Gangly, too-thin limbs nearly sent it toppling over Vargas's (apparently) suddenly prone form.


A wrist knocked against violet flesh—a thigh or part of the tail, maybe—with all the intensity of something swinging their limbs around in a semblance of movement, or maybe someone just winding up to kick a soccer ball. Either way, putrid eyes snapped to blinding alertness, and it lurched back as if it'd been burned; even with the drawing of said limb to its chest—though it quickly started to topple again, and caught itself before it could fall even an inch.

Nostrils flared, catching the scent of warmblooded beasts. It inhaled harshly, and the horrid stench of acid drifted to the roof of its mouth. Another gulp. Eyes twisted shut just as—as he should—Vargas tossed a cursory, squinting glance over a spiny shoulder. The ghost of an apology drifted from its snout, though it wasn't sure it was given any voice.

The violet behemoth going on might have been indication to yes or no.

It was the work of miracles that even half of the spoken word parsed through its mind, seesawed terribly back into the solid bedrock of reality and the so-called pilot's seat. At the helm, as it were; and knowing this, it was more miraculous that, on the heels of 'Do you want to choose?', it rasped, "N-no."

Precious seconds of processing later, it hoped he hadn't heard that.

Shivering as it was—hard enough to make quills stand on end with goosebumps and rattle slightly—and close to a complete blackout as it was, the orthoclase managed to consider. Weigh the circumstance in either claw. If it were to run and chase and howl, it would meet an end beneath pointed horns and worn-down hoof. It was far too confident in its own weakness. But, if it—"s-sstay. H-hhide." A claw indicated toward itself, muscle quivering with the effort of keeping its arm steady. "Pi-ck, pick up."

It stopped panting just long enough to lick at its teeth, eyes squinting to thin crescents.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

The bump had Vargas glancing back, briefly alarmed by how unsteady the Orthoclase had looked. Still looked. He dipped his head in a brief nod of acknowledgment to the barest whisper of what had probably been Alpha excusing itself, and then looked forward once again.

"N-no." For the briefest of instants he was immensely disappointed in himself for having asked "do you want to choose." And then, to his surprise--no, his amazement!--the sometime-Overseer corrected itself, making (gasp!) a choice. He glanced back again, grasping that it was requesting the lying-in-wait role. He was, given how barely-alive Orthoclase seemed, a bit concerned about that. In fact, Vargas very nearly called it all off there and then. It could barely stand, it was shivering. But--again, perhaps a mistake on par with that of trusting its ability to spar upon its own request--he chose to trust its decision. He spoke, advising it quietly, his voice soft so as not to alert the Meadow Deer.

"Very well. Remember, stay in hiding, and only go for stragglers! You do not want to get caught in front of a stampeding herd." Hell, not even he would. "If you are uncertain of a target then do not strike; we will regroup and plan again, if so." He waited a moment, eyeing Alpha, and then turned to slip away.

It didn't occur to him that Alpha might use this time to slip away, never to be seen again--again; instead, Vargas was wholly focused now on the herd up ahead.

He was fast, and he circled quickly even at such a distance: almost fifty yards away but his sweeping stride carried him low around them, to the other side. He realized, then, that he'd made a minor mistake--he hadn't really noted any landmark at which he'd left Alpha. From the other side of the herd, it was difficult to tell where they'd both been, exactly. It can correct for their trajectory in time, but I will need to be at least somewhat accurate, he decided, and made his best guess. That said--they were wild animals. There was no knowing if they'd flee in a straight line or if, indeed, they'd flee at all.

Vargas crept closer, still out of sight of the herd but now downhill; he wasn't far off from them, and if they did charge his way, he'd be dangerously close. He hoped that would not become an issue, however: if they saw a predator, they'd form their defensive wall. But if they only heard a roar, they might quietly try to flee before he "saw them." That was his plan, and so--some forty yards off, downhill and behind a scattering of trees--the Leviathan took a breath.

He gave it his best bellow, an airshaking roar, and then turned to slam his weight into the nearest small tree. It was barely more than a sapling. He threw his weight the other way, then, trying to make it sound as though something truly enormous were crashing through the woods, here: hoping that the herd would run the other way.

Toward Orthoclase-Alpha. Who might, or might not, be capable of handling it.

Vargas hoped to hell that it was.

A few seconds passed: the sound of snorting and hoofbeats came, and Vargas realized that no, he had not frightened off the herd. Hell--they were heading toward him, if slowly. It wasn't a charge, but it certainly wasn't what he'd planned, and if they did spot him he might actually be in trouble. He muttered under his breath, and glanced back; he'd have to keep to the trees, hope they couldn't trample him with the cover, but--what now?

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

vomit (in lower opacity text)

There were the orders, and it offered a weak simulacrum of a nod in return. Overgrown claws twisted and gnarled into the sod and adding to the months-old collection of detritus clinging to its tired, run-down body. It blinked, and Vargas's form was cresting the hill.

And it was in that precise moment that its body decided to exile the contents of its stomach.

With a violent clench and full-body seizure, the orthoclase retreated to the canopy-cover of firs and old oaks. It all but collapsed onto its forearms as the first clots of bile and barely-digested scraps of meat dribbled past its teeth. A stifled cough and gag (its chest burned, hurt) and it spat toxic incandescence into the grass. The stench rubbed against its nares, and it managed only a heaving breath before a second round of pure stomach acid burned its path to the ground.

Third time was dry, save for the saliva pouring off of its tongue in apparent anticipation for more and the saran-wrap coat over its eyes breaking. It thought it'd be used to this by now…; and it tried to not think too long or hard about the lack of solid substance in it

It scrambled to get away from the mess, willing disobedient and uncoordinated limbs to action. A hand lifted, turning calloused pad-up, and smudged at its gumline. Tremors wracked its body; hooked claws jabbed into its overly tender gums more than once. The same with smearing away what had spilled over the ridge of its eyes. Thin rivulets of blood lined its teeth.

Eyes went half-lidded.

It barely felt let itself fall down to its side, and drifted off into the relative quiet of Pegasus.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

The Leviathan was wholly unaware of the trials and tribulations of his other-side-of-the-hill spawn. Instead, he was pacing, heart lifting a beat in its own pace, as he eyed the oncoming herd. They were visible, now, their slow trot a determined-eyed stare.

Oh no, he thought, and for a moment, he went blank.

Going blank was not a good reaction, not one fit for an Overseer of millennia, and it didn't last long. But for that fraction of a second, his mind was thrusting all his Meadow Deer knowledge into his consciousness.

Deadly, even to creatures such as he. Each beast was more than half his size, bulky and strong, full of horns that could pierce him through. And each was perfectly willing--aggressive, even--to charge and knock him down. He could outrun them--if he could get into the open; and he'd remained in the trees hoping for cover. Damn it, he thought, eyeing the open land wistfully. But to head for it would be heading toward the herd.

Vargas clenched his jaw, and settled on a final attempt to spook them into the other direction; if that didn't work, they might charge. And then Orthoclase-Alpha will get a fine view of its Master fleeing across the plains, he thought wryly to himself.

He leaned back again, taking another breath and bracing himself to run--forward or away, it didn't matter yet--and roared. And again he reached for a tree--barely more than a sapling, so that he could snap it away and brandish it like a club.

This time he was successful--and the herd was far enough off that the deer didn't charge or form ranks. Vargas breathed a sigh of relief as the deer hesitated, their heavy brows low over snorting nostrils. And as they slowly shuffled back, he smacked the sapling with loud thwacking sounds against the other trees around him.

They weren't fleeing, outright; they were moving at a fast trot back the way they'd come. Back toward Alpha. With luck, they'd pass it, and it'd manage to single one out--but if they weren't at a full fleeing gallop, it ran the risk of being immediately attacked. Vargas set out to follow them. Not too close--that'd make them stop, circle around... but he wanted to be close enough to intervene, should it be needed.

He hoped that it would not.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

It stirred as a heartbeat rhythm filled the air. The cacophony of a hundred striking the earth; the song of breaths in unison. Shifting woolly hides and clacking horns. Branches shifting and crackling and—


Quills flared upward in an instant, jerking motions sending it halfway to sitting sidesaddle as a hoof struck too close to its body. A monochromatic haze blasted across its vision while it struggled to stand up at the fringe of the passing flood of woolly deer; a brawny, woolly shoulder struck its snout, and bright white arced across its already dwindling vision. The assailant bleated, still trying to press closer, away from the monster, predator, killer in their midst; and the whole herd took to a shambling run through the wood, curving away.

They were escaping, it needed to defend itself from them, it needed to sink its teeth in and— and— and— it needed to live. Just one felled beast. Just one. It backpedaled.

For fear that it would not get back up, it did not crouch.

For fear that it would not strike at what it so honestly believed to the final chance, the last stop, it hardly did not hesitate.

For fear that it would otherwise meet its end, it did not think.

Orthoclase-Alpha rocked into a shambling run, and leapt at the thunderous mass of brown.


Arms and hooked talons met the tangled hide of a cow; her bleating cry of pain burned in its skull in tandem with the hoofbeats thundering around them and the feeling of being dragged along the forest floor. Stones and branches long-embedded into the earth chipped at chitinous plates and jabbed in deep. Each elicited a pained gasp from the monster, struggling to drag the cow down with its own weight and making flailing slashes at her throat. More than once, an antler would come dangerously close to its face, catch in its quills—coming free with more than a few and viridescent blood—and knock against shoulder plates.

With a forearm slung over a brawny shoulder, the cow over-corrected her running balance, veering to the right and away from her herd. Gasping, breathing hard. Panting through a torn-open throat and seemingly unheeding of the added weight attached to her or the blood slicking her woolly hide.

Even as she seemed to slow, as she made to slam it into a tree, it held on—desperately swiping at a precious throat to make it end quicker, faster please HURTS—

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

The sapling was cast aside, Vargas launching into a cautious lope up the hill and across the open field. He was keeping a safe distance, but already his eyes were worriedly scanning the treeline uphill for any sign of his child spawn. The flood of Meadow Deer was already lumbering into the forest, and-

There! The clumsy tumble of six too-thin limbs would still have been a terror for many of the cave's Gembound to see: the lurching lunge of a predator Alpha's size, even sick, was nothing to be shrugged off. Even the meadow deer cow had no chance; the tear of hooked talons, the seemingly desperate grip of jaws, did its work.

Vargas snapped his gaze to the herd, and rushed in to ensure they'd keep moving, that they wouldn't circle back for Alpha, charge it to save their cow. Another roar, and he was darting forward--still not close enough to force them to turn back and swing horns for him, but close enough to remind them that he was still there, and that he was still a threat.

Was it that he did too fine a job, appearing too intimidating to ignore? Or that he failed at his attempt, drawing just a bit too close to them? Whatever it was, he suddenly found a forest of horns churning back his way, and with a grunt of dismay and a spray of dirt he skidded to a stop. Then he found himself quickly backpedaling--thankfully away from Alpha. "DO YOU HAVE IT?" he bellowed, even as he backed away. If Alpha needed help, he'd need to find a way to get to it--without drawing the whole herd along with him.

Hopefully, though--(Vargas thought, as he eyed the herd storming around to charge)--it would be fine. Because right now, he was the one who might need help.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

There was too much noise, too much blood in its eardrums, too much a washed-out smear across its vision; and too little hope for Vargas to be heard clearly.

A shoulder splintered the wood ahead, and in tandem with the crunching snap! of chitinous plates was a bold of white-hot agony. Hooked talons tore loose from gnarled wool; the impact tore orthoclase from meadow deer, planted splinters and shards into flesh and dragged a listing bellow out of the massive quarry. A strangled yelp spluttered from the orthoclase's own mouth, wet-sounding and terrible.

She stumbled and uttered her last few gasping wheezes before a younger, more spry calf bounded over her collapsed form—a stray hoof catching her in the head and punching through skull in its harried pace.

Orthoclase-Alpha landed on its destroyed shoulder plate—chunks gouging deeper in—some ten or twenty feet from the edge of the roiling stampede. It landed with a cry muffled only by the dirt filling its mouth and the awful war drumbeat of a hundred hooves in perfect sync. White hazed along its peripherals as a static fuzz befell it; a natural bodily response to so much agony.

At least it could not think past the present state of things. A small mercy.

With each labored breath came an increasing need, until at last it turned over to feel the uncomfortable heat rise up from its guts. A subdued gag caused all its nausea to tumble out in a throat-burning spill of nothing but pure stomach acid and blood. Quills rattled as it shivered, shuddered, collapsed back on the ground for fear of aggravating its wound, suffering worse. It barely managed to drape an arm over its eyes, to curl up on the spot.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Well, that hunt had--in the end--been all Alpha.

Vargas came up panting, feeling rather foolish; his contribution had mostly been to fail and yell at things, and here poor Orthoclase was, downed and wounded for having to pick up his slack. He stood for a beat between it and the remains of the fleeing herd, but they did not turn back; there was no need to guard it now. So he shifted to face the Orthoclase, instead, looking over its wounded shoulder and its kill. "Well done!" he boomed, unaware of the inner turmoil it held, the horror it had felt at the kill. Belatedly, the scent of bile caught his nostrils, and he turned and peered toward it with confusion, spotting the small puddle against the dark earth mostly by the tangle of blood within it.

Vargas was not an evil creature, malicious and sadistic, prone to tormenting for the sake of it. But your average denizen of these caves, when faced with their own spawn down, vomiting and wounded by a Meadow Deer and having cried out in pain, would undoubtedly have shown deep concern: a few "are you okay?!"s and "what can I do"s and so forth. Despite the lack of actual malice, there was none of that sensitivity in Vargas and it showed; instead his practical mind wondered what he should (and even could) do for Alpha now. "Practicality" was the key word, because his decision in the end was to stride over and inspect the wound as best he could, thinking.

He couldn't mend it, no, but he knew from experience that the foreign matter should be removed, the torn plate picked clear and the injury washed, at least, in water. "Can you walk?" he asked, bluntly; "you are wounded; it will need to be washed. You have tree in your shoulder," he added, with faint humor. And the humor again, perhaps, showed just how far his disconnect was with Alpha's actual mentality--or maybe Vargas didn't know how else to deal with it.

He drew closer, slowing now--careful to glance at Alpha, sensitive at least enough to understand that its reaction might be violent or afraid. One long arm reached out, clawed fingers plucking at one of the larger wood splinters. "The tree will need to come out," he added, trying to pull the piece quickly and smoothly away. His movements, at least, were practiced and delicate--the Leviathan was, if nothing else, good at moving with precision.

The Meadow Deer itself, he practically ignored: it was dead, skull smashed in, and his concern was for his spawn. As poorly as he showed it.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Vargas's voice should have come to it as the booming sound that it was; thunderous praise from monstrous lungs and vocal chords. Instead, a muffled "… -ell done!" fizzed over the communication line in its skull. A distorted wave of noise that hardly skimmed above the indistinguishable noise—another piece to add to the flood of sensory overload and excess of stimulation. It was a small mercy that it'd managed to cover its own eyes.

It barely acknowledged that its—the master had come close, barely feeling his presence except for the subtle thu-thump vibration of his feet striking the earth. The orthoclase ground its teeth in agony, muffling any sort of keening cry that could escape its throat; but, that could not have hoped to stop air from whistling out of its nostrils, the dim chartreuse glow of their innards flaring with every strained, rattling breath. Nostrils and nose bones that'd been broken before, had never healed quite right, stood as an obstacle now.

Claws reached for a chunk of wood, and Vargas might have been justified in thinking his spawn had been rendered totally catatonic were it not for the shrill whine that spluttered from it—the toxic eyes abruptly twisting up to stare at him, wide and unseeing. The foreign body was out of its shoulder long before it managed to react, trying and failing to shuffle away. Its forearm—the one attached to a certainly broken shoulder—shifted, and it bit its tongue trying not to cry out.

Strange, how it'd taken so many blows with hardly a complaint. Pierced through by the sinister limbs of a spider; struck across the face by by by b y b y—; menaced and burned and frozen by dragons; suffered glancing blows and scars to last a lifetime and to wear it to looking far older than just two meagre years. None of it had ever been so permanent.

But this? Staring up at the Leviathan once again from the ground, wounded and bleeding? Its heart jackhammered in its chest. It was too familiar. Too close. Throwing it back to the tunnel of sand, an awful energy crawling under its chitin, splinters and hide gone gone gone—

Unlike that time, Orthoclase-Alpha begged, "P-ple… -ease. I kn-know f-fail… fail-failed." In a rasping whisper as it struggled and failed to stand and move away, too deep in its own terror to just realize why it could not stand, it begged. "I-I'm br-brok… br-broken."

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Ahh, the foul luck poor Alpha had in being so vulnerable beside one so oblivious. Vargas knew that something was wrong, of course--it was hard not to, with his spawn cringing away and begging. But whether his offerings would do harm, or good, or more likely not make a dent at all in what was most admittedly broken indeed, was anybody's guess.

"You have not failed; you have succeeded! You did well," he repeated, maintaining a calm patience over his concern. He examined the limb again, his attention more careful now that he could see the way that Alpha was moving. It was, he thought, broken. "And your forelimb may be broken. But you are not," he went on. "Don't put weight on it," he warned, speaking more slowly, more clearly, his tone one offering caution. He held up the bit of wood that he'd removed, showing Alpha; then he let it drop into the grass. Its tone was heartwrenching, and he grimly wondered yet again just how it'd gotten quite this bad. If he could've seen its thoughts, maybe he would have understood, but such things were well beyond the Leviathan.

He didn't approach again, not yet; he itched to pull the bits of wood from the wound, but he didn't want to frighten the Orthoclase even further. He spoke after a few moments' thoughtful silence. "It will probably heal in a couple of weeks, or if your stone takes you--do you want to come back to Draco?" he asked, eyeing the shoulder closely. "You could rest there, in your stone, if you want. That would get rid of what's in there, at least." He'd have to make sure it wasn't too close to the Black Spire, but... "You still have five other good legs to use, unless you need a rest."

Leaving it here was a concerning thought, though. If Alpha plunged into its chrysalis here and now, he'd have to post a guard, or some such; such a gemstone would be impossible to hide, and Vargas was certain that the Forge had enough enemies that someone might try to damage it if it were left unguarded. Or maybe it's been in its stone all along-? In, and out of it? I haven't seen it almost at all during its absence, but... no; it probably wouldn't be so thin, he mused.

Now he waited for a decision, but he doubted that he'd get one. Doubted, even, that Alpha would understand much of what he'd even said. It's half feral, now, he thought.

@Orthoclase-Alpha