[EVENT] The Trial of Hydra - Reclamation

It is on the verge of collapsing, having finally struggled all its way back to the shade of the tunnel. He rasps horsely, "Did we do it?" There's no way for him to tell, blinded and lost.

He sways, tired joints about to give out. Likely, without the Merchant's decisive magic, he would've crumpled anyway. Even so, it falls over in a heap, bloodied feathers being claimed by its suglite.

The sleep is welcome.

I made it.

It's a simple thought, quiet. But it's triumphant at the same time. He did it. He conquered Hydra.

Spinnaker takes a deep breath, finally clearing his lungs of the toxins and the dust. Stretching his tattered wings, he opens his beak to cry out in victory - but the Merchant gets to him first. He tumbles down, knocked into a deep, dreamless slumber.

The celebration can come another day.

Kaizer's originally steady footfalls had become ragged and disoriented, as his fur caked with salt and sand. But the shade is right there, and he staggers into the shadows of the tunnel. Only then does it sigh in relief, sitting down in the sand.

He can breathe, for once...

"I hope we made you proud," he says, looking up to the Merchant and Vargas, eyes exhausted but hopeful. And when the Merchant strokes the top of its head, jolting him with the magic, he tries not to cry out. Soon enough, the trance overtakes him, and Kaizer falls away, melting into his stone and into sleep.

Despite the offer he had made, he felt no one clamber aboard his back. At this point, he might even have welcomed it, simply for the shade it would have offered.

He turned his head as he trudged wearily to the end, kicking up scuffs of salt... and saw that several had fallen. It was too late to turn back to help them-... it had always, he suspected, been too late. He'd been too far, and had not seen them past the glare of the orb-light as he'd moved past them. Only now--in the distance, in the shadow of the hunters far behind them--did he see that they had fallen.

And now... died.

He set his jaw grimly. It was nothing he could help, now, but he said a sort of quiet prayer to them in his mind nonetheless. Find peace. If even they still existed, somehow, somewhere. As for the rest of them... at least Hydra would be safe, now, for strangers. Though he held no illusions about what level of "safe" Hydra would ever truly be.

When he reached the shade of Tunnel P, he very nearly collapsed. Instead, he allowed himself a slow drop to his knees, and then a roll to lay on his side, sweat-slicked dusty hide heaving with heavy breaths. Warrior remained laying there, upright and awake but exhausted, ears rotating to listen for the arrival of the Merchant he knew would soon be coming, turning to look around him and see who had made it... and who had not. He remembered the pain of the chrysalis--knew it would come any moment. And when the Merchant reached for him, he flinched, a little.

And then--nothing.

Sleep.

- IVORY-

She did her best to stay near Captain, to offer him a shoulder, but he didn't seem to need it. And soon enough, she had her own survival to worry about. It still wasn't terrible; it seemed some part of her held the ability to survive, as even a massively hefty creature, in a desert environment. (Ivory knew nothing of her heritage; she wouldn't have recognized or even known the names of such creatures as thorny devils, addax or rhinoceroses.)

Like Warrior, she lay down once in the tunnel mouth--but rather than simply collapsing there, she edged off to one side and stood chewing her cud for a few minutes first. She hadn't really noticed the other dead. Instead, a peaceful and only somewhat troubled gaze took in the arrival of all the rest--before and after her--and eventually she lay down to wait for the 'end.'

It didn't take long. The sweeping stride of Vargas was followed by the ominous shuffle of the Masked Merchant; a touch, a blast of pain, and her gemstone was spreading from her skull to claim her.

It was a spike of agony, yes, but also blessed relief. Rest, at last.

As it turned out, Fleas wasn't the only one to shoot out ahead of him.

Wisperia, too, scampered off forward, and Corsair blinked to see the surprising speed at which such a strange animal could move. She didn't look like a desert creature; she was, instead, something alien and strange. Purple. But that pink eye was staring back--or was it up?--as she ran, so he shouted encouragement nonetheless.

"GOOD JOB, WEIRDO!" he squawked, but he had barely a voice left past his parching thirst, and it came out like more of a rasp.

Oh, well.

The heat was brutal on his black feathers, so much so that by the time he shot into Tunnel P--third in line, so far as he could tell--he was overheating. A crushing headache was pressing down on his skull, and he could barely think straight. He was, he realized, seeing double: the tunnel ahead looked all sorts of wrong.

He landed, stumbled, then forced himself upright, waddling with dragging wings as he looked about for any source of water.

There wasn't any, and he jammed himself half into a shaded nook, beak parted and black tongue panting, right up until the point the Merchant came back.

"What's our rew-" he asked, or tried to, remembering the rewards they had been promised. But before he could get the sentence out, those terrible hole-like eyes had fallen upon him, a sweeping hand had reached out, and he was falling away into his coral stone.