This thread takes place directly after the battle for Canis.

He had waited until all was quiet again to slip after her. Once the warriors had left and the chrysalis were left strewn across the battlefield. He'd watched her leave in the midst of the fighting and had waited for his moment to follow. This was it.

In his apprehension, he'd forgotten Aati, left behind where he'd been watching. That was okay, he would find a new one soon after this, although as he made his way through over the bones and rocks, he realized that it might not be so simple a task. What had once been a dusty and dry cave, muted browns and gray, was now infested with white strands and blooming fungus. Webs creeping across every surface, almost crystalline in appearance. The few lessers that flitted across his path had eyes blank and white and the same mycelial growth that had fallen like snow from the dragon's wings consuming their body bit by bit.

Things had changed. Dramatically. And Anubis wasn't sure what it meant, for him and especially the caves.

He had not seen Giggle for a long time. Not since he was a child. But he knew that she knew...things. What things, he wasn't sure but surely she understood more then him. Perhaps she could explain what was happening here.

It would be a good starting point if this deemed interesting enough to research.

Approaching the place where he'd seen Giggle disappear, he looked around, softly calling out, "Giggle? Are you here?" He hoped that none of those...monsters were still around. That would be a problem.

@Giggle

Giggle was 'working' when she heard the jackal's call. Her head came up, her dark eyes squinting as she sought the owner of the voice. Her mind wasn't all here, just now: part was off with Omen, who was circling as sentinel in a wide area around the bone pit. Though, Giggle could tell that she'd missed someone, because someone was here now, calling her.

The other part of her mind was still getting used to the presence of Kerberos along the link. She sent him a brief, affectionate greeting, then called out toward whoever had called her, her masculine voice rough with weary strength. "Here," she barked, then turned back to her work.

'Work' was keeping Mother's filthy bullshit far away from her bone pit, and her own flourishing crops of fungus. Giggle kept rings of mushrooms around her bones--hallucinogenic, defensive, bioluminescent--to keep herself and her bone pit safe. She was, even now, carefully and selectively stripping away white, moldy spores were taking root among her own fungus--driving it away, moving it onto bare rock that wouldn't sustain it. In her mind, there was very little mystique or mystery around the Hive. It was, she'd learned, a manipulative and empty-headed force, as selfish as anything else in these damn caves, and she wasn't worried by this pollution so much as irritated by it.

It helped that the bones had strongly forecast victory.

Giggle turned, squinting again, as she finished. Ahh-... A familiar shape. She wasn't sure, but it reminded her of the scrawny little brown pup she'd seen here quite a few cycles back. She waited, though--to see if he introduced himself again.

Anubis, was it-? she wondered--but no, the gemstone on his cheek... that was different, wasn't it..? But how would he know my name?

@Anubis

Anubis turned towards the sound and trotted faster, nimbly avoiding each patch of white webbing, until the infestation came to a halt and he was looking down into a pit - a pit, he realized, that was completely devoid of this strange fungus. It was evident why, as he watched Giggle chase the fungus away with magic. This was her space, then. Her pit. And obviously she did not like the white. Perhaps that was why she was at the fight - these people were her enemy (not THE enemy, but hers. Anubis had no enemies).

He stopped at the edge of the mushroom ring and looked over, ears angled in Giggle's direction. "Hi," he started and then paused. Did she even remember him? "It's Anubis. You taught me to hunt." Hopefully that was sufficient.

He felt something unpleasant on his paw and realized that he'd touched some of that strange white. Turning his nose away, he shook his paw out away from the pit, scattering the spores elsewhere, careful not to breath it in, whatever it was.

"It's everywhere," he pointed out, adjusting his position so that he was not close to any big clumps. "I saw you. At the fighting. I was watching. And I wanted to ask you about it. I figured...you know things." His words were in short sentences, abrupt thoughts strung together. His eyes were wide, curious, interested, begging to know.

@Giggle

She cast a sharp, wary glance at the fuzz, and then slid her gaze back to Anubis. What if he's infected? He might be--and not even realize it, yet, she knew. She tried to cast her magic forth, to test, a tentative feeler--but nothing came, as yet.

Again, she reflected that she'd chosen the worst possible time to elevate her magic.

Giggle shook herself a little, and turned her attention briefly back to the pit--it looked clear enough, at least to her eyes. Magic-... she'd have to try again with. "So that is you," she mused, looking back to Anubis. She studied him, a little. "You've grown! I'm glad you've survived. -Is that stone new?" There was a curiosity to the question--she'd never seen more stone grow on someone before. Maybe it was some kind of decoration?

"It is everywhere, though. It's--have you heard of the shhstuff that calls itself 'Mother?'" she asked, narrowly averting a swearword. (Anubis was, to her mind, still kind of a pup--that was what he'd been last she'd seen him, and the concept lingered.)

She nodded off to one of the patches of cleared rock nearby the pit. "Sit there, if you want, while I work--it's clean there--and ask me whatever you like. If you don't know about Mother--well, I'll tell you."

@Anubis

Relief. He was not wholly forgotten, although he supposed he would look different now, after many cycles and after - yes, the stone that she then pointed out. He tilted his head a bit, the whiskers on his right side twitching, almost self-consciously. "Yes - I was asleep, in the stone. And when I awoke it was there. I do not know why, but I'd like to know." It was another mystery to him that he intended to crack - a secret among the dance of life and death and rebirth that he would, one day, understand.

He shook his head, the word Mother meaning nothing to him, in this context or without. He'd never had parents, no mother or father or any protective figure. If anything, Giggle was that, but they had met only once. And for the rest of the time it was him, to fend and fight for himself, death stalking his every move.

But her phrasing gave him pause. She had said "Stuff...?" and not another word that would describe a living entity. "Is Mother a...gembound?" Could something be living but not alive? Could things have thoughts?

He returned a quick "Thanks." at Giggle's offer and stepped carefully over the barrier of mushrooms to one of the cleared spots where he no longer had to worry about the white stuff latching on. He sat himself down, ears perked and ready to listen. "So, Mother. Tell me about it. What was the purpose of the fighting?"

@Giggle

Her magicka flared out again, weak and flickering but--she saw no sign of infection on Anubis, at least, as yet. She hoped that she was right-... and ahh, here was some lingering crap around one of her bioluminescent clusters. With a grimace, the hyena set about clawing it away with busy paws.

"Well, I've never heard of it happening, for what that's worth!" she answered easily, wondering at the cluster of stone. Did it mean it would overtake Anubis-? Like some horrific growth, gemstone twisting over his body until-... That's enough of that thought, she told herself, pushing the idea grimly away.

"'Mother' isn't a Gembound, no--at least, I don't think so," the hyena went on. "There was a war, some time back--well. 'War's' a bit of a strong word. A big battle, a fight, off in Cetus--do you know where that is?" She cast a questioning glance back, eyes gleaming beneath the patchy skull-paint. "Dark sort of swamp off past Eridanus? There's this--white fungus sh-... stuff." Close call again, Giggs. "And if anyone eats it, I guess, they get infected by it, and end up with their minds all linked together. Except this entity, Mother, it's--in the fungus, or linked to it somehow? It makes the infected do whatever it wants. Pretends to be a loving mom, but it isn't that. It's just... fungus."

Of course, Giggle knew nothing about the Hive's Queen, or the Praetors, really. She assumed they were Gembounds serving Mother. She assumed, too, that they--Juggernaut, Ace and the rest--had once been normal Gembounds, like her. Well-... sort of normal. Maybe more like Vargas and his ilk: oversized and spiky, but not in some cultish hivemind, anyway.

"It uses them as slaves, I think. Pretends to love them. One of them ended up back with us after they were cleansed, actually a few of them have come and gone, and they're usually pretty f-... messed up about it." Giggle was unaware there was a 'point of no return.' "It's an infestation, I guess, in the caves. One the Masters get pretty pissy about," and oops, she'd finally slipped up and sort-of-swore. Oh well.

She kicked away a clot of white webbing, curling a lip at it in disgust, and glanced back to Anubis. "I told you once you could come back here whenever you needed--for food, water, here or at my den. You're welcome to stay now, until we get this shit cleaned up. If you want to. How've you been, anyway?" she asked.

@Anubis

He listened with an almost intense interest, fascinated by the story she unraveled for him. A fungus...that could think? Enslave others? Connect their minds together? Giggle seemed to regard this fungus with disdain but for Anubis it was...fascination. A big battle had been raged over this, not just here but in a faraway cave (that he hadn't visited yet). And that word...Masters. He had not idea what those were either. He burned with questions and curiosity, although some he didn't think Giggle would be able to offer him, or be willing, giving her attitude towards the fungus. He would have to discover it himself.

"So...it doesn't kill you, really. Physically." That was an interesting string of thought that he would have to ponder. To have autonomy taken away, the control in one's life in service to another. Was that not like death of the mind? "How do you get rid of it? You said it can be cured or...taken out I guess. Just in case I get infected. It is kind of everywhere." He glanced just to the side where the white was growing on the other side of the wall of fungus. He didn't mention that he would later be consuming it on purpose, to investigate this "hive-mind". He just needed that safeguard to turn back on.

Hopefully that wouldn't be a horrible, irreversible mistake.

"So were they here to infect you all? Is this some kind of attempt to enslave the whole of Canis?" He gestured with his snout towards the fungus. "It looked like they were trying to kill, though. I do not understand them." But I will soon. The addition went unspoken - he was sure Giggle would try to stop him.

He narrowed his attention forward as he turned to the second subject. "Masters? What's a Master?" Master of what? Of magic? Gembounds? Caves? Was Mother a Master, of this fungus? Was there a Master of death? Perhaps they could answer why a spike had grown from his cheek when he awoke again.

Talking about himself, however, didn't seem as interesting to him. "Oh, I've been okay. Keeping to myself, mostly. Your offer is kind, thank you." Although whether he would stay was unclear. Perhaps he'd dip in and out, go to his cave to study, and come back to swap results. Perhaps, if his research into the fungus bore fruit, he could offer what he knew for more of her knowledge.

@Giggle

Giggle sighed at the barrage of questions, her snout lifting from where she worked at purging a wider area around the pit. But it wasn't a sigh of annoyance. Rather, it was thoughtful, even a little disappointed perhaps that she hadn't better answers.

Her eyes flashed dark as she glanced back. "My magic--this magic, the magic of fungus--can push it out." She paused, then staring at Anubis. "As for what it was trying to do..." She hesitated.

She'd hardly told anyone this next part. It might even put her in danger, to admit it, but... ahh, well. She looked back to her work, plodding along, casting slow, light sweeps of magic forward in an attempt to push the white fluff farther and farther away. "I am going to tell you something, something that I'll ask you to keep secret. I took some of it back here, once--Mother's fungus. I used my other magics, the magics of the mind, to enter a sort of... communion with it. Normally--when it infects someone--it controls them, as I said. Makes them do things. Makes them feel things that aren't theirs. But alone-? If you can speak to it, and it doesn't have that connection, it's... pathetic. I grew it, fed it, spoke to it mind-to-mind. It was stupid, confused. It showed me images of a time long ago, and this may answer your question, Anubis: a time when it had rows of slaves feeding it, cleaning it, seeing to its needs. It wants that again. To spread and to grow in power. That's all it is; a greedy little life like any other." This was, it seemed, the source of Giggle's mild disdain: she'd looked deeply into this little abyss, and found it rather pathetic.

Giggle paused, turning, taking a breath and a short rest from her work. "Masters are the old--very old, very powerful--Gembounds who live in this cave. They also think we should serve them," she added wryly, and a flash of warning entered her expression. "There's a lot of creatures in this cave that'll... harm you, given the chance. We have to stick together and rely on one another, because everything else is out to kill us, take us over, use us as slaves or steal our children."

She said it grimly, yet almost flippantly. Her tone was a sort of 'yup, the world sucks, we have to stick together,' a casual severity born of years of dark experience.

Despite his disinterest in speaking of himself, Giggle pressed with more questions. She was interested in him--or at least his well-being. "Nobody's given you any trouble-? You've been all right with keeping yourself fed? Safe? Have you been training at all, magic or anything else?" she asked, tone switching back to friendly and even maternal.

@Anubis

Anubis hummed softly, thoughtfully. Perhaps it actually wouldn’t be so bad an idea to investigate here, to infect himself and let Giggle pull it out, since she was capable. He could have her give him a few minutes before she pulled it out, or if he tried to leave or do anything dangerous.

But then the promise or knowledge, of a secret, and he leaned forward hungrily, thirsty for what she had to divulge. He nodded a silent promise, to keep this to himself, as if he didn’t already jealously hoard knowledge as his own. And his thirst was watered by what Giggle told him. She had done her own research. Propagated it alone, penetrated its mind, or what mind was there. He unconsciously licked his jowls as he imagined himself doing this same research. He could see it now, setting aside a section of his cave for it, feeding the fungus what remained of his subjects when their uses were expended. The knowledge he could gain from an ancient being, however greedy it was. He had his ways to make things talk. Perhaps he could do that here as well.

”So only when it is consumed does it control. It must get inside the body? Very like a fungus, indeed.” He glanced towards the nearest patch of white fungus and stood suddenly to his feet. ”I would like to experience it for myself. Will you watch for me, and pull it out after a time so that I am not lost?” He did not often experiment on himself, as anything bad could very well end his research for good, but there were very few things he could do else in this situation. Only one path to this understanding. He could only hope Giggle was willing.

He glanced towards Giggle again at her seemingly flippant disregard for the dangers of the caves she was speaking of so casually. Interest rose - evidently she had seen and experienced a lot. She might be more useful to him and his pursuit of knowledge than he thought before. ”Do they? Then why do we call them Masters?why don’t we strike back, fight first? Kill them, before they kill us?” It was not said with any intent or anger, but a plain curiosity - there were obviously more gembound then Masters. Why did they not fight back?

Again, he didn’t respond much in the way of himself. ”No, no trouble. I live on my own, study things, magic and the like. It’s been alright. Now…the fungus?” He approached the nearest patch or white and looked up at Giggle expectantly, for her confirmation.

@Giggle

She startled at the question, glancing somewhat sharply back at Anubis. "Infect yourself-?" She hesitated. "If you do, the Hive will know your mind. Your secrets. And cleansing you--I've seen it go wrong." She shrugged, uncertain but not refusing outright. "If you're all right risking that-? Go ahead. I can try. As for the Masters-... They call themselves that. It's more a matter of convenience than respect, for us--so we know who we're talking about."

Her tone was grimly sardonic. She had turned away again already, nosing and testing at the edges of her fungus ring. "If you do eat that shit--mind if I listen in? I'm still curious about what the hell it's thinking. And-... be warned, it'll affect how you feel. Not just think, but feel. It's supposedly pretty damn addictive."

Another puff of white slid away from her, coiling and spreading like pallid fingers for bare stone--where it shrivelled, wisping away with nothing there to sustain it. Then the hyena was turning back toward Anubis--watching him, and awaiting his decision.

@Anubis