Avishraa Reloaded

The passage, as passages at this level went, was a quiet one. It went nowhere that there weren't more convenient routes to; travelers hardly ever came this way. It was left instead to the local flora and fauna, which themselves generally went about their business in relative silence.

There had, however, been a rather noisy incident a few hours before, which had resulted in a lone figure being deposited, prone, upon the tunnel floor, dimly illuminated by a nearby patch of glowmoss.

A thing like a millipede with extra-long legs, to all appearances made of milky quartz, skittered across the floor and waved a pair of antennae at the figure. It found nothing of interest; the only edible mineral deposits were too well-covered by meat to detect. The thing, losing interest, wandered off.

Some time afterward, another creature came loping down the tunnel. This one appeared to have come from some other world than the previous one, though it might have seemed less exotic had the figure been able to witness it: it looked something like a sea otter might look if it had the legs and gait of a cat, and was covered in short, dense fur.

The odd thing about it was the object that, without any evident danger of being dislodged, seemed to be attached to the top of the animal's head like a hat: a thing like a pinecone made of stone hexagons.

Tiny, fragile stalklike appendages extended from the furrows in the object's surface. At some unseen urging, the animal slowed and stopped next to the figure, and lowered its head to look closely at what lay on the ground.

At first inspection, it looked more like a bundle of black feathers than anything else, as though someone had discarded a large bird's broken wings on this path.

But from a slightly different angle, it was clear those wings were attached to a creature covered in obsidian scales, tiny enough to almost give a feel and impression of smooth skin, excepting a few places such as the ridge of its eyes and the centre of its spine, where they were considerably more pronounced.

Doing nothing to break the colour scheme, a short plume swept back from the creature's skull, longest feathers shorter even than its muzzle, and curving downward rather than calling much attention to itself.

The claws on its three-fingered hands too were simply black - a predator, then, though evidently at most adapted to life in the most literal deepest shadows. Its feet were currently concealed, though if one could see them, one would see each foot sporting two sturdy running toes and a third with a significantly enlarged claw.

A tail about as long as the rest of the creature was flanked by a few large, flat feathers, perhaps used to steer while flying.

And then it stirred.

It was a sluggish stirring, barely worth commenting on. It only slowly opened its eyes, a broad, flame-coloured iris peeking hesitantly through the cracks, a dark pupil unfocussed. One hand reached forward in a disoriented, physical search, pawing at the air only to settle against the ground. A soft snort disturbed a thin layer of dust near the creature's muzzle.

'Venara couldn't remember how she'd gotten here, nor where 'here' was, but it had really messed with her head and apparently knocked her out for a little nap. She couldn't rule out that this wasn't somewhere in Thelix's Star, but there was nothing that would drive her there. It wasn't Dusk, which meant she was nowhere near the Dusk stone she ought to be guarding.

The little stone-shelled creature was delighted. A creature with wings! And which could actually think! This, it thought, would be a far better host.

In response to prodding at its subconscious, the otter-creature glanced around. Its gaze alighted on an object hovering in the air ten meters or so further down the passage, drifting with glacial slowness. It hadn't been complete unexpected; though it made no pretense of knowing all the beings that called this world home, it was not too wild a bet that a completely unfamiliar one had come in with an Orb.

As the feathered creature groped towards consciousness, the symbiont realized it needed to move quickly if it intended to catch its ride before it got up and left.

The otter-creature obediently lowered its head to the ground, and the little stone cone gently popped off, falling to the ground with a clack. The now-former host carefully picked the cone up in its mouth, trotted nearer to the recumbent figure, and placed the foot of the cone against its back, between the wings.

There might have been a very brief itching sensation as the cone attached itself, but it was soon gone. The otter-creature let go and, the cone's control of it released, it gave the dracoraptor a sniff and then wandered off, slightly confused about how it had got here.

The cone, meanwhile, quietly watched its new host's mind awaken. It even more quietly rearranged a few things to its liking - just a few, to ensure that, however much its host might think about trying to remove it, it would never actually happen.

But it was, of course, free to think about it as much as it liked. It was one thing to make someone do - or not do - what one wanted, but one's thoughts were their own. That wouldn't be polite at all.