"Mm, I do go there a lot--to the Spire, to Polaris. Its magic is quite chaotic, so it is a good place to hone your skills; if you can consistently use it there, I think you can use it anywhere. Except the swamp," he added darkly. His magic had never damn worked in Cetus.

"If it helps, any, I do have the ability to see into the past at a touch--I may be able to use it to help you with the bones? And--yes. Simply fling it. Imagine as you did prior--the magic that you used but a moment ago; but will the wisp to do as you tell it. To hurl into your target. It will obey," he added, matter-of-factly--as if the wisp were somehow sentient.

Then he waited, and cast out his senses--attempting to 'watch,' via magicka alone, precisely what Aure was doing.

@Aure

"I haven't been there in a while," he mused softly, ignoring the bitter notes against Cetus --- which was odd, given that the bone pit seemed to be on the fringe of magickal influence. Aure never considered himself one to frequent the swamp, but he easily drew the conclusion that it was plain cursed.

Regarding hindsight, he chirped, "ah, do you?" Didn't Mother have that ability, too? "You're welcome to come and explore the bones at any time, or do anything as long as it isn't," the wyvern could barely stifle his snicker, turning away from his wisp for a moment, "y'know, vandalism." Vandalism of the genital sort, of course. "That was a terrible joke, sorry," he added --- with a clear full-stop --- and looked back at his flame.

Alright, focus. The wisp seemed to pulse in accordance with attention, and near-immediately shot straight at the boulder in a white-hot blaze. Where the plasma-stone hadn't already left scorch marks on the boulder, there were now some. Aure stared in mild awe for a moment, tail-wag betraying his slight enthusiasm at the discovery that these wisps, in fact, could have some offensive (and defensive capability.) Turning to Mr. Teacher, he chirped, "what makes them become so hot? They seem so harmless and cold when you touch them normally?"

The answer was probably "the sheer force of will," or something.

@Pride

Pride peered over at Aure. Terrible joke..? Whatever it was, he didn't get it. He was unsure why vandalism would be a joke, exactly.

"Vandalism? Have others used the bones in that way before?" he asked, after a moment, with faint confusion.

Pride watched the wisp, then, hurtle into the boulder--and felt the magic pulse correctly, a noticeable surge that resonated with his own and echoed his own use of the same spell. He noticed Aure's brief tail-wag, too, and felt a little warmed--Aure was clearly young, but joy was a wonderful thing. "Very good," he praised, and then answered the question--"I do not know. How does any magic work, truly? We imagine, we will it into being, and it becomes. I suspect the wisps have more to them, however--possibly a link to the Merchant. He seems able to summon them at our locations, and control their actions himself; hopefully it does not become too great an issue."

Pride paused, thinking. "Well, now that you know that one, you can practice it; but tell me--what other magics, precisely, do you know?" An inquisitive, pale gaze turned to regard Aure.

@Aure

Ah, no... now he'd have to explain the basis of his awful joke. Or just wave it off. Yeah, waving it off sounded good. Aure glanced side to side, ears moving back. "Ah, no, but---" ugh, may as well admit it, "it seemed funnier in my head. Nevermind." It was time to distract Pride from this conversation with some spellwork.

The answer to his question was exactly what he expected, plus a little extra. Aure had heard some rumors about the Merchant, seen some of his wisps in action --- he just never bothered to follow them, for fear of what sinister thing may lie at the end of the trail. Well, not the first time. After Wilder told him who the Merchant was, he just elected to avoid his flesh caves and such. It wouldn't be very Kingly of him to just walk into an organ and die. "I've never followed his wisps." The lights danced and they swirled, leading Gembound to the odd figure. Not him.

"Thank you for teaching me that," the wyvern began politely, tail wagging pleasantly, "I know quite a bit of my mother's magic --- mushrooms and mind sort of things --- and I've been practicing with the air my father once controlled." Oh, and, one more thing. "I recently discovered, too, that I can do something like that plasma-stone, actually, but..."

He turned toward the abused boulder. "It hurts a bit." Aure lowered his head, sucking in a deep breath. A white-hot flame seemed to bloom in his throat, causing him to wince visibly. A low bass thrummed from his being, magical radiation coalescing. The moment he opened his beak, a column of pure radiation blasted toward the boulder. Every single feather on his body stood on end, puffing up and immediately sagging as soon as the flow of magicka stopped. Not even bothering to look at the mess he had made of the boulder, he turned away, panting and rubbing at his throat with a wing-claw.

"Hngh," was all he could really say about that.

@Pride

Pride watched, and looked rather startled--backing up a swift couple of paces, and narrowing his eyes against the light.

"That looks a rather dangerous magic," he observed at once, shaking himself a bit. "Certainly useful to defend your home, however! It reminds me of something similar, in fact--equally dangerous," he warned, glancing at Aure, briefly. "I have seen Gembound torn apart, or even destroyed utterly--crushed into nothing in an instant--with this magic."

Pride approached the stone only by a pace or two, then lifted his head, falling still for a very long moment. He was concentrating deeply, and giving it time--this wasn't a spell to rush, let alone when one was ill, as he was.

When he was ready, he released it. A dark space--a nothing where light and air and rock should have been--appeared in the side of the stone. There were a rapid, sharp series of cracks, the sound of sucking, only lasting a few seconds--but in those few seconds, a good chunk (though not all, as he'd hoped) of the boulder had shattered away, sucked forever into the nothing of the black hole.

When the magic faltered and faded, Pride was left near exhausted. ...Damn. I did not realize just how weak that had left me, he thought to himself, Amazon in his mind. Then he turned to Aure, the shattered half-boulder behind him with no sign of the vanished material.

"More than only the magic itself, practice is important--and creativity with it. It can do whatever you will it do, however you shape it; it is limited only by your own mind. How often do you practice? Your magic itself looks quite capable of defending your family." There was a touch of weariness in his voice, but he ignored it, forcing past it with strength of will alone.

@Aure

That spell had been too sudden, even for himself. Aure doubled over for a moment, coughing rather harshly and coming fairly close to making his throat bleed. His wings felt like they were made of lead; that fire was a lot more intensive than a simple shot of wisp, weighing heavy on his entire body. Just barely making it to face Pride again, the wyvern plonked down, panting quietly. "Pretty last ditch magic," he murmured softly, rasping slightly due to an extreme case of a sore throat.

Bright eyes drifted lazily toward the boulder, now half-gone thanks to an impromptu void. Distantly, tiredly, he hoped that wasn't Senka's type of void... that rock won't be having any better of a time in there. Immediately after, the pale stag was just as dog-tired as himself. Aure didn't really notice it, but he remained firmly where he was, trying to catch his breath.

"I haven't... practiced much, really," he began, stifling another cough, "not with mixing magics. Not since the Olympics." Even then, that had been somewhat improvised. Neat, but improvised and extraordinarily successful. At the time, Aure had regretted his success, due to it placing him at the center of attention. Now, it felt pretty good, for lack of better wording. "Fungal magic forces me to be pretty creative," he began, and would've demonstrated if he actually felt up to it, "some mushrooms smell like meat, but taste rancid and are a good deterrant. Others break down into a slippery slime. It's good for escaping."

@Pride

"Are you all right?" Pride eyed Aure uncertainly. The hybrid was coughing, seemingly sickened--and the stag glanced off at the boulder, then back to Aure. Had the spell actively harmed its own caster-?

Pride tilted his head at the rest of Aure's words, curiously. "Fungal magic--I've little experience with that, but I know some very little about it. You're capable of creating spores, yes? If you are capable of magics of the mind, or simple bursts of power, perhaps you can use that to move these spores where you see fit? Ahh--as you were doing with the shell, prior," he explained. "I imagine it would be rather an effective strategy, procuring a near-certain infection of the enemy, even at a distance. Perhaps," he went on, thoughtful, "even in secret."

"Alternatively, fungal magic could perhaps be combined with something like-..." Pride glanced up, and around. He had an idea, one he'd never tried before, and for a few moments (his weariness near-forgotten in his enthusiasm) he used his front hooves to scrape together sand and rocks. He did this quite a safe distance from Aure, then turned, and called out to him.

"I am going to try something--but imagine that you had coated all of these things in spores, or fungus--something to infect the blood, perhaps, with whatever you wished."

He'd meant to lift up merely sand and rocks, but apparently his mental image of 'sharp' inadvertantly shaped the spell more specifically than he'd imagined: shards of razor-sharp glass began to form around him, raising and whirling in a deadly dervish. He looked a bit surprised, maintaining it only for a few moments--enough to show Aure--before the taxing nature and his own tiredness forced him to drop it once more.

The glass clattered to the ground around him, and he explained. "Or even a single, sharp object, really--hurled with your mind, but coated in spores? It might be enough to truly sicken or even kill an attacker," he mused.

@Aure

Aure rubbed at his throat again despondantly, nodding quietly. "I'm fine, just--- hngh," the wyvern turned slightly, dipping his head in the shallows of Fornax. Despite it's fairly warm state, the water was refreshingly cool as it ran down. "I just don't have much practice with that spell," he croaked, clearing his throat gently. He hoped Pride would stop eying him in concern, when he seemed to be the one pushing his luck the most right now.

"Ah, there's some spell to... make hallucinogenic spores and send them wherever you please, but it seems to be limited to that," Aure considered, though he wasn't experienced in that specific magic, "fungi tend to be fairly unnoticeable. There's mycelia crawling everywhere, even under us." Not that he could see it. He just knew that it was there.

Pride was suggesting a fairly efficient form of assault, gathering up stones and sand, somehow shaping them into shards of crystal-clear glass and scattering them in a flurry --- a form, perhaps, of the tornado magic. "It could serve well to incapacitate an attacker, too, if you don't want to kill them," Aure chirped quietly, leaning down to take another drink. Unless absolutely necessary, the wyvern wasn't too interested in having another's blood on his claws.

Maybe... he'd try a different spell strategy, once he had rested.

A pause.

Electing to make further idle conversation (and get his throat back in shipshape) bright eyes connected with the stag's own. "I may call a Bonebound meeting as soon as I get back to Canis, I think," his tail wagged, scattering the pebbles in its wake, "to count the numbers and fully bind those who have remained with us --- it's a ceremonial sort of thing --- maybe I'll tell them about the meeting between groups and the discussion we had. Would it be wise to ask them to be wary of the Ancients and uncover what they can?"

A pause, to take a breath and allow Pride a chance to respond, and--- "you're free to come and speak as well, or... to send someone to represent the Seven."

@Pride

At the mention of not killing, Pride glanced at the glass shards with doubt.

"I would not trust that these would not kill someone," he warned. "And I did not realize that--about fungus? Perhaps I shall have to look into it more deeply. As for the meeting, I wish you luck with it, and I shall ask Livius if they wish me to come as a representative? As for the ancients, I'd suggest as much. I know that Dragon wanted the meeting itself, the knowledge-sharing and the wariness as a whole, to remain secret... at least from the Ancients. Whether you choose to adhere to that is your decision, of course, but I see little harm in it, and great potential gain--depending on how wholly one embraces conspiracy theories," he added, with humor.

Pride paused, thinking, eyeing Aure curiously. "Tell me--does the Bonebound have any sort of defenses? I--know how terribly suspicious that question sounds, but for your own sake. For example, scouts, sentries--there are magics that could be useful there; and to hide you, to defend, should you require it? Ahh-... There is a spell that allows me, for example, to split another... version of myself away. I can use this to scout and look ahead without putting my true physical body in danger. And as for hiding--" He focused, for a moment.

After a beat, the shadows around and beneath Pride and Aure faded. Then the shadows beneath the pebbles, the stones, the boulders. Even the sea seemed brightly-lit, its glittering surface bright. There was no way anything could hide; it was as if Pride had deleted all shadows in Fornax from existence. He squinted around, lifting one forehoof.

"Ahhh... Maybe I should... Rest, for a moment--that had rather the opposite effect than I had intended--err. Shadows can be summoned, to hide, not... removed, that was unintentional-..." As the natural darkness--such small bits, so easily missed, but so obvious when missing--began to return, Pride sighed. "Magic is a fickle thing."

@Aure

"If you were careful enough, maybe not," Aure mused, eyes trailing the deadly edge at Pride's hooves, "they could serve as a powerful threat, at least." Bright eyes shifted to the pebbles beneath him, magicka flaring unintentionally to indicate that there were eyes everywhere. Realizing that there were fruiting bodies rising beneath him, the wyvern extended his wings. Everywhere his primaries grazed the ground, warm-white funnels clustered and pushed pebbles aside. "Edible," he observed fairly quickly, giving them one sniff and glancing at the false gills running up one's cup-like shape, "they taste alright --- a bit like dirt, to be honest --- if you'd like to try." Bones tended to taste a bit like dirt, too, so Aure was used to it.

"Some of them might be on our side," he chirped, referring to the Ancients and tucking his wings back in as he sat in his new mushroom-nest, "but I don't intend to have the Bonebound start any conflict with them by going against them. I'll make sure they remain wary and keep the meeting to themselves." Aure didn't doubt his half-family's ability to take secrets to the grave. Leading was about trust, at times.

Regarding defenses: "we do not... the Bonebound don't hold any claim over Canis. We simply ask that the bones be respected and that visitors don't cause too much trouble for those of us who live there." Bright eyes listened attentively to the spell descriptions, though he wound up being wildly disoriented by Pride deleting Fornax's shaders. Furrowing his brow and shielding his eyes with an outstretched wing, Aure murmured, "ah, I know someone who's used that spell --- successfully --- to teach me some light magic, but--- I don't think I'd be able to bring myself to use it specifically, with what I've heard of Senka and the Void. It's terrifying to be in the dark, alone."

He had never experienced in personally, but the brief flash his mother had shown him... it said more than enough.

A pause. Aure cleared his throat, and met the stag's eyes again. "The Bonebound will protect one another in whatever way is necessary. We'll train shortly after the meeting, perhaps, to hone our magical and physical prowess." Oh, idea! "We could set up a bit of a... shared session between the Seven and the Bonebound in Orion's arena?"

@Pride