Stellar, upon her return to the Spiral’s prison, wasted no time letting her presence known. “I’m back!” she called into the dark.
Similarly, Paxuzu was quick to let his presence be known, if not quick to actually attend to his visitor. He had been coiled around the pillars and walls of the temple when she’d arrived. Her call woke him and he slithered out of the knots he’d tied himself up in. The same odd lighting as before came back as he started towards Stellar.
“Ah, the star-touched one returns.” Paxuzu grinned and circled around the fae, his body so large and hers so small, he could wrap around many times while still maintaining a certain distance. “Now,” he extended a claw to her expectantly, “My eye.”
Stellar lifted the eye up high and he plucked it out of her hands. She watched the Spiral-like being lift his head high and push the eye back into its place, in the center of his head. The small godling sighed as he sifted through the memories the eye showed him.
He hummed. “Not much time. But even an hour outside my tomb is more than a millennium within it.” His eye returned, he focused his sight back on the fae. "Greedy little thing, aren't you?" Paxuzu’s coils tightened closer around the fae and he grinned. "So many wishes, so much desire for
more. More knowledge. More safety. More adventures.
More."
"The world you exist in is finite,” he said. “There is no More. But greed can't understand Enough. There will never be enough. Greed will gorge itself until it bursts, until it takes some essential thing and the sky crashes on top of it. Consequence comes for all eventually; its bloody hands care not for any innocent caught in its path.”
He gave the fae an appraising look. "Your greed is as tame as the next dragon. It knows the rules of Enough, if not the whys.” Paxuzu gave it a thought, then jabbed his hands into the earth, cracks splintering from the point of impact. “A chest of gold then, for the young one,” he declared, and it seemed as though he had something clenched tightly between his claws.
“Wealth is the greatest and most widely accepted source of power. Be smart. Be quick. Be rational. Wealth alone will not achieve your desires, but it is the most valuable of tools.” Paxuzu jerked his arms out of the ground and a studded chest burst from the stone. He set it down in front of Stellar and grinned.
“Take your prize, little thing,” Paxuzu gestured towards the chest, which suspiciously seemed as though it was trembling, straining against something. “It waits for you.”
Not a rock had changed since Cypress was in the underground temple last. The cavern was just as dark, the air just as oppressive, and the temple itself just as abandoned. But that pull on his soul, stronger now that he had Paxuzu’s right eye in his possession, made him feel certain that this was the right place.
(Not that there were many place just like this in the desert. At least, he didn’t think so)
Cypress inhaled the stale air. “Paxuzu,” he called. “I have returned with your eye.”
His words rang through the tomb-like space and echoed off the carved out walls. He waited for some minutes before the slithering sound of before reached his ears; scales scraping on stone like a giant snake. He looked up, expecting to see Paxuzu above just like last time, but there was no sign of the Spiral-like being among the stalactites. The sound echoed through the cavern, and without the light from before, Cypress was hard pressed to see anything beyond his own light.
“The pearl was
very forthcoming with the memories it had.” A voice said beside him, and the Pearlcatcher jerked away. Paxuzu laughed and let the light from before shine through the old temple grounds. The Spiral slithered around Cypress and came to rest before him, just like last time. “A civil war? Nasty business, but war is part and parcel of civilized life. Wild dragons had no concept of war before organized clans came about.” He held the pearl in his claws and took a second to inspect it once more. Then he glanced back at Cypress with the two eyes that remained in his skull. “I will be taking my eye now.”
Cypress wasn’t sure how he felt about the Spiral having looked through all his memories, but there wasn’t anything for it now. He handed over the eye without argument and waited for the pearl to be returned to his arms. The Spiral was slow to give it up, now having both the eye and pearl in his hands. Just as Cypress was about to curse himself for not being more careful with the exchange, Paxuzu huffed and placed the pearl in Cypress’s waiting hands. The Pearlcatcher checked the pearl over for marks or blemishes, but everything appeared to be in order. He placed it in its old satchel, relaxed now that his missing piece was returned after so long.
He looked back up at the Spiral in time to see him push his missing eye back where it belonged. Paxuzu seemed to take a moment to digest the information his eye had to share with him, then shook his head.
“Time will have to be set aside for examination, but it appears you’ve done your job well, little dragon,” Paxuzu grinned. “Arcania seems an interesting land indeed.” He lowered his head to look at Cypress. “Now. Your gift.”
Paxuzu turned to the side and gathered some of the scattered rocks into his hands and started to compact them in his palms. “War aside, you’ve quite the idyllic little village. Well established. Filled with quaint little dragons with their quaint little histories.” He repeated the process of gathering and compacting over and over and over again. Cypress wasn’t sure, but he felt that whatever the Spiral was making should’ve been… bigger by now.
“But it seems to have stagnated a tad,” Paxuzu continued, “both in size and in its economy. The war may have something to do with it, but even in the middle of strife, life does not stop. A strong clan will continue to grow in size, strength, and most importantly, wealth. If you possessed any marketable skills, you could help your clan by bringing in money from other clans. There can never be too many tradespeople, not even in the same exact profession. Many dragons prefer the competition, in fact.”
Paxuzu, apparently satisfied with the object in his palms, gently blew on it with a strange energy. Whatever he was making, it took on its own greenish glow, casting Paxuzu in a sickly light despite his own interesting luminescence. He grinned at Cypress. “Such simple advice is anathema to my practice, however. Instead, I will make you unique. A purpose, you ask?” He let the object in his hands drop. “There is no greater purpose than what I give you. A way to stop the infighting. A way to unify the clan. A way to serve as the threat that cannot be ignored.”
A glowing ball of energy gently descended from his hands, finally resting in front of the Pearlcatcher’s face. The edges of it spat and crackled and it felt as if it had its own gravity, tugging at Cypress’s skin. Its corrupting light shined on his body and revealed what would become of him if he let himself be dragged in.
"Perhaps what your clan needs now is a
monster."
Paxuzu was in plain sight when Dright finally returned to the god’s underground prison, lounging on, through, and around the temple. The Spiral’s gaze was on him long before he’d reached the entrance to the cavern, and his two eyes remained unblinking as Dright wordlessly climbed the steps to the building.
He stood at the last few steps, some ways away from where Paxuzu lay, and noticed the other’s slow grin.
"So long,
so long," the Spiral-shaped being said as he slithered his way out of the knots and tangles his body made. “You’ve made me wait near a decade for my request.” Paxuzu settled in front of the Guardian and held out a hand expectantly. “My eye,” he demanded.
Dright huffed, but had to comply. He reached inside his scarf for where he placed the eye in on the trip back and reluctantly presented it to Paxuzu, who wasted no time plucking it out of Dright’s hands the moment he could.
Paxuzu raised his eye up high, turning it this way and that and gave a pleased hum. "My lovely eye is as unblemished as the day it left." He slipped the eye back in its socket and thrummed, speeding through the memories it offered. “A decade’s worth of sights, of memories,” he hummed. "The world has changed, most certainly. So many places fallen to ruin. Too many others risen in their place." He looked down at the Guardian that returned his last eye. "But you are not here for my ramblings. You want
knowledge.”
Paxuzu smirked and flew over his small temple, gesturing towards it with his claws. “Knowledge was the foundation of my power. Many came to me for the wishes I offered, but many more knew me as a font of information, both past, present, and future.” His eyes focused back on the guardian. “Given your physical state, I suspect you are of a similar cloth. Enough that the casual observer might call us
kin.”
Paxuzu drifted back towards Dright, "Alas, your origin is something not to be revealed by my tongue,” he said. “The answers you seek are found elsewhere. But the
tools,” Paxuzu grinned, “are well within reach.”
Dright watched Paxuzu rise to the ceiling of his prison and drag his hands across the many stalactites there. “The Eleven may have breathed life to the many dragon breeds that have walked Sornieth, but life is no impossible feat.” It appeared that he found a stalactite to his liking, a rather long and smooth one. He snapped it off its base and demonstrated it to his audience of one. “The Windsinger may have created the Spirals, but such marvel is by no means beyond
me.”
With the tip of the stalactite he stabbed it through his left hand, letting his godly blood coat it as he pushed it all the way through. The stone soaked the blood as if it were cloth, turning as black as the void that lingered at the cavern’s edges. Paxuzu then carved patterns and symbols on the sides, all while exhaling lightly on the rock. It seemed to pulse gently with a faint light
The rock was given life, writhing in Paxuzu’s hands as it was reformed. One end of the stalactite split and grew teeth, the other formed an arrowhead at its tip. Six growths sprouted in pairs along its length and were gradually refined into winged limbs. The rock continued to contort and refine as the shape became that of a well-carved Spiral, and then into a washed-out living one. Once the final scale patterns appeared on the previously lifeless rock, it gave one last jerk and fell limp.
Paxuzu presented the new life to the Guardian, curled, small, and breathing in the other’s hands. “I suspect this may be useful to you in the future, whether as a companion or a sacrifice, or a slave if the fancy strikes you,” he said. “Be warned that it will posses an odd nature due to its, shall I say,
atypical conception, and may not understand some things that are intrinsic to society. May it serve you in your goals.”
The new Spiral was handed to Dright, who, after a pause to think, gently placed them in the space he’d carried Paxuzu’s eye in as a temporary measure. It wasn’t exactly what he’d been hoping for, but he knew better than to spurn a god’s gift, no matter how little power they appear to have.
Paxuzu floated back to rest his body on his temple, looping through and around the small entrances and cupolas. His eyes stared at the Guardian, waiting. Sensing his dismissal, Dright turned to leave the cave, but paused as he heard Paxuzu speak again.
“Do return one day,” the Spiral-like god purred, his voice easily reaching Dright’s ears despite the distance. "10 years may be a blink in the eyes of the universe, but it is an age to have known one dragon."
b o o f that was a lot of writing lol
gonna log off for now, will send stuff tomorrow!
