It'd been a while since her last outing, and since anything of note had happened for that matter. Despite her growing displeasure at the monotony of the everyday, she found herself reluctant to stray from Pegasus' comfort so soon. The journey back was always the hardest part, and it was something she was not eager to revisit. Not without more preparation, at least.

But that was a thought for later. In her reflections she found herself returning to the subject of gemstones - the one clasped tightly in Erasmus' hands, the one Mossie had scoured Pisces to find again. The latter was her focus - though the details had grown fuzzy with time, the memory of the cat's desperation had not left her. Fevered, sad. Her son was gone. Luna still didn't know what that meant, emotionally at least.

But it did remind her that these stones, like a heart, belonged to something. Something that lived and breathed - thought and loved, if it had been capable. Unlike an organ, it remained long after them, but unlike the gemless, the carcass was condemned to a swift and lifeless decay. They were separate, even in death - what kind of price was she to pay when the dominoes fell?

She trotted by the river, eyes fixed on the swirling water, half in thought, half in search.

The water did not respond, offering only its constant burble in return. Perhaps, nestled amidst its pebbled skin, was a chance for new life? But what she sought for now was new answers. She was not a mother nor father, just a scavenger circling from above. She could find the dead, but could she understand them?

Even the former might've been beyond her capabilities.

Her magic retaliated with a flare, and she hissed as her new headache washed over her. She already had a gemstone mind, stashed within the roots of a great tree, but she had wanted to find something new. No harm in having two gemstones instead of one, right? Well, the search was becoming quite the hassle, and she found herself re-evaluating the effort.

One last try.

At last, salvation! Through the rhythmic pain behind her eyes, she saw it - a golden glimmer from the shallows, like a drop of gold. Upon further inspection, the colour was paler, more delicate. She was fond of the hue, and behind its fragile edges she felt the pulse of life.

With two arms, she fished the gemstone from its resting place, shaking the water from it gently. It was notably larger than her own, but not too difficult to lift. She laid it gently on the grass, feeling the magick within through her paws. She moved away from the river to sink down to lay flat on the earth, her face level with the stone as she stared.

Tell me a story, She willed wordlessly, unsure if the gemstone would even respond. Potential stirred within her this time, as a new and unfamiliar spell reached for its memories.

The pleasant, light-swept plains faded into the sparkle of water all around Luna. Light shafted down, strangely dim, but the gurgle of the river filled her mind. A creature--four-limbed, large, coated in long hair like shaggy green moss--pulled itself slowly along the riverbed. Three heads, almost apelike but for long, canine snouts and shovel-like beaks, pried and prodded at the rocks and the mud. A small mollusc was exposed--and snap! went the jaws, gulping it hastily down.

Then, it rose from the water: three heads pushing upward, gazing around. The peaceful silence became a horrible, crackling roar: fires, black and violet, raged coldly in all directions. Smoke billowed to all sides. Shapes--indistinct, and massive--passed beyond the firelight.

The three-headed creature shook itself with an irritated grunt, and submerged again, going back to feeding. Leave the land-beasts to their wars; it had food to find.

It dragged itself on, a glint of gold briefly visible in the trailing fur of its chest as it pulled itself back down to the riverbed.

The fire and smoke faded, leaving birdsong and light. It was ambiguous as to whether this creature was the last owner of the stone, but it had certainly owned it once upon a time.

@Luna

She gasped softly as the scenery shifted around her, stirred by her new magick. She let her mouth drop agape as she found herself underwater, the light trickling down from above. There was no liquid to flood her senses, nor moisture to dampen her coat - this wasn't a reality, not truly. She was lost in a dream - a memory.

She watched as a great beast shambled past, her presence either hidden or disregarded by the other party. It was as if one of the moss covered rocks had come to life, seeking invertebrates to sate its stony insides. Three heads, all of unfamiliar structure. Three! How crowded was its head, she wondered, with all those brains to manage?

She lost track of her own body, mind swirling in the vision's current as the creature broke water. She still felt the rattling chill of dread across her skin as she saw the surface. What was left of it, at least. She had seen nothing like it - where had this been? Here, in Pegasus?

But there were no answers, not here. The gembound returned to its water with little more than annoyance, as if the hellfire had been nothing more than a nuisance. Frustration bloomed within her, but it was swept away with the excitement of opportunity. What had happened here? She had to know!

Again, she wished there was some way record to this knowledge. She didn't trust her mind alone to retain this focus.

As the memory faded, she returned her attention to the stone. Perhaps it could offer her more.

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

(mild)

gore

death

Pegasus was swept away, sudden and abrupt. It was not gentle, this time--not a delicate, subtle shift. Instead, the green was simply... gone, the birdsong cut off as though with a razor's blade. The bright, glittering light of its false suns was plunged into darkness.

Only the sound of the river remained a constant.

The fires were gone, but smoke still trickled up into the dark. Weeks had passed, or maybe cycles. A smaller creature, four-limbed and of a dense, black pelt, scurried along the riverbank--pausing furtively to sniff and stare about it, a tremble to its form as one paw raised miserably to hang, uncertain, in the air.

The shaggy, three-headed beast had been watching for some time, from beneath the water's surface. Though its thoughts were unknown to Luna, its actions were plain to be seen: it trailed this creature along the shore, albeit unseen where it lurked beneath the river. Now and then it broke away to graze and push a mollusc from the riverbed's mud, only to again spot the smaller creature--occasionally glinting with purple lights--crouched at the water's edge.

The beast seemed only to be... curious. Surely, if it had wanted to drag this creature down and eat it, it had had ample opportunity but--no. It only mirrored its path as it fed, peering up from time to time, as if curious.

Then--it stiffened. Attention sharpened. A larger, hulking shape--dark against dark--was prowling up through the field. The beast-beneath-the-water saw; the creature-on-the-shore did not. Its back was turned. Its attention, downriver, studying its intended path. And it was clear that the beast in the field, immense, was hunting.

The three-headed creature lunged just before the field-hunter did. Three jaws clamped on the small Gembound--purple lights flaring along black hide in alarm--and it dragged it into the water, dragged it down, twisted it away from danger. In the same moment, the beast of the field saw this, and leapt.

A splash of water, a lunge of muscles in the darkness, the twist of shaggy fur--all was chaos for a few seconds, a tangle of limbs too confusing to keep track of in the dark. But then the small beast was deposited on the far shore--safely--and one of those three heads lifted clear of the river to speak in a gurgling voice. "RUN," it rasped, and then the larger hunter had grabbed it from behind.

There was a fight--brief. The three-headed creature had interfered in this war not its own. It was dragged from the water--hind-end first--there was blood-...

Snapping jaws, as it was flipped bodily onto its back. A single wail, the sound of breaking bones. Hissing, growling, the sounds of fighting--and then the stone had left the battle, torn away, drifting in a cloud of oily blood down through the water to settle in the mud.

The light returned, the soft birdsong, as if the violence in the dark that night had been wholly forgotten. As if this Gembound had been forgotten.

@Luna

The second was not a soft, gentle dream. She was dragged into it, the dark and silent aftermath - save for the crackling of scattered, dying fires. This was after the fight, perhaps? Maybe even after the war.

A new character entered; another owner of the stone? She could not see the gold flash of a gem on its hide. It seemed frightened - but of what?

There was the three headed creature, lurking in its riverbed. So this was a vision of the same beast - would it lunge, she wondered? Seize the kill? No, perhaps its diet was suited only to mollusks. It watched the creature with an expression she couldn't decipher.

It followed, and so did she, strung along by an invisible tether. There was a dread in the air, a tension that pooled somewhere in her stomach. A horrid, hollow feeling. Something bad was going to happen here, and Luna would have to watch. But 'bad' was a subjective judgement, one she fought to keep from tainting this vision - her feeling was nothing more than an extension of her own bias, her immediate sympathy toward the cautious little mammal by the shore.

The shock of panic was projection too, when both she and the water-beast noticed the shadow that followed, skulking silently despite its size. A nightmare.

The next moments were sudden and violent as its prey was wrenched from land, the hunter following. She saw nothing, heard nothing above the splashing of river water, its quiet path through the cavern disturbed. The sudden voice made her flinch, and she strained to see if the hunted creature had been able to heed its savior's call - but she could not make out its shape past the two hulking bodies.

The metallic shock of blood hit her nostrils, and immediately she shrunk away, antennae flat against her skull. In another context, perhaps it wouldn't have affected her this much - but knew who's it was, and she knew the ultimate outcome of this fight - no, slaughter.

When the magic faded, she found herself upright, holding the stone against her chest with four of her arms. She was clutching it tightly, tighter than she had intended to. She set it down again, her dark eyes blinking slowly - decided how to interpret the events shown to her. Such wondrous, powerful magick. So powerful that she found herself frightened of its capability.

She let out a long, rattling sigh, letting the emotion go with it. There was more to discover here, and she had been given some massive clues as to what. She recalled the last location of the other creature, the one the deceased Gembound had sacrificed itself to save. Maybe the current had floated the stone downstream - but it was heavy, and Luna's curiousity was killing her.

She waded through the water, leaving the stone on the other side. She had to paddle most of the way; Good thing the day was warm! Estimating the rough position of where the creature had been deposited, she decided to experiment - could this spell be used on more than just stones? She pressed her paws to the muddy earth.

The mud that had stood here in ages past had likely been swept and scattered over the interceding centuries--and beyond this, the magic could not be given direction in this way. And beyond that--the small creature had not died here. Not then, at least. It had been saved, fled, scrambling onto the far shore and away as its savior had met its end.

Luna's sparked out, lashing to another point in time.

It lashed powerfully, yes--but what was seen was something else altogether.

The bright light of Pegasus again dimmed. A thick darkness pervaded, drifting with eerie fog; a rustle of leaves scattered and tumbled in dimmed flame orange across the soil, some skidding into the river to be swallowed down and drifted away.

A silence descended: ominous and thick with purpose.

With something coming.

A host, then: indistinct creatures, spectral, like men on horseback or perhaps centaurs. Hooved limbs thudded silently at the ground, horns and antlers and horses, skeletal steeds, stags, all beginning a forward surge, like fog made manifest. A rain began to fall: cool, pattering, uninterrupted by any sound given by the host.

Before them ran wolves and dogs, hounds, hunting beasts formed of thick dark mist. There seemed to be a chill to them, even in this imagery: a knowledge that to touch one would bring icy, unearthly cold.

Far ahead fled their prey: a spirit more than a creature, wisp-like and ever-changing. In one moment it appeared to be a fleeing hare, racing over the dusk meadows. And then it was a stag, bounding for the line of darkness, the trees in the distance beyond the river

...and it faded, a soft light returning, the rain and cold fading, the tumbling autumn leaves still firmly clinging to their trees.

Yet for a moment, it felt that distant eyes among that host had turned, and settled upon Luna, and marked her somehow.

---

Luna has seen The Wild Hunt.

@Luna

Her third vision was - somehow - far more frightening than the last. A different kind of dark swallowed her vision, autumn leaves fluttering downward like butterflies, catching the scarce light on occasion. She might've watched them for a while, their path through the dark graceful, hypnotic. But another feeling washed over her, one that set her hairs standing on end, antennae straining upward, twitching with anticipation.

They ran through her, the wraithly crowd of beast and man. She felt eyes on her, and she shrunk back at the undesired attention as the mass chased their quarry. The scene was soundless, save for the pitter patter of rain soft falling. The silence brought no comfort.

Luna found herself pressed close against the wet earth when she returned, her lower body now covered in muck. It clung insistently as she rose, drawing a weary sigh. She was next to a river at least - she cleaned herself off, thoughts consumed by what she'd seen. She hoped these ghosts would not return to haunt her further.

She was planning a trip to Cepheus for answers, but on second thought, this experience alone had been information enough. She didn't want to completely drive away her own sanity, so she scuttled back to the forest to rest away her fears - as difficult as that would be.

[exit Luna!]