set just after retreat into me, like a catabolic seed
Saliva frothed at the corners of its mouth when it broke into Pegasus. Its sides swelled in starts and stops, heaving with exertion that honestly should not be. When it made to slow down, every single one of its legs nearly crumpled beneath its body; only through a fragmented will did it stay standing. Putrescent eyes flickered behind it, watching the relatively dark tunnel mouth—(ironically) as if some looming figure would manifest there and drag it back. Whether or not it was a mercy nothing came, one couldn't say.

Alpha'd swear that the wind from running had made tears spill out over its snout, but that was the definition of a lie. Saltwater burned hot down its face, along with rivulets of thin, neon blood where it tore off its impromptu face shield. It sniffled between gasping breaths, but—in the open—it refused to let its shoulders quiver too harshly, or let itself slip too deep.

It'd run away, and surely it was only a matter of time before something came to drag it back.

Find a place to hide, it urged itself through the onslaught of sheer panic, eat? Eat. Its innards were chewing a hole through themselves. Claws curled harshly into the soil, and it half-shambled into the cover of the woods. Even though it could've—if it were smart and in any state resembling alright—taken one of the meadow deer down, the orthoclase didn't so much as glance at the herd. A single doe lifted her head from grazing, watching intently as it passed by.

The remnants of magic not committed to keeping it actually alive bloomed in a tepid pulse. Faint, sanguine outlines of tree rabbits, nibbling away on leaves and bark, came into view. The vast majority were high out of reach, but a few had eked out to lower branches—perhaps bullied out of the new growth and reduced to picking at cycles-old bark. It was these that the monstrous hybrid crouched low and sprung for...

... in a noisy, clumsy mess.

In no universe would the actual leap have been enough for it to reach any one of the rabbits; its claws stabbed uselessly into the trunk, one meaty fist reaching up for a branch that was still too low. Leaves fell in a ridiculous spray. The squealing of fleeing rabbits echoed in its eardrums as further insult to injury commenced: it overbalancing, tearing its claws out of the wood, and landing hard enough on an arm to leave a solid crack down its length.

Rather than try again, Alpha huffed quietly. Its quills didn't even flare with the agitation of a failed hunt.

It half-limped through the forest, scanning the undergrowth for any alcove large enough to nestle into to hide and sleep. After mere minutes of searching, though, every blink was slower and slower. The world spun and swayed around it. Didn't I already go this way... ? it asked itself blearily. The ever-present vignette of its vision intensified, and swallowed its eyesight whole.

The tree nearest to it caught its collapsing (more like stumbling sideways and half-lying down) body, as did a few stray bushes. It was still no delicate or graceful fainting you'd see on a drama—an arm was caught painfully underneath it, and its head was at an odd angle. Its whole body was essentially ramrod straight. At this angle, not all curled up or deliberately puffing out, one might be able to see the slight dip of its stomach, or the unevenness of scutes over a ribcage.

Still, yet, it looked more peacefully asleep than it had in weeks, quills simply being and ragged breaths steadying out into shallow huffs.

It was completely unheeding of who'd been watching it for... however long.

exit to sleep
@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas had followed at a distance: shrouded in shadows, at first, and dropping this shroud only when Orthoclase had hurtled into Pegasus proper. His observations had been done with eyes, with magic, though at times he'd barely managed to track the progress of his spawn.

He nearly lost the Orthoclase in the woods, which was, perhaps, for the best; for were he too close its magic might have spotted him in turn. And when he did finally find it, it was attempting to hunt; and he saw that it fell short, and failed. A rabbit. It failed even at that? and somehow this thought, above all else, was deeply worrying to Vargas. Did it lack the strength, or the willpower? Both?

Troubled, he lingered back. Why do I concern myself with this? some old and distant part of him asked.

Memories answered, as the Leviathan lurked in the scrub brush. Memories of those few victims who had turned on him in their final moments. Memories of the traps laid by the doomed and the courageous. Memories of glittering Titanite on a driftwood bone, protests howled until the last moment. There were... if not regrets, if not mistakes, there were necessities that Vargas had desired to... Not put right, that is not--correct. But... change. Outcomes that, while they could not have ended any other way, were not the ones he would have chosen.

It was a strange and tenuous connection--these memories of the fiery victims of the old days, and of Orthoclase-Alpha. And why was he thinking of that now-? Was it regret? Was it the connection--these victims that had, more often than not, rebelled out of kinship, even love, for others? Who had rebelled to protect, or rather died failing to protect, those they saw as family, friends? Vargas had never had such links. He had never cared for them.

Perhaps it was that he saw so many mirrors in his memories of this very scene: of Orthoclase-Alpha of a thousand others fleeing through the caves, struggling exhausted into hiding, collapsing into sleep with no realization that Overseer Vargas was close behind them.

But what is this one running from..?

For over an hour, he simply watched his spawn, and he considered. He was a patient thing, a hunter that would wait hours, days, for his prey to emerge and this was little different. But he was more than waiting, now. He was thinking.

He was... deciding.

As he had done in Draco, he was deciding what to do with his spawn.

His spawn, which had grown weak. His spawn, which had lost its will. His spawn, which he had made as Overseer, cowering and unable even to properly speak.

There was, for one in Vargas's era, only one answer to such things.

____________

He crept closer, scent guiding him more than sight. There was no need to use his magic; he was more than capable of hunting without it. When he was certain of the precise location of his target, he circled. He was intent; there was nothing but predatory sharpness in him. No bloodlust, no, not for this. There would only be mercy in this kill. But he was, as he always hunted, focused, and that left room for nothing else.

Not for second thoughts, or doubts. Not for overthinking--and there was almost a relief in that.

His kill was not a clean one... He had aimed for a snap of its neck. Something it would never feel, something it would not have to face--as was Vargas's habit. He never drew this out.

Instead he ended it a struggle, and his teeth in its throat as it rasped its final breaths brought him nothing.

____________

The Orthoclase slept. Ragged. Stiff. But asleep.

Vargas was quiet, as he drew nearer--and he had rolled himself in pines, in peat, to somewhat mask his scent. He did not try to wake it. There was no need, and no desire to do so. Nor would he continue to pursue it, but...

He could at least ensure it had food, when it awoke, if only a small meal.

It might seem, perhaps, as though the stone-less Tree Rabbit had simply fallen and died, but for the fang-marks in its throat. Would the Orthoclase stop to examine it? Would it catch his scent? Vargas did not know, but he left the rabbit near its head and retreated to watch it, for a time.

He knew that when it woke, when it found this, it would look for him, or for anyone who might have left the food there; and it was time to leave it, now. It would find its own way, or it would not, and it had never answered to him in any way that helped it, or healed it.

It would have to find its own way.

He did not know what he could do for it, bar to leave it that small parting assurance of its survival; he knew that his presence seemed to cause it more distress, instead of the assurance that a leader's presence should create.

Vargas left it there, and returned to Draco with sweeping strides.

There had been only one answer to those such as Alpha, in Vargas's era. But this era would belong to him. That did not mean, still, that he could write the Orthoclase's future: it would find its way--or it would not. He pushed aside the hollow feeling in his chest, and left Orthoclase-Alpha to its fate.

He had work to do.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

If you think it'd wake up at any point prod me; otherwise exit Vargas

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

vomit

self-depreciation

It'd be hours—perhaps, even a day—before the monstrous thing woke up again. Vargas's presence was met with nothing by way of acknowledgement; just its persistent, ragged breathing, flanks rising and falling with unfamiliar steadiness. A carcass pattering onto the ground went unnoticed…

… until it'd started to rot and all the Caves' decomposers had started to do their wicked work.

The scent of carrion filled its nose, thick and heady. It was cloying and heavy on its tongue. Putrescent eyes opened just a crack, the curtains impossibly weighty. Half-dilated pupils flicked about, searching here and there. Other senses just as essential as sight seemed to turn on, if slowly: the damp cool of the ground pressed against its one side; birds sang and rabbits chattered amid the branches; a river murmured distantly; leaves rustled in a high-up canopy; a faintly floral scent wafted from far-off.

The bones of its neck practically creaked as it hefted itself up. It balanced precariously on just its frontmost elbows, quivering with even that effort. Swinging its head like it were hanging limply on a ball-joint, it stared at the bright-colored carcass. Maggots throbbed beneath its once fuzzy and clean hide, eating away at whatever festering wound they'd been born into. A stray fly or so got its meal. Alpha sniffed at it, but was plainly too tired to spend much longer analyzing the thing. Marks of hooked teeth marred the thing's neck—it assumed it was the cause of those, and had convinced itself that it caught the rabbit before collapsing falling asleep.

A few pathetic nibbles into the Lesser, and it was lucid enough to ask itself: why am I here?

It paused, a torn-off hindquarter clenched in its teeth, and gazed off into the distance. (The sting of bile was already rising in its throat; innards curled inward, roiling.) Tunnel G had blurred by in its periphery, the Gates of Life—or whatever the pseudopoetic name was—yawning past as hardly an obstacle. Eyes barely glanced behind itself, senses not at all straining for what it was sure was following. There'd been no booming voice on its heels, no sweeping strides certain to catch up, but—

His voice was ringing inside of Alpha's head. "This is not a test," he'd said while it stood there in that idiotic stupor, "... a vacation?"

Lungs spasmed with a ragged gasp and a wheeze. Tear ducts pricked hot, vision blurring.

Sending it away, chasing it away, it's worthless.

Shaky claws fidgeted with its quills. Pupils went searching into the undergrowth for any observers, and finding none brought a mere modicum of reassurance. Worthless staggered back through its conscience. With that came an uptick in every part of the tried-and-true fight-or-flight response.

The orthoclase dropped its head to snap up the rest of the carcass (maggots be damned!) It choked the thing down with reckless abandon. Meathook hands and feet scrabbled to fit underneath itself; light as it was, its limbs quivered with the exertion of just pushing itself up. It stumbled a foot or so forward, face contorting into a half-snarl. The lights above had bloomed into intense refuse. Every square inch of its skull throbbed, but it took to a shambling pace: one foot in front of the other, repeat six times, rinse and repeat. Each step was measured by its gaze, yet it glanced upward into the darkness between branches and leaves—where there was stillness instead of a breeze, where there might be the glint of razor-sharp hooks and a death sentence.

Because, you see, here was a sniveling, weakened monster; and, here, it was convinced that it had been sent away to squeeze one last ounce of worth from it, the thrill of a hunt. It, gagging and dry-heaving over a pile of rejected meat, had failed to provide even that for its Master, its creator, its fa—

Another ragged gasp escaped it. What happened? Where had things gone so wrong? Why was it so broken? He'd said it hadn't done anything wrong, but—it had to have. Why else would it be running under the pretense of a vacation? Made to let its guard down? (Orthoclase-Alpha paused, leaning heavily against the base of a tree.) It'd fallen asleep—and still, it lived. Was he waiting? A guillotine primed, a gate between Here and Oblivion—

(It hooked its claws into the bark, sagging against the trunk, trying to ignore the knuckles pushing effortlessly against its hide. A hoarse "no" was all it could manage before a terrible sob thundered out its chest. Words failed it, throat feeling as if it'd swollen totally shut. It pressed its forehead forward, shell meeting bark. Keratin tore through to the heartwood, clawing and tearing where it was losing a grip. Tears flowed hot where it hid its face between forest and quills.

If the other side were on a map, it would be obfuscated beneath seven layers' worth of ink. It would be shrouded in the vantablack of Hydra, armed with lashing cold and teeth that struck fast, chattering bodies that had breathed their last ages ago. If its mother, life-giver Elyon were thriving in the Great Beyond, wouldn't she have the gall to come back and say how great it is?

There may as well be nothing after death for Alpha.)

—worthless as it was, it did not want to die.

After a while, the monstrous hybrid practically wilted—the temptation to sleep returned, so soon after its collapse.

Yet, both hands met the ground with heavy thump!s, and it stumbled back into balance. Dully glowing quills knocked limply against its shoulders as it kept up that forward momentum, halfway to shambling out of the wood and into the overexposed world of Pegasus. Putrid eyes barely scanned its surroundings before it took to a lopsided trot away. Any uneven ground had it nearly tripping and falling over its own damn feet, but it didn't stray from its course.

Where to? It did not know, except away. It'd survive if it got away. It'd survive if it gathered itself up, fixed what was wrong with it, and it went back to Vargas. He'd—(it faltered for a step, uncertain)—he'd take it back if it could prove itself worthwhile. He'd let it back in, and it could merrily go back to whatever work he assigned it to.

It could be back in that comfortable old rhythm where absolutely nothing was wrong.

exit
... for sure, this time