- THE LEVIATHAN -

Her words came back--booming, roaring, shaking the very earth beneath her. And were he any smaller, Vargas might have found the font of rotten breath and screeching voice blowing down at him to be intimidating. As it was he was calculating, staring at her every twitching movement, listening to the pitch of each and every syllable...

...and judging. Not right or wrong. Not good or bad. But the reality of it. She is afraid of losing it. An addict, through and through, trembling with her need, clutching her crutch with desperation in her. It is all she thinks she has. Accurate? Unknown. Assessment drew him toward conclusion, however, and rather than throw what he thought back at her, he constructed a careful frame for his narrative. It was, however, truth. "I DO NOT INTEND TO TAKE IT FROM YOU! IT IS YOUR POWER, GRANTED TO YOU BY THE CREATOR. BUT I WILL TEACH YOU TO USE IT, DRACONUA--RIGHT NOW, YOU THROW IT ONLY BLINDLY. YOU DO NOT DO IT JUSTICE!" His own roar was loud--their voices shook Pegasus--and he watched her spin to glare him down as he circled her. She challenged him to ruin her, and she left him an opening, even: threw magic into the air, spun chaos into storm, and stood in it.

She wants to fight, he realized, but even knowing this, Vargas still did not strike. That was the difference between them, he felt--his power was, and came from, control; hers was truly without any whatsoever. It was his authority, his duty, that had elevated him to where he was. And yet... Draconua had not yet struck him. Only her telegraphed attacks, only torn into the earth. Only her challenges.

Vargas offered no mindless attack--he did not strike at her words--but he would offer ultimatum, then.

"THIS IS AN OFFER I GIVE YOU ONLY ONCE, DRACONUA. IF I MUST RUIN YOU, IT IS NOT TRAINING THAT YOU WILL RECEIVE. IT WILL BE DESTRUCTION."

Six toxic eyes narrowed at her. "THINK CLOSELY UPON YOUR NEXT WORDS, SLEEPLESS CHAOS, FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE. AND CONSIDER THIS: WHY DID YOU ONLY HATCH AFTER I WAS THERE, AND READY TO GUIDE YOU? THE CREATOR MADE YOU TO SERVE A PURPOSE. IT IS NOT ONE YOU CAN SERVE ALONE."

Claws paused, scratched a brace into the dirt, though he kept his distance from her churning winds, her slavering Oil-slicked jaws. "IF I MUST TEACH YOU WHY, IT WILL BE YOUR FINAL LESSON."

@Draconua

Would it be a waste of time and oh-so precious energy to fight? Yes. Apex predators avoided one another more often than they came into close enough proximity to fight; even then, they stood and postured as Draconua and Vargas had been.

Combat, much like Chaos itself, was unsustainable. It was never meant to be a drawn-out affair, a thing made to last. The Sleepless Chaos was not made to last. She hadn't let herself be. Her end would be explosive, violent, dripping with Oil set aflame. The scent of ozone would burn in her nose and electricity would coil through every tendon in her body. Earth would shake underfoot and split to reveal what lay beneath the surface of everything.

Rot, all the way down.

She sneered. A throaty hiss billowed out from behind peeled-back lips and chipped teeth. Goring tusks swung through the air with her tossing head, as if she were shaking away the fact, the logic. Her tail lashed, knocking aside a nearby brush, and she half coiled around herself. Wings extended themselves as she arched her back. It was a rather Nidhogg-like action, the puffing up to intimidate. The difference, really, was only in size and the amount of faux bravado.

Gouging lines into the earth, Draconua bellowed again.

But, she did not lunge for another attack, or rear up for such a clearly telegraphed magical assault. There were a few twitching, stuttering motions forward, a half-pacing step here and there, but—"HAVE AT ME." Draconua jerked her head upwards, quite like a ceratopsian might have. "DO IT. I harbor no fear."

To accentuate---a shot of lightning arced off of her, striking the earth about five feet in front of her. The wind lashed against her face, still, wild and uncontrolled. "If you are meant to be my guide, then GUIDE ME—INTO DEATH, BATTLE, I DO NOT CARE. If I die, He will replace me, as He always has. I'll do what I must, so—DO IT. FIGHT ME. TIE THE GARROTE AROUND MY THROAT AND PULL IT AS FAR AS IT CAN GO. No matter what you, Master, or anyone else does—I'LL KNEEL TO LITTLE BUT HIS WILL."

She sucked in a gasping wheeze.

When she spoke again, it was... quieter, hoarse.

"Whatever it may be."

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

The seconds ticked past, tense and pumping with adrenaline. The Leviathan and the leviathan facing off, one tossing tusks and bellowing words, her magic lashing out to crash into the scarred-up earth before her. Her words were a challenge, on their surface. A denial of authority. A demand to be dominated, or for Vargas to die trying.

But.

But.

The Master's Overseer brain was ticking through her every movement, her individual words. Her challenge had come, but her magic still did not strike him. It did not backfire, either: it slashed into the lifeless dirt, despite the fury in her words. And two of those hateful words: those rang through his mind, emphasized, held onto. 'GUIDE ME.' In Vargas's mind--so attuned to assessing others--Draconua was, whether she knew it or not, asking for his help.

This is more control than she has shown in the past. Despite her frustration. She is fighting to force me to make the first move. She is disobeying, but it is not yet outright rebellion. And I have given her a choice, and she has said: 'guide me.'

"I will take your demand as your choice, then!" he boomed, head lifting. "You have said to guide you, and so I will. Wait here, Draconua, and I will bring you guidance. BY HIS WILL," he added, this last a loud bellow for not-particularly-clear reasons, as he stared up at her reared-back, bare-toothed form.

Acid eyes cut across the ruined terrain around her as he debated how to handle this. Azigh would not be pleased.

Gah--he could deal with that later, if at all. If Draconua survived this lesson.

@Draconua

At first, the monstrous valkhound stiffened, tensed; squared off further and braced herself against—at last!—a surely-impending attack. It did not come. She posthumously parsed Vargas's tone, all growling bass pitched into something... more approving? Positive? Mocking? Draconua twitched, head shifting as her gaze roved up and down like set of spotlights before a curtain rises.

The violet behemoth made to turn and stride off, and even with his implied promise of return, Draconua answered it with a wordless snarl. Maw pop!ping the air, she took a lunging step forward. Landing heavily with another growl, the Sleepless Chaos willed her magic to strike out at the earth, now.

Nothing came of it, and she let loose a bellowing hiss as instead the ground beneath her turned ill. Corruption stung its way up her forearms, but she refused to move.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Well, this was going well! Vargas felt quite positive about this whole thing, by now, almost to the point that he'd nearly forgotten his horrific disappointment with V-Chaos-Two. In fact, it was proving to have been useful, in the end--if only the damn thing hadn't given up, it could be seeing the fruits of its efforts firsthand. Draconua was not even attacking him; instead, waiting behind, if angrily.

(Little did he know that wasn't by choice.)

The Leviathan first made his way swiftly into the trees, following by scent the nearest herd of Meadow Deer. They were not easy prey, even for him; when he did stalk them, it was with a wary eye and a swift hand. With luck, he'd find some at the forest edge and manage to carry a calf off from the herd faster than they could follow; even he would not risk standing in the way of their stampedes.

Patient stalking eventually paid off, and Vargas--creeping among the trees--leapt out, wrapped spined arms around the smallest of them, and hauled back in as fast as he could. The thundering of hooves behind him, he half-dragged the bawling calf out of sight--and eventually out of hearing--of the rest. The sound of their stampede spurred him to greater speed than usual, tripping over logs and dodging beneath branches. But he made it safely away. Even so, he was littered in bleeding scratches, cursing and bruised, by the time he got even this smaller prey-beast back to where he'd left Draconua.

He came to a halt before her, still struggling to control the bucking, panting creature. "Are you ready to learn something?!" he demanded, though in an oddly cheerful way. Meanwhile, he wrested the beast to a standstill, both of them nearly out of breath.

@Draconua

Still, he went.

Draconua, oft tempted into a pursuit, kept to her spot in a simmering fury—perhaps more out of acerbic spite than actual compliance. Watching Vargas slink into the treeline burnt like acid in her throat. Her entire body shook with a barely contained rage, and it willed her legs to move, to carry her anywhere. Hooked talons grappled for fistfuls of dirt and sod, jagged teeth fitting around the trunks of bushes before ripping them from their places. Oil spattered all over the wildflowers, tainting their pristine newness black.

The Leviathan returned, after a time, to an even more torn-up landscape, and she whirled from where she was tearing up grass to glare at him.

By whatever arbitrary measure, it'd taken him too long.

"Are you ready to learn something?!" he called cheerfully, and the Sleepless Chaos howled her response: a "I'M NOT WASTING MY TIME WITH THAT" coupled with yet another shot of black lightning. It arched for Vargas for a split second, but forked downward and spun to leap back into her body. The muscle seizure bit down hard, and it was fortunate that she was already squared up and braced. A forelimb jerked upwards to meet her chest, and she barely managed to catch herself.

RAGE.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas stared up at Draconua, and if only a grin could have twisted his face-

She had stayed put, which was a huge bonus in his mind. As enraged as she was, she had leashed and collared herself, for now; and, somehow, even her magic was betraying her. This brought a spark of inspiration to him, and he spoke as he wrestled the bleating Meadow Deer calf down. "Have you considered that the Creator makes his will known through your magic, Sleepless Chaos-? That when it fails, or strikes you, it is He holding the whip?" Idly-said, mere food for thought-... Nothing serious, surely.

Even if it were true, would she care? She spoke of Him with religious fervor, but perhaps it was the sort of fervor one used for excuses. Perhaps she spoke of Him so because it was her concept of him that enabled her entropic fury.

Regardless.

"Their anatomy is generally similar--these Gembounds, and the Lessers, and even Valkhounds. Have you studied it? Here," he offered, drawing a line--without cutting skin--across the side of the deer's throat, beneath the jawline. "And here," and now he fought to keep it still as he gestured to points inside the armpit, the inner thigh. "This is where their lifeblood runs strongest, nearest to the surface. When your magic fails you, these spots, severed, will cause them to bleed out quickly. No matter how large they are."

Had her dreams taught her anatomy? Had her rampages included dissections?

"The base of the spine," and here Vargas grunted as the calf bucked and kicked at him, "where it meets the skull--here. Twist, or pop it upward, and the neck will be broken. It is a near-instant death. It is important to aim your destruction. Less effort, on your part. A more efficient result. Whether by magic or claw," and he glanced up at her, almost slyly. "Too many words, I'd imagine? Show me you understand this lesson."

Vargas kicked the calf down, stepped back, and waited: the creature's fate was in her hands, now. And it wouldn't stay down for long.

@Draconua

Surely, He would not punish her for evoking His magic... ? Utilize the gift she'd been given and had kept close? The very nature of Chaos was greedy destruction, gobbling up every ounce one could. Azigh was—had to be wrong in that He was discriminate in what He took. Why would this Cave not still be totally His? Food for thought.

Draconua pushed away the plate with a further curl of the lip, like it'd been covered in brussels sprouts and carrots.

The Leviathan went on with his lesson, and she took it as yet more mockery; that confidence that she wouldn't outright bombard him with magic, the shift in dynamic that allowed him to proceed as if all was normal, as if she were just another one of his beasts to train. Egotistical maniac she was, Draconua didn't believe she needed this.

She'd exhausted herself flashing her magic about and enduring the ever-present adversity of it kicking her back in the ribs. Fury burnt hot in her gullet, in her mind, but it'd petered away from a blindly righteous one to a more quiet simmering. The Sleepless Chaos had lost steam, as they say. It did not make her any less enraged by the state of things. There still remained Chaotic impulse in her reserves, and it begged for release. Vargas refused to grant her that.

... but, if she could get close... wait for that perfect moment...

Lurching forward, Draconua dove for the downed calf with a half-baked snarl before Vargas could even finish taking a step back. Lips peeled back to reveal the full breadth of her horrifying teeth, and they made to clamp down on its shaggy neck. The deer bucked, scrambling to get its feet beneath itself, and her teeth came away only with clots of hair.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

...Close. Her lunge had been good, but--in Vargas's ever-so-professional estimation--rushed. "Good," he boomed, lunging for the cave deer, to snag its feet out from under it before it could get away. His own limb snapped out as he spoke, kicking its hind leg, hard; it toppled with another frantic bleat, eyes rolling white, tongue lolling from its mouth in pure terror. "But I am trying to teach you precision. Control. When you lash out so blindly you will come away with nothing--no success! And only frustration! Take your time, Draconua. Aim your strikes--so that even a small strike will kill."

Enough talking, he told himself, and stepped away again as the calf flailed on the ground for the moment. Either she would learn, or she would not.

He hoped that her next strike would be true; for at least if his advice turned out to be worthwhile, to her, she might listen to him next time.

A critical eye (six of them, in fact) examined the Meadow calf. He reflected that he'd rather her end it quickly; the creature was in obvious torment, at this point. He felt as though he were teaching a new hatch, all over again.

@Draconua

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

Draconua spat out the clumps of hair, already soaked-through with Oil, and grimaced. A forearm stretched out against her will, muscles still twitching and spasming with electricity. She forced it back beneath her with a snarl. Words went in one ear, and fluttered easily out the other. The points of her wings stabbed through the air, and she lurched forward again with no hesitation. Blood in the water, as they say.

It was a torturous end, she thought horribly, for the calf. Delivered a glancing blow, kicked down a second time, and forced to endure the following: a massive, meaty paw falling upon its face, snubbing its nose into the dirt; another clawing deep into curly, shaggy hairs and dragging through flesh; the initial bite as Draconua fit her front teeth over the beast's neck; the horrible sawing of tendons and joints as she contorted and thrashed her own neck to sink jagged, hooked fangs into the gullet; blood sputtering from severed arteries and veins.

The Sleepless Chaos shoved the Lesser as it kicked feebly and futilely against her. It bleated its last long before she was halfway to severing its head from its body. A rabid sort of frenzy overtook her, and she abruptly jerked back with a clot of bloody meat clinging to her entire jaw. Choking it down whole, the monster dove back down.

@Vargas