Why Do We Always Seek Absolution

It's in the eyes; I can see you'll always be danger.

Lei was two things that made her a veritable force of slightly-unwise nature: she was young, and she was a cat. Her curiosity knew no bounds, and was unfettered by the concerns of older and wiser creatures, like safety or physical limits. All she knew was she'd seen a glowy blue light and she wanted to know what that glowy blue light was. So, with her recently mastered walk beneath her, she'd ambled out of the relative watery safety of Pisces, through Tunnel O, and into the wide glowing blue expanse that was Polaris.

She had no idea, of course, what this place was called, or that it was significant. She did know it was pretty, and she had the vague sensation here that it felt good to be, slightly moreso than it felt good to be, elsewhere. Being as young as she was, she didn't question these things-- merely started ambling forward on her baby legs, eyes wide and consuming every detail of the world around her.

Some wandering had been productive, and brought Lei to the edge of a wide expanse of water-- she didn't yet know or understand her affinity for the element, as its primary manifestation thusfar was in her vague attraction to puddles and rain and moving expanses of water, but it called to her nonetheless. If it was possible, Lei's eyes widened even further, a wide toothy smile on her face as she plopped herself down to sit on the Crystal River's banks, tracing the river's undulation with her eyes.

It wasn't as cool as Pisces' waterfall, but it was pretty hella cool.

((All welcome))

RPGD

He'd wandered away from Eridanus for the time being, going on his own to explore the wide expanse of the world. Everything inside of the bond seemed... different, like Booker had intentionally cut all ties with him. Maybe not Booker or the other living within him, Barnett. It seemed more likely that Barnett had decided what to do with the bond and how to get rid of the dragon but in either case he knew when the headspace was best not to be shared. If Booker wanted to be left alone then he'd oblige but he would always be listening in case something happened. Hopefully nothing would as it had seemed all quiet for a while... but that might have just been because the numbat was especially good at blocking him off.

Baratheon gave his head a shake. Now was not the time to think of that. As far as he knew his brother was fine so he would turn to other things like the child he'd made with Damian. The one of his own stone. That made the child a true dragon like from his stories. He was aware of the other he'd made as Dragon but that was not of his stone and he had no idea where that orca even was. Perhaps he'd see that child one day... but he somehow doubted it. The other stone shard he'd found he had no idea where it was or even if it had been properly given life. Probably not... but if he had he hoped the child was safe.

Anyway, the one that he knew was alive was his top priority and he intended to see it. Except as he craned his neck across to see the spire Damian did not seem to be there, nor the child. Irritated the dragon puffed pink smoke from his mouth, he would wait. Seeing the cave's second dragon was something worth waiting for. Especially since this dragon was his child. He turned his head towards the water, intent on submersing himself to relax and wait. That was when he saw her... A tiny lioness with brownish fur.

Baratheon's head tilted to the side as he studied her with one eye before very carefully making his way over to her to sit at the water's edge. His tail curled up across his paws and a friendly rumble erupted from his throat as he addressed her. "Careful you don't fall in, little one, the water's of Polaris are cold." His voice was mildly amused despite the warning.

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423
@Lei
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6/10

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this...

With Baratheon, there was a whole lot to take in. One moment, there had been only this wonderful expanse of wonderful water moving peacefully across the glowing landscape of Polaris, and the next thing she knew, the earth was shaking. Lei looked around, momentarily scared, and then her eyes caught sight of a pink-clawed paw beside her. She looked up at Baratheon-- and up, and up, and up, because there was quite a lot of him-- her eyes growing more and more saucer like with every second.

Baratheon was fascinating, from his white-and-pink self to the fact that he shook the ground when he walked to the pink smoke that he breathed.

"You go on forever." she informed him, with the blunt fascination of a child, "Why does the ground move when you walk? What are you? Why are you so big? Will I be as big as you? Can I be as big as you? Can I make the earth shake when I walk?"

She didn't know why, but this seemed very important, that she should make the earth shake when she walked-- that seemed a more palpable measure of power and authority than anything else she knew.

Her fascination with the water was totally eclipsed by her fascination with something very-very-very-very-big, and so his warning about the chill water fell on mostly-deaf-- or at least distracted-- ears.

@Baratheon

Image by Banshee/xx-Starry@DA; Table by me; Pattern from Dinpattern.com

With his seven cycles of life he was used to people staring up at him in fascination of his size. He actually liked when people noticed, it made him feel even bigger and even stronger. Almost imperceptibly his chest puffed out and the friendly rumble turned into a proud one though one would probably have to be a dragon themselves or well-versed in their various sounds to tell the difference. However, the laugh that erupted from his throat was probably easy enough to tell.

Baratheon snaked his head down towards the gal and fixed her with one giant pink eye. "I am a dragon. We tend to be very large." He answered simply. "When you are very large the ground likes to shake when you walk on it. So to answer your question... I'm not too sure you'll be able to shake the ground through natural means but perhaps magical ones when you're older." After all, he'd never seen a lion as large as himself.

The dragon lifted his head then and lowered his full body to the ground as carefully as he could. No need to accidentally squish the tiny cub, right? His brow wrinkled as he tried to remember the rest of her questions. "I'm not sure if you'll ever get as large as me, hardly any creatures are as big as dragons... but," Here he lowered his head to her level again and whispered as if he had a grand secret. "I know a way that you can feel as big as me. Want to know how?"

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260
@Lei
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6/10

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this...

Magic trickled through the earth, seeping down cracks and craters. Where the golems had once been content to mull about and mind their own business sluggishly, something has attracted them. Lumbering across the river's edge, a set of golems approach Baratheon and Lei.

One might nearly mistake them as parent and child, for one of them nearly reaches five feet, with large, brutish arms dragging it along. The other is about half its size and appears to be chasing it, with dozens of gem fisted limbs attempting to take hold of and climb the larger. It never seems to catch up, but both of them are headed right for the dragon and the cat.

Lei watched Baratheon as he walked and moved with more wide-eyed fascination; biology be damned, she wanted to be that big! And, young as she was, the limits of what was physically possible seemed fragile and tenuous things; certainly there would be some way, somehow, where she could be as large as she wanted, and make the ground shake when she walked.

These would be the sort of ephemeral dreams that, as an adult, she would abandon with a laugh as the whims of a child, because that's what they very much were, but as a child the ideas fascinated her and she lingered on them, imagining what it would be to walk and make the ground shake, to be so large as to need to be careful of accidentally squishing those she was talking to, of undulating slightly when she moved because there was so much of her.

Incidentally, the thought that he might step on her barely occurred; it was quickly dismissed, because stranger though Baratheon was, Lei trusted him not to smush her by accident with his big paws.

"Oooh, yes!" she responded to his invitation, getting to her feet and looking excited. She might've attempted to contradict him, with regards to growing as tall as he, but the offer was too exciting-- as were two other things she spied out of the corner of her eye. She did a little jump-hop to face them, blinking curiously at the two figures that were very clearly approaching them. They didn't look like any two gembounds that she had ever seen. "Are those moving rocks?" she asked, her eyes wide, torn between two reactions. Part of her wanted to fearlessly charge forward to investigate, because so little had hurt her here. Part of her, though, sensed the magic of the two things approaching, knew that these things were similar-but-not-the-same as her, and knew that wariness might be the best option when faced with unknown magically-animated rocks. The action she eventually took was a mix of these-- she darted forward, but also tried to dart behind one of Baratheon's big paws, to use at as cover from which she could watch the rocks' approach.


@Baratheon

Image by Banshee/xx-Starry@DA; Table by me; Pattern from Dinpattern.com

Baratheon chuckled at her enthusiasm but being a dragon of his word he answered, "It's quite simple you just have to--" He was interrupted at the sound of dragging rocks and the feeling that something was terribly wrong. His large head turned so that he could fix his good eye on the approaching creatures. What he saw tickled the back of his mind... He knew what these were. He'd encountered them once before or had at least heard talk of them. Golems. Lifeless things that wanted nothing but to steal the magic gems from gembound.

Baratheon growled as he turned to them, eye narrowing as he pulled on the magic in his body. "Yes. Those are golems. Creatures that want to steal the gem from your body." The dragon lowered his head and very gently pushed his nose underneath Lei's body so that he could pick her up on his nose where she would be safe and out of the way. "But nothing we can't handle! Plus, this is the way you get to feel as tall as I." His voice was light, mirroring how he felt about this whole situation. How could two puny golems hurt him or his charge when she was so far out of their reach?

"Now, watch what Uncle Baratheon can do." With that he cranked his mouth open and unleashed a powerful wave of energy towards the golems.

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234
@Lei
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6/10

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this...

The shockwave of magic lashes out at the golems, making the larger one stumble and the little one fall, one of its limbs breaking off. The sound of churning rock gets louder as the bigger golem begins to hurry, honed in on its target now. The golem is coming straight for Baratheon now, and although it is smaller than the dragon, it seems to have no qualm about throwing itself into the gembound like a massive boulder.

The smaller golem struggles to stand, but soon it waddles after its larger counterpart. It seems wholly unaffected by the fact it just had its arm torn off.

Lei had thusfar not had good experience with piles of stone, animated by magic or not. That contributed to her sudden shift of mood-- in one moment, she was having fun with this friendly big big big dragon who had appeared, and in the next, there were scary rock creatures that wanted to steal her stone. Why did they have to come and ruin a perfectly good investigation of water?

Ordinarily she'd've enjoyed getting scooped up by the big friendly dragon, and there was a bit of surprised joy in the shriek-laugh she made at being so lifted, but it was quickly distracted by scary-rock-creatures-coming-closer. Scary mean rock creatures. "Why do they want our stones?" she asked, safer where she was perched on Baratheon's face.

She shrieked with joy again when the dragon spat energy at the golems below, blasting off one of their arms-- she had nothing so powerful or useful. But the blast only made one pause, and that made her hunker down low again, scared once more. "Oh no- why is it still moving?" she asked, in a smaller voice; this was not going far to convince her that rock piles of any kind were remotely positive forces. First one had fallen on her, requiring the assistance of a stranger, and now two were attacking her and another friendly stranger.

Did the earth, as a whole, object to her meeting people?

There wasn't really much Lei could do offensively (which would likely remain the case for some time); she was a gentle soul, leaning more towards healing than battle, and the way that manifested at such a young age was a total lack of offensive spells. She could drink of the air, and she could eat of the water, and those were the only two magical knowledges that had thusfar imposed themselves into her brain. Neither of them seemed very useful in this instance, but she reached inside herself regardless, pulling at her Absorb Nutrients spell, aiming it at the golems.

She wasn't really sure what, exactly, she was hoping it would do-- they were stone, after all, and it would be all the weaker for being some short distance away-- but it's not like any of the other options were any more useful. She was wise enough to know that a lion cub wasn't going to make much a dent in the rocks through physical means, and would likely just be in Baratheons' way should he try to use his own more useful offenses, and the stones weren't likely to notice the dip in humidity that accompanied an airdrink spell.

Useless as the idea probably was in theory, it was even more useless in practice: in her fear, the absorb nutrients spell backfired, "Ohhh." she said uncomfortably, as she did the opposite of absorb nutrients-- she expelled nutrients, primarily through the same magical miasma means through which the spell usually worked, only in the wrong direction. Baratheon and the Golems might've felt stronger for it, though. Lei hunkered down lower, the world spinning slightly as the sensation of Vertigo made itself known. With the nausea she was feeling, if she wasn't careful, she was going to expel nutrients through a more conventional means-- her mouth.

((Aaaahaaaa poor Lei. CRITFAILS. Also, already mentioned it in the cbox but doing again here-- next round, Briar should post before me since it makes more sense for Baratheon to be acting primarily in a combat-esque situation~))
@baratheon @Game Master Schafear

Image by Banshee/xx-Starry@DA; Table by me; Pattern from Dinpattern.com

Baratheon let out a rumble of satisfaction as his magick pushed the golems back while ripping off one of their arms. "For the magick they hold." He answered the child. His eye remained on the rock monsters as they began to close the distance after being hit full on. "They're tough little creatures, I'll give them that!" They were also heavier than they looked.

The golem threw itself at Baratheon and though the dragon tried to dodge he found one of his forelegs tackled with a massive weight. It nearly threw him completely off balance but he managed to recover speedily with a growl of annoyance. Atop his muzzle he could hear the lion cub moan about something and inexplicably the air felt... different. More infused with magick in some way. "Don't hurt yourself up there. Let me handle this, alright?" He was made to protect and though this wasn't his rider that didn't matter. She was a child and he would give his all to make sure that she was alright.

With the golem on his leg that left him with only three good ones, one of which held his stone and needed to be kept away from the golems at all costs. "Get off of me, you rocky bastard!" He rose onto his hind legs with his wings flared for balance while he built up energy in his other paw to swipe at the golem with it in an attempt to knock it off and hopefully away with the energy.

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252
@Lei
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6/10

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this...