As a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light
She is modest and pure as she graces the night
Thothaga's fangs twitched with annoyance. "You and I have very different definitions of a mother." She retorted. Thothaga did not know where the Death-Carrier got idea that a "mother" must nurture and cherish. The Spire offered neither, yet, she firmly believed it, that its havoc, its uncaring, chaotic force, birthed the life held within these caverns. Though he did plant an interesting thought in her head. Should a mother cherish and nurture? There was no instinct that told Thothaga it was a sacred duty, but the possibility interested her. Skeena called the Bone Reader her mother. Giggle must have been the one to give her life, but Thothaga remembered how the hyena's daughter also sought comfort from her. She never had such a relationship with the Spire, and she knew she never could.

"But you are right," The spider said at last. Her stance relaxed. "She is cold, cruel, uncaring. She does not love, does not cherish. All She does is give and take, and gives and take, and give and take, like the generator churning water." Thothaga paused. "But, She is necessary... Why do you seek to destroy Her?" She continued to stare at the skeletal horse, waiting for an answer.

He had gone up and touched the Spire with his muzzle, and she could see he was receiving a vision from it. She could only guess, from the spell's magickal wake, that he tried to delve into its memory. She watched on curiously, wondering what it told him.



"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: @Khloros // OOC:

Khloros seemed to choke, to spasm and writhe for a moment before breaking free in one violent instant--leaping back with a rear and a spectral shriek of a whinny, his lithe speed perhaps surprising given his emaciated, sickly appearance.

When his hooves clattered back to the ground he stood, nostrils flaring as he eyed the Spire--Thothaga's words only gradually sinking in. He looked back to her, and was silent for a long moment, as if thinking--or empty.

At last he spoke, his voice still rasping and echoing. "Then that is no mother," he began. "It is angry. I saw a violet-black storm, with green eyes high above. Green smoke. Rage. Impossible size. The world split apart, and I fell here. With it came the smoke. The eyes' breath. It filled the Spire. It gave it life. Magic." Khloros stared, hard, at Thothaga. "Birthed by a monster. Birthing monsters in turn."

He lurched into motion abruptly and began to move toward her, his body language utterly empty of any sign of his intentions. "It is the cause; I did not know. The cause of the imprisonment. You do not see..? They fall; they die, yet they are denied peace. Raised again, and again, into bindings of stone. To live, yes; to suffer and die. They are not new. They are old. This cycle must be brought to an end." He spoke with a sort of hollow vehemence, conviction in his tone but no emotion. He was sure of himself--of his reasoning, his motives, of the righteousness of it--but there was no real passion in it.

It was as if it were, to Khloros, simple fact--and to him, it certainly seemed to be. The Spire was an abomination, a wretched thing that had taken the energy of a monster, and forced those living within the caves to rise again--and again--and again. Puppets on strings, jerked to dance to the Spire's tune, or that of the monster that had created it. No free will. No chance to do anything that truly mattered--trapped here, instead.

For eternity.

Unless they stopped it.

________________

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

@Thothaga

The Ruby watched with mild interest from the quiet reaches of Polaris. He had only been close enough to witness the final moments and the last words that the plague horse used as slander against him, the Spire, and the caves themselves. At least, he took it personally.

"It is not imprisonment," he corrected with a dense voice, stepping from his place among the shadows with graceful, planted steps, aimed to place himself in the path of the moving Gembound. The overgrowth of fungi that adorned his body and antlers weighed on him, but his head remained high. What did this child consider old...? Astraea grunted. His red eyes narrowed at the Butter Jade. How many lives had that stone known? Why did its current life think this way? For a moment, he glanced behind the Gembound and to the Spire, thinking of the black cloud and green eyes he had mentioned.

"So you met Him and your conclusion was that He was angry?" the deer asked with a smirk, returning his focus to Khloros. His tail flicked—ugh his tail, he really missed his beautiful, beautiful pristine body the more that he remembered it—and he cocked his head higher. "You do not believe there is a purpose here, other than to live and die and live again?"

Had a different fate crawled its way into the mind of this child? Were there ants in his head?

Cry listened to all of this, to the dark, horrifying conversation between the two creatures standing before the Spire and, although most of it was going over their head, they drank in the words hungrily. Never before had they imagined that the caves were full of such mystery, such excitement! There was so much more then they knew, so much more then they could even imagine! How incredible. Cry knew that they would have to do this more often - find the most interesting or oldest creatures possible and eavesdrop. Was it rude? Probably, but it wasn't something Cry was concerned about. What they didn't know didn't hurt them.

But then the stag stepped forward, emerging from the shadows and Cry felt a shiver go down their spine. The death-creature seemed like darkness, the spider seemed like magic, but this new creature? The way they looked, the way they walked, they way they spoke. They seemed like the world and that was the best that Cry could describe it. Everything in the caves felt like them. They felt like the caves. It was a difficult feeling to describe in words. But this creature was a big deal and Cry was very, very happy that they had decided to watch this exchange.

They wanted to trill with excitement but they didn't want them to be alerted to their presence. They wanted to know all of this. Who was Him? What was the purpose? What did the horse see? And what was the Spire?

Hrokr is just observing, feel free to skip him

This was interesting.

The death-horse seemed to be wanting to destroy the Spire, the fool. Hrokr wanted to laugh. The Spire was eternal, would only be destroyed at the end of days. And the spider wanted to stop him. Why not let him attempt to destroy the Spire, and be destroyed in turn?

He had just left a Job, with a cruel fellow, a wolf who had wanted the opportunity to speak with one of the Ancients. The wolf had, he had received his payment - the wolf's yellow eye - and now the wolf's corpse lay crumpled where the Ancient had left it.

Already, though, the viciousness was leaving him. He would never be kind, unless he had to play the part for a Master, but that, too, would go away as soon as his work was done. Just like the viciousness was.

But then one of the Ancients appeared, and he perked up. Oh, this was interesting! So he spread his wings, and fluttered to a perch not far from the gathering, meeting Cry's gaze with a bob of his head, before beginning to feast on his hard-earned prize.

As a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light
She is modest and pure as she graces the night
She was about to speak when another voice behind her interrupted. It was the Fungal Stag, proud and graceful. She could sense his magickal aura clearly, even near the Spire. This creature was very, very old. The dog-sized spider felt small in his presence, but not threatened. Thothaga stared up at him with her eight, beady eyes. "Him?"

The Stag mentioned the Spire as He. Had she been wrong? No, it changed nothing. One could be masculine and give life as well. Gender mattered not, not here. As single word popped into her mind.

Father.

It had the same meaning as Mother, but her arachnid instincts told her it was lesser, that's why she assumed it was a She. Now, she disagreed.

Thothaga glanced at the Death-Carrier to see his reaction, then turned back to the Stag and stroked her fangs curiously. "How do you know this?" She asked him. Her question was about the Spire, but she did not make it clear.

"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: @Khloros // OOC:

Khloros turned his body once more, shifting with a brief clatter of hooves to face the approaching stag. The birds, he ignored, or perhaps he did not see them, gathering like vultures sensing an impending kill. Instead he listened to Astraea, considering his words for a long moment. He did not rush his answer. He thought about it, instead, unaware who the stag was, unaware of his power--but he treated him as an equal nonetheless, as he did with all.

"Its eyes were filled with fury, and it fell. Or perhaps," he added, his sickly head tilting to one side, "it was angry as it died. It died, and fell; and its energy was tainted, and chaotic, and it would have killed all above--high above. Or it would have been killed by a death which rendered the land barren. The vision was unclear," Khloros added, matter-of-factly, indifferently. It did not matter to him which was truth, not in an emotional sense, though he was curious, and did seek to know. "But as it fell, its breath filled this stone. The stone is no father. It is a trapped creature, energy encased in crystal, which traps us in turn." Khloros turned to gaze at the Spire, darkly.

A trapped monster. Its power keeping them here, as it was kept in the rock.

It explains everything.

He then looked back to Astraea, levelly. "There is no purpose bar what we create for ourselves. No others hold the authority to decide for the living what their purpose will be. And no others have the authority to stop them from freeing themselves." In this statement he did not include himself, as if he were not alive, not one of the many Gembound of the cave. "But most do not know this." He then turned, and faced Thothaga.

He did not know what, exactly, she was asking; but he knew many things, and his source of knowledge (or, perhaps, madness) was the same in every case. "I was sent," he answered simply, his ghostlight eyes unblinking, and glowing with purpose. "I carry Death."

________________

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

Astraea's attention briefly flickered to the spider, his approach halting at her question. How did he know? His long deerish ears cupped forward and his wide nostrils flared—truly, he hated this body.

"It is my place to know," he answered simply. Then his red eyes returned to the horse as it began to speak, to answer his questions, and Astraea listened carefully: would it deny or confirm his suspicious, or create new ones altogether?

So the Butter Jade believed what it saw was a death; is that how they had perceived it? Oh, how wrong they had been. But Astraea did not know exactly what this Gembound had seen, and perhaps he had interpreted it incorrectly. Yes, He had fallen, but He had not died. "Tainted?" he echoed with a smirk. The energy had been tainted? It almost made him laugh.

Maybe he had never looked so sinister: an arrogant grin and narrowed eyes as he listened to this Gembound try to explain to him things it did not know. Or things it thought it knew. It believed it did not have a purpose? That it was—they all were—born here by what, chance? That this was all just some happenstance collection of fools?

This Butter Jade thought there was no authority?

There was a rush of magicka from his body, his ruby glimmering under a canopy of fungi. Various growths of different fungal species sprouted around his hooves and spread like a carpet in a small vicinity around him.

"You were sent?" he asked carefully. "Tell me," Astraea took a few steps forward, spores releasing at every footfall, "would you call yourself a Harbinger?"

@Cry @Hrokr @Thothaga @Khloros

Hrokr adjusted his grip on the wolf's eye, pecking at it idly as he watched the going's on. He wondered if any of them would be interested in him working for them, but doubted it. Maybe his fellow bird? or the spider, maybe?

Or perhaps the plague horse? He could help to spread its disease, if it wished. But spreading it to the Spire was impossible, as far as the crow was concerned.

The deer, however, was rather interesting. He'd heard of him, of course, and even watched him from afar - Astraea. But he'd never seen him act like this, he'd always been kind from what he'd seen, helpful, even. What had changed? Was it the danger to the spire?

Khloros turned to fully face Astraea, and for a moment of thoughtful silence, he considered the stag's words.

He did not know Astraea. He didn't know that the other was some sort of Elder, and it likely wouldn't have mattered, much, if he did. What he could tell was that the other was interested in his words, and was approaching with a display of magic, and a neutral exchange--or so it seemed to the diseased horse--of views.

Was he a harbinger?

He considered.

"No," he rasped, and he began to walk toward the stag, to meet his approach, his own gait slow and unhurried. He was unafraid--unaggressive; mirroring Astraea's movements out of instinct, though it may have looked rather dramatic quite by accident. "I do not bring a message." And then, quite simply, he repeated himself: "I carry Death."

As if to make his point, he reached out with his magic--delicately, almost gently--to touch the drifting spores and the carpet of Astraea's life as it bloomed along the rock, where it nearly reached his own hooves.

And to kill it.

________________

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

@Cry @Hrokr @Thothaga