ORIGIN

Garnet-Delta sneaked up on the bat it had chosen, invisible and disguised in the scent of the bat's natural pheromones. All that was left was to...

In a single swift motion, the feline lunged, teeth snapping down on the lesser pitch rat's throat. It squealed, but its colony mates barely noticed until, thrashing, Delta and the bat went spinning toward the floor. Poison seeped into the creatures body, but it was not Delta's bite nor the poison that fully incapacitated it. That was the landing, as a sickening crunch damaged several of the lesser's bones and internal organs-- well, Delta's weight slamming into it didn't help either. A choked gurgle came from the bat's throat, as it started to drown in its own blood from its neck wound.

The lessers above squawked and called out, bewildered, but they weren't going to do anything. Maybe one or two of them got curious when Garnet-Delta's claws slashed open the twitch, stunned bat's stomach. Entrails tumbled out on to the floor beneath it, and as blood began to soak into its fur, its invisibility was starting to become rather pointless. As one of the flying pitch rats dropped from the ceiling, Garnet-Delta's ear swiveled and it dismissed its magic, turning to snarl at the approaching creature. It promptly fled with a screech, sending the rest of the colony scuttling away.

The prey that Garnet-Delta had spasming underneath it wasn't going to survive much longer like this. Its heart was still beating, and its flesh had yet to rot from its stone, but nothing could survive the agony (numbed or not) that the poor thing was feeling.

Garnet-Delta tilted its head, staring down as the light started to fade from those beady, miserably eyes.

At Garnet-Delta's feet, the lesser was starting to succumb to its wounds. A slow, agonizing process, that let more and more blood gush on to the stone beneath its paws. There was a good sized puddle now, soaking the white toebeans of the alien hybrid.

Its eyes drifted down to that pool of blood. It saw a faint outline in the rippling, and almost started.

Supposedly, there were multiple ways for magic to see things. There was fungi and arcane magic among them that Garnet-Delta was aware of. Who was to say that its own magic couldn't? It had spent a long time trying to figure out ways... It had learned how to read others minds, and feelings, but that tended to be somewhat... limited, and risky.

Was it truly seeing something in the blood of an animal? In the magic it had been born with, the only useful thing its lifegiver had ever given it or anyone else? Was that truly the shape of its hatchmate, barreling through the wilds of Leo.

If it was. Garnet-Delta's lips drew back into a snarl and it stepped back from the puddle, crouching down beside the pool as the lesser's blood pressure finally dropped to nothing and it fell still.

It was incredibly difficult to make out, at first. The shapes were starting to grow more familiar, outlined in a strange rippling effect. That was definitely the Orthoclase, blurred as the shape was, and it finally collapsed somewhere in the underbrush.

It didn't want to watch this anymore.

Garnet-Delta tried to turn its eyes anywhere else, sinking a single claw into the blood and focusing its magic. Let it look instead for what was going on in Draco, perhaps. But the image didn't change as it willed it, and now, the lesser bat was starting to turn to oil. The rot began to mingle with the blood, and a growl of irritation came from the cat as it slashed at the puddle, splattering blood across the stone.

Useless.

It had wasted a perfectly good meal.

It could have tried to eat around the oil, but it didn't feel particularly inclined. It glanced up toward the few, sparse remaining bats, and tried to pick one that didn't have an obvious stone on it.

It reached with its magic and felt no hold take place. The smell of rot was subtle at first-- it would take a while for the lesser to rot completely-- but it was starting to get on Delta's nerves already. It reeked.

The Overseer raised a paw and started to lick the blood from between its toes, turning and pacing away from the mess with a stumbling, three-legged walk.

Garnet-Delta was tiring of these games. It chewed at the fur between its paw pads, ears laying back against its skull. By now it was starting to feel quite foolish for having wasted a meal, but the magic had surprised it.

Maybe this was part of what Emuh's transcendence was about. Its whiskers twitched with irriation, and as it heard a flap of wings above, it glanced up and tried again, not caring which creature it took with its magic.

Nothing. Maybe they were too far away? Yet that had never stopped Delta before. Its tail tapped on the stone, swishing back and forth.

Still, Garnet-Delta wasn't going to keep trying to grasp at straws. It instead paced back toward the dens where it had found the lesser mice and rats. At this point, it wasn't sure if it wanted the meat or the blood-- but it did want to experiment further.

At least its magic wasn't backfiring again.

It stalked back to the holes, and crouched. Focusing, it stared into the holes and reached with its magic, finding the blood of one of the creatures. Lips tugging back, eyes gleaming, it pulled.

A huge grey rat... one of the echoers, possibly, came lunging from the hole at its command. Garnet-Delta made it crouch before it and roll on to its back, whining and whimpering and struggling, and it rose to its feet to tower over it.

"What a good little lesser," Garnet-Delta let the words slip from its tongue. "This is your purpose, you know." And it hissed that in the rat's ear to torment it, even knowing that it wouldn't understand. Maybe somehow, it would. It certainly looked panicked, as the cat raised its claws, and slashed open its throat.