But during their stays inside the wire traps, anything within reaching distance of their bored and confined jaws and paws would be ruined and ripped to scraps. Fabric, clothing, food, wood or stone alike was subject to their curious prying attention. Sometimes the cages were lined with a high wall to keep this from happening, but the only fool proof way to prevent damage was to move things away from all the open sides.
Apparently, Zack thought as he caught hold of the reigns to one of the pack birds through the bars of his cage, Apparently the Striped Ones never had any vermin or traps to learn that from.
It only took a few moments for the caravan that had stopped in their travels to break into chaos when one of the carts began to get dragged through the camp. Cramped into an awkward position in his cage on the back of the cart and claws intertwined in the reigns of the pack bird's bridle, Zack didn't have much control over the animal. It spooked and bucked, dragging the cart through tents and over cooking fires. The wooden tug leaned dangerously to the right, riding on one wheel before the bird jerked in the opposite direction and it crashed back onto the ground. The two cages strapped to the flat planks jolted uncomfortably and both the Hedgehog and the Bird slammed their heads against the top bars on impact.
In languages barely intelligable and nothing like one another, the Striped Ones shouted as they dove out of the way or tried to stop the run away cart. Rocks scooped into their multijointed tridactyl hands came in a volley towards the cages, their throwers hoping to knock out the caged Hedgehog with the reigns. The Bird barely seemed to notice the attacks, or if he did, the size of his wings in relation to the size of the cage wouldn't allow him to do anything about it. Zack, on the other hand, was taking a great deal of notice. Raising an arm to fend off one rock only meant getting hit in the side with another one, and the more he struggled the more the bird panicked and continued to sprint erraticly through the camp. And the faster the bird sprinted, the more slack got taken up on the reigns and the more they became entangled in Zack's claws and spikes. By the time the cart was overcome and held down, the camp was in a distorted chaos and no one had the desire to bet he least bit gentle towards their captives.
The barred and latched roofs of the cages were flung open and the Bird and Hedgehog grabbed at with rough skinned triple-jointed fingertips. The bizzare turtle-esque garb of the Striped Ones jangled and clattered as they made a calculated circle around the two pens and threw and equal amount of stones and taunts into the cages. The Bird went placidly, unable to hide himself away or resist thanks to his wingspan. A few matted golden feathers came loose and lay at the bottom of the cage as he was dragged out, the pen overturning and clattering onto its side. He said nothing but glared towards the Hedgehog as the Striped Ones dragged him outside the circle, a few of their ranks following after and taunting in their language.
Zack didn't have time to notice the Bird's glare or apathetic removal from the pen. He was too busy coiling into a small, spiked ball and raising his solid hackles in defence. The blunt but roughly shaped spikes tore upwards, standing up from his skin and shredding through the tunic he had been wearing underground. The sides of the shirt leafed down and fell around Zack's face where he held his claws in front of his eyes. Occassionally one of the Striped Ones would reach a hand in to make a grab at the Hedgehog, but Zack's people were instinctively hard to pull out of a curl. Every prod only prompted him to intake breath sharply, forcing the spikes aggressively outwards towards his assailants hands. The jibes and assaults from above and the sides didn't let up, although their cries became rythmic and discomforting. Something in the atmosphere seemed to become more and more defiled as they chanted, and Zack's claws itched with an oddly familiar sensation.
"Stone-Terra! Stone-Terra!"
If Zack had been paying attention to the outside of his pen instead of curling tightly together, he would have found that although the crowds were chanting with unison, they had parted ways and stepped back, leaving a passage through which one of their rank was now making a shuffling slow gait towards the cage. The Bird, restrained but in line of sight for the pens, stiffened and tried to draw his wings up against his head, shrinking downwards. He knew what was coming.
The hobbling Striped One stopped a good few meters away from Zack's cage and reached into the folds of his clothing, his misshappen eyes flattening into dark lines as the multi-jointed fingers drew out a jagged and pulsating stone. The hue of the rock was slightly blue, slightly white, and light shifted across it like tigers' eye. For a minute the dimming embers of the trampled cooking fires caught the stone and it reflected, blue and shaking in the Striped One's hand, onto the backside of the Hedgehog.
There wasn't any chance of ignoring the feeling in his claws now. Zack knew it, knew it before but only from afar. Before the Striped Ones had a chance to react by closing the lid of his pen or even holding him down, the Hedgehog was out and shedding his shredded clothing, rear claws using the pen as a perch as he stared down the open strip of land, not into the eyes of the Striped One holding the stone, but into the stone itself. Some of the pack moved in on him, but the Hedgehog jumped, sprinting on stiff muscles towards the stone. The Striped One holding it aloft seemed to notice his approuch only a second before Zack was within reach of the stone, his pitch black eyes opening a sliver more just as the Hedgehog's claw touched the exterior of the stone.
The explosion of light and energy blew all standing backwards, and those who managed to hold their feet wheeled their arms for balance. Temporarily blinded by the flash, many groped blindly for handholds, chattering and snapping in their own language when they grabbed someone and dragged them down by accident. The Bird, eyes clamped shut through it all in fear, uncurled from where he'd landed on the ground and struggled upwards, staring dumbly at the picture in front of him. Like a painting that overdramatized a historic moment, the dark woods were tinted blue, everything faintly shaking off the glow the stone had bestowed upon it. The Striped Ones lay fallen or struggling to stand like the carnage of a war, but the Hedgehog and the Stone Holder were frozen in place.
Slowly, very slowly, the Hedgehog's claw dropped from where it had contacted the stone to hang at his side lifelessly. Staring with eyes that didn't seem to see, jaw slightly slacked, Zack moved as if to step towards the Striped One holding aloft the rock in front of him. He moved, but didn't make it. The step brought him down to his knees with a shock that rattled the spikes on his back, but his gaze was still locked on the stone blindly. For a moment more, he was frozen like that. On his knees and staring up, spikes flared as if in worship. Then all at once, the spikes collapsed against his back, and the Striped One stepped back as the Hedgehog's body sagged inward and fell to the dirt with a sound like a dropped sack of potatos.
For a short moment, it seemed like everything had gone the way it was supposed to. The Bird remembered the first time they had used the stone on him, however, and knew that wasn't the norm. The white hot pain and light had been for him only, had held him and left him shaking and gibbering, feathers dropping. The rest of the Striped Ones had simply watched, had not been thrown to the sides or blinded in anything like this. And the old one holding the stone knew it. Bringing it down from where he held it above his head, the Striped One gazed critically at the rock, clicking his tongue a moment before screeching and moving back with increased aggitation. Those few who had gotten to their feet all began to mill with the same degree of panic the Hedgehog had succeeded in sewing when he took over the cart. The Bird, momentarily forgotten, took a few shaken steps closer to see what was wrong with the stone.
He need not have moved, for the Striped One who had held it in his hands threw it to the ground in disgust and whirled, scrambling off into the darkening forest and screeching aggressively. A few of the others followed him, but none dared touch the Hedgehog. The Bird seemed entirely without interest to them as they retreated from their camp into the darkness, their voices echoing out into the trampled clearing. Moving cautiously towards where the stone lay, the Bird scrapped at it anxiously with a footclaw, turning it over in the dirt. The ground sounded hollow when the stone turned over, thudding and clouding its prismatic surface with earth. Looking up again, slightly paranoid, the Bird noted they were left alone now in the clearing and closed his footclaws around the stone, balancing on one leg as he bent both his knee and back to inspect it at closer range.
Even covered in dirt, the distress of the Striped Ones was obvious when he looked clearly at the rock. A fissure ran up through the center, a solid crack that had all but split the stone in two. Through some defiance of science, it held together. But the tigers' eye that had peered 'round from the surface was now gone, and with it the slightly etherial glow of the stone. The Terra-Stone had lost its magic.
And since this obviously hadn't happened to the Striped Ones before, there had to be a reason for it. Or a place for the magic to have gone. Lowering his claw and the stone to the ground, the Bird looked up and around, his pale blue eyes landing on the only other body in the clearing, the one that lay untouched and unmoving where it had fallen.
The nameless Bird folded his wings, regarding the Hedgehog.