holy the sea - Printable Version

The trek had been a long one, with Manticore alternating between grumbling, asking questions, and randomly lashing out at scenery. Sometimes he broke things. Once, he stubbed his toes.

Either way, he still hadn't figured out that he had wings, or learned to use them, so by the time they'd all arrived in Polaris his freshly hatched body was weary with unfamiliar strain. "That was... far," he muttered, but his eyes now filled with Polaris.

He could see what Mossie had meant. It wasn't quite what he'd pictured, but it wasn't worse--it was big, covered in glowing things, crystals all over violet walls. Manticore looked at his forelimb, lifting a hand into the air, then eyed the cave again. I match, he thought. Not the brown ground--but the rock walls, anyway.

Belatedly he realized, too, that he felt... energized. He wasn't sure why--maybe just excitement..? Or maybe the cave was as unique as Mossy had said.

"Do you have more... energy here?" he asked, impulse to shatter the nearby crystals for the moment postponed by his fascination. He shook himself, and huffed a little, thinking. "Like... magic," he reasoned.

It was magic, too, even if it didn't feel all that familiar.

Strange.

Spinnaker himself was his own share of exhausted. His legs were sore, and so were his wings, from his attempts to fly along the way. Most of the time he'd end up hopping into the air only to glide back down to the ground.

The room, however, does take his breath away. No lapping waves or great sea, but the gleaming shine of crystals is mesmerizing. "Quite the place we've got here," he offers, stopping next to Mossie.

The charge in the air is not something Spinnaker notices immediately, but once Manticore points it out it becomes obvious. "Yeah, it's like. The room is alive."

The boulder into which Mossie bumped was large, smooth, and shining, with facets that glinted in Polaris's light. It moved, when she collided with it--as though the stone itself were wakening, sembling from slumber into sluggish sapience. It rose, shuddering, other large stones rising around it, crumbling into place with plumes of cascading dust.

The creature--if it could be called as much--was an amalgamation of magic and rock, building itself with stone upon stone to a towering height of nearly eight feet.

It was drawn, at once--not powerfully, not yet. There was no surge of magic, from the cat--but a cluster of stones extended forward like a limb nonetheless, grinding toward the obsidian that gleamed like life's core, buried in the soft fur of Mossie's chest.

Manticore was, at first, oblivious to the perilous situation in which Mossie was finding herself. His spined back was turned to her as he paced forward, snout tipped up, four eyes scouring the walls of Polaris.

"Power," he purred, tail-tip flicking. He liked it; it felt... like he could eat it, or something. (Manticore didn't understand magic, yet.)

"Is it alive?" he asked Spinnaker--meaning Polaris, ironically unaware of the chunk of said cave rising up behind him. It was only the grinding sound that finally alerted him, his head jerking around, wings snapping out to their full length in surprise like some sort of pufferfish defense.

"IT IS ALIVE!" he roared, scrambling back. This was incredibly alarming, and despite being a Valkhound made for violent combat, his first reaction was to quickly back away.

Mossie's antics do get another chuckle out of Spinnaker. He hops around after her, not nearly as fast as her sprint.

He glances back up at Manticore, saying "I'm not sure. But it feels like, something is watching. Like the room is eager to meet us."

The statement becomes ironic when the Golem rises next to them. Spinnaker whips around when he hears the sound of stone scraping against stone. He has only a moment to think before the construct reaches towards Mossie.

He launches himself into the air, fluttering around the top of it and flailing with his legs. If it had eyes, he'd try to blind the thing with wings and feathers, but that's out of the picture.

The shambling mass of gleaming stones jolted to a halt as feathered wings battered it, as raking little claws scraped stone.

It felt no anger--it felt nothing; for it was mere stone, made animate with the flicker of power beyond its understanding. Yet the flash and spark of ruby just above--the magic innate in that--drew it; and rather than crush Mossie beneath one shuddering fist, it raised instead to swipe at Spinnaker, in clumsy but immense swings that attempted to snag his stone. Seeing as this stone was at his back, the golem was, in a sense, trying to grab through him: a strike might knock him from the sky. But it was a side-swipe of a strike, clumsy; it would break none of the bird's fragile little bones, though it might bruise him just a little, should he fail to avoid the swing.

At least this selfless maneuver had likely saved Mossie's life.

A grumbling huff escaped him, irritating rising in the shadow of proffered violence. It was as though the core of his being had suddenly remembered: Ahh, yes, I am a force of chaos and destruciton. Chaos being what it was, his magic would be fickle but Manticore did not seem to care: wings flared, his jaws opening wide, saber teeth on full display against a backdrop of glowing ultraviolet. He roared, a shuddering and coughing sound, and then inhaled.

He aimed for the midpoint of the golem: not so low that it would hit Mossie; not so high that he'd catch the flutter of Spinnaker in his flames.

The violet-black fire that coursed out flickered and hissed, lashing for the stones, was still only flame against rock: it would not destroy the thing, most likely. But it existed, at least: rather than a puff of impotent smoke, it was cursed fire.