This sight was one to behold, really: a child seemingly seeking comfort from their father—though it might look less endearing considering it was between two looming, grinning monsters; one of which with fresh tear tracks down its face.

Orthoclase-Alpha sat there for however long it needed to, shivering through its incomplete… catharsis? (Breakdown? Deconstruction of everything that it was?) It could have been seconds or minutes that it stared a hole through a hand that'd twitched, that'd flinched, that'd made to move away rather than forward as it'd grabbed it. Minutes since Alpha last took a somewhat steady breath, since it subject itself to the torrent of raw thought steamrolling all logical process. Minutes since the orthoclase first became fixated on the warmth and weight in its claws and almost… enamored with it.

It was something to focus on outside of its head.

But, the keyword was almost: putrescent eyes inevitably flickered up, glancing up at Vargas, so close that it swore it could feel his breath fanning down its neck, and cast themselves away. With a shuddering gasp, the spell was broken and it relinquished its hold altogether. Talons tossed away his arm like its hand was the one that approached burning. As soon as its six thumbs met the earth again, it staggered backward one, two, three, four paces, where it collapsed back on its haunches once again.

Out of reach, and— and— and—

What now? Simply sit there, zipping itself back up again where the seams had burst? Act as if that marvelous display hadn't just happened? It could hardly bear the thought of just… talking after that—or not unprompted, at least.

Its snout tipped toward distant Pegasus at large, body angling for escape. Too much to take in, too much already to process, riled up as it was. The static snow blitzed across the backs of its retinas in full force, and it squinted again.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

It held--held--and then broke, skittering back and away. Retreating, though not... fleeing, not entirely. Vargas only slowly placed his forelimb back down, having held carefully still throughout its few minutes of hazy-eyed panic.

He struggled to bind the threads of the familiar to the abyss of the unknown. He could read others. He could Oversee, he could gauge them and he could judge them. But it was Judge with a capital J, the sort that held a sentencing close upon its heels.

Empathy came harder.

Sympathy, not at all; or if it was there, it was small enough to be nearly nonexistent.

But that did not mean that Vargas wasn't, in this moment, to its spawn, at least benevolent.

This, as it turned out? This was hard.

He could, with his many Judging eyes, see that Orthoclase-Alpha was on the verge of flight. That its instincts were kicked into high gear, its adrenaline running wild, its thoughts and emotions chaotic. The Judge in him deemed it shattered, near-broken; the Overseer saw it for what it was. What to do about it still eluded him. Overseer Vargas had known what to do, but that had been a death sentence. Fixing such things was a task to which he was uniquely unsuited.

"Orthoclase-Alpha?" he tried, quiet, keeping to steady and calm. "Close your eyes. Stop thinking, for a moment, and feel. I won't come closer," he assured, and paused a moment.

"There is dirt under your claws--do you feel it? There is light on your skin. There is fresh air. That is all that there is--there is nothing here to harm you. Your thoughts cannot harm you."

And again he knew not whether his words would be a whip or a brace, a poison or a healing balm. I could try another pun, he thought, but now he was wary of what that might do.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

One could almost hear the sound of a zipper, cinching its way around the jagged teeth that lined Alpha's jaws. Not an ounce of air could escape those pearly whites; and that was in spite of the roiling heat under its chitin, the fever chills shuddering through its body and sending its quills a-rattling.

Words filtered through the static swarm, hazy and approaching incoherence: "... —eyes. Stop thinking, for ... feel." The television snow warped, pixels disorienting themselves into waves that pulsated with the pins and needles of claws that'd fallen asleep.

Sure, it could feel dirt and light and air, but that was normal for any given day—all that stood out here was the presence of dirt instead of hard, smooth stone. It was hardly of any note as Alpha curled its claws into the subtrate, like it were a tree rooting itself to the spot. Gnarled fists unintentionally kneaded at it as its weight rocked from side to side and it tried, once again, to stand and pace.

Only to fall backward once again after a few sidelong paces.

A minute had passed by that point, and it had successfully managed to dry up its tear ducts and smooth away the chattering wobble of its jaws. Though its eyes retained that desperate sort of wild edge to them, the folds of skin along their lower lids were puffy, greyed with a year's worth of exhaustion settling in.

It wanted to say how little the act of feeling solid ground beneath it meant: but not to at even acknowledge how little anything seemed to help, and how much everything seemed to pile. How it had gone from always angry to always miserable by sublimation. It wanted to ask Vargas—

A shaky breath blustered from parting jaws. Its voice soured around the words, bitter-sounding and yet... desperate; "Wuh— what a-am I—, I to you?" The phrasing was a cruel imitation, was exactly the same as what it'd asked its spawn V-Zoisite-One. Nearly immediately, regret sank heavily into its gut.

It shrank in on itself, a dying star gone minuscule with the explosion of hydrogen; it hunched downward, as defensive and braced as it could be without lifting its forearms (or... much else, for that matter.)

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Well, this was hardly fair.

A loaded question, one with an answer Orthoclase-Alpha would not possibly like, and upon which its entire mental health and state likely hinged-?

Vargas huffed, and dropped to his haunches, steeling himself to answer.

To find an answer.

You ask a difficult question, Vargas thought, if only because the answer is always changing. But he didn't say as much: not aloud. Somehow, it was too close to "I don't know" and "I don't know" was not, he imagined, an answer that would please his spawn.

In so many things Vargas strove for honesty (even when hiding the greatest of possible truths from nearly everyone): but how could he honestly answer a question like this? Not when he didn't know the answer, and not when so many answers could destroy what he'd been trying to build, here? Could destroy Alpha, potentially, but is it truly that fragile? "I don't know" was not even honest, because he did, it was just...

...A long list.

Vargas sighed, and made this his answer.

"Many things. You are my spawn. The first of my creations after thousands upon thousands of years of life. You are... a core of the Forge. You are-" a failure of my own, my guilt, but I cannot say that because that single word alone would "a point of guilt, because I struck you and you clearly suffer. You are an enigma, because I have no idea how to aid you and nor, it seems, does anyone else. A worry, always at the back of my mind," he went on, and it held no real emotion in it: it wasn't a sobbing admission so much as quiet fact. "-'where is Orthoclase-Alpha,' 'has it returned to hiding somewhere in silence,' 'is it eating,' 'is it starving.' A concern and a puzzle. You are someone that I wish to protect. If I were prone to metaphor," he added, the faintest bite of humor entering his tone, "I would say that you were something precious, like pretty glass, that I cannot actually hold close because if I touch it, it will shatter. You are obviously afraid of me, though you should not be, not now." Not anymore.

He eyed Orthoclase-Alpha closely, thinking.

"You are linked to me; I hesitate to call any of you my children, or family. Perhaps in another lifetime, another place, but not here." Too much liability. He'd said, so often, that family and bonds were a weakness. What he thought most of them had misunderstood was the word "weakness" in that phrase: it did not make one weak. It provided a point that others could exploit; it put the 'family' and the 'friends' at risk for those who would do the target harm. "I do care for you." In my own way. "I simply want you to be happy." As unlikely as that is. "I wanted you to find your own name; your own self." And it seems that you cannot.

He paused a moment, eyeing Alpha.

"Tell me, then; what am I to you?"

It was a simple question, one not loaded with emotion because unlike the broken Orthoclase, Vargas was not really saddled with such things. He cared, but it wasn't a deep and painful love, not like others felt. I wasn't made for it, he'd said, though Lord Dhracia had instructed him to transcend that fact. Demanded it, in truth. It was care; he would protect Alpha fiercely were it attacked. But what Zoisite felt, what Alpha felt--he did not.

A simple question, then, but he asked it nonetheless, and somehow... he almost feared the answer.

If Alpha managed one.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

It knew the weight of the question—heavy as a ten foot wide ball of iron and steel, suspended in the air by an impossibly thick chain. The links would've groaned in the contemplative silence between them. They'd have groaned with the percussive beat of leaves shifting and water tumbling over the banks as their backing.

Alpha knew what to prepare for. It knew what could come of such a question. But, as much as it dreaded the answer, it was… ready for it.

Or, so it thought.

There was a breathless sort of feeling where its heart jackhammered against its ribs. Squeezing the air out of its lungs in the persistent wailing of muscle on bone. A stuttering wheeze caught and strangled in its throat for fear of reacting, of interrupting. Diaphonous wings scraped at its stomach, eliciting yet another peal of nausea that had it gulping.

"A point of guilt." "... wish to protect." Someone. "... care for…" "I simply want you to be happy." "I wanted you to find your own name; your own self." My own self.

It did not like its own self—and so it hid from it as much as it could. But, with every passing day, cycle, year, experience… it grew harder and harder to ignore the clear disconnect between want and need, the necessity of creature comfort and of something to remind it that was more than just a so-called "wild animal". It thought so much more than any Lesser could. It thought and felt so much more than it could ever bring itself to let on.

Vargas didn't dare to ascribe the titles of children and family, but… he had implied enough. Alpha couldn't breathe the sigh of relief that it'd hoped for.

Then came the reversal. "What am I to you?"

A heady pause settled as the orthoclase stared, still quivering where it sat, limbs seemingly not quite enough to keep it upright—though it somehow managed anyways, locking its joints despite the soreness to come.

My Master could be an all-encapsulating answer, despite the tangled mass of complexity that came with even that. He'd not always been quite that, and it knew, at least, that its loyalty did not lie in the title alone nor in the purpose that the title served. Vargas had been known as an Overseer first, and no other Master sparked that unflinching determination—it hardly cared to remember their names, their shapes. It… did not care much for the Forge in theory either, as much as it was "a core" of its foundations.

So, why did it always come crawling back?

"Y-you're… familiar," Orthoclase-Alpha began, "but, I… you're—" Too pitchy, too unsteady. It cleared its throat. "You're m-my Master. Th-the only one that—" Should I stop there— "I t-trust you." Though it seemed unbelievably contrary to all its actions. "Wh-when you…— even i-if I w-wanted to, to…" Putrid eyes pinched upward, squinting at the stinging memory between them. A shaking claw reached to touch the long-scarred flesh of its forehead. "Even if I wanted to kill y-you, I… knew you had, had, h-had your rea-reasons." Is that far enough in the past that I can even admit it? "Y-you're still m-my… creator. L-life-giver."

Desert Rose had once told it that Vargas could be called a father; but—for the same reasons it had recoiled when Zoisite confessed to thinking of it as mom and confessed to loving—it balked at the thought of feeling that word on its tongue.

"You're— you're d-different t-to me, too." Just like everything else. Its claws settled back on the ground, tearing into sod as an idle act of unintentional self-comfort. "I— y-you— care a-about m— L-like—" It's voice crackled and faltered again, bile rising to intercept the next few syllables. "L-like Zoi—"

Ah, and away its ability to speak goes. Gone in the snip of amaranthine mandibles bleeding a gooey warmth.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

He found it hard to tell, as he watched and spoke, what it was thinking. How, moreso, it felt about his words. It seemed to be barely keeping upright, legs locked in place and quills rattling every so slightly. But aside from that, it gave no sign.

When he asked his question, it spoke and moved, and Vargas held his breath in silent surprise. It looked up, touched its head, and spoke, offering more words than he thought it'd ever managed all at once. And they were, unfortunately for him, almost heartwarming.

Familiar. Master. Creator. Life-giver. Different.

But most of all--worst of all? Best of all? Was that stammered, 'I t-trust you.' You do? Vargas thought, in fact nearly blurted. After all that? He nearly marveled over it, the idea that after all of this it didn't regard him with merely fear. He'd assumed so, all this time; assumed that he only terrified it, terrorized it. He'd only seen it shrink away, hide from him and choke on its own words--sometimes, even, on the very food he offered it. You trust me, he thought again, almost puzzled by the idea.

Almost belatedly he heard the 'even if I wanted to kill you,' and this gave him pause, and he pondered over it. A rare admission. A concerning one. Yet--wasn't anger preferable to fear?

The half-mention of Zoisite jarred him from his thoughts, and he nodded just a little. "V-Zoisite-One is... I like it; it is a good creature. A good... well, grand-spawn, I suppose. It cares, yes. Some of us... bond, more than others. I pity that it seeks perhaps more of a bond than some of us are capable of providing." Oh so carefully phrased. "I am... pleased that you trust me. I did not know that you did." He could have gone deeper into detail--assured it that yes, he'd had his reasons but--it knew that, and dwelling on that now seemed unwise. "But yes. I do care about you. And about the Zoisite and you are right; you are both different to me. You are of my magic," he added, quiet. And he meant more than merely magic. They'd come from him. They were his spawn, his grandspawn; they were 'blood,' or as close as the caves could offer.

"I will continue to try and earn your trust." It was a simple enough statement on the surface, though it had no real practical application. He always tried to be honest, and fair. It was all he could continue to do--that, and sit here with his half-broken spawn, and hope that somehow mere words could piece its wounded carapace back together.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Zoisite.

"I pity that it seeks perhaps more of a bond—" than I can manage.

Pity was an interesting word, given that the rest was spoken as if… there were nothing wrong with wanting. Yearning after the unattainable. As if Zoisite was not quite as imperfect or a mistake as the orthoclase thought it'd unintentionally made them to be. As if the two of them were anything worth caring about past their own random designs' efficacy.

Someone. My own self. Two things that stood in sharp contrast despite being so similar; oil and water; orthoclase and zoisite.

"I will continue to try and earn your trust."

It merely nodded, slow enough that it didn't send itself stumbling with the dizzy spell it'd induce.

It was… tired. Yet, at some point between the topics of Zoisite and trust, it'd stopped shivering. It merely slouched, eyes still squinting upward, slowly blinking, expectant.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

And he was... wondering, again.

Wondering about the winged Master and his machinations. Wondering about rebellions and hidden seeds. About the things a Master could do, unseen--things that he had done--and their invisible repercussions.

He couldn't tell Orthoclase-Alpha about those. Not that he couldn't trust it with a small secret--but that it would imagine itself a failure. That it would, like he, be haunted by the fear that someone might look at Alpha, at the Zoisite, at Khavur--and realize.

He took a breath, and sought another way to mention these things, another way to ask. "Tell me something: do you feel the need for such bonds, the way Zoisite seems to? Do you ever feel such things as mercy, as love or urges toward kindness?" He glanced to it. "There is no right or wrong answer; but I want the truth, if you will give it."

In truth, the reply it gave might not have mattered so much. Vargas wasn't sure--not yet. He had to find some link, a tether--not for Alpha to himself, but from Alpha to the information he wanted to impart. Information that perhaps Alpha might require. If... he was right in his suspicions.

There was no way to know, not for sure. Not until it spoke.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

"Do you feel the need for such bonds?" "Do you ever such things as mercy, as love or urges toward kindness?"

Orthoclase-Alpha shook its head no, purely on honed reflex; it needed nothing like that, that much it knew, had taught itself— … except.

Its snout drifted downward, eyes squinting in a contemplative half-frown. A look of consternation revealing just how not confident in the answer it was.

Somewhere, deep in its core, was that faint nostalgia for older days—but not only for the simplicity of them. The sensation of bodies pressed together in a hole of their own making, tiny paws kneading out the goosebumps along its neck. Of just exploring and learning on one's own without remorse. At some point, that'd become something it could not spare. Perhaps with the splitting of the race as it pulled far ahead.

It was… difficult to think on that and discern the reasoning why in a timely manner (it'd already felt the seconds, maybe minutes, pass by) so instead it forced a crackling "I don't know." At least that much was honest. It'd been… a long time since it last could consider either of those things in the context of itself.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas gave a little grunt of acknowledgment. He wasn't about to give a speech; to do so would extinguish the slow rapport he'd (hopefully) been building with his spawn. Little bits of words, enough for it to understand and not so much that might overwhelm it--that was the way, he thought.

But this still required clarification. And honesty.

"If you do, know that it is neither a weakness nor a failing." He said it because of the stumbles over Zoisite. Its fleeing. Truth be told, he didn't know if such fears even bothered the Orthoclase--but they'd troubled, he thought, both Khavur and some of his other spawn. "A fault of my own, I think, that they were included in some of you," anything but the truth, here; there was honesty but only in part, for the truth would get them all killed "but it is a fairly natural thing for most creatures to hold."

Imagine that. Natural behaviors in soldiers formed for chaos.

"If you hold troubles, they may be my fault, let me put it that way. The urges of a Chaos-born against those of a natural creature. Talk to me about anything that troubles you, Orthoclase-Alpha. If I cannot help you I will find someone who can, and you will not be punished."

There was more--there had to be more; a promise of a brighter future, an assurance as to his own intentions, even orders--the very structure Alpha craved. But he didn't want to layer on too much at once. Didn't want to overwhelm it, no.

So for now, he paused--and waited.

@Orthoclase-Alpha