ORIGIN

"It holds... shadows," he began, slowly. This wasn't going to be an easy concept for him to explain; his communication skills were questionable on the best of days. And these were all abstracts, and the facts behind them--any real, concrete science--was unknown to him. He had only impressions, vague ideas based on his experiences, no more necessarily accurate than a cave man's understanding of a solar system.

But he would try.

"They are all around it." One clawed hand gestured out, around, at the darkness that had only thickened around him since first he'd reached for the Void. "There are whispers. Promises. Words. Commands, suggestions." He paused, and tried to think: how could he link the vague whispers and chaotic urges to the ability to literally banish someone to the Void?

How had he made this connection?

"When the Bone Seer spoke of this Void. He felt kinship. The black dog was known as Void. Shadows pursued it. It lived within them, and they within it, as with the Sentinel. He... felt that he knew of what she spoke." -Did that make sense? He hesitated, and went on. "It reached into the shadows--deeper. Farther. And it found the Void. It lies beyond the darkness. The Sentinel is... linked to this. The magic is the same."

He fell silent, then, unable to better explain what it was that he meant. But he hoped that this would be enough to pay his side of this strange bargain.

She eyed him, deep in thought.

He used "void," but... he'd grown a fucking mushroom?

"So your magic's shadow, void, whatever--but you can grow fungus-?" she asked, brow drawing down. Or had he simply thanked the spirits, and they'd done that? She'd never had it happen before, but...

She shook her head. "So that's what your magic does, usually? It makes darkness?" She was almost disappointed. She'd hoped for some sort of revelation, here--though if this was everything, if this was all it was, that was certainly something to chew on. A starting point, at least.

If this void-thing was nothing more than another standard form of magic--well, all magic could be dangerous. Deadly, even--and terrifying. Was this really all it was..?

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

He inclined his head, ever so slightly, as if to indicate agreement--but he offered clarification, too.

"I am kin to the Black Spire, and to Master Vargas. To V-Chaos-One, and V-Chaos-Two. To the dark stones that whisper." One hand raised to lightly indicate the corrupted, oil-sheened onyx at his chest. "These things whisper. They are Other. They are not the soft grass and the light of other magics. They are... their own."

Vague frustration rose in him; he had too little experience to truly be able to define the differences between the Void and other powers. Between chaos, corruption, and something like the gentle magic of plants or the purity of fire. "It is... a nature of unpredictability. Of chaos. It is never... one thing," he tried to explain, and turned to gesture at an empty patch of mud.

He did not know what would result, and what did result was unexpected. The mud slicked black, as though suddenly stained with oil--and from it erupted a black and fleshy tentacle, misshapen and withered. It was not something strong or massive--it looked sickly, if anything. But it flailed and lashed, thrashing across the ground as far as it could reach. He'd placed it safely out of range of himself or the hyena but to watch it grasp fruitlessly, violently, for prey was...

...Fascinating, to the dog.

But as he looked back to Giggle, he got the impression she might be seeing it rather differently.

As he spoke, things began to become a little more clear. But it was when he gestured so idly, and summoned forth a bones-damned thrashing black flesh-tentacle from the floor, that she realized fully the implications of what he was explaining.

Her heartbeat picked up a few paces. She felt Omen's fear, distant, as the bird drew farther away--wanting nothing to do with such a monstrosity.

Giggle choked back her revulsion to study the tentacle a little more closely--though she kept her physical distance. It's... a magic, she realized, understanding dawning on her at last. It's magic, like any other. Like my fungus. Like Azazel's air, or fire magic... It's, what, evil magic?! Chaos, he says, the magic of unpredictability. More like the magic of warped horrors.

She watched the thing a moment longer, watched as it left oily trails across the mud while it thrashed and flailed in a useless hunt for something to snag.

Then she looked at the Sentinel, who was waiting patiently for her response. "So it's... your kind of magic," she said, at last. "This--black shit? This is your magic? Like... throwing people into the void, making shadows and--whatever that thing is--that's not gonna stay there, is it?" she added, worriedly.

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

He turned to stare at it again.

Would it stay there-? "The Sentinel does not know." A moment's thought, another gesture, and blackness swarmed: the tentacle... disappeared.

He had the impression that were the thing alive, truly alive, it'd have popped back out sooner or later. But the moment this one vanished, likely as it was part of his own magic, it was gone. He'd sent it to the void, as he'd briefly done to Giggle.

"It is gone," he informed her, looking back to her, as if this were somehow not self-evident. "Will she now teach it of her magic-?"

She stared blankly.

Right, that was one problem solved.

A distrustful, almost warning glance was sent the Sentinel's way and then she turned, pacing to the pit's edge once again. She sat there, in among her spores--a place she felt a little safer. Small mushrooms ringed this place; bioluminescent fungus to generate some light (ironically, perceived comfort against the darkness) were most noticeable among them. But the rancid carrion stench ones could be found here and there, ready to be urged into fruiting bodies at a moment's notice. And the small, pale-stalked brown ones were powerful hallucinogens. Strong enough to throw an opponent off, to buy her time.

She eyed them thoughtfully, and glanced back to the Sentinel.

"My magic's... varied. Mostly it's the mushrooms. What you see all around you. They talk to me, sometimes," she went on matter-of-factly, though whether this was truth or imagined, not even Giggle knew. "They're linked to death, like I told you yesterday. Alive, but eating death. Through them, I can see how something died. I can use fungus to consume a body, or bones, and see things from its life. I can grow fungus, or spores, to do almost anything I want--as food, to follow a target. I can look through existing fungus--mushrooms, molds, anything--to sense what's going on around, even at a distance. I can make fungus grow on whatever I want--I could make it grow on you, if I wanted to, and let it eat your flesh away." Granted, that'd take a good, long while, but she wasn't about to tell him that. The stronger he thought she was, the better.

"I can pull fungus out of things, or I can put it in. But my magic goes... beyond that, I guess. See, I think everything is linked. Well--it is. There's magic in all things, and everything that exists affects everything else. We share the air, the water. Our magic interacts. My Seeing... it takes all that is, and in a heartbeat it understands--my magic, I mean--how all of the... all of everything combines, and what it will become. In the future. I think the spirits see that more clearly, and that's why the bone readings are clearer, too."

She looked to the Sentinel, who was remaining silent, raptly absorbing everything she said. She took a breath and looked, then, back to the bones, thinking. (Plus, she didn't like seeing his weird, unblinking, six-eyed stare.) "I can see the past, when I touch things. If I touched your stone, I might see things that happened long ago, or things from your own life. I can see it in bones, too. And I can see the future. I can read minds, and I can put myself to sleep and find the mind of someone even across the caves to talk to them--if they're asleep, too. I can put myself into their dreams. It's... fungus, and imagination; truth, thought, reality. All of it, intertwined."

She paused, and glanced back at the Sentinel. "...Any questions?" she asked, wryly, aware that this had been rather a large dump of information all at once.

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

He was not sure how much of this he'd remember--fungus wasn't something he'd ever really discussed, before. He struggled, even, to try and commit all this to memory. So his first, instinctive response--without thinking, and half-distracted--was "No." Immediately he hesitated, and changed his mind as something else occurred to him. "Yes. The Sentinel has heard the Master warn of another fungus. A white one, that he calls Mother. Does she know of this one-?" he asked, head tilting to one side.

She was immediately a little wary.

The bones had once urged her to go to Mother, and she'd gathered some against her better judgment. Her mind magic had allowed her to speak to it, but without Mother's chemical effects, its attempts to sway her had been brutish and clumsy at best. She was still unsure if the bones had suggested such a thing simply so she could educate herself, or if there were something more to it--she'd certainly felt the impulse to align with Mother. If there was more she didn't know, or if maybe one of the spirits in the bones was malicious--could that be? She'd never found as much, before.

Whatever the case, she was hesitant to speak in certainties--or even to say too much, in case there was more going on than she herself understood.

"I know of it. It's a white fungus, and if it infects you, it tampers with your emotions, your mind. It's like any living thing--it tries to reproduce itself, except instead of hunting on its own it tries to get living things to do that for it. To protect it, feed it, that sort of thing. I'm not sure if it's necessarily good or bad. If either, really. But if you're asking for practical advice-? Check anything you eat for white fungus, first. Any prey at all. And if you see it on someone else, get as far away from them as you can."

She shook her head, a little. "My magic can remove it. I doubt yours can. Actually, I think your Master's asked for help, on that front-? Tahi-shei's been looking for others to help him. I've taught him a little, myself," she added, which in fairness was a tad modest. He was the closest thing she'd had to a real student, and she had to admit that he'd committed himself and learned well--even if his personality seemed a bit too... ambitious, for her liking. He didn't mean to be malicious, exactly, so she didn't hold it much against him, but he'd never be her best friend or the like. That was thinking off-topic, though. The point was, it seemed that Master Vargas's magic--and thus the Sentinel's--probably couldn't handle this fungus.

But hers--and Tahi-shei's--could.

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

He considered her words, and then bowed his head briefly.

"It is... good," he said, at last, referring to her information. This was knowledge he could use. Particularly, he committed to memory the warning to check all food before eating--and to stay far from anything infected. Perhaps he could send those things to the Void to keep them far, far away from him.

At last, he looked up at Giggle. "Will she show him how she fights-?" he asked, and then amended it: "Will she fight the Sentinel?"

Fighting to learn a magic type wasn't really what most Gembounds jumped to, but he'd already mentioned it once so it wasn't enormously a surprise. She let out a grim exhale, and considered her terms.

"We can. But my magic can hurt you. I mean, really hurt you. And I don't want to get hurt. Don't shove me into the void, or I'll fucking kill you, next time," she added, darkly. "And keep the pointy end of that thing off me. If I hit you with my magic, I can always remove the fungus later, but it might leave marks," she added. "I know that sounds unfair--it kinda is. But that's how my magic works. That okay with you?" she asked, rolling her muscles to loosen them up.

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