The sight of the flickering lights was what at last confirmed - this had to be Regalia's son. Spawn. Descendant. Wilder wasn't sure. But she knew no others that spoke in lights in that way besides that which she once called her child.

She nearly jumped to her feet at that and stepped forward. "I...Arcturus, I might know who...how old are you?" She lifted a paw as Arcturus answered, already setting things in her mind, preparing, organizing thoughts and processes, and then she was ready. The other didn't resist, confused, but allowed her to reach forward and gently touch the wood opal on his forehead. As the magic surged, she directed it - 50 cycles back.

The pupils of her eyes disappeared as a cloud of cosmic pink and purple swirled across her vision as she came to see...a tunnel. She recognized it - Tunnel K, the haunted one between Orion and Canis. And

Regalia.

Floating before a small opal claw, encompassing it, and then floating away, leaving the thing behind glowing faintly with life before going dark once again. There was nothing else to see, as the tunnel went still and quiet. But Wilder did not have to stay long. She had her confirmation.

She came out of the vision seconds later, blinking away the shroud of magic over her vision, and stared at Arcturus. It wasn't a thought anymore, it was real. My....grandson? How odd to think of it that way. A descendant felt weird too. Family? But they had only just met.

Arcturus was slightly alarmed at Wilder's sudden movements and caught off guard, again, by the question. "Uh...50 cycles, I think?" He quickly counted in his head - yeah that sounded right. And then she was reaching for him without explanation, but he did not fear. There was some determination like fire in her eyes that allowed him to bend his head a bit, and let her touch the gemstone.

Nothing happened - to him, at least, but he waited patiently for Wilder to do what she was doing. But when she pulled away, there came no explanation, just silence, disbelief, and something else stirring in her gaze. Arcturus liked to think he was good at reading people, but he wasn't sure what that look Wilder was giving him meant. He let the silence drag for a bit, before worry and anxiety sparked at this stomach. "Hey, uh, are you okay? What did you do?"

Wilder flinched, startled out of her thoughts by Arcturus's soft voice. She looked back, their gazes connecting (and those were Regalia's eyes, no doubt, two gleaming stars) and found herself at a momentary loss for words. She opened her mouth and shut it again, thoughts whirling through her head too fast to catch.

Trying to order together how she felt about this, puzzling out how Arcturus had turned out like this when its parent had been so...not this. Regalia had been hardset in its delusion of godhood, unflinching, unyielding, losing its mind to its own illusion of power. But Arcturus was...sweet. Wholesome through and through.

"I saw your life-giver." She suddenly blurted out. "I knew it, when it was alive. It's called Regalia - it was my child." Well that was a way to drop the ball.

Arcturus's eyes widened. "Wait, really?" It took him a few seconds for his brain to fully put all those pieces together, but his expression brightened immediately. "So that means we're related! You're my life-givers...life-giver? Wow! That's crazy that we just kind of ran into each other! Although I supposed it would have happened eventually." He stood up, energetic excitement suddenly too much to keep contained.

Arcturus had not wondered where he'd come from. He was alive and that was simply all that really mattered to him. But now that he knew that he'd been hatched out of the life of another and not the random creations that popped up here and there across the caves, he felt warmer. Fuller. Part of something! "Where is it now? Regalia? Can I meet it?"

She did not share Arcturus's enthusiasm, each second that he grw more excited, dread grew in her stomach. Since she'd told him, now she's have to tell him about Regalia's fate. Where it was. What I did to it.
She motioned with her tail, a stern look passing over her face. "Can you...please sit for a minute. There's something I need to tell you." And although it took Arcturus a moment to settle down enough to sit agound without wiggling too much, he eventually did and Wilder sighed.

"Listen. Regalia wasn't...good. It was cruel. It thought itself a god or some divine, untouchable being. It left home on its first day and I didn't see it for a long time. Until...probably after you were made. It was partially corrupted by chaos. Violent. Dangerous. It...killed people. I don't know how many, but one of them I knew." Wilder's shoulders hunched as she laid her shame bare for Arcturus to see. "I went to someone - a killer for hire. And I told them to end Regalia, because I couldn't do it myself. To stop it from killing any more."

She sighed. "So. It's gone now. If you want to know what it looked like..." There was a hesitation before Arcturus's nod. She waved a paw and the flickering form of Regalia appeared, misty and barely corporeal as it had been in life. It was only for a moment, its glowing eyes piercing the space between the two of them, before it dissipated.

Wilder's head was lowered. She couldn't look Arcturus in the eye. "I'm sorry."

Wilder's request to have him sit at first went over its head, too excited to even think about sitting, but then it washed over him that she was serious. Something about her had been drawn into melancholy and Arcturus's spirits dampened almost immediately. It stopped excitedly prancing in place and instead sat itself down, almost impatiently, scooting closer.

The revelation was worse then he was expecting.

He stared at her, disbelieving, speechless. It had thought, in the brief time it'd had to consider what its life-giver would have been like, that any child of this delightful cat would, too, have been delightful. And any parent of his couldn't be evil, right? He was anything but!

But...the sight that Wilder conjured for him, he took one look at it, and even though it had no expression - how could a cloud of gas express in any way - he could see the intensity in its gaze. The seriousness. And he could feel Wilder's longing and regret. It was his finest ability - reading others. Here, it only brought him pain.

He was silent through Wilder's short speech, and only after she lowered her head and apologized did he say anything. "Wh-why?" he murmured. "Why are you sorry? You didn't...you said it left on the day it hatched. You didn't cause it to be like that."

It was painful, knowing that he had come from something bad, but as the moments went on, he felt more and more okay with it - after all, it had been a long time ago, if they had never met. "Hey, if you think I'm mad at your or anything, I'm not. If they were like that, I don't think I would have liked to meet them anyways."