Vivilene wasn't the type to go looking for adventure or be very thorough in her explorations-- it seemed like going into new rooms were always a point of anxiety for her, particularly when rats bit her in tunnels or she discovered some sleeping fruit-monster in a corner --but she did like to go wandering. She just preferred to do so in places that she already knew fairly well. Eridanus she had wandered through so often she knew every little twist and secret nook like the back of her hand (which, granted, didn't have much to learn) and she knew the way to Orion fairly well.

But those were boring now. They were nice to stroll through, but it was no fun if she knew every surprise that lay in them! Orion, however, Orion was both familiar and had plenty of things she hadn't ever seen before. Plants, and crumpled, scorched houses and big cliffs she'd never really seen before, and when the lights were out and the quartz stopped sparkling, she couldn't see the bottom of them. That last one was a little scary. Vivilene wasn't going back to the cliffs anytime soon.

Today, though, her sights were set on something specific. Namely, the tower. It stood fairly close to where she'd come out of the tunnel from Eridanus but she'd never paid it any particular mind, not really. She hadn't even noticed it her first time in Orion, not until she was being led back home by Azure. Today, she was going to get all up in there and take a look at what was inside it.

Which were equal parts terrifying and exciting, really.

She tried not to think too hard about what might be lurking in there, for her own sake than anything else. She tried to quietly push the anxiety down again when she came to the tower and paused around the entrance to touch the stark, white quartz encrusted into the base. It was fine. She was alone, which meant nobody was out to get her and nobody'll be around if you get attacked and ohhh, no, no, no, no.

There came a clicking of hooves as Vivilene spun around in a circle, pacing briefly, before dipping near the mouth of the tower, staring in for a moment. She craned her upper-half backwards for a moment, and then took a deep breath. It was fine, everything would be fine. When she straightened out again and began to cast, she forgot entirely what the sensation of brutally failing a spell was like.

A sharp jolt of pain went through her gut, and for a moment she wondered if someone had plunged a knife through there. She recoiled instantly, hand going for the gemstone underneath the shimmery blue shawl as she reared back-- "AAAHHHHHHHHH!!" --and spun backwards.

She ran; leaping and bounding, but she didn't get very far before she fell over her own gangly limbs in a panic. Hitting the cave floor was, at least, enough to bring her to the realisation that nothing was attacking her at all. It did not stop her, however, from laying on the ground and hyperventilating for a good minute or two.

Maybe exploring was a bad idea for today.

It was the scream that drew him--he was not far, wandering, listening to whispers, staring into the strange darkness that sometimes appeared around him from nothing. It was unsettling, but he took it in stride: part of his meditation, his learning, part of his-

"AAAHHHHHHHHH!!"

From there, his head snapping up, he could hear the rapid clatter of hooves.

...Why had he come to Orion, again? -Ah yes, to find his children. That did not sound like his, but...

Black lurched into startlingly swift motion, cloak sweeping along the floor behind him. In moments, he had a tangled-legged creature in sight some distance ahead: violet, trembling, or was she panting for breath?

The Black Dog approached, the halberd held in one hand. It was not a pleasant or reassuring approach: smoky shadows swathed him, a constant whispering drifting along with him, the ground darkening beneath his approach.

Partway there, he felt as though something seized at him--a grasp at one arm, painfully strong, jerking him back. He turned, jerking, blinking, staring off at...

...nothing.

He paused, and then turned back, staring at Vivilene--still some distance off. No, not his. At last he spoke, his voice empty, echoing: "Are you harmed, child?"

@Vivilene

For a moment, Vivilene was beginning to feel calm again. The floor was cool, steadying, and when the pain started wash away she twisted her head to look backwards at the tower. She saw it, distantly, but there was something far more immediate to deal with-- a creature, cloaked (a little like the creature her father had pointed out, she remembered) and encroaching.

There was another sharp spike of fear. She knew the thing it held as being a weapon-- something Attikias used to hunt deer with, and she knew that Vivilene, from a distance, looked quite deer-like. In a flurry she scrambled, six limbs flailing.

Her legs tangled before her hooves found the cave floor and she used her hands to push herself up, trying to steady herself back out. The shadows weren't very comforting either, she soon realised-- but there was one thing that stopped her from turning and bolting right then and there.

This thing looked just a bit like Hunter. But-- older, and upright.

Hooves clicked back and forth on the stone floor for a moment as Vivilene continued to steady herself. She swept out the silk shawl around her shoulders and then shook her head a bit in response. She looked out towards the tower, then to Black, and then between the two again, until her pale eyes settled on him again.

The hybrid took a long breath. The magic used to try to communicate without using her mouth came to her much easier than the light did, at least. There was only a brief flash of light near her midriff before her voice joined the whispers around Black, fleeting but gentle.

"There's something in there, I think," she said (sort of) and then lifted a thin hand to point towards the tower. A voice in the back of her own head told her there was likely nothing at all in there-- at least nothing that could kill her. Some mice, maybe. A rat at the worst.

It did nothing to ease the fear, however. She went silent once more as she turned her head to look back to Black.

@Black

Black's mind was constantly plagued by unreality.

Whispers. Voices. Words that were not real. Visions of darkness. So when, for a moment, the crystal clear voice spoke crystal clear words directly into his brain, he did not at first realize it was Vivilene. But then--she pointed, along with the words, and he quickly cast his mind back, snatching for the sentence that he'd nearly discarded as more nonsense.

This took a moment.

When he had managed, he first trailed his eyes over her; she did, indeed, look unharmed. Satisfied in this, then, he slowly turned to look at the tower.

To his mind, he interpreted it this way: Vivilene had been fleeing, and fallen, and when asked if she was all right, she had responded that there was something in the tower. Therefore, there must be something within that had frightened her.

Clawed hand grasped more firmly around the oil-black halberd's haft, and the Black Dog turned to stare down at Vivilene again. Her shape, now that she was more... upright, was more visible. Four-legged, yet with arms--something like a mix between the shape he had once had, and the one he had now. Like a deer, but like the Collector, too. Strange. He studied her for a moment, deciding what she was; and then he spoke.

"The thing in the tower will not bring harm." A pause. "The Dog will accompany you." In his mind, of course, that was an explanation: the child would come to no harm because he would go with her. But with all the whispers going on, and his vision suddenly choosing now to blink into pitch black nothing, he didn't exactly think to lay out the thought process.

Instead, as his vision cleared, his gaze drifted back to Vivilene. "I am the Black Dog, Mind-speaker." And then, "Come." He held no fear, as he turned to walk back toward the tower: whatever had frightened the child, he would confront, and if it posed a danger to children, then he would kill it.

@Vivilene

Vivilene waited. She was in no way impatient-- in fact, she was quite glad to delay returning to the tower and facing the Horrors Within for as long as possible, though Black's silence did begin to largely concern her. At first, she wondered if he hadn't heard her at all-- but surely not. No one had ever accused her of being too quiet before, which was likely due in part to the fact she spat words directly into someone's head.

Was she meant to repeat herself? She wasn't sure if she could even raise her voice-- if that's what you could call it --to be heard properly if she went casting again. She could try making a noise, perhaps, but the moment she opened her mouth, the Dog's head turned to where she was pointing.

And then he looked back. Quietly, she continued to wait, slowly lowering her little hand.

His words didn't entirely comfort her when they came, however. If you were to ask, Vivilene wouldn't be able to tell you if it was the way he phrased it, or if it was because of how he looked, or if it was the not-quite-there whispering that came (maybe?) from his weapon.

Her tail flicked, anxiously, and she passed another glance towards the tower before she half-turned and started walking carefully, slowly, back towards the entrance. She kept herself half-next to and half-behind Black as they went, her hands lifting to fidget with her own fingers.

The Black Dog was a strange name, she decided-- but what was more distracting to her was the appointed title he'd decided to give her. Mind-speaker might not have been entirely wrong, but she wasn't sure if speaking was really a fair word to describe... whatever it was she did.

Another flick of her tail. "My name is Vivilene," she said after a beat or two, her voice still gentle, but largely, likely still clearer than the rest of the garble swimming around Black's head. "Do you know if... anything lives in there? Is it bad?"

This was arguably, an important question.

@Black

The voice came again, trickling into his consciousness. Vivilene; he took the name, and tucked it away. And promptly did not use it.

The tower-... She was asking if anyone lived within the tower. He lifted his head, gazing up at it from beneath the hood. Had he ever been inside..? He didn't think that he had; he couldn't recall, but it was difficult to concentrate past the whispering.

"I do not know," he answered, and it was neither indifferent nor rough, but there was nothing in it: no real emotion, only fact, calmly-given in his echoing voice. The whispers played chorus to it, and that was really entirely unnecessary but it certainly was a tad spookier than it had to be.

Black strode onward, speaking as he came up on the foot of the tower, and there he craned his head back to peer at it. "Were you attacked by what was within, Mind-speaker?" he asked, still not having questioned the child's ability to talk directly into his already rather-crowded-seeming head.

@Vivilene

Vivilene was concerned. Adults not actually knowing and potentially being as clueless to something as she was was still a fairly new concept. Like most things, however, this particular anxiety was stashed away to be fretted over at a completely unrelated situation.

She shook herself out a little, not unlike a dog, as she came to a small, quiet stop half-behind Black. She was afraid to look back in-- though, at a glance, she couldn't see anything in there anyway --and she hovered for a time, her hands twisting through the blue silk draping her shoulders.

In response, she nodded with a bounce of her hair, pointing loosely towards to gesture to her gut and, by extension, the crescent-shaped stone embedded into it. The pain had subsided by now but there was still the odd twinge-- the strange, almost-not-there tingle that wasn't painful but not comfortable, either.

Her mouth opened and then, uselessly, it shut again as she glanced back into the tower. If it seemed darker than before in there she had no idea-- she was skittering back a foot or so with a scrape of hooves on stone, giving Black some distance to... do whatever it was he was going to do.

Might as well let the professionals deal with it.

@Black

Black looked at the entrance to the tower. He raised his head a tad, and sniffed--and again, his vision went dark.

For a moment, it looked silent, still, dead--a snapshot of a greyscale night, motes of dust suspended in the air. A void-nothing, encroaching on reality. As actual reality bled back in, he inhaled. There was nothing to smell, however; only dust, rock, dirt; himself, his cloth, and Vivilene.

The black dog turned, and looked back to 'Mind-Speaker' behind him. He had to tell her to wait here. That he would go inside, and clear the tower. But these intentions were difficult to put into words when the constant whispers were assaulting him. Some spoke of death; some taunted him with promises of hidden knowledge. Others seemed to lament the darkness that shrouded him even now. One, he was fairly certain--and this briefly distracted him--asked if he were particularly hungry at the moment. So when he spoke, it was not quite... sensibly-phrased, and his gaze, and tone, were somewhat distant. "The Mind-Speaker must remain here," he informed her. "The Dog will destroy whatever has harmed the child."

And with that, he turned, lifted his halberd, and strode inside.

Black was expecting, perhaps, a lurking monster: slashing fangs, glowing eyes, bristling fur and too-many legs. He found... empty silence. His only real enemy within was far too many stairs, so that even his fairly muscular body was soon heaving for breath. He had to stop partway up the tower's spiral stairs to catch his breath, which was not exactly the image of brooding death-soldier that he might otherwise have presented. It did not help that half of the whispering voices now decided to mock him for it.

He did not stop to check whether Vivilene followed, or remained behind; halberd raised, he ascended to the tower's summit, leaving a trail of temporarily-distorted stone in his wake.

@Vivilene

Black said two things, which was interesting because he also happened to say two things that Vivilene didn't very much like the sound of, for two different reasons.

The first was to remain outside, which in theory was fine. Stay out where it was safe while The Dog went inside the tower where Bad Things where and dealt with it. This was fine. But the more Vivilene thought about it, the more she began to worry. She was to remain outside, alone, where another Bad Thing could come across at any moment, unseen and unheard and oopsie, she'd be dead and nobody would notice.

Surely just... a little bit inside would be fine, where the threat was getting-- destroyed?

Ahh. No. She didn't like that word, she decided.

Vivilene knew what it was supposed to mean. Attikias had often reassured her like that (not exactly like that, but still) by offering to 'fix it' or 'take it away' if something was bothering her. 'Fix it' or 'taking it away' seemed much different to 'destroy it,' though-- even if it were a Bad Thing that had scared and hurt her.

She didn't want to stick around to find out what, exactly, Black was going to do to it-- enough so that she didn't really even want to stay in the tower, even just a little bit. But that came at the risk of-- well, being outside, alone.

That was a lot, she decided. No matter where she was looking she felt a little spike of fear, of anxiety, and then a little bit of frustration as her own dilemma reminded her that she was not, in fact, a very normal child. This frustration would have to be tucked away and revised later too, though-- for now, she had to take dad's advice.

As Black vanished into the tower, Vivilene situated herself outside it in silence, curling herself up against the ancient wall. She tucked herself underneath the blue shawl and took a very, very deep breath before releasing her hands from inside it, flexing her fingers a little as she focused quietly.

A spark of flame jolted against her palms-- warm but not uncomfortably hot like most fire --and then erupted into brilliant, silvery flame, twisting in on itself in a little pale, bluish-white orb. This colour brought some strange comfort to her; the unabrasive heat was calming, almost blanket-like.

In silence, as she waited, Vivilene quietly watched the silver wisp circle around her in slow, wide circles.

@Black

When, eventually, Black emerged, it was with a puzzled set of thoughts.

Most of them were clear enough, along the lines of What did she see? and How did whatever-it-was escape? He'd gotten partway through wondering if, perhaps, it had been something winged, when something had squeezed his arm hard enough to make him snarl in pain. There was nothing there, but his thoughts were interrupted, and when the pain faded and he tried to go back to them, several of the whispering voices began to stray into distinctly nonsensical territory.

One whispered promises of death. Another urged him to defile the tower, as a whole; to spread corruption. One insisted he should kill Vivilene outright.

A fourth asked if he liked the way the window was situated.

Black eyed the window at the top of the tower. "It is good," he declared, to the voice, and this seemed to silence them, for now (either out of satisfaction at driving him mad, or confusion as to his reasoning--why was the window good?--or maybe they weren't real at all). He turned and made his way with slow and steady steps back down the tower's stairs, paws scuffing the black-stained rock he'd left in his wake, claws clicking as he went.

When at last he emerged from the tower, he'd managed to summon up a half-coherent sentence.

Half.

"The beast-that-harmed has perhaps flown," he had settled upon, after rehearsing it several times--"The window is good."

A pause.

Was that what he'd meant to say-?

Black shrugged internally; the message (he thought..?) was clear enough, at least, nonsense aside. He settled his halberd before him, holding it with a stiff and upright stance, like a soldier at attention; and he watched Vivilene in silence, for a beat. The voices were rising back through whispers into a clamor, demanding to know whether her gemstone would taste good if consumed, whether he should eat his halberd, whether he should gouge out his other eye to see more clearly. Through this, he struggled to remember what he'd wanted to ask her.

Ahh--"The Dog wonders: can she describe it-?" he said, at last, and was pleased that he had managed.

@Vivilene