to which the Dog was entrusted was a topaz, and it is revived," he answered slowly, fear (mostly for Throne) rippling through his voice as he raised it high enough to be heard. That he could manage to speak at all in the face of this billowing heat and dragon's fangs was a miracle at all, but he found his voice, and quickly continued.

He was about to ask, "is there anything we can do," but instinct at once warned him that if the answer was "no," he would be dead in half a second.

And so would Throne.

He glanced, too, to the strange dog that had just bumbled up, asking questions in the innocently foolish way of another child, liable to get them all killed. Raheerah had already answered that question, in his own way, and asking again... Black knew of him. This pup did not.

So Black hastened to call up, cautious: "I have killed none. I am Guardian. I will seek this stone, and bring it to you, but do not kill the lamb."

It was not a command, though perhaps it could have been better-phrased--it was a pleading, his tone clear as he pressed against Throne's small form, staring up with wrinkled brow and desperate gaze to the dragon.

What... is... this... THING.

This. Wretched creature. Black as night, so unlike his Dawa. Black as tar. Black as Him. Raheerah was, in the thinnest of senses, a holy man, in the way that one could be devout to a beast such as Him--but Dawa had never been like that. Never been tainted. Never been so destructive as the rest of them. She was pure as the sun, a vision of snow and light, a flare in the lens of eyes looking skyward.

They killed her. And instead, they gave him this thing, this monstrosity. This insult to her legacy, with wool tarnished black, leeching the shadows from the suffocating cave. This effigy of her, which was more like a mockery that made his stomach churn and his heart feel sick each passing second he stared. A stare that bore down. A stare as hot as the flames themselves. He barely heard the voice of the dog, appealing to his agony with promises of returning her stone--HER STONE!--AS IF DELIVERING AN EMPTY VESSEL WAS ANY CONSOLATION TO THE LOSS THAT WAS TEARING HIM APART. THEY'D NEVER EXPERIENCE A LOSS LIKE THIS. NOT IN THIS LIFETIME. NOT IN THE NEXT. THEY'D NEVER KNOW.

Oh, foolish were the creatures who gravitated to his fire. Foolish were their valiant hearts and fearful servitude. The white dog, the black dog, the lamb, the bird caught in its curls. But he felt no sympathy for them.

Only hatred.

At the crux of the lamb's small voice, he snapped.

For them to think that they could so easily mend this wound. It was unacceptable.

He detonated, reeling his head back in a furious cry. "NNNNNNNNNO!" the dragon shrieked with all the madness that burned in his heart, his forelimbs splayed, his claws scorching the stone, his wings arched around him like those holiest of halos--religious with rage. "YOU. WILL. DIE!"

He would make sure of that. Oh, he would.

He'd wipe that putrid caricature of his beloved right out of existence.

A hellish scream framed the sudden lunge he made for the lamb, employing the titanic size of his skull alone to knock the black dog and the white dog aside. His gaping jaws, within half a second, yawned over Throne and the bird so unfortunately trapped in his hair--and then just as quickly snapped shut, the massiveness of his teeth shearing through the Gembounds with calamitous ease. With their bodies already collapsing, crushed, a taste of blood in his mouth, he wrenched his head back and lobbed them into the air. Like ragdolls. Meaningless flanks of meat. Skin torn, their bodies were already rended apart when they hit midair; and then they fell into his waiting jaws again, and he snapped his mouth shut, and crunched, and Throne and Tyr were no more.

Barely visible, shards of their shattered stones glistened in the firelight and clattered to the floor around his feet.

If there was to be any shred of hope that they had survived, he would dismantle it, for a second later Raheerah mustered another firestorm from his jaws, incinerating whatever of their mortal forms remained inside his throat. His fire poured toward the ceiling, sheathing the immediate vicinity in blistering heat.

He'd slaughter every last creature in this forsaken cave.

I only wanted for them to be safe.

This thought was quiet in his mind, a mind soft in the buzz of physical shock, as the black dog tumbled across the floor. Raheerah's head alone had hit him hard enough to daze him, so that he heard the sounds--the bellowing roars, the lamb's desperate half-apology, the crunch of bones and flesh--past a haze of muffled ringing.

He blinked, a moment later.

Somehow he'd wound up several yards away, lying on his side, and landed facing Raheerah. He caught the briefest glimpse of the lamb's body--a limp, torn carcass--as the dragon swallowed it back, the bird a mere blip of color in its wool. As glittering shards of stone, as if in brief slow motion, spun and fell away. And then--fire, above, around, everywhere; and the hound struggled to pull himself away.

His eyes squeezed shut against the blast, and he scrambled, calling desperately on his magicka to form him a shield. He felt it form and burst behind him, heard the pop as it responded. The licking flames that had already scorched his back and exposed flank, burning scars that might not heal, at least now spared his life as the black hole drew them to it.

The hound scrambled on the stone, trembling, trying desperately to flee. He had time only for that. He was unable yet to even consider what had just happened, aside from his instinct to run, now, and to survive. No time to judge the best reaction, though he hoped that the white dog had the sense, too, to flee.

And no time to think, aside from that one mournful, stricken thought: I only wanted them to be safe.

All he saw was red.

Red of the fires that raged all around him. Red of the blood from the Gembounds he had shorn apart. Red of the anger that throbbed behind his eyes. Their existence was defiance in the face of the Creator. In the face of all they had strived for, all of their endless toiling--only to be met, after so many years of sleep, with this! Runaway monsters. Weak designs. Brittle mockeries of what this cave was truly capable of! Fools and mistakes and atrocities that killed his Dawa!

Raheerah was for the moment blind as a hurricane of fire ripped around him, the heat so powerful that it made even the obsidian scales on his hide glisten. The air was a glimmering mirage, sparks flooded the cavern with the threat to set anything they touched alight. The dragon sepulchered himself in the womb of his madness, his four walls made of fire, bellowing out at the injustices of his existence--which felt so small, now, even as he dominated every other creature in this pitiful hole in the ground with his titanic size. Loss had a way of reducing even giants to motes of dust.

Until the flames fluttered away. And he snapped his eyes down to the aftermath of his attack, witnessing the dog muster a void that slurped up the lashing tongues of his destruction. Raheerah's pupils shrank to wicked pinpricks as he crashed his front feet down on the stone, uttering a quaking roar. Both of the dogs fled--and he was met with the tiniest tickle of magic, a suggestion that someone or something had pervaded his emotional prison--but it wasn't strong enough for him to isolate it. No, there were too many creatures in this room; his indecision on who to target next left him raking the cavern, spouting fire at whatever he saw until all the life in his immediate vicinity had been scorched. He was left alone, enraptured in his violent, hateful fire.

"YEEESS, RUN! YOUR FINAL DAYS WILL BE PANIC. FEAR. DREAD. IN THE FINAL MOMENTS WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GO. IN THE END, YOU'LL ALL BE NOTHING BUT ASH!" he erupted, and beat his grand wings and lifted himself into the sizzling air. They could run. They could hide, even. But none of it would save them. He'd scorch every last inch of this cave, and he wouldn't be satisfied until it was nothing but lava. He would fill this forgotten nest will fire and then he would find his way out--emerge, like the cataclysmic eruption of a volcano, naught but a sizzling crater left in his wake.

Everyone--everything--would come to know his rage.

Exit Raheerah to this thread. Polaris is now filled with dangerous fire! Who knows how long it will last?

Black ran. He scrambled along the stone, his side scorched, searing, and wondered in a terrified and distant way how he'd managed to call death down upon them. He thought it might have been that magic--speaking of Raheerah, while using it--but that gentle voice that had spoken to him, guided him in its use, suggested other purposes for the spell.

And right now, it was only a vague and horrified notion--his primary concerns were with running. Breathing. Not falling on the rock. With the roars echoing through the cave behind him.

Then... it faded. Raheerah's thumping wingbeats left, and Black scrambled sidelong on the stone, turning wide-eyed to stare back at the place where he'd been. Why did he not finish it-? and his eyes flicked back to the-... To the place where the lamb had died.

The black dog hesitated. He wasn't sure he'd ever know why Raheerah had not chased him down and killed him--he couldn't have been more than a couple wingbeats away--but he was not about to waste the time. Quietly he reversed direction, flanks heaving and lungs (ironically) burning as he charged back to where the dragon had been. It might return--there could be no delay.

Skidding to a stop amongst the remains, Black put up a short cloud of black ash. Was that Throne-? And the bird? Grief and guilt again wrenched through him, but he pushed on--snuffling rapidly along the rock, skidding the crystalline shards of glittering gemstone with a cold, wet nose.

At first, he found nothing, and despair, grief, rose in him as if choking his throat from within. His nose struck something warm, then, and it tinkled softly across the rock. Smooth. Black, flecked with white. It landed perfectly beside another, similar piece, but misshapen, with a small spot of pink melded into it.

"I will care for you," he promised, and again it was choked, a half-sob threatening to rise from it. He'd already failed them. Both of them. He'd tried--and they had perished.

The black dog lifted his head, and looked back the way Raheerah had gone. He was tempted to follow him--to bay a warning to others in his path--but he realized how futile this would be. Raheerah was announcing his own movements--nothing Black did could make it any clearer that bellowing, angry fire was chasing them down.

He looked back down at the gemstones, considering them carefully. No--he could safeguard these, now that the immediate danger had passed. Raheerah seemed intent on burning the entirety of the caves; so where could he go-?

Cetus, he thought, at once. He had taken refuge from there once before, from a dragon--a bastard of a dragon, one he hoped was dead--and guarded a chrysalis among the roots of the trees, shrouded by mist and cooled by the swamp.

It was his best chance. It was their best chance.

Grief still eating at him, he scooped both gemstones carefully into his jaws, and scrambled for Tunnel H--and for what he hoped was the safety of Cetus beyond.