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bone-breaking

"I am going to try what you suggested before. I am going to wrestle my feelings... and change my actions. I will be back." That's what he had told Maximus before putting down the phone and walking away. To let off some steam, to redirect that anger, to keep unnecessary anguish at bay... again.

Then why, dear Khavur, did you make the EXTREMELY UNWISE DECISION to come HERE of all places?!

Okay, it's KHAVUR'S mental breakdown, THEY get to decide the location!!!

But why on earth did it choose this one?

And so on. Mental warfare in the mind of a regular person is normal, so imagine that for a double-minded creature! There's twice as much minding going on!! That's part of why cooling down, analyzing, reflecting... all of that was difficult for Khavur. There was time and process involved in figuring out what to take from a given situation... and then taking from it. It was a laborious, distracting task, that often took days to mentally and emotionally work through, like some kind of hideous internal anarcho-bureaucracy. That's why it had been easier to boil it all down into anger and lash out, and also why Khavur was now meandering about here, of all places. It had been too distracted by its own dang thoughts.

So there's the answer.

The jeering, chortling bones beneath Khavur's lumbering feet only served to add more shades of color to the attempt at chromatography. All around, there was red, but that red was made of many different colors. That was the task: separate, process, devise a plan, profit! And as much as Khavur was trying to do that peacefully... you can only expect the chosen heralds of disaster to get so far with pacifism. Sometimes you just has to mollify a situation... with VIOLENCE!

Khavur looked at the bony audience. Rebels, aids, loners, lovers, all torn to shambles. Khavur, in another temperament, might have been able to extend some kind of casual sympathy, for Maximus's sake-- but oh, MAXIMUS! The plan, the plan, the PLAN!!! Of course, all was far from lost but... GAHHHH!!!!!

So Khavur the Reaver set to work finding points, joints, skulls... and bending them against their angle, or testing their pressure resistance.

It was similar to last time, yes... but it would not end the same.

@Kerberos (c'mere boy!!)

And as he stares into the sky,

there are twice as many stars as usual.

αριστερά . κέντρο . δεξιά

There was something big in Canis, making a terribly big ruckus, and that something so terribly big was actually quite obviously a someone.

Why someone would be making a big ruckus like that, well, there were lots of reasons. The smell of chaos, of those who had lived in the sandy-tunnel toward death who had since moved far, far away to the heart of it, that smell permeated the air well before the clacking thunder of bones being smashed and cracked like thunder. It was like ozone on one's tongue before the lightning struck.

Kerberos had not the mind for that, despite having three of them, and despite living amongst several bird and bird-adjacent creatures who controlled both sky and storm. In fact, when Kerberos was interrupted from chasing down a red mouse, he had no thoughts of chaos or the Bonebound's allies, only a brief quizzical thought of "what is that?" followed by, "WHO is that", punctuated by: "A NEW FRIEND???"

Suffice to say that the big hound, who rivaled Khavur in size and head-count, did not waste a single second longer on closing the gap between himself and the Reaver. While normally he might have been more inclined to be careful of the bones in his path, the stranger was already disturbing several of them, and the sooner Kerberos reached them, the sooner less would (hopefully) be harmed in the process.

To say that was a conscious thought would be giving Kerberos a bit more credit than he deserved, but we'll give it to him anyway.

"HEEYYY!!" Bellowed the hound, howling through three wide parted jaws, tongue rolling out of the right most. As he got closer, his five eyes fixated on the wild, flashing colors of the other gembound (Kerberos had no idea what a valkhound was.) and realized quite quickly some very important things about the new friend. They were as big as him-- someone who he could actually play with-- and they had not one head, but two.

It had been a long time since Kerberos had seen something as big as him. Much longer since he had seen someone else with more than one head. His snake like tail was whipping behind him, and it was a good thing he was not close to anything that could give him a nasty case of happy tail for the effort. Beneath his skin, his bones and blood began to glow with an internal heat, flashing a vibrant warm glow through his pale fur. It might have looked like an intimidation display, if not for...

"Welcome! Friend! I'm Kerberos! What are you doing? Can I help? Do you want to play?" He started yapping as he skidded to a stop a few yards away, not wanting to invade the personal space of his potential new friend. His eyes were bright with delight, and he gasped for breath between each spurt of words.

Khavur had experienced terror. Terrors had come and gone in forms as immense as an ocean and as minuscule as the life of a lamb. Khavur, a failure, a soldier -- a guard of Master Vargas, no less -- should be no stranger to shock, horror, terror, you name it. And with a body such as his, the nerves ought to have been made from the strongest of steels!

But terror had never come in a package like this before.

It was massive, absolutely horrendously massive. White as a ghost besides the ferocious serpentine tail and paw gemstoone, and taller, longer, one head more than Khavur. It was bounding straight for him, over bones it defiled with alarming ease, BOOMING for its attention. Mother of duck. Unholy heck. Did Canis have some kind of guardian Master Vargas failed to mention? Like Isra of Cepheus, but, well...

Now it was glowing. Now it was talking! And Khavur was left with only the mind to stare at it wordlessly, desperately trying to analyze the situation. Kerberos? Help? Play?

It was bewildering mainly because this... by all means, this could have been a Valkhound in build and no one would be fooled. This creature, Kerberos, could have been handcrafted from one of the Masters predating Master Vargas and Khavur would not have been surprised! But it acted completely and utterly like... a person. Both monstrous survival instinct and the heart of emotions were getting a bit of a shock to their systems right now!

Perhaps it would come as no surprise, then, that Khavur's body reacted with venom. Both heads began to release their respective venoms, one numbing, the other "stopping". Khavur did not actually wish to numb or stop this absolute puppy at all, but you know, any apex predator would start flipping out once it realized it may not actually be at the top of the food chain.

When Khavur finally got some semblance of bearings, it managed to get a few words out through the drooling mess: "H- Hello... I... you are... you are like me..." Khavur dropped all its work of mayhem with the bones and decided to turn its heads away and spit out the rest of the venom as best it could. Attempt #2: "You are... Kerberos... What- what are you doing... here?" This was a stupid question (and not even remotely an answer). For all Khavur knew, Kerberos might live here. Certainly, the less of a threat Kerberos became, the more inclined the Reaver would be to actually act like an organized sentient being as opposed to a blubbering mess. Just... give it time.

@Kerberos