The stag saw the world lurch away, felt a tug of something gripping him, pulling him, swinging him down and along the ground. His body hit the hard ground and tumbled, limbs flailing and antlers smashing off the rock. A few tines cracked and fell away, and he felt, with a vague and distant horror, the savage impact of the ground on limbs and flanks. He would, most certainly, badly bruise; and his fur had only partially protected him from a series of scrapes and wounds.

He lay there for only a moment, eyes wide and mouth open, his tongue hanging as he panted and gasped for air. He struggled, too, to stand--a prey creature's instincts driving him to get upright, to stand strong, to escape. But halfway up he staggered, the world still spinning around him, and he fell again.

Amras was near, and Pride turned his head somewhat so as to see him better. His body remained on the rock, and he scrambled--and fell back down--every few seconds. Each time he fell back more exhausted, and gathered his strength for only a moment before again trying.

Everything was still whirling chaos, and he tried to spit out the only thing that he remembered, the only thing that seemed to matter. To tell Amras. To pass the knowledge on, so that it was not lost.

"D-death is--a lie, it--it is eternal--..." For a moment, he couldn't remember what was eternal, and then he did, and he spat it out. "Pain! Pain--is eternal--death is a lie-..."

Another scramble, another fall, his eyes still rolling to their whites, his tongue still hanging out. Hooves clattered on stone and scraped as he fell, and blood began to stain through his white pelt from beneath.

@Amras

There was little that Amras could do as Pride instinctively tried to scramble up. Movement would only aggravate the injuries, but any attempts to still the movement would probably trigger an even stronger escape response in the injured deer. Thus Amras kept a short distance, bracing himself to jump in should the thrashing become so severe as to require restraints.


He could not, however, brace himself for the words that came from Pride's mouth.

"Death is a lie..."

In an instant Amras was back in Cetus looking over a black gem slide that had overgrown with moss. Had it been moss or had there been another stone overlaid on the obsidian? He could feel sharp pain as his taloned hand had scraped on a jagged edge. Days passed, an intense mania slowly working through his head. Something was there. Something was calling. Something was screaming. He couldn't listen though; he had to continue to train. There was a magic competition coming up after all!

"The pain is eternal..."

There under the light of the spire, gembound all around watching the feats of magic. Trees, lights, sounds, and an odd spell that had made its way into the minds of so many a short time before. Amras had lead with that spell, but such magic caused instability of will. The mania had gotten louder, harder to control. A voice like a whisper but loud as a symphony repeating the same phrase over and over at that time. He hadn't understood it then. He had summoned a wall of stone with patterns in the marbling that flashed in front of his minds eye in time with the indecipherable voice. He had reinforced those markings with light. The wall had pieced him right in the spot he had cut them days before and the mania stopped as soon as he was free. Had it been due to the wound in the first place? The Spell? The Spire? So many possible variables it was impossible to single out the root cause.

One thing was for certain though. That mantra that had haunted him enough to bring a cursed wall into existence- that mantra that had been so impossible to translate into rational thought- was being spoken aloud right now by the addled Pride.

Amras said nothing at first, completely frozen in place. This was what had caused him to retreat to Eridanus for a month. This was the scar which he was only just beginning to recover from. Pride had sought to seek understanding of the oddity and now he, too, had looked into the eye of madness.

"I understand..." the gryphon finally replied, dire severity in his voice.

---

Pouch 1: Baubled talc rods x12	Pouch 2: Charcoal dust (50 in3)	Pouch 3: Dried Mothers Tear mushrooms (25 in3)	Pouch 4: Charcoal chunks x7 (medium)
Back bag: Empty

Take hold of the power within
"And shape the fabric of reality around you"
tags: @Pride
notes: None

The stag finally made it to his feet, standing trembling and panting, his head now hanging low. His legs shook terribly, so that several times he almost pitched over merely from standing up. His left flank held a rather bad gash, and blood spotted his coat here and there--and some of the tines had broken away from his antlers. One of the antlers, itself, seemed loose--perhaps brittle, and shedding?

Internally, Pride was struggling, heavily, to still his mind. His self-control was generally quite strong, and his emotions fairly muted; a more hysterical and emotional creature may have had a far harder time coping. As it was he found it hard to gather his fragmented thoughts at all. They were fleeting, barely-visible past the curtain of fear that drifted between he and his logic.

It took several full minutes of silence, even after Amras had spoken, for Pride's breathing to calm, for his shaking to somewhat still, and for him to be able to formulate himself at all. His words came stuttering and all at once, quiet, as he tried to throttle them out little by little. The thoughts themselves were still chaotic, so organizing them was difficult at best. "Definite... sentience," he reported, and the grey eyes rolled to Amras, still showing a thin crescent of white at their back edges, as though a moon were eclipsed by faintest shadow.

A gasp, a single trembling step as he reseated an uneasily-braced hoof, and he struggled to continue. "Chaotic. Came back to m-myself at--dark place. Sad, failed--lonely. Different beings--? Madness, rescued by an-... another victim or..." He shuddered abruptly, his entire hide flicking as if shaking off a thousand flies. "Or perhaps magic--not sentience--too powerful? Connection opens..." and he glanced more closely to Amras, as if struggling to convey what he meant.

To do so he tossed his head a little, antlers-first, as another might claw or strike at the air to make a general point of "violence." "C-connection, and then-... shock?"

First time, Amras, here, maybe opened it, maybe increasing magic, mania explained, overwhelmed, overrun, shattered. Voices? Source of voice? --Do not know. The stag again shuddered, trying to force his thoughts to be a little more coherent. What he got was a little more plaintive, though hardly self-pitying. I'm cold.

@Amras

Amras waited patiently as Pride slowly began to stabilize themselves. They were certainly in rough shape but it looked like with a bit of rest and plenty of time to heal they would probably be okay. Those eyes though- the touched deer had delved deeper, it seemed, than he could even fathom. Where the gryphon had scraped the edge of the unknown it was clear that Pride had accidentally jumped straight in.

So it is sentient, or at least there is something there that is.

That would certainly change how he thought of magic. Perhaps it wasn't a beast to be tamed or a force to be controlled but a mad god who led them along.

There's more than one? An uneven balance of power with the weaker being cast into a horrid state?

That had some... frightening implications. What if the physical world was only a fraction of the whole? With magic in the equation it already was known to be malleable, but was magic just an artifact of a completely separate system? A world of dreams and mind?

Then again Pride's brush with this anomaly had been while trying to utilize arcane magic. Would it have been the same if he'd used fire or pressure or light? Could it possibly be that there was a different kind of existence associated with each element? Perhaps the physical world was not so much concrete reality but their way of processing the twelve different natures of existence?

Amras blinked as his distant gaze reentered its focus. The possibilities were too boundless and with no way to test them without harm it was useless to indulge at the moment.

"You've taken quite a blow in the name of knowledge, haven't you?" he asked rhetorically as he sat back reached into the middle-right pouch around his waist, withdrawing a dry and shriveled object. Within a few seconds it began to glow in a pale beige light, deteriorating rapidly into glittery dust which fell to the ground. Each place the dust hit a new mushroom arose, plump and juicy.

"Let's get a bit more distance from the Spire's light before discussing too much further. Eat and it should help take the edge off the pain."

---

Pouch 1: Baubled talc rods x12	Pouch 2: Charcoal dust (50 in3)	Pouch 3: Dried Mothers Tear mushrooms (25 in3)	Pouch 4: Charcoal chunks x7 (medium)
Back bag: Empty

Take hold of the power within
"And shape the fabric of reality around you"
tags: @Pride
notes: None

Pride stood shaking for a moment, though it was nearly gone, now--just considering Amras' words.

Walk? Could he--walk? He slowly turned, blinking, to glance over his right shoulder at the Spire. He was wondering, in a vague and rather broken way, if he could still do anything with this. Anything to learn. A tap into its past, perhaps, rather than its mind, itself..?

But Amras' words echoed in his mind. "You've taken quite a blow in the name of knowledge, haven't you?" Pride blinked and turned back, staring rather blankly at the gryphon for a moment, despite the fact that he'd finished speaking some time ago. Pride was merely mulling the words over--and finding that yes, he had taken quite a blow. To try to focus on magic now would be... unlikely to succeed, at best, and catastrophic at worst.

"I do not wish to... blind myself. Again," he explained, and while it might have been meant as humor, he rather forgot, for the moment (and could perhaps be forgiven given the circumstances) that Amras had no idea how he'd come onto this train of thought. The poor gryphon had no way of knowing that Pride had considered further casting, and didn't want it to backfire--but to the stag, it held perfect clarity.

He bent down, cautious and slow. Despite his wounds and shock, he politely and carefully browed on the mushrooms for a moment, grazing. Once they had been eaten, he started off, his hooves clicking unsteadily on the stone. "Thank you," he said. "...Raises... more questions. Trying to think if th-there is a way to tell--s-sentient from... simply... too-powerful magic? Wh-what would happen if mind was linked to... magic, pure... no mind behind it? No--sentience?"

Perhaps they could think of some way to test all of this out.

yo why's your table gone crazy wtf

@Amras

As Pride ate Amras reached down and plucked a mushroom from the edge of the cluster, placing it back in the pouch he had withdrawn the dried one from. In its current state that would probably only work for a time- he'd have to go back to his home under the winds to set the fresh fungi out to dry out without rotting.

Indeed, the nature of the jest was lost on the gryphon at the deer's delayed words. He did, however smile at the sentiment- of course trying a destructive experiment multiple times without a plan would be foolhardy. He had not learned to intensify his fire by trying to ignite wood buried in clay from the get-go. He'd started out figuring out how to light twigs without hurting himself, discovered a way of minimizing damage, progressed to branches and then soaked branches as the barrier became stronger and easier to control. Even then he'd have to limit his practice time lest the burns the spell invariably remove his ability to practice for longer than necessary.

Pride definitely seemed to be recovering, their sentences were starting to become cohesive again. It was tough to say though how long it would take for recovery to be full.

"A good question, and one we might be able to test eventually without throwing ourselves at the source of magic itself." since apparently that was way too ambitious of an experiment. "I have some ideas but let's find a place to rest for now. No sense in exploring further when we are likely to miss details."

Slowly they treaded, with Amras standing upright to give himself as much of a view of the area around them as possible. This would be the absolute worst time for a dangerous foe to appear. There were three criteria he had in mind- they needed to get out of view of the spire, they had to be near water, and there had to be food nearby. Luckily Pride was an herbivore so no hunting would be required and Amras could just lie down in a patch of grass and pretend to be a plant soaking up the light. He just hoped the deer wouldn't get confused and try eating his green wing feathers.

Their journey would be long, especially with Pride's reduced speed, but eventually they arrived at the room's edge near the river, and in the wall a small cave mostly hidden from view of the rest of the room by a hill.

"Wait her a second, I'll make sure it's safe." he offered before rushing over to poke his head in.

Empty save for a large pile of glowing gems that was gathering dust. It looked like someone had pried up some of the room's natural rocks and was storing them here before they abandoned the cache for some reason.

"Unoccupied, this should be a good place to rest unless you want to get closer to the river or traverse the tunnels to get out of here entirely."

---

Pouch 1: Baubled talc rods x12	Pouch 2: Charcoal dust (50 in3)	Pouch 3: Dried Mothers Tear mushrooms (23 in3) + Fresh Mothers Tear mushroom x1	Pouch 4: Charcoal chunks x7 (medium)
Back bag: Empty

Take hold of the power within
"And shape the fabric of reality around you"
tags: @Pride
notes: None

Pride did not bother to inspect the little cave all that much, himself--he was exhausted, for one, and secondly he had already decided that Amras' common sense was not in any way particularly lacking. He might have a bit of a sense of adventure in terms of dangerous experimentation--but then, so (apparently, he thought wryly) did Pride. Plus, nothing jumped out at him as immediately wrong with the place, and that was good.

The stag ducked his head down to allow passage beneath the low ceiling. He walked in and, rather than grazing, he simply dropped into the gem pile. He looked around, slowly, nostrils flaring as he took scent. A little musty; uninhabited, then? He could also smell the faint metallic odor of his own blood as it stained the stones. He saw no food to be had, but that hardly mattered; he was not particularly hungry, instead being simply exhausted.

And thirsty, but that would have to wait.

He looked to Amras, tired but alert. His faculties were returning to him, though he found that much of what he'd experienced was too... esoteric, to put into words. He was uncertain if it had been as he'd thought--his consciousness shattering--or if that had been the logic that his limited mind had fallen to in order to explain the perception of a powerful, magical shock to his mind. Perhaps only his thoughts had shattered, and more coherent thought had been impossible..? It was so difficult to qualify that he could not even remember much of it, now.

"I think," he began carefully, after a few moments' rest, "that to understand the Spire and it--it's n-nature, we m-may need to find another way to-... ahh." He paused, his words briefly flitting away on a cloud of dark butterflies, and he blinked at Amras. He had to focus, for a moment, for them to whirl back together. "To find out what--happened." He paused. Well, that had been a terribly lame way of phrasing it. He attempted to clarify. "To d-discern whether magical shocks have the same or similar... effect. There may be two... beings or it may be--merely overwhelming power but-..." The stag trailed off for a moment, tilting his head.

"B-but I do believe that there was at least one being. The one that spoke those words--I could feel beneath, emotions. I d-do not think that was... my own thoughts, or feelings, echoed or--given form."

Pride looked again to Amras, thoughtfully, as he began to rub antlers on the piled gemstones. One antler felt loose, sore, and he couldn't help but realize that he might be shedding them. It had happened before, when he was still growing--he'd rub them heartily when they itched, and first the soft gray velvet would fall away. Eventually the antler, too, would fall off, only to be replaced, larger than before. I hope they do not get too much bigger, he thought glumly. They are already unwieldy enough as they are--magnificent though they may be. He paused, mentally, and evaluated what he'd just said to himself: yes. Relief. His mind was forming complex thoughts, again, as scattered as his emotions were. He was not permanently damaged, or so it would seem.

@Amras

Amras waited patiently by the cave's entrance as the wounded Pride entered. Like many of the side-passages this shelter was fairly small, they would be hard pressed to fit more than two gembound of their size in there without it becoming claustrophobic. The ceiling was just tall enough and the interior just wide enough that after his friend entered the gryphon was able to slide to the other wall of the cave at a good conversational distance. He wouldn’t be able to spread his wings out but that hardly mattered at the moment.

"We may be able to test the magical shocks on a smaller scale, but before we even consider that there's a lot of recovery and prep work to be done."

Should he be talking about this now or was it too early? Pride would probably be cautious having seen the shock first-hand but even with that recoil the thirst for knowledge could drive one to foolhardy actions.

"While the spire is much too much to handle right now it may be that we just need to learn a way to defend ourselves against its effects. The same concept as trying to use fire magic without cooking yourself alive. Without mastery the fire burns equally both ways, but with mastery you can create an inferno and only walk away with manageable surface burns."

Wings folded in as the gryphon sprawled out along the wall, head pointed back to look out the entryway. "The golems are infused with magic like the Spire, perhaps if we could figure out how to tame or restrain one it would help us develop the basic methods."

Though he tried his best to keep a blank face at mention of the entity Amras couldn't help but breathe out heavily as their existence was brought to light. Surely that one couldn't be explained by raw magic- a mantra inscribed upon stone and felt on an emotional level by those who touched its essence. If it was the spire then what might be causing it so much pain? If it was something else then what had brought it to that existence in the first place? An uncomfortable quandary- nowhere near as adventurous as simply exploring the breadth of magic.

Perhaps, though, much more important...

"I'm inclined to believe the same, even from my own limited contact with it. Do you think it's malicious?"

---

Pouch 1: Baubled talc rods x12	Pouch 2: Charcoal dust (50 in3)	Pouch 3: Dried Mothers Tear mushrooms (25 in3) + Fresh Mothers Tear mushroom x1	Pouch 4: Charcoal chunks x7 (medium)
Back bag: Empty

Take hold of the power within
"And shape the fabric of reality around you"
tags: @Pride
notes: None

Pride considered Amras' question in silence, for a few moments. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he found himself even more tired--and found that the stabbing pains from his wounds were most distracting. He shifted uncomfortably, wishing he had some way to mend his flesh, and forced himself to focus on his thoughts as best he could.

"I think..." he began, slowly--giving the idea the cautious consideration that it deserved--"...it was not hostile. It--grieved, I think? And if you were to be believed, it released you quite deliberately, and though that... may have been a shocking encounter, it seems no true harm was done. When my mind was-..." Pride paused, here.

There were, so far as he saw it, two possibilities. Perhaps three.

With the first, the being itself had made contact with him, and through madness or malice, struck out at his mind. He dismissed this as quite unlikely; the initial shock and--whatever had happened, the bits which were now slipping from memory... Well, he knew that these had not held the same feel as the being.

The second possibility, and the third, was that the Spire had been a different entity altogether, to begin with. Either he had made contact with pure magic (or the Spire itself) and been badly harmed, and accidentally run into this being--either it was near, or feeding off of the Spire, or trapped, or what have you, or it was simply brushed against by Pride's mind, same as the Spire itself. The third possibility was still that the Spire was an entity (or magic), and that this being had actively found Pride being harmed, and had drawn him in and hurled him back into his own body, and into consciousness.

Pride considered, and spoke very slowly. "I believe it may have been an accidental encounter, but coincidences... they never merit true consideration. It is possible that this being is either bound to the Spire, or found me in very dire straits and deliberately aided my mind in retreating from the shock delivered to it." One thing he did distinctly remember was the sensation of... landing on familiar shores, so to speak, yet shores so foreign and alien as to frighten him, had he been capable, at that moment, of fearing it. Shores of a strange mindscape, full of grief and loneliness--that was where he had washed up. Had this being pulled him there, drawn him in from drowning, and deposited him on the only beach it had?

This metaphor worked well to describe, to himself, what had happened, and Pride found himself rearranging his memories somewhat to fit it. The memories themselves had been fading fast, and so now he could in some sense retain them, categorize them--he had been drowning in a riptide of magicka, and was dragged onto a beach.

But that wasn't quite it, was it? It was more like being dragged down into a whirlpool, drowning, and falling out into a black cave below.

He looked to Amras, solemn. "I cannot say for certain. As for the golems--it is one idea. Alternatively we could attempt to find another powerful source of magicka, and perhaps test it on Lessers. Given our idea of sentience and power, it is possible we could create sentience in--say, a rat, or a bird. What do you think?"

He paused in this thought, and added--"I wonder if I were but instants from ascending into a new form. Or, perhaps, if doing what I suggest might send a lesser into simple shattered madness, as I believe I just skirted round the edges of." The first bit was given with humor; the rest, not so much.

@Amras

"Not hostile... so this mind behind the voice may be a force of good, or neutral at worst?"

Could it really be so? Pride did make a good argument- even if blood had been spilled to do so he had been released from the mania as soon as the mantra wall had been empowered. Still, Amras wasn't ready to put all trust in the force quite yet. It was still uncertain if it was even a separate entity to that which broke the deer in the first place. Even if it was benign it was also possible that it was dangerous by its very nature, like the eternal winds which held no malice but needed to be respected lest they cause harm.

"If the Voice is responsible for you being here now then we certainly owe it an attempt at understanding."

Was this helpful entity at odds with the Spire then? Could it be that the source of magic itself was malicious, or was it yet another construct dangerous to be in the proximity of? Perhaps the spider that attacked had been sent by an unknown party to try to destroy what was perceived to be a threat.

But surely they needed the Spire to survive! This was certainly deeper than he had anticipated it being.

"It is certainly possible, in fact I have heard rumor of gembound who have accomplished similar fears through chance. At the very least we know it is possible to create new sentient life through cleaving and empowering gemstones."

The gryphon's deep expression lightened at the last turn of phrase. "There's an idea. We just figure out how to harvest magic from the spire without going absolutely mad then overthrow the ancients with our all-consuming power. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that."

He jested but the idea of empowering gembound did have some interesting merit. Magic was usually shaped before it could be used for anything practical, but was it possible to use its raw form to ascend to states that would allow them to understand it better? Thorough testing would probably have to be done on the lessers before they tried anything on themselves. Today's experience was nothing if not a warning against trying anything extreme without caution.

---

Pouch 1: Baubled talc rods x12	Pouch 2: Charcoal dust (50 in3)	Pouch 3: Dried Mothers Tear mushrooms (25 in3) + Fresh Mothers Tear mushroom x1	Pouch 4: Charcoal chunks x7 (medium)
Back bag: Empty

Take hold of the power within
"And shape the fabric of reality around you"
tags: @Pride
notes: None