The cave wall. It whispered.

Dripping rock, past a tangle of the tunnel's trees: it whispered.


"DEAT? ?S A ?IE? TH? ?A?N I΄ ET?R?ALϱ."

An old chant, familiar to some in its cadence. Over and over, it whispered, each syllable threading through the passage.


"DEAT? ?S A LIE TH? ?A?N I΄ ET?R?ALϱ."

Incoherent, a susurrus of sound. Beckoning, ominous and mysterious.


"DϵATH IS A LIE THϕ PA?N IS ET?RNALϱ..."

She wasn't far when it happened. Pegasus was a nice place to live, at least for now. Wide open fields and cool forests, a bubbling stream that calmed the nerves and a strange sense of...peace that she didn't often get in some of the other caves she'd rested in. Perhaps this would be a better place to live then her old home in Polaris. She missed the pulsing magic of the Spire, but at the same time, she felt lighter and more at ease the farther away she got.

But then words thrummed at the back of her head, bringing forward an old migraine she hadn't suffered for so many cycles. At first she thought it was just old memories begging to be heard, but it didn't take long to realize that it wasn't a flashback or old nightmare coming to the surface. It was a real whisper, beckoning, calling, twisting through her like a spear and through the wounds spilled horror and fear.

It was back.

Whatever "it" was, Wilder had never understood. All she'd known was a whisper. A voice. Urges. Missing memories. So many mistakes. It had torn her life apart (or had she done that? It was so hard to tell), it had hurt her friends (no, she'd done that, but hadn't she been under some control?), and now it was trying to tear apart the fragile peace she'd made with her mind (not that she deserved it anyways).

She couldn't help it. Her feet took her closer until she was standing in the tunnel, staring at the wall it was emanating from. Those old words she didn't think she'd ever hear again, hoped she'd never hear again. And her head pounded, threatening something she could barely remember. Memories of magic sparking through her, electrifying her young mind, of claws tearing into flesh, her friend held tight to the ground by her own magic, nightmares, daydreams, fears...it was all coming back so fast - too fast - but she stayed calm. Her heart was beating out of control, but she steadied her breathing and tried to reach out.

Magic brushed against the wall, searching, reaching for some thread of magic - because how could it be anything else? - and out loud, she whispered, "Who are you? ...What are you? What does that mean?" Her eyes were wide and glassy, her body barely containing its tremble. "Please, you have to tell me. I have to know!"

Wilder's magic grants her a strange sensation: there is no active magic being cast, no, but it would feel as though something powerful was echoing through the walls, just as the whispered words were. There was no elemental magic to it, only a thrumming, sparking strangeness. Yet this power was moving, shifting in jerky, unpredictable movements a few feet this way and that.

It didn't feel esoteric or arcane. It felt... wrong, and her senses were the only thing that would alert her to guard herself in the moments before they began spilling from the walls.

Stones crumbled, vines ripping aside, and one by one, Echoing Grays began to tumble into Tunnel F. But they were not just rats: their eyes were maddened, glistening black; gleaming black gemstone that glinted with dull rainbow hues jutted in huge, jagged clusters from their heads, their bodies, their limbs. It wasn't Oilstone; inspection with a critical eye by anyone familiar would show it was a little duller, bearing none of the hysterical Chaos that came with the Creator's rock. No, this was something seething with Gembound energy, something that drove the maddened Grays in staggering, empty-faced, drooling ferocity for Wilder.

Those in the front came for her even as more pushed and fell through the cave walls, all of them stumbling, hissing, repeating the same jarring and distorted phrase:


"DϵATH ϕS A LIϵ. THϵ PAϕN IS ETϵRNAL."

______

Six Echoing Grays have pushed into Tunnel F and are approaching Wilder aggressively; more may be behind them in the walls. Wilder's magic gives her forewarning so that she may act before they reach her.

@Wilder

Wilder felt the fur on the back of her neck stand up at the sensation of this magic....no, wait, this didn't feel like magic. It was a powerful something that made her stomach feel queasy and every nerve in her body go alight with panic. It wasn't natural, it wasn't normal, but it felt uncomfortably familiar. The ghost of old memories flitted across her mind. A similar feeling of wrongness that sent her into a spiral of unconsciousness, of craving, of greed that had hurt so many people. She even felt it now, tantalizingly close, beckoning like an old friend. But she was strong now, in mind and will. She resisted.

But then she felt something else. Something that was far more natural and more immediately terrifying. Echoing grays were pouring out of the walls. She could sense something wrong about them, but she wasn't sure what was going on. All she knew was that they were approaching her and she needed to act.

Wilder whipped around and cursed under her breath when she saw the number of them approaching already. Even if they were the smallest, they were nearly as big as her and any fight with them, if they got too close, would end very poorly for her. There was nobody else here to help her. She'd have to fend them off herself.

She took a second to build up her magic, focusing it into the earth, and called up a pillar of smooth, hard gemstone, big enough for her to stand on and too tall for the rats to jump onto. She hopped on its flat top as it formed so she wasn't left behind on the ground and soon found herself standing a few feet above the rats, looking down at them from a (hopefully) safe distance. She'd cut off her own escape, but she had no intention of running just yet.

It wasn't until the moment of adrenaline had worn off and she was in a stable position that she realized that they were speaking. It was distorted and strangled, but she could hear it. Over and over and over again. Words that made her stomach churn and her head hurt and the magic in her very bones resonate strangely and uncomfortably with the words. She swallowed hard and trembled in her spot, but fire burned in her eyes. Today was the day she properly fought back against this.

Claws scrabbled at the rock, bodies thudding into the new wall one at a time. Gleaming eyes stared up at Wilder, nothing but madness in them. The Grays began to leap: falling just short, but each spring taking them fully four or more feet into the air. Forepaws snatched for the ledge's lip, but missed, again and again.

Six more rats tumbled from the wall, staggering, hissing, all of them repeating back the same phrase over and over--sometimes distorted beyond recognition, sometimes chillingly clear. The thud of their flanks and haunches on stone as they threw themselves forward played a horrid drumbeat to their words. The dozen Lessers leapt, and leapt, falling short and leaping again, their rainbow-hued black stones gleaming.

@Wilder

The number of rats continued to increase beneath her, but as they jumped up again and again to tear her down from her pedestal, each time they fell short, falling back down to the ground as she watched from atop her pillar of crystal. She was safe, for now, but she didn't have a plan. Their numbers would keep going up as time went on and she'd have to find a way out eventually, but there was still a mystery here that she intended to solve. Before her chance was gone again.

She turned towards the wall, putting off dealing with the rats for now, and tried to reach for the wall with her mind. She needed to open some kind of connection with...whatever it was. Whatever this force of magic was that was resonating out from the wall. She didn't know what else there was to do. But her heart was beating out of her chest and her head was spinning from the sheer terror of it all and it only took a second for her magic to fizzle out before she could even release it.

She felt a jolt, ears twisting back as the fear started catching up. The rats were still lashing up at her. She was stranded, alone, on a pillar of crystal. She looked down at the hoard of rats and survival rationality screamed in her ear, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

The empty-eyed Grays fell still, all at once: a strange communal silence fell over them. They stared up at Wilder, a forest of little gray bodies and jutting black stone, and a strange sense of desperation seemed to ripple through them.

"DϜиᛌT LEA᳒ϲϜ ME ALᚲNe..." A garbled pleading filled the air, echoed by each and every gray-furred rat.

They took a collective breath, sitting there staring up like a classroomful of gruesomely mutated students, and then said again, a little clearer:

"DØиᛌT LEA᳒VϜ ME ALØNe..."

Despite their shared words, their dark eyes remained wholly empty.

@Wilder

Blood was rushing so loudly in Wilder's ears that, for a moment, she didn't even realize the rats had stilled. But then she realized that it had grown silent and still. The rustling and footsteps of the dozen rats beneath her had...stopped. She looked down at them, crouched at the edge of her crystal pillar, ears pointed up curiously, as they stared up at her, rippling with a strange sense of...was that desperation? She didn't know that Lessers had the ability to feel like that, so intensely that she could sense it. But, then again, these weren't ordinary Lessers.

The words sunk deep, opening a hollow pit in her stomach. Something about this still felt wrong, and she felt deeply unnerved by the sudden plea, because it was still spoken by it. It spoke in its voice, its tone. The same one that had commanded her to tear her own stone from her flesh. But now it was pleading her to stay. It was lonely, whatever it was. Or perhaps putting up a front. She didn't know, she didn't want to risk it...but also she did.

Magic reached forward, no longer inhibited by terror but boosted by the adrenaline still pumping through her body. It lashed forward, wrapping itself gently around the mind of one of the rats, trying to penetrate deeper, beyond what was simply the mind of a Lesser being, trying to reach further. Wherever it was residing, in the mind of this rat, she wanted to find it and establish some kind of contact.

And with her magic came her best attempt at a soothing voice through her anxiety. As if reaching deep into an abyss, fighting through layers upon layers of thick, heady shadow, only to gently reach out a hand. "It's okay," she spoke, both out loud and through the magic, although she couldn't keep out the tremor in her voice. "I won't leave right now."

Wilder's mind connected, strong; she would gather up two powerful sensations at once.

The first was that of shouting into an empty den: her thoughts cast out into the unknown, ricocheting through the Lesser's mind like a hollow echo in the dark. It latched onto nothing; her assurance was given and remained, ringing through the creature's vacant mind.

The second sensation was another echo, in turn: as if someone else, someone just like her, had cast their own thoughts into the creature's mind. As if that thought, too, rang and bounced through this now-abandoned consciousness, filling it with ideas beyond the creature's understanding.

Don't leave me.
Death is a lie. The pain is eternal.
The flesh is weak.
Don't leave me.
Don't leave me...

She might then understand, staring into their own blank eyes, that there was nothing left in these creatures--nothing but another echo, a voice cast in that had driven all else out. They were, for a lack of better word, become like zombies. Ahh, but there was one other thought: a distant thought, a concept vague in their understanding, a desperate idea that another Gembound's lesser magics might have missed.

Cepheus.

The creatures turned, almost as one: they began to shuffle back into their hole, and yet looked back to Wilder, as if waiting; and in garbled tones, they spoke again:


"DØи'T LEAVE ME A᳒LØиE."

@Wilder

The connection opened between her and the rat was strong, stronger then most of the links she opened and she felt the sensastion as clear as it were her own - emptiness, nothingness. An empty room with the lights out. An empty shell left out to dry. It filled her with a deep sadness, almost like a sense of loss. This had once been a thinking creature. Perhaps not a savory one or a particular intelligent one, but it had been driven by a sense of survival and what little personality lesser gembounds could carry. But now there was nothing but vacancy. Whatever it had been before this...presence had entered it was lost now. It may have still been living and breathing and speaking, but it was dead.

But then in that empty void of thoughtlessness she heard an echo. It seemed to resonate with her own question, as if it were an equally alien presence in this creature's mind. She listened for a moment, hearing the words bouncing around over and over again in her head, and then latched onto the idea that seemed to hide within the chime of words. Cepheus. She knew that cave. The one with the strange palace that had always seemed strangely...off limits. She'd felt like a stranger or an intruder whenever she'd dare walk in.

What kind of secrets was it hiding?

Satisfied with what she'd heard, she pulled her magic back just in time to focus on awareness again to see the rats retreating in the wall. She might have assumed they were just returning to their homes, but she'd already heard the ringing of silence in their heads. There was no will to exist anymore in there. It could only be the unknown being she was looking for.

Slowly, carefully, she leaned over her crystal pillar, pressing her front paws down on its smooth surface before sliding the rest of her body over the edge and falling semi-gracefully. She landed with a small huff, sending a shock through her body that had her pausing for a second to recover, before turning her attention back to the retreating rats, taking a few steps forward to follow them. "Do you want me to follow you?" She stayed tense and wary, in case they turned around to attack again.