Nestled within a crack in the wall lay a pustule. Gleaming, the yellow-green of pus, threatening all manner of disease. This abscess had birthed its sickness once before; the remnants of an old chrysalis had then--still swollen with power--slowly settled to building a new creation.

This one had not grown right away; years had passed, and now at last spiderweb threads were spreading along its surface. Within, the hatchling--minuscule by comparison with the first birth, and yet with the potential for enormity--lay oblivious, deep in sleep. Unlike its predecessor it heard no whispers and words; it rested, there in the dark, until at last the stone began to seep and crack.

When the pustule opened, thinned, spilled its contents on the cold and misty rock, there was no cry. For a moment the child could have looked dead: limp, dark and damp, sickly-thin, the edges of its wings appearing tattered.

For a moment the little lump--only a foot or two long--lay still; and then it slowly raised a head, opening green ghostlight eyes and blinking around. It was in a tunnel: cold, dark and unwelcoming. The child took a breath, coughed out a spume of liquid, and shuddered. It was not yet sure what to make of the world around it. It took it all in--the dark walls, the emptiness, the feeling of foreboding...

Instinctively its magic flickered, pulling the shadows to it like a shroud. Quiet it hobbled up, and began to wing-walk--stumbling and falling, in the way of any child--to the tunnel wall, seeking any form of warmth, of comfort.

Crack seems to like this place, Caliante thinks; something about the tunnel’s cool emptiness, the unsettling aura it gives off that sends chills down her spine as she flies through the mist, wingbeats careful and slow so she won’t crash into a wall, is perfect for it.

And after the incident with the… creature who had tried to kidnap them, she’s wary about this place. It has bad luck; she’s half-convinced bad things happen to any creature who tries to stay in this barren tunnel, as silly and superstitious it seems to her.

Also, she can sense Crack in the back of her head, doing a kind of mental leaning forward as its interest and excitement is piqued by this place, and she doesn’t like it. She knows—although she doesn’t know how, the reason trapped behind an absence of memory—Crack shouldn’t be allowed control. Bad things happen when Crack is in control.

So she’s fully intending to simply fly through this tunnel on her way to Orion as quickly as possible, when, abruptly—sharp ears catch a crackling, spilling noise echoing through the empty halls of the tunnel, and Caliante slows to the sharp sense of alert that spikes through her chest at the noise.

She wants to get out of here, but—she’s pretty sure that was a chrysalis breaking.

It wasss... Tarragon hisses in their head, a silent urging behind her words. ...we ssshould help the little one.

Caliante sighs and shifts her wings to turn towards the sound, eyes squinting as she tries to see through the mist. Tarragon’s soft spot for kids is going to get her in trouble… but, at the same time, she can’t deny that just ignoring a newborn like that tears at her conscience.

She can hardly see anything besides the cold mist swirling in front of her eyes through the dim light of the tunnel, however… there was a reason Crack liked this place, and that reason is making it incredibly difficult for her to actually see where the little gembound is.

She lets herself drift to the ground in a haphazard landing, trying to discern whether or not the movement she keeps seeing is the shifting of the mist or an actual fledgling. ”Hello?”

Little one? Tarragon calls out mentally, worry in her tone.

Hopefully the sound of her voice will get it to come over to her… she hates the thought of a gembound being alone during their hatching.

When I speak.

When I think.

@Blight

Wingbeats. An instinctive knowledge--and a twinned, instinctive reaction. Ancestral knowledge, perhaps, of the potential for a predator's passage: or a parent's arrival, back at the dragon's nest.

Blight was unsure which it might be. Truth be told, the full imagery and impact of these thoughts were lost on it. It felt only fear, briefly, and a painful twist of hope--because it feared to follow through, feared whatever those wingbeats might portend.

What appeared, though, black winging through the dark, wasn't much larger than Blight himself. It was the wings, as it landed, that drew him: he craned his shadow-wreathed head to blink at his own.

They were the same--or similar. It is... like, he decided--like his wings, and perhaps, then, like him.

The magic shrouding him fell away reluctantly, shyly, the dragon blinking the now-revealed green-glowing eyes from a shrunk-back posture: a very young child uncertain about whether to approach that strangely-dressed, but friendly, adult (a Santa at the mall, perhaps, in some other reality).

The darkness fell away completely, and he was left small and huddled, staring wet and faintly-shivering toward Umbra. "Hello," he echoed, in a whisper, his voice unsure. He wasn't sure that it was the right word... but the Other had said it, and the meaning felt close enough to the greeting that he hoped to make.

@Umbra

A flicker of green in the shadows catches Caliante’s eye, and she turns—only to shift back slightly on her wings, startled by the emergence of a gembound just slightly smaller than her, neon green eyes reminding her unpleasantly of the monster that attacked her not too long ago.

But—that monster is nowhere to be found at the moment, nowhere to be seen, and as the shadows appear to fall away from this little gembound like water she shuffles closer, head tilting just slightly as she looks the baby over. When it speaks, its voice is raspy, uncertain—Somewhat like your own, someone comments from the back, and after a brief flicker of confusion before she identifies the voice as belonging to Ripple, she can’t help but agree.

A little, anyways. She’s not that uncertain, is she?

No comment comes forth, and she instead focuses on the being’s small, green form. It—reminds her of Bat, just vaguely, the little one’s wings and scales and spines coming to mind, and although this gembound is wholly different in color and in sharpness and in, well, size, the resemblance is clear enough.

This is a dragon, then?

...what does it eat?

”You… just hatched, didn’t you?” Caliante asks, almost to herself.

A beat as she looks the little dragon over, noting the gemstone glinting ever-so-vaguely out of the dimness of the tunnel and the fangs poking out of his jaw.

”Do you have a name?”

When I speak.

When I think.

@Blight

The little one hesitated. My name-? And this thought--this first self-awareness, really--came with a start; Blight's mind was still ordering itself, still coming to terms with being, with self, with the world and all of existence being... well, a thing.

Green eyes blinked. Hatched? he thought, twisting his head around to peer at the shattered remnants of the half-reformed, pustulant butter jade. He looked slowly back to Umbra, blinking, and gave a shy nod. "Uh-huh," he confirmed, the softest murmur.

Her other question had him thinking, shifting to rest on his other wing, his eyes going unfocused for a moment. "Name-?" He knew what it meant, after a moment's consideration; a self, an identifier, who one was. Who was he-? Imagery, concepts, briefly flickered through his mind; disease, healing, sickness, lifelessness, contagion. With them came the hiss of words in his thoughts; pestilence, decay, plague... "Blight," he decided, softly, choosing one of the words from its sickly parade.

Hesitation, once more, and the hatchling stared at Umbra. Curiosity sparked in him, hesitation. He didn't want to come too close. He didn't want them to leave. He wanted to know them, and wanted to stay at a safe distance, all at once. "Do you--have... a name?" Blight asked, carefully echoing the question back, staring intently at Umbra.

@Umbra

A sudden feeling of fondness that isn’t hers stirs in Caliante’s chest, and she can’t help but smile ever-so-slightly along with it. A little dragon… well, little isn’t exactly accurate, considering the kid’s almost as big as her, but she’ll use the moniker nonetheless.

Little… Blight.

Here, she has to conceal a cringe; oh. She doesn’t have a fondness for plague; she wonders, darkly, if the disease Crack had inflicted them with earlier out of a sense of ‘play’ is gone or simply hiding in their veins.

This one’s just a kid, and already it’s identifying itself with everything sick and virulent… she hopes he doesn’t have an affinity for plague, but her hopes certainly aren’t high.

Well—he seems nice enough, anyways, and he’s just a kid, right? She doesn’t… she shouldn’t shun him just because he’s a little plague-y.

“Umbra,” she responds, the name falling from her lips before she can even think about it. “M-my name’s Umbra.”

Well, it’ll do. There’s no point confusing the poor kid with an explanation of what she has to deal with on a daily basis, even if it means using a name that feels more like a vague title than who she is.

She looks Blight over once more, a chill going down her spine as she registers his neon eyes for the second time, worried.

And then she has to take a moment to chastise herself, because come on. He’s a kid—how much can he do, really? He’s not even close to Crack; what is she thinking?

No. She’s not going to let herself be afraid of a kid, and she’s not going to let herself be rude to the kid just because she’s afraid of… blight.

It’s fine, she tells herself. It’s fine.

When I speak.

When I think.

@Blight

Blight waited, mulling the name over in his mind, then at last--carefully--echoing it aloud. "Ummmbra," he offered, shyly, and then wing-walked slowly over toward her. It was a stumbling, slow, unsteady approach, and a wary one; he stopped again a mere few feet away.

Eyes roamed over her, and then looked back to examine his own body. She was velvety--furry, in places--and black. She had ears, and... did he have ears?

The hatchling paused, lifting wings to sweep lightly over his jaw and skull; there were protrusions there, bumpy hard things, but...

"Do I have... ears?" he asked, the word only coming after a moment's thought.

And what of the rest of them? Similar, as he'd thought at first, but... different. He was scaled. Smooth. Somehow, she looked warmer. "Are we... the same?" Blight asked, unsteadily.

It didn't occur to him to ask the big questions yet. 'Where am I,' for example, or 'what is this place?' He had no concept of the caves, no reference point to work by, no reason yet to ask these things--or even to know to ask them.

For now, he knew only himself, the black bat, and the misty tunnel.

@Umbra

Despite Caliante’s instinctive fear of plague magic, she can’t stop joy from bubbling up in her expression as Blight says her name. ”Yes! That’s me!”

He pulls himself forwards, walking on wings clumsily in a way that stirs a faint memory in the back of her mind, and she can’t tell from his all-neon, irisless eyes, but from the tilting of his head and the way he glances back to himself after a little bit, she thinks he’s looking over her.

She can’t help but feel a little self-conscious. Does she look weird to him? Does she have something stuck to her that she didn’t notice?

There’s a curious self-exploration that follows, of wings sweeping over his head. She notes that his legs seem more… distinct from hers? Something like that; better for walking and standing than for clinging to walls or ceilings.

She tilts her head, ears twitching as she thinks about them. ”I… think so?” she asks. After all, he can hear her properly, right? How else would he be able to respond to her otherwise?

She shifts her wings a few steps forward to get a better look at the dragon, now curious. ”I am half-dragon, I think,” she says, half-distracted by looking for ears herself. There are fins on his head, but no wings… maybe they’re hidden beneath them? ”—so, a little bit?”

She blinks, then, realizing that the little one might not know exactly what a dragon is. ”Oh, a dragon is…”

She pauses, remembering Bug’s explanation of what a dragon is, then continues. ”...big. Dragons have claws and spines and wings like mine and yours.”

Blight doesn’t seem too big, but, then again, he did just hatch… ”You seem like a dragon, too. You’ll probably be a lot bigger when you’re older.”

What else, what else… oh!

”Dragons have magic like everyone else,” she says. ”Some dragons breathe fire… I can glow.”

She remembers Mercury breathing fire, too, when they were being attacked—well, heat, which was close enough. She couldn’t pull it off herself, but the first time she had tried, inhaling, pulling on her magic, and exhaling, her breath had come out visible, a gleaming amber stream like dust.

This, she tries now, summoning magic up and exhaling gently as she focuses on the memory of her glowing breath once more, trying to give Blight a demonstration alongside her explanation.

The result is faint among the mist, but there—it hangs in the air for a few seconds before fading into the dimness of the tunnel once more, and Caliante can't help but give a pleased hum at the sight.

When I speak.

When I think.

@Blight

Blight turned, briefly looking himself over again, and then watching Umbra: Umbra, who spoke to him of dragons; Umbra, who softly glowed, and whose breath almost seemed to shine with it.

The hatchling considered, for a long moment, before concentrating on magic of his own. Once again he simply seemed to drop away into shadows, though he didn't breathe this out; he simply faded, swaddled in darkness, for a few moments.

"I do, um," Blight started, shyly--and then briefly paused as he struggled for words--"...backwards-light."

...Yes, that was it.

He settled back in place, uncertainly, as the dim light came back to shine dully over his scales. Words continued to come to him as he struggled out his thoughts, though slowly, uncertainly. But his curiosity kept him talking, regardless of the newness of it all. "If you're--half... dragon? What's... the other half?" He still wasn't quite sure what dragons looked like; but now he was contrasting them, rather than comparing. Umbra had less... neck? than he did, he thought; and she was furry, too. She had no tail that he could see--or was that one? Very short? Either way, the other half, then, must have been... black, and furry; with no neck, and no beak, for sure, and a very short tail.

At least, that's what Blight puzzled out, from all of this.

@Umbra

Oh! Shadow!

As Caliante watches the familiar magic drape over Blight for a few moments, she has a brief moment of ‘aha!’ So this was why the dragon was so hard to find earlier…

...maybe its affinity is with the shadows, and it’s just the name and the toxic eyes that speak of plague.

She hopes, anyways; she doesn’t want another plaguewalker wandering the caves. The thought makes her chest tighten.

No thanks; she doesn’t want an invisible force sickening her and weakening her.

But this is good. Darkness is good. ”Shadow,” she corrects, a soft voice granting him the word. ”Good magic for hiding.”

Her tone betrays her fondness of it; she’d always been partial to light magic, she feels.

”I’m not… sure,” Caliante says to his next question, hesitating. ”Maybe half-rat?” It would explain the fur, and the ears, and the… everything distinctly not-dragon, really.

And the size.

Besides, Bug had suggested it, and she seemed to know quite a bit about dragons, her father being one and all.

When I speak.

When I think.

@Blight