Ever since he'd been designated as a guardian of some of the smaller members of their family group by Dragon, Ghanyarah had it in his head that he had to be a protector, and that he must have been as powerful as the imprisoned king that the doe had talked about in her story. Obviously, the imprisoned king was him - and he had to admit, he liked the idea of being in such a position of power (sans being imprisoned). Being a guardian may just give him that authority - being the one in control, able to fight and defend and dictate the actions of those below him. Not to mention that Ghanyarah already wore a pretty high rank, it was easy to see how the komodo dragon could let it all get to his head. It wasn't as if he was going to overthrow Dragon - in fact, Ghanyarah had little idea of what being a 'king' really meant. All he knew was that he controlled the Claw faction of their group, and that made him powerful, like a king.

But he couldn't truly be powerful unless he mastered his magic, and could be strong enough to defeat anybody that threatened his groupmates. That was why the komodo dragon found himself here, in the tunnel that connected Cetus with the rest of the world. The tunnel covered in slick ice that made it difficult for him to move - terrain that he was not accustomed to, and yet... he felt at home in the cold. It held him back only because it slowed him down, but Ghanyarah was intent on overcoming this. He'd since discovered his affinity for the ice. He had to become one with it. He had to control it.

Lingering near the entrance of the tunnel, he glanced back into Cetus then huffed, a cloud of translucent mist curling up from his nostrils. Ghanyarah plunged into the tunnel, only stopping once he was deep enough in it that the cold began to permeate his thick hide. There, he hunkered down and closed his eyes, as if he was going to meditate - no, no such peace could reach the lizard. Instead, it was concentration. Reaching out to the cold that encased him. The wind that breathed around him. The frigid moisture that clung to him. He had to make it is.

Post-Roll Edit:
After a few minutes, he had managed to get a grip on the cool temperature. He could feel himself immersing himself in the cold, snaring a connection with it. It touched his skin and seeped into his body, but once he could control it, he pushed it away. He pushed the cold away until it lingered just at his skin, and there it gathered in glistening frost crystals. Instead of cooling his body, he wore it like armor - scales of ice that jutted out from his hide, protective and offensive all the same. Ghanyarah opened his eyes and raised himself off the ground by extending his legs, swinging his head to examine his sweet new garb.

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Dragon huffed as he made his way into the tunnel. He hated this place. Hated it. He hated ice, hated how it slowed him, made him sluggish. He hated how it bit at his feet and belly, making him stand high upright and try fruitlessly to lift his tail off the ground.

Ghanyarah, though, was already calling his magic, bright-eyed and intent, and Dragon watched, his interest combatting his irritation. The ice coiled with icy smoke, his lizard comrade suddenly frosting, like leaves in winter. Moments later the frost condensed, thickening, crystallizing into what almost looked like shining scales.

Dragon grumbled, and turned.

"All right, then. I'm going to melt some more for you to use, brother. It'll give us both practice--like you said."

With another irritable, huffing hiss, he inhaled. And now he felt what Ghanyarah must have felt, he thought: a vague, fierce tenacity, a joy, as his magic swelled within him. Unlike the ice that lay all around, and unlike Ghanyarah's magic, which he seemed to gather from the tunnel, Dragon's fire lived within him. When he opened his jaws and flared his nostrils, inhaling deeply, the cold air seared his lungs--and went beyond, feeding the fire that lay banked and simmering in his gullet, the faint glow like coals flaring up deep in his maw.

He did his best to call on it, to draw the fire together within him and expel it out. To show the ice who was boss, to dominate the cold with his own, blistering heat.

Maybe I could melt this whole damn tunnel. It'd be nice if it were a swamp, like home.. Or fire. All fire.

Instead of melting the cave, instead of even melting the tiniest lick of ice, Dragon coughed on the cold air. A tiny tongue of fire was all that escaped him before he was distracted, the magic faltering, and he grumbled again.

"Did it have to be here?" he complained. "I don't know how you can stand this place."

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@Ghanyarah

Now this was a nice change - his hide didn't look dull grey like it usually did. The ice added a selection of gleaming, clear sparkles to his skin, not to mention the thick protective surface too. He wondered how effective it would be in battle. The komodo dragon tried to move his appendages, gauging his mobility - each time he took a step, more of the ice crackled and seemed to fall off of him. He'd have to be constantly aware of his magic if he wanted to use it like armor. Or maybe he just had to solidify it better, allow more openings and some give to his skin beneath the armor. He was distracted by the alligator, who had accompanied him into this tunnel for training - his grumbly voice rang out, clear that he didn't appreciate the cold or the snow as much as Ghanyarah.

The dragon huffed and drew his lips back in a chuckle. "Yes." He confirmed with a nod. If Dragon could melt the ice, then Ghanyarah could practice solidifying it again; he could also manipulate the liquid water if his ice magic failed. Either way, it would be excellent practice for the both of them. He looked to Dragon and stepped back, watching the alligator suck in a heavy breath of air - only to sputter and choke on the coldness, failing in his first bid to cast fire into the icy tunnel.

Well. That was no good. Ghanyarah analyzed the alligator for a moment, then hissed a reptilian laugh in response. "It's my element." He answered simply, in the truest sense of the word. The cold was where Ghanyarah felt most at home, even if it did affect his metabolism in a rather inconvenient way - but that was just another obstacle to overcome in his training. He focused once again on his magic, reaching out to the coldness biting in the air.

Post-Roll Edit:
He felt the pull on the moisture and attempted to draw it out in front of him, compacting it into a glistening pile - before long, the moisture began to freeze into a pile of snow between himself and Dragon. The pile was a little jagged, and Ghanyarah fixated on the snow pile, trying to influence it to grow into a certain shape. The first shape that came to find was a small, slender noodle-shaped Gembound - that annoying weasel that had stepped in between Temoria and he. What was her name again - Diamondfang? He finally released his hold on the moisture, stepping back. "Try not to focus on the cold in your lungs." He suggested, but really Ghanyarah had no idea of how to control fire. His specialty was water, which was cold and fluid - he could only imagine that fire, being its opposite, would require attention on the hot and intangible.

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The heavy-bodied alligator watched as the more athletic komodo dragon created a snow--... Weasel? Thing. Dragon tilted and turned his head, peering at it with first one eye, then the other. Then he peered at Ghanyarah--but his brother was bright-eyed, confident, and didn't explain exactly what the hell this thing was.

"That's impressive. Whatever it is. I didn't know you had that much control over your magic. And believe me, if I could ignore this cold, I would," he grumbled, again irritable.

Dragon shook the thoughts away, tried to ignore the cold, and his own doubts about Ghanyarah's advice. This time when he sucked in air, he held it, wincing to suppress just coughing it all back out again. It burned, and he didn't have the metabolic warmth to really change that, but at least he could get used to it, to feed his fire before attempting to grow and unleash it. Maybe that was the trick? If not, he'd have to think of something else.

If only I could set all of this on fire, before trying to set it on fire, he thought wryly.

Then it was time to focus. The alligator turned his body so he wouldn't hit Ghanyarah with his flames, and faced the strange snow-weasel and all the thick ice beyond and beneath, calculating. He'd try to belch out enough lashing heat to melt a layer of it all, and maybe the snow-thing too.

The alligator held his deep breath, then opened his jaws, eyes unfocused and cold forgotten as he concentrated on unleashing a torrent of flame.

When it came, it wasn't quite as big as he'd have liked, but he was satisfied merely by the ripping pain of heat searing his jaws--he'd used fire plenty, and built up both a tolerance to the pain and the scarred flesh necessary to continue on with it. But the pain was still there, still an indication that he'd succeeded.

The fire roared from his gullet and out of his maw; he didn't fully melt the snowman, but it became grotesquely distorted, dripping and misshapen. The fire billowed out over the ice below, and though it didn't last particularly long and only reached a few feet, it still soon had streams of water running down the slope.

Satisfied, the alligator turned, biting down into an icy outcrop nearby, crunching it away with a loud crack. Then he turned back to Ghanyarah, rather satisfied with himself--but clutching ice in his burned jaws nonetheless.

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@Ghanyarah

Ghanyarah was very much a victim of his pride, but when Dragon had admitted he didn't realize that Ghanyarah had such control over his magic, he felt a rather modest swell of self esteem. It had been a long time since he first met the alligator - back then, he could remember trying to use his ice magic to make a set of frills resembling what he thought Aquarian's would look like. That spell had backfired horrendously, ending up in the two of them plunging into the water and Ghanyarah struggling to surface again before he drowned. But that was a long time ago - Ghanyarah had certainly improved since then. Dragon definitely had too, although Ghanyarah didn't get the chance to see the alligator's magic very often.

He sat back and gave the alligator space to handle the little snow creature he'd made. It was crude and hardly distinguishable as any beast that roamed the caves, but Ghanyarah still felt a sense of pleasure as he watched the alligator spit out a stream of hot flames, severely disfiguring the snow-Diamondfang. His tail twitched and swayed in the snow behind him, observing the fire as it swept from his massive jaws, licking the ice and casting it into cold liquid before the fire was exhausted and Dragon turned, cooling his burning mouth in the snow. "Does it hurt when you do that?" Ghanyarah asked curiously, tilting his head slightly. It only really hurt Ghanyarah when his magic went awry, and even then, sometimes he just accidentally wicked too much moisture from his body or froze himself. He could recover from that no problem. But burning one's self? That must be painful.

The komodo dragon took a few steps closer and focused on the snowman again. Maybe he could reshape it into something else for the alligator to melt... Focusing, he attempted again to call forth his icy magic.

Post-Roll Edit:
Sure enough, he summoned the cold all around them and solidified the melting water. He'd only been able to freeze the snowman over instead of building it up, resulting in a pile of snow that had glossed over with slick ice, no longer in the shape of a weasel snowman - rather, just a mangled pile of ice. "Hey, maybe if we work together, we can make... mist or something. I tried to once or twice, but it didn't really work." He said evenly, frowning slightly. Maybe he'd need the help of fire to boil water into steam, that would definitely make the mist easier to manipulate. Ghanyarah moved away once more, leaving room for Dragon to massacre the snowman if he so chose, but he kept a closer eye on it this time and prepared himself to try and mist-ify the melting snow if he could.

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@Dragon

Dragon nodded for a moment, then finally spat out the melted water--a bit of steam coiling up from his jaws.

"Hurts like hell," he agreed cheerily. "First time I did it I was in the marsh, thankfully. Pushed my face underwater, fixed it, but it burns. Hurts. Swallowed dead skin for a week. Hurts less, now--but still hurts."

The alligator looked around, huffing to himself in thought.

"I got a better way. I'm cold. Gonna just heat my feet up, move around a little, leave water behind. Hold on."

He froze--metaphorically--and half-closed his eyes, focusing hard. He willed the warmth deep inside him to flow outward, to fill his feet, his tail, even his belly, a little, so that his extremities would give off blistering heat--and melt the snow and ice beneath him.

A moment later he was tromping around, steam hissing up from underfoot, his clawed feet slipping and sliding around as water pooled and trickled away from his every step.

Dragon opened his jaws in an alligator grin, glancing to Ghanyarah with joy in his gaze. He looked rather pleased with himself--not proud, exactly, just... happy to be making fire. Or, at least, heat.

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@Ghanyarah

Ghanyarah grimaced at the alligator's answer. He couldn't imagine that hurting himself every time he used magic would be pleasant at all, especially what he said about swallowing dead skin. The skin inside of his mouth must be extremely tough and resilient by this point; the komodo dragon ran his tongue along the back side of his pointed teeth, across his gums and the roof of his mouth, relishing the lack of pain. In the mean time, the alligator decided to take a different approach to their training. He stepped back again and watched him slowly generate a cloud of steam from his body, stomping around through the snow and ice, melting it into crystal puddles of water below. Ghanyarah arched his brows, observing the translucent steam coil up around his body and dissipate into the air.

This would be his chance to try and turn it into mist... He caught sight of the alligator's delightful look, and he couldn't help but produce a smile in response, though it was somewhat of a foreign feeling. Ghanyarah rarely smiled - sincerely, at least. It made him feel good to see his brother happy, even if the feeling was partially because Ghanyarah attributed his happiness to the komodo's own assistance. In like, a roundabout kind of way. Somehow. Somehow. He was terribly arrogant that way.

Shifting his attention back to the steam, he focused and tried to get a hold on the sprawling water vapor. He reached out and he could feel the heat of the steam, he could feel it lose its temperature to the surrounding cold atmosphere and slowly vanish, but that was okay - he pulled it back in and soon a cloud of mist began to appear just above the two reptiles. Ghanyarah's expression hardened as he pulled on the mist, expanding it as it absorbed even more moisture from the melt and the snow around them until finally, that section of the tunnel was immersed in damp mist. It was at its thickest immediately surrounding the komodo dragon, who cackled in his success. "Look at that! We make the perfect team." He purred, shaking his head and dispelling the mist from his hide while it continued to linger in the air around them.

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@Dragon

Dragon seemed to grin even further--if even alligators could grin--at Ghanyarah's exclamation. He turned, long, thick tail swishing over the ice, and drew closer to his brother, tilting his head back to look at the mist.

It was thick, drifting and sparkling in the light of the tunnel's orbs, like a thousand thousand droplets of water--or perhaps crystals of frost--sifting down and over them. It was, for lack of a better word (or, rather, one more fitting for the alligator's practical mind), beautiful.

Two can play at that game, Dragon thought, mischief taking hold. But first, he wanted to address the fog itself, his brother's impressive magic.

He turned to glance at his brother, chuckling, his voice a deep and reverberating rumble.

"That would hide us very well in the marshes. Remind me to remember it, if we ever need to hide. Imagine if an enemy came for us, searching along the water's edge, expecting us to be just beneath--except--"

SNAP!

Dragon lunged upward, snapping his jaws powerfully shut with a very loud clap of sound, then burst into rumbling laughter once more.

"Except we were behind them, all along. In the fog. In your fog!" It didn't really occur to him that nobody would look for Ghanyarah underwater; Dragon hunted, most of the time, by laying in wait and ambushing from beneath the surface of the marsh. Aquarian lived underwater too, and Ghanyarah's magic seemed to toy with water and ice, so it seemed only natural to him to assume that this, too, was how his brother hunted.

Dragon turned, then, and decided to add his magic to Ghanyarah's. To show just what an impressive team they could be, together, if they tried. If they ever needed to.

He focused, perched just beneath the thickest point in the mist; the heat had long-since dissipated from his extremities, but if he focused, he knew he could draw it back into his hide, into his thick scutes. Sure, it'd burn away some surface skin, but a little scorching hardly bothered him anymore.

With all this magic use he began to grow tired, so the spell wasn't quite as potent as he'd hoped, but it still worked; a moment after his focus began, the hide of his back and neck, and the spiky ridges of his tail, began to overheat.

The odor of burning flesh came first, and then a faint sizzling. Soon, almost imperceptibly at first, smoke began to rise from Dragon's skin.

Soon it was billowing, and the alligator had to press himself down, panting for breath and squeezing his eyes shut at the pain. The thrill of triumph was enough, though, to push past it--the grim joy in knowing that the plumes of black smoke were rising, rising and twisting and joining with Ghanyarah's mist to form a swirling, hot-and-cold vortex of thick, shrouding air around the both of them.

Well. Maybe it wasn't as pretty as his brother's magic, and maybe it wouldn't pass for the thick mists of Cetus, but it was sure as hell a deterrent in its own way.

And, well, hella cool.

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@Ghanyarah

The reptile gazed over at his brother through the faint, shimmering mists, curious sunset eyes eager to know if his show of expertise had pleased the alligator. He listened, a slow smirk beginning to crawl upon his lips as Dragon delivered a scenario, then lunged forward with a snap of his powerful jaws, the sound exploding into the air and traveling through the tunnel. Ghanyarah's limbs stiffened, and his tail twitched excitedly while his grin broadened. "They'd be dead meat!" Ghanyarah laughed, envisioning it now. The two of them lurking, not in the water, but in the rolling fog all around Cetus. Waiting, watching as their quarry searched for them along the murk. They'd be fools to think they would have such an obvious hiding place.

He fell silent again, acknowledging with a nod as Dragon started to ignite his hide to add to their cover. Below long, the raunchy scent of burning skin began to fill the air accompanied by billowing smoke, thick and dark. The hot, charring smoke intermingled with the cool mist, dancing and swirling about itself in a blanket of mild haze that looked to glitter, both translucent and solid, a vapor lying atop fronds of burnt air. Ghanyarah stepped back and watched the two elements in their near flawless cohesion before looking back down at Dragon, grinning stupidly wide. "Perfect." He rumbled. "If we can make it thick enough, nobody would be able to see us, or even smell us." The lizard added thoughtfully. They'd be hidden well enough behind the stench of burning hide.

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Dragon bellowed his laughter, tail sweeping to and fro across the ice.

"I suppose they'd suspect something when they realized they couldn't see."

He glanced around, briefly, wondering what more they could do. They'd tested their magic, and now it was a bit pointless to just... keep doing it. Finally he glanced back to Ghanyarah, a bright glint in his eyes.

"What do you say we have a little friendly sparring? A tussle, a... mock-fight? To test ourselves. Perhaps we will learn a thing or two!" he chuckled again.

He seemed good-natured, in a good mood--and raring to go, even surrounded, as they were, by ice.

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@Ghanyarah