The little mice were fast when they wanted to be. And they wanted to be fast nearly all of the time. Little skittering scared things, flitting from tree to tree, burrowing into the thick wet mud of the swamps or else scrambling up the iron-hard bark at the slightest provocation, out of reach. How it must feel to be a prey creature with the fear of the world burning in one's veins! Delightful.

A far cry from Tsetse's slinking, rotting body, all her weight sinking heavy into the bog from her position curled beneath a tree, tail tucked against her side. Corrupted water flows in thick waterfalls from her body to tarnish the swamp muck. She's positioned herself rather like a horse would, lying down in the shade with her back legs folded up and one set of front legs lying on the ground... the other pair raised raptor-like in front of her to hold an unfortunate jungle mouse between her hooves.

The mice were fast, when they wanted to be. But this one was simply not fast enough, and now it struggles in her grasp, wild eyes wide enough to show the whites as it claws aggressively for purchase. Her virus boils in its veins. She cannot wait to see it begin to foam at the mouth.

With her neon green eyes locked with razor focus on her little subject (victim), she would not notice if she had an audience. Not at first.

@Mossie

Mossie was entranced.

She wasn't sure how she'd found herself here, in this entrancing tangle of mists and mosses. It was filled with water just like her hatchland and the great salty place where she'd met her first companions, and the water felt so soothing against her fur, reminding her of simpler times.

But there was an undercurrent of tension in the chilly air. She scents something on the wind, sour and diseased. Curiousity pulls her paws forward, till she reaches a scene she's unable to comprehend.

A great rotting black beast towers over a tiny, struggling creature, watching it with intense fascination. Mossie cannot stifle her gasp.

@Tsetse

Eventually, there comes a point where any given captured creature just... stops struggling. Unable to find purchase, unable to find escape, its fight or flight instinct gives in to freeze, and it awaits death.

She has seen this same series of events play out many times before. This is not the first insignificant rodent she has killed with her plague magic, nor will it be the last. She considers, briefly, casting the threads of her magic out again, to speed it up, or else wielding new-found watery magic to drown the thing—

—but then she hears the tiniest of sounds. A little gasp which draws her attention away inexorably, sharp as it is through the perpetual sound of buzzing blackflies that's become her white noise.

The little sound belongs to a little creature; a cat, standing stock-still in the mud. Frozen. Her wide eyes and terrified expression betray her as sapient.

Tsetse's eyes lock onto her newfound spectator. For a long moment, she stares, appraising the little thing. Soft fur, tiny ears, painted spots. Her instincts first telling her to freeze, rather than flee. She likes it when they freeze up. Makes them easier to examine, to pick apart visually like so much carrion.

She hums approvingly to herself. She's always been fond of cats. Perhaps she'll indulge herself with conversation for a while, until this one inevitably decides to run. She might not even chase her down.

"Hello there," Tsetse says. Her voice echoes from everywhere and nowhere at once, her mouth not bothering to move; but the vents dotting the back of her neck shudder open and shut, click-click, to punctuate the word.

"I was just working on a little experiment," she continues, holding the jungle mouse in her hooves tighter for emphasis. "You're welcome to watch," she adds on, amused by the thought.

@Mossie

An internal war rages within Mossie. Consuming fear like the creep of inevitable frostbite tangled with burning curiousity piqued by the mention of watching, wondering about the rotting stranger, wondering about the experiment.

Of course, the latter wins out, as the saying goes.

She scrambles forward, coming as close as she dares to the rotting one. The sour sick smell intensifies, cloying and unpleasant, but she powers through and unleashes a stream of questions. If she's getting answers, she's getting a lot of them. All The Answers. So Many. Hopefully all creatures weren't like Manticore and Spinnaker who didn't seem to know a tail from a talon.

"This is so cool," she starts. "What's that creature? What's an experiment? Why're you built like that?
@Tsetse

It is to Tsetse's great surprise when, instead of fleeing like a startled prey animal or else remaining locked in place, the cat actually comes closer. Not enough to touch, of course—very, very few get close enough to a beast like her to touch—but close enough. Far closer than she had otherwise expected.

The cat's eyes are wide and curious even as her ears flick back against her skull. So many questions, despite her hesitance! So much wondering, so much she wants to know about the world!

Tsetse finds it is unexpectedly lovely. She can see a bit of herself in the cat, that probing curiosity. The thought to unravel things to find something new inside.

Perhaps she will indulge this visitor of hers a little further. After all, she even finds her experiments interesting. She can't help but be flattered by that.

"Thank you," she starts, her voice warmer now. "This little thing? This is one of the lesser mice which inhabit the caves. Do you see the stripe along its side? Do you see how it glows?" She'd turn it in her hooves to show the cat better, but the mice are fast, fleeting things and that might open a window to let it actually escape. She could catch another, of course, but it's the principle of the thing.

"An experiment, ah... how do I define the word...?" She hums to herself, for a moment. How to define such a word without using other, more difficult words? To boil it down to its basics? "It is... something you do to find the answer to a question. I have seen these little mice scurrying in the underbrush before, but I have never seen them dead. Most corpses decay quite quickly into Oil, after all.

"Ah, but I'm rambling. My question, then, is this: does the mice's bioluminescence—their glow—stop after death?"

This could be important for a variety of reasons. If the a mouse's skin continues to glow after death, after all, the mouse could then be skinned to wear as a lovely glowing pelt. Tsetse has no such inclination, though. She's just curious, and she does so enjoy things dying slowly.

As for the last question. This is the one that Tsetse appreciates the most. It's just a few steps removed from her favorite pastime of splitting open animals to see what's inside. "I am 'built' this way, as you say, because I was created by another creature. My Master, Farina, created me..."

Here she hesitates slightly on the reasoning. Her true purpose, of course, is to kill the Master named Tamulus; a task which she has been planning for for quite some time, now. The destruction of a Master is not done easily. But that, of course, is a personal goal, and one she's certainly not going to spill to every cave-cat who comes wandering!

"...to bring death," she eventually decides on, each word coming with poorly-hidden joy at the thought. "Not to everyone, of course. Certainly not to you." Now, at least. Perhaps not for a while yet, if the cat continues being so interesting. "But yes, death. I was created to be a plague-bringer. To bring death silently. To pull the strings of destruction and see those I kill fall, one by one."

She can't help but chitter at the thought, the sound harsh and excited. Oh, how destruction sung sweet in the veins!

@Mossie

Mossie is silent and still at first save her tail, rapidly flicking back with excitement, as she processes the information.

She'd caught glimpses of the creatures with no light in their eyes during her travels. Had tried, and failed, to capture them to see if she could truly scramble the mind. She remembered the deer-thing that'd come within a whisker of her claws before darting away and bit back a snarl of frustration.

"Experiment," she repeats slowly. "That's so funky fresh . Imagine how much swag you'd radiate with a radiating hat..."

"I have some questions I'd like answered too. A bit back I felt this wave of magic washing over me,
and I think I learned how to reach into people's minds and make them wrong for a little. But I've never been able to find appropriate test subjects..."

But it is Tsetse's final answer that sparks the most questions.
"A...purpose? You were made for something?" She turns the concept around in her mind, and finds it pleasing. She'd been wandering, adrift, ever since her hatching that was ever so long ago and yet barely yesterday, floating in a sea of displaced memory and concerned looks and you're so much.

"How would I find a...Master?" she asks, almost timidly. "I want a purpose as noble and totally funky as yours. Ever since I woke I've been looking for knowledge, but there's something beyond that, isn't there?"

@Tsetse

Appropriate test subjects. What a delightful turn of phrase. Tsetse finds himself liking this little cat more and more.

And—that's an interesting description of her magic, too. A very interesting description. That sounds almost like the mind-magic she wields. This cat is not corrupted the same as her (not yet, anyway), and yet…?

Hm. Perhaps that is an experiment for later. Testing their magics against each other to compare and contrast. From the sounds of things, she might even be willing. That would be lovely; it's always much easier to conduct experimentation when the test subject doesn't squirm.

But—that is what makes it fun.

You were made for something? the cat asks, pulling her back out of the sinking mire of chaos-fantasy her mind too often wandered lost in.

"Of course," Tsetse replies, thinking—You were not? Hm. She may have just found an oversight in her perceptions. She had simply assumed that all creatures were like her, called from their chrysalis for one purpose or another. To hear otherwise…

…why, what a poor lonely thing. To not have a purpose. Not even the purpose of destruction that chaos gave. Where did her joy come from?

And what interesting questions of purpose the cat asks. She mulls over the topic for a few moments, considering her words.

"My Master resides in the Eyes of Eridanus—the two large pools in the cave," Tsetse first answers. "I am also vaguely aware of Master Vargas, who heads the Chaos Forge. Though she's not currently aware of where in the caves said Forge resides. She's never had much reason to interact with that Master himself. She has her purpose. What use does she have for another?

"Knowledge… that is a good purpose in and of itself, is it not?" After all, how much of her chaos has been headed by the pursuit for such knowledge? "But I can see it in your eyes, little cat. You want more than that. Your ambition burns bright."

Back to the topic of purpose. It is a difficult question to answer, in the end. Perhaps that is why the cat struggles with it. "My purpose… it is a goal I work towards. It is a goal that is completed one day after the other, one step after the other—each death I cause, both a fulfillment and a continuation."

Abruptly, her gaze snaps back to the soft little thing between her hooves. Her magic flares hot in her veins; fever-bright inside her skull, the sensation of corrupted water pouring in waterfalls down her body almost too much.

The terrible sound of Blackflies buzzing fills the air, the bulk of the flies licking, biting at her skin now rising at the command of sickly chaos. They are a thick, dancing cloud, singing the song of plague. Singing the song of death.

It is not long before their bites pierce another's fur. The mouse in her hooves begins to twist and thrash once more, but not in an attempt to flee. No; she can see the foam beginning to pour out of its mouth, feel its claws scrabbling viciously against her hooves.

She loves this part. She loves how they foam; she loves how they thrash; she loves how, when the disease strikes and spreads through their veins, they too begin to claw wildly at the world around them. Insensate with her virus, all they know is destruction.

And destruction is the sweetest thing of all.

Slowly, her head turns back to face Mossie head-on. "It will die when I let it go," she informs her. "The disease turns the mind rabid, fills it with fear and anger in equal measures. It will attack anything that gets too close. And it will flee from water, terrified of it like one would be of a monster. So either it will die from the dehydration, or it will die from plunging its teeth into something too big for it to kill.

"Isn't it fascinating?" The littlest breath of laughter in her voice; her tail thumping against the polluted muck that has been pooling around her, amused.

She remembers that she was telling Mossie something; telling her about purpose, and she finds her thread of thought once more. "My purpose is in this: the destruction. The death. Each death fills me with such sweet joy!—because I exhult in it, yes, but because I know that with this I hone my magic and my art to better serve my Master, and one day fulfill the purpose she gave me.

"As for you...? You have not been made for a purpose, given it by a higher power. Perhaps I could give you a purpose, some quest or goal to reach. Certainly we seem the like-minded kind," she compliments. "But it is my opinion that whatever goal you find, in the end, must bring you a kind of raw, instinctive joy. The kind of joy that you could simply laugh for."

A lull in the conversation, as once again her attention slips and she turns back to the mouse between her hooves.

"And for now," she says after a moment. "You are more than welcome to accompany me while I experiment. Or perhaps we may look into yours? The magic you described sounds... fascinating.

"In fact, it sounds quite like a magic of mine."

@Mossie

Mossie’s tail flicks back and forth with the force of so much barely restrained excitement and curiousity it’s a wonder it doesn’t rip free from her back.

Does everyone have a purpose except me? Am I just weird? Or was I given the freedom to seek my own, for whatever reason?

“Eridanus,” she said, testing the word out. She’d heard of it in her travels, though she’d never ventured there herself. Perhaps she should…

“Knowledge is fantastic, of course,” she chirped. “Every new thing I learn about this world brings me such joy, even if my friends can’t see the simple joy of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. But you’re right. I want to leave my mark on these caves. I want to enlighten everyone. I want to shake things up so much that even if one day my adventuring catches up with me everyone will know my name.” She huffed in frustration, pinning her ears flat against her head. “But I’m so small, and I don’t know nearly enough, and not even my friends take me seriously!”

Maybe if I could seek some higher power, someone who Knows like you…

She’d heard whispers of some vague collecting entity, one that knew things about the mightiest creatures. But only now, after hearing about the Masters Tsetse described, does she begin to put two and two together.

She listens, enraptured, to Tsetse’s description of the foaming death. “Illness is such a fascinating thing,” she whispers. “An equalizer, almost. Even the mightiest of beasts can be felled by it. Maybe my purpose is wielding sickness, like you..?”
As she says it, she knows it feels right, but it’s only a piece in a wider puzzle.

When Tsetse mentions experimenting , Mossie lights up. “Finally,” she whispers. “None of my friends would let me…”

Get a bit silly with it.

“I’d love to,” she said. “Probably won’t work, because I know this particular magic is quite fickle. But there’s no harm in trying…”

(And, of course, the one time she says that she pulls it off, if only barely. Perhaps the secret to magic is humility.)

Isn't it odd? Tsetse has never sparked joy in someone before. Always—always fear, rage, disgust, or a mixture of all three. She revels in it. She loves to see the whites of the eyes.

But as she looks down at the cat with her tail swishing this way and that, almost like the way Tsetse rattles her own tail when she's amused, she can't help the faintest glimmer of a smile.

It is not a nice smile. It is a sharp smile, a smile made for catching birds and other little creatures between the teeth. It is a smile that drips with Oil, as so much of her does.

But it is a smile, nonetheless; a small, pleased thing that shows as she listens to the cat.

"Smallness is not a flaw," Tsetse tells her. "Certainly I and the others in my clutch were shaped to be towering things. But anything can be weak if it is stupid or unlucky enough. Consider the jungle mouse: a tiny, scurrying thing—but quick and agile in such a way that it makes it difficult for creatures such as I to grab it."

"Consider, also, that even a rat may bite." Considering the rabid, clawing thing that is held between Tsetse's hooves at the moment, it makes a fine example of the danger that even the smallest thing could pose.

Oh, but Tsetse thinks she already understands. She understands full well, if her words about illness are anything to go by. "Precisely. Now you see why I was created as a plaguebringer: because even the largest beast may be felled by the smallest bite from a tiny fly—like mine."

The cat will make a fine plaguebringer herself, if she so chooses. Oh, but Tsetse would love to see the kind of destruction an ambitious little thing like herself would bring one day.

Tsetse huffs, amused, when the cat mentions her precious friends restraining her from experimenting. They, too, must fear what she can do. Why else would they stop her?

She would have said something about nothing can stop you if you will it—but the cat works her magic, and Tsetse is suddenly quite distracted.

She is used to hallucinations. Of course she is; she is a beast of chaos, and the magic she wields only makes that moreso. She has seen so many visions of death, destruction, war, beasts like herself destroying each other for sweet destruction's sake. For chaos. Even now, her magic whispers in the back of her mind of finding the nearest body of water and tossing herself into it, staying until she drowns. Even now, the rat she holds in her hooves is grinning at her, whispering those same things.

But there is a difference, she finds, between chaos-magic and the common gem-magic. There is power there too, she knows from Madhukar—but this is a different kind of power than even the lightning that cat wielded.

It is… dare she say, pleasant. A kind of full-body buzz like being suspended in warm water; a floaty kind of head rush, so that even her constantly racing heart slows and the feverish intensity of her body heat seems far away and distant.

The spell combines with her chaos-visions in the most interesting way: suddenly, she is not in the swamp, but elsewhere. A distant, war-stained battlefield, where the ceiling above is pitch-black and so vast she could almost say it was not there at all. There is blood-scent in her nose, the howling of warriors hell-bent on clawing each others' guts out in her ears. They are all foaming at the mouth, in the very same way her plague induces. Their eyes are wild and they are bloodied and it brings so much joy for Tsetse to see. It thrills the instincts, calms the heart—she is the storm and the eye at once, looking out at a mess of her own creation, of a war that she could have caused.

Her tail rattles with excitement as she thumps it against the slick mud of the swamp, thump-thump. The pits of her eyes are distant, far-away, and she grins.

"What an excellent magic," she speaks over the din of plague-war, assuming blindly that the cat is still here and she has not left. She doubts she would have a reason to. "Oh, but—I have a similar magic, you must see—"

She is a bit more harried in this than she usually is, worried that her magic might fade before Tsetse gets the chance to share this joy with her. It might just misfire anyway, she is certainly distracted enough for it to, but she must try.

She needn't have worried. Even lost in the throes of such a delightful, thrilling vision, she can feel the toxic magic latch on, strong as a viper's bite.

Oh, Mossie would learn what her magic did, indeed.

@Mossie

The corroding touch of madness was a sweet thing to taste.

The vision's seized her in slavering jaws speckled with foam before she even had a chance to open her mouth and respond to Tsetse's wisdom, dragging her down into a raging river of corruption and chaos and destruction so overwhelming she's submerged. Buzzing euphoria lights through her from nose to tail-tip as she sees through Tsetse's eyes, revelling in the glory of chaos surging through her blood for the very first time.

The agonized screech of creatures being torn to bits and the gruesome wet crunch of fangs sinking into flesh and scraping against bone is the first thing Mossie hears; the acrid stench of iron and fear heady and intoxicating the first thing she smells. The vision slowly filters into focus, and she's greeted by the inexplicably lovely sight of creatures of all shapes and sizes slaughtering in the name of the foaming madness Tsetse wrought. The battlefield is littered with mangled wrecks of corpses , and still more creatures that should be corpses with the way their limbs are battered and blood pours from their copious wounds, but fight on nonetheless, driven by some purpose greater than themselves. Carrion birds circle the battlefield, cawing a grimly delighted song at the coming feast; blood bathes the floor and is scattered across the wall in patterns that seem almost purposeful, a profane painting.

"Holy fucking bingle," Mossie says, because really what else is there to say?

@Tsetse