ORIGIN - WHY THE STRUGGLE? WHY THE STRAIN?

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NOTE: Backdated to be just after So You Want To Learn To Kill People (Pt. II)
Pegasus quivered the moment charred-black hands met its soil. It remembered her well; the nonrhythmic panting; the wild eyes searching; the hollow-lunged wheezing roars. Any Lesser with enough of a capacity to recall her shape bolted for their foxholes and trenches. She bellowed out her warcries—"WHERE DID YOU GO? COWARDLY BEAST!"—and it was as if the trumpets heralded the apocalypse from above. Rabbits scrambled for higher handholds in the trees. Immense, shaggy deer startled and made for the treelines. Lesser insects buzzed out of sight.

Any other day, and the horrendous valkhound would have delighted more in seeing the rear end of all things—perhaps hurled some entropic fire at their tails and laughed—but, no. No. She was on the hunt; she was a machete carving through an old-growth jungle, hot on the bleeding heels of an endangered tiger. A shark driven half-mad by the scent of a single drop of blood in the water. The Chaotic frenzy coasted higher than any other tangibly coherent thought.

Draconua skidded to a halt, carving gouges in the sod with her talons. Hussaresque wings worked a steadying rhythm in the air, and her tail lashed with a heartbeat thu-thump! thu-thump! thu-thump! Her head swung to and fro like it sat on a ball joint. The point of her sanguine face-plate glared every which way. Chaos-Two had outpaced her in escaping from Draco, but the thing that she did know—even in her hazy state of existence—was that that tunnel had merely one opening, and that any fleeing fool had a tendency to run in a straight line. Such as the most efficient path... allegedly.

She sniffed, still wheezing and sending herself into hysterics. A cacophony of voices roared in the back of her head, whisperings of five thousand years past and the overload of Chaos that always swam through her body. Oil dribbled from her nostrils, clotting them—but she snubbed her mask against an arm and pushed past the rotten odor.

Nothing. NOTHING.

The valkhound arched her neck upwards, lips peeled back in a full-neck grimace. The pads of her fingers dug deep into the dirt. Her tail lashed faster, faster, like the ticking of a metronome knocked off-balance by an earthquake. She knew there would be no answer to her howling cries—"COME OUT. FACE DEATH WITH SOME NERVE, A SPINE, ANYTHING."—but, what she wouldn't give to see that teary-eyed face again split with prey animal fear. Priceless, every single time.

Her grin was not laced with laughter as it had been before, though. It tightened, the corners spasming. Electricity jumped from flash-fried nerve ending to nerve ending. Sweaty flanks twitched and seized. Thunder, muffled by thousands of pounds of flesh, cracked like whips. Ozone burned in her nostrils and so did the split-ends of her mane.

Rage bubbled from deep within her; a volcano threatening to spill over an entire island at a moment's notice. There was no instant gratification except for the room before her.

A pin's dropping could've been heard before she unleashed a scream of nothing but entropic vitriol.

Black forks of lightning rocketed from her gullet, carving a terrible path along the grass in front of her and setting it aflame through sheer heat. Oil spattered the ground where she jerked her head downward and thrashed it. Tusks gored the ground, and chunks of sod flew here and there. The valkhound half-hopped in one direction, and then another, howling before every impact with a tree or bush soon to be torn out of the earth.

Any unfortunate and foolish Lesser quickly added to her growing beard of blood.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

It had taken Vargas a few moments to shake off his pained paralysis. Backfiring magic was a constant irritation for him, but his muscles were loosening now, and he shook himself off before making his way after the fleeing Chaos.

He found her raging, his ground-eating stride pursuing her distant screams, and he wondered how Chaos-Two had moved fast enough to evade her almost immediate pursuit. It mattered little. A quick check--a search for Chaos-Two with a simpler magic--showed him distant heartbeats all along the far walls. He was unsure if a few of the farther ones belonged to Chaos-Two itself, or to something with a similar shape, but it did not matter. He was not here to pursue it, right now; he simply checked, ensured it wasn't within dangerous range of Draconua's rampage, and then temporarily put it from his mind.

So long as Chaos-Two was not in immediate danger, he had little reason to intervene: and so he stepped only a little closer, pacing a long circle around Draconua and watching her with a gaze both wary and amused--entertained, even--as she tore apart the earth.

Teeth tore into dirt. Oil stained the grass. Her talons were like blades, ripping Pegasus apart. But for now, that was all that she was doing; a little landscaping wouldn't hurt anyone, after all.

@Draconua

Clots of dirt and sod clung to her face, grass and underbrush stuck between her teeth. Her claws started to bleed as they scraped rock. Oil wept in torrents. Her lungs ached with the force of her own bellowing. Dark eyes, at that point, started to roll in their sockets, searching wildly for any target; sometimes, they caught sight of a hidden Lesser, and she would bolt after it, snapping it up and into her jaws. Flat teeth would almost instantly pulverize the poor little things.

It was inevitable, though, that Draconua would catch sight of the purple behemoth nearby, and do a nearly full 180 to whirl and face him. "YOU!" Magic leeched from her in an instant, lurching across the earth and taking root on the surface. A thin, grasping tentacle clawed its way into being, thrashing over lush grasses and staining them black with putrid Oil. It struck for one of Vargas's forelimbs, and curled preemptively to keep its constricting grip—for if it even made contact.

The valkhound wailed as she hobbled forward, sides seizing with every panting breath. "Leviathan, where did it go? I'm certain you know!" Masters, all-knowing, all-powerful—come on, point the gun in a direction and pull the trigger!

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

The sudden upthrust of contorting black limb caught him by surprise. It... displeased him, and his mood went from amused to furious in a heartbeat. There would be no warning: Draconua should have known better.

With a guttural roar he tore at the tentacle, intending to rip it bodily from the ground: he then leapt toward Draconua, wasting no time in snatching for her bristles, in trying to shove the tentacle down the throat of her inevitably-gaping maw. Or if it didn't, he'd pry it open for her. Would she move, in time? Would she flee from him-? Would she know what he was about to attempt? He had his doubts, but even if she did, it was important to make a point.

"YOU WERE TO TRAIN IT," was his bellow, commanding, brooking no argument. Of course she would argue; if she weren't choking. He held no misconceptions on her sudden obedience. That was not how she had been made. "IF YOU CANNOT CONTROL YOURSELF LONG ENOUGH FOR A SIMPLE TASK, TELL ME, DRACONUA: WHY SHOULD I TOLERATE YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE IN THIS CAVE?"

His was rage.

"YOU CANNOT MANAGE TO SIMPLY SIT STILL FOR FIVE MINUTES. YOUR CHAOS IS ADMIRABLE. YOUR CHILDISHNESS IS NOT. TELL ME WHY I SHOULD NOT TEAR FREE YOUR GEMSTONE AND CREATE SOMETHING MORE USEFUL TO ME?"

@Draconua

Draconua, already hell-bent on the warpath for the violet behemoth, had precious few seconds to brace her forelimbs against Vargas before he was stuffing a tentacle down her gullet. There was no need to force her jaws open—they were, indeed, already gaping wide with obviously telegraphed intent—but the instant shoving of a limb made her instinctively recoil. She gagged once, choking on the appendage, and shifted her head upwards and back; enough away from the motion to snap her mouth shut (with an air-crushing pop! no less) and choke down the gob of Oily flesh with a strangled wheeze.

As soon as her hands met the earth, she retched once—hacking up a clump of the still-thrashing tentacle—and nearly deposited everything on the floor.

Then, she was back onto Vargas, every Oilstained tooth bared in a wicked, foolhardy snarl. "WHO ELSE WOULD WOULD RECLAIM THIS CAVE IN HIS NAME?" Talons curled into the earth, and she sprung for him with Hussaresque wings flying. "CERTAINLY NOT THAT LITTLE HOOFED BEAST YOU'RE TRUSTING TO LEAD A WARBAND—HE WAS SHAKING AS HE TOOK THE 'HIGH ROAD' AND FLED FROM ME—AND CERTAINLY NOT THE MERCIFUL, THE ORDERLY, THE WEAK-WILLED! NOT THAT HORRIBLE, SOBBING CREATURE OF JUST NOW." Voidfire bloomed deep within her gullet, body leeching black.

"I NEED NOTHING BUT MYSELF TO PURGE ALL THAT STANDS IN THE CREATOR'S PATH." The valkhound stopped short of Vargas, pushing up onto her haunches and standing up and up before unleashing a gout of Oil-fueled, entropic flame straight for the Master's upper half.

"THAT IS WHY HE HAS PLACED ME HERE. YOU COULD NOT HOPE TO RESHAPE ME, LEVIATHAN. WHERE IS IT?"

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

If she thought her Chaotic blast of magic to be unexpected, she'd forgotten how many examples she'd given. Draconua was nothing, now, if not predictable, and the torrent of black flame was exactly what Vargas had counted on coming next.

He hadn't, however, counted on her eating the misshapen limb, and that did throw him off a little--a power move, to be sure, and a disgusting one.

Already tensed in anticipation, he leapt to one side as her black fire scorched the ground. As unholy heat scorched past his purple hide. Perhaps she did expect it to be, well, expected--maybe she knew full well he'd see it coming. Perhaps she intended it as display, and not real attack--Vargas could not be sure, but right now he did not particularly care.

"TRUSTING? I AM ALLOWING THAT FOOL TO TRY. AND IT HAS TAKEN HIM TO EVEN BEGIN IT! YOU THINK YOU ARE HERE TO DECIMATE ORDER? HA!" If his rigid lips could have twisted into a grin-... But they could not. "THEN SHOW ME, DRACONUA, URSA PURGED. OR ARE YOU BIDING YOUR TIME-? WHAT IS IT YOU'RE WAITING FOR? FOR ORDER TO PERSONALLY INVITE YOU IN TO CLEANSE IT?" Was it wise to provoke her further? Perhaps not for someone smaller; but Vargas was getting to a point. "I DO NOT KNOW WHERE CHAOS-TWO HAS GONE. OBVIOUSLY, IT IS NOT HERE. IF YOU NEED TO BE REMINDED OF WHO YOUR MASTERS ARE, DRACONUA, I WILL TEACH YOU--BUT THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES TO THAT CHOICE."

Consequences--the one thing the Sleepless Chaos hadn't quite figured out, yet. Or... maybe it was more that she didn't seem to mind. Every awful backlash of her uncontrolled violence was simply accepted with more hatred; she was almost admirable in her stubbornness.

@Draconua

these posts have been edited after navy and i forgot timelines existed

The Sleepless Chaos was many things: destruction; unholy; righteous; the self-proclaimed herald of an apocalypse. Most of all, she was—indeed—predictable. Entropy swore by breaking the laws of the universe, by following no pattern. It could be measured—the particles of matter bouncing around in an enclosed space, increasing with pressure, decreasing with a shift in volume...—but it could not ever be defined.

Yet, Draconua always came with a chicken-scratch warning label: EVERYTHING ENDS IN SPLIT KNUCKLES AND TOTAL IMMOLATION WITH ME.

Her tail lashed out a frantic rhythm as Vargas bellowed, as he laughed, as he poked and prodded at the bear before him. "DON'T YOU DARE," she howled by way of a rage-filled scream, "DON'T." Failure, laid bare before her—yes, she'd not gone into Ursa yet, despite knowing that Order festered there. She'd allowed herself to be distracted by more trivial things such as trashing Pegasus, leveling Eridanus, wasting time on worthless creatures. She remembered, she knew, she was enraged by it. Furious with herself for her weakness, but more driven to anger by the others, those encumbering things, needing to march as one.

Draconua bellowed. "TEACH ME, THEN." Forelegs stomping against the ground once, another Oilslicked tentacle shot from the earth—this time more beneath Vargas—and lurched up to grip by the throat and coil around. Her voice broke, crackling into a hoarse, eerie lowness, "I'll show you that I am capable, and that I'll not fall against Order."

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

He did not move, to get room; he stayed in close, to one side of the charred patch, and when she inevitably started to tug at her Chaos he snapped one arm for her in a sharp uppercut for her split-necked jaw. It was not a hit with reach and power, nothing that would cause any damage whatsoever for a being with immensity such as hers--he had no time for that--but it was the sort intended to knock her concentration off-balance for long enough to ensure that no more black flame, or black lightning, or black and twisting tentacles came for him.

One did erupt from the ground a moment later--all oilslicked muscle, ominous as it reached for him, and missed. It struck him a glancing blow, slid oil up his flank in filthy grasping, but it did not get his throat--and so he turned snarling attention back up to her as he moved away from it.

"YOU WILL BE TAUGHT," he bellowed, "AND I GIVE YOU A CHOICE, DRACONUA." His own tail lashed behind him as he circled, prowled, ready to pounce, ready to leap for her if the need arose: "YOU WILL ANSWER TO ME. YOU WILL JOIN THE FORGE, AND YOU WILL GUARD DRACO, AND I WILL TRAIN YOU IN HOW TO KILL, INSTEAD OF THROWING TANTRUMS. YOUR POWER IS WASTED, IN YOUR HANDS. OR I WILL FORCE YOU BACK INTO YOUR STONE UNTIL YOU SUBMIT, AND OBEY, OR UNTIL YOU DIE AND ARE REMADE!"

This last bellow was filled with warning, a promise, with cold rage. Her lack of control had gone unpunished far too long. "YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO CHAOS-TWO. BECAUSE IT HAD A POINT, AND ONE YOU COULD HAVE LEARNED FROM. YOU MUST CONTROL YOUR POWER--MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU!--OR YOU WILL ONLY DESTROY YOURSELF."

And if you do not, then I will destroy you, he swore to himself grimly. Whatever Draconua was--whoever had made her, whatever she represented--he'd held the leash too loosely until now. Already here, the ground was charred black, pools of oil, a lashing limb, torn-up and shattered earth marked her only moments-long rampage. She was powerful, but she was not meant for this place--she was meant to be handed away, given from this nest, unleashed upon the enemy. Right now, right here, not answering to a Master--she was only a liability.

this kick result checked w/ navy beforehand!

@Draconua

"YOU WILL ANSWER TO ME. YOU WILL JOIN THE FORGE, AND YOU WILL GUARD DRACO—"

Not too many cycles ago, a valkhound still coated in her own Oil and half-buried by her own magic (how parallel that had been to now, hm?) would have made a game of it. Took that ultimatum with a price of her own: conquest. She'd have danced around it, eloquent but direct. Denied that she needed the Forge, to guard the womb when there was a whole nest to retake.

That beast was long-gone, replaced by a monster addicted to the taste of Chaos and nearly consantly nursing from its teat. Her mind was fractured, willpower and mental fortitude absolutely shattered. If one were to perform a horrible living dissection of her, they'd find grey matter soaked through with Oil and rotten from the inside out; guts eaten out by void-fire and black lightning; the stain of corruption even on her bone marrow. There wasn't an ounce of true Control.

Was she no different from the wretched hound she'd unleashed upon Leo? Sometimes.

Now, Draconua bit at the hand that fed her with a snarl, and choked down the palms and fingers with a wretched grin. She clawed and tore at anything, anything that dared to oppose her, to stand in her way; even a Master, which she was meant to be hardwired to bow her head to and submit to.

"—YOUR POWER IS WASTED, IN YOUR HANDS. I WILL FORCE YOU BACK INTO YOUR STONE UNTIL YOU SUBMIT, AND OBEY, OR UNTIL YOU DIE AND ARE REMADE."

The Sleepless Chaos immediately set back to an ear-shattering volume. "I CARE NOT FOR IF IT BURNS ME, BURIES ME, CHOKES ME, KILLS ME." She turned in place, body always facing Vargas and faceplate set low in a predatory glare; despite being at the center, being the Watched, she would not settle for mere defense. The violet behemoth stayed out of reach of any slashing claws she could have directed his way. "FOR AS LONG AS IT DISSOLVES ALL IN ITS PATH, IT IS MINE. YOU CANNOT TAKE IT FROM ME."

Bar her own overclocked and oversaturated Chaos, there were no mortal possessions that Draconua called her own. She would sink her teeth into it for as long as she willed it, unwilling to let it go.

"FIGHT ME. KILL ME. FORCE ME TO WASTE AWAY STANDING GUARD. DO WHATEVER YOU WISH, MASTER VARGAS," and she ground the name out, like it were the very acid his blood seemed to be made of, "RUIN ME FIRST." The Chaos within her begged for release, like the rabbit kicking against the jaws of a wolf. It beat an erratic rhythm against her ribs. It slithered up her gullet like another facsimile was clawing its way into being. She choked it down.

Her mane beat against the sides of her sweaty flanks as she shook and as a wind stirred, and errant magic curled through the air. It whirled, nearly sweeping her off her own feet with its sudden collection and touch-down. Grits of sand and once-corrupted earth bit into her skin. Draconua grinned wildly. "CARVE YOUR NAME INTO MY SKULL, IF YOU WISH. FIGHT ME AND LEARN MINE."

@Vargas

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