Sora was on her way back from her little adventure in Eridanus, fed and stinky. She was carrying a couple small truffles with her and resisting the urge to eat them, since she wanted to share them with her family. But on the way back, she'd caught a flash of pale movement out of the corner of her eye, and Sora had been driven by the nervous urge to investigate.

She didn't like to not know what was around her. "He''o? she called, her voice muffled by the fungal bodies. Her ears were pricked up to hear anything in return, but also to let her own voice paint a picture of the area. Her words bounced off a creature shaped like Ifrit, but sort of shrunk down and squished. How interesting! As he became visible, she noticed the white, and felt a pang of sympathy -- maybe he'd survived a previous trial?


@pride

The quiet call had his head coming up, silvered tines catching the light from where he lay beside the Throne. He'd returned from Eridanus not so long ago himself, also well-fed and content; the voice had him awakening from a happily groggy near-nap.

"Yes?" he called out, and then spotted the little figure in the distance. He pushed to his hooves--reluctantly, but it was the polite thing to do; and then he took a few steps forward. By his side, the little white hare scampered along--then back, skirting behind the Throne, and its crown of bones. He glanced back at her, quizzically, and then looked to Sora.

A pig, it seemed, with something in her mouth. Odd.

"I am Pride, of the Seven; how can I help you?" he asked.

@Sora

Sora dropped her truffles and kept them protectively between her feet so that she could talk to Pride. Her glowing eye looked him over more carefully. "'M Sora." A beat passed in the awkward silence she'd created. "I, uh... survived the most recent Trial." She hated that that was the best way to introduce herself. What else had she done? "Have... you? Y'know? 'Cause of the, uh, fur. Mine happened... after."

She wasn't usually this stuttery and awkward, but she'd realized as soon as he'd approached her that she didn't actually have anything to say. How was she meant to make conversation with someone who she didn't know when they hadn't done anything to her?


@pride

Pride peered at her for a moment, blinking. "Ahh, no, I-..." wouldn't be stupid enough to risk my life over nothing? Now that would be a rude way to open a conversation, and so he hesitated, quickly rephrasing. "-I have never been in Hydra. It seems... a risk; I, ah. I lost two of my--two of our... Two of the Seven. My friends," and for the briefest of moments, his voice cracked a tad. He looked down, head bowed, eyes closing for a moment as if in respect for their loss, and he looked back to Sora. Was this one of the surivivors, where somehow Fireheart and Nassir had both fallen-? He looked her over; she didn't look like much, but life and death was half luck and magic hardly showed itself on the surface. She was proud of her survival, too; one of the older Champions, perhaps-?

"Perhaps you knew them," he went on, head lifting again. "Nassir, Fireheart; a black leopard--and a good, close friend. A kind heart. And Fireheart, a strong magic-user, young, with--a great deal of potential. Self-control, courage. I-... miss them," Pride finished, the last two words a near-whisper. He shook his head, cleard his throat, as if embarrassed, struggling to keep from crying. It was not an easy task. "I am sure they would have been glad that you survived," he went on, turning the conversation back to his visitor--ever the polite host. "In any case, no, my fur was white from hatching; I take it yours changed?" he went on.

He hesitated, again, wavered. He wanted to ask of his friends. Of their deaths. Of how they had fought, how they had fallen-... But he didn't... want to be rude. Perhaps she wouldn't want to speak of it-... So he settled on: "If... you are up to speaking of it, I would be in your debt if you could tell me of--of how they fell. I know nothing of it, and I did not know that they had gone in until far later. But," he added, quietly, "if you do not wish to speak of it, I would not blame you at all."

@Sora

She stuttered in her breathing. "I'm... sorry," she admitted. "That I asked." Well, that sounded rude. The truth was, Sora remembered them both. She remembered... them melting. How brutal it had been. She felt like the owed this to Pride, though -- he'd lost people, just like she had. That deserved something. Sora nodded her agreement and cleared her throat.

"Fireheart... he helped protect everyone. So did Nassir. We had to, um, light torches -- and Fireheart kept lighting them. They were both making sure we were all okay. Fireheart almost died in the beginning, but, uh, one of my brothers -- and then a few others -- went to save him and the other one who went into the darkness." She swallowed hard. "Nassir died saving other Gembound. He fell into a pool of quicksand. Saved others who'd fallen in. Saved... me, and my family -- I think, anyway." She didn't bother revealing how the darkness had stolen him, but -- "Two of my brothers and one other sibling... they went in to try and save him. They-- they didn't make it." Her voice caught violently in her throat.

"Fireheart gave this speech. Kept our spirits up. Told us to, uh, to live for the dead. He... he died, saving my brother, Ifrit. The shadows-- they started to take him, and he fought. Fire everywhere. He burned himself alive to scare back the shadows, and... my brother survived, because of him. It was hard to light the last torch without him, but we made it. Most of us. I-- I lost one other sibling," she admitted, "who died protecting someone else. But... our lives were never our own in the first place. We were created by the Masked Merchant. Given no choice. Born to die. He killed one of us before the trial even started because she tried to flee."

Sora sighed. "But we survived. And that's... the most I could have asked for."


@pride

As Pride listened, his ears sagged, his head lowering.

Nassir, lost to quicksand--gods, hadn't he fallen before, drowned like that-? The poor bastard--and Fireheart, inspiring, aflame. They had both died protecting others, doing what the Seven had sworn to do, and perhaps if Sora's words were true they were protecting those who were innocent, not fools: those who hadn't chosen to go in, of their own accord.

All at once, instead of miserably questioning their decisions, he was... ignited. His head rose, his eyes flashing as the meaning of Sora's words truly sunk in.

"Created? By--the Merchant? And he killed one of you..?" The stag, who had seen much violence in his life, and even stranger things at the Merchant's hands, still could not fathom this horror. His voice was nearly a whisper as he added--"...Why?"

Surely he would thank the peccary, once his shock had worn off, for sharing this horrid story--for granting him the peace, at least, of knowing how his friends had died. But for now his face was twisted with disgust and with rage, with shock, his ever-present mask abruptly torn away.

Who the hell would do something like that?

And more importantly, why?

@Sora

Sora laughed bitterly. Pride was feeding into her awful rage, and she was happy to oblige him. "The trial -- no, the slaughter. We were feeding something. A monster in the shadows." She rose to her feet and started to pace in a slow circle (notably, around her truffles -- she hadn't totally forgotten about them and didn't want them being stolen). "I felt it claw at me. Pull me in." Sora snorted, shaking her head.

"The Masked Merchant. He created eleven of us. Kept us isolated -- we only had a each other. A little cave somewhere near Canis that I haven't been able to find since. We became a family. He fed us, gave us water, that sort of thing. If one of us got hurt, he'd fix it. But he never spoke to us. Never stayed longer than was strictly necessary. And that was fine -- we thought it was normal. Thought that's just what a creator did. What a parent did." She scuffed the stone with one of her hooves and growled. "We were chrysalized in our fourth cycle. Told to wait, to be patient. When we woke up, we were herded out of our little home. One of my sisters -- a tiger? She didn't want to go. She wanted to leave. Wanted to find the trees, like we'd always dreamed of. And he-- he-- he murdered her." Her voice caught, and then came out laced in venom. Fury. Grief. Guilt. Horror.

"In the trial I lost three brothers and a sibling. Kini-yolotl, Simon, Owlface, and Orenstein. Those strangers... they died, too. Call me ungrateful," she said, like the word was poison, "but if he'd really needed live Gembound to feed to the monster, why let folks with lives, families, and friends go in, too? Why not just us?" Sora came to a stop again. "In the aftermath, he changed us. Stole away our faces. I didn't always look... like this. He didn't even ask if we wanted to chrysalize again. As I went down, I was sure that I was going to wake back up to another death game."

Sora sighed, tired out by her little tirade. "I left their stones there, in Hydra. I didn't have a choice."


@pride

He listened with nothing but dawning horror, a nightmarish cold hand wrapping silken, icy fingers around his heart. Is this what Astraea spoke of..? Sending off our children... our creations, fission or no? Was it to--to feed something? ...Is this what we agreed to? Raised like cattle--like livestock--and then sent to the slaughter... though Pride didn't quite know this metaphor, it would have been quite apt.

The list of the dead widened his eyes further, and throughout Sora's speech, he said not a single word.

It was only when she finished that he at last shifted, the movement almost imperceptible, and even then he remained silent another long few ticking seconds, the horror drying his throat and keeping his jaw blankly shut.

"I... I am sorry," he answered her, softly. There was another long moment of silence, the awful nature of it still writhing in his skull, driving out all thoughts, bar How..? and Why?!
At last Pride took a breath, and shook his head, taking a moment to steady himself. To clear his thoughts. His magicka wrapped out, a protective, gentle embrace, slowing time in the area around he and Sora. To his eyes she seemed to have slowed, each blink magnified a thousand times, and he knew she'd not sense a thing; but his thoughts ran unfettered, even as he became aware of each slow breath his lungs heaved in.

He sent them out to die. That cannot... go unpunished. But the survivors--where will they live? Fireheart, Nassir--they died to save her, these strangers, and for what? For them to be thrown hapless into the caves, strangers even to themselves..?
Pride shook his head, and cleared the magic, trying not to sway at the dizzying sensation of time catching up with itself. "I will... aid you in attempting to retrieve the stones, if you can show me where to look--but I have never been to Hydra," he warned her, quietly. And then, realization: "Do you know of Nassir's stone--of Fireheart's? Were they still there; could we perhaps get them back, too?" But that was not all he had to say. "Regardless, though the 'Seven' are hardly Seven any longer, you and your siblings, those who remain, you are more than welcome to the homes here in Orion." Pride nodded off toward the ruins. "Those of us that remain will gladly protect you, should you need it."

And he was wondering, too, what could be done about the Merchant. His actions... were inexcusable.

@Sora

The idea of returning to Hydra made her sick, but she'd always intended to. But... the offer of having someone more powerful than herself... well, that sweetened the deal. She thought back to who she'd seen at the edges of the darkness, screaming for her to go into it and melting brutally into the sands. "Maybe," she finally said. "It's hard to know in the swamp, but I think I saw Fireheart's. I'm not sure about Nassir's, though. I was mostly, uh, focused on other things," she admitted.

Sora turned her head to the side at Pride's offer. "Maybe. I make decisions about the group with my sister Morganite. I think we're ready to strike out on our own and make our own fates, but I'll talk to her about your offer." Sora took a breath in, her whiskers twitching forward.

"But retrieving stones... I was planning to try it anyway," she admitted. "Going with someone else will be helpful, to say the least. Maybe I can gather a few others to better defend ourselves against the dangers of Hydra. I don't want to drag my family back in there if I can avoid it, but some of us are capable. I can certainly handle myself."


@pride

Pride thought about this, and then took a breath.

"I have a recommendation for you then--another offer. If your--group? Your siblings, as you say; if they are new to the caves as a whole, bring them here. I can tell them everything I know about each cave; the system is large, and each cave is unique. There are... dangers in many of them, and other groups that I know of. I can speak to you of magic, of... the Masters; of anything I know, really. My knowledge is yours, if you wish it."

It hadn't been that long since Hydra, but perhaps they'd found someone else to teach them all this, meanwhile; if not, Pride worried that they might all be ignorant of the dangers, running into the other caves blind. He didn't know if Hydra were normally more or less dangerous than other places--he doubted that they knew, either, if they had no experience of them.

"In any case, whenever you wish to go to Hydra, bring those willing to come--to guide me, and I will protect you as best I can. We can go together." Hopefully, he did not join Fireheart and Nassir in the sinking abyss; from what he'd been told, at least, Hydra wasn't as dangerous outside a Trial.

@Sora