ORIGIN

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Despite the coming trial, the Desert Rose found himself eerily calm. It was as if he were saving his strength- rather unusual for the frequent pacer.

The children were busy. While he expected to teach some of them, for now he busied himself with trying not to overthink things. He'd found a particular shelf in the warren to look over the rest of them as they came and went, and here he lay, head resting on his sharpened claws with his signature side-saddled hind legs.

It was quiet, almost as if they were watching a storm brewing in the distance. He couldn't do anything about it. His stomach flipped and turned and he didn't seem particularly pleasant to be around, at least, but he'd been trying his best.

Blearily, he blinked as he turned his head to watch the warren's entrance. It was empty with the others out in the tunnel proper. Part of him wondered if the youngers would understand what was going on- he'd taught them, yes, but was it enough?

He wondered, too, if his brother even knew of this trial.

@Hemlocke

The Sentinels had fallen into a bit of a lull post-hatching. Their established routine was comforting, almost validating. It was a show of their work, the future returned to the past. Order had finally arrived in Hemlocke's life, and its observed effects were nearly immediate. Where it once constantly sat, ears pricked and wings tense and claws scrabbling wherever it went, the garnet was simply lounging; and, what a sight that was.

Hemlocke watched as - yet again - one of the Overseer's spawn tried and failed to initiate play with the other, the barest hints of a smile at the edges of its beak. Orthoclase-Alpha was already growing to be quite large, shedding just about every week. It was just pure misfortune its other hatchmates were too small and fragile to get any proper rough play in. Vargas was working with it, though, on hunting and fighting. The cumbersome little thing wasn't tripping over its own feet anymore, at least.

Its own ~~children~~ garnets were both instinctive fliers, like they'd been doing it for their entire short lifespan. Desert's - well, the little selenite had a bit of a raw deal compared to its siblings: no wings, no armor, no quills. It was plain and simply more like Palefur, but with more protective fur. With how much Alpha threw it around, Gamma was surprisingly resilient. But, of course, the Overseer hadn't properly tested them. Not yet.

That would come in time, and Hemlocke hoped they would succeed. They were good, obedient youth and would be given some purpose in time.

Red eyes blinked once, twice as it seemed to finally acknowledge one of its (and it'd been thinking a lot about this, now that it wasn't burdened by worries of protecting chrysalises and spying on other groups and staving off rebellion and had been reminded of why Order was so perfect) allies sitting higher up. Staring owlishly for a moment, the alien decided to flutter up. When it did, it simply stood in silence for a moment, tail flicking this way and that. Considering whether or not to just leave.

After a few minutes of deliberation, Hemlocke managed to sit down a foot or so away from the desert rose. Leather rustled as it adjusted its wings and slowly laid down, and made a shitty little attempt at small talk, "the Initiates are doing well - I believe, anyways. I'm no Overseer, but... ours seems pleased with their progress." As pleased as he could be, at least, given the narrowed eyes and distasteful grimaces when they succumbed to youthful shortcomings.

It paused, heaving a genuinely affected sigh, and looked away, "we - we haven't just... talked in a while. Not since -" we nearly killed each other over the chrysalises. Look at you now, falling into routine and about to... go away, for a while.

Hemlocke was playing up like it just wanted to have a friendly chat with a fellow Champion, but it was really that the Winter Trial was coming up. The threat of it loomed over the horizon, and even as the alien respectfully told its Overseer it would abstain, that familiar feeling twisted deep into its gut. Fear. Apprehension. Worry for survival. Except, for once, it was not its own survival it fretted for. Finally, it gazed back at Desert Rose Thirty-Five: it's only true companion in these new times, one of few remnants of its old life (that it remembered.) Hemlocke regretted pushing the dragon away, but didn't know how to come to that conclusion or what to do about it.

Amusedly deflecting from its own thoughts, it wondered if Vargas could host a class in dealing with repressed emotion after detaching for so long.

@Desert Rose Thirty-Five

Desert noticed Hemlocke staring for a moment, and turned his head to regard them with a faint curiosity. He looked almost like a lion lounging (for once!) on a sunny rock. His head rose when Hemlocke did and his tail curled closer to give it room.

Hemlocke, now, was the one to try and do small talk. It seemed their personalities had reversed- now he felt like the more reserved one, while Hemlocke was now kind in its words. Considering how to respond for a moment, Desert let his eyes linger over the children play-fighting below, shuffling his wings closer.

They had not talked. And now he may vanish without a word to everyone else. "We haven't," he begun simply, his pitch low and gravelly as though he'd just woken up. It wasn't hard to make a guess at what Hemlocke was dancing around, and Desert wanted to ignore it for as long as he could to be able to sleep tonight. "They are good. Different, but... Good."

He shoved up, propping himself on his front paws with his hind still laid out to the side. The moment hung, and his head lowered as though he were Atlas holding up his own pride. The tension was flowing off him like a thick invisible mist of dread. He couldn't avoid it any longer.

"If I don't come back..." He begun before heaving a sigh out. They needed to get this out of the way, or Hemlocke would eat itself up while he spent precious time in Hell. "If I die, the Sentinels will fall to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make it, to not burden you, but I can't guarantee that I'll make it back alive. Or, more likely, even at all."

He glanced to the side, tracing the outline of the den he'd been working on for days now. He had more to say- it was obvious, but he waited. It was what he was best at, after all.

@Hemlocke

"Yeah," Hemlocke responded instinctively, guilelessly at a loss for more words, like it hadn't rehearsed further than its first line. That first impression was always the most lasting, right? "They're good." Maybe not as precisely designed as itself and Desert Rose were, but - "they're good..." And it fell into a useless silence that stretched the tension thick and thin, at once.

The selenite started into motion, and Hemlocke almost managed to avoid flinching. Old habits die hard.

One of his habits was to cut right to the chase, no matter how painfully. Bug-eyes shifted to stare over at Desert Rose, ears moving away simultaneously. A rare display for someone who wore their heart on their sleeve. The garnet averted its eyes, fixating on Alpha's attempt to swat at a pesky alien-cat. "No," Hemlocke began, halting as it noticed the harshness in its singular word. Unexpected.

"No, Desert Rose. You - you've survived too many Trials to fail now." It ground its beak, rattling through ways to deflect from its own feelings - because, as it were, Hemlocke was not actually prepared to cope. "The Overseer wouldn't be pleased." Way to shove responsibility off to your boss. The alien swallowed, looking away. "I... have good reason to believe that you'll survive, especially without me to sabotage the entire group," it chirped, still not looking at anything in particular.

@Desert Rose Thirty-Five

Desert's ears flicked forward in a tired surprise at the hard no. The tension had to be cut eventually. His eyes flicked to Hemlocke for a moment before watching the children tussle. "It was a good move," he spoke with a soft laugh. But, his face soured. "I don't expect to die, but I want you to be prepared if it comes to that." An age-old weariness regarded the alien in front of him.

His front claws drew together. "If something were to happen anyways, find Labradorite Five-Four-Six." It was the only thing he wanted to ask of his companion. "He needs to know what's going on here." His hind legs hopped up for a moment to tuck in under himself. "If you can even find him- we're fine as is, at least, but I suspect he'd be able to fill the gap I leave."

"But, I appreciate the faith, at least. The Overseer seems rather confident in my abilities, but there's never a full chance to these things." He shook his head, his mane fluffing up in its unruliness. "What do you remember of the winter trials, Hemlocke? I... I'm afraid I can't really recall much."

Damn his infernal memory. He closed his eyes and huffed, gazing out as though looking through a veil at Alpha pouncing at something along the floor. Would it ever stop growing..?

@Hemlocke

Preparation. That was all they ever did in these new days, wasn't it. Looking forward to the future. Dredging the past to the light again. With so much free time, the Sentinels had to find some way to be productive. Hemlocke just gave a resigned, whistling little sigh, and sank into its shoulders, "okay."

Ah, Alpha was harassing its smaller hatchmates even more - it was practicing, Hemlocke supposed, for hunting. But, the alien couldn't focus on the children for too long, because here Desert was making an earnest request; a responsibility that it didn't particularly offer or want, but... it felt obligated to take it on. Seek out Labradorite (He hasn't forgotten about him.) and let him know where his brother was, dead or alive.

Alive.

Desert Rose Thirty-Five, you'd better survive.

"Okay," it parroted itself, yet again. What more could it say? Make an earnest promise that it would stop at nothing to find Labradorite? Hemlocke couldn't invest that completely, but it could do its level best.

The very same level best it did trying to remember if it'd ever experienced a winter trial before - if they had even existed before. There was a soft grinding noise as it pressed its beak, ears flickering backwards, clawing an aimless pattern into the soft sand of their shared landing. "I don't remember..." Hemlocke admitted quietly, finally, "but, my memory returns in bursts. You might see something that - sparks it, when you go in." But, to be honest, "I don't think there ever were winter trials. Not before."

@Desert Rose Thirty-Five

Desert's gaze softened at the repeated 'okay's, his shoulders dropping. He didn't expect more- he didn't want more. It wasn't in need of a promise. He didn't even need that closure, but the knowledge that his request was heard was enough to settle him down.

As if speaking about winter brought on the cold, Desert could feel the new chill that existed through the tunnel settle into his bones. Both of their memories seemed to be for the worse, and the dragon's ears flicked down in disappointment towards the situation. "Perhaps," he spoke simply, his tail tucking in closer. "I don't remember there being any, either. But, that's another thing I wanted to talk about- Did you happen to see me before we spoke outside the Trials? I didn't think the gaps in memory would expand to time not so long ago-" He winced. 'Five thousand bloody years', he thought to himself.

He shook his head, trying not to think on his meeting with Tenzin. "My memory's missing around that time. I know I didn't hibernate, I didn't come out of any chrysalis, but there's just... So many unknowns." He turned to his nook he'd been working on that held the few gems he had squirreled away. "The gems, the bangles?" He lifted a wrist to show the rusted metal. "I have no clue where they came from. It's- I wouldn't take dead gems, but I don't know what do with them now that I have them, and there's no way for me to even know who they came from."

He paused. Wasn't there a way to look into the past? "Wait," he voiced out, his brain kicking into full gear. "The- The bangles. I didn't have them before, but I had them after. There's.. Arcane magic. Look into the past on these." He stood energetically, his tail lashing and eyes firey with a blazing thought. "Maybe that'd work on beings, too. Work on you and I. We could get our memories back."

His ambition was coming back full force, and even if it might bite him in the ass in the trials, at least here he could entertain it while he had the time. While his old man shtick fell away, he shuffled off the bracelets from his arms and held them like prizes in his claws. "There's a sort of red dog in the Bonebound- Giggle?- she knows mind magic. Maybe that goes time-wise, too."

He shoved them down to the ground, between the two of them. "I'm not taking them in Hydra- they'd freeze solid to my arms- but if I survive I'm going to find her. I'm gonna figure out what the hell I was doing."

His mane stuck out from where he was laying on it, but now he looked rather crazed with the fur on his spine lifting. It was such a trivial topic, but one he could solve, an answer he could find for yet another question in his mind.

@Hemlocke

Hemlocke regarded its brother-in-arms (a big step up from hated, despicable, antagonistic figure from the past) with open-book curiosity. With a furrow of brows and tilt of head, the alien chirruped, "I - didn't... I figured you'd run off into the Caves like the rest of the - survivors." The last word was said almost disdainfully, the memories of two very specific young Gembound sticking fresh in its mind once again. It shook itself, large ears whapping against its cheeks before it continued, "I didn't see you, or Labradorite - or any of the Champions except for Opal Three-Seven... -Six? He vanished like the rest of you."

There, the garnet seemed to grow a little emotional, a sort of wistful edge to its voice as it faced loneliness and unfamiliarity. Holes in memory couldn't possibly be helping matters. Desert Rose seemed to have it worse - with suspicious holes in his current life. Hemlocke hadn't done much in the cycles following the Trial, but it'd been lucid, at the very least.

But, the fox-dragon'd been blacked out for long enough to recover dead gems and embellish himself with sad attempts at identity or self-concept or something. Accessorizing was fine in Hemlocke's book, apparently; so long as there wasn't any sudden name-choosing or abrupt baby-making without the Overseer's consent. "You seemed conscious enough when we met again," it noted quietly, face wrinkling, "but you smelled like you'd been in there for cycles and cycles." It hadn't wanted to tell him then, though, since it was too caught-up in the excitement of finally finding someone who understood what it meant to be a Champion and a servant.

Desert started to strip the bangles off, placing them between his claws and then down on the sandy floor, talking about magic; and, quite frankly, he lost Hemlocke for a moment. It'd been gripped by mind magic before, held in the air by that white deer in Orion and had its mind invaded, but - to go back? Delve through the mind? "If you... think it's possible," it hesitated, "and that it isn't going to be a waste of time - do it and..."

Ruby-red eyes averted, longing continuing to ramp up, "and let me know. I'll take them, if you don't survive, and find out."

@Desert Rose Thirty-Five

Desert picked up on the word. "Rebels," he added in quietly, ears flicking back.

They weren't all rebels, but it seemed a majority tended towards it.

"It seems many of us vanished as soon as we came." He twisted his head this way and that in thought, claws drumming at his scaled chin. "I've seen Opal- twice, now. He's in the garden out in Canis." His head nodded in the general direction. "I don't know if he's awake yet, but he was rather... Out of sorts, last I saw. Doctor might know when he'll be conscious." Last he saw him, Doctor was by him.

Desert kept his eyes on his government assigned bangles, running a thumb-claw over the edge of one. "I remember that. But- I wonder if I hadn't entered some sort of stasis without a chrysalis." Obviously not, if he got these items, which he held up to the light and squinted. They needed to drag one of the orbs in here sometime, or make some light of their own. "That's funny. I didn't notice anything." He shrugged, trying to keep his emotions down.

But, he was still rather excited, his whole body keyed up. "It has to be." His head turned to Hemlocke with a wild glint in his eyes. He was getting into it now. "I'm going to let you know. I'm going to get to the bottom of this." He nodded with conviction, but softened for a moment. "But- Don't take them if I die. That'd be pointless- I don't want to be remembered by my past self." 'Remember me through the kids,' he almost said, but- he didn't really see himself in much of them. Epsilon, perhaps? Even then, they were all so different.

He shook out the thoughts and sat back down, winding down finally. "But- I got a bit wrapped up there, didn't I?" He force himself to not grin like a maniac. His whole posture made him read that he was getting loose, excited, emotional- and clearly wasting precious energy he wanted to keep in. And he certainly didn't sound like he was just talking about his own death moments before.

He caught himself this time. Taking in a hard breath, he steeled himself back in place and returned back to a stoicism that he should never had let go. "Sorry. I think I've been one to be out of sorts, lately, too." His throat cleared as he averted his eyes momentarily too. He glanced apologetically to Hemlocke, shuffling his wings in place. He had to be serious when his life was at stake, after all, no matter how much it seemed the others had faith.

Perhaps there was a little less faith after that show of elation. "Anyways. Perhaps these outbursts of energy'll help me in the cold. It'd be good to keep moving in there- I'm curious as to what our task will be."

He had to get himself off the subject of magic he didn't even know about, and magic he was so keen on rejecting before.

@Hemlocke

"Rebels," Hemlocke murmured, almost half-heartedly. They were a lost cause, it'd found. The only way to push them into servitude was force that it couldn't exert. It had a resigned sort of expression on its face, like it was faced with some indomitable obstacle that it so desperately wanted to get over. At times, it wished it wasn't just a mere alien that looked strikingly like a hybrid of regular animals. It wished that, maybe, it could contribute more than just being eyes on a wall or a wallflower listening for hot gossip.

But, that was neither here or there.

Ruby-red eyes flickered towards the dragon, furrowing lightly, "what is Opal doing in Canis — unconscious, of all things?" It flicked its tail, "is he with - ah, what did you call them? The Bonebound?" Hemlocke clearly left the diplomacy and group-acknowledging to Desert, and had only slightly actually remembered anything about them short of that they were a familial sort of clan. As long as they weren't a hive of rebels, all's well that ends well. The eel'd been apparently out of sorts, but it had a poor frame of reference for what that meant; "a rebellious sort of 'out of sorts' or…?"

It quietly hoped not, considering he'd been allowed to remain exactly the same, apparently already perfected (in the eyes of the Masked Merchant) as far as design went. What a privilege Opal'd been offered, only to throw it in everyone's faces and disappear from responsibility.

Hemlocke wondered idly, again — what if the Champion had present memory problems, too? Blank spots in the conscious and moments of blackness? Was Desert alone with that struggle, or no? It adjusted its wings in thought, pupils sliding away for a moment. "If he wakes up before you go, ask him if he's not remembering things, either. Maybe it's — something we're all experiencing." That seemed reasonable enough. Just a brief investigation to look for outliers other than itself.

Desert remembered, at least, squirreling himself away in his warren-hole. That was just about it, though. Little more remained, and he'd been there long enough to go nose-blind. That could be days, or it could be cycles.

If he was dead, it wasn't like he would know if Hemlocke carried on his investigation, right? Ghosts and spirits didn't exist, no matter how much the memories of them pervaded its thoughts and consciousness; no matter how much it was haunted by some of its prior actions, the betrayals it'd carried out for the sake of its own survival. That was in the past, and it would remain there. It just nodded lightly, ears whirling back for just a moment, "well, good luck, then. Add that to your list of reasons to survive."

It added, dryly and almost humorously — it was apparently at ease enough to try and joke around at Desert's expense — "put it above 'leaving a legacy of more children of your own.'" May as well make a mockery of his modus operandi, because that'd gone so well for the both of them last time. Hemlocke put on approximately half of a smile, but it fell flat and looked effortlessly awkward. At least it wasn't one of its snide asshole smirks when it thought it'd righteously ruined your entire life.

"We've all been 'out of sorts'," it admitted softly, stretching out its toes and limbs as it stood to downward dog, "everything has gotten so — perfect. Orderly." Unwittingly, Hemlocke started to smile a little more, corners of its beak turning up in a smile. It added, completely unaware of the irony, "all of this training, organization, the Initiates — it feels right."

Glancing towards Desert, it nodded lightly, "keep yourself moving." It remembered the four whole minutes it'd spent in Tunnel H, nearly freezing into torpor. "And find something warm and dry to stick by."

@Desert Rose Thirty-Five

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