"WHO IS THERE?" and then, a cackle.

The rustle of wings was near-silent, only the stiff quills giving away Emuh's approach. The owl-beast landed before Orthoclase-Alpha, looking it dead in the eyes, its toxic gaze a mirror of the Overseer's own. A crackling aura, shifting with embers, changed: slipping neatly to a dark black and red, and then, with a tilt of the beast's head, to faint and shimmering gold. "Oh, which will it be? WHICH?" and another shift, talons scraping over stone. "OR IS IT HERE FOR THIS?" and the aura changed again, to a light glow that swarmed around it--and again, deepening into black shadows.

"Come for a trial, have you?! WHICH WILL EMUH GIVE?" it asked. A ruffle of feathers, a narrowing of eyes, and another question--or, at least, clarification of the first: "Is it here to test its claws and muscles--or to ascend its magic? It isn't STRONG ENOUGH for that," it added, and another cackle rang out along the end of its words.

"WHOSE OVERSEER? -WHOSE? WHOSE?" A cackle from the owl-beast, then. "YOU TRANSCEND." And then it was gone: a silent flutter, spines and glow fading into the shadows of the little cave.

The terrain transformed: the earth rippling ever-so-subtly, a few spines lifting in pointed threat and narrow chasms cracking apart to from deadly pitfalls. The darkness deepened.

Then, the cave when silent. There was a quiet scuffling from somewhere beyond, in the depths of the room, beyond the first chasm: a low growl stuttering out from between some other creature's teeth, as if in answer to Orthoclase-Alpha's own sound. An echo of it, a warning, a threat.

The glow of four toxic eyes slowly opened from beyond, slinking along, watching Orthoclase from its hidden haunt.

From somewhere disembodied, location unknown, the voice of Emuh called down. "Prove yourself, then! Or LEAVE. Emuh is not here to waste time on the weak!"

What would it be like, to look into the mirror-? For a monster that seemed to half hate itself, to find its perfect twin suddenly slipping from the shadows, identical down to replicated scars?

It had the same empty, focused face. The same perhaps half-constipated look, like it couldn't gesture with its lips, like it was intent purely on first using magic--yet humor aside it was an immense predator, all shell and claw and muscled sinew.

It had blood, and perhaps that was the strange thing: whatever this thing was, it was alive, and its blood held the perfect, replicated shape of Orthoclase-Alpha, a bright pulse in the mind and magic of the original.

The creature did not, however, speak: it didn't ask if this was a test, or where Orthoclase had come from. It merely circled back into the dark, easily tracked by the beat of hot blood in its veins, drawing ever-closer in the shadows.

Four toxic eyes narrowed at the words, and in a sudden, violent rush, the other 'Orthoclase' bounded for the real thing. Even in motion it was identical, each surge of muscle beneath the carapace the same; and somewhere in the distance the owlbeast Emuh was laughing. The quiet cackles carried, even as this doppelgänger rushed in for a body slam: an attempt to knock the other Orthoclase off its feet entirely.

It offered no words: only violence.

The cackling halted, and somewhere in the distance was the sense that attention was being paid. A mutter, far-off, but what it said was unclear past the clashing of bodies, the slam of weighted carapace and claws.

Snarls rang, more quiet huffs of strain than anything so much as threat. And the other-Orthoclase, stymied in inflicting any real damage, instead dropped its head--four legs scrabbling at the floor, two struggling to bear-hug the beast before it--and aimed all those little jagged needle-teeth for the point beneath the real Orthoclase's jaw. Quills or not, it seemed to know its own body, and where to strike to cause the most damage--the question was, who would get there first?

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