Blinding White.

Then, the vision came into focus.

Bitter winds whipped across a frozen, white wasteland. In the distance, figures struggled to trudge through the mounds of snow that now covered the dunes. Those that fell behind were torn apart by the large, distinctive shape of Vargas, staining the crisp white with specks of blood. Further back, the squat, antler form of the Masked Merchant shuffled through snow, stopping every now an then to pick up a gem.

The silhouette of a stag stood from on high, observing.

Behind a group of survivors, something shifted underneath. A strange, white spike broke through the snow, then disappeared just as quickly. One gembound, a hybrid between a feline and bird, paused and glanced back. His bright, yellow eyes searched the snow. In the distance, a voice, presumably, called out his name. "Come on, Eythan!"

Seeing nothing, the hybrid turned back to catch up with the rest, flapping his frozen wings as he clambered over a mound. Suddenly, something grabbed his leg and pulled him under. He barely had the chance to scream.

Aries stood quietly, listening to Khloros and the Spellweaver converse. Apparently, they a knew a bunch about the spire and the beings attached to it- and each had their own opinion. Try as he might, Aries could not resist butting in with questions like: "Wait, there's two??" and "What? Huh?" and "Astraea's with the evil one?"

Aries blinked as he processed all this knew information that spilled. He shook his head. This was too much learning for one day. "Damn," He breathed looking down at his hooves. Suddenly, it seemed like whatever he wanted to know was trivial. We come from failures..? He wondered what poor idiot had his bloodstone before hand. Were they anything like him, like past lives? It was comforting to know there was an afterlife but all this speculating left him feeling dizzying and rather small.

His ears flicked and he turned to the horse. "Khloros, why do you keep saying that? -That we're trapped- why? What do you mean by that?" Khloros tried to tell him that they we're "trapped" and he would "free" them with the plague. Aries never quite got why Khloros was so obsessed with this theory, but maybe, there was some truth to it. "Do you mean like we're trapped magically? or physically? ...emotionally?"

"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: // OOC:

Khloros watched Thothaga in silence for a moment, after he'd spoken; he listened, one ear flicking, to Aries. About halfway through the ram's words he shifted his full attention to him.

As Aries asked his final question, Khloros remained silent for a moment. It wasn't a mysterious, brooding silence, more a baffled silence, if such a thing could be differentiated--he was wondering just how anyone could be trapped somewhere emotionally.

Huh.

"In death," Khloros began, "we ought to rest. To find peace. To go to another plane, perhaps," he went on, imagining in his mind that white, formless space. "But these stones--this magic, here; the Spire itself--it keeps our life, our magic, our spirits trapped. Astraea insisted that we have none--no soul. No self. That we are but creations." Khloros was silent, for a moment, contemplating, before continuing. "I imagine that he believes that having children entitles you to their ownership."

It didn't, though Khloros himself was hardly a good example of parenthood. He'd given life to a rock and then left it somewhere. But he'd forgotten about this, for the most part--so never mind that now...

"We will never find rest so long as their magic keeps dragging us back into malformed and random bodies. It is not the natural way of things. It is why I was sent here. It is why I was sent back." It was all said calmly, mildly, but his conviction was complete. Perfect. He was entirely certain, sure beyond all measure, that this place was unnatural; that he alone had been sent to stop it.

Crazed plague-spreader, or calm monk-of-a-horse, his beliefs seemed to remain unchanged.

Never mind that he'd never had any proof of anything; the existence of a being, bringing him back to life with the reassurance that he was right, was certainly something. It never occurred to him to distrust the gentle-faced one.

"He fears the word Harbinger," Khloros offered then, seemingly at random. "Though I do not know what he means by it. But a Harbinger is a prelude. Perhaps there is something coming--something that even Astraea fears."

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@Aries

as a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light...

Thothaga glanced at Khloros. "I like trouble." She said with a playful glint in her eye. Behind her, the giant tree creaked as if it were groaning in protest.

Suddenly, the spider froze, and her eyes glowed bright blue. Magicka sparked in between the crystal points of her gem, bathing her visitors and their surroundings in a soft, cyan glow. Thothaga stood like this for a few heartbeats, entranced by the most intense and complete vision she had ever received. She could feel the cold whip through her fur and the stifling chill turning her blood to ice. She saw, in her mind's eye another trial, this one more deadly than the last, perhaps. The vision faded, and so did the cold. Thothaga stumbled back, the blue glow fading from her eyes. She found herself back in the swamp, warm and humid, under the stares of the Death-Seer and Fire-Ram. "Oh-oh my," She breathed.

Thothaga shuffled back to where she was, flicking her abdomen. "I did not think it possible but.. Hydra will freeze over, and soon- there will be another trial- one of ice and snow." She stared at the horse and ram for second, deciding on whether to share more details. "And if any of you know an 'Eythan', tell them not to go. I saw his death." She wasn't sure if either of them knew someone with that name, but it couldn't hurt to try.

"Finally, something we agree on, Death-Seer." Thothaga chimed in. "Astraea is wrong to think that we are born slaves." She thought of her giant-moth child and how he expected them to name him, but ended up choosing "Aether" for himself after she encouraged him to do some independent thinking. She would never call on him to throw his life away. And then there was poor Huckleberry and the damage his mother caused to his psyche. Even she had her own complicated relationship with the Spire-Mother, the being from beyond; creator and taker of life in these caves. "Children owe their parents nothing." Thothaga concluded, almost coldly. "If only that stag knew..."

If Astraea was truly a creation of the acid-maw Spire-Father Khloros described, then she wondered how many other "Masters" were children of Him and if they followed Him too as His dutiful, slave-children. She shuddered and thought out loud. "...I wonder how many more are like him."

Thothaga's dark gaze seemed to fall back on Khloros, though it was hard to tell if was a trick of the light with her eight, unblinking eyes. Khloros was on her mind however, or rather, his mind was trying to read by her mind. Khloros was a strange one, even down to what he thought of the world. He seemed so sure of it and she wished to understand why.

"Thothaga speaking."
Thothaga thinking.

@Khloros @Aries

Hydra would freeze over-? Khloros didn't know much about Hydra, so it meant little to him--nor did the name Eythan. But his thoughts were clear enough to read.

They were wandering, working in an idle, absent, dreamlike manner at the puzzle that he perceived before him.

Masters. Harbingers. Death.

Who had trapped them? Why? -An image of the acid-mawed being flickered through his mind, Khloros' dark eyes distant. Him, perhaps. I felt his magic reaching for the Spire. Which means it existed already, I think; but then, who made it? And why? -A force of power they fight over, he decided, tentatively. Perhaps that was it: a great source of magicka that the more powerful beings did battle to control.

Maybe that was why it had 'eaten' him. It had stripped his magicka away too, after all--his plague was gone, his ability to drain life into death to strengthen himself was gone, his ability to walk into a lake without breath was gone. The gentle-faced being (and an image of them, too, now rose up in his mind, cradling Khloros' head and speaking softly through a fading agony) had revived him, but had only brought back his life. The Spire had reclaimed his magic. The white creature, then--the centaur-like being--it was not of the Spire. He thought of it as death, in a sense--for it was Death who had sent him, and Death whom he carried--so perhaps it controlled life, as well? Or simply... reverted his death. And it must not hold control, then, over the Spire's power, or surely he would have been given his magic to use, as well.

Which meant that the Spire's magic was independent. Perhaps it had been created or perhaps found, but it was not controlled. The being would not kill him only to bring him back again.

Khloros' gaze shifted to Thothaga.

"There may be a way to get answers," he said, at last, aloud--and tentatively. "Not about how many there are like Astraea. But how the Spire came to be, and from there, your lives, your magic, your purpose." And he thought of himself as other. It was not 'our'; it was 'your.' "If you claim to see the future: can you see the past? Could you find how the Spire was created? I do not believe that there are 'mothers' or 'fathers' within it. And I know that getting close can be dangerous. But..."

The black horse's mind threatened, again, to wander. Imagery flickered through. A distant chant, like names, but muffled; and a declaration of a figure, of scales in its hands, of a green-gray horse beneath it. Of black robes, fluttering in a wind. It was there-and-gone, indistinct, and whether it was real or the horse had simply imagined it was unclear.

"If they found a source of power, and put it to use," Khloros began again, rallying his mind to the here-and-now. "If they did not create it, but... perhaps imbued it. Fought over it. Claimed it. I think it may be a mindless thing of magic, and one being put it to evil use; and another wishes that to change." A final brief image--a memory--flared: the Spire, once an oily black. The white centaur-being fighting the acid-eyed one. The Spire going turquoise, shimmering pleasantly.

It was like the tumblers of a lock clicking into place, and a door, at last, swinging open. This made sense. This had to be the answer. Khloros stared expectantly at Thothaga--hopefully--as these thoughts whirled through his mind: wild, yet stronger and more defined than they had ever been.

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@Thothaga

"Wait-what?" Icy craws gripped his stomach. He must have miss heard the spider. There was no way she just said "Eythan" and "death" in the same sentence. It must have been another Eythan; not his Eythan, never his Eythan. His mind wrestled with denial, until he could not take it anymore.

"What..what did this 'Eythan' look like?"Aries finally had the courage to ask. He bristled, then added "Not a... bird-cat.. did he? "

"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: // OOC:

as a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light...

Apparently the ram knew an Eythan, what a coincidence. Thothaga stroked her fangs, taking note of how disturbed he seemed. "A bird-cat?" She recalled the gembound's frozen wings and feline visage. "Why, yes. He was."

The horse's mind was like shifting dream, like fireflies dancing from field to the next. His thoughts wandered but they always found a home in Death. Khloros thought about death a lot, but he also thought about the Spire-Mother and Father, and now Thothaga could put a face to the name.

As he spoke, Thothaga reached up and broke off two young branches, from another tree, and shaped them into a circular frame. "That I can do." Thothaga said while she tied it together with silk. "Looking into the past was one of the first things I learned." She began spinning a web in-between the wooden frame. "The future is not set but the past leaves echoes, like ripples in a pond, or vibrations in web- " She plucked one of the strands. "- that can shape the future." She continued spinning. Methodically, like clockwork, a pattern began to emerge.

Thothaga was there with Khloros, sharing in his euphoria, as it all clicked for him. Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she attached the last strand of silk to the web. "Now, I think you may be on to something, Death-seer." She began plucking some more at the web in a way that the pattern glimmered a certain way in the light. Her sensitive eyes saw meaning within the glinting, and taking Khloros' knowledge into account, a revelation accrued. "Order verses Chaos. Both seek to tame the untamable, only one shall succeed." She put down her woven teller. "In time, we must all choose a side."

She allowed her thoughts to slip into Khloros' mind. You are a strange one, Khloros.
"I do not know if the freedom you seek is possible, but you won't find it in death." She shuffled her fangs, perking up somewhat. "I will see what I can find out about the Spire and this... Harbinger." Her best bet might be asking Astraea himself, as risky as that seemed, but he mentioned it in front of her so perhaps it wouldn't seem suspicious she had questions. Just a curious spider, I am. That one reached Khloros too, and it was truth.

"Thothaga speaking."
Thothaga thinking.

@Khloros

Khloros flinched slightly as foreign thoughts entered his mind. It was not a pleasant sensation, and he peered at Thothaga with an expression like to a frown.

Still, he considered her (actual) words for a long moment. Order and chaos..? "I do not think it is so simple. I do not think she was order. She was merely... beyond." Death, perhaps--his very master--or something like to it. "Nor do I seek answers in death. I serve it. As I have said: they cannot escape, even in death. None of you can. It is why I thought that the Spire may bind us here. It speaks of the cycle, over and over--that is what I was trying to explain." Of course death would not free him--it wouldn't free any of them.

Khloros exhaled slowly. "And will you seek the past now? In that-?" he added curiously, with a nod to the branches.

He wasn't sure what they were for, but maybe he would soon be finding out.

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@Thothaga