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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 15:23:59 GMT -6
With both balgor more than willing to swim now, though she had not a clue why, the training passed by with a lot less drowning than she feared after Hektor’s original attempt. She’d hold up some food, call out to swim right as they hit the blue line, and then toss them each a treat while they paddled in the water like two neptica pups.
The more difficult part came next, with her calling out for them to swim without holding up a treat. Farida hopped into the water after she repeated herself a few times, with Hektor following closely behind as Farida’s treat fell from the roof of the cage to bounce off her head. It was all boring repetition, with the balgor seeming to completely ignore the command a few times at the start until Alma enticed one with a dropped piece of jerky, though soon they were hopping in whenever she asked them to.
She could not deny that the pair were starting to move slower as time dragged on, Farida slowing down much quicker as she dragged her dripping tail out of the deep end after swimming around a little bit. But it seemed like both understood what they were meant to do, or at least enough that they could swim on their own if they fell off one of the platforms, so Alma tossed them the last bit of meat as they responded to her final command for them to swim, and climbed down to take them back to their normal cage. [Swim-Finished?]
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:01:50 GMT -6
[For the next 55 posts, Farida, Hektor, and Balboa are all included. Have mercy upon my soul.]
It had been a terrible idea, throwing her pair of balgor into the pit. The only thing that had saved them was the timely intervention of the mercenary’s beasts, the pair of them taking down the pliathor before it could finish what it had begun. And yet she felt the need to go back. She liked the balgor, but they were just lab-made critters, she told herself as she made her way over to their cage. There was no point in raising them if she would never use them for anything, and the healers at the pit had expertly demonstrated how even being bitten by jaws large enough to eat a rowboat was only a temporary inconvenience in the city. And the pair of them had seemed fine, just fine, when she had led them back home. Neither had so much as limped on the way back, nor did they hesitate when their meals were thrown into the cage. The healers had fixed both of them up faster than she could darn a sock, and both of them looked a great deal better than any clothing she had ever tried to fix. Bloody magic. She had no idea how folks could be so willing to give up so much for it, but the power of the healers certainly helped that understanding. So they would be fine even if a massive snake tried to eat one as a snack, and so would their newest pack mate, even if they had not quite acclimated themselves yet.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:02:20 GMT -6
It had been a fun couple of days that she took trying to decide which of her other balgor would join the current pride. The ghostly spectral could not be hit by any physical attacks, and she had spent a good while trying to decide if that made up for the weakness of the creature’s offensive abilities. She had heard that the breed were the weakest of the balgor, unable to deal the damage their more physical counterparts could manage, and that decided her in the end to leave the spectral balgor locked in its special cage.
There had also been the problem of how she could keep the spectral properly contained when moving it around, or giving the thing treats to train it. The cost in magesteel alone would have been enormous, and her wallet was not so heavy that she felt like lightening it.
With the fiery crimson little more than a hue-changed temblor, and no tsavo in her kennel to make her consider risking their bloodthirsty nature, the green and black body sleeping on the cart behind her had been the only real option. She had not been keen on the idea of using it at first, the notes in the pocketbook warning of the beast’s poisons. Anything that dangerous could accidentally kill the other two just by contact, the poison it could supposedly secrete rumored to have deadly effects.
But a little research later proved the guide had dramatized the breed’s abilities, much like it had done with the temblor balgor and its promised ‘purity’.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:02:32 GMT -6
The thing behind her, snoring loudly as they made their way to the other balgor, had an acidic bite, and the ability to make anyone struck by its ‘deadly poison’ feel a tiny bit weak. “Bit embarrassing for ya, really. They made it sound like ya were some horrible beastie.” Alma paused for a moment, looking back over her shoulder at the balgor. “Not that the acid saliva ain’t scary, but I think the ‘deadly’ part is more ya’teeth, ya’know? Like, even if ah rinsed out yer mouth, the teeth alone would snap through me.”
The smile she gave the sleeping balgor with faint, and Alma turned back to continue their stroll down the hallway. She moved as quickly as she could manage, gloves squishy with sweat by the time they reached the cage room. Thankfully the creature showed no particular resistance to the drugs it had unwittingly consumed, and it did little more than snore as she huffed and puffed her way over to a small cage in the room.
The word small was relative. When she had been dragging it into the room wall by wall, holding up the walls and sliding pins in place, it had felt the size of the cage behind her, complete with the bulk of the two balgor that had watched her. They had wandered off after half an hour of her struggling with the metal bars, Farida leaving minutes before Hektor gave up on hopes of playtime or food from their human. Her suffering had not been entertaining enough, a thought she had paused to laugh at, the thought slipping away as one of the walls tried to slide down the wall.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:02:48 GMT -6
The cage stood before her completely assembled, looking just as strong as it had done when she had tested it. Considering that the first test had caused the door fall of, she began muttering a prayer to Order to keep the cage a cage as she dropped the cart’s handles and reached for the thing sleeping on it.
The gloved squished unpleasantly across her hands as she began to pull on the beast, dragging it down the slope of the cart as quickly as she would manage. “Just stay asleep a little bit longer, chase murp in yer dreams, just. Stay. Sleepin’.” She punctuated each of the last words with a yank on the balgor’s body, dragging it the rest of the way into the cash with a huff. The beast continued to snore, something that spoke poorly of whatever resistance it might have to poisons later, but she was more than happy to let it sleep. It might have known her as the one who brought food, but she did not doubt that could change to simply being food if it woke while she was still near it.
Stepping around its snoring form, she hopped out of the cage and slammed the gate shut behind her, rattling it to ensure it stayed closed. It did, standing up to even her most impassioned rattling, and so she turned away to glance at her other balgor. Both lay asleep in their cage, a leg of their last meal laying in the dirt of their cage.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:02:59 GMT -6
She could not see the powder on it from where she stood, just able to make out a hint of slimy pink glistening from behind a tumbleweed, but she sighed all the same. “Hektor. Farida. You lot know to eat all the bits, right? Now I gotta hop in there, throw it away so y’all ain't gonna get sick.” Neither balgor responded to her, their sides slowly expanding outwards and collapsing inwards as they breathed. Alma rattled the newcomer’s cage one last time, looking between it and the other drugged balgor for any reaction. When neither did so much as twitch at the sound, locked into whatever dreams the powder provided them, she walked over the the nearest cage door on the larger cage. Opening it was quick work, “Though you lot lack the thumbs for it,” she muttered as she pulled the lock open, and she made her way over to where the leg had been discarded.
She paused, mentally swapping the word ‘leg’ for ‘meat’. It was easier to think of the parts as just meat, little more than a fleshy meal for the balgor. Thinking of it as a leg suggested there was more than one leg, that the meat was once some galabex that had been ground up and-
“Right, not the time for that.” Alma laughed, feeling a little queasy as she walked at a brisk pace to where the chunk of meat was. She picked it up, gloves doing their best to make it feel even squishier and slimier with the addition of the sweat sloshing around in them.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:03:15 GMT -6
She could see the white powder now, distinct from the dirt and plants that had gotten stuck on the meat. It had clumped together and broken like parched mud, bits of the powder flaking away as she had lifted it into the air. Holding the meat in one hand, fingers wrapped around a spot where the balgor had gnawed to the bone, Alma looked for any other pieces that may have been left behind. She would need the balgor awake and fully alert if they were to ever get used to each other, though she was not particularly excited to return to using the wax and cloth plugs that always left her ears feeling a little grimy.
Other than the piece of meat she currently held, she failed to see any other rotting bits, and so she quickly made her way back out of the cage. She had led the two balgor before without much in the way of protection, the pit requiring owners at least manage to bring in their own beasts, but she doubted they would be quite so kind to her after waking from the drug. “Gave me a bit of a headache when I accidentally huffed some of it,” she told Farida’s snoring face and Hektor’s back as she slammed the cage door shut behind her. That had been the day she learned it was better to go a little slower and not fling the powder around like it was no more dangerous than flour.
She wondered what the misma balgor would react like.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:03:26 GMT -6
They were beasts with acid drool after all, so she had hoped the breed might show some sign of resisting the effects of the drug. Maybe a twitch here when it should have still been completely paralyzed, or a flicker of its eyelids long before the temblor and custom so much as yawned. But a glance at the cage showed the misma to still be trapped in the same sleep that the other two were snoring their way through, “Well, at least ya got a louder snore, right? Maybe you’ll have a louder roar too!” Alma slapped the cage bars, wincing at the impact. “Ain’t gonna be any weaker than Farida at least, so yer’ll be in good company. An’ acid drool should be helpful against the thicker-skinned bosses.” She smiled at the sleeping balgor, not at all imagining what would happen to them when they faced any of said bosses. And if she did, well, she knew there would be healers to make sure any wounds vanished quicker than she could forget about them.
“Probably should have stuck with sarane, huh?” Alma sighed, shaking her head. “Scaly bastards are made to be mean, and they ain’t got cute little furry faces.” With a shrug, she turned away from the balgor to face the door. “But you lot got picked by that guy, gal mebbe actually, and I ain’t one to waste trainin’. Not even if I gotta train a few more critters to make it worthwhile.” And the addition to the pride would hopefully be a nice enough reward for the balgor already in it.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:03:38 GMT -6
She was not sure how she would be able to control three balgor, “Not that I think I do much in the way of controllin’ you lot anyhow,” she muttered as she looked over her shoulder at the sleeping beasts one last time. The laws of the city prevented her from using more than that at any given time, a limit that was a great deal more welcome when it came to such bulky beasts. A part of her wished she could train a few more, rounding out her pride of balgor so that they were in a group of five and therefore at a strength that could face the larger boss creatures, but she assumed that was the same part that wondered about hopping off a cliff edge or diving into a mine lake. “Three ought to be enough for now, can always look for a new merc to help us out if yer all still too weak to fight a bleedin’ dragon.”
She shook her head. “Not that I blame you lot for bein’ unable to fight a wiurn. Doubt I could do any better meself, ya’know?” She turned back to the door with a shrug. “Anyhow, you lot sleep it off, then get used to each other. Hoping to stick you lot in the same cage as soon as possible. Not gonna learn to fight together if I keep y’all in different boxes.”
The balgor, custom, temblor and misma, make no reply. Alma left them to finish their sleeping, unwilling to be present for the first batch of roaring.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:03:54 GMT -6
Without a set of earplugs already inserted, she was not sure her ears could deal with the racket a pair of balgor could put out, much less the headache-inducing harmony that three beasts roaring at one another could produce. She would check on them later, when the trio hopefully had worn out their voices.
Of the three balgor, Alma would have been surprised to see that it was the temblor that began to twitch first. Having passed out before she could finish her share of the meal, unlike the custom balgor stretched out on the ground beside her, the temblor balgor flicked an ear at the faint hum of the lights that had been left on. The ear flicked a few more times, and the temblor balgor opened her mouth in a bone-cracking yawn, eyes slowly opening as she peered into the lights. Farida blinked a few times at the light, willing it to go away and stop hurting her eyes. Then that failed, she slid her eyelids shut and yawned again, this time stretching out her limbs as far as they could go.
As her sleepiness drained from her system, she opened her eyes to look around the cage. Seeing that Hektor still slumbered, she yawned one final time, rolling onto her feet as she became aware of an unpleasant taste coating her dried out tongue. Farida did not notice the newcomer as she padded her way over to the water trough, dropping her head down to drink from it in noisy slurps.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:04:04 GMT -6
She did not often wake up feeling like that, and the question of what had been wrong with the meat entered her mind an instant before a wave of nausea washed it away. She swayed on her feet, tilting her head up and drawing her lips up as she fought to keep her water in her stomach. The nausea diminished to a tolerable level after a blessedly short while, and the temblor balgor staggered back to where the custom lay. She was in no mood to play and hunt herself, so rather than wake up the custom with a well-aimed bat of her paw, Farida plopped down next to the custom balgor and pressed her back against Hektor’s. If the meat had been bad, they would need to conserve their strength for the next hunt. And so Farida happily curled up to do her best to fall back asleep.
The next to wake had not been the misma balgor either, though this balgor also had green on her coat. Hektor woke in the same bleary-eyed fashion as her fellow balgor, shutting her eyes against the harsh light of the room with a rumble. The world felt as though it was alternating between spinning one way and then a completely new direction without a moment to rest, and Hektor held her eyes tightly shut against the pitching room. She could feel the presence of Farida behind her, and she held to that as she waited for the world to calm, the taste of dryness and gross slowly creeping across her tongue.
Alma had decided to fetch a book and earplugs.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:04:16 GMT -6
Hektor had been a faster eater than Farida that day, the latter taking a moment to bat a leg around as Hektor had started eating. It had been their first meal of the day, Hektor certain the the cart and human had appeared a little later than their usual time. She had not waited beyond the time it took for the food to be dumped into the cage before she had started to eat, ignoring the gross powder coating it as she ripped free huge chunks of meat from the skinned body she held in her claws. There was really a point to being picky, but now she wished she had as the world lurch from under her and somersaulted through the air. Next time she would not eat the powdered food, not unless she was starving.
When the world settled enough that she dared to open her eyes, Hektor pushed her side against Farida as she tried to get her feet under her body. With the unwitting aid of the temblor balgor, she staggered over to the water that Farida had already drank from, lapping up as much of the water as she could until the taste vanished from her mouth and cramps began to assault her bloated belly. She swayed her way back to Farida, dropping down to resume her earlier position of being back to back with the temblor balgor.
She had not noticed the misma balgor either, her other senses too occupied for the scent of the intruder to make it through to her mind.
It was a decently long walk for Alma.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:04:41 GMT -6
The two balgor had fallen back asleep easily enough, hiding from the way the world seemed to shift with every breath they took, nausea and cramps failing to penetrate their true sleep as they tried to sleep off the effects of the drugged meat. The miasma balgor woke up last of all.
It had been an hour since Hektor had dropped back down next to Farida, water sloshing around in her stomach as she had regretted drinking quite so much water. It was then that the miasma balgor began to twitch, her tail whipping at some unseen irritant on her side, her snores fading away as her mouth split into a wide yawn. Licking the inside of her mouth, the miasma balgor slowly opened her eyes a crack, then all the way as she grew used to the bright light all around her.
She was not used to this. Where she had been had been dimmer than the stark white light that now, a light that she had grown up with and made her feel an instinctive feeling of wrongness as she glanced around her cage. She could see the bars that were a common sight in her cage, but the ground beneath her felt oddly hard, a stretch of her paws revealing nothing but cold metal where she might have found rocks or plants. The feelings of nausea and sickness led her to closing her eyes as she tried to figure out what had happened to her cage and her rocks.
The kennels had been designed for storage, not a human moving quickly in them.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:05:22 GMT -6
When the miasma balgor had been younger, she had tried digging her way out of her cage. It had been a grand idea, her plan to dig a hole just deep enough for her to slip under the bars and find someone to play with. The human who brought her food had been bigger then, and she had decided the human would be the one to play with as she pushed rocks and weeds and dirt away from the bars. Some of the rocks had been larger than her at the time, and she had braced herself against the bars so that she would push them out of the way. She was not about to let a couple of rocks stop her from going on an adventure!
But she had never made it out. When the rocks and dirt had been scraped away, there was only a floor of cold metal to be found. Remembering the memory, the miasma balgor brought her tail closer to her chest without a second thought. But she had not been digging, had she? The miasma balgor fought through the sickness to try to remember what her last actions had been before falling asleep. The human had brought food for her as it always did, dumping the pile of meat as far from her as it could manage, and she had eaten it as the human scurried away as it always seemed to do when the meat did not come from the ceiling tube.
The other two balgor had no such thoughts, enjoying their nap as their symptoms faded away.
Alma wondered about the size.
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Post by Alma on Jul 4, 2021 21:05:51 GMT -6
Had there been something wrong with the meat? There had been white powder before, a chalky substance on those occasions that the miasma balgor always forced herself to eat in the end. This one had been different though, the powder clumping together and having a flavor that somehow was both worse than the chalk and tasted almost like nothing as she tore into the meat beneath it.
Her illness seemed to fade as she decided not to eat any more of that white powdered meat, nausea leaving her as the world came to a halt. She tried to stand, rolling onto her feet, but staggered into the bars of the cage as the world lurched out from under her again. She fell to the floor with a grunt, waiting with the lingering taste of the powder on her tongue for the world to once again stop spinning. As she did, she kept her mouth shut and worked her tongue and fangs, spitting out a mouthful of saliva, acid and the drug to splat against the ground as the world slowed to a stop. The miasma balgor leaned heavily against the bars of the cage as she forced herself into a stiff-legged standing position. A familiar scent caught in her nose for a moment, but the demands of her dried throat led her to the water trough, and she drank until her throat stopped aching. She looked around her cage after she finished drinking, unaware of the other two balgor sleeping just a handful of meters away.
To Alma, the outside of the kennel building seemed small.
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