Numb was good...she was healing him...such a pure love she held for him. He forgave him and all that he had done in panic and haphazard thought. He loved his sweet Clover so, so much. "Th-thank you..." Exhaling softly he thought on the matter, Clover was so gifted. A loving soul, the ability to control wondrous light. The talent to tell fabulous stories, and now healing? She was perfect, not that she wasn't perfect before.

Some time had passed and he wanted to tell her everything, still nervous about what he had done. Even thought she had forgiven him. "It...was an accident Clover. All of this..." He spoke calmly, able to breathe much easier now that the thick plasma had been absorbed. "When I, heard you died I cried...so hard I cried till my throat went raw...I just remembering running and crying...I didn't see him Clover; honest I didn't..."


"Speech"

"Thought"

@Cayenne

Cayenne frowned. The name was familiar.....Clover...where did she hear that name before? She prepared to use her magic again, this time to use it on his broken tail, and she moved over to his far end slowly, feeling tired and stiff, and then as she got up, the name clicked. Clover. The kind-hearted white doe she'd met when she was healing Vazi.

She stopped.
Clover was dead?!

She looked back at the jaguar, utterly horrified. This jaguar had been looking for her and then got the news that she died and had run straight into trouble...how heart-breaking.

She turned her head forcefully away from the jaguar, her face tight in regret and worry. She didn't even know the deer had died...she was usually so excellent in finding gems right as they needed her, and she had no clue Clover was even in trouble. Maybe...it was sudden.

She hoped so. Such a gentle doe didn't deserve to suffer.

She focused all her attention onto his tail, this time letting her tiny plant growth pierce the thin skin of his tail and wrap around the broken bone, reinforcing it and weaving tightly over it so that it could heal. Then she broke off the outside tendrils, letting them fall and wither away.

She would obviously have to come back and remove the plants before they rotted under the skin and muscle, but she would think about that later.

She listened in silence, but her appearance did not falter. That forgiving smile she spared him was still there. Weight slowly lifting from his shoulders he could already live with himself so much easier...but he had so much more to tell her...but through trial and reason she would forgive him; she was his one and only jewel after all.

"W-when I ran and fell over him...his name was..." Scrunching his face up he attempted to recall that boars name...Zerobog?...czerno...Czernobog...that was the name...of the poor boar whom he attacked in haphazard thought..."Czernobog..." he breathed.

"I-I wasn't thinking he- he came towards me and all the plants they died around us...I didn't mean to attack it jumped from my pelt...I was so afraid...It happened just like before I couldn't control it Clover. I couldn't say sorry cause he was coming to kill me now...I- messed up..."

Voice hitched in throat he had so much more to tell her; yet awaited her love, her punishment. He would gladly accept it all from his Clover.


"Speech"

"Thought"

@Cayenne

She was looking into him with her army, feeling that this was a good start for now, at least, for the first round of healing. There was a lot left to be desired inside him, but at the very least he wasn't dying. The jaguar was talking about who he had run into, and she listened avidly, her little ears perked. She needed to know who it was that did this to him, and when he breathed out the name Czernobog, the name of her friend, everything went cold inside her.

This.
This was the monster that had hurt Bog.
The one with electricity magic.
How had she been so blind? She was just so focused on the fire magic in him that she didn't even see the true affinity he had, the one that hurt Bog over, and over, and over again, till he was suffering seizures and his heart was threatening to stop and he was gored in several places.

Outside, she was as cold as ice, and with a calm voice, she said, "I'll be right back. Don't move, okay? You don't want to hurt yourself."

She moved away a little bit, looking for mushrooms, and she came back relatively quickly, one in hand. She knew this particular mushroom, having tried a little bit herself and purged herself quickly when the delusions and hallucinations and serious paranoia started. She'd seen rats die to this thing, and she hoped if the jaguar swallowed enough of this, he would die.

She had called for the death of the monster who had hurt Bog, and with cold, calculating fury deep within her belly, she would exact his revenge.

( Panther Cap )

Vicktor could only see that loving gaze upon her face. Such a sweet understanding deer, truly sent from the heavens; an angel. She spoke up that she would be right back. Panic set it; what if he couldn't see her? What if she left from his sight and never came back!? Luckily though she wandered just inside his gaze. She was looking for something? Perhaps some more herbs, she was focused on still healing him it seemed.

In no time at all she had returned to his side. Glowing like the merciful angel of health, watching him. He paid no attention to what she gathered; he wouldn't be able to identify it even if he did. Exhaling a sigh he spoke up again.

"After I fought him he let out a scream...rot? and it summoned so many gembounds...a few I knew as friends...and I managed to run before all of them attacked. Eve and Tal'at though...they followed me and stayed with me till I fell asleep...I told them to tell the boar I was so sorry...I didn't mean to...I-I was so afraid! It was a misunderstanding..."

Bone white eyes began to blur. Pupils shaking as he struggled to maintain sight of Clover through misty eyes.

"When I startled awake they were gone. I ran again Clover; I jumped over a bush blind...and Diot was there and Booker...my-our friends both of them don't you remember? I told them to run and that I'll they'll die if they stay...they ended up fighting me and I could do nothing...I-bit Booker? I think...I...everything becoming a blur but...after I was nothing but fire? I-ido nt knwo Clover"

Coherent words began to spiral into incomprehensible whispers. Babbling to her and failing to stifle his sobs.


"Speech"

"Thought"

@Cayenne

She was shivering now as she walked towards him with the poisonous mushrooms in her arms. He was there as she was healing Bog, when everyone was swarming the black coated monster that had been in the ring of death, and she gritted her teeth together.

If she had just turned around and gotten a good look at him, she would've recognized the monster at first glance, and unbridled hatred coursed through her blood and her heart and seized her limbs, stopping her where she stood. She had only seen a glimpse and heard a little sliver of his voice as the monster had ran, and she was so blind to everything but Bog at the time.

She had healed his attacker.

She started to hyperventilate, and she dropped the mushrooms on the snow and fell, her legs and her arms useless, her eyes unseeing of everything but the white of the ground. Her chest was constricting, her back was tight with guilt and horror and grief and hatred.

How had she not known?

Unseeing, she heard the jaguar continue in his broken words of how he had ran and ran into Booker and his son Diot, and she knew them, she had met them before, and had to clench her fingers into her hands to keep from screaming. Every muscle in her seemed to tighten, her blood telling her to get up and kill him and rip his eyes out and command her plants to rise from the cold earth and gouge into his sides and send their roots into his intestines. She'd never felt such fury inside her before, and everything else inside her was blocked and pushed out by the red.

He'd attacked Bog, Booker, Diot, and most likely those two rhino children she'd encountered in Orion, the ones that suffered from lightning and fire burns, their screams fresh inside her head. This was a true monster that she needed to stop.

She picked up the caps one by one, her hands trembling, and she noticed that her hand was leaving blood on the mushrooms, and she opened her gem hand and saw that she had pierced the palm of her hand. She let the pain keep her steady, focusing on it, focusing on the necessity of this cat's death.

Huh! How funny - she thought as she made it to the cat's head. They were cat-siblings, she and he. For once she thought less of her own external ugliness and seethed at this one's internal disgusting appeal. This was someone who hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and had the audacity to cry about it like it wasn't his fault.

He would die for his crimes.

"Here. Eat this." She said, pressing the edge of the mushroom to his lips. "Eat as many as you can, okay? They're magical, and they'll make you feel better."

He watched her; struggling still but calm as her presence was like medicine itself. She was the only one now that he could say had a wonderful rapport with him. Caring, understanding and now even feeding him? He glanced at the mushrooms for only a second before they were pressed to his lips. She exclaimed that eating as many as he could would help. He believed her with every ounce of love still swirling within his being. So he accepted them happily between his teeth.

He wasn't one to eat plants or native mushrooms; but these tasted remarkably pleasant! These had to be some wonderful magic mushrooms! No doubt about it! Though as he ate, he spoke up again; talking through the chewing. Clover never did mind when he would talk and eat; it was a rare occurrence for him to do both at once anyway.

"Clover...do you think Vazi was right? th-that I'm gonna grow into a monster...I-I don't want to be one.."

Waiting for hr answer he continued his slow chewing; making sure each and every mushroom would be thoroughly digested. But he couldn't help but notice his vision wavering...and the slow churn of the contents in his stomach.



"Speech"

"Thought"

@Cayenne

When she had eaten just one of these mushrooms, she had experienced such powerful hallucinations that she had tried to immediately thrown them up and was dizzy for days afterwards. The monster had eaten six of them, one by one, till she had nothing more to give him. She watched his eyes waver and slide shut, and she stepped back, her hands falling to her sides.

She felt still now, the last words of his sinking into her mind, and the weight of what she had done slowly fell on her like snowfall, at first, light and delicate, till it piled on her like a mountain, her body weighing as heavy as a stone.

She couldn't watch this, she couldn't see him die.

"It's too late," She whispered.

So she turned around and left, her feet crunching in the snow without a word to him, and as she left, she felt his attention on her back like a hundred needles prickling against her skin, waiting for his Clover to come back.

She wasn't coming back. And neither was he.

He didn't want to be a monster. And neither did Cayenne. Regardless, they both were, now. But at least one of them wouldn't be around for very much longer.

[exit Cayenne]

He waited for her. For those love enmeshed words, for her to say he wasn't a monster. Yet they never came. Time seemed to slow; vision going out like dead pixels in a monitor. He watched his loving doe's glance harden into a set line. Her exterior fading into a solemn gray. What was wrong? What was happening!? He struggled to see her before him. Reality melting down and trailing towards him, every color blending into one solemn shade of black. Eyes unwillingly shutting, though he hadn't even noticed such movement.

But he was so tired now...so so tired...

Mind spinning he felt his gut retch. The contents of his stomach crawling up his throat. Struggling to choke them back down he called out for her again. Voice hoarse and wavering as outstretched claws gripped the ground, as if the spinning would hurl him across the caves. Only now she responded, soft words.

"It's too late"

Even just a whisper they rang out like a nauseating bell tone. Rattling against his skull as he struggled to open his eyes. Barely able to make out her soft glow through the melting forms. She was leaving!? No, no no NO! Why was she leaving!? Didn't she love him!? Hadn't she accepted his apologies just moments before!?

"C-Clover please! Please don't go! I-I love you so! I'm-i'm sorry!"


"Speech"

"Thought"

He attempted to crawl; only managing to dry heave under the exertion. He watched her, barely. Grey fading form spiraling into the colors as a final goodbye. He screamed for her, halfway through her name crying out sobbing; blinded. Babbling incomprehensible words as he heaved again. Bile rushing up his throat and across the floor before him. Blood riddled within the heaping pool of liquid.

Screams, each one exerting a struggled breath out with such force he was only greeted with bile. Eyes red and flooding as he could barely make sense of what he saw. Melting abstract forms smiling and laughing at him. Crying out mocking his need for her. His love, his growing obsession with finding and staying at her side.

He was so close; she had loved him, they had found each other! Yet she was walking away!? Melting into his dying world. Every color of her walking form had trailed back to him. Pooling around his lame body with everything else.

He could feel it all now, struggling to stand yet another wave had him heave up. Hard and heavy; thick black blood splattering across his legs. Mixing with the assorted bile he had spewed before. Stomach hot and pained; needles stabbing through his organs. Trailing the course of the mushrooms and spreading like a deadly viral disease.

The fickle thought of death flashed across him. What if he was dying? What if she was still there, yet he was descending into the abyss for his own crimes. She may had forgiven him, yet did he deserve such a blessing?

If he was to die now he only wished it was as everything else. Melting into the array of colors; enmeshing with all, especially his darling Clover. For they would have lived and died as one.


"Speech"

"Thought"