ORIGIN

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Dragon eyed Tal'at uncertainly--and then eyed his wings. Something about them jerked something in his mind, a string he hadn't known was there, something attached to long-distant... memory? Was it memory? Either way, the bat's wings fascinated him, and for a moment he sniffed closer before abruptly turning away, shaking the thoughts from his mind.

Now is not the time.

"Um, okay--we can check the big crystals. Maybe." He sounded uncertain--and he was--but up he went, hissing and huffing to himself, glancing back at the stranger as he went.

"Do you live here?" he asked, curiosity winning out over suspicion. He also muttered--more quietly--to Eve.

"Are you okay?"

Then he was snout-deep in crystals, nudging and sniffing around, clawing and pawing at the stone around the Spire's base. He peered up critically at its height; he'd climbed the ledges in Cetus easily enough. With a soft grunt he decided to start clambering up. He hoped that Eve could fly up higher--or could the soft-skin-winged-thing fly? But the thought hadn't occurred to him that he didn't need to check the lower sections, too; no, he had to pull his weight. And so, webbed and clawed feet slowly scraping over the shining blue, he started to haul his leathery bulk upwards.

He moved from thick crystal to crystal, careful and practiced from his time in Cetus, sniffing and peering between the cracks--but he found nothing.

"Can you check higher up?" he asked, nearly crossing his eyes as he tried to see his hat.

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Eve watched Dragon dig around crystals for a moment before she nodded, "I'm okay. Are you?"

Eve seemed to be referring to Dragon climbing the spire. She lifted herself up a little, crawling onto his snout to look up with a snort. She glanced back, briefly, before nodding and began to flutter up to the top, flittering around the spire at a distance.

It wasn't long until the crow was sitting on the alligator's head once more, shaking her head. "Maybe Usui and Ghanyarah had better luck."

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Dragon gave a soft hiss-hrmph of thought, lashing his long, heavy tail along the rock.

"I'm okay," he said to Eve, words coming more slowly as he pondered. "Maybe look at that thing up there. Check it, then go find them?" He turned and started hauling himself at a high-walk (his stomach held with some effort so that it did not touch the ground) along the stone, toward the dam. There were golems--he could see shapes heavily shifting about up there. He spoke quietly as he went, trying to approach the dam as close as was safe.

"Know what those are? Are they safe?" He hesitated, then tried to slip closer to the stone cover, murmuring back to Tal'at as he did so. "You have no eyes, but there are big things ahead. Slow things. Don't know what they are. Or if they're dangerous."

He crept along the shadows, trying his best to avoid moving where the three would be easily spotted.

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"I don't know. I can check?" offered the crow, though there was a hint of uncertainty in her tone. Admittedly, she didn't feel like flying again - nevermind the possibility of getting hurt in the process of that.

Not that it helped motivate her.

She grind her beak together a little, looking down at the top of Dragon's head as she waited for an answer.

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Dragon hesitated.

For the first time in his relatively young life, he was faced with a tough moral dilemma, and a practical one, at that. To leave without fully investigating the cave was to give up--they might have passed right past Aquarian's collar, and never known. And then he would not protect them, and they might die, later.

But to ask the little flying-friends to check--he knew they had a better chance at escaping danger, but what if the shapes had magic? What if it got one of them killed? Not only would they be harmed, dead, but it wouldn't get them any closer to the collar, either.

He thought about it for a long moment, motionless in the shadows, before he replied, his voice hushed.

"No heartbeats...? They aren't--alive, then? If you can't see, then--hide, for a few minutes. Eve, I'm going to go try and talk to them. They don't look very fast. If they are friendly I'll look for the collar. If they come after me you can check safely once they're after me, right?"

When Eve moved off, Dragon (hoping Tal'at would go with her) started toward the golems. He kept his eye out for anything resembling the golden collar, calling out as he went.

"Hello? I am Dragon," he began awkwardly, unsure how to start, but at least he was still moving toward them. "I'm looking for something... I'm wondering if you've seen it?"

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There was a pause, and then a nod. The crow's head dipped down to nudge the top of Dragon's head, before she hopped off.

"Come on up here," she said to Tal'at, and then she took off - briefly stopping and hovering in the air to make sure the blind bat was going the right way.

She tried to lead him to a ledge up at the wall, sitting and watching carefully as Dragon made his way to the golemns.

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