He held up the femur, a strange bluish-black bone sheened as though with oil. This one was easy enough to match up. Not all the bones had been formed with calcium--though many had--and many were almost metallic in appearance. He suspected this one held carbon.

His time was often spent matching them--his reasoning being to try and lay out, in the end the matched skeletons of those now-empty chrysalises that Jupiter had shattered before they could ever hatch. So many were half-formed, malformed, or small; most had stones that were long past revival. But some could be revived.

Vargas himself had limited magic with which to imbue new creations--even with the cooperation of Totum or Astraea. It was simply the way it was--he did not want to drain himself by overreaching this early in his 'career.' This meant that if he could find promising Oilstones with life still left within them, and match them to the proper bones, he could get an idea of what the design had been. And then, he could offer them to suitable revivers who were not masters: those who could best complement the designs, and spawn potentially useful Valkhounds while the Master continued his own, and separate, work.

"The Sentinel has come to report." Vargas turned, head coming up and around, peering back at the creature. Ahh--this one was of interest. It was a direct revival, a few cycles old, and was proving surprisingly useful. He wasn't sure why it insisted on standing upright, but it was more than capable of the task to which he'd assigned it and it was blindly loyal and unquestioningly obedient.

"Good," he told it, bluntly, and turned to set down his bones.

He paced over and stood before the Sentinel, giving him his full, if stern, attention. "I wish you to tell me of your journey. Tell me what you learned, and tell me if you believe that it was worth taking the time to travel the caves--or if you think you'd have learned more staying, and training, here." It was an important question to ask, for future spawn; he'd get a few more opinions, of course, but he wanted to know that his attempts to make the creations more... 'worldly' was working. If it was a waste of time, he'd just keep them in Draco.

He hadn't gotten the chance to ask it this immediately upon its return; and Effluvium's sudden push into Draco had put a bit of a delay on things.

Well, that had been a flood of words.

Vargas grunted. "Worth it, then? Good. Show me what you've learned in combat, then--strike me a few times, if you can. And meanwhile, I will tell you of how your progression will continue." He pushed up, and paced around the Sentinel in a wide ring, tail sweeping smoothly through the air behind him.

"When one of you--the spawn of the Forge--has proven themselves, they are allowed to choose a reward. I have changed this, slightly, from the old days, in that it is less... time-consuming." He felt they were on a bit of a tighter schedule here than literal thousands of years would allow for, and though he had no intention of simply giving them their names and privileges without proving themselves, he also wouldn't force them to wait centuries for each. He needed loyalty and he needed good servants, and he needed that sooner rather than later. "These rewards may be a name, or the freedom to roam when you are not needed, or the right to reproduce. And by performing various acts to prove yourself to the Forge, you may earn your choice of these. Your task is simply to guard the door. Thus far you have proven dutiful and skilled. So tell me: what do you think that you might do to prove yourself to me?" he asked, feinting a brief, skidding step toward the Sentinel before resuming his circling.

The Sentinel's sudden lunge was--even with Vargas watching for it--unexpected. But he had not trained millennia to sit unprepared for such a strike, particularly by the clumsily inexperienced. He had kept his distance as he circled, and his reflexes were as cat-like as they came; his sideways leap as the Sentinel rushed was nimble, and all four limbs cleared the air before neatly setting back down a few yards farther off.

Still tensed, watching the Sentinel closely, the Leviathan resumed his circling. But now the tail flicked, a little, as he did so: ready, and waiting, for another strike.

"You were saying..?" he said, and there was the faintest, taunting croon in his tone.

It hadn't escaped him that the Sentinel had spoken of the prior owner of the Onyx, of the "child of the Black Stone" and so forth. He knew of the Black Dog's children--the bird-dog, the sheep-... dog? He had seen them, waiting there after the Trial. And he was curious, too, about the Dog--he'd been curious when he'd seen it. In fact, several of its strange mannerisms, including the way that it spoke, had somewhat passed down to this child--though this one was coldly violent and unpredictable, his speech much less coherent, than even Black's had been. "And when you have done that, tell me what you were told of your stone-giver."

...Well, this was new. The halberd was windmilling; there was no other word for it, a spinning slash that Vargas immediately (and accurately) judged a tad too dangerous to try and stick a hand into. It wouldn't have been impossible, maybe, but the risk just wasn't worth it.

Again his reflexes were on display, as he moved quite swiftly back and away without a stumble--a leap back, a skittering run forward, and he was well out of the Sentinel's range once again.

It gave him freedom and time to reflect on what it was saying. It is content without a name. Interesting, he noted, but nothing really beyond that--most of these spawn were scrabbling to display their individuality. Was this a lack of ambition, or an admirable loyalty to purpose? Vargas wasn't sure, but he'd keep an eye on it, and find out. It was the same for the spawn, mostly. The others--bar Chaos-One, perhaps--had shown desire to create spawn, to further their falsified genetics, their faked blueprints. Was this a lack of ambition, or a sign that it was something else--perhaps something closer to his own stock, by now? Its predecessor had sired children, so perhaps the Sentinel was merely more kin to chaos than it had been. "And so you think that when I have deemed you ready, you would travel and train again? Further training would be your reward?" he asked, pushing--not because of mockery, but to keep it on its toes, to force it to multitask. To speak, and think, and gauge the fight, all at once.

Well, this was--something.

The kid charged him, and he stared nonplussed for a moment--how exactly did he react to this? He could just keep running, he supposed; it'd wear itself out before he did, for sure. For the time being he aimed to avoid the hits in a series of leaps and dodges, focused razor-sharp on each move the Sentinel was making.

His tail lashed, claws striking rock, muscles tensed as he moved. Quite abruptly one foot tangled in the other--the perils of running backward, he had time to grimly think--and down he went in a pile of confused limbs.