ORIGIN

A glance back at Alpha's approach, a nod of acknowledgement, and Vargas peered back forward. He was trying to track the progress of those within the white--and the Merchant, who had shimmered into nothing, seeming to fade into the barrier as it had begun.

Vargas grunted.

"Not for you, child." He reached out a brief six-thumbed hand to absently thump Alpha on the head. ...The little one--little-ish-one--had sat a few feet off, but Vargas' arms were, in a word, ridiculous.

"Do you have magic with which to see them? Can you see their blood, their hearts beating in the cold?"

Vargas fell silent for just a beat, concentrating on his own. Dim red glows seemed to dance out there, flickering to and fro in the snowstorm. "If you cannot--i can. They have not yet spotted the danger," he added, with a tone of faint excitement.

He really couldn't wait to see what happened. How they reacted; how they fared.

He wondered who'd survive it.

Vargas stared, nonplussed, as Alpha spoke and then did-... nothing. He grunted, hoping internally that "like this" didn't turn out to be a reliable indicator for the future--not if "this" was nothing at all.

Six green eyes shifted back to the barrier.

"You must practice," he responded steadily. "It takes some a very long time to come to terms with their magic, and even longer to reach anything like mastery." And then, an admission--"You are already doing better than some of the others." Fleeting thoughts of the stuttering, wingless fool among them tormented him; he'd already considered culling that one, but it still had time yet to develop. Best to see if it turned out to be a powerful magic-user, but thus far he could see little other use for it. But his assumptions about this one had been wrong, and he was always glad to modify his assessments--living things changed and developed rapidly, after all. He'd initially thought Alpha too ungainly to be much good, but it had turned out to be sharper-minded and fiercer, where it mattered, than many of its brethren. Dutiful, too--though many of them, thankfully, were.

"My own magic is not my strength." A second admission. "I rely on my body; maybe that will be your way, too."

Vargas nodded outward. "Have you been told of Hydra?" He'd almost asked, "have your creators," thinking of Garnet (Hemlocke, his brain absently corrected, and he dismissed this) and Desert Rose--as Alpha's guardians--its creators. It was only with a sharp twinge of guilt that he belatedly realized that he was the only real parent that this one had. The other had Palefur--for what little good that might do it--and this one-...

He twisted his head to stare down at it, realizing he'd been a little lax in its education. "There are wars, and there are armies. The world is what the strong make of it. Right and wrong are the path we choose to carve. There is no rule other than 'survival.' And you are the product of my choice: I myself am a design, rendered on another design, on another, as was your stone-giver. Many are created, and many fall in these tests, these trials. And those who continue--they are the strong. I am strong. Your line on both sides is strong. Hydra is a place to prove the strongest, and remove the weak." Vargas looked back out again, patiently nodding to the barrier.

"There are many dangerous beasts in Hydra. Most of them, in fact. And some that lurk far beneath the ground, drawn to the incautious, consuming the unwary. We will see which among these are incautious, and unwary, and which are clever and cunning--for that is a strength of its own, and a powerful one."

Vargas eyed Alpha at its news that it had forced another Gembound into a chrysalis. Already-? Ha! he thought, though it was true that he had no idea how large the thing had been.

Beta is still hurt. Vargas paused, considering, and then carefully asked, "Was it you who harmed Beta, or a rat?" He looked down at Alpha. He didn't care, past knowing which of them was stronger, really.

And at its reassurances, its promises of strength, he laughed shortly. "Good!"

For a moment, Vargas thought that Orthoclase-Alpha was asking whether 'Danger' was the Lesser's name. He was very briefly confused, even irritated, before the thought cleared itself into, well, making sense; and then he blinked half his eyes. "Danger--ahh, yes. Yes!" The second yes was boomed, enthusiastically. "A hunter, as you say. Far larger than anything they've ever seen, before. I thought that you meant that its name was Danger, but that is suiting, I think!" The Overseer boomed another laugh, this one longer and hearty.

When it had faded, he cast his magic outward again.

"It is nearer to them now, and they sense it. They're starting to flee," he observed. Something struck him as odd, then, and he briefly, confusedly, counted the red shapes flickering beyond the magical veil. "That's odd. There's more in there than went in," the Overseer half-muttered. How could that be?

What was Hag-rteho playing at?

Vargas grunted.

"It was understandable enough," he admitted. "And regarding puncture wounds! In the future, leave sharp things in, until you have a way to stop the bleeding. Or else you might bleed very quickly. Your stone may save you, but if you are still in danger, it may not."

Vargas had... experience with this sort of thing. Mostly on the giving end.

"General danger will always be there. But this Danger-" and he laughed--"This danger is one-of-a-kind. It has been growing for a very long time without our help, and this will be the first time any of them--even the older ones--have seen it. I am interested to see how they react; a shame we are on this side, but this time, I am not needed. This time, Danger itself will serve the purpose I normally perform: to cull the stragglers." Among other things, he thought, but did not say.

And then, made amiable by a day that was going all-too-well, he went on to ask: "So tell me, little Alpha; what do you make of all of this?"

"It will eat them if they straggle. If they are fools," Vargas responded, matter-of-factly. "That is often my task. And it is often a kinder death than they might otherwise find."

He listened quietly to Alpha, glancing at it in some surprise as it began to respond--and then Vargas broke into good-natured laughter. A rarity--the Overseer laughing without mockery, without cruelty. It was a pleased laughter, and amused. "You hold the old blood," he told the child; "and you see clearly. They are weak, for the most part. I am still trying to gauge their usefulness, myself; many of your brethren are an attempt to cross the old with the new, to test how strong or how cunning they can be. Many of them seem to share designs--some more common and therefore, I imagine, more successful than others. Cats are one of the most common, and the beasts called wolves--there are a number of them, but cats are everywhere."

"Palefur--that is a cat," Vargas explained, "and I have seen others like her, a black one, they come in several colors. Of Palefur's three spawn, which do you imagine to be the most successful, the most likely to survive, the strongest? Judge them for me, Orthoclase. Tell me what you think of Ruby-Beta, of Selenite-Gamma, of Garnet-Delta."

And then Vargas turned his gaze back on Orthoclase-Alpha. It was a question given with patience, and patience lined his expression, his body, as he sat waiting. He did not answer its other question--not yet; he wanted to test it a little bit, first. It wasn't a pass-or-fail sort of test--not unless it answered something spectacularly stupid; he simply wanted to gauge both its observational and deductive skills, and its general intelligence.

This conversation was showing him that it was sharper than he'd thought--not to mention loyal, dutiful, and willing to learn--but just how smart was it?