He had gone to Leon, first, and now he wanted Bevy.

He was dying... he knew he was dying. Not in a vague, transient hunch sort of way, no; his magic had shown him, shown him rotting away, or his stone shattering. He had felt Bevy come for him, or he assumed it was her.

Something touched him. Fluttered over his mind. His mind, which lay unhinged from his body, untethered, drifting on the silent wings of sleep and mysterious magics as he sought the one who had been present when he had suffered.

He thought she was Bevy. That's what she had sounded like.

Behind him, in tunnel J, his body lay still. He barely breathed, his heartbeat faint, and had he been awake, the agony would have wracked him. His flesh burned, his head ached, the thirst for water swelled his drying tongue to a painful state.

But he wasn't awake. Instead, he reached out, searching. The magic had shown him two things: Bevy trying to find him and take him away (or so he thought) and, second, a warning he'd had to deliver. He hoped Leon understood. But if not... If not, he had to tell Bevy.

Even if she were dead, she'd know what to do.

He didn't think all of this out logically, though. It was a feeling, a fleeting series of sensations and instincts.

Pain. Fear. Freedom. Worry. Determination.

Finally he felt his consciousness flutter over a mind he recognized. There she was, the one who had been present--but was she Bevy...?

Suddenly, Dark was unsure. Like the touch of a feather, the faintest brush, he tasted the mind before him. His magic faltered, and he did not show himself yet--but perhaps he could catch a glimpse of the thoughts that lay before him.

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He stood watching, not involved, not yet. First he gazed down, his free-floating mind untethered to any reality, instead soaring over a sea of churning wretched black, with limbs reaching and flailing.

It filled him with horror.

He hadn't intended to fall in; he'd wanted to press, here and there, to delve into the fluttering black-and-white mind, and find Bevy. But... Bevy wasn't here. At least, he couldn't see her.

Is this where we go, when we die...? This isn't what my magic showed me.

Dark looked up, as he flew, and he could see--he could see?--columns of gilded white, a ceiling carved with intricate pictures, carved to tell various tales.

Maybe when we die, our stories go here.

He could almost ignore the faint screaming that came from far below.

Beyond all of this, he could see a throne, white and awash with golden light, and he felt a gentle awe take him. He'd never seen sunlight, never seen orb-light, even, being blind; his whole life had been spent in the darkness. Dream-wings tilted, his shifting half-there "body" arcing and soaring toward this throne.

Suddenly the black oily sea was too close, the screaming abruptly deafening, rising to fill his mind with the pain and horror of a thousand broken minds. Guilt, agony, fear, misery loved company and it wanted him, and before he could react, it had surged upward and engulfed him.

His magic had tried to guide him safely into, and through, the dream, but as he opened his black beak and tried to scream, all he could do was choke on Clover's rage, and pain.

It engulfed him, and everything went black.

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Dark had known fear, off and on, his entire life. In death, it was no different: he could feel it filling him, making his mind quake with the terror of being trapped, of this nightmare engulfing him so wholly.

He had, however, never known hatred. The agony he'd sustained, the cruelty he'd endured, none of it had ever pushed him into a rage, into anger, aside from a brief flare of temper now and then. But this... he could feel the injustice of it slithering into his mind, into his soul, could feel himself rebel.

This isn't fair.

Whatever had happened to Bevy, this wasn't her. If it had ever been. This was something dark, malicious, something made of injustice and resentment and all the depths of fury that he had never felt. It resonated, it filled him, and the gentle-hearted owl felt his fear bleed away to fury.

Back in the tunnel, his body twitched, a fever flaring, a new warmth shrouding him; but it wasn't the warmth of health, of life. It was the warmth of fire, the heat of anger, the kind that burned you out and left you a charred husk.

The owl's mind fluttered and struggled as it sank into the black. All he could feel was hatred. Rage. This wasn't fair, it wasn't fair that he'd never hurt anyone, that Bevy was dead, that he'd been crushed and burned and filled with sickness. It wasn't fair that he was good, and kind, and was dying anyway--alone and hurt.

There were few ways this could go. His body might die, before his mind reached his destination; or his mind might rot here, his individuality falling away as he became nothing more than the hate and misery and pain that he was drowning in.

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Dark felt himself drowning, felt the black fill him, felt the rage and hate and pitiful frustration as it overwhelmed him. Talons kicked out, snared by viscous vitriol, wings flailing uselessly in the... yes, the "hell" that had taken shape in his mind. Or... in her mind.

The voice spoke. Hell.

He wanted to ask who was there, but the oil poured down his throat, into his eyes, his nostrils, his mind. Even his ears were filled with rage, a ringing deafness that only infuriated him further. He railed against it, he beat his wings, and he realized, suddenly, that this was who had been present at his... not his death, exactly. But he had been seeking Bevy--or what he had thought had been Bevy--as a bird had touched him, as someone had crushed his foot. He had sought the mind present, and here it was.

Was it another of Bevy's personalities? ...Maybe. Maybe not. Did it matter? He was too angry to think straight. His rage engulfed him, and for once, he fought back. It only seemed to feed the darkness around him, but he didn't care; he let it embrace him, he took it as his own, he screamed rage into the choking void. That was his answer to the stranger.

Impotent, agonized rage.

Back in the tunnel, wings spasmed, and eyes fluttered. The unconscious owl didn't have all that much time left.

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The dark-snared owl thrashed, hissing and screaming and full of fury. The hell around him was now inside him, and he fought it, his soul filled with frustration and hatred. He fought it, he shoved against it, he kicked and beat his dream-wings until suddenly it parted around him.

The warm and golden light of the Throne behind him filled the air, pushed back the darkness--but the owl was still shimmering black, his eyes opening. Two orbs of blazing emerald fixed on the deer before him, and Dark exerted his force, his rage, his power, harnessed with hatred, and rose up, a black phoenix rising from the filthy void. Made of it.

He hovered there, above them, safely out of reach now. His feathers were no longer a dusky brown, but jet black with the "oil" of Belladonna's anger, of her hell.

Yet it was tempered; his anger was not blind, not as he had been. Instead it whetted and sharpened his mind, taking the pain and confusion and binding it to a sharp point. He had come with a warning, and this monster wasn't going to stop him.

Black wings beat a blurred rhythm in the air, and the owl gazed down upon the twin white deer--one pristine, pure and filled with light, as the columns of marble above; one filthy with black, as the roiling sea of pain below.

"Who--who. Who, are you," the owl hooted, and the barely-contained, righteous rage made it almost a command.

He had come very close to being lost to Belladonna's madness, but now he remembered why he was here.

And he felt stronger.

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