Amras A small hint of a smile crept onto the gryphon's face at the child's indignant response to its caretaker's return. Even if sickly and plagued by weakness outside their control it was still a child and still had a sense of pride. "Very well in fact. After we last met I encountered a blacksmith who showed me that it was possible to use elements outside my own. I know that is not much your thing, but research into the different types of magic has provided me a lovely hobby." So far he'd been able to discover and consistently be able to use the base element and its three other linear elements- energy, light, fire, and electricity-, had managed to find a working theory for the first of his transmutative elements- the inner river of water-, and had a good hint of how to go about really familiarizing himself with the arcane eye of the mind. Through research and rumor he suspected the existence of about a dozen types of magical elements, but it was too early to say if the rest of them would be transmutative or if there was a third of forth technique that would be needed to unlock a few of them. "I'm sure you'll do well with taking care of the child, though if you ever have need of anything feel free to ask. I plan on going back to my tunnels under the tornado as long as the lights are out." Amras took a few steps forward, between the family reunion and the doorway. He could finish his scavenger hunt later, for now it would be best to see about attending to more important matters. "First though I believe a trip to the nearby stream is in order." he said as he extended a talon again. "The offer for a ride is still available unless you'd rather walk with your Mamma, young..." oh right, he hadn't actually asked the child's name. Pouch 1: Black talc stones x7 (medium) Pouch 2: Charcoal dust 50 in3 Pouch 3: Quartz sphere x1 (large, soft glow) Pouch 4: Charcoal chunks x7 (medium) Take hold of the power within "And shape the fabric of reality around you" tags: @Envy @Aaliyah notes: None

Envy
You sink your teeth into the people you depend on
Infecting everyone, you're quite the problem


Envy listened with some curiosity to the creature's explanation, and though the hunger and thirst was the most important overarching matter, they felt like they were missing some large detail. "Magic?" they asked. "Elements?" Though they'd never heard the words before, something struck a chord of instinct in the little one. Magic...? What does it do? but Envy felt like the answer was there, waiting for them to find. However hard they tried to pull it out, though, it drifted out of reach like mist, or a distant rainbow. "I want to know, too! Can you teach me? Can... 'magic' make me big and strong? Is it food?"

The little weasel continued to ponder as the two adult gembounds spoke to one another. They felt like with their words they'd just about scraped the tip of the truth, although perhaps that was hunger and thirst choosing their feelings for them. Could anyone in the caves do magic? With their luck, they suspected that they were the only ones who couldn't...

That same bitterness welled up in their chest once again, and they let out a pleading little whine. "Can I do it? Can everyone else do it?"

Envy watched the talon extended to them, and without hesitation or fear, crawled onto the appendage and quickly curled up for a rest, having seemingly tired themselves out. "Yes! Let's go now, I'm thirsty!" their gleeful voice rose quickly into a demanding chirp. They stuck out their tongue between small and pointed fangs as the gryphon asked if they'd like to walk. "No! Walking sucks!"

They waited for a moment, the question hanging on the air until the weasel realized it existed. They raised their head and puffed out their chest. "Envy!" they chirped loudly. "I'm Envy."

---

"Speech."
"Thoughts."


@Aaliyah @Amras

Li flicked an ear at the mention of magic. She knew there were different elements, and had entertained the thought of seeing if she could discover a new spell or...something, but she couldn't bring herself to try. What if it failed? What if she'd only learn fire spells? What if it still hurt someone, even if it wasn't a fire spell? It was likely she'd never use magic again.

As Envy spoke, she glanced down at them. Oh, right. She never told them about magic. And it was probably for the best...They wouldn't be able to show them how. But Amras...It seemed like he had a very good grasp on magic. Perhaps he could teach the little weasel? "Yes, dear. Magic and elements. I...am afraid I cannot teach you, but perhaps Amras could...?" She looked up at him, ending the sentence in a questioning tone. Perhaps magic could do good for Envy, depending on what element they are. "And if I do ever need anything, I'll be sure to come to you. Not really many others I can trust..."

Li glanced in the direction of the stream and chuckled lightly. She turned back and watched as Envy climbed into the gryphon's talon and paw, curling up. As they said their name, she flicked an ear, suddenly thinking about how a name such as Envy might sound to one. "Their name is Envy - I know, not exactly the most conventional but...well. I told them about the word and what it meant and they said it...fit them."

"Speech looks like this."
"Thoughts looks like this."

tags: @Amras @Envy
notes: here

Amras Amras shifted the positioning of his wings to rest behind him, shifting his center of balance so that once again he stood up to his full height on back two limbs. This close to the stream the light cast by the lamp inside and the orb on the ground by the doorway would probably be sufficient to see, but the trip might be a good opportunity to start his demonstration. "It is good to meet you then, Envy" It was indeed a peculiar name, but as he had discovered names were a fickle thing. Some had simple titles that fit their personality or hobbies and some had long or complex names that seemed to have appeared out of the ether. A first step into the darkness of Orion, curled up weasel child in his left talon and the sound of gently flowing water ahead of them. "Your Mamma is right to be hesitant in the face of magic. It is a wonderful thing, but like a wild lesser gembound is something that has to be approached with caution and resect." As they slowly walked toward the stream he held his right arm out where Envy could see. "These gems of ours appear to be the center of our magical potential, and each greater gembound- a name for those of us who think and talk- has a base element that comes most naturally to them." Once more light began to shine in the rod on the back of his forearm, soft white as it always was when starting the build phase of a spell. "My element is Energy, but yours may be different. By focusing on my gem and..." Oh what was the best way of describing the feeling? "using it to breathe in the magic around me I can produce a shockwave. For the longest time that was all I could do, but after a lot of practice and hard work I found I could make a wish for it to do something different and the magic would try to change shape before coming into existence." Of course, that was a simplistic explanation, but each gem had a different relationship with their magic. While he could go into details of shaping and intensifying and twisting and routing that would probably hurt more than it would help. "After even more work and discovering how my own magic functioned I learned how to make even more powerful wishes to produce different types of magic, different elements, that I'd normally never be able to use." The white light in his gem and almost invisible ghostly white energy that was gathering in his hand twisted and strained, taking on the pale yellow hue of the light element, with a very thin layer of white light remining lining his skin below the energy. The yellow grew brighter and brighter until passing a certain threshold and erupting into a much more visible bright orange energy. With walking and talking and thinking and spellweaving at the same time Amras was certain that he wouldn't be able to command too strong of a flame without hurting himself so he let the spell manifest early, resulting in a moderately large flame appearing in the palm of his hand resting on a white layer of protective energy that redirected the heat and kept him from burning himself too bad. The flame's soft flicker lit the path ahead of them and revealed that they had arrived at a small stream. Amras bent down to allow the small creature to hop off and drink of the clear flowing water. After standing back up he looked back with sheepish grin at Li, the fire in his hand held slightly ahead of him and lighting the company in its warm glow in the absence of Orion's stars. "Sorry in advance if I went to technical and you have to try to answer questions on it later. I may be good at researching magic but actually explaining it is a different matter entirely. Pouch 1: Black talc stones x7 (medium) Pouch 2: Charcoal dust 50 in3 Pouch 3: Quartz sphere x1 (large, soft glow) Pouch 4: Charcoal chunks x7 (medium) Take hold of the power within "And shape the fabric of reality around you" tags: notes: None

Envy
You sink your teeth into the people you depend on
Infecting everyone, you're quite the problem


Envy grinned and seemed to take the gryphon's words as a compliment rather than mere politeness. "Mamma said your name was Amras, didn't she?" they asked, thinking back to the moment her concern caused her to almost overlook the creature.

Whilst Aaliyah didn't give much away in her answer of their question, Envy fell silent and listened, intent with fascination, to the Gryphon's words instead. They too didn't explain exactly what magic was or what it did, and Envy soon dropped their head onto his scaly pawpad with a tiny sigh whistling past their gem. But, they continued- and the weasel once again pricked their ears.

Their gaze focused on the gryphon's arm, held in the weasel's view. they caught sight of the other's gem, on their arm, and groaned quietly to themselves. they swallowed, and felt the hard, cold marble stick in the back of their throat. A shudder ran down their spine, a sickness momentarily interrupting the hunger pangs. They shuddered, and listened once more, sticking out their tongue in disgust. "What's my element?" they asked. "And... I never knew a gem could be a good thing." Once again, that bitterness stole into their voice.

I can't see my gem - will it still work? they wanted to ask, but was stunned into silence by their display of magic- staring intently, transfixed by the glow- and then the flame that they then held in their hand, feeling the warmth falling on their fur. They were frozen for a long while, staring, and then they looked enviously up at Amras to see if they were surprised, thinking -hoping even- that maybe their display had been accidental.

Envy then looked around, peering at Aaliyah over the edge of the gryphon's palm. "Mamma," they called, remembering her earlier hesitation. "Can you do anything like that?"

They thought hard, and based on Amras's words, Envy thought that Magic sounded easy, and it looked pretty! How hard could it be? they knew where their gem was, and the more they thought about it, the more it felt like something was in there; that metaphorical mist from before, thicker and heavier, and seemingly more within reach, floated just out of reach of thoughts. Of course, to Envy the feeling was more like trying to catch a fish in the open sea; they had never attempted to swim, but they could see the little fishes dancing just out of reach, tempting and taunting.

With a fiery thrill running through their chest and down to the tips of their claws, they decided that they were going to have a taste of this magic. Maybe they could do this!

Even though they didn't know what they were looking for, they fell silent, and breathed deeply, and focused, remaining silent for a few long moments.

After a while, they felt a tingle of pins and needles running through the surface of their skin, and a surge of power that made their heart pound. Their whiskers stiffened and a low gasp escaped them. Their fur faded from dark brown to a sandy pale, with the dark stripe down their spine fading to brown. They looked around frantically, searching for the pretty lights they were sure should have appeared. "I felt something! Did it work?!" the little one danced in excitement, almost toppling off the organic platform that held them in their eagerness, only to quickly fall into disappointment, with bristling whiskers drooping as they failed to see anything. "I... I swear I felt something. Something good."

They curled up, once again burying their head in their paws with a sob.

"It didn't work."

---

"Speech."
"Thoughts."

@Aaliyah

Li watched as Amras told Envy how magic worked. She watched as the gryphon did his own magic, wondering what it was. She knew there were other elements, but she'd never really seen many of them used. She was interested in seeing what Amras would make.

When it developed, and she saw the flame, she immediately tensed. Trying to stealthily take a few steps away, she watched the flame cautiously, increasingly wary of it. She knew exactly what fire magic could do. Perhaps Amras didn't know, but she did. She knew all too well what it could do. And with it being so close to Envy...well, she didn't exactly like it. But she wouldn't say anything. Not yet.

When Envy spoke to her, she flicked an ear and looked to them. "I...yes, I can," she began uneasily, "though I try my best not to." Just looking at the flame made the burns on her leg sting, and the small burns that would remain forever on her paws. She then turned back to Amras, still trying to keep an eye on the fire. "Well, you definitely helped a lot. I could never go that in detail with magic."

She turned back to focusing on Envy when she noticed something shift. At first thinking it was the fire moving to envelop him, she soon realized that wasn't the case. Instead, their fur color was changing to a sandy brown with a brown stripe. She smiled. Surely that spell couldn't hurt anyone. When the they seemed to droop in disappointment, however, she frowned.

"No, you did it! You may not be able to see it, but you did something! Your fur is a different color now." She would go up to them and nudge them slightly, but then she'd be closer to the flame and she didn't want that.

"Speech looks like this."
"Thoughts looks like this."

tags: @Amras @Envy
notes: here

Amras Amras had simply nodded in quiet acknowledgement at Envy's knowledge of his name. At the time his focus had been primarily on the demonstration. His focus flickered for just a second as he processed Envy's question. He indeed hadn't seen a gem in the child, but it could speak so surely it had one somewhere. From the sound of it though it seemed like it knew about it and that it was a sore subject. Could that have been part of the issue it faced? Just as he was about to voice his suspicion about the child's disease element they spoke up to Li. Her reply had come uneasily, she obviously didn't like the kind of magic that was going on. Perhaps it had been mean of Amras to use this type of magic as a demonstration- from Li's burns and the shape of her gem there was a high chance that it was the one they feared. Nevertheless he had to make sure the child knew that magic that seemed to only exist to destroy could also bring light and warmth and comfort with it. Just as he contemplated this something changed with the child. Its coloration shifted drastically, taking on a much lighter hue. This was no trick of the light, at least as far as he could tell, and he'd never even heard of a disease that could cause such rapid change in coloration. No, this child was something different... the primal element perhaps? That element had a lot more basis in the physical form, so it could still explain some of the sickliness but not as readily as the disease element would have. "Amazing." the gryphon softly exclaimed as Envy declined transferring to shore and curled up more in apparent defeat. "I imagine not many gembound can claim such solid success right after hearing about it." Okay, so perhaps he had no actual basis for such a claim, but he'd never learned magic from another. he'd kinda... stumbled into it by accident. But envy probably couldn't see themselves very well, and especially not in the soft light that the flame gave off. "Give me a second, I'll see if I can get a better light here." he added with some excitement as the magic that powered their flame was dissipated and they were placed in darkness again, lit only slightly by the light from the building a ways back. The gryphon placed three fingers on his right hand together as though holding something and bent down again to strike the ground. Energy gathered and twisted into light and flew into the ground. Unfortunately, the energy built up a bit too much and intensified into the fire element again, causing a wide net of small flaming runes to spring out of the ground below them, delivering burns to Amras's paws as he stood there. It was a good thing Envy had sulked and was still safe in the gryphon's hand it seemed! "Ahh! Misfire." Amras exclaimed as he hotfooted into the stream, keeping envy safe in hand and out of the water's way. Fortunately, the pattern painter spell was NOT meant for such a usage and the fiery runes it had pained on the ground did not ignite anything else, dying off quickly in a matter of seconds. As adrenaline faded a deep and hearty laugh started to emerge from the great gryphon's chest, sitting now in the middle of a stream with water flowing past the border between fur and downy feathers and a baby weasel in hand. "Woo, you awake there Envy? As I said, magic is like a wild animal and can sometimes try to jump up and bite you if you aren't careful. Give me a second and I'll see if I can do it right next time." Pouch 1: Black talc stones x7 (medium) Pouch 2: Charcoal dust 50 in3 Pouch 3: Quartz sphere x1 (large, soft glow) Pouch 4: Charcoal chunks x7 (medium) Take hold of the power within "And shape the fabric of reality around you" tags: @Envy @Aaliyah notes: None

Envy
You sink your teeth into the people you depend on
Infecting everyone, you're quite the problem


"Why, mamma?" Envy asked curiously. "If I could do magic, I'd use it all the time! that's right!" It was only now that the small one seemed to notice the burbling stream flowing far beneath them, and realized that in a few short moments they had reached their destination. The weasel had been so transfixed by the concept of magic, that they hadn't even noticed, but now thirst truly clawed at them and they peered eagerly over the edge of Amras' palm.

Hearing the reactions of the adult gembounds caused Envy to sit up straight in surprise, their whiskers stiffening with joy and surprise as they did so. "I... I did? and... There aren't?" Their pointed fangs showed in a toothy grin and the small weasel seemed to bask in the praise, examining their pale paws for any sign of the praise they were describing. In the dark, they couldn't see much, and soon gave up trying, instead leaning out and looking towards the water. It was then that the view was suddenly obscured by what was, to Envy, an enormous wall of flames beneath them.

Amras' sudden movement caused them to let out a shrill squeal, clinging for their life with claws hooked onto their scales. Their fur fluffed out and their pupils contracted to slits full of fear for an instant before they clamped them shut. With the blood pounding in their ears, they clung and waited until the feeling of motion had passed, to be replaced instead by a familiar feeling of nausea. They swayed as they waited for the feeling to pass, and when it had their eyes snapped open.

They seemed to think that Amras was laughing at them, and fear gave way to rage. "It's not funny!" they yelled angrily, fur bristling and body curling as they unhooked their claws, rounded ears flattening against their head. "Stop laughing! That was horrible!" Their voice broke into angry sobbing. They perched themselves on the edge of their paw, the distance to the water below causing their stomach to drop, and wailed into the dark. "MAMMA!"

---

"Speech."
"Thoughts."

@Aaliyah @Amras

Envy
You sink your teeth into the people you depend on
Infecting everyone, you're quite the problem


Unbeknownst to Envy, as they sat and wailed off into the dark, the sudden surge in adrenaline and anger had subconsciously caused something to break. The gem burned, itched and prickled in the back of their throat, and the floodgates opened to a surge of magic that flowed and shuddered through them.

Suddenly, the power and means was in their grasp, no longer a formless fog but something tangeable that they could capture and hold firm.

It was as though the magic had spoken to them directly, whispering in their ear a long-kept secret. Suddenly they felt as though everything clicked- a world's worth of magic lay at the tips of their claws, ripe for their picking.

Envy opened their jaws for a moment of reprieve and a deep breath. They coughed, the irritation in their gem causing them to try and eject it, but as they did so, a thick, black mist rolled out between their jaws. Envy's crying stopped almost instantaneously, shocked lilac eyes peering out from behind the smoke, which grew to shroud them. Their eyes glowed, shining out of the mist, bright and round.

Soon, they appeared as nothing more than a frightened pair of eyes and a ball of pitch-black smoke rolling off of Amras' palm.

"Wh-what's going on?"

---

"Speech."
"Thoughts."

Li frowned. "Magic can be dangerous. You have to know how to use it, and...it can bring more harm than good." She wouldn't go too into detail, Envy didn't need that. But she still had to warn them of what could happen if they weren't careful. She turned her attention back to Amras as the flame eventually died off, and she relaxed, if only slightly. It was dark, but it was still better than having the flame.

That relief, however, quickly dissipated when the gryphon held three fingers into the ground, only to cause flames to flare up. She stood there, frozen, eyes wide, until the flames died off and she breathed a sigh of relief, quickly turning to the stream where Amras and Envy now were. She frowned as Amras laughed, but said nothing, until Envy started yelling. She quickly rushed over into the water, only to stop as thick, black smoke began to roll out of their mouth.

They stopped short, suddenly unsure. It reminded her a lot of the smoke that used to roll off Imperia in waves whenever they used magic, and it took every bit of self control within her to not cower or flee. Carefully, she nosed around Envy until she found their scruff, and picked him up and away from the water and the gryphon. She didn't exactly trust the creature to hold the weasel anymore, not after he used fire twice. The second time wasn't intentional, she knew that, but between all the fire and now the fog, she wasn't thinking clearly. She held onto Envy and waded out of the water, now setting him down close to the edge, but not too close.

"Speech looks like this."
"Thoughts looks like this."

tags: @Amras @Envy
notes: here