The slightly smaller child flashed a grin at Doru, his coal eyes gleaming. "You owe me one," came his answer, but it was clearly teasing: just a joke, and nothing more. His fangs shone past that grin as he started to add something to this, but he was interrupted--eyes shooting to the darkness beside Doru--by another apparition.

There were shadows there, yes--the pit seemed full of them, almost as though the darkness here was a moving, living thing. Yet something coalesced inside them now. Something relatively small, something made of splashes of white beneath that black.

Bez went still, grin sliding into a focused frown, pudgy red hand sweeping out to point at it--to show his sibling this new echo. "A bird," he murmured, realizing, as the shape came into focus. A creature of white, with black wings folded across its back, flesh-toned legs ending in webbed feet; yellow eyes seemed to peer up at them, a red spot shining prominently on its straight, strong, yellow beak. When it spoke, it was with an oddly urban accent, out of place, though Bez found his lips moving in imitation--he liked the way it talked.

'I can't do magic so good. I can scout for ya, ya know? But ehh--there's no...' The gull trailed off, one wing unfolding from his back as if to gesture--and then its colors wisped away, uncurling from the rest of the vision like dispersing smoke, and it was gone.

Bez considered, for a time, before looking back up at Doru.

"What do you think they are?" he asked--unafraid, but certainly reiterating his ignorance of the nature of these apparitions.

@Doru

Doru's gaze sharply focused upon the new echo, studying it to try to discern anything new about it. But the information gained was basic, they thought.

"Not just a bird," Doru corrected after what to a child was a very long pause. "'Nother greater gembound..." They thoughtfully added. It felt important.

"I wonder, if sound can echo... Can other things echo? Living things? Do we echo?" Doru frowned a bit, thinking on this.

"None of what showed up were prey, all greater, like us?" They try to clarify.

"If so... Maybe... Maybe it takes having magic, for anything to echo." Doru was frowning still. That didn't explain why magic would make echoes, but magic was what set greaters apart, right? They all had it, even if some like their dad didn't use it.

@Bezaliel

At first, the impatience (and low attention span) of the young tempted him to huff and wander off. To find something more interesting than this dark pit, its penumbra of shadow nothing more than empty, in the end. But partway through his fidgeting, he heard something that sparked his interest back up: magic.

He paused, eyes narrowing at his sibling as he considered.

"Magic-?" he echoed, and pursed his lips. "Maybe if we use it now we can see?" The childish ineloquence frustrated him, and he tried to rephrase it. "Maybe if we use magic... we'll make echoes now. We can test it," he added, trying to clarify.

A chubby hand lifted, Bez's coalglow eyes flicking to his own palm and fingers. Red light winked into being, forming another swirl of wispglow. "-Do you have magic?" he added, frowning, as he realized he didn't really know. His gaze flicked to his sibling, that frown deepening in realization: he didn't think he'd ever seen Doru cast a thing.

And he'd never really thought about that, until just now.

@Doru

Bez didn't get what they were saying fully, and it frustrated Doru, this lack of words to describe their theory. "No, not using magic. Having magic. All greaters have magic. Dad said so."

"Noise, when heard, can echo off stuff. Can magic-having, when... existing? Can it... echo off the... world? None of the greaters that appeared were using magic, but they were all greaters," Doru was half rambling half theorizing.

They were distracted by Bez's question, though. "'Course I have magic!" They retorted, then paused. "I... Think so, at least."

Doru leaned a hand against a wall and tried to focus. Magic, magic, where was it...