ORIGIN - WHY THE STRUGGLE? WHY THE STRAIN?

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- THE LEVIATHAN -

Popping skull from neck had been one of his suggested methods, and Draconua indulged him, or so it seemed. He had also recommended the arteries of the neck, and it seemed she was going for that, too. Or maybe she was just being horrific about it, but Vargas was an optimist in this case.

He would take what he could get.

"Better," he told her, and his voice was a domineering purr, a scrap of positive reinforcement thrown to the attack dog. Past that he did not interrupt her. He would let her enjoy the fruits of her labor.

Be calm and be precise, and you will be rewarded. That was the intent of this lesson; he hoped she would figure this one out on her own. Thus far, her learning ability hadn't proven to be particularly strong as a trait; in fact, her changes had been toward the chaotic, instead of away from it. It would take work to shift her, but perhaps this was a start.

Or maybe not.

Time would tell.

@Draconua

Any other being would have accepted the praise; they'd have preened underneath it. Especially Vargas's ilk, deprived as they seemed to think they were (not that Draconua had ever cared for or about them past grinning at the wide berth all of them gave her.) The valkhound, tearing the calf's head free from its bindings and gulping it down felt little positive response to it.

No—this was a pointless lesson. Something in a poor faith attempt to quell her. Quiet her down and draw her focus elsewhere, somewhere more suiting of the Master's needs. Vargas had not yet claimed her to be his, and until then…—rage swarmed within her. A little more, that was all she needed. A demonstration. Redemption. To give her name reason to be feared.

She abandoned the calf's carcass.

The Sleepless Chaos much preferred the taste of Oil over bloody meat, anyways.

She stepped away from the corpse and darted forward with a wordless growl. Enough of song and dance, she would bellow out the beat of a war drum. Her forelimbs lifted off the ground as she reared, and beat against it on the crash back down.

The earth split before her to reveal corrupted-black stone—perhaps underneath Vargas's feet—with a thundering roar to rival her own: "THIS IS A WASTE. COME ON!"

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

The earth darkened, blackened, split, and the gaping hole retched open just beneath him. He felt himself start to tumble, the earth smashing against his hind limbs, tearing into the flesh of his flanks, his ribs.

Pleasure turned to utter disappointment. They are all useless. A curse at the Creator; why was this Nest churning out only whining fools and feral beasts? With, or without his help.

The Leviathan caught himself at the edge--enough to keep himself from being crushed entirely, from falling in--but not enough to stop the damage the upthrust, split-down earth had caused. This--was an attack, and he would follow through on his promise. She would be hard-pressed to give him an excuse not to kill her, now.

(Ah, but he was overconfident.)

Vargas shoved up, forward, and leapt to make good on his lesson: a rending tear given all the power behind his upthrust arm-spikes, aimed for Draconua's inner forelimb. Was there an artery there, as there was with most beasts? More importantly, could he sever it?

He didn't bother speaking; he'd tried, and this was the result. It was not a fight that he had started, but he would do his damnest to finish it.

@Draconua

Violet swept across her field of view, but foolhardy Draconua did not move away from its arc or to defend any part of her. Blades carved their way through the meat of her upper arm, into the dense flesh of a shoulder, and across the breadth of her chest. Oil sputtered from the split tissue, shimmering and sparking with heat. The Sleepless Chaos skidded to a half where she'd been charging, backpedaled, and wheezed out a bellowing gasp.

Nearly immediately, her upper half was slicked over in her own lifeblood, and she only faintly recalled five minutes prior. Marking her for death.

The valkhound barked her rancor, stomping down on her good arm with a scream twisted with careless agony. Not an unusual sound, really.

As her foot once again met the earth, it again started to buck and crumble—but, rather than make a new hole or force any shelves of rock from the earth, she pushed her magic towards making the sinkhole larger, deeper; towards absolutely burying the Master in rock and corruption. That'd show him, surely... ! She could show him what she was capable of, that she was not just another one of those creatures.

A battle for the ages, as they say, with one at higher ground than the other.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

He went from "getting in close" with the scent of blood (and Draconua's rancid breath) in his nostrils, to "the ground is tumbling out behind me." First his feet gave, kicking for purchase that wasn't there across stone and earth that fell away underfoot.

Vargas turned, and did his best to launch himself the other way: shoving across the hole she was smashing through Pegasus (and he was reminded, again, that Azigh would not be pleased) and to the other side. If he could grab it, ram his arm-spines in for purchase and haul himself up, get some distance between them-

He leapt. Spines caught at the edge, digging in--and then through--the earth. Too soft, he realized--too late--as the hole opened up beneath him. For a moment he slid, hanging at the edge but it was a losing battle, his own weight sending him spinning down into the opening gap. He hit the still-churning bottom with a grunt, on his side, and rolled to come upright--but this hole was deep.

If Azigh turned up now, he'd be true to his word, he decided. He'd tried, with this one. She wasn't worth his efforts.

@Draconua

Down the Leviathan went.

The Sleepless Chaos cackled her sheer glee, giddy and already delirious. Oppressive blackness crept along the fringes of her vision, blotting it out in monochromatic smears, but still she laughed. "SEE?" She wavered on her feet as she hobbled toward the edge of the hole—favoring her gored-up leg and shoulder. "I have control! I've not been struck down by Him, yet!"

Her tail lashed in an eager rhythm, and she twisted so that her grin was more visible from the side than the front.

Her eyes lolled in their sockets, then, and she nearly toppled into the pit. It was by sheer chance that she caught herself, scrabbled backwards—with no less than a fairly large landslide of soft earth giving way beneath her claws—and flopped into the disgustingly pleasant grass. Flanks seized as she rolled right onto her back (overly confident in that pit, much?) and pressed a palm against her forearm. The faint stink of decay from the nearby decomposing calf reminded her of a murkier lush cave. She'd charred herself back together then, too.

Until the Creator made her purpose here clear and permanent—besides the omnipresent objective to shatter Order—she did not know if another form would bring her here.

Draconua rolled onto her stomach, pressing a scorched hand against a spot quite similar to what'd been marked off on that rotten calf. Perhaps a little far south, but the intent was there. Flesh and hide curled black, and she wheezed through it, but... it'd work, provided she didn't tear it open again (which was quite likely, of course, especially if her assumption of relative safety had been so bold.)

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas came to his feet. When Draconua made her appearance at the edge of the pit--gloating? Reassuring?--he wasn't sure--he lunged up for her. He was not about to let that stumbling-in-loose-dirt opportunity flit past; a muscled arm shot up, his momentum behind it, and he let his weight drag at her. She was heavier, yes, but was her imbalanced posture enough-?

He fell back, afterward, hitting dirt heavily. It was probably unwise to enclose himself in a smaller space with the Sleepless Chaos--even if she moved to cauterizing herself, first. And he wasn't sure how much blood she'd lost; how weakened she would be, yet.

He'd need to get out, afterward, and if he wasn't mistaken, Draconua's rampage would probably only dig herself deeper.

There was no response to her words; he was focused on the fight. So far as he was concerned, the time for conversation had long passed. He'd given her that opportunity, and she had spat on it. And "spat" was putting it politely.

@Draconua

A lanky arm had then ripped from the shadowy darkness of the sinkhole. It grappled for a hold on a sanguine horn, maybe the underside of her face, and it pulled with the force of Vargas's weight being claimed by gravity. The valkhound hissed her surprise, the spine on her shoulder digging harshly into the loose dirt as she was dragged toward the edge and made a mad scrabble to peel the offending limb off.

There was a thump! as the Leviathan's claws shredded through the flesh of her jaw and slipped loose, but it was not her body meeting his in the hole. Oil sputtered onto already old stains in the earth. The fresh wound burned down to the bone.

Instead—in a surprising show of… calm?—she just… hobbled further away from the sinkhole and sank back into the grass.

Draconua remained where she was after that, hand nearly baked onto the meat of her forearm by voidfire. A wheezing sigh rattled out of her lungs. Completely against her will, her body slumped; and, with her head pressed flat against the ground, she could smell blood, Oil, and that horribly clean scent of fresh-cut grass. The latter was most overwhelming, and no amount of half-hearted grappling for fistfuls could make it any weaker.

So, the valkhound just relegated herself to that fate, spent as she was. She looked all-too-peaceful lying there, belly exposed to the sky with a fist nearly over her heart. A twitching grimace and seizing flanks—and what seemed to be centuries' worth of scars—indicated otherwise.

Tipping her head, as if it'd make her out to be any louder, the Sleepless Chaos wheezed. "I'll wipe out every last shred of Order in those mountains, Vargas. I'll do it." If there was a weakened wobbliness to her voice (and, of course, there was, having had herself brutally sliced open moments before,) she didn't seem to acknowledge it, or even be aware of it. "And then—then, I'll move on to whatever purpose our Creator has for me. Wherever it is—here, there, away from you, your failure of a beast."

She sighed, then, almost wistfully.

Even if it was death.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

He drew back his arm, feeling the slick of blood dripping down along his talons. It wasn't what he had aimed for, and he felt annoyance grip him; he'd wanted her in the pit, where he'd fully intended to leave her.

With a coil of immense muscles, he put his lanky agility and power on full display--the same power that could send his body scaling vertical rock given enough of a head-start. A massive leap, lifting him up, out, landing outside the pit--the soft dirt crumbling under his rear feet, so that the grace of the effect was somewhat ruined by a final scramble free.

Then he strode, long strides, toward Draconua--around her--as she spoke. He didn't care, any longer, what she said. "Shut up," he snapped, and there was savagery in his tone. "I told you I would kill you for striking out at me here. Give me a good reason not to tear your stone from your body right now," he snarled. Or would she return to it before he had the chance-? He glanced over her, eyeing from a few yards off; where even was her gemstone?

"You say you will destroy Order-? Is that your cry for mercy? Your promise that you'll be useful to me, instead of a slavering beast? I do not need MINDLESS, Draconua, not here. Chaos-Two's was not the only failure today! What use are you to me, when all you do is preach your melodramatic cries for purpose and servitude while lashing out blindly, serving none of it-?" And there was still anger in Vargas's tone. He had no intention of letting a risk like this continue to run wild while he had business to attend here in the caves; this was a creation that should have been set loose elsewhere long ago, and if it remained unchained, was useless to him.

@Draconua

"Mindless?" the valkhound gawped with a wincing wheeze. Her chest seized involuntarily, a twitching spasm of black lightning coiling through the iridescent-shiny flesh there. Despite her lying prone before the Leviathan, spent and at the vestiges of her own consciousness, Draconua couldn't help but to laugh and bite back. Vargas's form swam in and out of the edges of her vision. "I'm anything but—" she broke into a sharp cough, "anything but that."

And how so?

"Always, always thinking. I believe He puts many of those thoughts there. Flashes of sound and color, promises." Crooked teeth bared in a lopsided grin, and she let off a giddy laugh. The blood loss was certainly addling her stream of thought. A set of hooked claws struck up into the air, hung there, and dropped heavily to her side. "Glimpses into past and future. Destruction and wonder, Chaos and pandemonium. Mine and others."

"My skull is ever fit to burst. Beautiful, hm?" Draconua shifted her head so that she could better see Vargas; she quickly gave up as his vulturine circling persisted. "I don't think you'd find a stone or trouble's worth in there."

She half-rolled to her side, and let gravity jar her onto her stomach with an unrestrained gasp. Oil burned up her throat, and she nearly spewed it all over the grass, but, ah, that'd be a waste, too. "My design has lasted through the ages. You'd waste it for the scent of blood and tears in the water? A hole shot through the earth?"

Draconua had seen the beasts Vargas had made. They were inelegant and all so damn soft. She would sooner shatter her own stone into uselessness than allow that waste—if her preconceived notion and idealized version of the Creator did not do so first.

At that thought, the Sleepless Chaos reared onto her feet. She listed to the side, wobbling in her stance, but ultimately kept her ground. The flat of her face-plate glared at Vargas.

When she spoke, it was with surprising solemnity and a weary undercurrent of electric fury. "Spare me, and I will not forget this." Black eyes narrowed in their pinhole sockets. "I will not forget it for as long as I remain here."

@Vargas

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