Vargas had been busy--extremely so, in fact--since the new Hand had turned up here. Part of it was coincidence--he'd been pondering how to handle Chaos-Two's utter failure, Draconua's loss of control, and so forth. Part, on the other hand, was Aethril's doing herself. She had requests, demands, questions; and last but not least, a task for him to perform.
She did not want its magic to be corrupted, and so Vargas was looking for a suitable stone--something dark, matte black or so--that wasn't Oilstone. Canis was the best for picking through discarded gemstones, he knew, and in any case, it would afford him time to look for the missing Orthoclase-Alpha.
He hadn't seen Orthoclase in cycles, now, and was beginning to truly worry for its well-being. What if it had pissed off the dragons? What if it had gotten lost somewhere, fallen into a ditch and died? Drowned, even--could it drown? He didn't think it likely that it had deliberately chosen never to return. All else aside, it had always seemed too... cowed, for that. Vargas had searched Tunnel P, to no avail. He'd even peered at Hydra, from its entrance, but the cave was vast and there was no point in more than a cursory test with his powers.
Now he was here, pacing through the bones--pausing, now and then, to look around him with a strange sense of displacement. When he'd been Overseer--the vast majority of his life--he'd spent all his time in and around Canis. It was bizarre to have been gone from it without even considering it; now that he'd returned, he felt strangely out of place. Memories of the past--of when the bones had still been fresh, of prowling hunts among their piles--merged with the knowledge that now they were ancient and dusty things. And he--he had moved on. Master, powerful, still vibrantly alive and pressing on as he always had.
The Leviathan sighed through his nose, and turned away.
He passed by the Bone Reader's bone pit--the hyena-thing, the spotted dog--and reflected on her old prophecy. It'd turned out... surprisingly accurate, in retrospect. He most certainly had lost one of his people, and he most certainly had made mistakes he'd need to rectify. He considered seeking her out, asking her if she could find the Orthoclase for him. But for now, he didn't see her.
On the way back, then, perhaps.
Lanky strides took him into the fortresses at a swift pace. He kept aware of his surroundings--old habits, born of particularly dedicated and determined--desperate--rebels. But Canis was empty, for the most part. Only a few scattered Gembound lived here, and they seemed to keep to themselves.
He turned over the bones, picking through them. Most had no gemstones, of course; but a few were certainly here. All the discarded, useless ones, failed designs or rebellious fools; life still flickered ever-so-dimly in some of them. Vargas needed no such glimmer. The power would be wholly his own; the stone would only be a vessel. He just needed something suitable. Aethril wanted a scout, potentially an assassin, so it couldn't be anything garish or bright.
It didn't take him all that long to find something suitable. After picking up and setting down--or lightly tossing aside--a few dozen gemstone-studden bones, he lifted a femur that held a small cluster of dull brown crystal, mottled black. It was perfect for his purposes; a scratch with one claw told him that it was somewhat soft, but not so much that it would prove a real liability. He pried it free with a careful few flicks of his claws, and then tossed the bone aside with a quiet clatter. This gemstone--a xenotime--he cupped into one six-thumbed hand; and then he started back off, striding on three limbs back toward Draco. Ahh-... but first;
He waited. Seconds ticked by; the pit remained empty.
Ah, well. He had more important things to do; he could come back, at least, when time allowed.
For now he paced away, intending to begin his work nearer to the Chaos Forge itself.
exit Vargas