Khavur had chosen, for now, to return to his normal duties within the Forge. To survey what he had missed, what needed to be done. What he had gathered was: there were a lot more Forge members than there used to be. Master Vargas's new... experiments, it almost felt like. Or perhaps they were children of other Forge members? Given the lot of them... that seems ill-advised, he had thought. But in Khavur's particular quest, those numbers could potentially be useful. If he could train them.

How many numbers would it take to siege Ursa? Since the previous attempt Khavur had witnessed, it seemed that regular Gembounds weren't enough, even if there were many. How many chaos beasts? And—not Labradorites, not Zoisites. Not just those, anyway. How many Valkhounds? What could Vargas spare?

All these many mounds of thinking and calculations just to bury the thought that his siblings had made more progress while he, the hare, had remained carelessly idle. It is not supposed to be a race.

And yet here he was, summoning the Labradorite to Fornax, as he had promised to long ago.

Khavur paced around, looking for something to strike while he waited for the arrival, as though acting like every moment was precious would prevent any of them from being wasted. A lot of good that had done. Stress, stress, stress balls up into a tight fist that Khavur would use to try to break the shell of a poor Lesser crab scuttling on the shore. It wasn't the crab's fault. Khavur would lie and say he wanted a snack. Maybe it wasn't a lie. Maybe he needed to stress eat.

He would pick up the poor thing and clench it tight in one hand. It might have snipped at him but he wouldn't notice. With a deft, well-placed strike he would smash the crab through its shell. Perhaps horrific, but quick. A little shaky. His technique was flawed. He huffed. It can't be flawed like that anymore.