ORIGIN

After his spar with Enoki, the Sentinel had wandered and then returned, resting by the water's edge. The few pools here were clean, surrounded by foliage, and clearer than the stagnant water standing throughout the rest of Canis.

For a time he sat staring at a flower, pondering it. Why would someone bother to grow this, and here of all places-? Was it medicinal? Food, perhaps? The fat, orange pumpkins scattered on vines here and there baffled him, too. Maybe they were edible. The fruit on the trees above at least made sense--but the grasses, the moss and ivy, the ferns-? He did not feel quite at home, here. He felt at home in Draco--with its oil slicks and breathing walls, and lifeless rock below. This place had a different energy to it. It was alive, with or without him. It moved and breathed with immense slowness, not the pulsing gasps of the Aperture but with their own plantlike aspirations, aspirations he could never understand.

It was... unsettling.

He was left staring at this plant and that, shifting position now and again, trying to understand.

Oliver's return wasn't by any means unusual. He came and went to this little place quite often; Canis was something of a home, for him.

He'd avoided Eridanus since the brawl there many cycles ago, and now he sort of made his way between cave, tending the various little groves and gardens he'd planted here and there, working to cultivate and spread the plant life. In his mind, if Eridanus were ever lost, this way they had backup plants. Pegasus had been something of a shock, with its associated tunnels and Cepheus nearby, but a happy shock; he was glad to know there were other caves full of life. And he wondered, too, if there might be more, hidden just beyond a thin shield of stone, just waiting to be revealed. He imagined these emerald treasures--jungles and forests tucked away in rocky clefts. But in the meantime, he made his own.

This place--between its crumbled walls and stacks of bones--held trees offering shade, clusters of moss and ferns and ivy around purified water pools. It was a triumph and a sanctuary for him. Whenever he came "home," it was with a sense of relaxation--as if his work for the time being were done, and he could relax, for awhile.

He did not often expect to find corrupted beasts sitting within, in total silence. And upon spotting the Sentinel, some seven feet tall and sat staring at a flower, Oliver froze. His blue eyes regarded the stranger's glowing blue... spots? -and for a moment he looked like a strange and feathered pointer dog, one winged forelimb held frozen midair as his head, held low, stared fixedly.

The eyes on his 'ears'--a combination, really, of ear and strange prong-structure--saw Oliver coming. He did not bother to turn his head, perfectly able to both see and focus on both the stranger and the plant before him all at once.

The feathered canine-creature might have magic; it might be a threat or it might not. The Sentinel didn't know, but he'd encountered very little threats outside Draco thus far. His experience, then, suggested this might be a wandering stranger, and a friendly one. The way it froze, however--predatory, almost, or maybe like startled prey--gave him pause. His fingers tightened imperceptibly around the haft of the black halberd at his side.

"Is it predator, or prey-?" he rasped, at length, the hollowness of his voice clearly apparent. He turned, then, giving his full attention to Oliver--to studying him with all his eyes. Then he drew up, smoothly, so as to defend himself if needed.

That voice.

Oliver's heart jumped in his chest, terror and hope twinning. Uncertainty roared over it all, a swirling maelstrom resulting in utter confusion. He searched the stranger again, forgetting, for a moment, to breathe.

Tall, bipedal. Black. Canine. Wreathed in whispering shadows. Blue-eyed, and rasping voice. Referring to others, itself, in the third person. And--that weapon! His father's weapon! Could it-?

"...Dad?" he tried, at last, totally confused. It was about the right height for Black--a little taller, maybe. Definitely lankier. But-... He had heard of others, near death, returning to a chrysalis and coming out changed.

It was--similar to Black. But different, too, and Oliver took two baffled steps forward, inhaling sharply as he looked the stranger over again.

It wasn't--was it? Could it be-?

Of all of the responses the Sentinel could have predicted--which, admittedly, its limited experience kept to only a few--this would not ever have been among them.

His head turned fractionally as he followed Oliver's movements, studying him more closely. His mind, too, was picking over the meaning of 'Dad'--supplying an answer, a definition. A father. A lifegiver. A male creator of a child.

"The Sentinel has created no spawn," he rasped, at last, but he was looking over Oliver with realization, just the same.

Black, with blue eyes. Vaguely canine in appearance, as was he. And after a moment, his searching gaze picked out the gemstone on the hybrid's forelimb: small, but inky black with a green sheen, as was his own. One clawed hand lifted, absently, to brush the oil-tainted onyx embedded in his sternum.

"The Sentinel's stone," he offered, a moment later--his voice slowed, his words thoughtful--"came from one who had fallen in trial. The Master claimed it to not be failure." Indeed, Vargas had made it clear that the Sentinel's unnamed predecessor had been one of the first touched by the Creator in recent cycles, and that to survive to aid others in the Trial in which it had died had been both worthy and remarkably foolish. 'But I have need of a guardian, and this Trial was more an execution than a real trial,' he'd explained.

And the halberd--the Sentinel looked down to it, clutched in his hand, as Oliver stared intently at it. Then he looked up again, their gazes meeting. "This belonged to the bearer of its stone," he confirmed, though he was indifferent to it all. There was no emotion here, no surge of revelation or newfound care. Simply curiosity, and surprise.

A new question occurred to him, and his head tilted another fraction. "The stone," and he tapped his chest stone with one claw, eliciting a tiny click, "formed this creature?" and here he gestured to Oliver, questioningly.

What did that make Oliver-? His nephew? His uncle? Brother, or... strangely-lost son? The Sentinel did not know, and he supposed it did not matter: but he studied Oliver nevertheless, gauging his own value in what he saw. It was too spindly--was he? He examined himself, looking down. It had feathers--he did not. A long snout; his own was thicker, stronger. Only two eyes. The ears weren't even real ears--they were tufts of feathers, too. It had wings, but could they fly-? They didn't look very large, and anyway the Sentinel had magic wings it could use, itself, to soar. He was larger, stronger, by far. "What is your purpose?" he asked, at last, the rasping question cold.

His heart sunk as realization struck. No: his father was dead, still dead, well and truly dead. The grief seemed to hit all over again, a piercing tear at his chest, and he sat back and stared down, for a moment, fighting back an unexpected surge of emotion.

He wanted to cry.

After a good few seconds he took a breath and looked up, sagged down a little. Now that the Sentinel had explained, some, he could see it: the spines and quills of Vargas, or maybe one of its spawn--had he relegated the stone's revival to Orthoclase-Alpha, or one of them, perhaps? Oliver struggled to form an answer, voice thick with grief.

"He... got your stone back," were the words that came out, realization given sound. A shuddering exhale, as he got himself back under control, and he blinked a few times.

The Sentinel's question might have struck most Gembound as strange, framed as it was through the lens of the Chaos Forge, where each creature was chosen for a specific purpose. But Oliver's father had always spoken of purpose, and had instilled knowledge of his own--and Oliver's--from a very young age. He'd found it a little odd, but then again his father's idiosyncrasies were something he'd quickly gotten used to.

"Purpose, um--he created me--and my sister? To be guardians. Like him," Oliver explained, slowly. "But he was a guardian by fighting. I heal," and here was a miserable jolt of a thought; 'couldn't heal him. he died' as illogical as it was. "I can... mend wounds and stuff. Fix sickness. Dad fought. With that, later on," (and here Oliver nodded to the halberd) "but he wasn't--I mean--do you want to know about him?" Oliver asked, hesitating. There was a split-second thought, an "I don't know if his other parent told him about Dad," which quickly led to the abrupt question: "Who brought the stone back?"

He was... wondering. Wondering how good the creature was at fighting--and here, he took a step toward it, unconsciously. Wondering how good it was at surviving, and here, he took another step. But it said its purpose was 'healing,' and this gave the Sentinel pause.

Not a fighter, then-?

None of the Forge had spoken much about mending, or the need for it. Chaos-Two had the vaguest mentions, now and then, but it was about patching the children up. Was this what this stranger did?

"The Sentinel does not understand. For what purpose does it heal?" he asked, blankly. It was offering knowledge, too: information about its predecessor that perhaps even its Master had not known. The Sentinel reflected that it might indeed be useful to know of the stone's past: strengths, weaknesses, that he himself might have unknowingly inherited. And, perhaps, there was some genuine curiosity there, too.

It was reminded of Oliver's question almost in afterthought. "Master Vargas created me from the black stone," he answered, and then--after another moment's brief pondering--decided that yes, he wanted whatever information the stranger had to give. "The feathered dog will tell of the fallen Guardian," he informed Oliver, speaking slowly. As if fact, instead of agreement or request.

Slowly, he sat back down, cross-legged and lanky before "the feathered dog," who had as yet not given his name. Not that the Sentinel, prone as he was to assigning his own, particularly cared.

Oliver studied the Sentinel, and had the first inklings that this creature--unlike his father--might be dangerous. Even unpredictable. It didn't scare him, exactly, but he felt a wariness prickle up, instinct warning him that its stalking approach might erupt into violence. He didn't know if it would, but the newfound knowledge that it was a Vargas creation gave him worry that it might. Grief again swarmed through him. They should not have been the ones to get ahold of his father's stone-! Not that he... wasn't glad it had been recovered, at least. But it should have been family.

Maybe he still can be, Oliver thought, but the idea was a somewhat sad one. The stone was already corrupted, somehow--not only by magic but in shape, taking the monstrous form of the miserable monsters that had once lurked in Tunnel P. He looked down, and sighed softly, and set himself to the duty of answering the Sentinel's... "question." He himself had offered, and as a gentle-hearted creature he hardly took offense at what was practically a demand. But emotions still roiled in his heart as he began to speak, and picking meaning from the confusion was difficult.

"My name's Oliver," he started, out, quietly, a half-correction to the 'feathered dog.' "And Dad... told me a lot. I can tell you all of it, if you want. Just... stop me if you need to, because there is a lot. Dad--he called himself Black--was one of the oldest people in the caves," and Oliver hesitated, thinking--"except the Masters, maybe."

The Sentinel showed no signs of interrupting--only an eerily still, rapt silence--and so Oliver, with a breath, began.

"He was born in that tunnel between Pisces and Orion. The--really icy one," he explained. "He said he was created as a guardian, and when he fell out of the wall--out of the ice--there was a black wolf waiting for him. It had a fiery stone in its chest, and it told him he was Void..."

Oliver went on, detailing how they had heard strange noises, and followed them. He described Black as he once had been: a large, gangling puppy, pure dog and oversized, at that. How the journey on such young joints had been hard. And he told how they'd at last come to Cetus, where the strange buzzing they had followed had led them.

He told Sentinel of Aquarian. Of the hatching of the alligator Dragon, and of Fisher, and of the fight, as he'd been told, with what few details he still knew. Of the gathering of baby Gembound who'd been nearly swallowed by the great serpent. "He asked what they all were--like he didn't know. Dad always told me that he said 'we are children,' and that he didn't know why but that made Aquarian scream a lot. He yelled that someone was a 'Betrayer'--we found out later he meant Nemean. One of the other masters. They don't all seem to get along," Oliver continued. From there, he branched off into the formation of the Children of Rot. He explained how his mother--Eve, a crow--had joined Dragon, and how they'd later ended up with Oliver and his sister, White; how they'd split their time between their parents, between Polaris and Cetus, mostly.

Sensing that he was off-topic, Oliver went back. "Dad asked for instructions. Orders. He figured he was meant to be a guardian and whatever'd pissed off Aquarian was a danger. So he found a smell, and listened for that buzzing sound, and spent a long time searching. He told me he learned a lot of the caves that way--hunting like that--and touched things to look into their pasts. He saw stuff like... creatures building things, and someone on the Throne--in Orion? I dunno if you've seen it but he always told me that when it was new, it was shiny and red." Then into the mentions of the things with smooth legs--the one that had sat atop the throne, the one that Black had later seen in his visions at Skahan.

A great deal of the tales deteriorated into rambling, or side-stories where they linked with future events. And Oliver didn't know it all, by any means. He didn't know the details of everyone Black had met, but Dad had been careful to teach him all he knew of the history of the caves. That, and Oliver had been alive for a great portion of it, himself.

"One of his closest friends--from the fight with Aquarian--was always Fisher, I think. He said he thought it was part of his duty to look after him. He was... little-ish, brown, with electric magic and really tough, but Dad always thought he was nice. So he followed him, and they made a friend named Fallah--a brown cat. And they both tried to look after her and protect her, because she was so young." On, then, to the time they'd lost Fallah, of which Oliver knew only scant details; but he knew they'd visited a white cat here in Canis, named Mau. He didn't know what had become of Mau, only that Black hadn't thought much of her. And he knew they'd visited Giggle, for a bone-reading on how to find Fallah.

"Dad always said her readings were real. I don't think it ever occurred to him to think they might not be," and here Oliver showed a tad more self-awareness than his father had ever shown. He'd wondered if the hyena might be a charlatan, out for her own fame and gain--not ever a serious concern, but the thought had crossed his mind. He didn't know her, really, but Black had accepted her words at face value--always just a little naive. "She was the one who told him when he'd die. And he didn't listen, and he did," Oliver added, quietly. "But he said it was his duty. As a guardian." Here he offered a sad and gentle shrug.

Then it was on to the tales of dragons. Of Baratheon, the white and furred dragon that was quite possibly the only Gembound Black had ever truly hated. He had made it abundantly clear, with venomous disgust quite uncharacteristic for his normally stoic demeanor, just how little he had thought of him. Baratheon had been the antithesis of Black: emotionally volatile, incredibly selfish, and selfpitying to Black's stoic selflessness. Oliver explained, if briefly, how Baratheon had flown into a chaotic rage at the scent of blood--nearly killing Fallah, and wounding her guardians Black and Fisher in the process; and how later, Baratheon had only shown a petulant rage that they would not accept his apology as enough of a solution, even speaking over the chrysalis that he had caused. "Dad always used him as an example of what not to be like," Oliver explained. "He said he was never really sorry, or he'd have locked himself away somewhere, or done something to fix himself--but instead he just kept roaming around, nearly killing others and then being upset when they wouldn't forgive him for it." He shook his head. He held none of Black's anger, but the whole story had been upsetting, to him; the idea that so much suffering had been thrown about so viciously brought him grief. He wished he could've been around, back then, to try and help things in his own way.

Oliver paused, here, studying Sentinel: but the Sentinel was silent, utterly still as he stared at him. "The next bit's about, um, Raheerah. Do you know who he is? -And do you have any questions?" he asked, feeling that maybe a pause was in order.

The Sentinel was taking all of this in, but perhaps not in the way that Oliver'd intended. He was not seeing it as the history of lost family. Instead, he judged everything he heard, finding value--or lack thereof--in each part of it.

Was there value in challenging a master? Strength, worth as the Chaos Forge defined it, in guarding the young and weak? That was, after all, his own task; and perhaps Vargas had chosen him knowing full well the history of his stone. He was unsure. He pondered this, and noted down the information about the Masters. Nemean had been Vargas's own master, he knew; the Sentinel wondered why she had led them to Aquarian in such a way, if it were even true. He thought, too, about Baratheon rather closely. About the judgment Black had passed on him as unworthy, and his reasons for it.

Selfish. No responsibility for its failures. That second thought was the fall of a hammer, in the Sentinel's mind: the concept of taking responsibility for one's own actions was a fundamental tenet drilled into the members of the Forge. They had their tasks, their purposes, and to fail or to succeed was on them and them alone. They were given the resources they needed to ask for aid, but if they failed to do so, and faltered in their work, they were responsible. The things Oliver described in regards to the furred dragon were nearly unfathomable to him, not in any horrified way, but simply out of his realm of comprehension. Unworthy, he thought, again.

And now Oliver was asking if he had questions.

He thought about this, for a moment. "Do they yet live-?" he asked, in his rasp. Now, and only now, there was some strange sense of connection to his stone's past owner. Was it possible that he might, someday, meet this Fisher--the close friend of his predecessor? What would he make of it, if anything at all? "The white dragon, and the Fisher." Giggle still did, he knew that; Enoki, his last sparring partner, was her son and had explained her bone reading to him, if briefly. Given Oliver's estimation of her abilities, the Sentinel decided to visit her next. Her revelations could perhaps be useful to him.

Oliver blinked. "No," he blurted, and then blinked again, correcting himself at once. "At least--Fisher might! I think Fisher's still alive. But the white dragon--um--Baratheon? I'll get to that but I think he's probably dead. At least, nobody's seen him in a real long time; Dad never saw him again after Raheerah."

The Sentinel didn't interrupt, so after a pause, Oliver continued his tale.

He told of the stones they'd found in the pit in Monoceros--and he described the place, its heat and its wind. He didn't bother telling of his grove, there, how the Kingdom of Eridanus had moved there for awhile--it was unrelated to the story he was telling. Instead he told of how they'd found Dawa and Raheerah curled together, asleep, at the bottom--with gemstones laying around, too. How Gembound had gathered up, and tried to steal some of the stones.

How Raheerah had awoken. How he had, in a crash of rock and flame and roaring, smashed through the cave ceiling, and come out in Polaris. He described Raheerah, too. "He was a big black dragon, with lots of horns and claws and things. Dad said he was huge--like, impossibly big, a lot bigger than any Gembound he's ever seen. He said he set the whole cave on fire. That even the rock was melting." Oliver then told of how the Gembound had gathered to fight him off.

He didn't know all the details of the fight; and he only knew the descriptions of very few of those who had been there for that, and what had followed. The blind owl, and Baratheon; Dragon and the Children of Rot; Astraea and Tenzin, Fisher and Bevy, and others. Those he knew, he described, if only briefly--Bevy as "a little bird," and so on. Azazel he mentioned in passing--the "old Bone King of the Bonebound." But the majority of those who had poured in had been unknown to Black, and some he'd never seen again. "He said there was magic, like, everywhere. Just thrown around like war. Blasts of energy, and the whole cave would shake, and rocks would fall. There were walls of ice and streams of fire. He said Tenzin tried to help protect them with his cold. But they were still losing, a little, and a lot--maybe everyone--might've died if Nemean hadn't turned up right then." Oliver took a breath. "You gotta remember, Dad was still hunting her. So he was confused and kinda mad, but she led Raheerah out before he could do anything anyway. Up through the cave tunnels, into the roof of Polaris, and then they didn't see him for a real long time."

Ah. Sad story time.

"I gotta skip some here, but... a long time later--Oh! And Baratheon got real hurt during the fight. He blew his own face apart and Dad never saw him again. But um. A long time later, he was there--Dad, I mean. There was a little black lamb--in Polaris. And it had hurt itself real bad by magic. He heard a voice telling him how to help? Like, guiding his magic. In his head. And he fixed it, saved it, but it messed up his own body too. His face. Like he took part of the wound on. He taught me how to do it, later--it hurts but it can save someone." He paused, saddened by the story that he now had to tell, but he knew it was important to the story of the one who had been Black. "Anyway, he tried to distract this lamb from his pain. He told him stories about Raheerah. And it was like... Raheerah heard, because next thing they knew he smashed back into Polaris except this time, only Dad and the lamb and this little tiny bird were there. And Dad told them to run, that he'd try to talk to Raheerah, distract him-? But they didn't run-... and Raheerah ate them. Right after Dad had saved the poor kid." Oliver shook his head, miserably, but this at least led to new information: "He brought the stones back to Cetus to try and bring them life. So um. You do have other family," he explained. "They're called Sword and uh, Crown. The lamb was Throne, so--I guess it was related but. They're lamb and dog and bird, kinda all mixed in because the stones were sort of... melted. They're around somewhere--they were sad Dad died, too, but I haven't seen them much."

Oliver paused, realizing he'd rambled, and went back to the fight with Raheerah. He explained how, shortly thereafter, Black had created he himself, and White.

And he told other stories, then. As many as he could gloss over quickly enough.

Oliver told of how Black had once been among those who'd fought a monster made of organs and bones, lumbering up from a crack in Polaris's floor.

He told of how the herbivores of the caves had once risen up to make war, to exterminate the meat-eaters, and how Black had fought in that war, too. (And he mentioned that he, himself, only ate plants now, using the help of magic--because he felt bad for Lessers.)

Of how Black had found, and watched, Nemean. How she had tampered with the Generator, and put out the lights in the caves; how he'd helped a white snake and the white wolf (the 'Lightbringer') to fix it, by pulling a topaz from the workings of its wheel.

How Vathrahi had tumbled forth in a storm of cloud. And Oliver told briefly of Senka, too--what little he knew of the cat, and its void, and how they were sisters. How Black had pitied them, separated and hurt as they were. How he had offered aid, but warned them not to harm others.

How Black had aided in returning that topaz to life, later. And how he'd hidden away some sort of magic ball that someone had once held--Oliver didn't know the details, on that, bar that it 'hurt' and that he'd learned that strange healing magic first from the ball, with the voice only later guiding him in its use.

Then, with no sign of Sentinel interrupting, Oliver went on with Black's corruption. His voice grew slower, here, because this topic was one he still wasn't very sure about. Black had been distant--not emotionally, but physically--after his first venture to the Hole. He'd found the Black Altar; he'd changed, both magically and physically. "He said it was a stone, a big one. That he listened to it talk. That it could be dangerous, but that it had things to teach him," Oliver explained. "It's down a real long tunnel right outside Canis, here. Uhh, that way--the spooky one. But he fell into his stone, down there. I think the only time he ever did, really. And when he came out he wasn't just a dog anymore. He stood on two legs, kinda like you; and he went to the Collector to get himself a weapon, and a cloak. His magic changed--it was still darkness, but now it was like yours, um. Kinda... smoky. Dark."

Oliver grimaced, a little. "The last thing he did was go into the trial to protect the people who were in there. I don't know if he managed to save anyone, or who, but he died doing it. I guess... Vargas got back his stone--your... stone," he corrected himself, quietly, "after that. I didn't know. I'm sorry," he added, though he wasn't quite sure why.

The bird-dog fidgeted for a beat. "We can be family," he offered him, abruptly. "I mean--can we be? You could visit as often as you want, and I have food here," he added, gesturing to one side. A fat, yellow banana sprouted up, with just the perfect hint of brown, and Oliver picked it up in one crow-like forelimb. He shuffled forward, offering it out. "It's magic food," he explained. "It'll make you sparkle for a little while, but not forever. And pretty much everybody likes it--even if you eat meat?" and this was half a question.

He hesitated, ear-tufts flattening back, as the Sentinel slowly took the banana. "It's just-... I miss Dad. And I don't see White or Crown or Sword enough. I wouldn't mind, um. Hanging out? We can teach each other, maybe. And I can tell you more stories about Dad--Black?--whenever you want," he added, half-hopefully.

But there was something sad in the offer, too. As if he feared that, now that the Sentinel had any information he required, that line of Oliver's life might now be cut off forever. And somehow, that felt like losing his dad a second time.