Orion lay silent, still, its drifting dust illuminated by the flashes of quartz-light that shone down like starlight from its ceiling.

But now came a soft sound: like a thousand thousand whispers, a rustling susurration. Like cloth, gently swishing. Like voices, their words too quiet to hear. Like...

...Like a million tiny feet, skittering over the rock walls, the floor, the ceiling.

Into every dark space swarmed thousands of small Green Wallcrawlers, each three or four inches long, like glittering millipedes. Their many-segmented carapaces glinted like emeralds.

Though not aggressive, they were ravenous for gemstone. Some started on quartz protrusions, but others would seek out Gembound, and any exposed gemstone they might have... crawling, biting, chewing their way into it. It would be difficult to drive them all off. It would be even harder to rest, to sleep, with the swarm about.

Orion was under siege.

___________

"Get out. Not me, you little idiots. Get THEM." Nemean's tone was irritated, as she swept two Wallcrawlers away from her. Then her voice rose, crowing--deafening, but only once--throughout Orion.

"THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DEFY THE GREAT NEMEAAAAN! Good luck, Seven Uglies."

for an f-bomb (and obvs this is backdated to before the angery cetus thread)

If he'd been a slightly more uncouth being, his response might have been a muttered, "oh, for fuck's sakes." Instead, the regal stag lifted his head, Nemean's bawling eliciting a gentle, exasperated sigh.

"Lovely," he murmured, and reached his mind out to his familiar.

Before he could quite send her a message, though (and she was right there, beside him, curled against his flank in twitching half-sleep), he heard the faint, whispering sound rustling throughout Orion.

Pride came to his feet fast enough that Mischief was thrown off to one side, snorting and blinking her eyes wide. And his eyes, too--their irises gleaming silver in the half-light--had sprung open, flicking this way and that. What has Nemean done..?

He lurched out into the open, peering around, and then felt, rather than heard, sudden distress behind him. He turned back, pale antlers swinging, and saw Mischief frantically darting past, shaking herself. There was a carpet of slithering, skittering green covering the cave floor, and the hare had dislodged several of the bugs where they had crawled onto her white pelt.

Pride blinked.

AHHHHHHHHHHHH- The mindless surprise, and fear and annoyance, rang through his mind as a sort of shout. He turned back, looking around Orion, as his familiar leapt up and scrambled onto his back.

Onto his armor plating. Made of diamond. Diamond that the bugs were swarming for-...

The stag took a step aside. Then another. He blinked, staring down at the mindless rush of skittering green. His hooves danced backward and his eyes lifted, watching as they swarmed the quartz on the ceiling and walls, as they began to chew-...

"They want gemstones..." he realized, aloud. And then he began to call out, loudly. "NASSIR?! NASSIR, WHERE ARE YOU? AMAZON?" He cast his mind out, his magicka, aiming to create a doppleganger to send looking for the leopard, and for the lizard, worry flaring through him. He wasn't worried about Zothra--that little brat had run off from Orion altogether--but the other two? -Was Amazon even in Orion, anymore?

Nemean had said "seven," but they were down to very few. And whatever these bugs were (though they seemed unaggressive, at least, their hunger only blind), he didn't want to lose anyone to them--in their sleep, or what have you.

@Nassir @Amazon (if wanted by either)

Nemean's voice had a special way of being so obnoxious that it just permeated every corner of a cave and your own mind. Nassir swore, at times, that it just inserted itself straight into his mind and echoed around for dramatic effect - through magical means, of course.

So, of course he'd be awakening; especially with flanks heaving in an unrestricted panic attack. Nary a thought but she's going to kill us all and me - for sure this time! ran through his mind as he jolted upwards. The motion of searching was so quick that a muscle in his neck popped, sending a shooting - but grounding - pain behind his eyes. Ghost-white eyes screwed shut for a moment as drool slipped off of inky lips, pattering on the floor in tune with his panting breaths.

Nassir stared out, ears faintly picking up on the persistent clicking noise as it grew louder and louder, and closed his eyes again. Breathe in, and his diaphragm went slack, breathe out, and his diaphragm pushed, heaving against his lungs. He pushed himself onto shaky limbs, tail curling at the overly heavy tip. A walk would be swell -

"NASSIR?! NASSIR, WHERE ARE YOU?"

Ah, no, he didn't have much time for that. He could clear his mind on the way there. The leopard took a few stumbling steps forward, then broke into a full sprint after the glowing white stag... and away from the gem-starved insects that'd spotted him. Almost instinctively, he cast out his magic, trying to shunt out a sort of bubble of energetic protection that might provide the cushioning he might need if he were to, say, trip and fall right near Pride.

Which, he nearly did, with no cushioning whatsoever.

Out of breath, he cried as he skidded to a halt, "what're these - is this - what Nemean's punishment is -"

@Pride

Pride spun toward Nassir's voice, irritably (and a little fearfully) kicking bugs free. He looked relieved to see the leopard unharmed, at least.

"I think so--I just wanted to be sure you were safe. Do you know if Amazon is here? OH--I need to check on Livius' chrysalis!" Silver eyes sprang wide and Pride turned, streaking back for the throne in leaps and bounds.

He called on his magicka as he ran, but nothing came, and when he scrambled up to the hole Livius had gone to hibernate in, he found himself having to scrape the wallcrawlers away with his hooves. "They seem to be drawn to gemstones!" he called to Nassir--alarmed, and intense both. "If they stay here, we won't be able to. We can't risk sleep, they'd chew us apart... And I don't think we can kill them all." He glanced around worriedly.

There must have been thousands of them. Thousands of glinting, segmented green carapaces, streaming over Orion's abandoned throne, over the stone, along the ceiling...

He looked grimly to Nassir. "I'll find a way to protect this stone, but you might want to leave Orion. I doubt she's put them in all the caves." Worry, though, flickered over the white stag's face.

...But what if she has?

@Nassir

Nassir sprang upwards onto a rock, legs kicking out dramatically to dissuade any clinging wallcrawlers and sending them - well, to the wall. His tail curled close, vanishing between his legs and held there to the best of his ability. Why can't my stone be on my chest like others seem to - the panther heaved through his thoughts, swatting at any of the bugs that came up. "I don't know where Amazon is - rrah!" he batted away another wallcrawler, smushing its exoskeleton grossly against the rock.

When Pride cantered off, Nassir tore after him - for fear of being left alone and leaving his emotional support deer on his own (consciously aware, of course, of the magical prowess he possessed.)

This situation looked dire - apocalyptic, even. "If they're - not in all of the caves already, they'll spread," Nassir huffed as he drew nearer to the hole the Seven's king hibernated in, flicking away the frenzied insects and holding his tail high, now, bristling and puffed up. "I'm not going to leave," he called with a keen certainty, "and we'll figure it out." The Seven's inability to follow an impossible request couldn't be the downfall of all the caves. If there was one thing he'd learned from his time with Pride, it was that Nassir had too damn strong of a sense of guardianship to just run with his tail literally between his legs.

Pale eyes flickered around, at the ceiling as it was swarmed and the various chrysalises lying about. There were unborn lives at stake, too. Nassir smashed another carapace and turned, wide-eyed, "we - can't kill them all spread out like this, but we could... set bait for them. Build a pile of gems in the Forum and lure all - most of them into one spot and kill them." For a moment, the leopard lamented his inability to conjure up vast spires of gemstone from nothing, but at least he had the grasp of magic to dredge crystals from the earth and move them with his mind.

But, he was awaiting Pride's blessing.

@Pride

Pride would have, by all appearances, kept smashing bugs that drew too close to Livius's chrysalis for days. At Nassir's words he spun, blinking.

That was... genius. Although-...

"That's assuming they can sense them, from a distance, and aren't just swarming everything. But it's a good idea--better than this," he added, nodding his head at the crushed few Wallcrawlers underfoot.

He turned back, focusing toward Orion's center. Magicka flickerd and crackled--and then a single pointed spire shot up just beneath the stag.

He had just enough time to think THAT ISN'T WHERE- before the stone crashed into him, cutting a bloodied line up his chest and knocking him back and down. It crumbled as soon as it emerged--useless, for their purposes--leaving the stag reeling and blinking, dazed, on the rock.

@Nassir

Reign
He who is to be a good ruler
must have first been ruled

How long he had been locked away, he didn't know.

Why? He didn't know either. He had laid down to sleep, and never woken up. But, perhaps, it was best that he woke up when he did, else he might have been consumed along with his chrysalis and then, disastrously, his gemstone.

A mite scratched at his chrysalis, and golden eyes snapped open for the first time in seven cycles, adrenaline flowing through sluggish veins. He jolted, twisted, and the chrysalis shattered--exploded, more like--and was set upon by the mites.

In his alarm, as the king cheetah found his paws, staggering and stumbling as muscles that hadn't moved in many, many cycles were forced to take his weight, his magic lashed out, a low, thundering rumble filling the cave.

"I think they have - at least some sense, right?" Nassir growled as another bug tickled the fur of his ankles, kicking one leg back, "I mean... they know to follow us even while we're running. But -"

The panther thought of the faux spire they could create, arching his back and tail higher on the rock to keep those pesky wallcrawlers off his (literal) tail. "At least they might all be drawn to the same convenient spot," he called - and stared in bewildered horror as gem surged up and briefly through Pride's chest. It crumbled as the white stag reeled, and Nassir's anxiety-ridden cat brain worked overtime.

Ah! The dark beast hunkered low to Pride's side, shoving away and stomping on any wallcrawlers that came near while he distantly focused. Nassir's magic drummed heavy against his tail, energy coalescing into a pushing shield. It shifted to allow only the two of them and Livius's precious chrysalis while all parties recuperated.

He stared down with genuine worry, ears swiveling back as he expected the worst answer: "are you alright, Pride?"

@Pride

Pride reeled, dizzy, trying to stand--and immediately falling back, blinking. He was dazed, no doubt about that, and blood from the crystal's wound was already matting his white chest fur.

He focused for a moment, trying to gather himself--Is this serious? -No, it... feels shallow, he decided.

There was a sudden, deafening roll of thunder, and Pride glanced around, startled. Was that Nemean's doing-? What had that been?

He took another breath and pushed up again, grimacing.

"I'm all right--what was that? Did you see anything?"

Nassir, he saw, was shielding him--and he gave him a grateful nod before coming fully to his own feet. Nassir's idea had been good, but Pride was hurt, and he didn't feel like being slow and smart, right now. He lashed out with his magicka, a white-hot flash in his mind that whipped for a rock in the distance, searing it instantly into a ball of boiling white plasma.

"Don't look," he warned, just in time, and averted his own gaze. The tiny sound of squealing millipedes told him that, at least, he'd hit his target-... targets.

@Reign

Reign
He who is to be a good ruler
must have first been ruled

The cheetah snarled, baring his fangs and lashing out at the nearby mites, stumbling, twisting and flicking his ears at the far, far off sounds of familiar voices, finally kicking the ground and bolting towards them with that speed that his kind was known for, not half so fast as he was used to, slowly regaining his balance as he went, seeing Nassir (who was that?) but, more importantly, Pride, and then there was a shield in the way and he had to throw himself out of the way but he wasn't built for such a thing, losing his balance and rolling, barely managing to find his paws.

"Pride?" he called as he scrambled back to his paws, shaking himself to get the few mites that clung to his fur free, voice raspy with disuse, "What is happening?"

He drew bile into his throat, launching it at a nearby group of mites, watching with grim satisfaction as they began to spark.

@Nassir