Black snuffled over the rock, lapping briefly at the dragon's blood.

It was burning stuff, and he winced, glancing up and away, surveying Polaris.

It was ruined. Jumbled stone spires twisted into the air, shallow crevasses opened up. The vast corpse of a moth lay strewn over the ground, and other Gembound remained quietly talking in the distance. Dust from the catastrophic fight still drifted through the air. Polaris had been wrecked.

Black wasn't better off. He limped slowly along, his fur matted with blood and singed by dragon fire, every muscle and bone in his body aching horribly. He would live; none of his bones were broken, so far as he could tell.

Fisher, being tended in the tunnel behind him, was much worse off. So much damage inflicted--yet the mustelid was already healing, already recovering.

Impressive.

Still, something had to give, and Black knew that the gembound who had gathered likely would not survive another fight with Raheerah. Never mind the soulful howling of Aquarian in his memory, calling the name of the one who had led Raheerah off and away from them: Nemean.

Unless they found another way to fight these strange creatures, they would all perish.

They needed weapons.

And, in case of failure, they needed a backup system.

With these thoughts in his mind he continued to survey the damage, wandering along with furrowed brow and limping gait.

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The dog's heavy head swivelled up, setting him into a spiral of vertigo from which he did not immediately recover. The blood loss, the exhaustion, the heat--he jerked too fast and before he knew it Polaris was spinning, and he was tumbling, falling, the rock soaring up in an arc to meet his head.

He felt a heavy thud, vague pain, and saw a black squawking thing hop-running toward him in rather graceful little leaps.

From his position on the ground he stared at her, before responding simply.

"No."

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Black huffed and slowly rolled to his chest. He lay there a moment, head low, acknowledging the crow's words in a magma flow of exhausted, slowed thought.

"...Yes. I have been."

He watched her uncertainly, reality flickering and returning as his body struggled to remain conscious.

"I am void," he explained abruptly. The words were distant even to him, a long-ago memory, as was the attempt at magic he followed up with. Unlike his wounds, his stone heart seemed intact and strong; he felt the darkness shroud him, cloaking him, displaying to Eve in visual terms what he could not quite put into words.

He was darkness.

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Black rolled further upright, staring intently at the glowing rock, suddenly entirely focused and alert, awake.

She is light. I am darkness. Black lifted his head to stare at Eve, awed; she was a small thing, unlike him, but black, very much like him.

When he had been born he had decided at once that he had a purpose. He had leapt to that purpose and fulfilled it to the best of his ability since then.

Now, he immediately assumed that this, too, was his "purpose."

He felt the swelling within him, the welling of magic; he felt his heart-stone skipping magical beats as it began to cleave a smaller portion away. Thinking that he was dying, still unaware that his magical gem lay within his chest, he managed to choke out a few words.

"Then our magics are meant to be. I am wounded; you must..." Then he was coughing, hacking, wheezing, and a small black stone slid from his jaws and clattered quietly to the floor.

He stared at it, stared at it where it lay beside Eve's glowing gift.

He was still alive, but what was this? He looked up at her.

"My form provides this gift, in return. It will be a weapon, and it will be insurance," he added, suddenly certain that this bird, and this strange stone-occurrence, were the answers to his earlier thoughts.

________________

He lowered his head to snuffle gently at Eve's gift, glancing briefly up at her with pale blue-grey eyes. Then he planted his massive paw over the tiny white moonstone.

Eyes drifted closed.

He had just given a piece of himself, yet he could feel the darkness within him respond to her light: coalescing, drawing from him, pouring void--pouring life itself--into her stone talon-shard.

At length he pulled away, peering down.

There seemed to be no change, and yet... the stone felt alive. He looked up at the crow, simply staring--as if waiting for her to respond. Then, abruptly, he spoke--voice soft.

"Thank you."

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