Pride looked to Reign, gasping out a terribly worried "Reign! Are you harmed?!" Then he was stumbling, scrambling for the hole--and back again as he saw that something was wrong about it. Not just the massive beast scrabbling and growling at the pit, no: his eyes glanced this way and that, taking in (with dawning horror) the corruption spreading through the rock. "What is that?" he cried. "Is this Mother's work?!"

He backed away again, floundering in the deep snow, blinking against the wind, ears pinning back against the cold of it.

He wished to rush to the pit's edge, to look for Giggle, for Sora--for anyone else who had fallen without his knowledge--but he couldn't get close. Nor was there any way he'd hear Sora, almost forty feet beneath the ground, past Draconua's gibbering and the roar of the wind around them--hell, he could hardly hear anyone right next to him, right now. Tahi-shei's words barely brushed past his mind, and he had to struggle to focus himself.

The white stag looked around.

The world seemed to slow as he fought to take it in--to really get an image of it to project to the other deer. Even as he did, rage gripped him briefly--Tahi-shei was blind? Fully, truly, completely blind--and had not asked anyone to show him the way? Had he even scouted Ursa out, or were they simply wandering in now, for the first time? He hadn't bothered to ask if Tahi-shei knew where he was taking them because it had seemed an obvious answer. Surely he knew. But no--they were prey. Bait. Unprepared, unable to make this attempt.

When his link established it was a brief one--faltering, flitting with faint touches of that anger, of that surprise, of his fear and grief at what was happening. That was not to say that Pride was out of control--he was thinking, fast, his logic overriding all else. But he was certainly not happy.

The churned black earth, Draconua pawing at it. Others pulling one another free, the snow rising in a vortex--no, two of them--raised by magic. Wyvern, seriously injured, blood streaming down from her waist as she hauled herself clear of immediate danger. It was a brief, chaotic glimpse--and two of them were missing from it.

The image faded.

"WE NEED TO FIND THOSE WHO FELL-!" Pride called. "WE HAVE TO GET THEM OUT!" He had a horrible feeling, however, that given the worm's descent alongside them, there'd be nothing left for the group to retrieve.

When gravity did its worst, the Sleepless Chaos fell into a heavy heap; she plunged past the powder layer of snow, a leg or two briefly embedded into the permafrost beneath. Her concerns—as usual—did not lie with herself but her seemingly missed target. The worm (her quarry!) thrashed in recoil, jaws snapping on fruitless and thin air. Draconua nearly dislocated a shoulder in her attempts to claw her way toward it, before it vanished back into the foxholes.

There was a great deal of noise around her, voices lost to the high winds and her own Chaotic frenzy. Tahi-Shei's desperate command swirled away in a breeze and shrieking roar—a hyena's cackle of frustration as she lurched forward—and Giggle's hurled insults faded like motes of a roaring fire's embers.

Even if the group had not been in the center of it all, even if there'd not been a sulfurous sky and raging storm, Draconua was too fixated on this singular target to listen, to obey.

Her claws outstretched, she pounced on what was half crater, half bored tunnel. Corruption—entirely her own—shot up her forearms like lightning, sparking at nerve ends and only furthering her state of mind. There was no way that she could have fit into the hole, wide as it was, but she jammed her head downward anyways. A roar of frustration reverberated down its length when crimson horns caught against the edges, when she was up to her shoulders and unable to proceed.

She rocked backward, shrieking again, and set to scrabbling at the edges of the void. It proved to be a useless endeavor time and again, and she spun around it in agitation.

At the tail end of Pride's broadcast to Tahi-Shei, the valkhound stopped, reared up. Voidfire bloomed in the swell of her chest, an entropic black amid vehement indigos and a charred black hide. When her hands stomped back down, a sanguine face-plate vanished into the top of the hole, and she bellowed, loud and deep from the bottoms of her lungs.

The resultant column of fire would only travel about six feet down the tunnel's length, and she was back to digging like—to borrow from another's narrative—a dog after lost prey.

Clutched and dragged to safety, Madhukar felt frozen in time. No words came, only a heart pounding and wild eyes staring straight at Twisted. It was not a gaze like daggers, like fire; it was the gaze of a frightened animal trying to register difference between the words "enemy" and "savior".

All while wounded by the whispers. They were only whispers, rising whispers, impending whispers... for now. But the way they called to her, the way they said her name, like it was love... It was her very heart and soul screeching from her chest to be set free into the open air. The milieu of this time would impede the process, good or bad as that was for them all. For now, Madhukar had to indulge it in more inconspicuous ways...

Tahi-shei called for her. To him, as to whispers, she would listen. Turning wordlessly, stiffly away from Twisted, to the blind deer Madhukar would shout: "MADHUKAR SAFE!" Either she would fall later, or not at all. Turning then -- for a blink of a moment -- back to Twisted, Madhukar would nod, almost smile. Then she would shudder, shake her head, live again.

Next was the draconic beast sticking its stupid head in the tunnel Tahi-shei wanted to go down. Madhukar couldn't allow that. This one was certainly familiar, a heaving mass of trouble. It was they who turned upturned ground and cackled with ugly lightning. Madhukar didn't imagine they would listen to mere words.

So Madhukar would march up to the idiot, as close as she could get -- yes, even marching back over the corrupted ground -- and would try to let loose several chains of lightning. Instead, the magic backfired again. Madhukar felt the shock and terror course through her body. She began to shake, a painful migraine pounding at her head. This did not make her chrysalize, surprisingly -- if anything, it was the delivering bolt of life to Frankenstein's heart. "DRACONUA?!" Madhukar shrieked, only making it worse and worse-- "MOVE!"

It might have been a somewhat pitiful display, but Madhukar had gone through worse. This would only add to whatever was within her now, the chorus of whispers adding to the volume in her head. She was hurting, so she would make everything else hurt worse.

@Twisted
@Tahi-shei
@Draconua

Mercifully, Wyvern was finally released, but she just kept falling as dark whispers swirled in her mind. Her wings flapped weakly, but the hole was not nearly wide enough to open them fully, and they had been seriously damaged anyway. There was more yelling, and the voices were so insistent that she listen... but it was difficult to pay attention to anything in this chaotic milieu. (Or maybe that was just the blood loss talking.)

All the voices seemed to dim, fading into the background. The edges of her vision blackened, and Wyvern thought maybe it was better just to keep her eyes closed. There was less pain if she stayed still. Air rushed past her, faster and faster--until at last there was a tremendous thud, and there was not even time to recognize the blaze of sensation as pain before the rose quartz encased her.

--exit Wyvern through chrysalis, at the bottom of the DracWorm hole

Zhusha flinched away from the ice worm's strike, everyone else's voices briefly muffled by the thunderclap beats of his heart in his ears and the gnashing jaws of the monster. But it missed, and he was unharmed, and the bird-dragon was free--"NO!"

His cry was drowned by the howling wind. She was falling, her feathers stained red, her wings unable to unfurl in the comparatively narrow hole. How far is it--? Could she even survive, injured and unable to fly, with the earth around her black and jagged? Draconua roared, fire erupting from her jaws--THIS IS YOUR FAULT, he thought with blind fury, wheeling around in the air to face her.

He could not see how far down the voidfire reached. He had no idea that Sora was unharmed, or that Wyvern and Giggle were safe in their chrysalises. He only knew that it was fire, black and roiling with toxic smoke, and that there were PEOPLE! down there. Sora's words themselves were snatched away by the wind and chaos--he only knew that there was the peccary's voice, screaming.

"GUTLESS WORMS--!" he shrieked at the group below, half-hysterical with tears welling up in his eyes. "DO YOU JUST LET HER KILL YOUR FRIENDS?" How had they not realized that such a beast could never be trusted nor controlled; how had no one thought of how bad of an idea this was? All they could do was watch helplessly and beg futilely for Draconua to stop while their allies screamed and burned.

Zhusha despaired. They were still making noise, thankfully--they weren't dead--but who knew what Draconua might do next? Who here could do a single thing to stop her, if she wanted? he wondered bitterly. There was absolutely nothing he could do to defend the ones below. He could not lift them, nor go inside to stand beside them, nor stop the chaos beast's frenzy.

But perhaps--he could redirect it.

A distraction, like the one that had diverted the ice worm's attention away from the poor wyvern? Zhusha did not know if it would work, but he was too desperate and too enraged to care anymore. He dove once more, a mere speck of brown next to the valkhound's towering size, driving his beak forward as he had with the ice worm. The back of her head, an eye, one of the... ear crest things... Zhusha did not care what he struck, as long as he struck something.

@Draconua for stab attempt

Nemo

All he has time for mid-gale is a screech that sounds two parts heartbroken one part terrified as he watches one of the few people he could actively start to even think as family slip down, down- "GIGGLE!" and he cuts his magic as others are moved away, as the beast that could have killed her, may have killed her, is he thinking of the worm, or the creature that's supposed to be on their side, he has no idea nor does he care as his mind whirls like the gale's he'd conjured, that fade as he drops further down, closer to the group, within earshot to listen for what's going on.

A kind of gutless cold has taken hold of him, a blend of terror and rage that he's never felt before in his not-quite-long life, as all he can do is have his magic spirit most of the group away from the worm, away from Dracouna, away from the literal chaos and the magical chaos raging below his wings, and now below the ground. The not-quite-a-bird who'd been grabbed, who'd stopped to take a look at Giggle when he hadn't, who had taken what wounds that should have been his if he'd been doing things right, was swallowed up by her chrysalis, the bright pink crystal standing out among the black and white and unnerving red of blood in the snow.

The insult from the other bird in the air, the one on the wing on his last wisps of magic from back at the beginning, doesn't really resonate with him other than an acknowledgment of the truth, an approximation of his current feeling and his lack of action, and the rage that seems to be consuming him from the inside out, and consuming his common sense for the first time. "Y-you MONSTER! YOU SLAVERING, STUPID BEAST! ARE YOU HELPING THE FUNGUS ON PURPOSE, OR ARE YOU SO NARROW SIGHTED AND MINDED THAT YOU THINK THAT WIPING US OUT AS FODDER WILL HELP YOU?" He's shrieking, and had half a mind to dive down and strike at the beast himself, to pull it from the hole it's scraping at like some sort of rabid fox, but...

No. Maybe?

The other bird diving causes him to follow, and swoop once around the head of Dracouna, but he pulls away and looks about, taking stock of who is around, who else may be in the hole, and who else may be... approaching.

He needs to calm down, but his feathers are more than ruffled, and is perched on a knife's edge.

Esther was so glad to have dodged the hole and the giant oaf's attack all in one. There was no way the hit reached all the way down to the coiling worm and the others beneath. Their screams made sure of it. Except now, well, they were missing members. Peering from above Esther knew they wouldn't be able to climb down there, let alone fly. Their claws would not help with the wall being flat, and their wings were too wide to get a good drift down. They could go down there, sure, but not get back up. Their magic hadn't helped so far, and Esther wasn't sure they wanted to use any kind of magic near that beast anyway.

Insults went, and so did spells. Esther wondered if Draconua would swing her tail and toss each of them out of her way. Admittedly, it would be kind of funny. Still, they didn't want to be anywhere near that chaotic mess of gembound trying to fight with her. Didn't any of them understand she was a lot stronger then they were? Esther learned that the almost-hard-way. Instead of dealing with that mess, they landed on the ground, claws slotting into the snow underpaw.

With all of their yelling, along with the storm raging into their ears, Esther really did regret going to this thing.

The world was spinning around him and suddenly-- it stopped. An invisible hand grabbed at Reign and pulled him back from the brink of black, cold earth. Something flashed through his mind during the grab, something dark and scattered and corrupted, before settling into the back of his brain. And he was out again.

The cheetah took a moment to breathe, gasping, trying to regain all the energy he lost while splayed out in the snow. His cloak still hung around his shoulders, if barely. Amber eyes turned to the pale deer. "No. I'm fine. Thank you, Pride."

The spotted knight hauled himself to his feet and looked at the aftermath. The militia fell apart so quickly. Everyone was shouting, the great beast (he knew she was a bad idea) was regurgitating black flames down the now-empty hole, injured gembounds were everywhere-- 'This is bad.'

The first thing he saw was a crane, spiraling through the air and aimed for Draconua. His heart skipped a beat. As much as he disliked the beast for causing this mess, turning on eachother would only make things so much worse. Reign suddenly made a charging movement forward before skidding back, forcing the kinetic energy to form an invisible barrier between him and the valkhound. "STOP FIGHTING! All of you! Our enemy is MOTHER, not each other!" his deep voice was booming. "You're drawing more attention to our location! Let's all calm down, and think this through STRATEGICALLY. Pride is right-- some of us need to go down and find those missing. Are we going to do that, or are we going to continue spitting flames?"

Reign (attempted to) block @Zhusha's attack and gained 1 point of corruption.

For a moment, everything was still. A lanky, snow-frosted siamese gripping the hand of an anthropomorphic torbie, dangling over the edge of a chasm. Two twin pairs of green eyes reflecting animalistic fear against each other. Mirrors. Twisted didn't dare breathe.

Then the Ice Worm retreated back underground with a hooowl of wind and a snap of ice, and Twisted realized they had to get out of here right now. She pulled both of them away with a grunt of effort and pains from muscles not meant for pulling, a gust of snowy wind assisting her, and then she collapsed onto the black-stained snow, panting. They were safe.

Oh, and there were whispers in her mind now. She didn't particularly care right now. Her first-row seat at the edge of the crater gave her a spectacular view of draconua's massive, corruption-laced claws gripping the edges. She still didn't care. When enough seconds passed that she could actually stand up without losing all her energy she finally cared enough to shout "TWISTED HERE!" just like the other feline did. She didn't dare look at her again. Let's unpack the emotional turmoil later, when she's not in the middle of a wartime crisis.

She flomped back onto the snow, too tired to listen to anyone's dictation.

The black serpent was on his feet again, scurrying this way and that, his already frenetic energy driven higher by the pulse of chaos all around him. He darted over the corrupted ground, jaws open, hissing; his eyes stared wide this way and that at all the noise and movement.

Those shouting at Draconua drew his ire, his impermanent loyalty flaring briefly high. He hissed and snapped--at a distance--from Nemo as he shouted, and then when Zhusha folded wings and dove, Nidhogg bolted to try and meet the attack. With open jaws, of course--he wanted to leap, to scramble up, maybe claw up Draconua's hide himself, snag the crane in his teeth, crush it eat it kill it-

He soared almost gracefully in his leaping arc through the air, and for a moment it seemed like he might even snag Zhusha like some vaulting cat. But he impacted the invisible shield raised by the cheetah--and to Nidhogg, it was like he'd hit a nonexistent wall.

With an ungraceful squawk his body flipped around, tumbled back into the snow in a hissing bundle; he was on his feet an instant later, looking around and bristling.

"WHO HIT ME? I'LL EAT YOU. FUCK OFF!" he yowled, at nobody in particular. Or, rather: at everyone.