It is on the verge of collapsing, having finally struggled all its way back to the shade of the tunnel. He rasps horsely, "Did we do it?" There's no way for him to tell, blinded and lost.

He sways, tired joints about to give out. Likely, without the Merchant's decisive magic, he would've crumpled anyway. Even so, it falls over in a heap, bloodied feathers being claimed by its suglite.

The sleep is welcome.

Exit Reverend

I made it.

It's a simple thought, quiet. But it's triumphant at the same time. He did it. He conquered Hydra.

Spinnaker takes a deep breath, finally clearing his lungs of the toxins and the dust. Stretching his tattered wings, he opens his beak to cry out in victory - but the Merchant gets to him first. He tumbles down, knocked into a deep, dreamless slumber.

The celebration can come another day.

Exit Spinnaker

Kaizer's originally steady footfalls had become ragged and disoriented, as his fur caked with salt and sand. But the shade is right there, and he staggers into the shadows of the tunnel. Only then does it sigh in relief, sitting down in the sand.

He can breathe, for once...

"I hope we made you proud," he says, looking up to the Merchant and Vargas, eyes exhausted but hopeful. And when the Merchant strokes the top of its head, jolting him with the magic, he tries not to cry out. Soon enough, the trance overtakes him, and Kaizer falls away, melting into his stone and into sleep.

Exit Kaizer

Despite the offer he had made, he felt no one clamber aboard his back. At this point, he might even have welcomed it, simply for the shade it would have offered.

He turned his head as he trudged wearily to the end, kicking up scuffs of salt... and saw that several had fallen. It was too late to turn back to help them-... it had always, he suspected, been too late. He'd been too far, and had not seen them past the glare of the orb-light as he'd moved past them. Only now--in the distance, in the shadow of the hunters far behind them--did he see that they had fallen.

And now... died.

He set his jaw grimly. It was nothing he could help, now, but he said a sort of quiet prayer to them in his mind nonetheless. Find peace. If even they still existed, somehow, somewhere. As for the rest of them... at least Hydra would be safe, now, for strangers. Though he held no illusions about what level of "safe" Hydra would ever truly be.

When he reached the shade of Tunnel P, he very nearly collapsed. Instead, he allowed himself a slow drop to his knees, and then a roll to lay on his side, sweat-slicked dusty hide heaving with heavy breaths. Warrior remained laying there, upright and awake but exhausted, ears rotating to listen for the arrival of the Merchant he knew would soon be coming, turning to look around him and see who had made it... and who had not. He remembered the pain of the chrysalis--knew it would come any moment. And when the Merchant reached for him, he flinched, a little.

And then--nothing.

Sleep.

exit Warrior (he will be taking the Sandworm's vibration-sense ability, and Star's wings... y'know, as a memorial)

- IVORY-

She did her best to stay near Captain, to offer him a shoulder, but he didn't seem to need it. And soon enough, she had her own survival to worry about. It still wasn't terrible; it seemed some part of her held the ability to survive, as even a massively hefty creature, in a desert environment. (Ivory knew nothing of her heritage; she wouldn't have recognized or even known the names of such creatures as thorny devils, addax or rhinoceroses.)

Like Warrior, she lay down once in the tunnel mouth--but rather than simply collapsing there, she edged off to one side and stood chewing her cud for a few minutes first. She hadn't really noticed the other dead. Instead, a peaceful and only somewhat troubled gaze took in the arrival of all the rest--before and after her--and eventually she lay down to wait for the 'end.'

It didn't take long. The sweeping stride of Vargas was followed by the ominous shuffle of the Masked Merchant; a touch, a blast of pain, and her gemstone was spreading from her skull to claim her.

It was a spike of agony, yes, but also blessed relief. Rest, at last.

exit Ivory (taking the general poison/toxin resistance of the Quill Mouse, and Ruby Beta's toxic spikes)

As it turned out, Fleas wasn't the only one to shoot out ahead of him.

Wisperia, too, scampered off forward, and Corsair blinked to see the surprising speed at which such a strange animal could move. She didn't look like a desert creature; she was, instead, something alien and strange. Purple. But that pink eye was staring back--or was it up?--as she ran, so he shouted encouragement nonetheless.

"GOOD JOB, WEIRDO!" he squawked, but he had barely a voice left past his parching thirst, and it came out like more of a rasp.

Oh, well.

The heat was brutal on his black feathers, so much so that by the time he shot into Tunnel P--third in line, so far as he could tell--he was overheating. A crushing headache was pressing down on his skull, and he could barely think straight. He was, he realized, seeing double: the tunnel ahead looked all sorts of wrong.

He landed, stumbled, then forced himself upright, waddling with dragging wings as he looked about for any source of water.

There wasn't any, and he jammed himself half into a shaded nook, beak parted and black tongue panting, right up until the point the Merchant came back.

"What's our rew-" he asked, or tried to, remembering the rewards they had been promised. But before he could get the sentence out, those terrible hole-like eyes had fallen upon him, a sweeping hand had reached out, and he was falling away into his coral stone.

exit Corsair (still deciding)

It was like the light at the end of the tunnel but reversed. Tunnel P came into view, and soon it was the only thing in her view, the other gembounds left behind in her wake. The eye at the back of her head noted a jackal and a strange bird that would take second and third place. It was starting to hit her now that she had won. Out of everyone here, she had been the victor. Wisperia stayed towards the edge of the tunnel, waiting for the rest of the gembounds to arrive before Vargas made an announcement. Her toes were sensitive, chafed raw by the hot sands. It was hard to focus through the pain.

She noticed the glance she had gotten from Vargas. The Chaos Forge was something she had not heard of, though it did capture her interest. Hmm... perhaps she could join? But she did not have a chance to think too deeply about it before a wave of the hand sent her to her chrysalis.

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

[Depressing ass post]

More fell in the salt flats, the sheer amount of effort tacking its toll. Whistle passed the limp forms - the bustard, the civet. Fuck. She couldn't stop. She knew she'd collapse amongst them if she did - absorbed into the desert itself, bones scraped clean of meat. Eaten.

She crumpled beneath the shade of tunnel, spent. Her head thrummed with heat, her feathers fluffed and scattered, caked with mud and sand. Her wing still hurt, the fracture within its fragile bones clean. She couldn't think of what would come next - maybe she didn't want to. Maybe the ones they'd left to burn amidst the dust were the lucky ones. She thought back to the whooping cries of the gembound in front as they fell to earth like a fluffier, noisier Icarus. Had he been happy in his delusion?

Thank the caves her thoughts of him were limited to her knowledge. Thank god she didn't have to grieve family while the light scorched her sanity from her. She had time. She had time. They didn't, she did.

She had won.

Was that what winning meant?

She didn't want to win anymore. She wanted to sleep.

A shadow swept over her and heeded her wish. Her muscles eased as the blue, like a false sky, swallowed her. She was spared of further thought.

Exhaustion pulled at his final steps, dragged on his eyelids, weighed his shoulders down. He was done. He barely registered the tunnel in front of him - he could've curled up anywhere. He was beyond caring.

He had some spirit in him left for the approach of the Merchant, though - limited to a grunt and a flick of a claw, apparently displeased with the creature. Not enough to fight back, but little could now that the trial was done. His tiger eye swept over him, and he was allowed rest.

Despite her bitterness, boiling underneath like good pot of stew - with oil for taste, of course - She accepted her reward graciously, still panting from the effort it'd taken her. The little cat approached the Merchant and the Overseer, her tail a flagpole and her gaze easy, saccharine.

Perhaps it hadn't won in the literal sense, but with the appreciative glance it stole from Vargas, it knew it was a winner in his heart. Maybe that's all it needed - recognition [from a much higher power, preferably]. it mrrrrped its gratitude, settling into a purr as the shadow of the Merchant approached.

She wasn't the first in line, and thus understood the fate that awaited her. Her false eyes spread across the real, and she drifted into her glittering sleep without complaint. She would wake again, and she would wake superior.