It was this stone. He knew that now.

Khloros stood silent and still, his near-skeletal frame a dull black against the deeper black of the night-cycle of this edge of Polaris. The blue glow of the Spire still lit him, lending a soft glow to his dull coat where it faced the stone. Emaciated ribs and shoulder-bones stood in stark relief, pressing against the clinging hide of his pus-caked body.

He was contemplating the Spire--the power it held. The Generator lay here. The Golems gathered here. Perhaps this was the source of the magic in the cave--the very source of it all.

If so, surely he could... infect it? Corrupt it?

He was unsure, but it wouldn't hurt to try it.

Or well... it would hurt. But not him. If this truly is the core of this cave's magic, and perhaps even its life, then I must end it. These cycles are beyond over. It has gone on long enough.

After nearly an hour stood in total stillness, utter silence, the horse lurched into motion. Quiet clicks of his hooves echoed across the stone as he approached the towering blue crystals. His lamplight eyes slipped near-shut against the crackling magic that surrounded him as he did so, and at length, he reached out his soft muzzle to almost-touch the stone. His words, as his own magic swelled around him, came quietly--his softly-rasping voice only barely audible, a near-whisper.

"Go. Go, and carry death, as I do."

He felt the buzz around him as his magic grew stronger. It was chaotic, with the proximity to the Spire--almost uncontrollably so, and the horse briefly lurched as he struggled to control it. When he touched his nostrils at last to the stone, the slime that slicked his face was full of magically-imbued bacteria, ready to infect the stone.

Only time would tell if this had any real effect.

Stones, after all, were not well-known for growing ill. But with magic, who knew what would happen?

________________

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

As a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light
She is modest and pure as she graces the night
Thothaga had seen a black figure foolishly race towards the Spire. The action aroused her suspicion. There was a steep price to pay to approach the Crystal Mother in such a fashion, and few ever dared. The powerfully bright storm of magicka blinded her, as she skirted around its edges, but she did not need her eyes to sense the death this one carried. She wondered if they wished to die, to return to the Spire's womb, but she was very wrong. Then, she felt it.

He was pushing his own death upon Mother.

"NO!" Thothaga cried. She bolted torwards the Spire, driven by an urgency to protect it. She had to prevent that taint that would ravage her Mother and all its children. The very thought of this abhorrent blasphemy sent her into a rage.

Thothaga could barely see the offender, but she knew he still was there, very near, but the spider could go no farther. The Spire's power was too strong, it buffeted her senses like a mercless halestorm. "NO, YOU WILL NOT!" She commanded, her bellowing subvocals echoed from the tempest. Thothaga stood a few feet away from the gembound, her forelegs raised in a hostile fashion with venom dripping from her fangs.

"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: @Khloros // OOC:

Crackling with energy, it sparked and popped. There was another, perhaps, staring at it, and for a long while too. There was the stillness of inaction before action, the rush of magic toward it—and the foolishness of some other to assume it was not already death, to assume it was not already chaos, to assume it had not been such from the start.

post-roll
But oh, did they clash; was perhaps another hand of fate guiding the plague in this Gembound's heart, its desire for order when there was none? The Spire was the will of one and yet, the will of none. A violent quaking shuddered under the horse's hooves and a whip of magicka snapped from one of the nearby floating crystals, branding Khloros' leathery and diseased skin like molten iron, and with it:

Death. Dead grass, dead trees, dead bodies—some familiar in shape, others foreign in shape, but dead nonetheless. The view panned the reveal a large area, unfathomable in scale, with life receding until it was gone, leaving only death in its wake... and the feeling that it had been like this for a long time. The view sucked into the ground, revealing the Spire, glowing and alive.

In its outburst, the nearby spider may have also received this angry message from the Spire.

@Khloros @Thothaga

The horse let out a short, sharp scream of pain--an equine scream, half-whinny--and leapt back as if shot. The lash of magic hurled over his left side, leaving a streak of lightning-black scarred over his hide, smoldering.

The moment his hooves hit the ground from his jump, images flooded his mind. A dead land, death stretched for a near-eternity this cycle has ended and only the Spire standing firm. Khloros' dull fear was instantly mixed with a sort of grim satisfaction--he'd been right.

This was the source.

Khloros paused for a moment, staring balefully at the blue stone. So this is what I must destroy. I have been going about this all wrong... but it can defend itself.

He had heard the outcry behind him, and for a moment he turned to stare Thothaga's way--then back toward the Spire, though he was a good few paces back away after his rearing buck. In his rasping voice--more loudly now--he spoke directly to the stone... as if expecting a response.

"You keep them bound. They drift, in ignorance, destroying one another. They wander, in pain, until they perish--only for the cycle to repeat. It is time for it to end."

For the time being, the plague-bearing horse (his words trembling with the rush of adrenaline, but strong nonetheless) appeared to be trying to reason with the Spire.

________________

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

@Thothaga

The prospect of excitement and drama is what called Cry to the place where the horse and the tarantula faced off. The Spire was always a point of interest and the mockingbird knew that it would surely start some fantastic and wondrous encounters. And here was such a thing. They had heard a quiet voice and could feel the crackle of energy as the Spire took in the magic. Obviously, this was something they had to see.

They couldn't yet fly, but they managed to flutter onto a higher rock, high enough so that they could see the two creatures and low enough that they could hear them. They didn't try to make themselves known - they were just here to watch. They stared down with barely contained excitement. Something big could happen very soon, two passionate creatures of darkness. Two terrifying souls clashing. Ah, this is what they lived to see!

As a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light
She is modest and pure as she graces the night
Mother-Spire had lashed out with burning hatred, Thothaga felt its heat kiss the tips of her hairs. She cowered at its powerful lashing, then a vision tore through her mind's eye. Death, stretching as far as the eye could see, and life, returning to the Spire's womb. It had been this way for an eternity. She looked up as she heard the black gembound cry out to Spire, confronting it.

She understood now, he was trying to break the cycle.

But this was not the way, this could not be the way. He would destroy everything if he succeeded. Her Crystal Mother brought death, yes, but she was also the life-giver, rebirth, right?.

"Please, leave it be!" She pleaded with him. Thothaga forced herself to carry on towards the Spire. She must get closer, perhaps he could not hear.

She got close enough to make out details. The black gembound was a quadruped, skeletal and sick-looking, his ghostly lamp-lit eyes shone through the blue storm. They reminded her of the Collector's stone, and the cold sensation of dying it gave her through a vision. This one is carries death's magick. Thothaga knew she had to be careful, or she could catch his death too.

She reached out to him once more, inching closer and closer. The sensory overload was almost to painful to bare, but she must be heard. "Death-Carrier, listen to me!" She cried out. "This is not the way, leave her be!"

"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: @Khloros // OOC: A lucky guess? or spidey senses?

Khloros took several steps further back, at the shouting, turning his sickly head to stare toward the voice's source. His pale eyes glowed toward Thothaga for a long moment, unblinking. He did not seem to react much to the pain, though someone observant might notice the faint limp at his left side, the way he staggered just a bit as he retreated.

This one recognizes me for what I am. Yet I have never met it. It is the same color as the Spire, and emerged when it was attacked-... is it an avatar of the stone? Its guardian, perhaps? Khloros decided that this must be the case, and turned to face Thothaga, giving her his near-full attention.

"It must be broken," he called back, his voice a loud and rasping call. "It drags all back, again and again, driving them into what will only suffer and die. It denies them rest. It denies them peace. It is an unnatural force. All would be dead; should be dead; this is Death's domain. Why do you interfere?" What Khloros meant was, why did the Spire interfere with life and death itself, though to Thothaga it might sound as if he was asking why the spider herself was interfering with his own work. He wasn't exactly clear, after all, now that he'd decided that Thothaga was apparently an extension of the Spire itself.

________________

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

@Thothaga

As a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light
She is modest and pure as she graces the night
Thothaga could go no further. The Spire's magicka was too strong. Its sting felt like a thousand white-hot needles piercing her exoskeleton. How can he stand so close?

Thothaga backed up. "Why do I interfere?" She echoed the question back to Khloros as if it were rhetorical. Though expressionless, for a brief moment, the spider's beady eyes seemed to reflect the anger of the tempest. "Because you are a FOOL if you think killing our Spire Mother is the answer." She spat. "You will only doom us all, if not yourself! "

Thothaga stood firm like a boulder. She had hatched by the Spire and lived in its shadows for cycles. She felt a kinship with it, perhaps one sided, but Thothaga could not deny it. She was so sure of its nature, that it was a life-giver as well as a death-bringer. That all came from it, and eventually, all must be returned. It was a sacred, never ending cycle. She would not suffer any fool who dare disrupts it, and looked like Spire wouldn't either. If the Death-Carrier wanted to kill himself by attacking it with his magick, she would not stop him, but Thothaga will not stand idlily by and allow her Mother to be destroyed.

"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: @Khloros // OOC:

Khloros stood; there seemed to be no effect on him, for the moment, bar the crackling of magic all around. Others had climbed the Spire, or even perched upon it; he was simply standing near it, for the time being. Surely this could not be too dangerous... yet the whip that had lashed him said otherwise.

The left side of his hide still steamed as he looked at Thothaga. He felt a deep sense of disdain rising like bitter bile. And for once, rather than ignore the source, he spoke.

"How is it," he rasped, "that so many are so ignorant..? This is no mother. It holds no warmth for you; no more than ice would cherish or nurture. It does not offer life; it confines. It is no mother. It is a prison." Khloros stared disgustedly for a moment, before adding--"Why would you think otherwise?"

The horse then turned, and shoved forward to try and press his muzzle to the Spire once more--this time with different intentions.

Where did you come from? The thought was harsh. Demanding.

________________

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

(gm requesting ;o )

@Thothaga

Another contact from the Gembound—a demand.

Nothing demanded anything of it. It was chaos. The Butter Jade would know.

Thick, purple-black smog-like clouds flooded the mind of Khloros, acidic green eyes the size of moons peeling through the rumbling clouds like smoky lightning. Khloros was small, the size of an ant perhaps, being gazed upon by an overwhelming sky of purple clouds and two angry, green eyes. And then, with a deafening crack and the peel of thunder that tore the earth beneath the horse in two, the sky split open with a gaping, glowing green maw. Thick, acrid breath spilled out onto the plane below and the ground trembled with the same loud thunder as before—but the vision was swallowed by the earth as Khloros fell, fell into the chasm that had split opened just moments before.

And he plummeted into the cave for an eternity's length of time, the Spire a gleaming essence forming as the green breath hurdled down the chasm with him, filling the Spire energy and life.

Wrapped in the essence of chaos, suspended before the Spire, the green energy formed a claw around the Gembound's body and gripped him tightly.