ORIGIN

Once he'd gotten close, he curled his wings in against himself, balanced on his hind legs... searched the targets with his eyes... and concentrated. He was maybe fifty yards away, at the outside, from the farthest; the nearest of them, though dangerously close to the security of their holes, were only ten or twenty yards away.

Blight picked a rabbit near the middle of the pack--close enough (he hoped) to strike with his half-untested magic but far enough that if it tried for the holes, he'd get a chance to stop it.

Another long moment of focus was fruitless, and he sat back and wondered why. He had his own virus out here; surely that was enough to sicken them-? Why was his magic failing?

I need more virus out here, he decided--more sick. There had to be more available, loose, before he could actually use it.

He had visited other Gembound the day before and accidentally used his magic in a new way--it had worn off since then, but maybe if he could replicate it-? A long moment of focus brought his magicka to the surface again, and he did his best to shape it. To direct it.

After a moment his skin broke out in slick film, a bacterial coating dampening his hide. The smell was foul, rank, and for a moment he glanced worriedly to the rabbits--what if the wind was going their way--? But he was downstream, and above them... he could only hope the odor didn't reach them and that, if it did, it would be mistaken simply for carrion. Whatever the case, after a few moments the first Blackfly arrived--and then another, and another, the insects notorious for their rapid swarming. And then he was surrounded by them.

In moments they'd all sampled the film, and Blight's virus--interwoven with the bacteria--was incubated through them, as well.

Now, perhaps he could strike.

He concentrated. He held very still, the buzz of the flies around him somehow zen-like--emphasizing his focus, rather than disrupting it. Glowing eyes, through the fading shadow, fixed on a rabbit in the middle of the pack--one hopping slowly, nibbling at foliage, safe in the numbers all around it.

The deer were passing by, now. He might only get this one chance.

At last, he felt it taking hold: the magic reaching out in slow and sinister tendrils, carrying with it his incubated virus. The flies buzzed about him, oblivious to the role they had played. Blight could feel that other disease, too, was likely gravitating to his spell but he ignored all that, for now; the point was to infect this one, single creature.

When he released his magic, jaw parted to catch his breath, he could see the rabbit falter. It hunched, and paused, going still as the first tremor of illness took it. It would not, without help, really get sick just yet--but Blight had an answer to that, as well.

It was time, at last, to strike.

Blight pushed off, dropping from the ledge, his wings curled against him as he fell--and then flipping out with a quiet sound like canvas being flapped in the wind. It was still enough, as he dropped to speed low over the colony, that the rabbits began to scatter but his eyes remained locked on his one, single target.

As they bolted, he swept low over the sickened rabbit, jaws opening to breathe out one last fatal gift: a burst of magicka to accelerate the illness, to drive the Wind Hopper to the final stages of dying. It turned, trying to bolt, stumbling, and ran in a circle as he descended--and claws and fangs, a twist of his jaws, were all that was needed to finish it.

As the last of the rabbits--and scattering deer--vanished, Blight took flight with his neatly-killed prey: it had taken great effort, but he had succeeded at his hunt at last.

Satisfied, he arced toward the exit of Monoceros, where he'd cleanse his prey--and share it with his semi-sibling Bug, before taking her watch in turn.

Blight flew, slow and angling, his wings carrying him--and his prey--onward. He swept for the mouth of Tunnel J, widely skirting the Twister roaring to one side. That thing scared him, and rightly so.

The blackflies flew with him, an irritating, buzzing swarm, but they had served their purpose--and so he tolerated them.

Behind him he left the Gorge--the scattered deer, the hiding rabbits dug back into their colony of tunnels.

Undoubtedly he'd return--but for now, at least, he wasn't stuck on a banana meal again.