a pawsibly catastrophic occasion

"No behemoth. No babies. And we don't need a wall sheesh."

"Okay, okay, fine, no wall. At least that's good to hear."

He carefully tested each step before fully setting down his foot, taking a careful note of her murmured warning before stepping around it. 

I'm getting the hang of this.

Woo. You go, Ced.

Suddenly, he was yanked to one side, collapsing against the solid stone of the wall with a slight gasp. His wide eyes took in only more darkness.

A few deep breaths managed to get him back into a relaxed state of mind.

"Okay so there it is. It's sleeping. Do you wanna kill it, or-?"

He glanced around, seeing only blackness. I'll have to light a torch or a flash bomb.

Quickly, he shifted into his animal form. As a cat, his vision was much more accommodating in regards to the darkness, enabling him to see the form of the slumbering behemoth. He glanced upward to Ade, then nodded.

"Yeah, I'll just kill it."

He needn't shift out of his cat form for this.

Carefully, he molded the darkness around the behemoth. Tentacles of wispy shadowstuff curled into being, clinging naturally to the floor and walls.

He coaxed them forward, sending them slipping up over the curves of the behemoth. In this darkness, they would look like nothing but the same night that surrounded everyone. To an aura reader, they would probably appear as something much more solid, and much more dangerous.

They slithered up the behemoth's neck, coasting down to its skull, flowing like ink but faster than any natural fluid. He let them linger on its muzzle for a moment before, with a flicker, they dove inside the beast's nostrils.

The behemoth's eyes flashed open, but it was too late. The tendrils had seized its brain, wrapping tightly around the organ and beginning to pull.

With a gory burst, it exploded out of the top side of the behemoth's skull, and Cedric shifted back into human form. One hand struck a match, allowing for a small measure of pulsing light as he brought the still-warm organ to be suspended beneath his other hand, dripping blood.

"My dear beast," he murmured. "It was a wonder to watch you die."

The tendrils evaporated, and the brain fell to the floor with a wet little splort. He turned to Ade and the eggs, pulsing with life.

"Well, we'd best take care of these."

"Yeah, I guess we should."

The Vetr paused and watched as Ade lobbed one of the huge vaguely spherical objects across the cavern, sending the embryo smashing against the floor like a gooey new carpet of dead baby.

The Iduneus then turned and buried her hatchet in another egg. Meanwhile, Cedric frowned.

"Hey, Ade."

It was time for an investigation into the second mission that he'd been sent here with, since the first had already been a resounding success.

"How well do you think one of these would burn? Or even explode?"

He wasn't really one for killing things in terrible ways. That only came out if he didn't have the time or explosives for lighting miscellaneous objects on fire.

"Or would that break some kind of anti-animal-cruelty law that's in place for some reason?"

He hoped her answer would be yes. Otherwise there'd be a very sad Cedric coming right up.

"I haven't lit anything on fire yet this mission. C'mon, please?"

The Vetr had a thing about lighting stuff on fire, well-known to his friends but not exactly to the common Drakonrhedi. It would cause too many issues with his usual facade if he were to make it known, but there were always a few public demonstrations of his affinity for pyrotechnics that sent the keener Drakonrhedi wondering about the true nature of his character. So he kept it fairly hidden, waiting for missions to release his pent-up stress by detonating or otherwise lighting on fire whatever dared oppose him.

It wasn't like the eggs could feel it, anyway. And he'd set a live behemoth on fire once--it'd chomped an old friend in half, and payed the price.

"Everything burns if you believe it can."

They were meant to be.

Cedric had practically gone starry-eyed with joy. However, Ade wasn't done just yet.

"Besides, we don't need the law on our sides. You can just bedazzle them with your Vetr card. I won't tell if you won't."

Dammit, woman, you're making me want to hug you.

"Ooh, yeah, you're right. That's a convenient thing to have in my back pocket, hmm?"

He didn't even need to beg. 

"Not a word," he responded with a sly grin.

She'd gone around to the side of the dried brush that the eggs were nestled in. As she did so, Cedric dropped the current match, increasingly aware of how close to his fingers it was getting. With a single twist of his foot, he stamped it out, even as he reached for the next one and struck it for a source of light.

"Here, gimme a match."

He strode over and tossed her an entire box. He had a spare. "Just take them all. Make it burn."

He glanced at the entrance. "Coincidentally, how far in are we? Puck gets pissy every time he has to save me from dying of smoke suffocation."