"This cave is where I was born, you know? I stumbled from my rock here. Gosh, I was terrified! It all seems so silly now--especially since I have you all, wouldnt you agree?" Edeltraud said. She'd spent most of the journey from Monoceros talking, yet she wasn't winded. Somehow. The excitement from the prospect of using her new magic seemed to have kept her going.

At last Edeltraud stopped in a crumbling building, one wide enough to support her and at least five or six other dolls. She had been picky about her new abode, after all she needed to be ready for her collection of dolls to expand! It was only natural to want the best. Edeltraud's eyes roamed the ruins, before she twirled back to face her dolls.

"Now! This seems like a perfect place to practice, yes? Oh, even better, a perfect place to live. We could all fit in here! It could use some tidying, perhaps some lovely herbs or flowers to bring a beautiful scent, or something to cover that hole in the roof, in case rains were to strike. Ah, but I'm getting off track--I need practice! Bly, as I found you first its only natural I bind myself to you first. Oh, its not that I don't like you Freda! It would be rude if I were to ignore Bly's seniority. Now! Let us begin!"

Edeltraud tried once more to focus on the magic of her talisman, directing it into Bly.

Well, no time like the present! Wolf-Rayet had been sneaking around the room since it hatched. It had been mostly quiet, at least since its loud welcome into the caves, so it was surprised to hear another voice.

Ears perking, it trots up to the building Edeltraud has holed herself and her 'friends' into. Peeking around the doorway, purple and silver eyes curiously watch as the sheep talks to the dolls. Rayet stays quiet for now, not wanting to interrupt her business.

image credit: oskenund

@Edeltraud

For a herd animal, Edeltraud was blissfully oblivious to the Culpeo's presense. She was entirely focused on her friends. She frowned at Bly. The magicka was stubborn, refusing to take hold in Bly. Was it that Bly did not want to be her friend...? The thought was met with such an agressive mix of posessiveness and revulsion that Edeltraud had to stomp. Impossible. The spitting bug gave her a blank, white-laced stare. If Bly didn't like her, they would not stare at her so!

"My, this is hard work, dears. I don't think im used to using this kind of magicka yet. I suppose this practice is good. But still...how annoying! I wish to bond with my cherished dolls immediately!" She shook her head, nostrils flaring with a withheld snort. She paused. Sheep eyes staring wide and doe-like at nothing. Edeltraud chuckled.

"My, how unbecoming of me to let me impatience show. I'd endure anything for you two, my beloved little dollsies! Now, lets try again, mm, Bly? Perhaps it'll get you to finally stop eying Freda." She said, chuckling to herself. Edeltraud pulled at her reserves of magicka. The threads of magicka came from her slowly, tentatively. No--not her. The necklace. She felt it reach Bly. The burgeoning connection ws fuzzy--but there was something, some emotion or sensation from the other side. She fed the connection greedily, strengthening it as much as she could.

((Casually ressurects a 5 month old thread i posted in once, will tag rayet once i gm tag to see what a cordyceps'd spitting bug is feeling :) ))

The link shivered into place, magicka reaching, reaching, and... snap. Like the click of a chain clinking into place to bind them both. Edeltraud's consciousness slithered along that ling, and at the other end, found it...

Empty.

There was a being there, yes. But compared to her own vibrant, if atypical, mind--one full of thoughts and emotion--a spider's mind was blank. There was faint hunger, an awareness of its surroundings--if less aware than she'd have been--and the perhaps disturbing mindset of an ambush predator.

By nature, the spider wished to sit in a dark corner, silent and empty--and when it sensed some hint of shivering fur or trembling limb--lunge for the kill. It was savage, in this way, but coldly so, void of violence or bloodlust. It would be an alien mind to a mammalian brain.

There was something else... something trickling in with the first inklings of enhanced consciousness, granted by the sheep. This 'something else' would best be called... distress. Or perhaps simply, stress. As Edeltraud would find its mind foreign, so it did for her: an overwhelming touch of a mind it could not at first comprehend, her complexities so far beyond it as to essentially be the touch of an eldritch being.

Beyond that? It wished to be alone, hiding, in the dark.

It did not wish to be out here, tramping along, exposed, expending its energy unecessarily, ready prey for any larger predator who might happen past. It didn't know why it was here. Some hint told it something was wrong. But it followed nonetheless, broken by the spores, existing in a state of empty, broken distress so distant as to feel more like a far-off echo.

@Edeltraud