Deli would unfortunately find that the monstrous baby that'd absolutely obliterated it before was in the general vicinity again - if only ten feet away was a good enough measure of general vicinity. Acidic eyes peered at the serpentine stone, widening as it started banging and making a whole lot of noise. Were there (visible) pupils in its eyeballs, they'd be shrunken into thin lines like a cat's.

The orthoclase wouldn't have moved an inch, though - it didn't. Alpha wasn't intimidated at all by the dog as they failed to even get to their feet; it was, in fact, curious. Curious about the clear difference. Somehow, this creature seemed skinnier than before, with longer and wider limbs. There were fingers at the end of their forepaws now, and they were in the process of inspection by not one, but two parties.

Alpha scuffled forwards (distantly noting that Deli seemed smaller now - or was it bigger?) and stared down at the hands. "You -" the hybrid monstrosity barked, as if it hadn't painfully caused this, "different?" Quills pricked, but in mere curiosity, "you... not dead? Bleeding before... then - rock." Big brain time. "Rock make different? And child?"

What concepts!

What couldn't chrysalises do? They couldn't just stop at spawning children and changing bodies. That would be a waste. Alpha mulled over this for just a moment, grunt half-heartedly at Deli, "should have died." The orthoclase had seen all of the blood. If the Overseer was worried about one little hole in a paw, then two very large holes in an entire body was definitely cause for concern. But, alas, here this fuzzy thing was. Perfectly intact. Alpha, surprisingly, noted this for later use.

Acidic eyes narrowed upon the now-bipedal canine, more than upset that they could just put it in their shadow. As a paw reached out to pat its head, the monster child gave off a noxious sort of gurgling and cub-screech, quills rattling and teeth snapping. Aside from that, the orthoclase didn't pursue the appendage. Hopefully, Deli knew not to push their luck.

"Don't mean anything," Alpha growled (showing off its excellent use of contractions,) scuttling away a few steps just to sit down and pick at its flaky exoskeleton. "I'll grow! Life-giver big." The orthoclase twisted its neck upwards, quills rattling with the motion. With a meaty paw, it gestured towards some stalactite whose point laid some fourteen feet in the air: "Overseer Vargas is touch-that-rock-big."

Yeah.

Alpha, if it had actual lips, would have scowled. Unfortunately, it was even more limited in expression than its life-giver. Deli was at least rewarded with another grumbling noise and narrowed eyes. Oh, and a childishly-thrown insult: "you break. Little bones shoot into my arm, so weak." Well, maybe it wasn't so much an insult as a thinly-veiled threat - it lifted a slightly cracked forearm, for Deli to see and not touch. "Touch me and I break bones." In case it wasn't clear enough. The orthoclase wasn't a fan of uninitiated touching.

Unhelpfully, it barked, "what bag." It wasn't even phrased as a rhetorical question - just a statement of confusion. The monster child didn't even know what a 'bag' was. It was more curious about the whole killing thing, and definitely not in a serial manner. "I kill you? No -" Alpha grunted, "no. You go - went into rock. You not dead like rat."

Did everything just go into rocks when they died? Rats, too? If Deli managed to glean any emotion from empty, glowing eyes, there'd be a vague notion of fear at thinking there were little rat chrysalises in its stomach, ready to claw their way out.

"Don't be mean!" this mutt snapped, and then immediately gave it a reason to 'be mean.' Alpha had apparently been a fool when it thought they would wisen up and listen when it gave a warning. It'd been so clear, too! But, no, this idiot just didn't learn a lesson when it got beat into them.

The orthoclase's quills rattled, and that would be all the warning the mangy dog got. Its head snapped forwards in pursuit of the hand that'd patted it twice too many times.

It had already killed them once, apparently (and with relative ease and minimal consequence) - it could absolutely do it again. It didn't aim to full-on sever the limb, but there would definitely be some mangling if it landed and held on, thrashing like a terrier with a rope toy.

Alpha just stared blankly as a rightfully angry little child should. Its tongue snaked out and ran over sharp teeth and cleaned off blood while Deli went on a tirade about how mean it was. Well, of course. Only the strong survived in this world, and whining wasn't going to get them anywhere. The orthoclase wasn't worried about anyone liking it (except for the Overseer, of course) and gave a guttural growl to back that up.

It still sounded like an tiger cub, but just a little more bassy and intimidating by about two weeks.

And when the dog claimed to be leaving, moving at a snail's pace, Alpha gave a few clucks in laughter, trundling forward after them. "Go!" it barked, almost amusedly, before just giving the dog a hearty shove and continuing on with not a care in the world. Just to make sure their slow little movement couldn't catch up, Alpha put on a trotting gait towards the fortresses, out for some rats.