ORIGIN - IT'S WORM O'CLOCK

Pages: 1 2

Blight winged along, quiet bar the flapping of his wings, the dead Wind Hopper clutched in his jaws. He didn't have hooked talons like Dad or Dad-Dad; he couldn't really carry prey with his feet. His jaws, though-!

Gradually he made his way to the entrance of Tunnel J, spotting Bug against the rocky wall and flitting carefully down.

He spat the rabbit out.

"DON'T TOUCH IT YET!" he squealed, a loud warning, and then bent down to concentrate--mantling over his prey.

A pause, as he concentrated--and then a grunt. He squinted up at his adopted half-sibling."Wait!" he repeated. "It had sick. I wanna clean it first."

Bug turned at the sound of flapping wings.

She was not having fun with this whole "sentry duty" thing. She wanted out. She wanted to go, to explore, to fly and have fun. Sitting around staring at a mostly-empty tunnel all day and night was BORING, and she hated it.

She knew it was to keep her family safe, but avoiding the temptation of just leaving was incredibly difficult for her.

"Blight!" she cried, upon seeing him, ember eyes lighting up. A portion of it was just happiness to see him but most--no, almost all, really--was relief. It meant he was gonna take over, and that she could go do whatever she wanted to do for a little while before she got too tired, and had to sleep. "I haven't seen anything. It's been quiet--what?!" She sprang back as he yelled, and then eyed the Wind Hopper doubtfully.

"Ewwww, sick?! I don't want it, then. Why'd you make it sick?!"

Long, thin canines bared in disgust, and she hissed briefly at the dead rabbit. That was disgusting!

He looked up at her disdainfully.

"That's my magic, Aunt Bug," he answered, a little reproachfully, and a little bit hurt. Plus, indignant--that was in there, too. Then, in a tone that was almost a wail, a long-insecure and -miserable reminder: "I can't DO fire!" Dread had been a little nonplussed at his lack of ability, at first--unconcerned, but it had bothered Blight. The other dragons had very visible magic breath: flame, or ice, elements that one could see coursing through the air. Even Bug had shimmering heat.

His magic was invisible.

"It's how I gotta hunt." He looked back down, neck craned, still standing atop his rabbit with mantling wings.

He focused a little harder, and then felt his magicka almost give way, like a dam bursting; it passed through the Hopper, cleansing the disease. It wasn't... great; he could feel that it was harder with the thing dead. But a freshly-dead body wasn't the same as long-dead. The individual cells were mostly still alive, so it was doable, at least.

"There," he said, satisfied, and began to parcel out the meat. Little tears of his jaws pulled it apart, and he lobbed some toward his Aunt. Sister. Thing. "It's safe now. You don't have to be mean."

"Sorry, Blight, I'm not being mean. It's just gross, you know? Sickness," she added, grimacing a little.

The cat-dragon turned, sitting on the ledge--high up against the tunnel--and curling her tail around her, peering down along the derelict stretch of abandoned armor and weaponry. It was picked through almost daily by the armor-smiths and so forth that lived in Monoceros, so what was left was mostly scrap, unidentifiable and half-decayed. She'd hear anyone trudging through the metal easily enough, well in advance.

"Anyway, it's been quiet." The scent of meat caught her nose, then, and she glanced back, hunger spiking. She wasn't quite sure she trusted it to be healthy--it wasn't that she didn't trust Blight's magic, exactly, but the idea that something could be diseased one minute and then wholly purged the next was... questionable, in her mind. Still, she found herself hungry enough that she decided, if somewhat doubtfully, to give it a shot. And because she was a prankster, she didn't just go over and get her share.

Instead, she focused on a piece, and then on a rock near her foot, trying to swap their places.

A moment later, the dead Wind Hopper's quartered leg was replaced by a stone--but the leg itself embedded halfway into the rock below Bug's feet. "Awww man," she lamented, and then pushed up with a sigh, going to take a piece the old-fashioned way.

Blight had no idea how old Bug was, but he always got the impression that she was closer to his age than to that of any of the others. She was often joking, or abandoning her responsibilities, or playing tricks and pranks on him--she wasn't mean, usually, but she wasn't serious either. Where Dad was kind and thoughtful, a little quiet at times, and Bone was warm and wise, and Dread was-... loud, and old, Bug was bright. She was like a small flame catching here and there rather than an old, established one.

He looked up to see the meat vanish--and followed Bug's disappointed gaze to find that it was ruined, half-merged with the rock. "Bug!" he protested, dismayed. "I spent a lot of TIME catching this thing!" His feelings were hurt, now; he'd crawled through the Gorge, disguising himself in magic shadows, and spent the time to disease and then ambush this rabbit. It'd been a near thing, and now she'd gone and wasted a good piece of it, and for what? "Stop being so lazy!" he demanded.

The little dragon pushed back, leaving her a limb but glaring at her, and then took a moment to gulp down a few bites of meat. He was ravenous, after all that magic use. Granted, he'd rested well, but he'd spent the better part of a day practicing nonetheless.

When he'd gotten a few mouthfuls down he paused. "I have an idea to mess up the Alpha," he said.

His narrow jaws then pulled up another strip of meat, tearing it free with a shake of his head, crow-like feet pinning the Hopper beneath. Its fur felt soft, warm, and he wondered if he could keep it, after.

"I'm gonna try it in a minute, if you wanna watch. And then you can leave, if you wanna. I'll watch."

Young as he was, he was still dutiful: and that was more than could be said for the cat-dragon.

"Sorry," she said, and she mostly meant it. Unlike Blight, mantling and tearing at his meal, she just sort of flopped down, wings sprawled loosely out to either side, like a dog with a bone. Her ears twitched as she ate, and she glanced at the little dragon as he spoke.

She swallowed down a bite after chewing it in the corner of her mouth for a moment; it didn't taste sick, anyway. "I'm not going with you," she said, and her brow furrowed. "You can't just go to Canis alone. They'll kill you, Blight. -And if you do you'd need a distraction," she added. Suddenly, instead of worried, her mind was excited--she could go, too. Despite having just said she wouldn't. And how stupid it was. No; she could lay down whispers, wisps; draw their attention-...

The cat dragon took another bite of meat, and gnawed at the bone for a moment, tail lashing behind her as she thought.

Blight lifted his head from his food to stare at the cat, and for a moment he wondered how stupid she was. It wasn't that he didn't like her; but he'd never really connected with her, and her logic was... questionable, at best. She was fickle; that was the best word for it, really.

For all his youth, he had far more common sense.

Blight shook his draconic head and wolfed down a few more gulps of meat before responding. "I'm not going there. I'm gonna do it from here. I can make sick; I think I can just. Send it to them." He paused, eating another bite, and then admitted, in a somewhat lamenting tone, "I just... haven't been able to get it to work, yet."

Bug finished her portion a moment later, eating quickly, as a cat is wont to do--let alone a dragon. Then she turned, lounging, legs out to the side, back to the wall, tail twitching.

"From here-?" she said, doubtfully, eyeing him. "But you can't even see them from here. -Are you gonna try to make them sick? Don't make me sick. You'll probably make the wrong person sick, you know, if you just... aim through the caves. It'd be like Dad--I mean, Dad-Dad--setting everything on fire," she explained.

Still, she had to admit that despite her caution, she was curious. She'd never really understood the little dragon's magic, not since Svartis had turned up having found him roaming Orion. Blight had been much smaller then--and shy--and it had taken Bug playing with him quite a bit to bring him out of his shell, at least with her. He'd enjoyed chasing her wisps around, if nothing else, and pouncing on her tail.

He was going through that holier-than-thou phase, she thought, that kids tended to go through. (It hadn't occurred to Bug that he was actually more mature than her, already, in some respects.) It was making them drift apart, a little, though she didn't really want that. So it was with a vague desire to mend fences (which hadn't really broken) that she forced up some enthusiasm.

"I'll stay, though. I want to see. Just--be careful, okay?"

This was, most definitely, something that Blight had needed to hear. He perked up at once, and eyed his sister-aunt-whatever with bright eyes.

He'd finished his meal, now, his belly distended with it; and anyway the Wind Hopper was showing the first signs of decaying into Oil, now. He kicked it off the ledge, remembering only belatedly that he'd wanted to try and salvage its fur.

"Oh, wait-" he cried, and flew down after it. He tried to pull at the skin, but the decay spread quickly; black sludge took the muscle, and before he could part that plush warmth from it, the fur, as well. "Awww," he said, disappointed, and then--heavy belly slowing him, somewhat--half-flew, half-scrambled back up onto Bug's ledge. "I wanted its fur," he explained, rather miserably.

Oh, well, spilled milk and all that.

The young dragon turned his attention back down the derelict tunnel. He still had Blackflies buzzing about him, and now that he'd flown down and back up they'd been unsettled--a few flew around him, rising from their perches, in a little cloud.

"Right. I'm gonna try it, now--are you ready?" he asked, firing a glance Bug's way.

Bug eyed the flies.

"Why've you got flies all over you-?" she asked, trying her best not to sound disgusted. It was gross, though. "And why'd you want its fur?" She, herself, didn't really imagine that Blight might be cold. She had fur, and was always warm. Dread and Bone were always warm to the touch, that fire within them perhaps keeping their temperatures high. And Svartis, and Asimona--they were cold, but happy that way.

Maybe he just liked the softness of it? That'd be... weird, but she supposed she could understand that, at least.

"All right, I'm watching. And I'll be quiet," she promised, but there was mischief in it--and magic. Her words echoed all around, ricocheting off the rock, and twisting as if spoken by a dozen voices.

Pages: 1 2