ORIGIN

His strides were long. His breaths, heaving. They had to hurry: the caves were open. They'd need to find Totum, and they'd need to push to Draco--whatever stood in their way.

"I need to know that you have control over yourself. And if you do not, I need to know why."

He'd bid Orthoclase-Alpha follow him--alone. This was a talk they had to have now--not a great time for casual conversation, but given the circumstances, it was urgent. "You showed incredible self-control back there. I am proud of you; I admired your actions. But as to what happened before: I never pushed you, never fought to find out what it was." Nemesis. Blood. Blood like old, strewn across the dust of the arena floor. "I gave you that time, but now I need to know that you can still stand as my Overseer. And that you wish to," Vargas went on.

He came to a halt. Arms reached up, plucking hidden stones from the crevices. An oily black. A dark red agate. Toxic eyes glanced back, passing over the Orthoclase as he moved past it. As he moved past it, and down the tunnel, not confronting, not lecturing. Had it truly spoken its mind before, with the pressure of an audience? It had hardly spoken at all. A meek 'yes, master' had been nothing. It told him nothing but that Orthoclase was cowed--and from what? He glanced its way; it was half of this generation. Creatures in his era would snarl at those who struck them, and that showed courage; that showed fire. Orthoclase was... more sensitive than that. Different. All blind loyalty and silent suffering. And so Vargas had to know. Had to ask. "I need an Overseer that believes in what we are doing. That understands that they are a cog in the wheel that keeps the mechanisms of this cave not only turning, but alive. If you are reluctant, if you will break beneath this pressure, if you will rail against it..." Vargas reached up again, pulling, with the quiet screech of metal on stone, the corrupted halberd from its hiding place. "Then tell me now. We will work first on training a replacement."

He turned toward it, then, and now there was attention--no confrontation, now, but with the stones and halberd in hand, Vargas had what he wanted from this cave. "If you believe, if you understand the order in chaos and the tasks ahead of us, and if you wish to strive ever-higher in forging these creations, in having a hand in the shaping of the universe itself--then you will remain my Overseer. But I ask you, because I need to know: can you; and will you." Overly-solemn, yet still without emotion: fact, but somber, sobering.

He would call the others, soon, to join them: all the children, and Doctor and the rest, that had remained behind and away from the fight. He'd tell them they could return here, if they wished--remain 'Sentinels' of a desert they never entered--but the rest, the able and the willing, he would take to begin their work.

The question remained, however: where did Orthoclase-Alpha stand on all of this?

For a moment, Vargas paused. There was a brief sense of weariness to it, a regard in his eyes as he studied Orthoclase that didn't, for once, glow with dutiful intensity. No; this was a question he should have better answered in the past.

Hell, he'd barely taught it, even, how to Oversee. How much of its insecurity, fear, or whatever this was, stemmed purely from not knowing how to do its job?

With a grunt, Vargas sank to his haunches. And first, he acknowledged the validity of the question--there was no mockery in him for it. "That is my failing, for not teaching you more clearly. And there's much even I don't know. But I can tell you this," he began, and boy oh boy was this to be a lesson.

"There are many worlds out there. No, I do not know how many," and he admitted his ignorance twice now in three sentences, directly; "and there are magics throughout them. I do not know how they came into being. That was never important, for that to be told to me. I have wondered if they were primordial: the First Things that existed, and all else came from them! Or perhaps powers and... themes, magics, grew enough to become like gods. I know of a few, and there may be many more, and most of them, I think, are enemies. As power always is. Power fights; it conflicts. The thing called Mother," he went on, glancing back down the tunnel and suppressing a shudder--its touch was insidious, unwelcome--"is one of those. Or rather, the creation of one. A stray child, sent to seduce the unwary. It cares nothing for those it drags into its web--its only goal is to sabotage this nest. Our Creator is chaos, you know this. Chaos is freedom: the strong may carve their own fates, strive for an equilibrium of their own." Had Vargas known more of these things, perhaps his viewpoint would be shifted, of course; but his perspective was... limited. It was one of millennia in the same location, staring up from the same enclosed world, and so he knew only these things, and in this way.

"The thing that made 'Mother' is antithesis to chaos. It is order, but not a calm and measured peace. It is control! It is a lack of freedom. It is safety in servitude. Give up your freedom, and it will 'protect' you, for as long as that suits its needs," and Vargas sounded disgusted by this. He enjoyed the idea of chaos finding its own 'order'--the equilibrium of a natural world, really--though he didn't realize the irony of this, either, as he thought it. "I tell you all of this to explain; to answer your question. These powers fight among themselves for dominance! For control. Our Creator tasks our Lord. There are likely hundreds of such nests--thousands, perhaps!--like our own. And we provide, we create, those which are strong enough--those which will be chosen!--to go out and to defeat this Order. It would bring all to crystalline nothing; to a blank stasis without feeling or strength. You have felt how it controlled you-? That is what Order would do. A hive-mind, a single being with a thousand individuals, all identical, none with... self. That is blasphemy," the Master added bluntly--and though Vargas rarely sounded fervent, there was feeling in this, this time. "I do not know--I admit to you now--if there is pain and suffering that we add to. I do not know if this is the world I would build--bringing savagery to peace, where it exists. But I think that what we destroy is mostly order. Do our creations fight other forms of magic? Other... themes? Possibly. That knowledge has not all been granted to me." It wasn't worth going into the other details, not yet--the point was there.

"In the long run, then, our task is to support our Creator's efforts to spread Chaos. To ensure its domination. To ensure that Order does not creep over all living things and sterilize them." Not for reproduction, no--but that white, blank room with antiseptic stench, that blank and empty nothing that Order seemed to revere. "In the short, we represent this nest. If we fail, we prove ourselves useless; no longer worth maintaining in these efforts of war. If we are infested again and again by that stink of Order, then we are compromised and do not deserve continued effort. No: we must prove our strength, wipe this out, and provide the power for chaos to thrive. For freedom to thrive." A pause, as Master Vargas considered. "To inflict cruelty? Perhaps. I do not know. Does it matter? It may; we will see. These are recent thoughts, Orthoclase, and I do not know the answers to them. But those are what we 'fight for,' as you say. For our Creator. For the freedom of power, of chaos. For the destruction of rigid, smothering order," and again, Vargas seemed as though he meant this, an unusual light glinting in his eyes. Zealous-? No, but there was something there. "Or if you do not believe in that-? Then the assurance of this cave system's continued survival. Both of those lay on our shoulders." His face twisted into a grin, then: "No pressure, Orthoclase-Alpha."

Vargas pushed up, picking up the stones, the halberd. He was in no rush to leave, and did not seem as though he were about to--only that this particular speech was done.

"It occurs to me that I never trained you to be Overseer. I declared it, but the need was not yet there. I will teach you, when we are in Draco, when it is safely secured. How to read others--how to find their value. How to strengthen their strengths, and cover their weaknesses. How to inspire them, train them, discipline them. An oversight, that it has gone on this long without that," though it was--and he wouldn't say this--at least in part to Orthoclase's instability. There'd been no point in sitting it down to train it when it was fidgeting and worrying about things it refused to speak of--or more likely, didn't itself understand.

So he'd given it time.

But now it was time to move on: now it was time to begin. And for that, he did not need a faltering spawn; he needed an Overseer. Perhaps now he could forge one.

Vargas listened, patient--despite the rush; his Overseer was worth these few minutes' investment, and then some. 'The strong thrive. So... we must prove strength, for the Creator. Him? For freedom.'

The Master considered this, for a moment, and then spoke, clarifying this carefully. It wasn't, perhaps, important to their tasks--but if he were being honest, then he'd ensure that Orthoclase understood the truth of the matter. His tone was not of reprimand, correction, but one of addition. "The strong thrive because the weak are annihilated. That is not the rule we make. That is the rule of nature and of existence. So even if it is not the rule we make, it is the one we must abide by to survive. It is not about only proving our strength: it is about being strong enough." A pause, as he wondered if this were clear enough a distinction, if this were quite the topic to make the point on. But it was truth; they were scrabbling for their survival, not simply to prove a point but to come out on top, to be so valuable that they couldn't be discarded. Or, rather, that doing so would be a momentous waste.

Strong enough that any coming to wipe them out would be annihilated.

Strong enough to stand against the Hive.

"If we are weak, the Hive will defeat us. We will be abandoned or destroyed, lest that Hive consume our strength and take it as its own! Freedom--should we ever earn that--comes at a much higher cost than survival. We can scrape by for survival; but true freedom we would have to fight far harder for. For now, we maintain freedom against the imprisonment of Order. And some measure of freedom, here in this cave: if I am a Master, I have some freedom, after all. Freedom to decide, rather than report to a Master above me. And you, as Overseer, have more freedom than, say, Khavur beneath you. Strength buys you that. The power to say, 'this is mine,' is what makes something yours. And that is how we will survive. By fighting, and saying, this life is ours; this cave is ours; no one will take it from us." This was spoken with quiet vehemence, and at length Vargas shook his head.

"Come, then. We will see to Draco; and when it is secure, and when we have rested, we will begin our training. We have much to do," and wasn't that always the way..?

Vargas then turned, bellowing, deafening--impossible to be missed--along the echoing expanse of Tunnel P. "ALL of you, all of the Sentinels, those who will stay and those who will come, come now with me to Draco! You may depart, if you wish, when that cave has been secured; but you must know where it is, in case you need to find me. Come!" he repeated, and then turned--nodding once in passing to Orthoclase-Alpha--before striding toward the tunnel exit. Should the Overseer wish further conversation, he would indulge it, certainly; meanwhile, the two gemstones and the shadow-swathed halberd were clutched in one six-thumbed hand.

Its acceptance was enough.

Vargas could never tell if the Orthoclase was somehow battling some inner conflict (possible, he supposed), plotting some sort of treason (maybe?), or was only quiet because it was very, very dumb. He didn't think the latter was the case; it could show cunning, even show a well-spoken consideration for its thoughts, at times. But it hadn't done, not in a long time.

It would come, or it would not; right now they had things to do, and perhaps a new routine would aid the beast, Not in rebellion, though--Vargas had no intention of allowing that sort of thing again. Not like last time, anyway.

"I don't know," he answered, in response to the question about Astraea. "Maybe. But we will have other... company, there." Totum had been meant to arrive with them--to aid in watching for Mother, to fight it if needed. Vargas wasn't sure how, but he trusted Dhracia's judgment in this--unless that's a test, on her part. To see if we manage with only Totum's aid-? -But no, that would be a waste, Vargas estimated, of resources after all the other conversation she'd practically poured into the subject.

Well, they had a cave to reclaim, in any case.

An Overseer and guards to train.

And creations to begin... well, creating.