ORIGIN

You can see in the dark. You can't see the future.
...it was wheat, brilliant in the light.
She can.
...grip your fur, pull it out-
The bones know.
Eat them.

Black sat stoic, wrapped in his black shroud. The halberd lay across his lap, his clawed hands lightly holding its haft. His one good eye tracked the hyena as she poked around the bone pit; his blind one did the same, but unseeing.

He had asked for a reading. He had heard of the Trial to come, and he, as a Guardian, had wished to step forth as a protector for those who had no choice but to go in. Black had faced many dangers; he had fought alongside others against Aquarian, and Raheerah, and others; he had confronted--as ally and as guardian-of-others--Senka. He had been present for the caves falling into darkness. He had been led by Nemean's deadly lures into the very jaws of death. But he knew that Giggle claimed to see the future; she had told his, once long ago, and it had seemed to be true enough (though he could no longer remember its details). And so now he waited.

Shadows seeped around him. The rock beneath him had soured, stained black, though he had assured the hyena (in somewhat jumbled words) that it would recover, given time. The whispers were audible to her, though only he was picking meaning from them--and it was difficult to differentiate their murmurs from his own, true thoughts. An invisible hand had caressed his head, and then pinched his ear, and he had tried to ignore this, too. The darkness, despite the wisdom it brought, and the windows into another world, demanded their price.

Black had explained what he knew of the trial, and then asked Giggle this: "The Black Dog would ask what awaits him, should he join the rest, as Guardian in the desert place."

And now--watching her grunt, watching her pluck a thick skull from the mass of bones and trot to a ledge above the pit--he waited.

Giggle glanced dourly, almost venomously, at Black as she loped up to her rock ledge. She did not like the void-smoke swathing him. She'd seen its like before--on Senka--and she knew that Black had, in the past, defended said shit-cat. She'd demanded to know, at first, whether Senka had done this to him--as a 'gift,' maybe?--but he'd explained what he could (in a halting, confusing fashion) about the Altar in its Hole.

She resolved to investigate later--maybe not in person, because fuck that--and buckled down to her fortune-telling.

One of Giggle's core beliefs was that she had been granted her gifts for a purpose, and that it would never be up to her to decide who was allowed to ask for a reading. If Nemean herself had come, Giggle would have done a reading if requested; as it was, Black was familiar enough, despite his... well... changes.

She cast a final glance at him, and then took up her position at the lip of the ledge, staring down into the bone pit. She'd chosen a thick-jawed skull with broad teeth, and an old mark wound over it like a vine, of some sort. It spoke to her of a carnivore, of strength, yet of some natural spirit to it, and that was close enough to Black, in her mind, to represent him.

All right. Bones: he wants to know what will happen if he enters Hydra as part of this 'Trial' shit. He wants to know what 'awaits' him. Please tell me. She felt her mind 'click' into place, settling into the Bone-Reader mindset, and then she lobbed the skull off the edge, and watched it fall into the pit.

...Oh. Oh, this was bad.

"You'll die," she answered, bluntly, staring at the crushed bones, the ones that had rattled into place, the crack across the supposedly strong, thick skull. Rarely did she have a reading so clear in its negative connotations. "That, or others will die around you. Everything broke. There'll be chaos, and destruction. No avoiding that," she explained, with a shake of her head. These 'trials' were so fucking stupid. The Bonebound had already lost one member to them.

"I see... one of the bones looks--frosted? Like ice. Like... you'll have to struggle against the very nature of Hydra. Last trial was freezing, I hear; so maybe something like that. And..." Dark gaze scanned the pit, searching for any further clues, any more meanings in the patterns formed of chaos. "I see sorrow, in the way they've fallen away. Loss. I see a very hard journey ahead of you, and I don't think you'll learn from it. We learn until we die, so..." Giggle looked out at the Dog, and offered a shrug, a roll of hyena shoulders.

"My advice? Don't go it. It's stupid, and it's pointless, and Gembound die for no reason in there. We lost one of our own," she added, but there was little emotion in her tone. She had given her advice; whether or not Black took it, well, that was his problem.

rain stock: D Sharon Pruitt wiki commons; hyena Benjamin Hollis on flickr

Black listened in attentive silence, and though half the whispers seemed deliberately distracting, the rest eerily echoed the hyena's words.

When she had fallen silent, he went still, for a time, mulling this over. When at last he spoke it was full of stops and starts, pauses and trailings-off, as he pushed through distracted thoughts and mental murmuring to put thoughts into actual words.

"The Black Dog is... guardian. A threat cannot be ignored. Yet the One-Who-Sees... sees." He was silent, for a moment, and then looked up at her, studying her with his single good eye.

Ignoring the whispers that suggested that he impale her, and leave her in the pit. Ignoring the murmurs that her fur was wrong, or that the bones might come alive with just a little help. He forced his mind, with all the experience of days of recent meditation, to the topic at hand.

"The Dog asks, then, something more. The Dog asks: is there a thing that he should do?"

And then, as if this made perfect sense, he stared expectantly at Giggle.

She eyed him dryly as he spoke, waiting patiently as he apparently worked through the quagmire of his own mind. The shadows, she suspected, had affected more than his mere appearance.

His question wasn't stupid, at least, and she loped back down to pick another bone: a sturdy femur, this time, one that felt strong in her jaws. Short, but thick, and well-proportioned; this she carried up, and turned to face the pit. He wants to know--is there something specific he should do? -I think. I think that's what he's asking, she thought wryly, and then dropped this bone, too, into the pit.

The result, to her, was-... a strange one, to say the least. The bone bounced, and others bounced away; and yet, somehow, they rebounded back--for the most part--to where they'd been. Her brow furrowed as she watched, plucking meaning from motion, and then she spoke. "Protect the rest. I mentioned you'll be struggling against... the elements, sort of? Same thing, here. It's nothing... targetted; I think it's mindless, but either way you're meant to protect. And... energy... Hm. You know how when you strike out, with energy, there's an equal rebound? Like... if you bite a rock, you crack your teeth. I see this, here. There will be power, and it is... It is as though you're part of the cycle. I don't understand it, but the bones say to draw this power to yourself. Or that it might be drawn -from- you. I'm not sure which one. Whichever you do, it'll reflect. I think it means draw it away from the others?" she suggested, with a shrug; and then eyed the bones one last time.

"There'll be darkness," she said, and assumed this to be metaphorical, as she looked over the pit; "though light'll come back. I see... The way the bones stopped moving, either that's the end of a journey--probably yours, ha!--or you're gonna find it hard to get others to cooperate. Again--I think you die," she added, with a shrug.

Magicka flared, adding a touch of other to the readings, and she spoke with a grunt. "I see, too, black dog. I see... cats, I think, and a creature of darkness, and I see dark and light, and I see death."

For a moment she studied him.

"If you decide to go in--good luck, in there. And goodbye."

rain stock: D Sharon Pruitt wiki commons; hyena Benjamin Hollis on flickr

It sounded very much as though he would die.

Very well, then. He was Guardian, and no Guardian would live forever. Still, he would do as she said, and as the bones said: he would protect, and he would draw power from... whatever he found inside. Darkness, creatures of darkness, cold, light; it mattered little. He would consume. And it, in turn, would consume him.

For a moment, he wondered if the opposite were true. Perhaps if he fed this power, it would feed him in turn.

He would have to wait, and see what he was facing.

"The Dog thanks the Reader-of-Bones. He will protect, and he will seek to draw power."

He was pushing up, as he spoke, drawing the halberd to him; and for a moment, he studied Giggle, even as she'd studied him. He remembered her speaking of the void-place, of the too-many-eyes, and of the shadows of Senka. He was certain--indeed, the whispers were encouraging him to do so--that he could return the hyena to that place, if he so desired. That magic lay with him, now.

The murmurs insisted, and so he acquiesed: for a moment he reached his magic out, thrusting the hyena into the Nothing, the Void-Dark, the Place of Eyes. It was only for an instant, and then he returned her.

Perhaps this would be of use to him, in the future.

"The Black Dog holds the magic of the black plane, now," he began--but before he could continue, Giggle had scrambled up, turned tail, and fled.

...Ahh.

She would recover, given time--probably cursing him all the while; but for now, he had a Trial to attend.