Cetus had been desecrated. Where it had once been a calm place, where its shadows and mists were only mild irritants to the once-proud eagle, it now struck her with a paralyzing fear. She had two options, really: face the terrifying, chilling shadows (even though it was the middle of the day, for Aquarian's sake!) or dramatically lower her visibility with her orb of light. An attempt at making light had been made, because it wasn't much of a choice in her mind. It hadn't appeared, and she'd been nearly catatonic as she flew towards the home of the Children. Her wings tucked in slightly to begin her descent, and she landed on a tree branch fairly near the ground once she finally reached their territory proper.

As loudly as she dared, Hera called, "D-Dragon?", ashamed of how her voice cracked. "Uh! I'm back, and, I-- I really need to talk to you." Gray feathers. Strange ears. Glowing eyes. Heavy, black claws -- and a shaking in every feather. It was dark and she hated it. She didn't want to talk about this, didn't want to be here, wanted to be somewhere with more sunlight -- but he really needed to know.


@dragon
(that was meant to be a cast of her new light spell :pensive: it would have failed, tho)

He was lying half-submerged in the Heart, the cold water still around him, the offering pile granting its reeking stench to the mist all around him. Life was good; uneventful, calm, dark.

A distant voice hit him, then; a faint call, a familiar one. -Hera? he guessed, but he wasn't sure; it didn't sound quite right and regardless, it was rather far.

The lame alligator grunted, and turned, his motionless floating-log body lurching into a slow drift, ridged tail starting heavy sweeps to propel him toward the shore. Once his chest threatened to scratch up against the half-buried branches and other detritus of the shallower shores, he called upon his magic.

Vast wings--blood red, shot through with streaks of smoky black--sprang from his shoulders, his flanks, spreading with thin draconic fingers. Horns twisted and curled back from his head, wisping dark behind his eyes. Magic or not, when those wings beat, Dragon rose: surging into strange, almost vertical flight, rushing toward the voice. Hera had seen this, before, of course; idly and in battle, and where to her the image would look familiar, to another it would have appeared bizarre (if not outright frightening). The hanging, heavy tail of the alligator was not the sweeping line of a dragon, but a swiftly-moving upright shape, sweeping through the mist and the darkness of the swamp with blood-smoke wings trailing magic behind him.

"I AM HERE," he bellowed into the swamp, merely to be heard; now, where was Hera..?

@Hera

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

[small panic attack bc crit fail :(]


Despite the untimely trauma making her hate all this gloom and chill, despite the fact that every shadow and rustle in the darkness made her shake, despite the fact that Hera wanted to fly far, far away from here and never look at her reflection again -- hearing Dragon call out to her was enough to soothe her nerves, and the noise of it made it easier than usual to pick out where he was -- she could almost see the whole swamp from that! "Over here!" she called, trying to make her bubble of light again for two reasons -- one, so he'd find her more easily, and two -- she hated the dark.

Instead, the space behind her eyes went dark. It was just for a split-second, but the seizing panic of it had her clutching the branch nearly hard enough to break it and all her feathers fluffing up like she was being attacked. She couldn't see. It's here, it followed me, I can feel it-- she thought, phantom claws tearing into her newly-gray feathers (and the scars under them ached from the panic of it all) and she breathed out shakily, trying to focus on the fact that Dragon was arriving.


@dragon

He arrived in a soft thudding of magic wing-beats, landing with a more brutish splash in the swamp-water below. Hera was there--trembling, it seemed, staring blankly or--blindly? But she wasn't what he'd expected.

Not at all.

Her feathers were gray. Her eyes, phosphorescent, shining. She had long, batlike ears--and long, black talons.

"-Hera?" he rumbled, somewhat confused, as the magic reds-and-blacks of his wings and horns faded away. He was left just an alligator: heavily-scarred across the head, snout and back, one leg twisted and limp behind him.

"What has happened," he asked, and it was as much a demand as concern--but Hera would know this tone, oh yes: it was the tone of a father, wondering if someone had hurt one of his children, one of his family. Or, in this case, a friend.

@Hera

The light came back and she breathed out a sigh of relief, trying once again -- despite the risk. She needed light. To her great relief, it slowly pulled light together and started to shine. Hera sighed in relief. It wasn't big, but it worked. She relaxed a little, stopped trembling so much, leaned a little bit into the tone Dragon carried. It was comforting in all the right ways -- she was distantly reminded of the time when he'd carried her on the top of his snout just after she'd hatched. It made it easier for her to think.

"You were right about the Masters," was the first thing she said, her voice lowered. "I went to a Hydra Trial. I thought-- I thought I could get information, good information. But it was a brutish massacre. Sh-shadows, and a monster we couldn't see, and-- it stole the bodies of the dead, made them talk to us, tried to trick us into the shadows."

She shuddered. Lump in her throat. Deep breath, Hera. "I think some of them might've been there against their will." And her least favorite part upcoming.... "W-When we woke up, we all looked... different." While birds generally did not have a wide range of emotions visible on their faces, hers twisted violently into a sort of disgusted horror. "The littler one, with the antlers and the hands -- he, he didn't even ask. Now I look... like this."


@dragon

He flinched at her descriptions. He wondered, too, what information she had hoped to get--not in a doubtful way, but rather, curious. Had something happened that would promise something new? "What caught your interest, Hera--was this trial different from the others, somehow?" he asked. She wasn't the first to have gone in. Though from the sounds of it, he hoped she'd be the last.

As to her body changes, he looked her over, briefly. "The same happened to Imp. Well--NOT the same. But his form changed. I think it happens, sometimes, to those who go into their stones for awhile. I have seen it before. Does it bother you?" he asked her bluntly.

For the most part, he had listened--and spoken--matter-of-factly. Shadow monsters, even things puppeting bodies, weren't wholly unknown to him, or even to most of the Children; in years past, the caves had darkened, monsters lurking in the dark. Dragon--and the rest--had fought them off, for the most part, but it had not been easy, and it had not been kind.

...In fact...

Sudden realization struck, two hitting two and bringing forth a blinding four, and Dragon's eyes first narrowed, and then widened, fixing on the eagle before him.

"Tell me... Was the one they call the 'Masked Merchant' there-?" he asked.

Suspicions were beginning to mount, and little threads to connect together, so that Dragon was now seeing a bit of the unpleasant tapestry that formed the whole.

@Hera

She paused. Considered his question, snapped briefly out of her stupor. "Uhhh, there were a few creatures who watched us go in, and none of them followed us. The smaller one, with the antlers and the hands -- the one who changed me. That one opened some kind of jar and let the cold shadows out. A very tall one -- a little less than you are long, I think. They were... purple, with a lot of green. Eyes, especially. Like... blistering, neon green. And quills all over. Next to them was another creature that looked kind of the same, but was noticeably shorter. Six legs, green eyes, lots of quills. No purple, though." Hadn't they been followed in the last Trial? She assumed so. And... thought about rumors she'd heard. "We didn't have to like... fight anything, either. Nothing more than the land and the darkness. No Lessers jumped out at us, unless you count the shadows. If someone fell into them, they were just... gone. We were all equal, too -- no separate groups. It wasn't, like, a race. Just trying to survive." She shuddered.

Hera fluffed her feathers up at Dragon's next question, and felt the sudden urge to pull them all out and pray they grew back golden. Not that it worked like that, but she was just... upset. "I hate it. I was-- I was pretty! Now I look like a deformed hatchling," she lamented. Her light kept in view, she smoothed herself down so she didn't look quite so... fluffy. This was miserable indeed.

She made a gesture that could have been a shrug. "Uh, the little one was wearing a mask I think? But no names. Umm... a biped with antlers and a mask. They had some kind of stone on their hand, I think, but you know how I am with seeing things up close." Terribly far-sighted, this one.


@dragon

He listened, intently, to the descriptions. One he recognized as Orthoclase-Alpha, and prompted this memory from Hera. "Think back--was the one with quills the same as the one that helped us against Mother?" It would be interesting, if so: Dragon knew that this one had been sent to aid them in Cetus, but he could not for the life of him remember by whom.

It was the mention of the Masked Merchant, however, that jolted him into interest. "That's him!" Dragon cried, with a fair bit more fire to him than his usual half-hibernating, primeval patience. "That is him. The antlered one."

Dragon gave a low rumble of thought before continuing, before explaining. "There was a time when darkness came to the caves. It has done that before--many times!--but this time was different. You were alive for it, I think, though I cannot remember if you fought, or if you were in your stone. But this darkness was different in that it was not only shadow! It was not just..." and here Dragon paused, a stretching, churning bit of silence that was not true silence, but the urgent search for a description, "...the absence of light. Do you understand-? No: this darkness was aware. There were things in it, things formed of the dark. Things that hunted, fought. We fought them, killed them, but many were badly wounded, nearly killed." He paused, remembering, thrusting his mind back to that time--years ago, now. One year, two? -He could not remember. "There were monsters throughout the caves--but here in Cetus it was a dog. A dog that was black, and far too large. It had a glowing red gem at its chest. Glowing red eyes. But it controlled the shadows, you see. It came with them," and he paused, recalling the roiling darkness that stretched like rapid, savage claws to engulf them, remembering the thin dog's eight-foot height, "and these shadows whispered, confusing. We heard threats, and cruel promises. But we defeated it, in the end. With that, though..." And here, Dragon paused, eyeing Hera with that same intent gaze--he was, it seemed, getting to a point and not simply providing comparisons--"came a magic, as it died. We learned to make lights."

Dragon turned, nodding to the air, his permanent alligator grin somehow out of place with the cold solemnity of the conversation. And yet there was an almost eagerness in his tone that matched it: the detective unfurling a mystery, though in truth he had yet to more than tug at its fraying edges. A wisp--phosphorescent, somehow eerie in its pale light and slowly bobbing motions--flickered into being beside and somewhat above him. It was nowhere near as bright as Hera's orb, but it was there, a fool's guide into the marsh, into death. "These. They came to us; we learned to make them. But it didn't end there."

"Some time later all of us found that our wisps began forming of their own accord! Leading us, or trying to, in bobbing and confusing paths. Those of us who followed found ourselves in the cave of winds--Monoceros, they call it--deep in the Gorge, at a hole into the ground. And that creature you describe! -With the antlers, the mask. The Masked Merchant, it calls itself. It was there, and it said that it had sent for us." Dragon grunted, then. "I know that it offered rewards for going into--and surviving!--that deep hole. Some went. I did not; I thought it foolish! But others did. I do not know who came out, and who did not. But my point is, that if this creature was using the wisps to beckon, and I think it did create the beasts in the darkness that we encountered here, before; if it created this black trial in Monoceros itself, well..." Dragon snapped his jaw at the wisp: a cracking, heavy sound, like a boulder falling, a sound that echoed before being lost to the mist of the swamp. The magic vanished, the wisp dissipating. "Then we know much more about him. If he creates trials with dark shadows and monsters, and controls this magic, then he must have done so again. And he may plan to do so in the future." Dragon paused, thinking. It added up, to him: antlered creature creates dark trial, shadow monsters; he's present at the same happening just a cycle or two ago? Then he must be behind it all.

"We will need to think of how to address this. It is good information, Hera," he praised; "but perhaps you can find this information second-hand, instead of risking yourself!" As for her looks, well, she'd given an honest answer--but Dragon had never thought the bird pretty. He wasn't sure what he found 'pretty,' in truth; he had little reason to see things in such light. Hera had been... brown? Large; her claws were perhaps her finest feature, and her wings, and she still had those. But he knew, too, that to say as much would be insulting, and so he addressed it on a more practical level--and a slightly more tactful one. "I am sorry that you feel that way about your appearance! But you still have your wings, and your talons. That is good," and he wasn't sure what else to say about that. A pause, then, and admission of his ignorance: "You have problems wqith your vision?" he asked, quizzically; he hadn't been aware.

@Hera

"Umm," she said, thinking back. "The smaller one! Yes, the smaller one helped us fight Mother. But the other one? I think they were related. The larger one was the other one's life-giver, I think." A beat. "And I think the other one's stone-giver died in the trial. The big one said something about trying to recover the stone."

Hera listened to Dragon, an uncomfortable ache churning her stomach. She flinched violently when the wisp appeared. Despite the light it provided, Hera didn't want to look at it. She didn't want to think about it. "S-Sorry, sorry-- it's just... there was o-one of those, keeping the darkness away. Leading us to our slaughter." She took a deep breath, trying to compose herself. This was not the time to have a breakdown, and closing her eyes to cower would mean her own ball off light would dissipate.

Once he was done, though, she cleared her throat to indicate she was going to speak. "Uhh, well, there was... nothing visible in the darkness, really," she admitted. "Nothing we could have fought. Only the-- the others, all... Oily." The eagle shivered. "And it was... cold. Whenever the darkness touched you, it felt like something with claws made of ice was tearing into your body. I-- I probably have scars, under my feathers," she admitted. "It almost got me once or twice."

The shift back to her appearance, though, was a welcome sort of reprieve. "... I do kind of like the new talons," she admitted quietly. And then, Dragon admitting that he wasn't aware -- she perked up a little bit, her voice edging into the same tone it usually had, a little brighter. A little sunnier. "Oh! Ha, yeah. My eyes are kinda made for seeing things from a distance, but up close? Well, I tend to lose the sharper details. It gets pretty blurry."


@dragon
(i... forgot i was rolling there, but that was "don't have a breakdown")

She didn't seem to see (ha) the same things he did in his wonderful little theory, pointing out that the shadow creatures (if they had been alive, at all) hadn't been... hm, corporeal? He wasn't sure; but he was a little disappointed that there wasn't more enthusiasm, there. He'd hoped he'd hit some sort of deep mystery, but maybe he was reading too much into it.

He turned his attention to the description of Orthoclase (maybe?) and its family. Dragon didn't quite grasp what Hera was laying out in terms of the threads of the relationship, nor was he sure who the various family members were--Vargas, perhaps? He remembered, abruptly, having seen Vargas at the Orion meeting. Had that one died, then? Or was he the one to try and recover a gemstone? Unsure, he filed this information aside in case it came up later, and focused on Hera's new topic.

"Ahh, I did not know that. They are... glowing, now, in case you did not know; it may be harder for you to stay hidden, if you need to hide." Speaking of which: Dragon studied her a moment, and then abruptly pressed on. "Tell me: you say it was a dark trial, with shadows, and now you come with light. Are you frightened?" he asked, the question a blunt one.

The corners of his mind were already churning over all this new knowledge--and, more importantly, what to do about it. But Dragon had his paternal side, and he knew what it meant to a creature to have concern expressed to it from someone close, or at least, somewhat close. It wasn't concern that she'd be less useful; it was a look to her well-being.

@Hera