She saw the owl's clenching claws, saw him lean back, and Belladonna's mouth screwed into a snarl, and she slammed her hoof in front of her crow, startling Diánysma into moving back so that his claws dug straight into Belladonna's leg instead of into her disease. She hissed with the pain, and blood ran down her leg, but she said nothing. Instead, she looked down at her raven with hooded eyes. May his death be slow and merciless, She said to her, the voice that echoed through the bond calm and sweet towards the vector. You've done well, Dia. She wanted the shadows that had slipped inside the owl to rend and tear and kill him from the inside, but alas; shadows could not touch. Dia's disease would sit inside him with a nasty fermentation and ruin him over the course of days; if he was lucky. His death would be a marvelous thing, one that, perhaps, neither of them would see in person. They had others to focus on after all; there was no favoritism when spreading death. What she would do to make her shadows a physical thing! To send her army of death to kill and dance on the corpses of her enemies as she watched with glee from afar! A dream, only a dream, she thought to herself. One day she might realize her dream, but until then, she would bide her time with a slow, sick death. Bella called to her magic, and as the blood ran down her leg, the hot trail traveling down to her hoof, she decided that Dia should be gifted with the perfect goodbye for this pathetic, soon to die bastard of the caves. Let him know how alone he is, she told Dia as she gifted her with such a perfect rendition of Bevy's voice. She crafted it from both Clover's memory and that of the owl's, letting it form inside her raven's throat. Let him know the meaning of the void. The ruin that death truly offers. There is no peace in death. Belladonna knew this for herself. There was the nothing that all the dead disappeared into, that no one ever came back from. From this, one knew true despair. "......."

@Diánysma

The raven's sick and twisted smirk widened into a sadistic smile as her offer was so foolishly offered, stepping back for a moment. With a slow croak, the owl reached forth with his wickedly sharp talons, hoping to snatch the pale corvid up and tuck her small form close. Diánysma jumped back in surprise, skidding on the ice and watching as the serrated claws took her god's forelimb in them, cutting in deep. Blood seeped, almost an oily black fluid, from the hoof. Her stone glowed momentarily, hoping to send a cloud of positive bacteria to aid the healing of her god, but not the dying bird of prey. 'He will pay for such foolishness,' she hissed through the bond, despite the praise that made her heart flutter with joy.

Diánysma glared down at the owl, and as a voice echoed through her mind, she smiled. A voice was placed within her throat, and she nodded, 'he will know.'

Carefully now, she hopped onto the broken owl's chest. "No, no. Not yet, my dear child... for I must confess..." The sing-song voice reverberated within her throat, not belonging to her but to someone else. "This was all a ploy." Pale talons picked through the seared feathers of the dark creature, before driving them in. It would only go in a quarter of an inch, seeing as she was only around five days old, but she'd feel the sickly satisfaction of blood upon her talons anyways. "Your precious Bevy is nothing anymore. She does not exist. She has faded away and she will never come back for you." Corners of her beak upturned in a wicked smile, Diánysma tore her talons from the flesh of the owl and she stepped closer to the owl's beak and stared right into those emerald orbs.

Oh, how she wished he could see her, the bringer of his dying breaths. Cackling almost maniacally, her rubies glinted. "And you know what?" Diánysma crooned to the owl, "So will you. And no one will remember you." Feathers ruffled as she placed her bloodied foot upon Dark's cheek. "You never mattered to them. You were only a hindrance to those you clung so pitifully to." Another bout of deranged laughing brought her almost to tears. "A blind owl, something that should have never experienced life for so long. It's a shame you got so used to it."

"My point is, poor little owl... is that you won't suffer from life for much longer. You will feel the void of death, the loneliness it provides." The pale corvid chuckled darkly and lowered her crown to the owl's bird-ear, whispering right into it. "So go ahead, cry out for help..." Finally, she left the tattered form of the blind owl. Diánysma shifted behind Belladonna's hoof and stared up with pride in her eyes. Such sweet misery. She fed upon it, she feasted. It was glorious. With an air of finality, the raven smiled.

"And I will be there to announce, 'but nobody came'."

@Dark

Dark's talons struck something, though it wasn't the soft, puffy thing he'd expected. It wasn't Bevy. It was something hard, muscular, bony, something large; he quickly retracted his talons, confused.

An instant later there was a series of sharp and stabbing pains in his chest. The owl cried out, pained, jerking a little and then going still, motionless beneath her harsh touch.

Bevy was speaking, then. Her voice was sickly sweet in his tufted ears, and though he couldn't see, he could hear. He listened intently to her words--the last he might ever hear.

She was telling him that he was a hindrance to those he'd clung to.

But... I don't cling to anybody. I don't even know anybody.

The thought was faint, fleeting, and forlorn; the owl had never had any friends outside his mother. He'd stayed away from the rest; he'd be a burden, but really, he'd never held any interest in any others. They had their fast-paced, sighted world, and he had only darkness, and the memories of stone. His mind flitted back: he remembered walking the pathways and corridors of Origin Cave, catching glimpses into the past of many of the things he'd touched.

This Bevy didn't know him at all, he decided. Perhaps the white bird was one of her personalities, then. She had many. Was the black horse another...? She had been mad, hadn't she, near the end. The owl screeched again, far more weakly, thrashing a little under Dianysma. It wasn't out of pain, exactly, but the madness brought on by it--a madness that thus far, the strangers had not touched.

Bevy knew him. At least, Enna did. These Bevys did not know him. He didn't cling to others. He wasn't pathetic; he had taken care of himself, alone, his entire life.

"Whichever Bevy you are... you are one of the ones who doesn't even know me. You're a Bad-Bevy," Dark rasped, but the clarity did not last. "One went away and the others didn't stay and I'm in the cold and the light hurt. It hurt me," he wailed, voice suddenly breaking, loud again.

He had been mad when the two arrived here. His mind-state hadn't changed much. They may as well have never come here--but for the sickness Dianysma had polluted him with.

It didn't seem it would, either; the blind owl simply closed his eyes again, once more slipping back into himself, motionless and oblivious to the visitors, his mind taken by the pain of the radiation that wracked his body. He was aching now, too... something he hadn't before. It was the plague at work, but of course, Dark didn't know this.

Time would tell if he survived it.

________________

@Belladonna ((I will have him die in another thread, later))

Belladonna just watched the whole exchange between the two silently, a frown developing on her face. He was denying what her beloved raven was saying, calling them lies, and she remembered when she had tried to torture Fisher and Fallah and had her words thrown back in her face. She had been new then, without a name, without her subtleties for taking someone's mind and heart and ripping them apart, too engrossed in her need to destroy. No, what you needed to really torture was a full understanding of the victim's flaws and all their insecurities, and you needed to find the cracks they already had in their psyche and shatter them. With Fisher and Fallah...no, she should've approached them differently, she should've separated them and tasted deep of their flaws, but they were too happy for her to ruin at first meeting. No...if she ever found them again, she would take the slow approach with them. This owl, on the other hand...He was denying her vector, and she could hear it in her head, how he found the flaw in her words. Dia had been too hasty, too fast, and the owl just turned away and took his oncoming death with a measure of dignity still left in his breast. She sneered, and raised her hoof and brought it down on the owl's curling taloned foot hearing the bones crunch under her. "Let's go, Dia," She said softly, nodding down the tunnel, breaking off the thread she had made with the owl's mind with a sharp motion. she walked off without looking back, knowing that the owl was dead and dying and that was all that mattered. There was nothing they could say to him at that point, he already saw death come for him to swallow him up. [exit Belladonna] "......."

@Dark

She'd been too quick to break it to the dying owl. All Diánysma felt was disappointment with herself as her god raised their mighty hoof and stamped it onto the avian's taloned foot. A resounding CRACK! echoed, but she didn't even flinch. Rubies stared at the owl for only a moment before she flinched at the soft sound of Belladonna's voice. 'Yes.' And so, the plague vector fled with her god, lagging a little behind in slight fear of her punishment for her mistake. There was so much more misery to glean from the owl, and she had ruined it...

@Dark

[ exit dia ]

Dark lay silent for some time after the two departed. His eyes remained closed.

He forgot about them, actually; the resounding agony in his foot had sent him unconscious, for awhile, and when he woke, only confused thoughts of Bevy and a beam of light raced through his head.

He ached. He shivered. The pain of Kerberos's magic had destroyed his body, and he might have recovered, but now the plague that infected him set about weakening what remained. He was physically incapable of rallying from this damage. The strange sensation of lethargy that began to overcome him was almost welcoming. The burning pain, the chills, the aches that had now set in... it was too much. His head throbbed, and the crushed bones in one foot lanced him with new, sharp pain every time he tried to stand.

He could feel his heartbeat growing weaker, faster, fainter.

Logically, he didn't know what this meant--but he had the vaguest memory of Bevy beckoning him to follow, to come with her into the darkness.

It would be a relief, he thought. Bevy had always shown him the right way--taken him to safety. To peace.

But listening, he could hear no sign that she remained. No breathing, no scratching of talon or hoof or whatever it had been, on the rock or ice.

With a croaking, cawing cough, the owl stumbled up, teetering as he laid weight on his broken leg.

She left me.

A brief howling grief filled him, but immediately it spun down and away, leaving him empty. He did not have the capability to handle that right now, to even sustain it.

Home. Go home.

With a sudden flurry of motion the owl took flight, crooked and broken, slamming off the tunnel wall and careening down it gracelessly. He flopped and fluttered, sometimes tumbling down onto the cave floors, but he made his way away.

Dark was dying.

He was going home.

________________

exit Dark