Ravage was quiet for a moment, so much so that Tourmaline could have been forgiven for thinking he'd lapsed entirely and would not further speak. But abruptly, paw pressing with a plume of black smoke to another fungal clot, he did. "Chaos is pretty fucked up, too," he offered, oblivous to how the profanity might be seen. He'd picked up enough accidental swears to happily add them to his vocabulary, though out of earshot of family. "I saw something when I hatched, in the bones--my family reads bones." He didn't elaborate on this, just glancing half-up at Tourmaline as he moved on. "Someone going out to lead some Chaos thing--Valkhound?--off away from their family. They died," he added, and his tone was empty, as though he were utterly indifferent.

But he wasn't; that memory, far too much for a newborn to have seen, still haunted him. He shrugged it away.

"And Chaos and Order are, uhh, opposites right? I guess they're both assholes." For a moment, depression settled on his back. Something else he was too young for, really. But his mother had hinted at the circumstances of his creation; he was to prove something to Chaos. Something about how being an asshole was bad--he didn't know, exactly.

"Anyway--how unsettling? Were you gonna say it killed someone?" he asked, peering up again. That'd be a pretty good reason not to like it, anyway.

@Tourmaline

She's patient, letting Ravage think, still moving alongside him. Though, when he speaks up again, Tourmaline stops. Maybe I had turned a blind eye, she thinks, trying to remember if she'd seen anything of Chaos personally. In her hate of Order, she hadn't stopped to see the other extreme. "I don't doubt that you are wrong... I just. I had seen what the Order has done, so I paid more attention to it."

She shakes herself off. "I don't know if that makes sense, but..." Tourmaline does worry she's overwhelming him with too much information, but he seems to be following. The image of some hulking beast - Tourmaline doesn't know what VALKHOUND refers to specifically - stalking frightened Gembound is conjured in her mind. "Maybe sometime you could show me, how you see into the bones."

Her pace is steady as she works alongside the larger Gembound, paws searing both the fungus and themselves. "Maybe so," she laughs at his choice of words. But her expression darkens when he asks about killing.

"They... they didn't only kill someone. They killed one of their own."

@Ravage

He was planting burning paws into another patch of fungus as Tourmaline spoke, but her suggestion brought his head twisting back to peer at her. "I could show you now, if you want-?" he offered, then considered this. "It's magic, though, so it's--I'd just be doing magic. Invisible," he explained. "I mean it wouldn't be 'showing' so much as just--doing. But I could." Though the old prickle of fear always came with that. The knowledge that the moment of someone's death--it was all the bones ever showed him. A curse, in a sense. It was rarely a good death.

That was the nature of Canis, though Ravage hardly knew that.

As to her mention of Order--he jerked back around again from where he'd been sniffing at the ground, blinking. "-One of their own?! Why? -How? Or well. Why?" He realized hastily that the 'how' was probably not very pleasant to hear about. The why, though-... Why would anybody do that-?

Ahh, if only he'd known his own family's sordid history.

@Tourmaline

"Ah. I thought maybe, there was a way for us to both see. That somehow you could share the vision with me," she admits, looking down at the bones underfoot. Of course they had secrets. She'd love to find them out herself, but perhaps some things were best left buried.

As much she wanted to learn, maybe the magic was kept in Ravage's family for a reason.

Her pace and magic remains steady, but as the larger Gembound whips around she freezes. "...Well, there were two of them. The large soldiers, they came to some of us who were hiding. They were quiet, only staring. Assessing. Seeing if we were a threat," she thinks back, to the bone fortress all those cycles ago. "Some talked to them, I think touched one with their magic. To talk closer. And instead of letting it wear off or be broken, the soldier turned and... beheaded its companion."

So much for levity.

@Ravage

Ravage was listening, but at the conclusion of this story his head jerked up. He blinked at Tourmaline. "Hold on," he blurted, mind combing quickly back over everything she'd said. "These guys were--both on the same team..? Both Hive? And they just--one killed the other one, just like that?" He stared.

It seemed inconceivable. How could someone just kill someone else like that-?

He shook his head, trying to imagine it, plodding forward as he did. There was another wince, another curl of rancid smoke from his forepaws, and he glanced back to Tourmaline with a troubled frown. "...Are they all like that?" he asked.

@Tourmaline

It hurts her some to have to relay such a ghastly tale to such a young Gembound, but knowledge is power. "...Yes," is all she can say.

She'd take another couple of steps, listening to his next question, but before she can answer her magic flares wildly out of control. Hot cinders quickly become flames that dance up her legs, burning fur and skin. A shrill howl of pain comes from Tourmaline as she stumbles to the Order-covered ground.

@Ravage

Ravage was thinking all this over, but any thought was quickly driven from his mind at the cry of pain and smell of burning flesh. "Oh shit-" he blurted, hurrying forward, despite the fact he had no plan and no idea what he could do to help.

He tried to reach Tourmaline, to roll her on the ground, maybe, so as to snuff out the flames. But she was a cat, and she was a cat who was on fire, so he just ended up clumsily stumbling after her and missing his leap entirely.

"Hold still! Don't run around-" he cried, panicking.

@Tourmaline

There's panic flooding her mind, as she flails on her side on the ground. OW OW OW OW OW fills her mind she struggles to think on anything other than flop along the ground. Fight or flight didn't work when the threat was fire clinging to your fur.

Perhaps her rolling around would work in most cases, but since the floor is a bed of flammable fungus... anything that got put out by the age old fire advice was simply re-lit by the Order's held coals.

@Ravage

Ravage yelped, loud and sharp, terror flicking through him. THE CAT IS ON FIRE! was all he could think. After a moment's clumsy stumbling, he paused and aimed a more precise leap.

In a horrific, tragic comedy of failure he missed again, crashing past Tourmaline straight into fungus. He managed not to eat any, or breathe any, but when he turned and scuffled up he was coated in Order's spores.

A moment later he was chasing again, fruitlessly.

@Tourmaline

Ravage careens somewhere behind her, and she can't tell where or what is happening anymore beyond they are both panicking. She needs to control the situation. Though thats hard when all your nerves scream in white-hot pain.

But trying to breathe, she drags herself to a clear patch of ground, just dust and rock, before smothering out the flames on the ground. She doesn't move for a while after that, just trying to regain her breath and her senses. Everything stings. It hurts. But she's alive.

Wincing, she holds her eyes shut, just trying to calm her heart before it pumps out of her chest. Hopefully the Order didn't notice the commotion. She doesn't think she could fight after that.

@Ravage