the princess isn't here! but we can still fight if you want

It was an offbeat day. There were about a million thoughts passing through Khavur, an information highway circulating between two brains, and an insurmountable, swelling tune from the past was managing to dominate every single one of them. It couldn't work like this. Couldn't guard, couldn't hunt, couldn't think of all its wonderful, devious plots, plans, pots, pans, clanging clanging music. It needed that music, more than ever before, and it couldn't ask for it from anyone else. It needed those clumsy feet and those gentle claws that it just couldn't reach. It needed the birds. It needed the music.

So it left for Cepheus.

And they knew, maybe this wasn't the right time. Maybe every oily machine clattering down the infernal electric railways of its mindscape had no business derailing here. The traffic, the heat and the tension, they were a prelude to a tsunami, earthquake, an all-out war. And he had to focus. So many things were reliant on his success, on his patience as well as his action, his direct spearhead, but now even the honking was coming into tune. The fluttering of bird wings, like an orchestra of the way looking at a butterfly felt, they landed on his back, his tail, they found a home in his spines and spires.

It's too much love to hold in one body. Too much love to take on alone. He needed music.

Welcome to Cepheus, the Palace, the doorways even Khavur could fit through, and the piano — deification of all sound. Pristine and polished, not a trace of past (or present) users. Khavur would never know the present, but the past he could bring to mind, the memory emblazoned in his heart and head with molten iron. He pressed every key. His grasping and killing claws were ineloquent, he fumbled against the ivory notes, he clashed and battled with his own lack of knowledge. Maybe he should have visited Menkheperre. Maybe he should do that now — but no, he needed the music.

Once the right hammers hit the right strings, Khavur could feel the inflammation in that hammering memory cool down somewhat, and one head brought forth a smile. The next few presses of the keys were a testy sequence, a rocky white water river, and Khavur was navigating step by step, trying not to lose their path. With time, he had it; the part of the melody he remembered, the sound of their swaying steps in the Colosseum, where another day they would part from one another. And he played that tune over and over and over again, getting it down perfect, breaking in the muscles of his fingers, engraving the rhythm into his bones. The carollers eventually caught on too, and they embellished with all the grace Khavur could not manage. And after a while, every voice took flight, including the wavering baritone of Khavur's two humming heads; two separate throats, finding harmony. A forest of music springing up from one piano.

They staggered and swayed.

A blaring siren came crashing into the forest of sound, interrupting Khavur's focus. He cut off, hit a flat note and the carollers cawed and fluttered in protest. Somebody was moving in with construction equipment, preparing a fool's errand of terraforming Mars it seemed. Well, this living Mars did not seem to mind the rude interruption or the absurdity of the attempt so much as it minded the presence altogether. It turned one head and watched — no, it looked. No, it studied. Without a word in response, as the small thing flitted from one thought to another right before Khavur's very eyes, his gaze seems entirely absorbed in analyzing its form, peering with almost feline-like interest.

When the creature returned, valiant "weapon" in hand, Khavur's gaze and the facial expression(s) had not changed. But the direction did; he came to meet the seedling's eyes. And the sound did, at last, grow apart from song, shouting, and silence: "Are all you bipedal organisms this determined, or is it just... my luck?" It was a complete rhetorical non-sequitor, which the child might find strange — if indeed it was the child it looked to be. Khavur wouldn't have cared for its thoughts, as it was too preoccupied with the analysis of the form and function.

With a brief snort, the Reaver decided to bumble over to the child and pick it up by the scruff, dangling it in the air like a lion toying with its prey, and twisting the sprout around as if to fully inspect all its angles. He spoke as he observed in a somewhat distracted manner, as if he wasn't even fully aware of the thoughts pouring out from his maw. "A dragon...? No, you will find those in various other caves, I usually see them at large gatherings or events. They all have a similar design and they are quite different from Valkhounds. Although, I suppose my design does look similar enough to that of a dragon. Many of them, however, lack my... duality." He gestures idly with a free claw to his heads. "We... We Valkhounds are generally created by Masters, with a specific purpose in mind that informs their design. We all look very different from each other. I look the way I do because it serves my purposes; to be a prototype of sorts, and to serve this nest."

Khavur then halted his microwave-like spinning and twirling of the sprout after spinning it to exactly the point where they could look each other in the eyes. Then, Khavur brought it closer to his observant faces.

"You... I cannot see your gemstone, but considering your size... Did a Master create you? A Knight... is that your purpose, little sprout? What does that word mean to you; how would you describe it? Did you choose it for yourself? And how did you go about doing that? And why?" It was an absolute tirade, a flawless display of Khavur's complete lack of social skills outside the Chaos Forge. Hopefully the "little sprout" would be capable of handling this. Not all battles were as easy as a duel of sticks, after all.