ORIGIN

Blight was alone, for now: growing, hunting, learning. Sometimes he wandered the Gorge, happily exploring its depths and the small gardens that dotted it here and there--a consequence of lovingly-tended magic from other Gembound. Sometimes he tested himself against the edges of the Twister's winds, though he feared going too close to its howling roar.

And sometimes he watched the wildlife.

Blight had come to learn them well, while hunting in Monoceros. Ever since Svartis had brought him here he'd become familiar with the Wind Hoppers and the Dragonflies, the cave deer and the bats.

The bats had, eventually, drawn his attention the most. Many of them acted... strangely. He'd thought it fun to chase them, at first--and some were larger than he was, so this was a questionable behavior at best. But Dread had warned him off them. Had told him that the bats were sick; and eating them would make him sick, too. The older dragon had shuddered at it, even, and flown away rather than speak of it any further.

Blight was unaware that the very thing that had initially sickened the bats in Monoceros--disease that still lingered in pockets of them here and there--was a Gembound who had initially shared his stone, and his element. He was oblivious to such strange coincidences. Instead he found it interesting. From a distance he watched them, some days, as they came and went from their darker roosts within the Gorge, seeking food for themselves and their colonies. And one day, he decided to try and take one out--to kill it, to hunt it, to seek for himself this sickness that Dread had described.

Blight, after all, knew what he was: a plague vector, a dragon that could breathe deadly... sneezes against others.

He picked a bat, one flying a little slower than the others, a little more erratically (and thus, also easier to catch up with) and dropped down, batlike, himself from a clifflike overhang. As the bats flew, he swept down, wings half-folded, above them--and as his wings snapped out just overhead, he cast out his magic for this particular bat.

This magic urged its sickness to grow--to grow, and engulf it, and to show him what it was.

He watched as the bat faltered in flight. It didn't simply fall out of the sky, or anything like that--but it did half-tumble, and then turn, banking down to abruptly land.

The little dragon followed, at a distance.

When the bat--now alone, and without its fellows--landed heavily, he watched it with curiosity.

It seemed stiff with pain, and saliva ran in strings from its jaws; its chest moved shallowly as it struggled for breath. Whatever diseases it had carried, Blight had accelerated them--he knew that he had; he'd meant to--to their final stages.

The dragon watched it turn this way and that, its eyeless face locked in a grimace, its ears twitching as sounds--now over-loud--tormented its sensitive ears.

Blight then crawled over to it, rapidly alternating wing-walking and leap-flying over short obstacles of stone or deadwood, before coming right up alongside it. It was one of the Crawler bats: half his size, and much smaller than some of the other bats to be found here. It couldn't see him, but it could hear him, and it was incoherent with pain--briefly lashing out with a hiss and a baring of fangs before turning, staggering back the other way.

Blight concentrated: and then pulled his magic forth again, reaching for the sicknesses. He picked through them, curious: there were more than one. A strong disease that was consuming it. Other, smaller illnesses that, against the dying body, were ravaging it.

He felt the little pinprick lifeforms throughout it, and he took one for himself, altering his magic for it, supporting it, drawing it into his own body--where it could grow, and be nourished, and carried. He knew he'd have to be careful--he knew it instinctively, even if Dread hadn't warned him--but there was more he wanted to do, with this.

Well... that was done. And powerfully, too. It was a strong disease, and he felt it thrumming through him powerfully, though for now his magic held it firmly in check. It almost seemed to resonate with him.

Blight turned his attention back to the bat. He was surprisingly unsympathetic toward it--he felt little pity. But it did seem the right thing to do to end its suffering. And eating it... it was sick. He didn't, despite his confidence in his magic, want to eat this much disease.

The little dragon hop-glided a long pace closer, and then inhaled, neck arching back. What he breathed out was magic: cleansing, purifying magic. The bat went still, bar trembling ears, as its myriad sicknesses receded, the symptoms gradually easing, and Blight--satisfied that his work here was done, and eager to begin on it in earnest--took flight, leaving it behind to recover (or, far less likely, die) on its own.

What a dark inheritance, unknowing, he had earned from the other owner of his stone-! But it wasn't enough. Blight didn't like the exact makeup of this particular disease--it was good, strong, but there were... imperfections.

A few wing-flaps took him higher, out of range of any bats or wandering predators, up onto one of the ledges of Monoceros. There, he concentrated deeply. He could incubate, he knew, whatever he wanted. Diseases could mutate. Strains could exist. He just had to choose which to keep--which to discard. His inner magic began to sift through what he'd taken, mind and spell working together to try and make precisely what the little dragon wished to achieve.

He wanted... weakening.

Throw that one away.

He wanted something that worked fast.

And that virus, there. Too slow.

He wanted something disabling... something to sabotage any enemies, to stop prey in their tracks.

That, then, and that... they can still fight back. I want hallucinations... there. And there.

And he wanted death, should he choose it--should he choose not to cleanse it. He wanted something that would kill, if he needed it.

Something that would destroy those like Orthoclase-Alpha and Vargas, things that would kill his family if they wished to. He wanted to be able to kill them first.

He worked with the genetic material, with magic, with patience and close attention, for nearly an hour.

The disease seemed to work with him, too, taking to him and nestling there like a contented child, even as he weeded and plucked and reshaped it to his desires.

What he was left with was a perfected thing: a beautiful ball of pestilence, a glowing green that grew inside him, nurtured and ready to unleash. He could feel what it would do, though he wanted to test it, too. His magic whispered to him of its effects.

Chills, yes. Fever, heat. Cramps and seizures. Swelling and pain. Delirium. Coma. Death.

Blight latched onto the seizures, the delirium. He'd need those most of all. Creatures like Vargas would be least able to fight if they could not tell enemy from friend--ahh, and the cramps, the seizures... they'd be unable to fight, too, if they were physically locked down.

While a bright, cheerful little dragon, generally, Blight saw nothing wrong with putting the same intense enthusiasm into this. This was his magic, after all, in the same way that fire was Dread's, and ice was Dad's; it was a part of him.

There wasn't any shame in that.

The dragonling took this time to rest, nestling up on the cliffside roost, feeling the hot winds of Monoceros brushing pleasantly over his hide--and the buzz of prokaryotic life thriving within his body.

There was one more thing, now that he held this gem of plague inside him, that Blight wanted to do. He wasn't sure quite how to do it, but he had some idea of it, some instinct, and a concept of how to put it into practice.

He wanted to send a nice little packet of fatal disease to Orthoclase-Alpha, the monster that had attacked his father.

Despite his youth, despite his small size, Blight had every confidence that this could work.

Maybe.

That it might work.

He knew his magic was powerful: he just wasn't quite sure how to do this yet.

Blight concentrated, quietly hunkering down on his ledge. He focused on the illnesses--in him, and all around. He thought deeply of his magic. Of concentrating the sickness, of condensing it into... into a something that would seek out-...

...And here his mind turned to Orthoclase-Alpha. He'd seen it only once, but his concentration now as just as studious.

Nothing came of it, at first; it flickered up, and failed. Disease did not form, let alone tumble forth to seek out his enemies.

...Maybe I gotta be closer, the little dragon thought, in a casual way wholly antithesis to the whole 'death and destruction' gig he was casually embarking upon.

He'd try one more time--but closer to Canis, at least--and then leave it alone, for now.

He lifted off, quiet, little ragged wings beating their leathery rhythm. He was single-minded, powering off toward the exit of Monoceros. Dread had warned them not to leave, and he was pretty sure Bug was on watch at the exit at the moment, but Tunnel J wasn't all that long. If he managed to "make a sick," as he was thinking of it, surely it could traverse the tunnel and find its way to... wherever Orthoclase was.

He alit down by the mouth of the tunnel, leaving himself space to see in all directions. No sneaky Alpha creeping up on him, thank you very much.

Blight focused again, silent for a long while.

Sickness. Magic. Orthoclase.

Magic. Sickness. Orthoclase...

"I CAN'T DO IT YET," he cried, in childish exasperation and declaration both--at no one in particular.

Nothing was happening.

This was something, he decided (with deep disappointment), that he'd just have to come back to later.

He came back to his task a little while later, silently settling himself--after a good night's sleep--to watch the nearest herd of cave deer. They were a little too big for him--too big to reliably kill and worse, too big to fully eat. Even a single cave rabbit was meal enough, at least for a day, for he and Bug--and he intended to bring Bug a bit of meat when switching watches.

It was the cave rabbits, in fact, that he was looking for: he knew they were often in warrens, dug down into the rocky dirt as best they could manage. But often enough they hid, and it was his experience that they sometimes showed themselves a little after the grazing deer passed by. The cave deer were alert to danger, and large prey; the rabbits coexisted with them, grazing as the deer did, though of course they didn't limit themselves to that.

For now, Blight pushed up, quietly, intently creeping along at the top of the Gorge, staring down. The nearest deer herd was grazing along the bottom, moving slowly. A neck bent down, dipping a soft muzzle into the river, its dancing lights sparking back up into his eyes. Beyond, a small oasis--one of the unnatural ones, thick with greenery and trees--awaited them.

Blight waited. And when the rabbits at last appeared, he tensed.

They came out of their holes in the bank, up against the canyon wall, in ones and twos: sitting up, rotating ears, hopping slowly out into the open. The problem Blight foresaw was that sickening one might merely rush it back into the warren. And there, he could not retrieve it. And he didn't want to spread his disease among all of them; he wasn't after a full-on plague, just a single kill.

The little dragon concentrated, hunkering down and staring.

He waited, but nothing happened. The derelict garden below was soon infiltrated by wandering deer, but at least the rabbits were ranging farther out, now, one Wind Hopper farther than the rest. It was bolder, and Blight decided almost at once not to take that one--he felt bad, killing something strong and brave. Instead he decided to take a smaller one ranging along behind it.

Again, nothing happened, and the little dragon sighed through his nose and hunkered down, some.

He could get impatient, and just fly down and struggle with the Wind Hopper, but that would defeat the purpose of honing his magic here.

But getting closer, in general, might help.

Blight crawled to the ledge's edge, and prepared to sneak closer.

He slipped down along the ledge, doing his best to keep to the shadows. Wings gripped the rock as best he could and he knew that, to some extent, they'd only see him as a bat. But whether the bats preyed on rabbits, he didn't know--so "being a bat" might not be the best disguise, anyway.

Magic, at least, could hide him.

Blight paused partway down the rock, and concentrated. Shadows flickered up and shrouded him, so that when he again slipped into motion, he was a darker blur in a crevice. He crept down, turning and trying to pinpoint his chosen rabbit among the rest--but they'd spread out a little, now, among the passing deer, and he couldn't find the small one.

He'd have to just take whatever he could get close to, then.