ORIGIN

Vargas followed Astraea into the Hole.

Vargas followed Astraea... That's how it had always been. Created to obey, always doing his duty; and here he was again, pacing along in obedient eagerness. The hound on a leash, slavering for his reward. He had near-forgotten his fear that he might be getting set up as the whipping boy for this nest's awful state. He'd forgotten, or at least didn't care, that the Masters might be propping him up to do work they couldn't be bothered with.

No; he was eager to perform his tasks, as they'd created him; he was hungry to begin.

To begin creating. Molding. Testing. Proving.

His power had always come from himself, and from those beneath. From the careful, brutally-molded results of his work.

Vargas had also not known that an Altar yet existed, and he could not wait to see it. It held an almost religious symbolism for him: a zealotry that sent his heart racing in anticipation. How had he not known-?! But here it was; he could sense it down there, down the long, dark tunnel. And as they reached the tiny room below, the not-light played strange tricks. Vargas' hide became toxic yellow-green, the opposite of his purple-pink hue--and the same green-yellow shade, his eyes, became a hideous glowing pink. Astraea's brown coat was turning a sort of aqua teal, his red eyes and gemstone bright blue? Green? Vargas stared, briefly, and then glanced back at Orthoclase-Alpha, who he'd commanded accompany them to watch this rite. It might be good for it, after all; good to see it, whatever the process might turn out to entail. Creamy-brown, here, became purple, and that was bizarre to see, particularly with the turquoise highlights along its limbs.

The Altar ahead then became visible. Vargas stepped fully into the room, staring at it, almost awed: at its smooth black surface sheened a marble-white in the void-light, that oily rainbow glistening across it. The pulse of dark power. The whispers that filled this room.

He thrilled with it, he felt it roil through him, and he looked to Astraea--expectantly--with a grin.

Whatever happened next... this was surely the pinnacle of his life.

Vargas glanced at Astraea, grinning back. His heart raced, anticipation, eagerness, trepidation, all roiling through him.

"Ahh, well. Nothing worth doing is easy," he answered, a brief, dark chortle following. Painful, then.

He expected agony.

Almost in rapture, utterly forgetting the Orthoclase behind him, he stepped forward; his eyes flicked over the washing waves of shadow. 'You will die...'

...Ahh.

Vargas looked back, eyeing Orthoclase-Alpha. "Watch closely," was all he said--a short, barked command. Whatever happened, he felt it important for the Orthoclase's training that it observed this--that it knew.

He looked to the altar.

This was it, then. His ascendence.

The Overseer took a breath, eyes bright, and moved to lay one six-thumbed hand atop the altar's smooth surface.

The smoke leaked forth, and gradually, Vargas woke.

He remembered agony--he remembered searing pain, his body tearing itself apart, everything that he was and had ever been being siphoned forcibly from him. But it was an honor--a glorious honor-...

Half-awake mind wondered if it were over, now. He took a rasping breath, clearing liquid from alien lungs, and he turned--he'd wound up, somehow, on his back within the stone. Or maybe that was how he'd... Reformed. He didn't really want to think about that, about how his skin might not now be his own, about how old scars were gone... the flesh regrown.

Long limbs, spined as before, slowly extended forth in an almost spider-like manner. Overseer-... No, Master Vargas pulled himself out, liquid dribbling from his jagged teeth, glowing eyes blinking as he looked around him. The smoke half-shrouded him as he stood, testing his limbs, his strength. He felt... different; he felt a depth of his well of power that he'd never felt before. The ability to... to do things that had been beyond him, before. He turned his attention, then, to his surroundings.

Astraea was there, and from habit and respect, Vargas dipped his head to him in acknowledgement. And there was Orthoclase-Alpha, waiting; and Vargas offered the same. They were both here, then..? Had it only been moments, or had they returned--had his stone, perhaps, given warning? Or had he been in it for the usual reformation time..?

His voice was full of fluid, as he spoke. "How long has it been..? he asked.