This thread is backdated to the 12th of July!

The chrysalis, throughout its growth, had been like a living flame. Hence the name 'fire opal'. Light that reflected off of it gave the illusion of flickering flames, each fleck of sparkling green and purple catching the eye among the sea of beautiful blue.

Now it lay shattered on the ground, the ground around it soaked with the fluids that had held in suspense the life form within. Shards were scattered all around, like whatever had been inside had burst out furiously and trampled it, some pieces driven into the ground with hoofprints nearby.

She stood still in the center of the tunnel, facing the Door of Life with her wings held slightly spread, the ends tucked in to form a V above her rump. Her ears were forward and her stare was unfocused, her mind far away.

Whatever personality that could have been had been destroyed long before she hatched. Perhaps she would have been sweet or caring, or even manipulative or cruel. The spirit that would have burned brightly was stamped out before it could spark into being and twisted, broken, and reshaped into something more beneficial to her set purpose.

’Silent, sleek, elegant. I am loyal, I am Guardian and I am savagery unbound. I will obey.’

This mantra burned in her mind like hot metal. The chains that bound her were heavy indeed and she could already feel the weight of them threatening to crush her. Whatever remained, whatever scraps of Arwen still lingered... they were fading, and quickly.

And so she stood, blank-faced and her familiar blue eyes staring like a living statue, the branching antlers above her head blue and speckled with false flame, the only remnant of who she once was and would never be again.

@Dawn @The Sentinel

Dawn burst from her stone minutes after her twin, cracking through the grandidierite with powerful kicks. Even as she shook off the shards of blue crystal that clung to her fluid-soaked fur, she was already craning her neck and anxiously searching her surroundings.

The newborn knew nothing apart from what Vargas had attempted to imbue within her, and it had been a successful enough spell that she clung fiercely to her assigned purpose even newly hatched. She was a Guardian. She was meant to protect someone with her entire being, because she owed her very existence to that someone. But what was there in this tunnel to guard?

Her eyes passed over Dusk's still form, nearly not registering the other Helldeer as living for a moment. Then Dawn saw Dusk's shoulders move as she breathed, and her attention snapped back. Maybe she was meant to protect... this other deer who looked exactly like her.

Yes, Dawn decided, hooves clicking on the rock floor as she stepped closer. "I am a guardian," she informed Dusk tersely. Then she turned, antlers sweeping in an arc as she scanned the tunnel for threats.

@The Sentinel

The Sentinel stood guard not far off. Or rather, he patrolled. These two chrysalises had been planted, he knew, just beyond the Door so that they would remain free of the Black Spire's corruption. Vargas had tasked him, not for the first time, with stalking back and forth between the gemstones and the Aperture, making sure that all was well.

The familiar sound of cracks was rather distant--his stride would need to carry him almost halfway back down the tunnel to reach it. And by the time he did, both of them had emerged.

White, soft; winged, antlered. He pondered at this. They did not look like creatures of Chaos.

He came to a halt, as stiffly upright as he could manage, weight pressed down on the halberd at his side. He kept his distance, too; he was swathed by shadows and whispers, and well aware that his very magical influence might in itself be corruptive.

"They have emerged," he observed, his voice a hollow rasp. "Do they know... who they are? Do they know... what they are for?"

He would need to find Vargas, of course; but he was wondering if he should deliver them straight to Isra, and to Aethril. The Master had told him that this was acceptable in the case of Vargas's absence--and he wasn't entirely sure where the Leviathan was, right now.

The Sentinel lifted his skull-face, peering between them. They were aesthetically pretty; there was no doubt about that. But they looked... soft. Perhaps that was the point? Maybe it was a trick; something to get one's guard down before their twinned magic ripped a target apart? He didn't know, for sure. "They are to guard... the Palace. They are to answer... to Isra. To Aethril. Do they know-?" he asked.

They wouldn't--though he didn't know that; but that dutiful, loyal savagery might well have clung to their very bones.

@Dusk

Dusk had turned to look at Dawn as she approached, her only reaction to her sibling a blink as she perceived their matching forms and quickly decided that they were a pair. They were to protect... each other? Was that their purpose?

’... I am savagery unbound,’ was the last thought to run through her mind as the Sentinel approached from behind.

An ear twisted back to face him before her head followed, turning and turning until it was entirely backwards. It didn't hurt since her neck was less like a deer's and more like a hellswan's, but it gave the effect needed: she'd taken notice, and judging by her pinning ears, her attention wasn't very positive.

She turned, her head lowering like a predator's as a low hiss was drawn out from her mouth, feathers puffing up as she glared at the new gembound. She didn't know or care that it was simply doing its job and even watched over them while they grew within their chrysalises, but she did know one thing: the Sentinel looked like a threat.

With its sharp halberd, dangerous claws and overall menacing appearance, the Sentinel didn't have to do anything to appear intimidating. Even though it spoke, even though what it spoke of seemed familiar, like she'd heard it before, she didn't back down, didn't cease her little threat display.

Her gemstone antlers and the small, marking-like pieces that jutted out from each cheek sparked as her magic rose up and failed, though she had no way of knowing so. Even if it had worked, all the Sentinel would have felt was a mild case of an upset stomach with no visible symptoms to discern. Working off the notion that it did, however, she stomped a sharp hoof and snorted as hard as she could, trying to scare the Sentinel off.

@Dawn

Dawn's reaction to the Sentinel was possibly even worse than Dusk's. While Dusk was more subtle--a threatening hiss, a failed attempt to blight the approaching stranger--Dawn positively snarled, hooves clattering as she dashed between Dawn and the Sentinel. Rather than lowering her head to present her antlers, though, she extended her neck, baring her teeth and honking.

That's right, she thought with satisfaction as the Sentinel stopped a good distance away. Don't come any closer. He could do all his talking from that distance, until she could thoroughly disarm him. Which would probably require a literal disarming (among other things, such as a beheading and dis-toeing) given how spiky he was.

A brief glance back at her twin told her that Dusk was also bristling. There should be no need for that. Dusk didn't have to get her hooves, antlers, or teeth dirty. Dawn would take care of everything for her charge. Like the perfect guardian she was.

Her ears twitched at the Sentinel's words. They sounded very familiar. Dawn was getting a sudden sense of deja vu, even though she had been alive for literally all of two minutes. But... yeah, that just sounded right. And if that was right, and they were meant to be guarding a palace... Dawn checked the tunnel again, just to be sure. Nope, no palace. That meant they were slacking off. Terrible. UNACCEPTABLE.

"Where's the palace?" she demanded. "I'm going to go guard it. Right now."

@The Sentinel

The Sentinel stared, for a moment.

They were... angry. Hostile. It was almost impressive, how ready to fight they were right out of the stone. "It is beyond this place," he explained, nodding toward Pegasus. "The Sentinel will retrieve the Master. Master Vargas will explain and take them to their task." He paused. It seemed he should say more--explain to them the world they'd hatched into, why they'd been created, or... something.

But he was not particularly good with words, and when he spoke again it was to offer the most basic of summaries. "The Palace bears many enemies. They will be taught to fight. To defend it. Will they wait-?" he asked. Would they, or would they simply... run away? If they tried to find the Palace on their own they'd likely become lost; he waited patiently, then, to ensure that they'd promise to guard the place before he went to get Vargas.

"Or they may come with him. To see Draco. It will not be far," he added. Maybe it was the only chance they'd have to see the Black Spire, in the end--he didn't know for sure.

@Dusk

Dusk stepped forward to stand beside Dawn. This was her place, standing right beside her sibling to protect each other, at least until they found this... 'palace'. Whoever Aethril and Isra were, they had to have answers as to who they were. But they were being impatient.

"Don't be so hasty," she said softly, her feathers smoothing out as she touched her sister's side with a wing, "If it showed intent to kill us, it would have done so by now. What is Master Vargas and what is Draco?"

She stared at the Sentinel, her gaze intense as she found new purpose. A shaky one, sure, but it was enough to keep her grounded for now.

"If we wait, how do we know you are not going to come back to strike again with help?", she asked, tempted to whisk off with Dawn into the wilds, to find their own way to the palace. It couldn't be far if they were supposed to be made to guard it.

Though it did beg the question... what even was a palace? Perhaps she needed more information before she decided to forge her own path.

"Who are you?", she asked suddenly, ignoring the Sentinel in favor of staring at the mirror image of herself, wishing to know who her other half was. Sibling? Friend? Foe?

@Dawn

Dawn sniffed primly. "You can never be too careful," she told her twin, but reached out a wing to return the gesture. "I had to look out for both of us." But she stood still as Dusk spoke with the Sentinel, albeit with an occasional twitch of the jaws whenever his halberd seemed to move.

She broke her silence with an angry honk, though, when the Sentinel spoke of enemies in the palace. "YESSSSS," she hissed nastily, flapping her wings. "I will fight! I will defend it! I'll KILL ALL THE ENEMIES AND RIP THEM APART!" No one would dare to be an enemy of Dusk or the Palace while SHE was Guardian!

Then, she narrowed her eyes. "Like I'll rip ALL OF YOU APART if you come back and attack like she says," she added. That would surely assuage her twin's concerns. Threats finished, Dawn finally settled back down and let her twin ask the questions she wanted. She was sure they were good questions. She was just a little less interested in those questions than making intimidation displays and utterly annihilating any possible threats to their safety.

@The Sentinel

The Sentinel studied them both. The first one, with the gemstone antlers, was reasonable enough. But the other was bursting into loud and combatative words. They were not aimed at him, but like a hand swept low into dark, still waters, they were stirring the depths of his usual cold patience. Dawn's outburst itched at his mind, curled claws into the Chaos that always lurked there, and tugged.

He gave into it without so much as a warning.

If his magic took, it would simply--banish Dawn. She would disappear.

The Sentinel turned to Dusk. "The Sentinel needs no aid to destroy you both with but a thought." The rasping voice had taken on a guttural growl, and his hand clenched around the halberd haft. A wave of his hand and he released the magic--if Dawn had vanished, held in the void for those few moments, she would reappear. "They will be taught such power." He considered, and then decided that he could not trust them to wait. "They will come with him to the Master."

He took a step back, and waited, to see if they would follow--or if they would break into combat, freshly-hatched and furious.

energy of the void is a corrupted spell & grants corruption points sorry dawn-

@Dusk

Dusk had sighed softly as her sibling threatened, knowing that this wasn't going to end well. She jumped, startled, as her sibling suddenly disappeared, bleating in alarm as she stared at the place she'd just been.

"... You are threatening us," she whispered, turning her head to face the Sentinel, a horrible feeling welling up in her chest.

She decided right then and there that she hated the Sentinel, even as her sister popped back into existence. If they never crossed paths again she would be perfectly fine with it.

"I only have so much patience," she stated bluntly, a fact rather than a threat, "I do not know how far that limit reaches but I will not be able to control myself if you reach it. Do not do that again."

It was like she was standing at the edge of a crumbling cliff with a rope tied to her neck dragging her forward. Every provoking word or action dragged her closer and closer to falling, and she didn't know what lay at the bottom yet.

Dusk touched Dawn with a wing and followed, head held high despite all that had happened. She was wary of the Sentinel now, and of her sister's outbursts making things worse. She put herself between them to minimize eye contact or sight lines, not wanting to find out what happened when she fell.

@Dawn