a little dragon hunting! anyone can join! Blight is friendly!

The plague dragon was, for once, hunting outside Leo. It helped that it was night: Pegasus was plunged into darkness, the dimmed orb-lights providing far less light to hunt by. For Blight, that was mostly a good thing. He preferred dimmer light, even though it made the glow of his eyes stand out more--prey rarely looked up, anyway. It meant they wouldn't see his shadow criss-crossing the plains.

Normally he just ate fish, dipping into the bay around Dread's sea stack home and bringing up enough, sometimes, for the both of them (not that the other dragon didn't hunt for himself, too). But he felt like a change, today, so he swept along, tattered wings thudding softly at the air now and again to keep him aloft as he searched for something a little more substantial.

When at last he spotted movement far below he swept lower, wings half-folding, narrowing in on his prey. Cave deer, he thought--and not the ludicrously large kind. He wasn't about to tackle them. These were a far more manageable size--and as long as he startle them toward the treeline too soon, they looked like an easy meal.

He had to get low--he didn't want to infect all the deer, just one. Blight wasn't a cruel creature. The idea of a bunch of prey Lessers roaming into the trees to slowly die was not at all his intent--just one, and quick enough to be... relatively merciful.

But that meant he had to get quite close. He steadied out into a near-silent soar just above the ground, balancing with little tremors of wings and tail, his focus razor-sharp on the hindmost creature. From here he could see the glint of brown fur, the shine on short, blunt antlers-... He opened his jaw, inhaling, and gathered his magic.

Whatever happened, it was not his intention: anyone watching would see the dark silhouette of a dragon against Pegasus's night 'sky' dip low, then suddenly bank off-course, faltering and then abruptly thudding down in a skidding tear of grass and plume of dirt.

"HELL!" came a startled, coughing cry--and the cave deer scattered off ahead as the grounded dragon, choking and wheezing, struggled to gather himself.

He could already feel sickness tugging at his gut--he'd need to fix that, quick. It wasn't all that hard, for him--unless he messed up a few more times, winding up too sick to fix it.

That would be awful.

ooc note: ehh screw it this thread date technically only overlaps with potential chrysalis timing by like, three days? so i'm just gonna toss styg in

Stygian is—and would always be—a creature of the night. He's fine with existing during daylight hours, to be fair, though caves forbid he actually has to be up around the time when the orblight shines high in the sky.

No, he'd much rather be hunting under cover of darkness; nothing more than a vague shape in the night as the light recedes and he navigates purely on sound alone, chirping in the back of his throat to listen to the shape of the trees he flies between, the foliage rustling in night's breeze.

And then he hears a sound that isn't like a tree at all. A startled cry—a yelp, even, a Gembound's cry—and then the shape of something very big and very heavy crashing into the dirt, kicking up leaves and splintering branches beneath its weight.

Stygian lands on a nearby branch and hangs there, ears pricked, wondering if he should approach. On one wing, he's a distance hunter, and he's found that not approaching creatures many times larger than him is a good way to stay intact and whole.

On the other wing... well, that didn't sound like any Lesser he knows of. And, sure, he's a bit asocial, but he's not going to leave some poor 'Bound in the dirt just because they sounded bigger than him.

...also, he's a little curious over what dropped the Gembound in the first place.

It's a curiosity that overrides whatever small fear he might have of the unknown and sets him to flying again, chirping high-pitched once more to duck and dart between the various branches and twigs until he's out past the treeline and into the night air; and then closer, until his echolocation reaches the great, curving shape of whoever just took a tumble, lying in a rut of fresh-carved dirt.

He doesn't try to land, yet, but rather circles a couple feet above the downed... Gembound. He's honestly not certain what he is, other than the great shapes of leathery wings like his and a spined, reptilian face most certainly not like his.

He drops his voice an octave or so down from 'seeing' to 'speaking' and calls down, "Hey! You alright?"

@Blight

that's FINE clearly this thread takes place 3 days 'later'-

Blight was just gathering his magic to try and mend himself when a voice called out from above--and it surprised him so strongly that it was like a blow to the back. He jolted, blinking and twisting his serpentine neck around to peer upward.

It took him a moment to actually spot the far, far smaller shape above, and he opened his mouth to reply--before devolving into another coughing fit. He raised one wing, as one might raise a hand to ask for just a moment...

A soft surge of more beneficial bacteria flooded his system, and he shook himself, tattered fins rattling like bones at his back, as the cough at last subsided.

"Hey! Sorry. Didn't mean to-" and here he looked around. Was he interrupting, bothering? "...Startle you, or anything," he settled on, rocking back on his haunches with a draconic grimace. "You can come down. I'm Blight, I'm not going to bite you or anything!" ...Repetitive, but oh well.

A moment later, he was blinking again, ancient memories flooding back. My hatching. Is that-

"...Umbra?" he asked, staring up, utter shock in his voice. He gave no indication as to what this meant, though someone might reasonably guess it was a name given the followup of "Is that you?"

It had been many, many cycles since he'd seen the bat named Umbra. And though she'd been a bit larger, and her face was quite different, time had a way of fading memories away--plus, it was pitch dark, and the bat was practically invisible against the 'sky.'

@Stygian

Is he alright? Stygian can't decide. He certainly seems to hear him calling down from above, but he seems to be having trouble responding. A coughing fit wracks his body and it's concerning enough that Stygian actually dips a little lower, circling warily around the dragon as a vulture might, if vultures tended to worry about one's health.

A few more coughs and the dragon seems to find his voice, at least. Stygian would shrug good-naturedly at the words if he wasn't currently using his wings to fly. And the reassurance is… nice, he guesses? A part of him kind of resents the implication that he might be wary of this Gembound, (a part of him that remembers dark tunnels, an altar, the idea of strength burned into him, dripping) but he ignores it. Not Blight's—as he introduces himself as—fault that he's rather large and predator-shaped, eyes gleaming sharply in the darkness. He can actually kind of respect it. Must be one hell of a hunter when he isn't coughing.

He's circling to land, trying to find a good spot that won't make it awkward to speak, when Blight says something else. A… name. A name that isn't his.

He blinks as he touches down on a particular pile of dirt that's been dug up by Blight's rough landing, settling his wings beneath him.

"...never heard of an 'Umbra'," he says, head tilted. Frankly, he's never met anyone shaped enough like him to mistake him for whoever this 'Umbra' is. The closest thing he's found are the cave bats, and those are more easy meals (the smaller ones, anyhow) than fellow kin. "I'm, uh. Stygian."

But now he's curious. He hasn't met anyone like him, ever. And it's not like he's discontent with that, creatures in the caves come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, but… it would be nice to… compare.

"Who's Umbra?" he asks.

@Blight

...Not Umbra.

Blight squinted, then took a breath and leaned back a little in surprise. This one did look different, and up close he could see--and hear--that this was a wholly different creature. "Oh! Nice to meet you, Stygian," he said, brain shifting to polite autopilot for a moment. "That's a cool name," he added, a blank blurt of a statement.

He blinked.

"Oh, ahh--Umbra was someone I met when I was very young. She looked a lot like you, but had a different... um, face." That hung in the air for a moment because, truth be told, Blight couldn't quite figure out what was going on with Stygian's face. Was it... okay? Were those old injuries--would it be polite to imply, or mention, all the weird folds and pointy shapes?!

He hastily cleared his throat. "She was half dragon and half rat! Is that what you are? We have the same wings," he added cheerfully, lifting one up and waggling it in an enormous plume of dust and air. It was a little tattered, and a different color, but yes, it was a leathery wing. So... somewhat similar, at least.

"Anyway, all that coughing was--just my magic messing up. Happens," he added, again apologetic. "It's sickness, and I use it to hunt deer, sometimes, and I just made myself sick. You're safe though," he hastened to assure the bat. "I, uh, fixed it now."

And judging by the lack of coughing, he had.

@Stygian

If there's anything that's unfamiliar to Stygian, it's compliments. His lifestyle is not particularly a… compliment-heavy kind, one could say. Most nights he's on his own, anyway. He soars through the sky and catches birds on the wing and that's enough for him. This politeness, it's… unexpected.

"...thanks," he can't help but say, bewildered. What is he supposed to say to that? 'Thanks, I had it when I was born'? Truth be told, he doesn't even know if there's a particular meaning to the word. It's just him. It's just his name, that's all.

Well. At least the words are nice.

"Huh," he says as Blight explains who, exactly, Umbra is. That explains things, although he wonders why their paths have never crossed before. Then again, Stygian is hardly the social type. Would be easy for him to miss some random Gembound wandering around on the other side of the caves. But maybe he should go looking, sometime…

Another bewildered blink as Blight continues on to mention what Umbra was. Half rat, half dragon? He certainly doesn't feel like a dragon. What's a dragon? he would have asked, if the answer wasn't blindingly obvious. Blight is a dragon. They certainly do have the same wings.

Stygian spreads one of his wings, glancing at it sidelong in idle thought. He hasn't given much thought to what he is, either. It's always been much more important to him that he knows who he is, and what he does, and those two are easy enough. He's a hunter. He's always been.

"Could be," he says, after a long few moments of deliberation. "Always thought I looked like some of the lessers. There's a kind out there that've got wings like us, too." Then again, a few of those lessers looked rather like rats with wings themselves. Maybe Blight's onto something.

He tilts his head. "Your magic is sickness?" Eerie. Stygian's never been sick before—really, truly sick—but he's seen, occasionally, lessers who were. Lessers who acted strangely, or otherwise off, lessers who the rest of their pack abandoned; lessers who he spent time putting out of their misery, occasionally, for the sharp thrill of the hunt, but never bothered to eat. Something instinctive in him told him it would have been a bad idea to.

He nods approvingly. Fear, he's learned, comes from power. Anything to be feared so deeply as to trip his own instincts has a power of its own. "Never thought you could use sickness to hunt. Smart. Means you can keep your distance, yeah?"

Another subtle nod, this one partially to himself. "My magic's lightning. Fast. I use it to take down prey myself." With the slight twist of a wing, he calls on his stone to demonstrate. He's always been fairly physical when it comes to directing the magic, a flap of the wing here, a tilt of a talon there. It's what he understands best: what he can feel, what he can hear, what he can see.

The electricity—his lifeblood—comes at his call. From stone to wing, the lightning crackles, buzzing sharply against his skin. It's the feel of it that he always loves the best; that and the sound, the vast crack! of lightning that for a moment illuminates the shape of the world, like for a moment he can see it all.

This isn't cause for that, though. No, these are just simple sparks dancing on the fur, enough to light his form sharply red against the dark night.

@Blight

"Oh yeah! The bats?"

Leave it to Blight to know the name 'bats' but not, somehow, apply it to the two actual bats he'd met, one of whom he was speaking to right this very moment. "Maybe bats are half dragon, half rat," he mused. He seemed in no hurry to rejoin the hunt, instead eyeing the soft spark and crackle of red electricity.

His ghostlight eyes widened.

"Oh, wow. I don't think I've ever seen that, before. It's like a tiny storm, in your fur!" He sounded genuinely impressed, because he was impressed. "I could see that being really useful. Sickness... Well, it can take a bit. Which is inconvenient but also not always..." He grimaced, looking off into the dark, trying to think of a decent word. "...Nice," was what he settled on, with a little shrug.

He looked back to Stygian. "So you hunt, too? What do you eat? I was out for dinner; maybe we could hunt together?"

@Stygian

Bats—that was the word. He had it somewhere in the back of his mind, but—well, Stygian's simply not the type to speculate about prey. The most important thing to him about the leather-winged lessers in his mind was that they were one of the few animals capable of noticing his echolocation, which made hunting them a bit of a bitch. He tended to stick to birds for that reason.

Still, the theory that Blight brings up is… interesting. Easier to hunt prey if you know more about it, right? And a small part of him in the back of his mind thinks, well—hey, wouldn't it be interesting if he did have a dragon relative somewhere out there in the caves? It would be nice to know what he's made from. He didn't have a parent show up for himself when he hatched in Polaris.

A thought for later, because Blight's looking wide-eyed at him at the magic and he can't help but fold his wing back against his fur as the magic ends, a little bashful.

"Hey, thanks," he says. He didn't really anticipate the compliment; as much as he was going on about how good lightning was for hunting, well, it's one thing to talk up his favorite magic and another thing to be agreed with. Blight's—well—for someone who again, doesn't see other Gembound much, Blight is incredibly nice.

He composes himself and nods along subtly as Blight talks about his sickness. 'Nice' is not a word he thinks often, and certainly not something he thinks about on the topic of hunting, but… he guesses there's something to it. He enjoys the satisfaction of a clean kill, that single shot on prey that sends them toppling. Sickness would be more of a slow, crippling thing, wouldn't it? As patient as he likes to think he is, he thinks having to track a wounded animal for minutes on end, slowly circling it in the night sky, would be… trying.

The question of, so you hunt, too? is much more familiar to him than any compliment. He grins.

"Of course. It's fun," Stygian says. "I take birds, most of the time. Rats, if I can catch 'em out." He pauses, giving an amused huff. "Doubt rats and birds are anything but a snack for someone like you, right? I don't mind helping with something larger.

"I love a challenge."

@Blight

Blight tilted his head, inhaling deeply--a test--and exhaling. He gave himself a moment, testing out his body with light, careful movements of his limbs and focus on his lungs.

He felt fine. Which meant--he hoped--that his magic had worked. And that, in turn, meant that he was--should be, anyway--okay to hunt. He gave a small, but genuine, laugh at Stygian's mention of rats and birds being too small. "Yeah, snacks. I usually don't hunt birds, myself--not only are they too small but those feathers? And anyway, I normally live in Leo and my Dad-Dad's friends with birds. So I think he'd be upset," he explained. He did not explain what Dad-Dad meant, but rather, pushed right on, leaning back and flexing his wings a little more strongly.

"We can try! If I find something, is your magic strong enough to kill it? Something bigger? I was chasing deer--not those giant ones, they're dangerous, but just regular deer," he explained.

Blight turned, peering around at the dark treeline, struggling to call up his magicka again.

But again something seemed to just... go wrong.

Suddenly the world was blinding bright, but not in the good, clean way, not the way night vision normally worked; instead it was like a flashbang dropped in front of night vision goggles. The world went bright white, washed out, and Blight couldn't see a thing.

"Damn magic," he muttered, irritated. "I'm blind, for a minute. ...At least, I hope it's just a minute," he added, alarm threading through his voice. The ragged fins atop his neck rose a little, like hackles, at the prospect he might have done something more permanent.

"My magic's really not cooperating with me today."

@Stygian