Aran wasn't planning on getting too close to the place that was cold - honestly he wouldn't have noticed that it was cold if he wasn't paying attention. The snow, however, was cold against his hooves and body. Not much of it got to where he was, only a dusting coming out of the place, but it was enough for the barasingha to realize that it was cold passed there. He'd never interacted with snow before, and it was a shame that he could only see the shape of it and not what it actually looked like. Maybe.... after the Collector did what he had to, Aran could come see it for real. At least if whatever the being was doing worked.

The collector said there could be some things weird with it, since he was using the eyes of a lesser. Which... sounded weird. it almost sounded like the Collector was planning on removing his eyes and completely replacing them with the eyes of a lesser. That sounded intimidating and painful. Aran could deal with pain, he had time and time again, the scars proved it. But that just seemed.... Weird.

Aran almost wished he asked more questions than he had.

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

Thoughts of Death

Thoughts of Murder

Thoughts of Suicide

Trauma

gore

Uhhh ill edit more onto here if I gotta

NOTE: These warnings are for the entire thread!
God this feels like a lot of warnings haha...

It was too late now to go back and ask more questions. He would seem like a coward, and Aran was no coward. He'd been through so much in his 13 cycles of life already that would show it. Multiple fights, multiple times that he'd been reverted into his chrysalis. It.... Didn't feel good, to have that much experience with it. If anything it made his body hurt to think about. Especially back then... When he'd saved James from the batcat jr's. That made his skin tingle and his body remember what it felt like to have gotten bitten by the whole swarm at once. The blood... He hated the sight of blood. His own, not others. It didn't matter if it was someone else's blood. Aran only needed to take care of himself - at least, that's how it was before. Now he was part of a group, a group with children and other gembound that needed to be protective.

Aran is no hero.

Even if he helped multiple gembound out before. Even if he helped groups in those.... Large things that the groups all found. None of it made him good. He was just as bad as he was when he began. Aran almost wanted to go back to when he'd just hatched.... He couldn't though. He wouldn't ever be able to do something like that.

No one could do something like that. Maybe through death. Aran would have to die to get to that point - to hatch again. To remember nothing about this life and to continue onto the next. But that only was if someone revived him. Someone would have to find his antlers and bring life to that stone that would still be there upon his death. He didn't deserve it. Aran wouldn't ever deserve another chance like that. It wouldn't even be him that came back from that stone. Just a memory of what was, a new life broken from the old one.

Maybe that's why the stone of Elias didn't take to his magic. Aran just wasn't good enough for it, to revive anything. Others would agree, wouldn't they? That he was such a bad gembound that he simply couldn't do something so important as to give life to stones to create new life. It was like his karma was coming back to eat him. It would, one day. One day he wouldn't be able to escape the death that was coming to him. Everything would come crashing down onto his shoulders and one day he wouldn't be able to wake back up.

He deserved that, too. He was sure a good amount of gembound he'd come into contact with would agree. At least the ones that could still talk about it. Elias was gone, Aran hadn't seen the body but he did have the stone for a short time. Until it shattered. He couldn't give Tahi what he wanted in giving the gator a new chance at life and... That sucked, really. But it didn't matter now, he kept telling himself. The two of them had killed the guy and he just didn't get another chance at living. A lot of dead ones didn't get a new chance at living. None of them did even if their stones were revived, really. It was a new being. That alligator wouldn't have had a new chance.

Still, that was the one time he felt almost bad for being unable to do something he'd promised. Aran didn't promise much. Didn't trust himself to keep the promises he made even though he wouldn't ever break one on purpose. It was a back and forth with himself. Are you good or not? No.

Maybe he shouldn't have gone to the collector and stuck with what karma gave him. Would that have been better? Aran found himself thinking that it would have been. Maybe the world around him just wanted him to suffer for the things he'd done. Even if they weren't nearly as bad as they could have been. Nearly murdering someone wasn't scary, if anything, Aran had found it fun at the time. He could argue that he would still feel that same thing now too if he tried.

Which was bad, he knew.

The numbness that laced his being wasn't fun. It wasn't good, either. Doing bad things to make oneself feel anything was bad. Was it truly, though, if he got was coming to him? Glazed eyes closed, and opened again.

A fluttering of wings caught his ears, Aran squinted in the direction of the sound. There was a bird, quite small, but fluttering near his face. Didn't birds usually get scared of other gembound? He supposed he was an herbivore, though, so some lessers may not feel the same fear that they would if it was a carnivore standing there. Either that or these things were easy meals for anything that ran into them.

He supposed this one would do. Birds could see well right?

Aran had to remember that the collector said he needed to bring the lesser back alive so no accidental killing here. He couldn't do that. It was almost amusing, a deer who had gone out of his way to try and commit murder (and failing) resorting to trying to not kill something. He was destructive, but Aran was pretty sure it would take more than a couple of simple spell casts to kill the bird. Even with his stronger spells - of course he could always be wrong, but the bird did start waning at that first cast.

He would simply have to make it worse until the thing couldn't move anymore. Speeding up the sickness would be the best thing to do. But what if the spell backfired? He would cast something else first just in case - on himself this time.

He could feel his magic already working, which was good. That meant he could now try the same spell he had before... the one that nearly killed him, he was pretty sure. It didn't really matter much at this point, he'd only lost his sight. Nothing else. It could have been worse (it also could have been better).

Squinting at the bird who was now sitting on the ground below, he attempted to use another spell.

After the spell worked, aran was able to swiftly move the bird into the bag that normally swung from his antlers - he needed to get a new one, but that would come later - and stood back up. It would be better eventually, which meant he had to get going quickly. It would take time to get to Canis to call for the collector, too.

So he left in a hurry.

Exit babyy