It had been a couple of days since Wilder had come home from Tunnel H and she hadn't been happy for a single moment of it. She refused to talk to anyone, slept in strange corners and nooks, and barely ate at all. She also threw a couple of temper tantrums in that time, kicking bones around, spitting fire, throwing things around with magic, and summoning black holes and just watching as things were sucked in and crushed, imagining that it wasn't bones and rocks that were being obliterated but Pride and Envy. The white fur torn apart, the little weasel screaming as Blackberry screamed, and then when it was over, she'd curl up and hate herself for thinking such ugly thoughts.

She could not get the sounds out of her head. The screaming, the sound of the rocks collapsing. The sight when she had lifted the rocks, which she hadn't noticed before - the crystal was intact, yes, but the rocks were coated with blood and there were streaks of red showing through the chrysalis walls. That was her friend that had bled so horribly, screamed so terribly. A friend she had failed to protect.

What if Pride decided to turn on Aure? What if Aure made a mistake that caused them to hate him too? Could she protect him? Or would she fail as she had done with Blackberry?

And that, in turn, brought back all of her fears of herself. All of her uncertainties. She looked down at the scars on her leg. She had once done that to herself. What if another trance came to her...and she hurt Aure instead? Or someone else close to her? What if she was lost and could never come back?

All the mix of emotions was too much for the cat to handle. She could not contain so many things in her small, innocent body. She shivered as it all exploded outwards, quite literally, and she hissed and opened her jaws, letting loose a spray of flame, roasting all of the bones nearby. Too much pent up anger and frustration, too much worry and now this newfound hatred for two gembounds, one of which she had considered a friend.

@Aure

How he had failed to notice the emergence of charred-black bones and odd pits in the earth was beyond him.

Aure circled high as he could around Canis, feathers just barely scraping its low-slung roof with every wingbeat. He'd begun to lose hope in his friend's return and began wishing that she wasn't a black cat barely the size of his own head. Energy thrummed low in his throat, bound to his gemstone and burning still since his practice session. It had, miraculously, not gone horribly wrong aside from the crawling sensation of plasmafire picking at his throat.

Flames crackled, something entirely out of place --- Bones rarely, if ever, cast his fiery home element, except as a light. Fire always was a beacon, though, and it shone stark against the drab brown dust that called itself a floor. Wilder couldn't cast fire magic last he saw her, but it was worth investigating. For all he knew, this could be some random new hatch. He held onto hope, though.

Hope, which wasn't misplaced.

"Wilder---" he chirped, a clipped note as he circled low. His magicka drew up, stirring the dust and hopefully driving it toward the burning flames. Aure remained at a slight distance, alighting with a click of talons. The poor cat was shaking. In a soft voice, "Wilder, are you okay?"

@Wilder

Wilder panted as the flames died away from her mouth and watched them burn before her before a sudden gust of wind blew it all away. Her eyes widened and she whipped around towards the source, glancing up at Aure, flying above her head.

What should she feel? Relief that someone she knew was a friend was finally here? Dread because Pride had certainly warned him about her? Anxiety because she knew she had betrayed his trust?

She didn't know what to think anymore. She'd gone through everything on a one-track mind. Things that were scary and bad she stayed away from. She didn't like them and ran away or fought them off as best she could. Things that made her happy, or things she could do to make others happy, attracted her like a moth to flame. And that was easy, that was simply and that was fine with her.

But now she didn't know because she liked Blackberry, she felt like she had some degree of trust with the goose, even though she knew she was a murderer. Any other time she would have run, she would have hidden, she would have tried to fight the goose away if she had attacked. And Pride, she had considered him a friend! They had gone through that terrible cave together, they'd almost died together and now...he had tried to kill Blackberry, whom she had also considered a friend. He was justified but she hated it. She hated him. But was she wrong to hate him?

She stared up at Aure, opening her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a high-pitched wailing as the dam broke. She sunk to the ground sobbing and shaking out of control. She was a simple cat of simple things and this was far too much for her. She couldn't handle this anymore. She wished she'd never explored that cave.

@Aure

Aure closed the distance in record time as the little black cat basically melted into the floor, a pathetic sobbing mess nearly blipping out of view with how tightly she was curling in on herself. His talons clicked across the floor as he came to her side and settled down so that he was essentially flank-to-flank. Extending a warm, friendly wing, he tried to nestle Wilder close against himself. "Hey there, Wilder," he murmured worriedly, bright eyes half-lidded as he leaned down to lick her back, against the grain of her fur.

Unwittingly, his magicka worked its way into the cat's mind, sending a feedback loop to his own that persistently grew louder and louder, more and more crowded and overwhelming. A cave, dark and foreboding, Wilder's own paws beneath her and a white stag ahead, face yet unmarred by criss-crossed scars. Then, another cave --- the one the meeting between leaders had happened in --- but with a heavily scared, weary looking goose, lying pathetically among her own mess. Barely skin and bones. Pride's face, stern, uncaring. A brief walk through dreams, utterances of giving up on life, shrieking. Stones and rocks tumbling over and over and over, void impossibly black---.

For lack of a better phrase, Aure shut his brain off for a moment, and his magical ties to Wilder's mind. It immediately felt intrusive and wrong, but he needed to know, right? "Hey, hey... let's figure this out, okay? Together? We've done it before, Wild." His ears flickered back, and he started licking again, "you don't have to do this alone, alright? You just need to tell me... what happened? How did you--- end up talking to Blackberry?"

@Wilder

In the moment, Wilder didn't notice that Aure's magic had intruded on her mind, the chaotic feedback he received all she could focus on. She just didn't know, didn't understand what she should feel, how she should react to all of this. She just sobbed and gave up on trying.

But Aure's gentle licking and his voice at least helped calm her down a bit, enough so that the sobs were just an occasional hick, although she couldn't stop her overwhelmed shivering. She looked up at Aure, eyes bloodshot and for a second her expression hardened, a flash of anger making its way through all of the confusion in her expression. "Did Pride tell you? Did he tell you I'm a traitor and that you shouldn't trust me or that you should throw me out? He's a liar! He lied to me! And he killed my friend!" Another sob broke her off from saying anymore and she hid her face down, pushing her paws over her eyes, ears flattened back against her head.

It took a few more moments for her to calm down enough again to speak again, although he words were a lot more pitiful and a lot less confident. "I just found her...she looked terrible! I wanted to help! Why is that wrong?"

@Aure

Wilder was back, now, and the wyvern had the patience of a Saint--- he gave her however long she needed to gather her wits, to formulate at least a few sentences in response. She looked up at him, a definite sign that he didn't need to repeat himself. Anger flashed through her pink eyes, but vanished quickly as it came, as she buried her head in her paws. Aure hummed softly, more in thought than reassurance, contemplating whether or not he should admit to it; "he came and told me that Blackberry was dead, and that you were not to be trusted, but--- I need to hear your side of it." His ears flicked back, and he stopped licking (and rested his head just so that he near-completely encircled Wilder.) "He made you out to be someone I don't believe you are or ever could be."

That was an honest statement, from a friend to a friend.

"But I need you to look me in the eye and tell me, and tell your side of the story, if you can, okay? I trust you, but I need you to tell me so I can figure out what to do."

Aure was unsure of how to proceed without divulging that he had, indeed, peered into the little black cat's psyche; though, he didn't think she would particularly mind, right now. "She couldn't even be bothered to move from her den, could she?" The amount of... waste in it, the way feathers were ragged and mangled and seemed to hang limply off of bones. "I read your mind--- I'm sorry," he apologized, but quickly moved on, "I know what she's done, yes, but... something was wrong with what I saw. I didn't see a murderer biding her time. She was waiting to die."

He paused, that's not what she needs to hear, is it?

@Wilder

Wilder curled in tighter, utterly miserable. She still couldn't believe that her actions had, apparently, been so terrible to someone else that they'd spread across the caves that she was untrustworthy, a liar, and a traitor?

It felt good, at least, to be completely surrounded by Aure, someone she knew, something that trusted her and didn't believe whatever garbage Pride was dishing out. She closed her eyes and didn't talk for a moment, just let his scent and his warmth calm her down until she could speak. When she did speak, she was obviously fighting back more sobs, her voice low and monotone and forced.

"When I was younger I went to the Collector for a job. He wanted me to go around and learn about things that were happening, give him the news. He wanted me to go and get to know, uh, a wolf that lives around here, a tiger and a dog, the Children of Rot, and the Bloodberries. The first three were easy enough, but I couldn't find the Bloodberries anywhere. I wanted to find out what happened to them so I could tell the Collector. He was going to give me magic! But then during the meeting I heard a weird sound behind a rock in the same tunnel and when I went back later...I found Blackberry. I was just going to ask her about what had happened to the Bloodberries but..."

She shut her eyes tight, remembering the dark, dingy cave. The terrible smell that came out when she moved the rock and Blackberry screaming for her to leave her alone to die. She wanted Aure to see this, to understand why...what she had done. She needed more then a link; she needed a connection. And so she reached out in the same way that she would read minds, but more...deeper. Something much more powerful because it was all she could think of doing to try and make him understand what she had done.

But the instant the magic touched to Aure, something went wrong. Horribly wrong. The thread of magic she had been slowly weaving between the two suddenly snapped and fire blazed through Wilder's head, spreading tendrils through her mind like spiderwebs. Every inch of her body burned in the flame and she screamed, from the depths of her soul all the way out into the physical world where Wilder's body, her poor body, exploded into movement.

What had been a tender moment just a second ago was ruined now as Wilder leaped away from Aure, her claws out from her paws as far as they would go as she pushed off against him, her limbs flailing wildly as she tried to escape the flames within. She was screaming, horribly screaming, a sound she'd never made before, worse then the screams that had come from Blackberry as she was torn apart.

It took seconds for her consciousness to go under, the flood of backfired magicka burying her beneath a world of pain and power. Her body went completely still and her fur bushed. Her eyes were wide and blank and not a single sound came from her throat. For a second, it could be mistaken that she wasn't going to move, that this was going to pass, but then she straightened up, glaring down at Aure with a gaze devoid of anything and everything.

"Searching memories." It paused. "Red Jasper, second life. Goes by Aza'zel, now Aure. Life-giver - Fire Agate. Goes by Giggle. Possession of Fungi magic and pressure magic." Its eyes moved to train on the jasper upon Aure's head. "You will give it to me."

@Aure

Wilder had been on a quest from the Collector, initially, which seemed harmless enough until you realized she (a tiny cat) was being sent to be in cahoots with a wolf, tiger, dog, and the actual Bloodberries. The elder being's motives and actions were always suspicious, but that seemed like a pretty deliberate death sentence, if the Bloodberries were actually organized like they were, before. Aure flicked his ears back,maybe we should do something about him. What good was a treasure when it required near-death to get it?

The cat had stopped for a moment, seemingly to consider how to word the next bit of speech. Small, but sharp claws dug into Aure's side. A sharp series of kicks from her subsequent convulsions drove a sharp yelp from him--- in a very similarly cat-like way, the wyvern sprung to his feet and moved away a couple bounds. Unwittingly, he was squaring off, wings loose and ready to take him up into the sky. For a moment, he feared that Wilder had waited for him to be vulnerable, to claw him up and kill him and leave him for dead, influenced by that goose; though, seeing the stiff way of moving... this wasn't her.

A trance of sorts had overtaken her, and without a single bit of hesitation, she began to speak. Dread sat hollowly against his chest, somehow impossibly heavy. Her voice was unrecognizable at this point, an analytical monotone. Hearing Aza'zel's name made him freeze--- I don't think she knows his name.

Expecting a fight or some conflict, Aure backpedaled. "I can't do that, Wilder. It'll kill me. Do you hear me?" With a few wingbeats, he was in the air. He had meant to contact her via mind, to see if she was still there in any way, but nothing came--- he wasn't sure if it was his failure or if she was deliberately blocking him out. "Wilder, c'mon. There's nothing here to be worried about, okay? Just breathe, just breathe. If you don't hurt me, I won't have to hurt you."

@Wilder

The cat watched Aure with the same blank expression as he took to the air. Everything about the way she was, the way she simply existed there, it was wrong. It wasn't Wilder. Wilder was small and joyful, standing tall but casual. There was always something moving, whether her tail gently waving, a twitch of the whiskers, a swivel of the ears, but now...she was tall and rigid, as if electricity coursed through her veins. Her tail was straight behind her, completely unmoving. Her ears stood tall, but didn't move to listen to what Aure was saying. No expression passed across her face.

For a moment after Aure's first statement, the cat paused again. "Searching memories." A few seconds of silence before the robotic, hoarse voice continued. "Rhodonite. Goes by Wilder. Possession of Arcane, Energy, Light, Fire, Pressure, and Non-elemental magics."

Finally there was movement, a shift in the shoulders that rippled through the rest of its body. A strange look of confusion passed across the face and the cat looked behind, narrowing the eyes. "Rhodonite incapable of flight." It turned back and glared back up at Aure. "Red Jasper shall be brought down by other means."

A sudden strike of magic came from Wilder's body, streaking towards Aure in an invisible pattern. To grip his body and bring it to the ground. It wasn't gentle, but it wasn't violent either. It was to pull in his wings and set him back on the pile of bones beneath him quickly and efficiently. The black cat continued to stare without expression, but something darker was beginning to spread onto the face. Just a snippet, just the corners; greed and desperation. Not yet twisting its actions but as time went on and no magic was given, it was growing restless.

@Aure

Mother's advice flashed in his mind ("If someone's gonna be a threat, you kill 'em, or take 'em out.") as he struggled wildly against the telekinetic hold keeping him aloft, but dragging him ever-closer to the earth.

Wilder moved mechanically below, and by that... not at all. Aure's talons met solid earth again, and he immediately set to shakily assembling his magic, tossing it toward the little black cat. His grip slipped as soon as he went to cast, and he wound up short of breath himself. Why wasn't it working? Was this her doing? Was she able to hinder the flow of magicka, somehow?

Am I going to die here?

Panic surged through him, as he struggled to his feet and moved backward, "Wilder, stop. Please." Aure wanted to call for his Mother, for her to come and protect him, but--- what if Wilder goes after her, too?

@Wilder