ORIGIN

The scorpion was a real nuisance to track down. She made him pay for that. She expected him to resist, but he didn't, so it lessened the severity of his punishment, but only marginally. The reasons for bashing his skull in still far outweighed the reasons against.

Click, click, click. The tapping of her long, raptorial claws should be a rare delicacy in these parts. So too should the veil of cold that wreathed her return, and the shadows that crept faithfully along the walls and into crevices. She knew they weren't. But they should be.

Evidence of her success was smeared up her arms, sticky and red, artifacts of life--his life, her mercy, he might recall once upon a time. His mortality dashed across her lower jaw and her neck. His handprint impressed on her grey draperies, on her hip, where he grasped as he withered and tried to reason for her understanding. All she wanted was for him to stay in his fucking cave. Out of everyone. He was the one. Where was his understanding in that?

It was done now, but she'd never tell herself to get over it and move on. If it wasn't clear enough already, Lord Dhracia didn't move on.

She wasn't alone in her return here, either.

But it wasn't Tamulus. Oh, no. She got what she needed from him. He could rot up there for all she cared. Until she failed again, and she needed him again, and the cycle repeated itself, but she hoped she wouldn't need him again. If this new Master was still as competent as his work ethic promised, she wouldn't.

Behind her trailed two more pairs of feet, dragging, unenthused about the great realm of possibilities that had opened up beneath their towers. Every so often they hesitated or stumbled, but their weakness was fuel for her aggravation, which warranted a sharp tug on their ropes to follow in the instances of them trying her patience. They saw what she had done to the creature they worshipped. She made them watch. She'd do it to them, too.

There were far worse things than God to fear here.

The ribbed tunnel was unusually quiet and absent of wind. Lord Dhracia wove with an innate sense of direction, for this place she had audited countless times before, and the creature she sought was a fragment of herself. She scoured the dimness until she felt herself nearing him, she felt it in her veins, in the entropy that persistently burned under her skin in wait of being wielded. And when she caught a glimpse of him among shadow, Lord Dhracia came to rest, silently commanding her wards to halt at her heel. She appraised the monstrosity with simmering expectation.

“Master Vargas,” Lord Dhracia beckoned for the first time,

in millions of years.

Around him lay the chrysalids. Alpha's: large, and small; the watermelon zoisite of a massive, carapaced beast and the selenite of what he hoped to be a warrior. Behind him, his own: two enormous, slickly-black stones, iridescent with impossible color. And they were not alone; or rather, they were not the only ones. But the others waited in another cave, shrouded in mist and protected by mud.

Eggs, basket; and anyway the damn things fused to the rock too quickly to reliably transport. He was watching them--Alpha had been given leave to hunt and to feed, though it was due back soon enough. And for a time, this was uneventful: the hot and steady exhale of Hydra's throat wisped sand past him, the light beyond his little niche unchanging.

That changed suddenly: a jolt, like an electric shock across his quills. His head came up, swinging left, his six toxic eyes widening, and fear flickered through him. Recognition, of a power beyond his own, thick with that decisive indecisiveness, that determined inconsistency, the entropic roar that simmered in his veins. He stepped out, throat briefly dry: he had feared this moment. Feared her coming, feared what she might do to him. He had only woken recently enough, yet that was no excuse: not an excuse he would have accepted, not an excuse that would do. It was words, and words were not actions; words were not results. He stepped out, moving to face her approach, awaiting her arrival.

Yet as she swept into sight--each step rife with grace, clicking with menace, shrouded in cold dark, the scent and slick of blood across her--he felt it falling away in favor of awe. It was unexpected. He noted, but hardly saw, the creatures tugged along at her sides. He hardly saw what was there, at all; he saw power, and perfection, and to this, Master Vargas bowed his head. Not submission, no, or fear, this: but admiration.

Lord Dhracia could kill, yes. And do so much worse than that. But here was power; here was a vehement intensity he only wished he could approach.

His name and title sang through him, and he raised his head to look at her, his eyes gleaming with eagerness. lurching into his own swift and graceful step to come to rest just a few feet before her, beckoned and obeying.

"My Lord," he answered, somewhat hoarsely.

The honor of this moment was... beyond him.

As the beast became imminently aware of her arrival, and it regarded them, Lord Dhracia felt fear permeating the air--piss-terror pheromones that rolled off of the lower lifeforms in waves, curling at her feet, striking her with disgust at their fragility. Even these tiniest flaws were enough to irritate her. The sounds of their whimpering as the beast's many eyes laid upon them. The way she could feel them moving closer together, seeking comfort in one another as strangers, mutual prisoners, subservient to their mortal impulses. Repulsive. Weak.

Lord Dhracia ignored them and pitted her attention on the Leviathan. An unseen stroke of satisfaction smoothed her at the deference of his bow. All creatures should be inclined to follow in his stead. And as he rose again to approach, she assessed him, clinically devouring his anatomy for signs of flaw, and in finding none (very little, but she'd grant him this one clemency) she kept her satisfaction plateaued. His approach was superseded by a familiar utterance. His awe nourished her.

Now this was an impressive creation, all jagged and sharp edges and unquestionable loyalty in her favorite palette of violet and green. Otherworldly aether burned out of his fearsome flesh; she could imagine running down droves of inconsequentials with this monster at her back, and the thought was among the few things anymore that tickled her. A brief lapse in her attention had her conceive imaginations of his bellows and squeals. She raised her hand and touched his chin, admiring the dentricled texture of his hide and the subtle chartreuse glow that his innards cast on her knuckles, and hummed. Lord Dhracia decided then that she quite liked this one.

“I hear congratulations are in order. It isn't often that a hound becomes a hand,” she said, tilting her head to consume him at a different angle.

Of course, his promotion would have never come to fruition were it not for her.

“You've been making up for lost time,” Lord Dhracia remarked, flicking her eyes away to the surrounding tunnel, grazing the chrysalids growing out of the wall. Her gaze lingered on the oilstone growths. “Rightfully so. This nest has fallen severely under quota within the last few centuries.” Subtle, but purposeful disappointment. She shifted her eyes back to him, delivering as much before she neutralized again. “I have an assignment for you. Consider it your entrance exam.”

Casually shifting the ropes so that one was clutched in each hand, Lord Dhracia tugged them and beckoned her wards forward. The pair meekly advanced to either side of her, shrinking under the caustic stare of Master Vargas.

One of them was tall and matured but failed to demonstrate the full ingenuity of her evolutionary design; she hid her well-crafted hands in fists against her thighs, she bent her spine in a slouch, she didn't even look up from beneath her narrow eyebrows. She was a pitiful excuse for something descended from greatness, hiding her anatomy in cotton clothes, sniffling and red-eyed with tears of apprehension. She reminded Lord Dhracia of an iteration of herself that made her feel ill with disdain.

The other was of more biological interest. She was smaller, and by the metric of the nest, she would be just arriving at the advent of her second cycle. She resembled something like a hybrid between a biped and a carnivore, her posture hunchbacked, her skin beneath a fine covering of curly white. She could not truly see the horrors that unfolded around her, her large, foggy yellow eyes could only wager a guess out of screams and wetness. Sheets of pale yellow hair framed her delicate face; a long nose, a long face, reminiscent of things that used to exist here. A crown of white howlite sat on her head.

Lord Dhracia dropped the ropes and slowly, sickeningly leaned toward the hybrid, wrapping her hands pervasively over her bare shoulders, guiding her to stand in front of her, between Lord Dhracia and Vargas. “Perfect this design,” she instructed. With her hand on the back of the girl's head, she bent her head down and exposed the bony ridge of her nape. “Your stone here,” she said, dragging a nail across the bump of her highest visible vertebra before tilting her head upright, her fingers coiled around the girl's throat, “and your shadows in here.” Lord Dhracia tapped the girl's temple.

Then she leaned in, over the girl's shoulder, to seek the architect's gaze. “Do you understand, Master Vargas?”

The girl trembled. The woman held her breath. Lord Dhracia waited for confirmation.

He held his breath as she reached for him, and exhaled it--a soft, hot rush rank with toxicity and meat--as fingers touched his jaw. A chain could not have kept him so still, or silent, for while those he would have raged against, this one held him rapt.

Her voice rang through his mind, clear as a bell, seeming to ripple the surface of his very being, and he was breathing, again: an answer, a bowing incline of his head, the grace and nobility of the gesture absurd on his monstrous frame. "My gratitude," was all he breathed in thanks in her pause, a growl of a thought, honest but not daring to interrupt her further.

Her head tilted, and she was eyeing him over further, and he felt that regard, and he basked in it--not out of pride, no, he had never felt pride in his appearance (and how could he? He had not designed himself). But her attention alone was worth the risk it brought.

His gaze swung back to the chrysalids, and had he had time, he would have given some credit where it was due--to Orthoclase-Alpha, despite the fact that he himself had created that spawn, had accepted it for reproduction. And then he was looking back to Her, feeling the cold knot in his gut at her words. He'd not felt the same disdain for her cowering creatures--he felt nothing; when he encountered such beings they were worthless to him, and there was no point in wasting his energy on feeling anything. At times one that had cowered and cried beneath his shadow would elicit disgust--and certainly, those that fought to the end were respected--but he did not hate them for their fear. It did not occur to him that she might find his lurch of... worry, disgusting; the fact was, she was right. This nest was a decayed wreck. It was a thought that had haunted him, over and over, striking more urgently once he had heard of--no, felt--Lord Dhracia's initial return to these caves. He had been struggling to catch up, in the hopes that they could prove their strength if nothing else--but despite her disappointment, he hoped briefly and fervently that they would see a reprieve. Or, at the very least, an extension of the deadline he had felt looming nearer.

He had worried that this nest would be culled, its masters slain. He had not considered the feathers a warning, purely because he was no optimist; a warning implied a chance. Vargas did not imagine this Lord to be a creature who offered second chances easily.

But then, had Vargas truly yet been given a first-?

Outwardly, then, there was a dip of his head in acknowledgement, acceptance of this truth, a tightening of the jaw at the unpleasant truth in her words. "It has," and it was not agreement--she did not need his agreement for it to be true--it was an expression that he had understood this. A promise that he had known.

And she had an assignment, for him-! He straightened, head lifting, to regard the beasts she drew before him. By his keen eye, one appeared to be an adult, cowering and afraid. His mind was already ticking off the possibilities; a tool-maker, a worker, the rider of another beast who could fling magic as she rode. But it was the other that Lord Dhracia indicated, touching her (and was that a sudden spark of jealousy in Vargas?), guiding her forward.

Vargas studied her in that instant: pale, young, he thought, or poorly-proportioned; a mess of what he thought might be half-blindness and mis-matched parts. He glanced to Dhracia, his full attention on her as she spoke.

She wanted his stone, and his element. That was not difficult; but she wished the design perfected. Despite who he spoke to, the power of her, the awe of his regard, his mind was--as those of all lovers of their craft--already fervently in the details. What to make. How to make it. Vargas was one who took pride in his work, and the question of "perfection" was due one guiding force: purpose.

"I understand;" and perhaps it should have ended there, a good little subject biting his tongue--but Vargas knew that her wrath would be a thousandfold worse if he guessed and got it wrong. He swallowed back the fear of speaking out of turn, and continued. "And perfection requires purpose. What purpose do you see for this one--my Lord?"

She knew that, of course--he knew that she knew--but with these words he proved that he knew his work well. A blacksmith who took a barrel of steel, and asked no questions when told to forge a weapon, was not worthy of being called even an apprentice. No--the master asked of the wielder, and the fighting style; the armor and the weight.

Vargas waited, then, with rapt attention and bated breath, and tried not to wish that she would deign to grace him again with even the lightest brush of contact.

Lord Dhracia could appreciate an agreeable individual. She had spent far too long working, scheming, shedding blood, sweat, and tears to have any patience left over for those who defied her. The monstrosity acknowledged the shortcomings of his superiors, and if he had any sense about him in the field of begging for forgiveness, he would have apologized on their behalf--but Dhracia only parsed his brevity as accountability and the sheer resolve to improve. She could appreciate that, too.

Her gunmetal stare tempered once her command set in, and the question had her straightening. “You will never see it come to fruition,” Lord Dhracia said simply, “but perhaps it will motivate you to know you'll be engineering a world-ender.”

The specifics weren't important; they weren't relevant to the nest or what lie above it.

“What is critical is that it resembles this,” Lord Dhracia continued, and her hands left the girl as her attention shifted onto the woman. Her fingers trailed down her subject's arm and curled around her wrist as Lord Dhracia drifted behind her, around her, showcasing all of her dimensions. “This form, this physiology. Study it. Outside...” Her voice lowered into a malevolent, self-satisfied growl, a horrible poltergeist of a smile in the corner of her mouth. “...and inside.”

Her instructions prompted a trickle of resistance. Lord Dhracia squeezed the woman's arm with warning (good little froggies get the mercy of a clean dissection) and returned to her place before Vargas, between her two captives. “It won't live long down here. I'll supply you with a replacement if you need it,” she advised with nonchalance, because really, these creatures were of no trouble to find. They were as plentiful as clouds in the sky. Too bad the frame of reference would be lost on him.

As it sank in what became of her Fate, the woman gasped and trembled backward. Lord Dhracia didn't bother to spare her a glance. She already knew that there was no escaping from this place; she was condemned the moment Lord Dhracia laid eyes on her, and in hissed tongues she had previously uttered the details of their contract, which wasn't so much a contract as it was just a one-sided decision. If she ran, there would only be another thing to take her place. Save someone else the trouble of dying, won't you? So Lord Dhracia merely lingered, savoring the dread and terror that spread from her sides like wings, in the pale pleas of the woman, in the frightened whimpers of the hybrid girl. Her silence was deliberate--the backdrop of the real demonstration that was these mortal creatures' fear of her.

And then she moved forward, extending her hand to Master Vargas again. To gift him with the touch that he so craved, this whisper of glory that she would dangle over his head, this glimpse of intimacy if he should please her with his work. Her fingers curled around his chin and delighted again in his texture, in the leather integument under his jaw, in the feeling of his hungry gums, in the obsidian violet glisten of his teeth. A shiver down her spine. “I don't believe I've left much margin for error, so,” Lord Dhracia said, leaning ever closer. She crept her hand over the wicked points of his bottom teeth and pulled his mouth open, teeming with its Hellish glow, green that lapped at her chest, her face from below, illuminating her with such villainous appeal. “I expect nothing short of perfection.”

What pleasure may have previously lived in the predatory gaze of Lord Dhracia was gone. Somewhere along the way, the stare had become hollow. Without empathy, without threat, without even a blink of uncertainty as she wrenched his jaw open and plunged her arm into the phosphorescing cavern of his mouth. She seized his eyes and held him there, physically and metaphysically, informing him of her sovereignty. She grabbed his tongue, wet and rasping and disgusting with the meat of his past meals, and ripped it out of his mouth, choking with her sharp nails, sharp enough to draw blood.

“I had you designed with many things that can be cut off, Master Vargas,” Lord Dhracia threatened lowly. “Don't disappoint me.”

She whispered each word with cutting magnitude--the blade of a knife pressed against his brainstem.

Lord Dhracia released his tongue and stepped back. Her arm shimmered with saliva unnoticed. The smirk returned, and the life that flickered back into her eyes was cold and daunting. “Now. As I recall, you've been holding onto something for me.”

A world-ender. Too-many nostrils flared with toxic light, the intake of breath a clear enough response without more interrupting words. Ambition, and honor; there was not even a consideration of morality, not yet. It would be a rare glory, to say he had created such a thing, to be the architect of an apocalypse.

Yes, he could do this...

The Leviathan's gaze swung to the woman as Lord Dhracia went on. He noted his Lord's commands, absorbed them, made them his decree; and his eyes roved over her subject. That thin, soft skin. The weakness that seemed inherent in it. The shape overall was not dissimilar to Dhracia, herself; and he looked back to her, considering (and in this was an appraising gaze, a thinking one, instead of awe). Then why did one seem so weak and wretched, and the other ripe with power? Was it magic alone that did this-? No; it was in the way she held herself, her diamond-shard stare, her poleaxe-back. Of the two, Dhracia and this woman, one was a weapon; and one was little more than target practice for it.

Vargas looked back to the woman, and at the moment of her realization he felt the faintest stir of... something; something too distant to be called pity, but then he was not one to draw out pain and terror. It served no purpose and he, unlike Dhracia, neither gloated in nor gained from others' pain. Now appearances, that was something else. And perhaps Lord Dhracia, more than anyone, knew about appearances.

Impossible, terrible beauty, then, he thought, looking to the half-grown child. I shall make her ethereal and pure. Terrible and lithe, with a beauty to ensnare the mind, a voice to capture the ears, a mind and magic to annihilate. This will do. A pause, the thump of a heartbeat. I hope.

His Lord was in motion, and his attention snapped to her, his thoughts falling away discarded. Those fingers, lacing his jaw, and he felt that pause in time: that held breath, again, that tingling rush of rapt exultation. There was reverence in her stillness, and as she spoke, meaning crept from even the first words like hidden venom. He felt the hand pulling his jaw down, the power behind her command, and he did not resist--he certainly did not resist, and how could he? Could he? If she wished her hand in his mouth, on his tongue, then that was his joy; but the threat was already there, whispering along the backs of her words and he knew he was in danger. Ahh, but did he care? He couldn't decide, and though it happened quickly it seemed a thousand years--her stare locking his, her fingers brushing his mouth, electric; the fear of what she might do and the eagerness of... other possibilities, ones he could not fathom. Granting of gifts, of power, of favor-... And should he fear? Should he fear? Part of him half-wanted to simply submit to whatever it was that she desired; and then her nails were clenching, and there was blood and pain and threat, there, empty eyes and words like steaming ice.

He winced, as his head was jerked down--the drawing back of lips, the narrowing of eyes, the grunted hiss of pain as if he'd stubbed six toes on a particularly nasty rock... and he waited, and listened. Quills half-rose and clattered along his back. Abrupt and distant resentment sparked in him, but it played second to his professional patience, his dutiful obedience. The Master waited, this intimate moment suddenly unwelcome, what had been almost... personal now nothing but a power play.

The threat, however--that was real, and in a way far more than mere words could deliver. It came with a poison lace behind it, something deadly and woven sharp. He felt it cold and ripping in his mind, and he had to fight not to shake his head, as if to clear the thought. But another thought intruded, then, uninvited. 'I had you designed..?' She-?

Then she had slipped back, and his tongue was back in his jaws, and he watched her for a moment--as she spoke her new command--with a little less eagerness than before. Surely it would return, and certainly she could have done far worse; he, in her stead, likely would have done. And the flourishing awe, now, of the idea that she might have been his creator, in a sense-?

But Lord Dhracia's remark on her 'something' was not merely a remark, it was a command, and Vargas turned to pace to the wall. The 'gift' was well-hidden, and when Nemean had frantically handed them off to him, he had not been pleased. The prospect of facing this moment had been horrific--but all told, was it not worth it, now? Vargas had smoothed those feathers, cleaned them, kept them safe and blocked away high in the tunnel, wrapped in soft leather; and now he reached up, pulling at the boulder he had used to hide them.

Some of him wanted to answer to her. The silence that stretched, as he moved, felt unpleasantly empty, as if, if he did not fill it, something else distasteful might. But his mind reached first for some amusing comment about how he would not lose too many body parts and that was a thing he could not ever say. She wanted perfection, on the first attempt; she did not want his hollow, flimsy little flippant jokes.

He heaved. The boulder crashed down behind him, a plume of sandy dust rising, and Vargas carefully withdrew the wrapped package. He felt little sympathy for Tenzin; he did not know whose side the bird had taken, in the end, but he was part of the reason this nest had fallen into ruin. Rather than designing, refilling this cave with worthwhile creations, he had laid and moped in his little pool and done... nothing. If they had been punished en masse, Tenzin could have been part of the reason for Vargas' death, and he felt very little sympathy for his punishment.

He came back, stepping close--perhaps too close, perhaps wanting still to bathe in the closeness of her or maybe it was something else; maybe it was a mixture of strange tenderness and the dominant beast pushing his luck. His expression gave nothing, but the wrapped phoenix-feathers, those he held out with utmost caution.

He spoke five words, quiet and intense, his voice a low rumble.

"You will not be disappointed," he told her; in fact, he was already planning ahead.

There was no denying that the beast was enraptured, and for good reason. Lord Dhracia wouldn't expect anything less from a creature in her presence intelligent enough to understand her gravity. And even Master Vargas--he didn't truly understand it, not to the depth he thought he might. To him, the scope of her importance was limited to these walls, these cobbled floors, these arched and umbral ceilings. To him, she was a traveler who existed one second and became a memory in the next; she was just a whisper of something that surged and throbbed and screamed from the beyond. He would never know just how prominent she really was cast against the substrate of existence. But he marveled at her all the same, and it made Lord Dhracia sizzle.

She observed every sleek movement of his prowling structure, unable to ignore the sounds that softly ebbed in and out from the subjects beside her. They feared him, but did they fear him more than they feared her because of how monstrous, how calamitous he was? Like Master Vargas, did they understand her intrinsic value, or did they see her as just a hand holding a knife? The thought was a violent compulsion to prove to nobody but herself that she was as wicked as they came, she was worth every breath of terror. She was on the cusp of snapping with no real catalyst except her own sudden insecurity.

But that was unfair of her. To want to rip them apart because they annoyed her with their weeping.

Maybe something else, maybe someone else, later.

The stalwart visage of the great chaotic Lord remained unfazed by Vargas' fallen boulder and cloud of dust, even as her eyes fell upon the parcel. She considered momentarily that maybe Astraea would have been a better recipient for it--more impactful, the way she could imagine his doe eyes bulging at the sight of blood and blue feathers. But she didn't fancy spending any more time in this cave than she had to, and nor did she fancy wading through the emotional bog that would become of Astraea struggling to appease her past whatever arrogant, greedy, narcissistic pain he had cooked up for himself. She'd rather just kill him. But that would defeat the purpose of having somebody watch her mail in the first place.

It was his approach that incited some change in Lord Dhracia. It was his steps that brought her back to the moment, feeling the echoes of his impact through the ground. Beneath her skin, the burn of gratification ate away at her as she clawed into his brain with her stare alone, and wondered what he thought, this creation, this unnatural thing. What he thought of what she'd done. And maybe subconsciously, he saw it and he thought it was a challenge--maybe a dare to conjure the suggestion of his subservient parity to her, maybe the answer that she carnivorously wanted to rip his head open for was that he liked it. He came to stop too close to her. She delighted in that he'd never done it before.

You will not be disappointed.

The tiniest quirk in her lips became a fully realized smirk, however faint and taunting, meeting the level of his stare as he delivered her prizes. She didn't move, even if the putrid stench of his breath curdled up in her nose, even if he could have shorn her in half with his teeth if he should decide on a whim to betray the obedience coded into him. Because he wouldn't. They both knew that.

But the wards at her sides whimpered as they often did, and she could feel another presence inching into their proximity. Some other disgusting thing was magnetized to the encounter, and she had half a mind to turn the shadows persistently writhing in her wake onto it for the sheer brazenness of its approach. It would need to be castigated for this intrusion--she very much hoped that Master Vargas would do as much, or else Lord Dhracia would have to make an example of it, and she was already feeling so malevolent.

The aggravation it incited had Lord Dhracia taking possession of the parcel before her smirk vanished into malignity. “I value your contributions, Master Vargas. Don't take that for granted,” she warned lowly.

And then her gaze trickled sideways, toward the hunched and trembling hybrid staring blindly into abyss. Lord Dhracia grabbed her wrist and without even a shred of compassion, jerked her closer, leaning down to hiss in her ear, “Don't zap him. He will be far less forgiving than I was.” Lord Dhracia discarded her wrist like it was spoiled meat. Her next target was the woman at her other side, and to her, Lord Dhracia cast a sneer. “Take solace in that you actually have purpose down here.” Because if she couldn't rip apart with her fingers, she'd rip apart with her words. There was no real reason for her cruelty besides what was enflamed by her self-made, hostile doubts.

Lord Dhracia then settled her gaze one last time upon Master Vargas. She delivered him no new expression; her mood was too sour to bequeath him a final poison kiss. She looked him over, committing all of his details to memory, and hummed as the writhing shadows lapped at her feet and climbed her limbs. “I do expect you'll dispose of them once their purpose is served.” The woman would die, of that she was certain; and she trusted Vargas would find the hybrid just as hideous and nauseating as she did, so, surely, it would meet its end as well.

Her chin tilted innocuously. “See you soon.” No smile. No quirk, nothing but cold; this was no casual farewell, but a promise.

When she returned to this cave next, Master Vargas would have a lovely little bomb to place in her hands.

The shadows engulfed her, and in the blink of an eye, Lord Dhracia was gone.

Did he only want her closeness..? It was not a challenge that he saw, no, and no warning. Perhaps it was nothing more than a reciprocal invasion of spaces, a note that to draw so close was impolite, yet he delighted in it. Her power danced over his skin and no, no he had no thoughts of tearing jagged teeth through her hide. She was a sacred artifact, an elevated dark saint on Vargas' altar and beyond his harm. He had no designs to harm her, and even if he had considered it--even if he had imagined it once in a fever dream a thousand years ago, and he had not--he would not have thought it possible.

Perhaps it was only appearances, but he was sure that his claws and fangs would have no effect on that flesh, and if it did, the damage would not last. No, she was a chosen Hand; the shadows would swathe her, boil her back into being, and he would be punished. Or perhaps he would be elevated, himself, for his power--but he did not think so. There were things other than power that surely their shared master must value: experience, ruthlessness, cunning. And for all of Vargas' qualities, he did not imagine that he knew a thousandth of what his Lord knew. She thought that his estimation of her ended with the caves: she was wrong. He knew, in his dreams, of a thousand thousand worlds beyond this one and he knew the entropic influenced stretched like eager tendrils throughout them, and he knew, with a primal greed, that Lord Dhracia rode them all.

This was what he wanted. And now, she was granting it to him, if vicariously: the gift of creating a world-ender.

This thought, despite his Lord's soft blade's-edge warning, brought his mind back around to the momentous task before him. Again his eyes strayed to the human-creatures, their traits, their characteristics, what he could use, what to discard. He still did not quite grasp his Lord's intent, but he imagined that it would be up to him to decide: a frail creature that could somehow decimate existence.

An interesting challenge... And one that Tamulus failed, he realized, abruptly, with dawning horror.

If an old and experienced Master had failed--what chance did Vargas have? He realized, abruptly, that rather than a gift or an entrance exam this was perhaps an impossible chance to prove himself. And if he failed... Then this nest will be destroyed. Eagerness turned to urgency. Necessity. He looked to his Lord, and he bowed his head again.

See you soon.

And as the shadows coiled 'round her, he exhaled softly, the weight of what lay ahead, of the responsibility and the glory of it, threatening to drive him to the ground.

"I look forward to it," he near-whispered, staring at the place where she had been.

And yet... As the sickly-sweet scent of her, of blood and chaos faded, he felt the loss keenly. An unexpected pang, and he embraced the bitter pain of it, fighting to reject the whispered promises of her return. Would it be a triumph, Vargas upon a slick black pedestal, now above all the rest of the Masters-? (This was a chance he had never imagined, and one he would never have again.) Or would it be a failure, a slaughter, an apocalypse for them, instead?

This troubled the ex-Overseer, and he pushed back upright, shaking himself as a wet dog might--to cast out in unwanted spray the thoughts now plaguing him. And he looked to the creatures, then, and spoke. His tone was measured, calm, patient; there was no bark of cruelty in it, no bite of threat. "I am Master Vargas. You will be taken somewhere safe, for now; fed and watched after. Do not try to run, or I will have to eat you," he warned, but it was indifferent, as if his killing was some distant force outside of his control. "What are your designations--your names-?" But then he felt something--the lingering touch of shadow, farther up the tunnel, and his head snapped up.

Eyes narrowed, and he raised one six-thumbed hand almost gently to ask for silence, before they could speak.

Long limbs carried him two steps past them, and he stared into the darkness. Senses reached out, and in the shadows he felt an echo of his own magic: of his own element. Horror, outrage, though both mild, flickered through him; if he sensed it, surely his Lord had.

Master Vargas called out. His voice was flat, empty, and commanding. There was death in it.

"Orthoclase-Alpha. Overseer. Come."