Were it not for the fishhook curve of its talons, the orthoclase's rather weak grip would have broken the moment Vargas made his delayed attempt at a dodge.

It knew what it was that he was doing; the split-second realization sent peals of revulsion through its body, and it nearly broke away from the shifting limb in that instant—would have, were it not so desperate to grapple for a shred of decency and desirability. Alpha tried (with great futility) to cling closer to the violet forearm—and in that moment, anyone might have mistook such an action for a child attaching themself to their father's side, pudgy fists curled into the folds of a shirt.

But, no, it was gripping as hard as it could to suppress the full-body shudder and nausea swarming in its gut. A heady exhale blustered from it. Nostrils flared hot against Vargas's forearm. He's going— it started to think, but a flare of static snow fell over its vision. Putrescent eyes squeezed shut, and it shook its head against violet-magenta flesh and bone and—

The pressure closing around one of its wrists jarred it to reality with a strangled sort of yelp. As firm and gentle as it had tried to be, that tiny shred of contact was too much. Breathing air too quick for scarred-up lungs to process and its conscious brain deprived of oxygen, the orthoclase sank deep into its mire of panic.

As the Master threatened to yank one of its middle legs toward him, Alpha tipped in the opposite direction. Muscles seized upward as it tried to squirm out of the hold, tried to withdraw its claws and hold them to its chest. Both forearms abandoned their task of keeping a hold on the Leviathan; and, with that, it overcorrected in its stance and toppled onto its left side with a terrible crack! of chitin.

Its shell dragged through the grass as it was briefly taken by a need to defend itself that it could barely comprehend. Forearms bracing against the ground, it lurched forward with snapping teeth and white-rimmed eyes.

A single click! of teeth sounded, and with nothing caught between them, Orthoclase-Alpha just... laid there. It stared into the shadow Vargas cast over it, even hunched over and barely humbled by a pitiful assault. It glanced up at second-long intervals, always with a shift of its body so that it was lying there, underbelly flat against the ground. Another yank of its limb, and it shuffled a scarce few inches away.

It felt sick, shaking all over, and like this cave was too hot and cold all at the same time. If it could sweat, it would be drenched to the point of dehydration; though its tongue lolling out as it panted away the sensation of bile rising in its throat might indicate otherwise. It felt vile. It felt—

Too much. Too much. It shouldn't have come, shouldn't have tried—

It didn't understand. How frustration could bleed into misery and a sticky feeling crawling beneath its skin. How little one could know. Why it was like this, so incapable of anything and left to beg for what it did and didn't want because it was so terrified of every Godforsaken thing, and it hated that. Hated and hated and hated that. It didn't understand.

Chin held just barely above the leaf litter and soft, soft, so soft grass, Alpha muttered a wobbling little word: "s-s-sor— sorry." It choked down the gagworthy lump in its throat. "P-p... please. D-don't—"

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas stepped back.

His response was matter-of-fact, though without its overbearing, booming quality. He bore his usual stoic patience as he spoke. "We are sparring, Orthoclase-Alpha. You asked me to spar," he reminded it, hoping that reasonable... well, reason--would jar it back to reality some. "You do not need to apologize. Do you want to stop?" he asked it. He was disappointed, of course--in them both--and confused; it had faced its fears to some extent, and now it only crumbled. In himself, too, for misjudging so poorly. He'd given the Orthoclase the benefit of the doubt, judged that perhaps it was ready for him to honor its own request, but it clearly wasn't

Still, he laid the offer out there; the decision was its own. The question was: would Alpha be able to make that decision itself? Or would it simply topple again, writhing on the floor in mute misery?

@Orthoclase-Alpha

It pressed its tongue against the roof of its mouth, foaming saliva sticking and making a wet click! as it peeled away and made a halfhearted attempt at licking at its chops. The Overse—no, Master spoke, and its gaze averted, chin tilting downward and pressing into the dirt. All its internals churned, heart beating too fast, too fast, too fast.

"I d-did... M-Master," Alpha practically mewled, quills clacking weakly against one another. A gasping, stuttering inhale kept another wave of nausea at bay. It screwed its eyes shut, shaking off days and two seconds' worth of exhaustion creeping in on its vision.

An alarm wailed somewhere in its skull, crying OVERWORKED! OVERCLOCKED! MELTDOWN IMMINENT! while joints failed to keep it upright and it lapped up another gob of drool before it could slip down its chin.

But Vargas's question? Left hanging in the air as his own creation crumbled and sank into the grass before him?

It didn't know the answer to it.

A please stung hot even in thought; but, it nearly spilled out of its crackling throat, barely-retained consciousness waning. On an opposite hand—the one that marked Orthoclase-Alpha as too damn stubborn to die—it wanted to stand up, wanted to give its best battlecry and tear into violet flesh to prove to itself him that it could. That it was still capable. That it was still worthwhile—

(Wasn't it tragic how it clung so desperately to a notion of worth, and yet ignored any of it?)

The orthoclase's first attempt at a response was muffled by soft (sweet, sweet, sweet) grass and its own thick tongue; so it swallowed, nearly choking, and it rasped, "I-I d-don't... don't know." It didn't so much as try to look at Vargas.

It was going to be sick.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

....Riiiight.

"I don't know" was fast becoming Vargas's most hated phrase. And on the heels of that thought, the growing concern that his magic spawn, his would-be children, were horrifically pathetic and defective was lingering, growing, a paranoia at this point. It was one thing to have feelings; he'd have expected that. Even a healthy spice of trauma was to be expected, the way that he was raising them, the world they were being raised in.

But he'd given it a vacation! And when that hadn't been enough to make up for the lifetime of military abuse, he'd tried to be nice to the damn thing. What more could anyone want..? ...Black humor aside, he really did think that by this point Orthoclase's reactions were far beyond rationally equivalent to whatever horrors it might've seen. It had somehow made itself worse.

He didn't know how, but it had.

Once again, for the thousandth time, he wondered vaguely if it were molting.

With a grunt, he sat back on his haunches, puzzled and growingly irritated, and disappointed, by the puzzle that was Orthoclase-Alpha. It was a puzzle he was missing far too many pieces to complete; it couldn't fix itself, that was for damn sure. It seemed like it'd taken a few pieces out back and burned them when nobody was looking, actually. "Did Lord Dhracia speak with you?" he asked, at last. Maybe she'd made some headway he could draw on. Maybe distracting Alpha from... (Vargas eyed it over) from whatever was going on now in its impenetrable headspace would help, somehow.

Then, with a mental shrug, he fell back on plain honesty. "You are consistently afraid, and I do not know why. You do not eat, and I do not know why. You vanish for weeks on end." (And Vargas didn't know why, but that bit was becoming rather repetitive.) "This leaves me concerned for your well-being. It would be useful if you could at least communicate why. Or offer something other than 'I don't know.' Maybe you don't know. That's a shame, because though I am certainly powerful, I am not a mind-reader, Orthoclase-Alpha."

Vargas trailed off, studying the Orthoclase almost absently. I've tried talking to it before. At length. It's probably already receded back into that 'I can't hear you' mindset. He knew--again, vaguely--that it did this; he could talk to it all day, concerned and gentle, and it'd miss most of what he said and pass out in terror by the end of it. Is there even a point in trying?

Perhaps normalcy. A new routine, he decided, and then rolled with it, because it was as likely as anything else to work--or not. "Come," he said, pushing up and turning away. "We will hunt, instead." Maybe if he could just get it working alongside him--hunting, scenting, tracking, killing prey instead of cowering at the sight of him--they'd forge some new tenuous bonds. Something he could work on; something he could strengthen.

Creator knew he needed some form of lifeline, because otherwise, Orthoclase-Alpha really was lost to him.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Vargas shifted to sit, and in that moment was a desperate fluttering: one hand white-knuckled on the escape hatch's lever; the other primed to press continue. Its addled, fading conscience warbled between either option. Violet haunches had already met the earth, but still Alpha was calculating its opportunity to flee—if it should, how long until its stomach gives out and it can no longer choke down the vomit rising in its throat.

The mere thought of upchucking is enough to make it screw its eyes shut and stifle a throaty whine.

Its guts performed another acrobatic routine as the Master—not its—made mention of Lord Dhracia. Talons gripped hard into the sod; whether its to keep itself in place or from getting sick is the dealer's choice (because he always wins.)

It answers with merely a nod and a flinch.

There is now the gut-punch of reality to contend with. A laying-out of cards that Orthoclase-Alpha had always known were there. Afraid. Starving. Weak. Deserter— Each successive line had it closer to outright lying on the ground, nose back in the dirt—proving him right I was supposed to prove hi— me— myself wrong—

But a question jolts into mind and refuses to release its hold. It had tried it before, but… it did not remember the answer, or if there'd even been one..

"H-how l-lo— long…" comes a fading sentence in between its stuttering breaths. A labored gasp for air like it were a lifeline, and it spluttered at Vargas, now standing, "Hhhave I b-been g-gone?"

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

The question--an actual question, spoken words from his wayward half-mute spawn--took him by surprise. He paused, head cocking to one side, as he considered. It took him a moment to try and calculate the days. "Hmph," he began, amusement in his tone, staring off at the treeline in thought. "That is a good question. Five cycles? -Six, seven? I am not certain, but too long, I think," he answered, and his tone was not condemning but instead rather careless. "I did tell you to take however long you needed, of course, but you do not look better." Again, careless, blunt, his grasp of social niceties in the face of a delicate persona absent. The fragility of the Orthoclase was far beyond his comprehension.

A rolling shrug of massive shoulders and the Leviathan pushed upright, turning half-away to peer out at the fields. His chin lifted and he sniffed, multitudes of nostrils deeply inhaling Pegasus's petrichor.

It occurred to him, briefly, that the question might have been designed to deflect his own--perhaps about their shared Lord--but Vargas dismissed this idea, if tentatively. I doubt it has the presence of mind to be manipulative, he mused.

Beyond this, he simply waited: alternating his long gaze out into Pegasus with a brief glance or two back at the Orthoclase, to see if it were interested in a hunt. A distraction, really. Vargas only hoped that it would say 'yes': maybe he could engage it in a more useful conversation when its mind was focused on more primal things. A glint of magic through his Oilstone set red shapes dancing in his vision: rabbits here, birds there, and beyond--over the rolling meadow and beyond a stand of trees--the massive meadow deer.

"There are deer just out there, if you are ready," he said. He was trying not to rush it--pressure would not help. But a distraction, the way he'd wondered if Alpha were trying to distract him? He hoped that it might help.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Seven.

Lucky number. Spin the roulette and land on a triple. Maximum jackpot.

Seven.

The orthoclase winced visibly; a minute reaction compared to the torrential flood unleashed within its skull. Its reaction had not been for the characteristic blunt answer, nor the irrefutable opinion of a Master who knew it was weak and doomed condemnation. A failed creature of random chance that was too stubborn (or too afraid of what came after?!) to die. Long ago had its sense of time left it grasping, but... had it thought it hadn't been long? That it'd been years? Which would be better to believe? The Leviathan said it'd been too long. Was there such a thing?

Had it failed one of his tests? Yes. Many—

"Seven" was its barely-audible, whispering wheeze of a response. A simple parroting with a twinned sort of disbelief.



Its minute-long stunned silence was broken only by a jagged gasp; it'd pushed itself upward with too much force, nearly over-corrected its swaying balance, and found its vision swimming with far greater intensity than before. A gaping gulp of air was all it had to shove down its nausea. The orthoclase staggered in place, and spread its stance a little too far out for it to be subtle.

Chartreuse eyes narrowed into a harsh squint as it lifted its head to the light, and closed completely as bloody red blurred behind its eyelids. Its throat throbbed, jaw wobbled, and it lapped at its chops before a stream of saliva could drip off of them.

Despite everything clamoring for it to RUNFIGHTCOWERAWAY, Orthoclase-Alpha half-stumbled to stand at Vargas's hip, albeit several feet away and out of its diminishing depth perception's idea of his reach (which was to say not at all out of his reach.) There it swayed and shook like a branch in the breeze, waiting for... a move.

A command?

A chance to flee again... ?

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas paused to watch Orthoclase-Alpha, for its moment of long silence, though he was careful to keep the whole of his body--his shoulders, the line of his spine--facing away. The creature was, he felt, too fragile at least to bear even the weight of his gaze should he face it full-on. Why? Why? That is the question.

Likely because you tore into it without purpose, he told himself, at least from its perspective. Well! Carapace-splitting attacks aside...

His observations dictated that the Orthoclase was ready to hunt. This, based on the fact that it had pushed up quickly--eagerly? This potential, a tentative in Vargas's mind, was borne out by the saliva that it lapped from its jaws, and by the push to come to his side. Ready, in any case, he told himself: and thus satisfied that his spawn was prepared to work with him, rather than flee, he looked ahead and pushed forward.

If Alpha was intending to flee, or even to attack Vargas from behind, it was likely now its best chance: he was just in front, now turned away, his attention shifting to the fields beyond.

And if it did not flee-? If it did not strike at him, maddened (neither of which he expected, or even really thought of)? Why, then the Leviathan was--true to his word--about to lead the way in a long and easy-limbed stride over the grassy hills. It was almost utopian, this place, and the day: warm weather broken by cooler breezes, a dappled shadow wherever orb-light was interrupted by the shifting leaves. The scent of grass and earth filled the air.

Vargas offered an olive branch of speech, as he walked; the Orthoclase had managed only one word, and he wanted to encourage more. The more it spoke, the more--perhaps--it would grow used to speaking, again. "Seven, yes; much has happened in that time. New members, the return of another Hand, others leaving us. It has been busy!" And then, a risk; "It is a shame you have missed it; it would have been good to have you there."

Was it even still behind him?

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

dissociative episode?

If only it'd been present enough in mind to consider the wide-gaping opportunity here. What a maddeningly simple plot, too; letting Vargas take the lead and merely assume it was plodding after him without the intent of either predator or prey. A few cycles before, and the orthoclase may have tempted fate's cruel grip by leaping at the violent behemoth's back. Taking him by surprise, worming into good graces with such a well-planned assault, becoming more than a dumb, terrified brute.

Alas, Alpha was far from the mind of this body—it kept one arm in the figurative pool, hooked claws and fingers death-gripping at consciousness and pushing away the overwhelming urge to gag. Its limbs stuttered at an agonizing pace, already so intensely strained. Quills sagged against its neck, rattling only when cracked shoulders brushed them aside.

The pleasantness of Pegasus and simply walking at its Master's heel was lost on it.

His words, too.

Its gaze, the only dully focused sense it managed to cling to, was dead-set on the approaching meadow deer; and, it made no motion to spring after them or skulk around for a calf, straggling herd member, something.

Orthoclase-Alpha merely… stared, panting like it was overextended. Sometimes, it checked Vargas in its periphery, but it was merely a split second's look, and with a slight shuffle away. Looking for a signal? Wary? It did not know.

A shiver of revulsion roiled through it.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas was pleasantly oblivious, or at least so it seemed. Inwardly he was keenly aware, of course, of its silence; but was that silence born of trauma, or had the Orthoclase simply nothing, now, to say?

He didn't dare guess, nor plan around his guesses.

Instead, as they drew closer--as the stench of wool and hoof grew closer--he skirted down into a lanky crouch. His body angled away from the herd, still out of sight physically (and now his red blood-sight had faded) but the herd was faintly audible, the snorting and stomping just over the next hill. But his head faced toward them, the full attention of his senses fixed upon their prey.

Vargas moved for the treeline, intending to circle a little more, and then he looked to Alpha. He spoke, very quietly. "We can one of us spook them at a distance, and the other lie in wait, hidden on the other side--and attempt to take any straggler as they pass? Or we can go out together, circle, try to break them up. They tend to form a defensive line that won't break, so that will be hard. Or, we can try something else, if you have anything in mind. Do you want to choose-?" he asked, and waited.

Would it choose?

Choose a method of hunt, choose a role to play?

Or would even this mild demand force it flat against the ground, drooling and trembling?

The Leviathan shifted his gaze back forward, so that whatever terrible pressure his eyes pressed on Alpha would be ameliorated. But he had to know it was capable of this--of a single choice, of the hunt itself--before they could proceed.

@Orthoclase-Alpha