Vargas strolled up to the tunnel with a jaw full of dead rats.

This was relatively unusual for the Overseer--he ate his own food, and he didn't usually go in for helping others. But it was a payment, of sorts--a reward--for the presumed help of Elyon. He hoped the Orthoclase would be waiting. That she'd found her way there, at least.

Vargas spat the rats into a pile at the tunnel entrance and stalked around its edge, prowling purely by nature of his build. It wasn't deliberate. He just moved that way.

"Orthoclase?" he called. "Are you here?"

@Elyon

Elyon scratched at her forearms the whole walk through Canis, keeping to the shade and shuffling to and fro to stay out of the light. At least she hadn't been poking and prodding at old scars. Her arms were too sore to add another reason for pain. The exoskeleton was sturdy enough, even with a few cracks in her lower back.

When she finally got to the tunnel - that hadn't been there before - Elyon had promptly plopped down out of sight.

Crimson eyes came back to lucidity the moment she heard a booming voice, already barely familiar. Hoisting herself up onto her legs, Elyon peeped up from behind a particularly large boulder. She ogled at the pile of rats on the floor, so numerous. This was pretty good payment for one little piece of rock, right?

"Damn that's - that's a lotta rats," she chirped, hooking a foot underneath one and flopping it into her waiting hand. Rather than tear in right now, she added, "m'name's Elyon, by the way." Because it seemed like Vargas might've forgotten that.

Holding the rat by its tail in one hand, the centaur nodded. She'd been willing herself for a hot minute to shed stone, but it didn't seem to work like that. Tilting her head upwards, Elyon tapped at it. The diamond-shaped Orthoclase shimmered immediately, lighting up with an incandescent glow that crept towards the edge of one facet. It split with a clean-sounding crick! and fell harmlessly into her palm - which she offered up to Vargas, "that good?"

@Vargas

Vargas grunted, holding out his own hand to pluck the stone from Elyon's palm. He had done this a grand total of one time, and that earlier in the day, but he thought he could manage. It was a small piece (and for the briefest of moments, he glanced at Elyon and wondered if it wouldn't be better just to take the whole stone--but it was a fleeting thought, given no real consideration), but he'd work with it.

The Overseer turned, and pressed the stone piece against a nearby rock, letting his weight rest lightly on it. A bright glow infused it, and for a moment the gemstone seemed to take on light of its own--and then it began to swell, ever-so-slightly, rooting to the stone beneath.

"Perfect," he declared, aloud. "The rats are yours. If you are ever close by when we run a trial, you can join." It sounded like an obligation, rather than an offer; Vargas was looking Elyon over, and wondering how she'd do in the cold...

"Until then, you can go. Those are all yours," he half-repeated, nodding to the rats--he'd already eaten a couple on the way over here, himself.

exit Vargas
@Elyon

Vargas took the gemstone and did a little funky jig with it (well, not a jig. Just slapped it right onto a rock.) And it began to grow, bulging and swelling into a chrysalis. It still didn't hit Elyon, since it was just a rock stuck to another one, now.

There was the bit about trials, too, but Vargas had already left before she saw fit to even try and formulate a response to that. It sounded a bit, at least, like another fight. She'd be happy to go for one of those in the future.

But, in the present, there was rat. The centaur gathered the rest of them up into the crook of her right arm, and set to picking them clean from the tail to the neck as she skittered back through Canis and towards Monoceros. Eating on the go, like an inbred.

;exit elyon lol