crickets and creatures will come in the night
keep my back from the reaper
who's hunting or running, you gotta decide

He was not expecting the blow. Or maybe he was, with his early forms of cheek and audacity. But he had not yet known pain. And this simple scratch may as well have been a killing blow to a child newly hatched. He bleated and stumbled back as it tore open skin - shallow, of course, but he thought it might be deep, the way it felt. Like fiery lines had shredded across his skin, like his nerves themselves had figured out how to turn screaming into a sensation.

But it went away fast. In its place...euphoria quickly flooded in. Ice quelling the fire and then reigniting it, but colder, more lifting, like helium in a balloon. He felt light-headed, he felt like he was drifting from his body. Colors blurred, his vision shifted. He couldn't see anything but then he could see everything. It was strange, like he was underwater (although he had never been underwater before) and every fiber of his young, breathing body was singing in a discordant harmony. It was great.

"Woahh..." he bleated, stumbling. "What...is this magic?" Oh wait, hadn't the other one hurt him? He could still feel the wound on his cheek, but it was a distant thought, like it had happened to a part he'd cut off and regrown. But that still meant he'd been hurt! Why was he laughing about that? Why was he giggling? Was it funny?

Through it all, however, a strike of wrongness pierced through, followed very quickly by fear. This...was this right? No, this didn't feel right. He felt happy, he felt excited, but the way his heart was hammering wasn't like before. It was heavy, drugged. A sense of weight came with the euphoria, the toxins like metal in his veins. It was so deeply wrong and so horribly disturbing that the giggling cut abruptly and he simply stared at the other with confusion. "What. You do to me?" There was a tremble, disgust in his voice. Anger. But he couldn't quite reach those right now. So he just tried to stay conscious and aware and held onto that wrongness like a lifeline.

september

@Doru

It was fascinating, watching the venom take hold on the newly hatched calf. His fearful response due to pain shifting quickly to euphoria.

Doru's claws were coated in blood faintly, and he brought golden claws near his mouth and licked the blood off of it, almost idly at first. While Doru was an omnivore technically, there had always been a great appeal to blood, so he preferred hunting over anything else.

But he had never tasted blood of a greater gembound. It was fascinating, thinking that this blood had come from a speaking being, had been part of the life that still existed before him. Doru wanted more.

He barely resisted his instincts telling him to lunge once more. Doru was a being of logic and whims both, but he was not so weak as to give into base instincts.

"I taught you a lesson," he stated, a slight tremble to his own voice that the calf likely could not detect in his current state of euphoria. "About listening, and about power, too, I suppose."

He considered the calf, a hungry glint in his purple gaze. "I suppose if you'll listen this time, I might as well answer you. This is not magic. This is a venom unique to me," he told the truth, only to partially lie at the end. In truth, his parent Erasmus shared this same venom capability.

And perhaps Doru's child or children would have it as well, one day.

But for now, Doru wished the calf to think he was the only source of such a venom.

@September

crickets and creatures will come in the night
keep my back from the reaper
who's hunting or running, you gotta decide

He stared, blankly at first, at Doru, watching idily, almost carelessly, as the calf's world turned upside down and inside out. He bleated again as he struggled to stay upright and fight back those feelings of euphoria. It was not right, not right!! It was overwhelming, artificially rewriting neurons and flooding his brain with false chemicals to drive him away from fear. Make him happy. Make him complacent.

But this calf was anything but complacent. The euphoria flooded through veins already hot and bright with a new life's spark, and like adding sugar, spice, and everything nice to a cauldron, it mixed with that anger and fear to create a unique sensation not unlike a fight or flight, leaning heavily towards fight. But not out of survival, but out of a need to feel, a love for rushing blood and adrenaline and danger. The fallacy of youth invincibility and a prideful indignation that this much older Gembound would walk up to a newborn kid and drug him to teach him a lesson. He didn't know much, but he knew that was pretty fucked up.

He bleated again, but this was mixed with a strangely aggressive hiss as his wobbly stance widened, eyes trying to focus on the dark form in front of him. "Teach...a lesson? I...teach you one!" His muscles bunched and he sprang forward, his head lowered so that the opal that jutted from his forehead was pointed right in Doru's direction. Heat suddenly flared across its surface, the gemstone glowing almost white hot as he made to buck up, not stab through but score the pointed, heated horn right up the torso of Doru.

september

@Doru

Doru had a sense of pride, he realized, one that was easily aggravated. And this calf was good at pushing his buttons, much to the other’s misfortune.

He was aware enough to recognize the hiss as aggressive, and the stance as dangerous. And so, as the calf charged, he attempted to kick up some of the softer ground, sand or dirt, to get in the other’s eyes and stop him in his place.

The sand itself worked, disorienting the drugged calf enough that the fresh gembound only grazed him. But it seared against his scales, and he hissed, wings springing open and taking him to the air even as his side continued to burn.

”A lesson on what? I insulted you by assuming you defenseless, and you attacked first. I tried to teach you. You insulted me by ignoring me, so I attacked. And now you’re insulted by my attack. An endless cycle,” his voice was a harsh growl.

”You will learn nothing, and be nothing,” Doru proclaims, taking up higher into the air of the cave.

@September

crickets and creatures will come in the night
keep my back from the reaper
who's hunting or running, you gotta decide

The dust in his eyes wasn't going to stop him as he charged forward. It put him off course, but he still felt the horn connect with Doru's torso. He felt a moment of victory before the rush of wings frustrated him further. He couldn't see for a moment, trying to blink the dust and grit from his eyes, but everything was blurry and spotty. Still, he'd gathered enough that the other had flown out of his reach.

He began to kick and buck at nothing, daring Doru to come closer again, his movements still stumbling and awkward and now with the blindness added on top, he looked like he was having some kind of a fit. Which he was, in a way - it was quite easy to see the childish tantrum taking over. He'd only been alive for a few minutes but already he was experiencing a deep, righteous, and prideful fury. Doru was trying to reason with him, but he was beyond reason now, his venom-addled mind and the confusion and pride based anger sending him into a full-on little boy tantrum as another little burst of wind went Doru's way. To knock him out of the air, or just because he had nothing else he could do while he was flying out of his reach?

"You!" he brayed. "Coward! You mean, you dumb! I will be...better then you! Just wait! Won't be little forever!" It was a promise and a threat. Yeah, he wasn't going to forget this.

september

@Doru

The child was throwing a tantrum at this point, and Doru's lips lifted at a sneer. His words weren't even articulate, let alone worth responding to. Still, a part of him was glad that he hadn't told the child his name, because he had clearly made an enemy today.

Suddenly, he could sense a shift of the winds, air creature he was, and Doru realized the child's magic was sending a blast his way. He attempted to dodge away, not wishing to be caught up in strange magical air currents.

What an annoyance. He dodged with a drift in the sky, not overly hard when there was a blinded child throwing a tantrum, and he was glad, because the wind that went past seemed decently powerful.

There was no reason to stay now, nor even attempt to reason with the child, whatever his name was.

Doru was done with this.

[Exit Doru]

@September

crickets and creatures will come in the night
keep my back from the reaper
who's hunting or running, you gotta decide

He continued kicking and stumbling for a little while, waiting for more lashing words, maybe even another bite or something to come, but nothing. Silence. Slowly, he settled, turning his head to rub the grit out of his eyes and blinking back his vision. The other one was gone.

He spat and then trampled on some broken bones for good measure. He was still trembling from the euphoric overdrive and it was really starting to make his head spin. He didn't like it, it was too fake it was too nauseating to stand. It made him want to chew his veins right out of his skin if only he didn't have to feel this false sense of happiness anymore.

The fawn collapsed to the ground and curled in on himself, still trembling with rage that persisted and dimmed to a smoldering from the entire experience. The face of the creature burned in his vision - yeah he'd get him back for that. When he was grown, he would be the one "teaching a lesson."

For now, however, he just curled tighter and shut his eyes and waited for the venom to run its course.

*exit

september