Nerium
there is no such thing as harmless power

Nerium was only two cycles old, still a child by the caves' standards, but she had learned some things.

She had learned that the time when the orb-light high in the sky dimmed but before it went out was when the temperature was kindest; she knew her magic could cool things down a little bit, but she still didn't like the way the midday sun felt on her feathers.

She had learned that the place that was her hatchplace, the crucible with its towering stone canyons and its winding ravines was not the only place in the world that existed. No—further south there was an ominous, muddy marsh that she took one look at and thought... That looks bad, and quickly turned away from, because the canyons had monsters with too many legs and spiders that shimmered and danced, but at least they weren't... that.

And to the west (or an estimation of such direction, as the little fledgling really had no concept of things like 'south' and 'west')... there were dunes. Rolling, towering sand dunes, as far as her eye could see, and those were imposing, too, almost as terrifying as the marsh, but... there looked like there was nothing there. No plants, no water, sure, but—no monsters, either.

And she had held off, for a time, focusing on the little safety she could scratch out of the canyons; focusing on the instinct to spread new-feathered wings and fly, her attempts at which were exhilarating at first and terrifying afterwards, as she got the hang of another dimension.

But... she was okay at flying, now. She could stay in the air for a little while, and using her magic to propel herself felt a little like cheating but it worked.

And let it never be said that Nerium wasn't an inquisitive creature.

So now she stands at the edge of the dunes, talons curling in the cool sand, and looks out over the endless sea. What might she find? What is out there, past the dunes—if anything at all?

Her heart is pounding in her chest. She's about to find out.

With a few, tentative steps (too full of trepidation to fly just yet), she begins to make her way deeper into the sands.

♥ I speak. ♥
♥ I think. ♥

❥

The moment the first curved talon sank into the sand's warmth, something far beneath the surface stirred.

A monster was woken into awareness. The trickle of a single grain of sand, shifting, squeezing down between the others; the soft and faint vibration of the harpy eagle's foot in the earth, started it in motion. Smooth and sinuous it came, jaws churning easily through the soft substrate that separated it from its potential meal.

There was but one warning: the sudden, faint tremor of dusk-lit sand, sparkling and leaping here and there as the ground briefly, gently, shook.

Nerium must roll a Barely Successful or higher to avoid the incoming threat, or will be put in immediate and mortal danger...

@Nerium

Nerium
there is no such thing as harmless power

The sand is tepid in temperature, she finds; the desert heat seems utterly persistent in the glare of the light of the sky, but it seems to fade so quickly. It feels strange on her talons. The grains of sand shift with every little movement, skittering and rolling off—she finds with a beat of surprise that her feet actually sink in a little, a sensation that is mildly disconcerting. Each step she takes is tense; Nerium keeps expecting to be pulled under by something.

It would be fitting for this cave, after all, for the very sands to be deadly. More and more, she grows uncomfortable with the idea of walking—her feathers fluff with stress, and she swallows.

Should she have practiced more, before coming out here..? Oh, she doesn't like this place…

The sand trembles. Shivers, even, and Nerium jumps with a startled squawk. She really doesn't like this place, the canyons were dangerous too but at least they didn't move on their own—!

Her heart begins to pound in her chest. Instinct honed through the cycles tells her to move, move! She jumps and leaps, reaching for her magic to propel her upwards, wings snapping outwards without thinking, only obeying the urge to fly, fly—

♥ I speak. ♥
♥ I think. ♥

The slight twist of magic served only to solidify her position to the predator below. A churning of sand seemed to sink away below her, spinning, sucked down into a hole forming with impossible speed-

-and a monster burst free from the surface, all dusty hide and rocky scale, bone-white bristles and enormous, gleaming pincers. Its maw was a hole filled with razor teeth, a lamprey-mouth reaching for Nerium as the entire muscled Sand Worm launched itself from Hydra's dunes for its little prey. The eruption of flesh from sand was sudden, a split-second of color and motion, the spray of sand catching that dim light in its sparkling descent.

The worm was perhaps ten feet long, but broad, more than capable of snagging the young eagle, of chewing her into nothing, of dragging her down without a trace and leaving only a few feathers, and sand, in its wake.

Nerium must avoid the Sand Worm's attack with a successful (Barely+) roll, or she will be killed and consumed.

@Nerium

Nerium
there is no such thing as harmless power

The magic fails to fire. A twist—then nothing more, and she lands firmly on the sand with nothing to show for it. Her breath catches in her throat; no, no, there's something wrong, she can't fail now, she has to flee—

—the sand falls, twisting into a dusty whirlpool of what seemed to be unimaginable proportions to the little one. Sand rustles and shivers and twists in a sinuous river, falling into unknown depths below, and she realizes, with a brief beat of heart-stopping terror…

...it's not the sands that kill.

A monster erupts from the sands, sinuous in form. Something filled with too many teeth, too many spines, bone-white glinting in the fading light of the orb above, churning through sand like water. The mouth threatens to draw her in both physically and emotionally—with horror, she notices the teeth.

So many teeth. So many teeth—churning and grinding and—and in that brief moment, she knows what it feels like to be afraid to die.

She doesn't want to die here. She doesn't want to be crushed up and bloodied, killed and forgotten—

She doesn't want to end up like the one she left to die, pierced through by the fangs of a monster.

And then the moment is over, the worm is throwing itself through the sand like some great javelin, faster than she's ever seen anything move in her whole life, the body itself big enough to crush her beneath it, and again, again, Nerium attempts to fly.

Except, this time, there isn't just simply instinct fueling her. There isn't simply a buried knowledge in her brain that now is the time to learn, to catch the winds beneath her wings—this is life or death.

And Nerium, straining, reaching, leaps, wings spreading and flapping, trying with all the strength in her small body to catch air and flee.

In a final, frantic effort, she reaches for life.

I don't wanna die here—

♥ I speak. ♥
♥ I think. ♥

❥

Nerium
there is no such thing as harmless power

Maybe things could have been different. Maybe—maybe there was something else she could have done. Maybe she could have waited to go through the shifting sands; maybe, in another time, she would have cut through the salt flats instead, and would have been faced with scorpions and spiders instead of… this.

Maybe it was always fated to be this way. Maybe her bones and her stone were always meant to disappear among the sands, broken into shards and never seen again.

But—whatever the case, no matter how much one reaches for the past or future, there is really only the now. Really only the present that matters most.

And, here, in Hydra, the present goes like this:

A little bird hatches in the Crucible, in the canyons, and abandons someone who saved her life. Torn by survivor's guilt, she promises herself that she will never abandon the next gembound she meets.

A little bird, somewhat older this time, goes exploring into the sands, searching for—something. What, she doesn't know, but… something.

A little bird doesn't make it out alive.

She strains, and she flaps, and she tries so desperately to fly, but—she's just a fledgling. Too young to have strong wings to fly upon; too young to catch the winds in the way she wanted.

And the great worm's maw comes forward, and it comes down, and. Well.

She wasn't fast enough.

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

in gray for those who'd prefer to skip it

Maybes, possibilities, perhapses, did not factor into Hydra. Hydra was finality, with a sudden hollowing out of "what could have been," to be replaced with silent, empty space.

Predator eats prey. A story repeated throughout the caves--throughout life itself: a sudden rush of muscle and power, the flutter of struggling wings. The massive maw engulfed Nerium, the rows of teeth shredding, drawing her down and crushing bone and if nothing else it was at least mercifully quick; a tearing, a ripping and grinding, and then-...

Nothing.

The Sand Worm smashed back into the dune in the same movement it had erupted: a smooth sweep upward, the bird snagged in that maw, and then a dive back down; it was as a whale breaching, a bird diving, slipping back into water or air--or sand, in this case--and vanishing once again.

Bright grains glinted, shifted, in the twilight gleam; and then the Dunes fell still, a single grey feather settling where Nerium once had been.

@Nerium (for visibility)