ORIGIN - WHY THE STRUGGLE? WHY THE STRAIN?

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- THE LEVIATHAN -

He paced, he circled, tense for another attack--but one never came. Her words, though--Draconua's words--swept through his own skull, curling there like black worms, evidence at last of the source of her madness. The Black Spire had imbued her very mind with Chaos. But as a result, half of what she said made no sense to him--"a stone or trouble's worth?" He didn't know what the hell that meant, but it was obvious that she was tormented by constant visions.

He gradually formed his conclusions as he paced--one way, another, quills raised--and he thought over his response even as she spoke. But her final words:

'Spare me, and I will not forget this. I will not forget it for as long as I remain here.'

-earned from him a burst of dark laughter, a grim guffaw that held nothing back. "OF COURSE YOU WILL NOT FORGET IT, FOR IT WOULD BE WEAKNESS, AND WHAT CREATION OF HIS DISREGARDS WEAKNESS?" This bellow (its volume entirely unnecessary) was followed by an agitated change in direction, further relentless circling.

"So He fills your head with visions! There are TWO types of creations in this nest, Draconua. Those destined to be taken away and DESTROY, and those who SERVE THIS NEST. Your mad-word nonsense about holes in the earth and blood and tears in water has nothing to do with it. I would destroy you for being created the former, but LEFT HERE to interfere with the latter--a creation, for destruction, left to destroy His servants. You are useless here, less than useless--a liability!--unless you can RESHAPE yourself. And I will not continue to show mercy--weakness!--for defiance."

He strode forward, leaning in--dangerously close, not close enough--and lowered his voice. (This would likely be a relief to any sane Gembound.) "You try to appeal to my pragmatism, but unless you can learn to show usefulness I will not tolerate your presence here any longer. Go to your stone, Draconua, and when you emerge you will either beg our Lord Dhracia to take you from this place and give you the destruction you've been shown--I am certain she would oblige you... Or find a use for yourself that does not involve lashing out at the Forge of his creations."

He paused a beat, six eyes narrowing.

"The only reason I am showing you mercy--and you mistake it for weakness at your peril--is that you have not struck me more directly. In THAT you have at least shown restraint. For your visions and usefulness--I speak to those who ask for aid. I will help you with those visions if you ask it. But I will not continue to tolerate a child throwing magical tantrums in my cave."

A little egotistical, but perhaps he'd earned that.

Maybe not.

"Your fate is in your hands. I will be ready for your answers when you wake." -Unless, of course, she could manage them now.

@Draconua

Tormented wasn't quite the word for it—no, no, she celebrated those wretched sights the same as one would the scent of petrichor or the feeling of sunlight on their skin. They were as natural to her as (even her staggering) breathing was a reflex. Silence would crowd in on her skull otherwise, and what a terrifying concept that was. Room to think? To consider with no external influence? Bah!

Despite Vargas's abrupt shift in volume, the Sleepless Chaos did not flinch or move from the spot. She tilted her head up by a mere few degrees and looked him in the eye. Hussar wings fell slack, pressing flush against sweaty flanks. Every breath was a heaving inhale and exhale. A chore, if you will. It did not help that frantic hyena giggles continued to bubble from her maw; because left to interfere? She would never. By such a standard, V-Chaos-Two was a traitorous wretch, a heretic deserving of branding and exile—if its keeper were still so kind to show weakness and mercy.

"I know what use I serve. I do not think your—" and she had to laugh again, sputtering a coughing wheeze that was barely suppressed, "Chaos beast does." Claws fiddled with the cauterized scab of her forearm, pricking dangerously close to unleashing the full flood once more. Her head—and the rest of her body—hit the ground again with a solid thump!, apparently somehow satisfied with no assurance against certain death. "Pitiful thing. Pity, pity, pity. I have more use to Him than it could ever hope to weeping and withering away."

She wished she could have found it to kill it.

A problem for another time, perhaps.

"Do not allow blood in the water, Leviathan." Draconua growled cryptically; and she added lamely in an airier voice: "Don't put a sniveling coward before me." A set of claws gripped at fistfuls of grass and sod, still sobered into solemnity despite her delirium. "I can't get enough of that taste." Her teeth bared in a toothy grin.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Oh, how grimly poetic.

"Do not come NEAR THE WATER if you cannot handle the scent of BLOOD!" he bellowed in response, rage curling up through him. He gave her this--he gave her this-! Words, and mercy--and she retaliated with still more defiance? She dared?!

Ungrateful wretch-!

He cocked back one arm, coming in closer to aim another mighty strike, his full weight behind it; the thrust came close on the heels of his words, no gap between lesson and lesson. Be it through his own miscalculation (hazed with fury) or her own still-bestial reflexes, his fist punched into topsoil, instead, a spray of dirt pluming back around him.

@Draconua

A switch flicked on somewhere in the rotten carcass of her skull, and she managed to launch herself out of the way in time for dirt to sputter into her face. A ragged, gasping wheeze broke from her chest, and she remained standing—coiling upward with a lopsided snarl splitting her maw.

Her stance wavered as she reached for earth with her magic again, a shrill yowl rattling from the pits of her charred-black lungs. A hooked limb clawed its way to the ruined soil's surface, gleaming as iridescent obsidian would. It swiped forward, but not with the intent to maim—not this time.

No, it merely aimed to shove and brace itself in defense. It coiled itself after the motion, primed for another deflection.

The crackling of burning hair promised otherwise, although with the way she wavered in place and Oil started to stream down her forearms again… was it a threat? Her flanks shuddered with great abuse, and she shook from exertion, blood loss, all else.

But—she glared into those vehement eyes of Vargas's—not fear.

"It is UNAVOIDABLE that something must drink." A giggle did not punctuate her words this time. One of her forearms threatened to buckle beneath her as she continued. "The room you and your— haunt is what remains of Him." Talons curled into the earth. "That Spire is all that calls familiarity." It was something of a confession, but it was not admission, nor was it totally pleading.

Black shot across her vision, but she locked her joints. The singular shielding limb before her wavered once before solidifying more harshly.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

It was a solemn moment, a grim one, one where life and death teetered on the brink and a monster snarled half-poetry that dripped with longing and infinite fate. And so, inevitably, Vargas tried to rip the arm off and beat her with it in response.

There was no vocal answer, at first--just a savage snatch at the Oiled limb, an attempt to yank it free by root and blood, to start slapping at Draconua with its tip like some thick whip. They wouldn't even be damaging strikes, if even they hit, just... angry, Oil-sprayed flailing. And when Vargas did speak, it was in a fury. "YOU ARE MAKING NO SENSE! THERE ARE RULES THAT I HAVE LAID OUT, BECAUSE I AM CAPABLE OF ENFORCING THEM!" (Each stumbled clot of words was punctuated by an attempted thwap of tentacle.) "YOU WILL OBEY, OR I WILL PUNISH YOU! IT IS NOT! DIFFICULT!"

This was not, perhaps, the clash of leviathans that might have initially been envisioned.

@Draconua

The first thwap! hit home, as did the second and the third. By the fourth, she was—albeit delayed by precious few seconds—snapping to intercept it. Accompanied by hisses and rasping barks, of course. By the sixth, she involuntarily stumbled back onto her haunches. Hussaresque wings flailed uselessly through the air, and she sputtered a wheeze. It intensified as the very atmosphere around her collapsed into a deafening sphere.

She clamped a palm over her bloody forearm—precious Oily substance streaming hot down the limb—and shuffled backward.

Teeth continued to snap at the tentacle, and now a little more blindly at the overly long arm wielding it. Between pops of teeth, she slurred and gasped. "STOP." Oil smeared down her face, a chunk of tentacle-flesh catching on a fence-pike horn and hanging there. "I TOLD YOU." Draconua's voice angled for dog whistle pitch and frequency. "CONTROL IS MINE TO WIELD. THAT I WOULD NOT FORGET. THAT I WILL NOT WASTE TIME WITH CRAVEN LITTLE THINGS THAT SPEAK ONLY ILL."

She snapped again, barely balancing on three legs where she'd stood up again.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas paused. He had no idea what concept she was trying to convey with her twisted speech; it was more mangled than some things that even the Sentinel threw his way. At length he simply lobbed the tentacle loosely at Draconua and turned away.

"Obey or I will kill you," he said bluntly, and left it at that. If he couldn't grasp her meaning, he'd break it down into the simplest bits--and he was long out of patience, by now.

He turned to simply leave--to leave her there in her oilslicked puddle, to live or die or... whatever it was that Draconua would do, as she would. He would--unless she lunged after him, or sent her magic or screeching voice at his back--stride back to Draco, and turn his irritated pondering back toward Chaos-Two.

exit Vargas, unless stopped??
@Draconua

The tentacle smacked wetly against her neck, and slid off without ceremony. Wisely, she kept her mouth shut as the Leviathan walked off; no fired-off remarks, no closing statements. Just silence as she swayed in place.

... perhaps it wasn't too voluntary, though.

Vargas padded past the horizon's threshold, and the Sleepless Chaos sank into the disgustingly clean and soft grass beneath her—unsullied except now by her own blood as she sucked in shallow breath after breath. A brief sleep would be enough to get her back onto her feet, back to the place she called some approximation of home.

Just a moment's respite.

As she sighed away the last bits of her wakefulness, she was remarkably at ease; impulses assuaged and put to rest by being entertained. What a concept.

exit via unconsciousness

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