ORIGIN

Astéri
seek what sets your soul on fire

Elroy is missing.

Astéri knows he likes to explore—like he does!—but he hasn’t seen him in what must be days, the dimming and brightening of the lights keeping time with Astéri’s own lonely thoughts. It was worrying even when only one or two days had passed; he remembers all too well the swarm of nasty, angry bugs that he had to rescue him from! What if Elroy got into trouble again?

That’s what brought him here, to the bright cave with all the glowy rocks and shiny plants, the cave where he hatched. Surely Elroy must be somewhere, and what better place to look than somewhere so bright! It’s easy to look for missing bird friends here.

...and it gives him a little hope, too. The constant glow of this place is like the gleam of fire, shiny and bright and almost as good as the flame. It gives him hope that Elroy will just be distracted by something, and not hidden away in a tiny hole because the evil bugs came after him again. He hopes that Elroy is okay.

He doesn’t know what he would do if Elroy wasn’t. They had adventures together, Astéri had saved him, he’s his friend!

He wants his friend to be okay.

Astéri’s head is to the ground and his eyes are firmly set ahead of him as he strides through the cave of magic, sniffing away in an attempt to catch a hint of the bird’s scent. This, he thinks, is the best way to track him; everyone he knows has a particular smell, Elroy’s being all… static-y and, dare he say, magick-y. Like the way the fire his magic makes smells just that bit different from the fires Attikias lights in the firepit.

Astéri
seek what sets your soul on fire

Astéri’s focused efforts yield… nothing. No sign of Elroy’s familiar scent; no sign of his friend. The only thing he can smell is the magic in the air, so heavy it muddles his senses, and cold, empty stone.

The little leopard whines, ears rotating downwards in an expression of disappointment. Where is he?! He doesn’t usually worry about stuff, but… he’s worried about this. Who knows where Elroy might be?

There are so many questions about his little bird friend spinning through his head, and not enough answers to stop the pit of anxiousness in his chest.

Astéri takes a deep breath and sighs, eyes drifting back down to the ground as he lowers his head and continues sniffing around, attempting to locate the bird. He has to find something, some clue to Elroy’s whereabouts.

And if he can’t find anything here, he’ll move on to another cave and keep searching. He has to—for the sake of Elroy, if nothing else.

Astéri can’t imagine what might happen to Elroy without him being around to protect him.

Astéri
seek what sets your soul on fire

The little leopard’s orange eyes narrow as he focuses—really focuses. Each paw steps in front of the stone slowly, carefully, as Astéri all but slinks across the ground, nose working overtime as he breathes in all the smells of the cave and tries to separate Elroy’s smell out from the rest.

It’s hard work—a few times, Astéri finds his mind drifting, easily distracted by the flickers of neon light out of the corner of his eye, but he forces himself to keep on the task. If he doesn’t look for Elroy, who will?

It becomes a rhythm, of sorts—step, sniff, step, sniff, one paw after the other as he walks through the cave with his nose to the ground with all the seriousness of a detective.

Step, sniff, step, sniff—there! There, he has it!

Astéri was worried—kind of an understatement, he was scared—that he wouldn’t be able to find Elroy’s scent. After all, it was all magick-y and crackly, and this whole room was magick-y and crackly. But he should have known better—Elroy’s smell is different.

Elroy’s smell is the smell of a friend.

He’s in this room, he knows it! Now, it’s just time to find him.

“Elroy! Elroy!” Astéri calls out, a hint of sharp kitten teeth showing itself at the corners of his mouth as he finds himself on the verge of a smile, excitement and hope showing through in his tone as his tail lashes and he speeds his pace, nose working frantically as he tries to follow the trail as best he can.

Astéri
seek what sets your soul on fire

Wait, wait—he loses it for just a moment, and Astéri squints and backs up, excitement dulled by the fact that even though he may have located Elroy’s trail, this cave is still filled with that magic smell, and it makes it difficult to keep track of the bird.

But he will,, he promises himself. He’ll follow Elroy’s smell, and follow his metaphorical footsteps, and he’ll find him. He promises himself.

He doesn’t know what he would do if he couldn’t find Elroy—or, worse, came upon him and found him hurt. He wants to keep him safe…

…focus! he tells himself.

Astéri picks his head up from the stone, sharp eyes glancing around for any sign of movement, as if he’ll catch a glimpse of Elroy’s shiny stone or his equally shiny black feathers. He stares searchingly over the rocks of Polaris, wondering if any one of them could have his friend huddled behind them, hiding from a bug or something worse.

“Elroy?” he calls out questioningly, hoping for a reply.

No movement or voice makes itself clear to him, however—the stones and mosses only gleam back at him silently, and he wonders if they’ve seen his friend.

...well, if they have, they wouldn’t be able to tell him anyways.

He squares his shoulders, huffs in disappointment, puts his head back down to the ground, and keeps sniffing.

Astéri
seek what sets your soul on fire

But this time, there’s nothing—no hint of the familiar smell he swears he just caught a few moments ago.

Astéri whines with frustration and worry, eyes threatening to water. It isn’t fair! He just had his smell just a few moments ago—he knows Elroy’s been in here before! Why can’t he find him?!

No, no—pull yourself together, Astéri thinks. Elroy wouldn’t have wanted him to be so frustrated over him. He needs to keep searching—he feels tense and almost exhausted with the strength of the emotions stirring in his chest, but he tries to muster up some more determination and push through. He has to keep going. He has to, he has to…

...but with all the smells of Polaris, it’s going to be impossible to keep track of where Elroy’s gone by scent alone. He needs to find him in… in a different way.

An idea stirs in the little leopard’s mind.

Astéri thinks he’s pretty good at seeing. After all, he needs to see good to hunt mice among all the plants and brush at home. But this time, he isn’t going to hunt something—at least, not hunt to catch.

No, this time, he’s hunting to find.

It reminds him of the game he plays with Attikias, in a way. Ready or not, here I come… I hope you’re okay, Astéri thinks, then shakes his head to clear the thought from it.

His tail flicks with hunting energy, and then he’s off in a jog, kitten feet padding against the stone, head swinging from side to side as his eyes take in every detail he can see, tilted upwards just slightly as he continues his call.

“Elroy! Elroy, where are you? Come here! Elroy!”

Astéri
seek what sets your soul on fire

It’s the simplest thing that catches his attention, in the end; the simplest little thing. No movement of the bird or a familiar voice calling in response to Astéri’s cries—no, none of that.

It’s a small, little feather.

Astéri almost misses it, too; he’s looking for movement, for the gleam of Elroy’s gem as he does his strange little hopping movements, not a little feather set on the ground.

Almost, almost—but as he turns his head to the side to take in the environment, panting slightly from the brisk pace he’s running at, he catches black against grey stone and pauses.

He could recognize Elroy’s black-and-kinda-not feathers from anywhere, even… even detached from the bird himself.

“...Elroy?” he calls, voice faltering for the first time… he’s never seen his friend lose a feather before.

Not for the first time, he worries about him; is Elroy okay? He should have heard him if he was in the area, right?

Why isn’t he calling back?

“...E—Elroy?” he tries again, and this time his voice cracks outright—breaks under fear and worry and everything else, a tangling feeling of slowly-growing apprehension pooling in his chest.

No response, and the silence of the cave except for the dim crackling of its centerpiece has never felt more foreboding, a foothill leading up to horror.

He lowers his head to the feather and sniffs, and here he does find Elroy’s smell—stronger than ever now that he’s sniffing at a bit of him, that distinct smell of magic (his magic, not the caves’) filling his nose—

—and, here, he finds another scent.

Blood.

Astéri’s eyes go wide, pupils shrinking to frightened pinpricks, fur raising from his body, and he trembles.

“Elroy…”, he says, worry bleeding through his voice like water soaking through fur.

He knows blood. He knows what blood smells like, its sharp iron tang that makes Astéri think of the color red even before he lays eyes on it. He’s seen it a dozen times from catches, from the meals that he and Attikias had together. He’s felt it on him; mice got messy when he killed them, carried them between sharp teeth.

Unbidden, his mind gives him a memory of a bird he’d caught; a lucky occasion where he leapt from the branch of a tree and managed to snag it in his mouth. His mind recalls the pinprick feeling of feathers scattering beneath his teeth too easily. Nausea wells up in his chest and in his throat, threatening to turn into the real thing, but he keeps it down with another bolt of tremors running down his chest.

He can smell Elroy’s trail clearer than ever, now, catches it in his nose with an ease he couldn’t just a few steps away, but as much as his worry goads him to go forward, his fear makes him dread what he’ll find.

Is… is Elroy…

He begins to move forward, again, trembling step after trembling step as he keeps his head to the ground and continues to sniff, following the trail, so full of worry and fear it makes him sick.

Step. Sniff. Step. Sniff. Step. Sniff. Step—

—Squelch.

Astéri’s eyes widen in a single, still moment of primal fear as he feels his paw press down on what feels like a piece of wet, raw meat. Then, he registers that feeling, that feeling—that pinprick feeling of feathers scattering beneath his paw, poking into his pads, accompanied by the now-cold, sticky feeling of—

—of blood.

His heart goes numb. Gradually, distantly, he takes it all in; his eyes settle on the way the crackling tower of blue rocks in the center of the room casts an aquamarine tinge on the bright redness of the blood clinging to his paw in sticky strings as he slowly lifts it up from the—the thing he’d stepped on.

The thing being a pink, deformed lump among other unidentifiable pieces of flesh—even before his unwary footstep had squished the thing into a vague piece of black-and-kinda-not feathers and what must lie underneath, the pieces are unrecognizable.

And the final thing Astéri sees is a large lump of the stone Elroy carries (carried? he can’t—think, only stare in disconnected horror) placed in front of the Spire, large enough that it comes up to his wrist, and this time, his mind summons up another image.

He remembers accidentally stumbling across the fern trench and seeing—a rabbit, that had lost its grip and gotten itself impaled by a spire of stone—and—(and now his thoughts are breaking up, being replaced by a creeping sense of ‘no no no no no no no nononononononononono’ but his traitorous mind still remembers)—and remembering how as it struggled, the yellow-clear gemstone on its back tried to expand, to grow outward and cover it, and he didn’t see the rest of it because even though it was a lesser the sight scared him but—but—

—there is a chrysalis of rainbow stone veined through with aqua stone matching the spire behind it, and everything that Astéri has seen catches up to him in one, single, horrifying moment.

Elroy is— is— is—

And then he finds himself turning to the side and vomiting, heaving the contents of his stomach onto the stone, chest heaving over and over again as his body shakes and his mind goes numb and he thinks there’s tears in his eyes but all he can feel is this creeping mix of disgust and horror and disgust and sorrow and disgust and terror and he was ripped apart i saw his insides i saw i saw no no no no no no nonononononononono—

Somewhere in between dragging up the remains of his last meal and reeling in dumb horror at the sight just a little to his right—i can still smell it—Astéri finds himself sobbing.

No...