She followed the sound of rushing water, a hand on the wall and her ears lifted high. Eurydome's eyes could adjust to the dark easily-- most of the gladiator's life had been spent in Orion, after all --but when it came to the mist that shrouded Cetus, she was at a loss. It was easiest to rely on other senses; her hearing, her sense of smell, and like, whatever the other two were, instead of her sight. She could barely see in front of her and what little that she could were just distant, high trees she had no particular interest in.

The amethyst blade sat on her shoulder glinted in the low light, and she held it a little more tighter than she would have liked. Something about Cetus set her on edge; the way her paws slowly squelch, squelch, squleched through the marsh and the crooning of distant insects inspired something more primal in her gut. Not fear-- never fear --but certainly the wary sense that an attack might come from the mists and she wouldn't be able to see it.

Cetus had no audience; no prying eyes or roaring crowd. Any fight here would be for the hunt; for food or for survival. While Eurydome had little intentions of either, it didn't mean that someone else out there wouldn't take offense to her presence. Compeition in the hunt for food, a trespasser to dens-- it didn't matter in the long run. The best that Eurydome could do was be quiet and be quick, and once this realisation dawned on her, her amaranthine limbs began to pick up the pace.

Squelch-squelch-squelch-squelch-squelch-- SPLASH

The swampy ground under her paws simply stopped, it dove down into the murk and left nothing but an abruptly deep pool of acrid water for her to tumble into. So much for being quiet-- a sharp 'ARGH' left her chest as she fell in, and combined with the splash, it startled a flock of black birds on the nearby tree-tops.

Eurydome's head lifted, an unpleasant, bitter taste in her mouth-- thick mane sticking to the sides of her face, gold-plated scars drowned in mud, and listened to the distant fltfltfltfltflt of Callers far above. The gladiator pried her sword from her shoulder and began to stumble back onto mostly-solid ground again, sharpened teeth gritting.

Now, she'd have to prepare for the worst and hold her ground if something decided to come inspecting what had startled the birds-- and maybe a good tussle would help her dismiss the embarassment flushing her cheeks.

@Dragon

The squelching sounded like a Gembound--too heavy to be a swamp deer, for sure. But it was distant, and Dragon was mostly indifferent where he floated like a lazy log. That was, until the squelching became an enormous splash, and then-... nothing but a brief, sharp cry.

Dragon slowly turned, a single sweep of his tail rotating his body to face the direction of the sound. He could hear a few Callers going wild, spooked, but-... no loud splashing of something emerging from wherever it had fallen.

No sound of drowning, either, though. That was--probably good, unless someone absolutely could not swim, in which case they might be sinking. With some measure of professional concern (this was his home, after all, and he was usually a decent host to strangers), Dragon set off toward the noise. Magic flared around him, ethereal red-black wings sweeping outward to lift him dripping into the air, draconic horns twisting back from his head.

He arrived at Eurydome in silence, the sweep of noiseless magic wings bearing him close. He peered down, studying the creature briefly: a centaur type of thing, not like anything he'd ever seen before. Well--it wasn't drowning, at least; it was dragging itself onto shore, and it was armed.

"Not drowning, then," Dragon called down, good-naturedly. Then he turned, taking himself a short distance away before setting carefully down, eyes on Eurydome as he did so. He didn't want to be rushed and cut up by that sword before he had the chance to fly off again, or fight back, at least. "Are you harmed?" Clawed feet thudded into mud, and this close he could see the muscles on the stranger even through the mist.

He hoped she didn't choose to use that sword. Not now, at least.

@Eurydome

Her breathing was shallow. She hadn't allowed herself to settle-- especially when an unfamiliar voice called out, but she didn't make the first move to attack. She was defensive instead; she faced the creature and the blade twisted diagonally over her torso, muddy limbs turning in a pivot and half-slipping in the marsh. This was no smooth, dusty arena-- Eurydome had a long streak of disadvantages here, but they were opportunities that this stranger had either missed or were ignoring completely.

"No," the gladiator said, her voice rough, but the blade lowered slowly-- a silent indication that she wasn't going to strike first. This thing with magic wings and horns seemed familiar in some distant way, as though someone had told her about it some time long ago and she, in turn, had not bothered to listen. "I'm fine. ... thank you."

At least she could remember manners, and as a few beats passed, still with no combat, Eurydome heaved the sword back onto its spot on her shoulder and began to roughly shake out her lower body. A good amount of mud went flying; but the majority remained, clinging like leeches to her thick hide.

"Are you the Master here?" She asked tentatively, because you can never be too sure. "I do not mean to disturb your work here."

Another slight shake, but this time it yielded no results. Half-irritated by the sensation of her coat being weighed down, a powerful hind leg lifted and began raking great sheets of mud from her striped haunches. "--I'm Eurydome," she offered mid-scritch.

@Dragon

Dragon laughed, jaws parting and tilting back. The sound was deep, a belly-laugh if an alligator could truly laugh, and the teeth that he exposed weren't all that threatening. They were small--the threat was in his jaws, but he was not trying to posture.

Just-... laughing.

"I should say yes!" he boomed, amused. "-I am Dragon. Not a Master, not anyone important," he added, tilting his head with mischief sparkling in his dark eyes.

He noted the centaur-cat's hind leg scratching at her coat, and found it funny, or perhaps just strange--he eyed her, musing that he'd never seen any creature do this and also, at the same time, have an upright humanoid torso on top. It was... strange, yes. But interesting. In any case-

"I live here. I believe Aquarian is master of this cave. We feed him, in exchange for his... aid," he explained. The pause, and emphasis, because Aquarian's "aid" was questionable at best. "In any case: it is good to meet you! If this is the first time you have come here--this is my home; I may offer advice." He wasn't aware that Eurydome was from another time: a time in which this had not been swamp at all. Perhaps she had known Cetus once, long ago, as something else entirely: as shining forest lit with "sun." "If you have questions, I am here! But I will leave you be if you prefer."

Dragon was certainly easygoing, even on the worst of days. And today wasn't all that bad a day.

@Eurydome

Dragon laughed and Eurydome went stiff with brief alarm-- alarm that lingered until she realised what that strange gesture in combination with the bellow was, to which her pale eyes blinked a few times. It might be a little funny to be asked if you were a Master mostly out of the blue, but it was a reasonable question from where she was standing.

Still, Dragon (and he was definitely no Raheerah) showed no aggression, and that was more than Eurydome could have asked for. She listened with her oversized, damp ears twitching carefully. She'd never been to Cetus, but she knew it from the mere identifier of Aquarian.

She had pictured it being... nicer.

"It's, uhh, a nice home," she lied anyway, because telling someone their house smells like shit and looks like shit to their face was considered rude in most cultures. "I didn't really intend to stay for long, but it's nice to be accomodated."

It was... very nice, actually. Vaknornol had offered nothing but a fight and the others seemed just as unhelpful-- granted, they didn't know that she'd just woke up out of a five thousand year long power nap, but it would still have been nice for someone to at least go 'hey, what's up, just about everything as you knew it is different now.'

The oversized paw plopped back into the mud with a muted splash. "What do you want in return?" she asked-- good-naturedly, though distinctly business-like. Who was just nice for free, anyway? "I can catch some prey to feed you or your Master, if you'd like."

She shook a little, unsatisfied with the extraction results. "You, uhh, got anywhere drier to stand around?"

@Dragon

"Dry-? Here? No," Dragon answered, amused, but he thought about it, for a moment. "There are trees, where the roots are at least a little dry; and rocky areas that way," and here Dragon jerked his jaw to the south. He left the decision as to which--if either--to go to up to Eurydome, and went on.

(He didn't comment about the "nice home" thing. He had no delusions of grandeur in regards to his swampy manor: it was suited to alligators, and to bugs and fish and frogs, bats and so forth. That-... was about it.)

"I do not request anything in return." It was oddly phrased, but deliberately so. He wouldn't mind someone owing him a favor, after all; he wasn't going to request anything. But freely offered? Sure.

"As for this cave: if you eat meat, the deer can be found by their glow, but they are fast! If you can catch the slime-covered fish, they are best eaten hot. Be careful," he went on, listing off all of his advice at once, "of the great spiders in the rocks back there." Again, he nodded south. "And do not swim in the deep waters without leaving an offering for Aquarian. I do not know if he would think you were food, otherwise," he added. He, himself, had accidentally killed a speaking Gembound who'd come to close to the water's edge--it wouldn't surprise him if Aquarian had done so, too. "Do you have questions?" he asked.

@Eurydome

Eurydome hadn't known anyone to pass up a free meal before-- and although Dragon didn't directly say yes or no, she felt as though he were almost avoiding the question. Her great limbs began to bring her south where the alligator had pointed-- at a slower pace, noting Dragon's shortish limbs and assuming he was also slow.

"I've only eaten fish a few times, always raw," she said as she went splashing through the mud, undoing all progress she had done in cleaning her fur. "I'm faster than deer," the gladiator boasted with a good-natured grin splitting her face-- perhaps unaware that the thick, gold-plated scars draping her shoulders and haunches might suggest otherwise. "Have you ever eaten deer hot? Do you wanna try it?"

The mention of spiders had Eurydome making a sharp turn, heading towards the treelines instead. She would not be dealing with that shit today-- not if she had any say in the matter. "From what I've heard of your Master I don't think he'd, uh, really discriminate between what is and isn't food," she offered-- not unkindly, but matter-of-factly. There must have been thousands of gembound who met their end in those jaws.

Not that Eurydome judged. You gotta eat what you gotta eat. If people were dumb enough to get eaten, that was their problem.

The centaur came to the beginning of the Grove and unsheathed her claws, gripping the great roots and pulling herself up. She settled, her belly on the dry (okay, DAMP) root and her legs dangling close to the surface of the water. The humanoid half of her wriggled briefly; twisting and then offering a scarred hand down towards Dragon to offer to pull him up onto the roots, too, if he wanted.

Her paws flexed, toes spreading and joints clicking. Better.

"What do you do?" Eurydome asked, adding with a little more humour-- "Did Aquarian make you just to feed him?"

@Dragon

Dragon hauled himself along, noting with approving gratitude the slowed pace of the centaur-creature. His limp quickly became clear, the twisted and scarred hind limb withered and half-dragged as he walked. The knots of scar tissue criss-crossing his back, hips and head didn't do much to improve his appearance, but at least those didn't slow him down. He could have flown, but that might have seemed rude, and the walk wasn't that far.

"He speaks to us," Dragon answered, conversationally, as they walked. "But there have been times he has almost eaten us, too!" Who the "us" might be was not immediately made apparent. When Eurydome hauled herself up onto a set of roots and offered down a hand, he eyed it for a moment.

"I have only my jaws," he said bluntly--not a good idea. They would crush bone easily, and while he was unsure how much Eurydome could lift, he was pretty damn sure that his weight was over that limit. He hauled himself up more slowly, limb over limb, but given his immense strength he was actually fairly good at climbing. His bulk slithered up the roots, gripping and pulling until he was up beside her; and then he lowered himself down, huffing as he relaxed against the wood.

"I do not know why he made us," Dragon said--he still regularly claimed that Aquarian was his father, and so he didn't challenge his actual source. "But when I was very young, he captured some of us, and we fought him. He told us that he had been betrayed by Master Nemean, and that if we served him, he would protect us. And he has shared what wisdom he holds, since then." "Wisdom" was... a generous term, but Dragon did not say as much.

"As for what we do? -What I do--you meant me," he amended. And then explained, "I do not live alone in Cetus. There are a number of us, here; we call ourselves the Children of Rot. As to what we do--we survive. At times the Masters request our aid. Sometimes we provide it," he went on. "So far, they have not really threatened us."

He knew that Farina wanted help--with her lover, Artio--but he didn't yet know the details; so he didn't have much to provide, on that front. He studied Eurydome for a moment.

"I am very old, but I know that I have never seen you before," he remarked. But she was clearly aged, unless she had fought a great deal in a short amount of time; the scar tissue that littered her hide easily rivalled his own. "May I ask where you live? What it is that you do?" he asked.

Conversation, and all that.

@Eurydome

It should be noted that Eurydome didn't care about getting bitten-- she had no idea how powerful Dragon's jaws were, that he could quite easily tear off her limbs --but she didn't pry the situation nor did she try to touch Dragon without his permission. She leant back against the tree-trunk and watched the alligator slowly ascend.

"Not bad," she said. "I didn't take you as a climber." He was slow, sure-- if he tried to pull that off in the arena he would be torn apart in seconds, but anyone with a limp and ungodly amount of bulk being able to slither up onto the roots was a good climber in her books.

Her arms stretched idly up behind her, listening. She hadn't met Aquarian-- only heard stories involving the little sprite Nemean leading gembound into his maw for fun. She hadn't ever imagined him as particularly... active, however. It didn't seem like he did anything but act as a glorified garbage disposal. "What kind of wisdom does he have?" Eurydome asked with some lingering amusement.

"I live in Orion," the gladiator went on, and there was a little bristle of pride as she went on. "I was created for the Arena. Entertained all kinds of Masters and Overseers and even Hands, you wouldn't believe." She was bragging, but it wasn't entirely over-exaggerated. Even beyond the boasting her passion was clear -- Eurydome loved being released into the coliseum. She adored every eye, every cheer, every splatter of blood.

And maybe that brief glimpse of passion is why she suddenly seemed to deflate with her next sentence. "It's very quiet, now," she said. "Before I fell asleep-- before the dark --there was so much life here. Now it's just... empty."

A long huff left the gladiator's chest, and one massive forelimb slowly folded over the other on top of the root, tail lazily flapping at the surface of the murky water. Then, she was moving on-- continuing conversation, and all that.

"Sounds like you're being trained for the Trials," she offered. She would have loved to go-- running in the desert, surviving, fighting-- what more could you want? "Have you been taken into Hydra yet?"

@Dragon

Dragon would've grinned at Eurydome's first question, had he any lips. As it was, his tone did hold clear humor as he rested himself on the branches and answered her. "A question that cuts to the heart of the matter! His wisdom is usually loud, and mostly complaining," Dragon paused, giving a brief huff of amusement. "But he tells us things about the old era, his era, advice that will keep us alive." I hope.

He fell silent as she spoke again, telling him of the Arena, the Masters and the Hands. Dragon was puzzled: he knew nothing of an arena, of the Deathmatch, but it occurred to him that there was one place he'd seen that was similar to the mind's eye image that his imagination conjured up at the term. He pondered this as she went on, asking about the Trials. He glanced at her sidelong.

"I do not know of an arena--unless you mean the ruins in Orion?" She had said she lived there, after all. Dragon, now, got the first inklings of realization: if she had been made for that arena, and then "fell asleep before the dark," she might be as old as the Masters themselves. He eyed her sidelong, with curiosity. "Hydra-? No, I find that a foolish risk," he answered, easygoing, and his words might have made it clear to her now that things had changed. The Trials, voluntary-? "One of my children is a champion! Twice," he added, for though he found it a stupid risk, himself, he couldn't help but be proud of those children that had pressed in and won. Imp, for all his selfish antics, had done it for Dragon: to bring back information.

Mostly. Part of it, even Dragon knew, was just the hybrid's daredevil nature and swollen ego.

"...Tell me," Dragon asked, turning with the soft scrape of claws on bark to more directly face Eurydome. Again he was examining her scars, but now with that idea in mind: "Are you from--were you created in!--the era before our own? When the ruins were not ruins, yet?"

Eagerness flickered in him, a rare thing in his staid and stoic life of "drifting in the swamp." If she were that old, and not a Master, perhaps he could ask her a few things--get her opinions, even, on how things had changed. It was the same sort of wisdom he sometimes asked of his "father," though he imagined--hoped!--that Eurydome would screech a little less than he.

@Eurydome