Tal'at was incredibly, horribly lost. The caverns hadn't changed much in the last few cycles, but being a blind bat that relied on magical senses that meant if there was a magical disruption in the caves-- or a change in literally anything in the ecosystem, it was completely confusing.

At some point, Tal'at had ended up back in his chrysalis, for maybe the third or four time in his life, and when he awoke, he did not know where he was. He did not know where the Big Bog was, nor did he know where Dragon or the rest of the Children of Rot had gone. All he was keenly aware of was that he was in a place that was hard, and did not have any trees to hide in.

He was absolutely terrified that a predator would snatch the life out of him. He had spent so long learning to survive and thrive despite the challenges he faced, it would be tragic to see that life snuffed out so abruptly. He tried again to sense any sort of foliage he could hide in, or at least, trace back to Cetus.

His senses felt muddled, but he could pick out a lichen that crawled upward, probably upon some kind of rock or stone. The mutated bat hopped along the ground, swinging his head to and fro as he clicked quietly to himself, trying to get some sense of where he was.

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going out a different path lead by a beating heart

Tal'at walked up to where he could sense the little growth of plants, settling his talons upon the mossy surface of a stone. As he expected, the damp stone had been overtaken by some moss, and he climbed up on to the stone, swinging his orb-faced blind mug about and sniffed at the air.

Cautious, he let the magic fade from his gem, until he could no longer feel the lichen under his feet except for through where he touched it. Abruptly, he let out a sudden sneeze, and frightened by the sound, he squished down on his perch. Ears twitching and swiveling, he tried to sense any potential danger around. If there was a big cave rat around the corner, he would rather know before it tried to eat him.

He was definitely freaking out too much to focus, however, as his own heart pounded hard enough that he could barely think. Goodness, if there was something dangerous out there, it might just eat him. Stirred by that sense of panic, he scrambled forward off of the rock and took flight, furiously flapping through the clear air. He was used to his flight being caught short by a tree branch, but at least this part of the caves were mostly clear as long as you avoided the walls. He was able to do a lovely circle as he tried to calm down, sweeping through the vast open space of Polaris.

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going out a different path lead by a beating heart

As Tal'at was flying, however, he had no way of knowing that he was careening toward the Spire until it was a touch too late. The bat flew square into the massive crystalline growth, gem first, the shock of the crash sent right through his little skeleton. His body kept going, his wings fwapping ineffectively against the crystal, and then he plummeted once his momentum had been thoroughly stopped.

"Aaaieeee-eeeee-eee," the mutated bat squeaked as his body collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the Spire, head throbbing. It took him a moment to even process what had happened-- he had hit a tree before, but this was some large, strange tree if that's what it was. It felt more like an outcropping of rock, and a massive one at that.

Oof. His head was still spinning, and he didn't dare sit up.

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going out a different path lead by a beating heart

Eventually, however, the dazed little mutant bat couldn't just lay there anymore. He had momentarily forgotten his worries about danger and cave rats, but slowly his paranoia did return to him. He twisted himself back on to his feet, despite the protest from his addled brain.

Alright. He reached out once more with his magic to try and see what he could sense. He had been trying to pick up heartbeats, or even sense the gems of nearby gembounds-- sometimes he could pick out one of the Children of Rot from the shape of their gemstone-- but what he got instead was something he had never sensed before.

The thing he had flown into became a sudden, all engulfing beacon of energy. Everything else became completely secondary; he could scarcely feel the stone under his paws. Whatever he had crashed into was a massive source of something, brilliant and near blinding in its radiance. It was easily as tall as one of the trees in Cetus, towering above him for what felt like infinity. If he felt lost before, he now was completely disorientated, anywhere could have been up, anywhere could have been down.

Tal'at wanted to go home. This thing... Whatever it was, was not home. And now, as it stood like a fixed pillar in his mind's eye, he knew the only way to get home was to get the hell away from whatever it was. He shuffled back from it, spread his wings, and took flight.

Unfortunately, having what was probably a concussion, being blind, and slightly overwhelmed by the Spire, did not make for flying very efficiently. He got about three feet, and crashed into the ground again.

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going out a different path lead by a beating heart

Dread did not eat bats.

This was a rule established, in his mind, when he did eat a bat, and said bat turned out to be horrifically plagued, sending him plummeting into severe illness and near death. And that had sucked. The dragon, then, ate almost anything else that crossed his path: deer, hares, birds, rats. But bats, no--never again would he clamp jaws around those creatures.

This one, though--he watched it from a distance, for a moment. It was flying blind--quite literally, by looks. Perhaps, again, diseased-? It was careening into objects, collapsing near the Spire, flopping here and there. And--squeaking.

He could not be sure whether it was alive, or not, but he did know that he didn't want it near the Spire. The Spire was... uh, magic, and--important? Somehow. He'd been told that, at least. And the last thing Dread, in his simplistic imaginings, wanted, was some sort of explosive magic bat-disease sweeping out through the caves.

Carefully, then, and as quietly as a twenty-five-foot-plus-dragon could, he crept up behind Tal'at. He leaned back, reaching one taloned hind foot forward, and--assuming it didn't simply flop away from him--tried to scoop it up in the 'palm' of his foot. It was awkward going, and the dragon, for the duration, wore an expression of studious focus. His movements, though--and his voice, when he spoke--could have even been called "gentle."

"Are you dead?" he asked, and then--with inspiration--surely he could just ask if it were diseased?--"Are you sick? You are flying into things," he then informed it.

Should Tal'at allow, the dragon would turn and deposit him carefully a few yards further from the Spire, speaking as he did so. "You are going to break your head. And whatever that is that is on it," he added, with a rare display of "wisdom." Maybe it was sentient; maybe it was not, but Dread had found it best to err on the side of caution, lest he accidentally eat someone who turned out to be able to talk.

@Talat

@Dread

Tal'at was too distracted by everything else to notice a massive dragon sneaking up on him (and even though he was blind, that was saying something) but he did nearly jump out of his skin when the ground shifted and something *warm* and scaly scooped him up. He froze, his furry, stinger tail going rigid as though it might strike.

Whatever it was, however, spoke to him with a massive, deep voice. Quivering, the little bat clamped down his hind feet on to Dread's scaled foot, twisting his head back to quietly click at the beast and get a sense of just how large the gembound holding him was.

With somewhat of a squeak, he cleared his throat and hastily explained, "No no no," he chattered. "I am alive. Quite alive even. I am Tal'at," he went on, reaching with the claws on his wings to get a better feel of the surface he was on. "That big thing... Over that way... I hit it. I cannot see. I am lost." He was a bit uncertain if he should say what he was looking for-- what if this massive creature kidnapped him and used him against the Children of Rot?

As he focused on the creature that had him held, he was able to pick up the strong particular signal of the gembound and hone in on it, even if his senses were still too rattled to pick up on any other gem in the room. He breathed in, and out, and quietly got the sense that he was dealing with someone not too dissimilar to the usual crowd that the Children of Rot attracted. A big, warm lizard-dragon thing. That was... probably a positive sign, right?

"... May I ask... Who you are?" He began tentatively, "and if it's... not too much... to ask you... I may need... Help returning home."

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going out a different path lead by a beating heart

Dread moved as if to set the strange bat-creature down (tail aside; the Lessers had weirder appendages, so it was still a bat, in his mind)--but it was clinging, now, to his foot. He tried to balance on one foot and two wings, but it was a little awkward, and so he just sort of stood there with one foot tilted at an angle, his head twisted on a serpentine neck to peer down at Tal'at.

It had a strange and stilted way of speaking, stopping and starting and hesitating, with short sharp bursts of words. Dread tried to listen, but rather than irritating, he found it easy to understand. Keeping things simple was always, for the dragon, a good thing.

"I am Dread!" he answered, and then considered, exhaling. Brief twin plumes of smoke rose from his nostrils. "Where," he went on, hopping a little on one foot so as not to fall and accidentally crush the bat, "is 'home?' And that thing you hit--it is the Spire! You shouldn't touch it. I don't know why," he added. He'd been warned not to--repeatedly--and that was the only reason he'd not tried to tear pieces off and hoard them away among the treasures in his den.

He was curious as to where "home" was, in any case. He didn't mind hauling the tiny thing around--he didn't intend to stay here, forever, anyway. But it depended on where it was. He wasn't the most familiar with the caves, and anyway, travelling through them with his wingspan tended to be... clumsy, at best; dangerous, at worst. The tunnels tended to require slow wing-walking through the narrower bits.

At least Tal'at wasn't sick, though. If he had been, undoubtedly Dread would have been frantically shaking his foot as if a spider clung to it, trying to get him off. For now, though, he just balanced awkwardly, and waited, his full attention on the thing hardly the size of one toe.

@Talat

@Dread

Dread was the oversized beast's name, and the little bat clicked his tongue, trying to get a better idea of who was holding him. Tal'at was relieved that this was a friendly and helpful gembound, one that gave him information readily. The Spire-- he remembered the Spire, from stories of the fight against the massive Dragon Raheerah. At least he had some sense of where he was, then, though he was definitely far from home if that was true.

It was somewhat ironic that Tal'at did not remember this as the place he had hatched.

With a nervous gulp, the small gembound gave a nod of his heavy head. "Pleasure meeting you," he squeaked, wriggling so that he could sit up a bit straighter upon the foot of Dread. "I come from... A place of... Trees and marsh. A vast swamp." He did not know if he should mention the group he belonged to, in case it endangered them... Though, he had a gut feeling that Dread was not a bad gem, even if his name and size was quite intimidating.

"Maybe you've heard... Of my family. They are called... Children of Rot. We live there... In the cave... Known as Cetus. We live there, for a long, long time indeed." His nose twitched, and he shuffled his feet, large tail swinging for balance as he kept his wings stretched out so he wouldn't fall off. "If you could, guide me home... I'd appreciate that."

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going out a different path lead by a beating heart

Dread stood, silent. Considering. Slowly--laboriously--he ran over every single cave he could think of. He didn't know, though, of any place called Cetus, or the Children of Rot. He had never, either, been to a place with lots of trees, or to a swamp.

Wistfully, he wondered what it might be like to burn it down.

Still, it did narrow things down. He'd been, given his vast wingspan, to very few places--but those he had been to, at least, he could cross right off the list. Fornax--he'd been born there; and Orion, which he'd gone to quite a bit, and Monoceros--where he lived, and "THIS IS POLARIS," he finished thinking, but out loud. "I have passed other tunnels that go to places. And I don't know where they go! But they smelled like--green," he offered, uncertainly.

He recalled, in the vaguest terms, the faint odors of moss and ozone that crept forth from rainy Eridanus; and he knew, too, the faintly musty, rotten stink that wafted in on the damp fog from Cetus. Some long-forgotten knowledge glimmered up in his mind, glowing in his dim intellect like embers--or somewhat literal sparks of inspiration.

"Does it stink?" he asked, at length. "There is a tunnel that smells of two green places. I think two. This way," he added, and started plodding off toward Tunnel H.

Lopsidedly.

"STOP BEING THERE," he added, irritably and more loudly. "I CAN'T WALK. Go up! Higher. Climb," he instructed, and snorted with loud annoyance.

@Talat