strong language

... She was being ignored. Why?

Scout snorted and stamped a foot, making her way forward with pinned ears and a furious glare.

"HEY! ASSHOLES!!", she shrieked, her voice shrill and unpleasant to listen to, "HEY!! Why did you kidnap me? For ransom? I don't have any friends so you're not going to get anything- what is that?!"

Setting her eyes on the gross, chubby, hairless thing on the ground, her lips drew back in a sneer, "Eeeeeeew. It's so... hideous! And ugly- is it blind?!"

She burst out in hysterical laughter, "All this for some flawed little thing? Some stupid little naked baby?!"

The springbok had no fear, as stupid as she was. Dhracia's aura flew over her head like it was a terrible joke, either because she ignored it or something about her being completely unable to feel fear. Perhaps some flaw when she'd hatched. A bump on the head, maybe?

Scout glared at Vargas and Dhracia, instantly seeing them as the leaders (which was surprising, honestly, for she couldn't tell the difference between either of her hooves on a good day).

(Country roads) "Take me home!", she demanded, "Right now!! RIGHT NOW!! ASSHOLES!!"

Turning to face Dhracia, she went to insult some more before looking between the baby and her, seeing how they were both naked, pale, and honestly quite gross.

"... Is that your kid? I'd return it, if I were you,", Scout sniffed, "And maybe punch your creator for making you look like a melon with arms and legs. Ugly bitch."

Her curses really only grew in volume as her tirade continued, hooves stamping and teeth clacking clumsily as her voice grew louder and louder.

"FILTH! VILE FUCKING PIECES OF SHIT! GARBAGE-EATERS! FUCKHEADS!! TWAT WAFFLES! DOUCHE CANOES!! DICKHEAD!! REGURGITATED SHIT SQUIRT!! DIARRHEA BRAINS!! FUCKING WH-OREOS!! PISSWAFFLES!!! CUNT HEADS!!"

Her dull eyes were alight with anger and the highest level of annoyance there could possibly be. In no way did she sense any danger. She didn't even consider death as a possibility.

"I hope you die in a fire! I hope your eyes get ripped out by birds and your innards eaten and shit out into a nice little pile of worthless crap!!! I hope that you, Mr. Big and Purple and Smelly, I hope that you get a cactus shoved up your behind!!", she squealed, tossing her head.

Sticking up her chin in the most haughty way possible, she focused on Dhracia, stamping her foot again.

"Fuck you,", she said, "And you can get a cactus up your behind too. And maggots in your ears. Though they'll probably starve, since your head's full of nothing."

Doctor turned, opening his beak as Scout started in--he wasn't quite sure what they'd brought her for (another subject, most likely) but he hadn't had time to brief her or question her, yet. When insults began tumbling from her mouth unbidden, his eyes (one the milky gemstone) widened, beak hanging open.

It took him a moment to hasten, half-frantic, to quietly shush her, but his words and bustling wings--trying to shoo her back--were lost to her tirade. "Oh no no no-" and "You should not--please do not--ah-" which segued into a confused "I believe this is a very high figure of authority, it may be best-..."

The direct insults to Lord Dhracia silenced him and he stared in horror. And then he was left--as he slowly shuffled away, distancing himself from this stranger--wondering what, exactly, a 'douche canoe' or a 'regurgitated shit squirt' were--and quickly concluding that it might not be best to think about it all that much.

Doctor looked to Lord Dhracia, to the flabbergasted, glaring Vargas, and hastened to blurt--"Th-this is, ahh--she's not with us."

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

death

gore

Testing the substance of identity, the child mouthed, and formed a sound, and shaped it into something it could call its own. Mary, she named herself. But Lord Dhracia didn't care what name or who she thought she was, only that she wasn't mentally deficient.

Or maybe she did care. Admittedly, Mary was not the name she expected.

Lord Dhracia hummed over it, but before she could humor that this turn of events was unusual, before she could even let herself be swayed by the child's eager smile, another unexpected disparity had caused this routine to veer off track. A clatter of hooves on the stone, and movement among the bodies she'd been scrutinizing; Lord Dhracia was immediately aware of a break in the line, but didn't part the veil of gravity her attention was honed in on until her attention itself was summoned. Which seemed inevitable--the intuition of it imparted a ghost of amusement on her lips, even before Lord Dhracia straightened up and turned around.

HEY! ASSHOLES!!

My, this coil was rife with surprises. But she chose to see it as a good omen.

Before them was a spitfire, bolder than all the rest. Perhaps, no, definitely stupider. A small animal that possessed no crude weapons of war except the daggers on its head. Unlike the rest of these beasts holding their breath in comprehension that their existence hinged on obedience, this one didn't care so much for self-preservation as it did self-satisfaction. This one operated in direct confluence of impulse and chaos--and if that wasn't the utter embodiment of the tenets Lord Dhracia served, she had to admit, she didn't know what a greater definition of it could be. Each expletive that spat from the antelope drew Lord Dhracia's smile wider, until she realized that she was no longer pretending.

Hah. Hahah!

A fool to smile at insult and injury, perhaps; Lord Dhracia almost wished that her skin was thin enough for this pest to pierce, just to feel that earnest and undisciplined rage. A lack of restraint could prove another point to the Leviathan and his creations, but she only smiled! And now, woe, she laughed! Are you seeing this, Hive? Are you seeing this, Creator? Lord Dhracia has found a creature more powerful than both of you--impossible to exceed in its damning tenacity.

A God could smite those that threaten it, but only a mortal had the staying power to stare death in the face and goad it!

The chilling symphony of Lord Dhracia's laughter bounced between the walls. This indiscretion might have bent her authority some, and for that, she had to bolster it again. But, until the tiny antelope had finished its tirade, she only laughed. Whatever qualm the creature was bitching about went unregistered--it was microscopic in the scope of Lord Dhracia's concerns--even the nature of its verbiage, offensive to the infantile ears of her bomb, rolled off Lord Dhracia's back ineffective. However! Lord Dhracia was never one to shirk an opportunity! And when the antelope had exhausted its vocabulary and Lord Dhracia's laughter wheedled into wiping a tear from her eye, she ignored the vulture, looked at Vargas (as though to charm, are you seeing this?), looked at Mary, and flourished with revelation.

Never one to shirk an opportunity. Oh, but how she wished she could entertain this little beast a while longer, and have it, in turn, entertain her. Unfortunate that Lord Dhracia was too ambulatory these days to establish a court for jesters.

“Have you ever questioned what it is you monsters serve?” Her voice cracked sudden like lightning through the room, electrically charged with treacherous mirth. The smile remained, only it was poison now, bleeding toxic vapors that sought to choke and kill everyone it touched. “You see it now. This--” Lord Dhracia gestured to the antelope and lifted her eyes to her audience, “--this reckless abandon is the helix of your constitution. This ferocity. This destruction of self! This is what you're made of!” She laughed again! “One day, you all will shed this disgusting facsimile of life you think you possess. One day, you will serve me exactly as this mote does. You are carnage that is MINE to wield! I AM CHAOS, AND YOU ARE MY INSTRUMENTS OF EXECUTION!” She erupted, and laughed, and beckoned the shadows that scrawled the walls that had been lying in wait this entire time.

The darkness throbbed and bled from recesses in the stone. It gushed out onto the floor, splashed like a roaring waterfall, whipped the air and turned it hot and cold all at once. Darkness from all corners. It stretched, it yawned, it rippled toward the antelope and ensconced it within tendrils of biting void. Eyes peeled open, rolling and gaping over their newest meal. Yes, it would devour. Yes, this was its purpose! This was its purpose, and their purpose, and the antelope's purpose--chaos that ate itself over and over, the infinite ouroboros of destruction and recombination and destruction again!

Lord Dhracia willed them all to look and keep looking, for this was their Fate to be turned into weapons for Lord Dhracia and her Hands and her House of Chaos.

Her Mother Valkhound, the first of the Gembound to have ever heard the voice of Creator and accept His influence, would once more pursue its natural purpose--to rend, to eat, to rip apart. Such was the ultimate Fate of all creatures born in this nest, under the Masters' schematics, and to the reservoirs that had parasitized the aftermath.

The antelope was enveloped, eaten from the inside out; and after the shadows were done and retracted up Lord Dhracia's leg to live in the darkness of the stole on her shoulders, all that would be left was a crumpled, bleeding skin, smears of viscera, crimson bones, and a stone.

Please allow Scout to post first, followed by Vargas. All other observers may post this round, as well as newcomers who would have been present who have not been posted yet. Be aware that any character that attempts to approach Scout's skin/stone will be intercepted by Lord Dhracia.

This round will close on Aug 29, 12 PM CST.

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

strong language

gore

death

Scout stared Dhracia down with all the hatred such a creature could muster, her chest puffing out as she laughed, a flicker of something rattling in her chest like seeds in the dried shell of a rotted gourd. It was kind of gross. She didn't like it.

Though, was Dhracia complementing her? What? Did her insults not cut deep enough? She'd made Gembounds cry and run away from her shrieking, stabbing words. It seems she'd finally met her match. Fitting that it would be a god, she thought, grim satisfaction welling up.

"I won't speak for any of these shit squirts, but nobody fucking owns me!", she said, sniffing with disdain and rolling her shoulders, "Let alone you, Bitchy McBitchface! I'm fresh out of fucks! If you think that you can just laugh at me and then try to intimidate me with your stupid fucking shitty-dicky fucking speech, you got another thing coming, shit-for-brains!"

"NEWS FLASH, FUCKWIT! I don't know what half the words that came out of your cunt-looking face even meant!", she said, as if that would help her case somehow, "So anything you said just sounded stupid! Like you! You're stupid! Stupid moron! Swamp-donkey! CUNT PUDDLE!! SHIT POUCH!! COCK WOMBLE!! TWAT FACE!! PISSMOUTH!! BITCH TITS!!"

With her attention on Dhracia, she ignored (or just didn't notice) the shadows gushing onto the floor, and stepped forward to start up another tirade, accidentally stepping in it.

Gross. Moving on-

"Also, one more thing,", she said, as if knowing her death was upon her, the notion only driving her to push past any barrier that held her back, "I'll never die, fuck face! I'll be in your fucking dreams whispering into your ears, telling you how ugly you look today! Every swear you fucking hear is me! ME!! I'm that fucking song you get stuck in your head, only I'll never go away. I'LL NEVER GO AWAY!! GOEST AND FUCKETH THYSELF!"

Her nostrils flared as she suddenly reared, away from the substance, eluding her death for just a second more.

"MY NAME IS SCOUT!!! REMEMBER ME, AND FAREWELL THUNDERCUNTS!!!", she screamed, before her wails of agony turned to bloody gurgles, and then her form collapsed into a wet heap of bones and gore, nothing left behind by the gross diarrhea substance but her fur and horns. It was really fucking gross, and definitely the way Scout wanted to go, swearing and in the most disgusting way possible.

Ironically, her most defining features aside from her vulgarity. It was true. She would never be forgotten, not with such trophies being so carefully chosen to be left behind.

- THE LEVIATHAN -

To say that he was horrified by the antelope's outburst would be like calling a hurricane a gust of wind. The twist of dread that fired up through his gut and into his chest was a primal thing, black and urgent and cold, one that was almost dizzying in its intensity.

It was ironic that the thing thus far to cause Master Vargas nearly the most fear, in his entire life, came from such a tiny beast. A small, brown thing, inoffensive in appearance but oh, so loud. A bellow rumbled up from his gut, and he took a step forward on instinct if nothing else, to shout the creature down: to roar at her to be still and if she did not, to kill her himself. But... Lord Dhracia started laughing.

Vargas went still, twisting his shocked head toward her just a little--not shocked at her, but at the tirade of the little antelope. No, what he felt toward Dhracia was... perhaps best described as a sinking feeling. He had no time, his mind frozen, to even wonder what their fate might be for this--if anything at all.

And then... her rant.

'Have you ever questioned what it is you monsters serve?'

Well, Vargas knew; but her pure viciousness certainly painted it in a darker light. His toxic eyes shifted, ranging over his spawn, that sinking feeling turning to near-despair. 'They are my weapons,' she was saying, in essence; 'they belong to me and are destined only for chaos and pain.' She wasn't... wrong, either.

He wondered, though, at her placing Scout upon that pedestal. She crows of this, but that deer-thing is the one among us--no, one of two--that is not His creation, Vargas thought, in some confusion. Surely she knew this--he said nothing, regardless. She knew or she did not and far be it from him to bring it up, certainly not now. How ironic, though, that this creation of a wrong god was being placed on such a pillar while the rest of them, true spawns of Chaos, shrank back.

Perhaps it was only that they knew--that they recognized, innately--the greatest among them here, the Lord of them, she who resonated with their same power, who could shred them with it in an instant.

Ahh-... and so she did: but not them, no. Only the antelope, and Vargas watched grimly, and with a faint kernel of admiration at Scout's fire, as misguided as it was--he'd seen a hundred thousand creatures die and the courageous always stood out, towering in his memories over the meek shadows of the whimpering dead.

Well.

Now she was dead, for all that fire; admirable or not, there was hardly anything left of her. Slowly, warily, Master Vargas the Leviathan looked toward his cackling Lord, and awaited her command.

Kethri's beak fell open.

... So that happened.

First the swearing, then Dhracia was laughing. The whole ordeal made her feel rather dizzy. The gorefest that was Scout's death made her turn a little green at the gills, but she couldn't turn away to even hack up a pellet, so she kept it down and shuddered, her head sinking into her feathers.

Gross...

Garnet-Epsilon

They were going to be sick.

Gazing about from a perch, having been in the cave and hiding as a lookout, looking over the stones as the others with flight patrolled outside, feeling a supernatural heat and then watching Lord Dhracia and Master Vargas welcome Mary into existence, having locked up in anticipation when they realized she was blind, but... thankfully still effective.

The antelope being ripped into nothing from the inside out, however, seems to be the final straw, causing the small hybrid to feel it's golden skin on it's face pale, and it's blue paws do the same at the sickening sounds and smell of the other's death.

Of all things that had happened, this makes them press themselves fully flat against the stone ledge they had been silent upon, this is what makes them fully start to question the actual worth of the Sentinels, if one from the outside that was seen as amusing was still... eviscerated...

Deep breaths, Epsilon... oh caves please don't hear me... I don't want to be.. that...

A splitting headache and the taste of acid in their mouth is the reward for attempting to stay as unnoticed as possible, and Epsilon pulls it's wings up and around it's head as it recovers from that mishap...

A baby was born. Zoisite was still only a mere grub themself, but they recognized it: small, and pudgy, and incredibly important. The words that the adults said all seemed wrong and sideways-- no one talked about their sibling's flaws so loudly, in front of everyone, if at all. Surely Mary (what a pretty name...) would hear these words and be upset by them.

It wasn't fair, either. They all had lots of growing to do. To say Mary would only "suffice", as though her life was not valuable enough on its own merit alone, it made them quietly frustrated, maybe even... Angry? They hadn't felt anger before and it was like a sour, rotten chunk of meat in their gut upsetting their stomach.
Their mandibles ground together, and they passed a glance toward their mother life-giver Overseer, quills prickling.

The uproar of Scout made Zoisite flinch. Their siblings were learning a lot of very bad and not very good words right now. They, too, were learning those words-- but it didn't like them. They glanced up at the screaming ungulate.

Lord Dhracia spoke up, her voice growing louder, booming, suffocating, and the grub shrunk down until their quills brushed the stone beneath. Yellow eyes watched for only a split second before the slaughter began, before pressing shut. Like rats, dying rats, mother killing the rats, the sounds enough to make them want to shrink into a pinpoint deep underneath their carapace. The grub's eyes remained shut, and did not open, pressed firmly to the floor and waiting for everything to go away.

Very gently, Luci and Hellfire put their paws over Koi's ears. They looked horrified, and pale as the antelope cursed and swore up and down, saying words it didn't know but with such hatred that it had to be awful.

Then the damn thing got gutted.

Hellfire went to say something before promptly fainting, making Luci frantically hold his head up, paws moving to force his eyes open just in case. Koi just blinked.

Wow. Um. That happened.

Jesus H. Christ!!

Chaos-Two kind of wondered what those words meant. Maybe they'd ask Alpha later... hm.

They heard the wet sound that meant meat was tearing, but since they couldn't see, just guessed that someone was eating. Now they were hungry.

Pawing at Alpha gently, they let out a gentle bleat, sadly setting their head down, eyes directed towards the scene. They wanted food... Stretching out their front legs, they tried to understand Dhracia and the others, but all the input at once just made them scrunch their nose, so they didn't bother. Though they were wondering when Nidhogg was going to start screaming now.