((ooc -- this is a private thread, as there's a few things I plan to have happen in it to close everything off. That said, if you have a reason/desire to join, PM me or hit me up in chatbox, thanks! ALSO -- it's possibly pretty dark/explicit, so if that's not your thing, don't read :|))

The dark shape that careened wildly down the halls of the stone corridor seemed to be blind. It ricocheted off a wall, spun hard by the impact, fluttering weakly to the ground. The moment it fell still, the creature was more clearly visible: a ragged-feathered owl, trembling and gasping, staggering up on one crumpled, broken foot.

Seemingly undeterred it rose again, launching a bit farther in another wild flutter that took it a couple dozen meters farther. This time, when it struck stone and collapsed, it simply slumped there.

Tiny heart hammered in the blind owl's chest, racing weakly. He couldn't breathe right, couldn't catch his breath; each time he gasped, he found himself choking on the wet in his lungs. His body ached--every bit of muscle and skin burned, yet he could not get warm, shivering with cold. He felt as if he'd been beaten, battered, and he had: by magic, and by disease. By the blinded, broken flight through Origin Cave, making his way like a salmon back to the place of his birth.

And, like those breeding fish struggling against time and all odds to make it back to their homes, Dark was dying.

The owl tried weakly to pull one wing up, against himself, but failed.

The pain was too much.

Bevy.

The thought was weak, barely there. The owl didn't know it, but he'd been hit dead-on by an irradiating beam of powerful magic, then while trying to recover, had been found by the white raven and the white deer, and infected with a dark plague. To add insult to injury (and illness), the deer had then crushed his foot before departing.

Dark remembered none of this.

He knew that he'd heard his mother going mad, had heard the others preparing to attack her, had tried to intervene. All had gone white and full of pain, and then... Bevy had been gone. He hadn't been able to find her, only to fly off in the manner of a wounded animal to try and recover alone.

That's where Clover had found him, her plague-bearing raven alongside her.

Dark only wanted to rest. To return to Bevy, wherever she'd gone. She'd beckoned him, called to him, insulted him, threatened him. He didn't know it hadn't been Bevy--it had been Clover's, or rather Belladonna's, mind games.

It didn't matter. In his haze, he'd barely understood, anyway.

Like any wounded, agonized, dying thing, he just wanted his mother.

________________

Dark dragged himself into his corner, feeling the gentle crunch of stone beneath him, and he knew he'd finally found the right place. He'd fluttered down the stairs, tumbling, until he found the niche, the crevice from which he'd hatched. There he lay, panting, dazed, his body slipping away as the hours passed.

It hurts.

The owl wondered what would happen to himself. His green gem eyes stared out at nothing, but finally he squeezed them shut.

He wanted water, but there was none, here. The thirst ate at him. Hunger, too, but he didn't want to eat, at least; the sickness made him dry retch every so often, leaving his head throbbing with pain.

With an abrupt sense of detachment, his mind slipped away, and he could feel his magic begin to take on a life of its own. Gratitude pulsing through him at the chance to separate his mind from his pain, the owl latched onto it, pouring the remains of his energy into focusing on the spell.

He wasn't sure what he was doing, or what his magic was doing, only that it was away from the pain, and anything was preferable to his agony.

Dark lay motionless, and as the magic took hold, the pain swelled behind his eyes. His consciousness began to fizzle like static, electric sparks, until they catch fire and swallow the owl, blinding, consuming until there is nothing but hot, hot white.

It lasted forever.

It began again. The pain swelled and began to eat away at his brain, but he could not move. He could hear the passage of feet nearby, but they could not see him; he was tucked in his corner, and he began to rot, until there was nothing left of him but a dull murmuring consciousness extending into the void. The pinprick of thought here and there, a heartbeat, but nothing more, and all he was, was green. He was unsure if he had been sleeping this whole time or had been awake and merely lost in time. But when he awoke, it was to the sound of feet, only far stranger than he had known before. Two feet, with long, wicked claws clicking the rock as they walk, and the tinkle of delicate chains. Voices rose up from the doldrums of his slumber but they were sheathed, as though muffled by water, and there was something that he can sense. Moonstone. The voices stopped. He could feel their eyes on him. Then he shattered.

It began again. The pain swelled, then slowly fell away, and swelled again, an agonizing cycle that threatened to bleed him into numb nonexistence, if only for a single interruption. A rustle, like that of feathers, and a croaky, female voice. She broke him away from the deafening and vicious teeter of life and death, and she sent him off now, into the ethereal, away from all that has tormented him. The pain disappeared, as did he.

________________

Dark lay silent in the tunnel as the vision faded.

Bevy.

He could feel that the visions were separate. One was a future. One was another. Not that he could puzzle this out logically, in his state; he just knew.

But in one of those futures, Bevy came for him.

He felt the faintest tug of hope, and then his mind trickled over the rest of what he had seen, bleeding through the pain and the fog of impending death to try to concentrate, if just for a moment.

Clicking claws. Moonstone. Voices.

Their lives, snuffed out. Shattered, like their stones. He felt that it would be all of them--not just him. Could he warn them...? He didn't know how. He wasn't conscious enough to project his mind out, to find his friends.

Dark slipped into unsconsciousness, and found again that he was simply more free, this way. The shackles of the mind fell away and he soared freely, no longer blind, the pain left behind.

Now he just had to find someone he knew, and warn them.

________________

The tunnel shifted and shuddered ahead, the shadows seeming alive, the dazzling light of the orbs turning to look at him. He'd never seen it quite this way, before, and in the utter silence of his dream flight, he nearly got lost on the way to Pisces.

It wasn't literal; his mind was travelling, using images of the cave as he'd seen them through Dreamshift to travel. But he didn't know that. He saw the tunnel mouth whip away to either side of him, the muffled roar of the waterfall filling his mind up ahead.

Leon's den.

Dark turned. He voted again. He flew to the den, rocketing in; the bear was asleep there, but he did not land beside him. He soared into the bear's head, into his mind, the dark images around him changing and flickering. A strange sensation of otherness filled his mind, and he paused to get his bearings.

((partially paraphrased from GM PM!))

Leon was there, sitting quiet at the edge of the water. Dark didn't know how he'd gotten back to the water, but there he was.

And Makyna was beside him; she was indistinct, a shimmer, but he knew her shape. He could feel the warmth that Leon felt toward her. The two were leaning against one another, and Dark felt the faint wash of grief that Leon felt.

A faint shiver of anger, and the briefest flash of a massive three-headed white dog, and the dream threatened to fracture into a nightmare. But before Dark could even register this it had faded, and Leon was facing a different direction, Makyna still by his side.

A thousand Bevys danced through the air around Leon, shimmering with Light, and yet the bear still merely looked miserable. Lost in himself.

This isn't how it should be.

The thousand Bevys gathered into one, one that stood staring up at Leon, and he back at it. For a time all was silent; Leon was dreaming of Makyna, and Bevy. Dark merely lurked, watching, struggling to keep his mind in Leon's subconscious.

When he felt strong enough, secured enough, tethered to this reality, he spread his dream-wings and soared down to land beside Bevy. He was not sure if she was real, but he pressed gently against her, and he peered up at Leon.

His voice came indistinct and tremulous.

"Please find me," he asked, plaintive. "There are things in the darkness. They want to find me, and shatter me. They'll shatter all of us."

The faint sound came, drawn up from his own recent memory: the click-click of wicked clawed feet.

"I felt moonstone. They'll shatter us all. Please find me. Bevy is looking for me. She won't find me, if you don't get me safe. Please, find me," he pleaded softly.

The briefest image, shuddering, jittering, a shadowy nightmare, came: great clawed feet passing by, a thousand eyes opening to stare down at Leon and Makyna and Bevy, the sense of shattering stone and destroyed souls.

"Please find me," Dark said one last time. "I went home."

He turned and flew, intending to show Leon: the cave flashed by, despite the bear still merely sitting in place. The icy walls of Tunnel M, the glittering starred roof of Orion, and then here. The carvings, the leering faces above, the things Dark had only ever seen in Hindsight.

And then he lost the tether, and his dream faded. He felt his mind break free, drifting lost.

Please find me.

________________

@Leon

His mind wandered. He found the one who had come to him as the sickness took hold, and he slipped into her dreams. With her, he shared the warning he had given Leon.

But now he felt weariness overcome him.

He had no magic left, no tiny reserve, that could cocoon and save him, that could reform him for later. Instead he had expended everything on glimpsing the future, on contacting the others--on asking for help, on warning them.

There was nothing more he could do.

His mind slipped back into his body, half-awake, half-asleep. The pain was there, lurking, lingering, and so his consciousness remained at bay. But he could feel it; he could feel his breathing falter, his heartbeat begin to fail.

He hoped that Leon would find him, and move him someplace safe--even after he was dead.

He wished he'd had the time to hear Clover's stories. To explore the other caves. To see the truths held in the past, by every inch of Origin's rock. To build his nest in Cetus higher and higher--now it would be abandoned.

Melancholy swept through him, but also relief. His mind was clear, at least, in these final moments; and the pain, at last, was fading.

It was strange, he thought, that even for a blind creature, everything seemed to be going dark.

A final twitch, a shudder of his wings as if he were taking flight one last time, and the owl was gone.

________________

((exit Dark one last time. RIP. @Isi ))

Listen to me + Hear my thoughts

There were many places Isi had not been to before; in fact, off the top of her head, she could only recall three rooms. On the hunt for her father however, Isi had decided to search in different places which, now, seemed like an awful idea.

Isi was lost.

She had passed through a room with buildings and stars, and more quickly turned into a new tunnel. Somehow, the room had frightened her - perhaps it was the tower, or the crumpling buildings, or how the silvery gems on the ceiling reminded her of faces, morphing and twisting and staring at her.

She didn't like it at all, but this room was decidedly even worse. Even though the lights had dimmed out, she could make out the carvings on the walls and just how hugeit all was. She didn't want to go on - she wanted to turn back and run into Eridanus again and sleep for a while - but for her father, she had to do it.

One step. Another step. A third and a fourth.

There was something wrong, here, a primal instinct bubbled in her belly as her ears flickered. She continued to walk regardless, shoulders tense and eyes wide. She could make out the faint outlines of a staircase - and something on the wall.

She stopped dead. It was looking at her, surely. But as she approached it, she figured, it was not, and it was not a living thing. It was just a carving on the wall. She got closer and closer, intending to touch noses with the carving on the wall. The thing drawn there was strange - something she hadn't seen before, something seemingly tall with-

CRACK.

She stopped dead, her hoof had stood in something hard and wet. Her nose was only an inch or so away from the wall, and as she looked down her antlers scraped against the wall. There was something lying next- no, she was standing in it. Something was there and she had stood on it. It wasn't breathing.

There was blood.

The stag recoiled in wide-eyed horror, throat running dry and stomach sinking. "B.... baby...?" she rasped quietly in disbelief. She hadn't seen it. She hadn't heard it. There was no response. It was dead.

Her hoof was covered in it's blood, the pristine white fur of her leg stained scarlet. Was it her fault? She leaned down and nudged it gently. "Baby," she said urgently - though still with a shaking voice. "B-Baby!"

There was still no response. Isi didn't know what to do anymore. Carefully, she nudged the creature's shattered head. Blood seeped onto her snout as she continued to nudge. "Wake up," tears brimmed the stag's eyes. "Wake up, wake up, wake up,"

But the dead owl didn't wake up.

The stag collapsed onto her belly, next to the body. She whimpered quietly and choked as the tears began streaming down her face. It was her fault - she knew it was her fault - and she was the only one who could fix it, and yet, she had no idea how to.

Her vision quickly blurred as she stared at the limp body of the owl. She made an attempt to blink back the tears, though it seemingly only brought even more. She had completely forgotten about Czernobog, who had brought her here in a search for him, all thoughts now concentrating on how to fix what she had done.

No ideas came. She leaned over and nudged the owl a little more until a glimmer of green caught her eye. Slowly, she clambered back onto her hooves, neck craned down to stare at it. There was something lodged in the owl's skull, behind the eyes. She winced.

Something told her to get it. To pull it out. She stuck her nose into the skull and her teeth grasped around the emerald and lodged it out from behind the owl's eyes. Blood and pieces of the owl's insides got into her mouth as she removed the gem from it, and she immediately spat it out along with the taste of copper.

She was panting now, eyes wide. She watched the emerald which was now on the floor - it had felt surprisingly cold to the touch on her tongue. She was beginning to shake now, as she leaned down and touched the stone with a scarlet nose.

But nothing. Nothing but the cold reminder that she had done this shot up her snout and to her eyes, bringing on more tears. She pulled away and observed the mess for a moment, knees shaking and head still lowered.

Listen to me + Hear my thoughts

There was still something pulling Isi to the freezing cold gem, despite every attempt the stag made to try and ignore it. She slowly closed her eyes as whatever instinct drove her to touch the stone once more. She almost flinched away at the cold touch of the stone, but her diamond hoof glimmered softly as she exhaled warm, trembling air onto it.

She did flinch away however as the gem jerked and rooted itself onto the ground, seemingly swelling up before going still once more (as rocks generally do). The stag watched for a moment in disbelief, before looking once more at the dead owl.

She had done all she could, she had decided. She hadn't fixed it at all, but she had to leave before she did anything else wrong. The stag turned heel, drying blood clinging to her face and leg as she began to run down the tunnel and back towards Eridanus. She would be safe there. She could hide there. She could try forget about what happened.

Czernobog didn't have to know. Nobody did.

[exit]
@Leon

It was a terrifying dream.

Terrifying, if only because he had seen Bevy again. In dreams, one can't tell that the creature they see and speak with is dead. In dreams, its like they're alive all over again; the memories are contorted into new realities that he'd never experienced before, even if they are strange and disjointed, they are new all the same. In the dream, Bevy was alive - she had come to him in the thousands, glowing and bright and singing, flocking around him as she vied for his attention, much like what he had done to Kerberos. He feared that he was back there, in the moment that Bevy had died, with Kerberos fleeing and Quintus and Leon fueled by rage, but it was just them. Just him and Makyna, side by side, and then Bevy.

The dream brought Dark to him as well, and Leon helplessly listened, half too petrified to do anything lest he shatter the illusion, and half without control of his own form. The dream played beyond his grasp, delivering unto him only the memory of what had occurred without his influence. They sat side by side and he begged to be found, and Leon was met with a whirlwind of guilt knowing that he had sent Quintus to find Dark, only for his son to fail in locating the owl. Dark had gone somewhere beyond Leon's grasp, and he wished so deeply that he could have found the owl and helped, and he wondered if this was his guilty conscious; Dark, pleading for the safe return of his body, and an ominous message.

Moonstone, shattering. Bevy was looking for him. His heart twisted further. His guilt was rising like an inevitable tide. Images of a vision that he couldn't make sense of, he tried, but it escaped him and in the wake of the dream he thought it was no more than mind-forged nonsense in the turmoil of his sleeping thoughts. A final plea to find him, where he was home, but Leon didn't know where that was. And then the owl left. He wanted to reach out and call after him, but he was frozen. They were left alone with Bevy, who only smiled with her eyes and fluttered into the air, into the shadow of her den.

Then he woke, shuddering, thinking to tell Makyna of his dream - but she was sleeping soundly, and he couldn't bring himself to rouse her. No, he would have to do this by himself. For a moment he considered the dream and its merits, whether or not it was real, but Dark had begged to be found and Leon had searched. The bear shook his head and rolled to his feet, moving down the trails to the main, open floor of the cave. His paws took him to the edge of the lagoon where he had been, and he sat, only there was no Makyna and no Bevy and no Dark. His brow furrowed and he turned his eyes to her den, where she lay buried; and then to the tunnel where Dark had flown, disappearing into the shadows of the fringe of his dream.

He didn't think much; his paws were moving again, taking him through the tunnel. He walked the tunnel, exhaustion from sleep slowly fading into wakefulness. From the tunnel he went to Orion, and then into another tunnel, unsure of what he would find. Only then he saw the owl and he knew - this was where he was meant to be led all along.

Blood smeared across the floor, and the owl's lifeless body was no more than a heap of feathers - like Bevy. He slowed and wondered if this was Kerberos' work, or if something else had gotten to the unfortunate bird. The answer came when he realized that the owl's face had been torn apart, bone and gore glistening in the dim light of the tunnel. He pursed his lips, swallowing, disgust and recoil mounting in his throat before he pushed it back down. "I'm sorry Dark. I'm too late." He murmured, hovering near the owl's body. His emerald lay nearby, slathered in dark crimson - something had pried it out, only to abandon it there for whatever reason. There was something... fresh, about the gem. Something alive. For as lifeless as Dark was, his stone remained, pulsing with magic.

"I'll bring you home." Leon's gentle voice parted the silence of the tunnel. His head bowed, and for a moment of he was quiet, his eyes closed as he summoned to strength to retrieve the owl. "May you rise above us and fly forever." The bear whispered, and raised his head again. With a careful tenderness, he grasped the owl's mangled body and twisted his head, settling it in the nook of his shoulders. Then he grabbed the emerald and he turned, delivering Dark to Pisces for the final time - at least, there, perhaps Bevy could find him.

(exit Leon)