Dododex
ARK: Survival Evolved & Ascended Companion
Tips & Strategies
Waning Unity
Chapter Twenty-one
The darkness felt so good.
It enveloped him. It covered him. It stirred all around him like hot desert winds.
The desert. Oh, the desert. What a desolate place. He had been so, so alone. His heart had been slowly dissolving away. It broke, fractured, fell apart until there was nothing left but a hollow shelf of what he had been. And what was a wolf without their heart?
He had known from the beginning that his pack would never come back. It wasn’t the loneliness itself that had broken him, it was the knowledge that the loneliness would never be healed. He would be alone forever, and he would die alone, and the darkness would close in on him and eat away at him until he was nothing.
Except he wasn’t nothing. He wasn’t alone anymore. Because of Lume.
Lume.
The thought of the she-wolf ripped him out of the darkness that enfolded him. He sucked in a desperate gasp, thrusting himself to his feet. “Lume!” he cried, though it came out as a ruptured whine. His legs buckled and he fell back into the ground as burning pain engulfed him, throat tightening and cutting off his air flow. Instinctually he began coughing and retching, stomach bile mixed with blood running from his jaws.
Somewhere behind him he heard his name, carried on a fearful voice, but his gagging filled his ears and he couldn’t focus on anything else. The pale, sun-kissed fur of Milkweed leaned over him, her body brushing against his as he fought against his own lungs to breathe, eyes wide. Tears ran their way down his face as the convulsion continued, stabbing claws of pain through his entire body.
“Breathe, Fraser,” Milkweed’s voice told him from somewhere overhead, voice filled with concern. He could feel his sister’s fear, but more evident was guilt. Not her guilt, he managed to process as he vomited up more blood. Someone else’s.
The form of Lume appeared beside him, pale fur almost white with the faintest trace of blue, except for the stripe of sky blue that weaved from her face down to her shoulder and along her side. Fraser managed to pull his eyes up and look at her, and as their eyes met he found that the she-wolf’s fear was greater than Milkweed’s. “Fraser,” she whispered, voice trembling with worry and guilt.
Everything was on fire. He felt as if the pain, the convulsion, the burning would go on forever. But just when it seemed to hit its peak, all at once his body stilled, muscles relaxing and freeing him from the potentially deadly hold. He panted heavily, open-mouthed, sides lifting and sinking as he regained his breath, dizziness overtaking him. His weight sank into the forest floor, everything growing limp as his eyelids sagged. He couldn’t smother a pitiful, pain-driven whimper.
“Fraser,” Lume repeated his name, moving to lay in front of him with her nose level to his. “Fraser, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
He let out a weak, shaky moan in the form of a response, straining to look at her. Milkweed’s fur swished against his side before she turned to move. “I’m going to get him food,” her voice said, wobbly, as if Fraser was underwater. “Be careful, okay? I’ll be right back.”
Silence followed, the only sound being the wheeze which followed Fraser’s every breath, straining his lungs to a point where he wondered if death would be a far better option. The darkness had been so soft. So warm.
“Fraser,” Lume’s voice whispered finally, after what felt like an eternity passed between the pair. “I am so sorry.”
Fraser groaned out an inaudible response, every piece in his body weak and heavy with burdensome weight. He felt himself begin to tremble as a chilled wind hummed through the treetops, a mixture of cold and his current status catching up to him. He could faintly hear the rustle of Lume’s fur as he moved, but his eyelids were too heavy to force them open and look at her. His heart thumped inside of his ears as a moment passed, when all at once the powerful strength of the ethereal wolf enveloped him, fur brushing against his as she moved to lay down alongside him. Though a simple gesture, he felt his heart swell within his chest. It had been so long, far too long, since he had been able to lay in the company of another wolf. One who cared for him.
“I’m so sorry,” Lume’s fractured voice repeated in a hushed tone. Fraser moaned out a shaky answer, giving up on speaking and instead allowing his muscles to untense completely as he dipped away back into unconsciousness, the vibration of Lume’s heart against his side comforting him to the point of rest.
(They’re besties)
- President Loki
More Magenta Coloring Tips
<:NEXUS:> I claim for rebellion
Very good colour like if it’s good
<:NEXUS:>
Says the yapper
Best camouflage in game #invisible
Makes for good Camo, especially for PvP put this on and you’ll be practically invisible
Waning Unity
Chapter Twenty
'Stop it.’
Lume could hear him screaming as she thrashed him back and forth, pulling the blood in his veins from one side of his body to the other.
'Stop it.'
She could hear him breaking as she slammed him into the ground over and over again.
‘Stop it.’
She felt his throat working as he pleaded for his life over mouthfuls of blood.
It would have been simpler to say it wasn’t her fault. There were many creatures of legend with a sense of duality, a second mind controlling their body. For all anyone knew, she could easily have been one of them. For all they knew, Lume had retreated to some far away corner at the back of her mind, left to the devices of a mindless beast.
But Lume knew. This was her; she was that beast, and lying to herself would do no good. She had promised to help them, to save them like a fool. Maybe she had even cared about them. What good had it done now? She’d cared about Fraser at some point, right? Now here she was killing him, and as much as she subconsciously might have wished she could have, she didn’t care. She was hurting, hurting too much to care about anything else. Their essence was causing her pain … if she could only get rid of them all, it would finally stop.
“Lume. Please.”
So if it was Lume in control, what was that then, that voice repeating over and over: ‘Stop it.’
She tried to pull her jaw shut tighter, tight enough to simply break Fraser’s neck and silence him, silence the pain, but she found she couldn’t.
‘Stop it.’
‘I can’t. I want it to be over.’
‘You’ll kill him.’
‘I know.’
Maybe there was another part of her, not a separate mind altogether, but another Lume. That was the Lume Fraser was looking for, the one he could plead with and be heard, the Lume that tried to keep him out of harm’s way; the Lume that wanted to protect the only creature that had ever truly bothered to care about her. Maybe that was the other voice that had been in her head all along; a Lume that existed simply to keep things like this from happening.
‘You wouldn’t kill him.’
‘I would.’
‘You can’t.’
‘I must.’
Wolves were slamming into her left and right as they ran past her. She had long gotten past the point of recognizing anything else was there. It felt as if she was burning alive, and it only grew worse the further the battle went. Her entire body was
trembling now.
‘I just want it to stop.’
“I’m loyal to you.”
Her internal dialogue halted. What had he just said?
“You are my pack.”
Something in Lume broke. He was trying to stop her … no, he was trying to SAVE her; save her before she did something she would truly regret. The red of his essence seeped away, softening to a light blue once again. The scar of red that had started Lume’s torment became a striking blue, taking a portion of the pain away. She felt as if she could breathe again, if
only a little. Fraser didn’t break eye contact with her, and his eyes were soft and kind, already forgiving her. Then they rolled back and shut, pulling Lume back to the reality of what she was doing.
‘It’s time to stop.’
She released her grip on Fraser’s neck and he began coughing out heavy spurts of blood. Lume was still hurting, still
frenzied, but in the midst of her hysteria something remarkable happened, perhaps not so remarkable for anyone else but her, but remarkable nonetheless; Lume began to cry. It was just pooled in her eyes for a bit, then tears began to run down
her face in small threads, and then like rivers pouring down her face. She sank to the ground slowly, sobbing while fire ran through her veins.
‘It hurts.’
‘I know.’
‘Not the essence.’
‘I know.’
Lume tried to blink her tears away as she fought to regain control of her breath. Horror dawned on her at the helplessness of her position. She was stuck in a degree of pain that threatened to turn her feral at any second, and Fraser was lying broken
and bloodied beside her, now unconscious and teetering on the edge of death. Initiative drove her back to her feet and she lifted Fraser by his scruff, gently this time, before turning and dashing into the forest as far as her legs would carry her from
the sea of red behind her. She was aware of footsteps trailing behind her, but the scent belonged to the young she-wolf Fraser had acknowledged as one of his past pack mates.
Several times she wanted to stop, and then a strike of pain would inform her she wasn’t yet far enough, so she kept running. She ran until the agony became a numb stinging all over her body, and then she collapsed, still trembling. Milkweed wasn’t far behind, panting as she made her way into the small clearing Lume had found, careful to keep her distance from the monster that had torn half of each pack apart.
The ethereal wolf hung her head as she looked down at her friend’s bloodied body, and a new, vulnerable thought occurred to her. “Fraser,” she whispered to a wolf she wasn’t sure could hear her, “I … I don’t know what to do…”
(EMOTIONAL DAMAGE)
~CL1
Waning Unity
Chapter Eighteen
She could not see it, but she felt it. A clutch of wolves were following her to the river when a sudden stab of pain made her
heart throb. She stopped for a moment as she tried to keep herself from doubling over. The wolves behind her gave each
other looks of confusion before Mink pushed past them and pressed against her side to steady her. “Are you alright?” He
whispered. “What happened?”
“I … “ Lume tried to put into words what she had just experienced. “Truthfully, I do not know.”
Mink blinked at her a moment
and then gave a nod towards her. “Is this a sign we’re getting close?”
She wasn’t sure what he meant until she looked down to see a sharp streak of scarlet stretching from her right shoulder and
stopping just shy of her heart. She thought it might have been blood if the shivering of the wind through her fur hadn’t alerted
her that this was merely a change of color on her coat.
She had never seen this before, both colors resting on her fur at
once, and the searing pain emanating from the scar of red essence made her certain it was not good for her.
She looked up
suddenly, searching the group of wolves for the cause. It didn’t take her long to find a splotch of red in the sea of blue around
her.
“Fraser?”
The much less timid wolf raised his head towards her. She hadn’t seen him back there, but she had assumed he was lost in
the crowd. Apparently he had only just now arrived, his appearance marked by the shift of essence. “What?” He asked, likely
growing uncomfortable with the way Lume was gawking at him. She had never seen him with red essence, not even when
Harrier and Boa attacked. She couldn’t imagine what must have happened to result in this.
“You … you’re … ”
She stepped forward and the searing pain grew worse as the red stripe quickly grew along her fur,
reaching halfway down her leg and up her neck to the right side of her face. She yelped suddenly and hopped back from
Fraser, leaving the curious wolf just as surprised as she was. The wolves around them gave Lume a wider berth as Fraser
tried to approach her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Lume retreated one step for each step he advanced. “Stay back!” She
shouted to him, letting out a small sigh as the crimson retreated back to the small sliver in her fur and the pain subsided a
little.
“It’s okay, I just want to help,” Fraser assured her quietly, taking two more steps slowly towards her.
The patch of red grew back ferociously quick and climbed up the side of her face again. She could feel her mouth fill with
saliva as the tips of her fangs tore further from her gums in an painful, elongated state, along with her claws. A hideous
screeching noise accompanied a sudden light-headedness, and once she regained her focus, she found she was lower to
the ground with her ears flattened against her head. “I said stay BACK!” It came out, half snarl - half bark, and it was no
longer clear whether it was fear or anger taking the reins.
The wolves encircled around her dropped to defensive stances, their essence slowly ebbing into red as well, only making
the pain worse until everything in her vision was a shade of scarlet. “BACK!” She snarled, snapping at all of them as she
spun to face them.
The tense situation was thrown into utter chaos when barks and snarls drowned out the sounds of the forest. The group of
wolves all turned to see several canine bodies moving towards them through the trees; the enemy pack had arrived. She turned back to the pack she was supposedly meant to be defending, but everything was blurred and red. She couldn't see clearly and her head felt like it was being torn in two.
The
war was about to begin, and once the commotion began, friend and foe would all be the same to her. Lume remained self aware only long enough to realize things were about to get very, very bad.
~CL1
So sorry, I was certain that I’d posted this but apparently not. ):/
Waning Unity
Chapter Seventeen
“I leave you alone for a half hour and you start a WAR?”
Lume nodded as though this was an extremely natural scenario, making Fraser wonder if she had done something similar in the past. The two of them were out for a stroll, which had been up until this point peaceful, as they ventured through the pack’s forested home. Here the lushness of the overhead forest canopy hid the sun’s harsh rays, concealing the countless birds that sang in joyous harmony. “I can’t trust you with anything,” he muttered as they continued on, following a narrow deer trail that led through the shrubbery.
The ethereal wolf, her fur still glowing a dusty blue, paused to turn and look down at him. “They believe I am a savior of sorts, Fraser,” she told him with what looked like surprised optimism. “I would like to live up to their expectations of me.”
Fraser sighed, letting out a wispy breath through his nostrils. “And their expectations of you are that you’ll fight wars for them?” he muttered, looking away as he sat down hard into the dirt, stirring it beneath him. Lume sat down parallel to him, ducking her head in an attempt to make eye contact, which the little desert wolf fiercely avoided.
“Fraser,” said the large wolf gently, her tone caring. “They are fighting against starvation. I cannot stand by and let them suffer. You out of everyone else should understand the gravity of this pain.” She lowered her head, swiveling herself as he evaded meeting her eyes. “And besides, I think that I can help.”
“You THINK?” Fraser cried, backpedaling a few steps and turning away from her, his head low as he shut his eyes. A million things were racing through his head, thoughts and opinions and decisions and choices running tracks in his mind. He sucked in a breath, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before turning around to face her again. “It isn’t my decision to make,” he uttered finally. “Just… whatever you decide, don’t leave me.”
As sunshine gave way to dark, the sky flaunting brilliant colors of fiery orange and vibrant shades of purple and red, Fraser lay underneath a burly oak tree just within the camp’s boundaries. As he sat, head down in the dirt and eyes closed, he listened to the rustling of leaves in the wind. He wasn’t yet used to the forest, the dancing shadows that dappled the ground or the way that sunshine was hidden away from view nearly all the time. The way that squirrels and other animals dashed through the underbrush startled him. This place was nothing like the desert which he called home.
“How are you feeling?” a voice asked. Fraser’s eyes flicked open and he lifted his head. Milkweed, one of the three wolves from his old pack, was standing in front of him, a smile tracing her face as she awaited his response.
Fraser hesitated a moment before responding. “Fine,” he sighed, turning his head away from her in hopes of avoiding a conversation.
Suspicions arising, Milkweed moved to sit beside him. “Are you sure?” she asked softly, doubt radiating in her expression. “You know, it’s alright if you’re not fine.”
A sudden anger flared up in Fraser’s chest. “Stop being nice to me,” he snapped, pushing himself up to his feet and fixing her with a glare. She looked taken aback at his sudden outlash, though he didn’t give her a chance to speak. “Stop acting like we’re friends, like we’re family.”
A look of bewilderment cascaded over her face. “But Fraser, we are fam-”
The smaller desert wolf cut her off with a growl. “Don’t finish that sentence,” he snarled, ears pinning back against his head. “We are not family. Not anymore.” He turned away from her and began to pad off, pausing to shoot over his shoulder, “If we were really family you wouldn’t have left me.”
- President Loki
(Sorry this chapter took me a few days!)
Waning Unity
Chapter Thirteen
Lume let out a fearsome snarl that made Fraser's fur crawl. He backed away, tail snatched between his hind legs and his body low to the ground, as chaos erupted in front of him. Lume smacked the cougar away in time for Wildflower to land a bite to it’s neck. It recoiled with sharp claws and temporarily blinded her, thanks to claws over the bridge of her snout. The ethereal wolf, glowing a soft blue, pounced on the big cat and tussled across the ground locked in harsh combat. He had to do something.
But what was he supposed to do?
Use your brain, he told himself. That’s what you’re best at.
Forcing himself out of his fearful paralysis, he looked around, tuning out the violent barks and yowls of fighting in front of him to think. He slowed his breath until it was rhythmic, running through the library of ideas in his brain and sorting through what could be used and what couldn’t. The cougar was powerful and dangerous. Fraser was not.
His eyes landed on something. A stick.
Fraser quickly dashed through the underbrush and pounced on the stick, sinking his teeth into the damp bark and heaving it up. His neck strained at the weight of the fat branch but he ignored it, dragging it back towards his companions. He heard a crunch and froze, stiffening as fear crawled through his spine, rolling his eyes around to see that the cougar was stalking towards him now, teeth curled up to reveal frightening fangs. Lume was distracted by something behind the big cat, bent down towards the ground. She wouldn’t be able to help him.
I don’t need help, he told himself sharply, tensing his jaw around the large stick in his mouth. I’m perfectly capable of defending myself. I won’t run. Not this time.
The cougar let out a frightening yowl, pouncing closer with jagged claws reaching out to attack him. Tensing all of his muscles, Fraser swung his head around, gravity whipping the stick around after him, lifting it up and building momentum due to his speed of motion.
The stick connected itself with the cougar’s neck and sent it tumbling back. Right as he felt the jarring of the strike he opened his jaw, pulling himself away from the stick and letting it thrust the cat backwards. As it let out a pain-filled cry, temporarily stunned by the strike of the stick, Fraser jumped forward, now carrying the offense on their attacker.
I won’t run.
Using his hind legs he pinned the feline to the ground, and scraping his claws through the soil underpaw, he flung dirt into the cougar’s eyes, temporarily blinding it. It let out a furious snarl, using its claws- which Fraser had forgotten it had- to score marks down his haunches. Blistering pain was joined to his muscles within moments and he yelped, hopping backwards and dodging into the bushes. The cougar staggered to its feet and shook off, whipping around to attack him again.
Not this time.
Lunging forward, Fraser let out a harsh bark, baring his teeth with a throaty snarl. As he did so Lume appeared, and her mere hulking presence finally convinced the cougar to turn tail and flee into the woods. Fraser panted, staring after it, regaining himself before turning back to Lume. She had claw marks along both of her sides and shoulders, and the side of her face was bleeding as well.
“Are you alright?” he asked, analyzing the depth of her cuts and deciding whether or not they were fatal. It didn’t appear so, but infection could prove that thought wrong if they weren’t careful.
“I am safe,” she told him. “Wildflower is not.”
Fraser’s heart sped down into his stomach and dropped like a heavy weight. His wall of hope crumbled around him as he dashed numbly past the white wolf, crossing to where Wildflower lay in a heap of reddened fur.
It didn’t have to be spoken. Wildflower was dead.
- President Loki
Waning Unity
Chapter Two
She didn't know how long she had been trudging through plains and forest and rock terrain, but Lume knew she had been walking endlessly. She looked around at the trees and the water and the sky above. It was all so ... bland. She had heard other wolves describe the "greens" and "yellows" and "oranges" of the tree leaves as the seasons passed; the "purples" of a deep night sky. For her there had never been much beauty in nature. She quite literally saw the world in black and white. Everything was some varying shade of grey, all equally as unstimulating as one landscape.
Long ago, older, wiser wolves had thought something was wrong with ancient wolf's eyes, but it quickly became clear to them that Lume could see things they couldn't. For instance, the small pools of white leading like a trail of pawprints further into the desert. Thin whisps of white, smoke-like dust lifted from the essence prints further from the ground, curling away as she stepped past them. She didn't have to walk far to find where they led.
A young, chalk-brown wolf lay curled under a gnarled, dead tree ahead, muttering something under his breath. She hadn't gotten within seven pawsteps of him before his head shot into an upright position and he turned his head to face her. "Stop! Stay where you are!" he shouted, standing quickly. Lume noted the hind paw he was clutching close to his body, wincing everytime he put pressure on it.
"It's rare I find one with a completely neutral essence, neither this way or that, other than mine," she said, sitting just in front of the rock the defensive wolf was perched on. "You must be quite conflicted to manage that."
He stared at her for a long moment, sizing her up with the look of a predator determining if an intruder was a threat or simply a passerby. "You're in my pack's home," he said, holding his head high in an attempt at an authourity Lume had no concern for. "This is our territory ... you must leave."
Lume looked around the desolate ground around them. Other than the crickets and lizards lurking under dust-colored rocks and dead bushes, there wasn't any other creature in their company, though she could see the evidence that this had once been the heart of a great gathering of wolves.
"They no longer remain here," Lume said, more of a statement than a question. The tan wolf's authority faltered. "They ... they'll be back!" he said with finality. Lume stared at him without saying a word. "They'll be back," he repeated, much quieter this time. "We'll all be together again."
Lume stood suddenly, content with a slightly fuller understanding of the situation. She turned, following one of the many faded-blue essence trails as it broke away from the others, growing a red tint as it split further from the heart.
"Where are you going? Their scents have long gone cold, it'll be impossibpe to track them through time and weather!" the tan wolf called after her.
"Scent fades quickly, essence doesn't," she called back over her shoulder, still following the reddening trail faithfully. The follow up questions from the tan wolf began to fade behind her slowly, but she disregarded them for now. Either he would follow, or he wouldn't; that was his path to decide.
For her, the decision had already been made as she found a new direction to wander.