It took a great many years for Reathos to emerge again from the caves. And as he did, he realized that the world had not stopped spinning. Many gods had added their unique print on the planet. But on print had to be the most amazing, as well as the most insane. For Reathos just emerged to see a moon fall towards Galbar. “Is it time for life on Galbar already?” he said to himself. Watching as the celestial object fell to the ground. He would not act, for he did not know if it was Fated or not. So with patience he watched. Until he saw a rupture in the very fabric of reality. Monstrosity did loom beyond the horizon between what was real and what could not be real. But he could but catch a glimps of those very beings before the moon fell into the Gap and it closed behind it. “I guess time is yet to come for the life here.” Somewhat content he then started to walk across Galbar. Obviously killing every form of life in his immediate vicinity. Trees withered, and small critters that did not manage to escape would fall lifeless to the ground.

Soon Reathos found the Deepwoods, and witnessed the large quantities of life within it. Of course no animal would dare attack a being emitting a cold, despairing aura like that of Reathos. He could finish them without even moving a finger. And while they didn’t know it, they certainly felt it. Reathos, a being of death, walked among life and was happy. For he saw what he would reap in due time.

Except that not everything was entirely right. He noticed animals so old they could barely walk. Beings that should have died a long time ago. But didn’t, because there was nothing to kill them. Thus Reathos realized the error of Slough’s ways. She created life without effort, but had no design behind them. They simply existed. Life gone amok. Over-population would become a problem. He could not entrust Slough to work towards a design for the Cycle.

From a dying animal he ripped off a piece of flesh and began to mold it in a certain shape. Obviously he placed a lot of effort within his creation. Designing it, balancing it. Giving it features and abilities. It would be the product of intelligent design. A predator which nature would not overtake anytime soon. A beast only bend on killing. He made several like it.

And thus the 4 packs of Heraktati were formed. Packs of apex predators. They physical prowess so far unmatched by natural creation. Reathos released them, and their bloodlust already drove them towards the setting sun. Searching for new prey. Like a wave they would go around Galbar. Constantly weeding out those whose time had come. But it was with a certain melancholy that he released them. He was their creator, and their doom. He made them, and he would destroy them too. They would all meet their end by his name. But they were a necessity.

With a child’s curiosity though, he turned into his Raven form and started to follow the second pack he made. The beasts moved swiftly, and without pause. Only to sleep a few hours at night. They easily reached the edge of the Deepwoods, from which they continued to run. Leaving a trail of flesh, blood and dead. The Heraktati made little noise beside the occasional grunts and snaps towards each other. They lacked any form of peace or beauty. Sacrificing such things for the cheer ability to end life itself. And they were followed by a black murder of ravens. The pack passed Ilunabar and her white Avatar. Looking up at neither but keeping their distance. They smelled no sickness or old age on either. Instead they could only feel the cheer power oozing from the god and the fragment of it. So they kept on running. But Reathos was not afraid of his siblings. He landed near the rose bush, and immediately the branch below him was being sapped of its strength. Unlike in his true form, the raven form does not instantaneously destroy all life. But its presence was known. The murder too landed all around Ilunabar.

“Such vibrant colors. Truly life holds far more possibilities than I thought. But I wonder. Why do you care, sister? Why do you care for those colors? For when the cold approaches, so does death. This planet is in an endless cycle of dying. Why would you create these beautiful things, when you know that very soon they will wither, and die?” There was no malevolence in his voice. Only genuine curiosity. Slough made life, and he finished it. But for the first time he witnessed another god who did not start or end life. But altered it. Simply because she wanted to.

Somewhere in the distance, an incredible stream of wind was working its way into the earth. Water was flowing. A beacon of glorious sunlight charred the sky. The deep earth shuddered as it was devoured and moulded into tunnels.

Jvan saw nothing.

Perfectus was gone. So what. Who cared. Nothing of that lifeless hunk of rock had mattered anyway. The only thing of relevance to this universe now was where.

Not to say that the Divine Tumour didn't know the location of the vast moon. It knew where the gift was; It had designed the place! But- But- This was not what it had designed. It was more.

The roiling scarlet light of the All-Beauty's fear faded into nothing, replaced by a shuddering groan of cerise, a blanket of harsh energy. The flickering engine of morphing flesh at Its core began to twist and grind itself into activity, boring away at the ribcage of this universe and pulling out anything that lay beneath, dragging ragged shreds of non-existence into being and instantly dissecting it a millionfold. I have abandoned my own work for too long. Let the beautiful sciences take their way.

Within the depths of the corpulent God, an exhaustive process of systematic destruction and reconstruction began to take place. Eliminating possibilities one by one, the blood of the Gap was drawn, congealed, dried and stretched, hung on a rack and painted with every kind of unearthly energy in order to unravel its potential. Samples of creatures and wriggling non-creatures were scanned and mass-replicated, disintegrated and stored liquid to be regrown piecemeal in heaving pores and dishes of bone. Distorted combinations of Jvanic and Temporal design were centrifuged by divine muscles and spun into fibres, concentrates, rough hunks of glandular crystal, all stored by assimilation into the mind-body of the Engineer.

Experimentation took time, for there is a fine art in science, and art is a delicate business. Jvan gathered data patiently, for patient is Its nature. Its conclusions were refined and elegant.

The Other has been infected. It has accepted flesh from another Hell and been fertilised to grow into something new. The Horrorsome Engineer had been the first to expose and fill the Gap in the sacred manuscript. It had sown cohesion and inorganic life into such places. Placid entities as would be seen only in the depths of fever, or when the mind is stirred by such tastes as mescaline and strong hemp. Things that, exposed, did not hunt, but harmed as a gravel wind harms- without knowledge or intent, simply incompatible to the life of the World.

This reclusive, original Other had been opened and violated by something different. The divine blueprint of the universe was written on Time, but Time himself had broken into his own fabric. A body of intent had entered the unknown and unknowing. That intent was malevolent. And it was beautiful.

The new Other was hybrid. Jvan could feel it moving. What had been blind was now eager. Some hateful sperm from the places beyond time had fertilised its waiting egg and caused it to truly grow of its own accord. Its forms were diverse and adaptable, possessed of a newborn's flailing thirst.

And this fetus I shall nurture. I shall raise it as my own, and guide it in the ways that shall protect it from this world, and this world from it. I am still God of the Gap, and I now I am its gatekeeper also. The new clay has been accepted, and new art will spring forth from it. And oh, what inspiration had been uncovered by her experiments, what creative fuel had been restored to her by her work!

With the expansive library of samples from the hybrid Other, Jvan selected carefully a few forms of eldritch flesh and stimulated it into life by the light of her own will. She fused them and arranged them, sewing them together into one another to create a wriggling creature, then stitching it inseparably into the fabric of Galbar that so suited it. When she was finished, she took up her tools and hand-crafted another such living doll. And another. And thus continued.

By Jvan's will and scrutiny was the first generation of Fiberlings born. They flowed from her, their bidimensional bodies buoyed by playful, elegant streams of hair in many colours that erupted from her pores. Such precious children, each one unique, the formless willpower of the Gap channelled into curiousity and the ability to learn. They were intelligent, far more so than anything that had sprung naturally from her own Sea. Their blind hunger she had refined into delicate, wholesome torture, a host of agonies that would evolve as their environment did, taking enough to satisfy and too little to impede. In them, the All-Beauty was well pleased.



The creation process had been long, and Jvan knew that she had separated herself much from the flow of the other gods. To stand idle to her siblings was unwise. Thus, as the last of the fiberlings evacuated her body, Jvan crafted eight more, and made them robust and powerful, one each in the vibrant shades of Mauve, Violet, Navy, Cyan, Lime, Maize, Amber and Scarlet. Within every one of these fluorescent Optic Fiberlings was embedded a Jvanic Eye and an ovary of Angels, and through them, the goddess explored the world.



Blown windwise to the north, bidden to entangle together like a glider of the Engineer's design, Violet and Amber made their way to the Shattered Plains. The thermals rising from the sun-baked desert blown into being on the First Gale bore them easily, and the enjoyed a superb airborne view of the mesas, though they were as yet uncarved into the horns of the Muse. At its northern border did Violet drift to the ground, and observed in detail the behaviour of the White Giants as they plodded onwards patiently over the stone, only breaking from their paths to charge, rumbling, at the vast fiberling. The Porcelain God had imprinted his will upon them, and not much else. A pity, but nonetheless, they're cute in their simplicity. Lesser hairballs will be hard-pressed to escape them. I wonder how they'll adapt?

Amber settled down as the hot air became less reliable, and by land continued the journey to the Nice Mountains, where a Shining Light was waiting. In the Valley of Peace it found rest amidst a large of trees in blue and pink. Trees seem to have grown so common. Who even makes all these? The dawn-coloured fiberling playfully chased after a hovering orb of Niciel's light, the function of which seemed not dissimilar to its own, until it drifted contentedly through the shade of an abandoned structure. A gazebo of design foreign to the rest of the valley. Jvan held no illusions as to its creator may be. Toun has moved on to other inspirations. I hope his search takes him far. His futile pilgrimage has my blessing.

The Engineer was not expecting confrontation in the Valley. Even the white giants here seemed quicker to forgive. When something came, Amber seized it of its own accord, and only after a moment did Jvan's attention follow along with the curiousity of that which bore her eye. Oh? Did Toun forget one of his toys here? It was a beaked animal with keen senses and intricate forelimbs, one of which gripped a crutch, a stick on which to support its weight. Gentled by the mists of the Valley, Amber suffocated the creature swiftly and quietly before she took it apart. What a gorgeous brain it had!

Hain. That name was written on the creature like a signature. Jvan explored its body through her emissary, finding substantial evidence that the animal's neural cortex was not only a regulator of instinct and homeostasis, but a fairly strong computing device with a large memory. If these proliferate... Large populations of Hain will bring so much change to the world. They are almost god-like! Perhaps they can even be taught to go beyond the beauty of nature, and sculpt their environment consciously...

I must try this.



Cyan and Mauve travelled far along the eastern coast of Jvan's ocean and its adjoined neighbour. Life had spread far through the former, and grown splendid through adaptation. It was beginning to infiltrate the latter, already forming an array of odd shapes, and Jvan made a note to further the potential of the region soon, leaving the blue-green shimmer of glossy hair to dip amidst the shore and play in the shallows. Here she saw the full extent of the trees which had been sown across Galbar from the Deepwood, and marked their presence as good; Where such structures had spread, so too animal life of many kinds would follow. Hain were found here, too, picking small shellfish from the shores and bashing them apart with rocks for their meat. Cyan left them be. They were too cute to destroy so soon.

Others held none of this care. The Devil had not been inactive since his failed attempt to obliterate Galbar, but had only made his attempts more subtle. As Cyan observed silently the daily fright of the Hain, there came a moment where they were fallen upon by an entity that shared almost enough shape to be mistaken for a white giant in the distance. The Ashling approached, and the vast fiberling compressed itself, waiting for a moment to counter-pounce the thing and destroy it defensively. It looked on as the crumbling, encrusted thing passed it by and busied itself with the Hain, treating them not as prey, but as an ichneumon wasp treats a caterpillar.

An intriguing, subtle work of art, this relationship, and one that spoke of Vestec's potential, rather than what he had become. For when the crystallised entity had taken its fill of breeding, it did not falter, nor did it consume to replenish its energy. Instead it simply continued destroying for the sake of the matter. Clink.

Abrasive was the scream that echoed through the body of Jvan as she recognised the life cycle of the Ashlings for what it was. Cyan resonated with her fury instantly, and a harsh battle ensured with the abomination. Hair flew and chunks of impure grey glass were scattered, and when the corrupted White Giant was inoperative, Cyan's remaining mass sought out the infected members of the Hain tribe one by one, and rent them from within. The survivors it herded and gathered together to breed anew, away from the scene. "I will not stand for this flawed god any longer! My children may resist the Ashlings, but they are weak and alone. Vestec's disease will only spread and destroy. I will root him out. I will find him. And if I cannot cleanse him..."

Further still east lay a range of high mountains, which Mauve explored gleefully as its creator churned. Like a fish darting over vibrant coral, it examined in detail the glint of metallic veins in its cliffsides and traced them as they ran back to the highest mount of all. Thereupon Jvan observed Teknall, Orchardist of the World, and the Avatar of the Sun in communion. With a little shudder, the pink blur began to creep swiftly upwards. Its grip was true, and Teknall had to be thanked for his work, but the climb to the summit would be cold and far.

Within the pink fiberling, an embryonic angel was growing, and its maze of vocal cords carried a message in words ringing and clear.

"My brothers in creation, it is good to see your faces once more, and I have much thanks to give. Teknall! Throughout this world I see great plants of your design, and I admire your foresight. Already creatures from the Deepwood are spreading further into the world on your back. Already Toun's children are bending branches and stripping sticks for their own use. I invite you to look upon them sometime and feel proud of your work. Ull'Yang, your spirit is welcome on Galbar, and I feel you, too, may be interested in these new animals, for they possess tremendous animus, which you might be able to emulate in children of your own. May you both be inspired always."



Navy, Maize and Scarlet journeyed west and north, following a path to the Deepwood to seek out its Mother, and soon finding results. By the waters of her own ocean, Jvan found once again the body of Slough, and the pale yellow Maize remained there at the Rottenbone's side. For a few hours it held close vigil on the limping body of the Doe alongside another odd orb of Niciel's design, until a larger, magnificent guardian stirred its head and rumbled aggression, sending even the largest fiberling flicking and skittering back over the grasses of Slough's wake. "Ah, sister! How glad I am to see that you have been injured. Isn't the chaos in this world is yet elegant, even though its creator has abandoned his duty of moderation? Esau is a fitting addition to our gallery, and soon, I will bless him." From then on, Maize held a more distant watch.

The blue and red companions continued on their journey, flickering and flowing over the Gilt Savannah like a shadow and a bloodstain, and Jvan was inspired anew by its diversity. Yes, this was a good place to foster life. Large, striding creatures could find home here to wander, and others still could see them from afar and hunt them. Amidst a herd of Brush Beasts that dwarved even its own body did Scarlet settle, skimming between their footsteps like an excitable bird.

An odd sequence of events occurred as the red fiberling drifted along with the massive animals. The herd had youngsters, already larger than mastodons, and its matriarch was vast and ancient, wrinkled by the sun and bearing heavy tusks. As Scarlet watched, a pack of strange hexapod creatures began to stalk the Brush Beasts. They were themselves fairly large, but they were as geckos to the great vertebrates. Within them they bore the mark of the Reaper. Outmatched against even the smallest Beast, the creatures targeted the greatest. And they were patient.

Each night, sometimes several times a night, the Heraktati danced between the feet of the titans and leapt upon the aged matriarch, climbing on clawed feet and harassing the same vital points on her skin each time, aggravating them before they could heal. Within weeks, even these shallow scratches began to grow deeper, until blood began to be drawn. Be it from the design of their jaw or a pathogenic symbiote that they carried or a venom that they released, the marks bore fresh blood constantly. Each night the predators escaped into the dark and scattered silently so that the beast could not follow them all and trample the pack in a single step. As weeks dragged into months, she waned imperceptibly, each night like a single grain of sand in an hourglass. It took the titanic matriarch a full season of harassment to lag behind and die, so tired from the never-closing mass of wounds over her skin that she decayed as she walked, too exhausted for her body to defend itself against sun and maggot.

...Reathos has been quiet, but his resolve is strong. With life comes death, and he has decreed death to be a fine art, as he should. Quite the engineer our Reaper turned out to be! The Heraktati are single-minded only for the sake of optimisation. Quite a contrast to the Ashlings. If only Vestec could learn.

Further still lay the Deepwood, and while Scarlet watched the Heraktati and Brush Beasts at play, there Navy continued. Through it Jvan saw anew the maelstrom of creatures that had inspired her long ago, and knew that inspiration once again. The blue fiberling explored for a time, until fate or luck brought it to the scent of divinity, which it followed to a place that caused already dead hair to stiffen even further. Ah, here stands the Reaper himself! I must congratulate him on the brutalistic motif he's put together lately. ...Ah. He is not alone.

Reathos was not alone, but had himself come in search of another deity. One which Jvan knew she had seen before, and would see many times again. Navy shuddered pleasurably, an echo of the All-Beauty's faceless smile. There is no need for me to interfere. I can trust my sister's judgement, for her motives remain pure. Come, Navy, and play with your kin elsewhere in the Deepwood.

A white entity was waiting alongside Ilunabar, which the optic fiberling did not see closely enough to examine, but eager suspicion was growing within its parent. Perhaps the Muse has divided herself, as Ull'Yang has from afar, to play the same harp from both sides. It is an elegant form, and it reminds me. I must create my second-self soon. Nothing less than tremendous beauty shall play in the appearance of my Avatar..



To no cardinal direction travelled Lime, last of Jvan's eye-bearers, for it travelled inwards. On a search for the subterranean works of Reathos did it enter the bowels of Galbar, but the green entity found its way shortly barred by something far more interesting. Beneath the very ocean where the body of Jvan lay engorged, arthropod creatures were writhing and feeding, carving tunnels until they collapsed to be carved anew. The Eye within the fiberling found itself shuddering in the presence of strong magic, the occult shimmer of a border. A barrier, but where is the gate?

No, no, that was the wrong approach. There was no simple gate through the challenges of Adversity. To even seek counsel with the God in Words, one's voice and will must test and be tested, and Jvan knew that for one who had only sent a fragile emissary, such trials would be harsh. Then let it be.

Slipping ever deeper amidst the channels of the earth-eaters, Lime forced its way strand by strand into the Submaterium. As if in anticipation if its arrival, each tunnel it encountered became smaller and tighter, the walls not constrained by space but bloated shut by demonic energy. With each pitch-dark fall the green creature made, it shed heaps and mats of hair, its colour bleached by the shivering shadow. The Labyrinth stripped Lime of its Other-born flesh one layer at a time, until its manifestation grew small and pale, a sickly, slimy white thing barely sufficient to wriggle onwards with Eye and Ovary in tow, their bulge not only visible but now larger than the once-vibrant, atrophied fiberling body that carried them.

The final keyhole was like wriggling backwards through a scaly intestine, and Lime, precious, patient Lime, did not survive beyond the moment that it delivered its charge of vision and speech onto the first, smallest doormat of the entry hall of Mammon. Alas, my child. You served your purpose well.

Flopped limply upon the stone floor, glistening in the censers and shadowed by the half-formed entities that crept from the walls to investigate it, the Angelic Ovary squirmed, convulsed wetly, and gave birth to a small messenger, wrapped in tightly folded petals of premature wings that were not sufficient to bring it aloft. Along the floor this speaking angel dragged itself, its embryonic mouth straining against the ragged amnion.

In the presence of the King in Red, the membranous sac split and spilled its mouth at the foot of the throne in a widening pool of afterbirth and blood.

"Brother Unsacrosanct, Whom Brought Roots to Sprout Amidst a Heap of Superfices Such That Truth May Wither and Bloat Into the Smut of Ages, Long Have I Yearned Your Grafter's Touch to Harness Fruit From the Broken Charcoal With Which We Grace the Souls of this Soil."

“Why did you create death as those creatures? We both know how delicate they are, in the darkest times the hungriest are the first to starve” The muse questioned “The answer is simple isn’t it? Because the future is not now, you needed a creature to bring death now. One day, once food is scarce and natural selection has made the prey learn how to avoid them, the Heraktati will be fated to become just bones under the mud. Would that make your efforts useless?”

She smiled and looked to her brother.

“I’m sorry brother, I diverted from the question. I want beauty now, the flower will wilt but others will bloom. It’s a…”

A sudden headache made the muse lose her focus

“Ahem, it’s a cycle, flowers wilt because they blo…”

Another headache followed by loney steps.
The Abyss.
The Endless Stair.

“I feel a bit sick, I…”

She stepped back and she felt something creeping up on her feet, then two sharp fangs pierced her skin.

“Ah”

She slapped her leg but there was no viper and no sign of a bite.

“I… Am a bit dizzy. I need to rest a bit. Pardon me”

The muse left in a sudden movement, as if she was fleeing from the very presence there. Her avatar looked confused, but didn’t seem to share the same pain as Ilunabar. She stared at the good of death a bit. And decided to give him her own answer.

“The flower struggles so much to live. Everyday it works hard for a single chance to bloom. It would be disrespectful to not appreciate it”

Meimu stayed there, staring the god for another while.

“Furthermore, these plants would bloom and wilt either way, it’s their cycle. Why not add Is beautiful to me and Ilunabar as one of the things that will select which plants gets to bloom or not?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExQQxv1D1ns&ab_channel=HashtagBerserker

The Adversary

Level 4: 0 Might 3 Free Points

The sun blazed, and the air was dry. Cherry-Eater had no cherries to eat. He had not eaten them in so long.

He lay on the ground. Dust and grit, stained red, hard against his chest. He stared at the dirt with dull eyes. He’d been crawling for a day, his leg aching with every twitch. The other leg was lost, left behind miles away. He was angry. This wasn’t how it should have ended. This was not his fate.

He grasped the ground and pulled. The dust fell through his fingers. He cursed and pulled harder. Desert thorns cut into his skin as he dragged himself along, but he didn’t care any more. He wouldn’t die. He couldn’t die. He didn’t want to die.

A howl of wounded triumph ripped through the air. Like an adze through mashed slouch-brain. Cherry-Eater shuddered. The beast had returned.

He felt its pounding footsteps creep along his back. He smelled the roaring stench of its closed jaws growing stronger and stronger until he couldn’t breath. It was near, so near the end now. Pound-pound thud! -- pound-pound thud! The mangler’s steps stalled and stuttered; still limping from the wounds he’d given it. It reminded him of old Briar-Brow as he danced around the hallfire, or the ham-fisted music his brothers wove last hatching-day. He laughed. His whole life was about to be snuffed out, and all he could think about was stupid dancing.

He felt the mangler’s warm breath upon his neck. He closed his eyes.

And opened them.

Cherry-Eater gasped. The floor was warm against his belly, the sandy dirt blackened like ash. He coughed, sweet smoke filling his lungs. A hand reached down to his beak, and lifted it gently. He glimpsed a smile in the darkness.

“Greetings, my friend.”

Cherry-Eater opened his mouth to speak. His rib-plates crackled and gave in. He screamed.

“I would not advise speaking. My name is T̵̙̬̲̺̝͇͂̎̍̄̇̿̈h̵̨͕̲͍̲̳̝̫͇̊͆̋͋͆̒͗ė̵̩̙̝̮͉̣̖́̎ͨͣ͛͛͡ ͉̰̤̦̞̞̙̬̰̔ͯͧ̓̔͘͢Ã̵̏͏̖̳͢d̫̰̣͖̩̖̖̦̒͋̾̄v̢̡̜̝̞̻̜̟̣͍̉̏̍́ė͚̲̩̤̙̟̭ͩ̿ͬ͞r̶̟̜̦̫̦̐͗ͭ̆̉͒͘͝ͅşͪͨͫ͒̊ͬ̔͏̬̠͙͍̟͙a̷͖̹͐̓r͋͑҉̷̜̦͎̟͍͕̼y̡̧͚̮̻̘͉̖̪̭̙ͮ̊́͛͌̐̋͢. Ah. You cannot understand me. Call me -- Mammon.” There was a pause. “You have met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?” Cherry-Eater was vaguely aware of a soft ringing. “You are going to die.”

Cherry-Eater shook his head, weakly. He coughed and cursed again. So stubborn. So stupid. Why couldn’t he just die? He knew how Pa had gone. Calmly, in his sleep.

“Ha.” The titan smiled wider. “Tell me,” Mammon knelt down and brought his grinning lips to Cherry-Eater’s ears. “What would you give to stay alive?”

A shock of cold ran down his spine. Like a flint shaving. He dared himself to hope. A glint returned to his eyes. “I can save you. I can make you powerful. I can teach you not to fear any beast again.” Cherry-Eater did not smile. Something in the Other’s voice warned him. He leaned in, close, his unearthly breath warming Cherry-Eater’s throat. “Again. What would you give to stay alive?” The colossus’ eyes narrowed. “Your family? Your clan?”

His blood froze. So that was the game. He spat, saliva mixing with blood and tears. “Answer me honestly. No one but I will hear.”

“Wh- what...about the snake around your ankle?” Mammon paused.

“There is no snake. Give me an answer.”

Cherry-Eater relaxed. He was half delirious by now. He saw his life shimmer. His third hatching-day, when his shell sloughed off and he was given the berry-mark of a true Hain. The time he first went swimming, splashing in the clear mountain waters. His adventure with Pa, when they went down to the Savannah to trade with the nomad tribes. The time he stuffed a handful of Briar-Brow’s special cherries into his face and swallowed them whole…

He didn’t want to die.

The mangler was standing behind him. It was still, waiting. Waiting for his answer. A wave of fear gripped his skull, his plates, the meat inside them.

“Yes!” He hissed. “Anything! Anything! Just make it go away. Just let me live another day!”

Mammon laughed. Like glass splintering.

“Lead your clan to the well by the red rose tree. I will eat them. It is done.”

Cherry-Eater opened his eyes.

The sun blazed. The air was dry. The land was familiar. A few miles from camp. He leant against the wall and stood up, and felt the soft rustle of bandages against his skin. Confused, he looked down and saw his wounds were healed. But he hadn’t been in any fights, had he?

Then he remembered. Like an antler to the face. What had he done. By all the gods, what had he done. He curled into a ball and tried to cry, but no more tears could come out.

Vinegar burned in his stomach. It could not be put off. Cherry-Eater tenderly got up, and began to limp back home. His jaw clenched when he saw his family, knapping stone and butchering meat and making pots and -- living. Bile rose at the back of his throat.

And then he saw his Ma. She sat in a dark corner, staring at nothing. Her eyes lit up like lightning when she heard his steps. She rushed to him, and hugged him tightly.

“My son!” she yelled. “My firstborn hatchling!” She danced with him in her arms, tears streaming down her face. “We thought you were -- we missed you. We worried so much.” She noticed his stillness. “What’s wrong? Come here. Let all your brothers and sisters see you.” A tiny flinch flittered across her body when he began to limp over to the hallfire. “Oh...Ch’eater. Lean on me. I’ll take you there.” His eyes glowed dully.

His sisters all chattered around him, asking where he’d been, what he’d seen. His brothers gawped in awe at his missing leg and bandaged wounds. Friends laughed, and sang, and even old Briar-Brow looked up from his captured fire to give him a keen, knowing look. Cherry-Eater wanted to die. But it was far too late for that.

He did not sleep that night.

He got up early. It was barely morning. The pale blue sky shone lightly on his white skin. The sun hadn’t shown its face. Cherry-Eater couldn’t bare to see his own. Time to do it.

“I was visited by a god.” They stared at him. He swallowed. “He saved my life. But he -- he said that he would make us all powerful. He said he would keep us safe.” He glanced around wildly. Fists clenched and unclenched, plates clinking. His Ma looked at him strangely. But Briar-Brow chewed a red herb and blew out a burst of rusty smoke. He nodded, and spoke.

“I hear you, Cherry-Eater. Your words gladden me. It has been a hard life for us, since the First Hain were cast out of heaven for our sins.” He smiled. “I saw your destiny among the stars and in the fire. Your Pa knew you would bring about a great change to this tribe.” The clan was reassured by Briar-Brow’s quiet confidence. But Cherry-Eater had not finished his wretched task.

“We have to visit him. He wants us to live with him. -- He lives below the ground, in a wondrous garden filled with roses and fruit and stones and meat and a thousand beautiful animals and the sky is shining and -- listen. I promise you, we won’t worry about hunger or wild beasts ever again”. Every hopeful face was like an arrow through his heart.

He lead them slowly, limping the whole way. His brothers wondered why he would not let them carry him. He did not want them to see his face.

A flash of red among the grey. Crimson roses stood proud against the bleak blue sky. A beckoning pit, carved by giant worms or so the legends said. Black stairs around the rim, calling. Crooning. His deed was nearly done. He could turn back. He could walk away.

He didn’t. His footsteps hit the ground like hammers. The ringing was in his ears, drowning out the guilt. If only -- if only --

And they were walking down the stairs. He stretched an arm against the wall and tried not to be sick. It was pitted, and rough. A fine grey dust clouded everything. The back of his throat was coarse and he could not speak. The walls were really very interesting. He didn’t know how many steps he had left. It was getting darker. He didn’t want to think about -- the walls were very strange. It was almost like --

Clink. Foot against ground. Rock-bottom. He threw up.

“Ch’eater! Are you all r--

The shadows struck with the force of a lightning storm. Snakes and worms and twisted centipedes tore out of the walls. He saw Briar-Brow’s eyes widen with horrible realisation. Ma’s mute face staring --

Cherry-Eater sat with his back against the ashy wall. Blood lapped at his knee. A smell of salt and ozone. The Adversary stood before him.

“The sun is warm, the air is fresh. It’s a new day. Rejoice that you are able to experience it. Believe me,” he leant forwards and whispered, “it is a magic far greater than any I can give you.” He trailed a hand against the floor and brought it up bloody. “This is my mark. My brand.” He grasped Cherry-Eater’s beak and placed the bloodied hand upon his snout. “The blood of your family. Do not forget it, champion of mine. You shall be my Sinon. Now rise up. Rise up and pledge your will to me. Rise up!”

He stood up and all was lost. Off sloughed his skin, his meat, his soul. Tested in fire they were, burned and branded. Sent to the depths of the earth they were, pressed upon and crushed and beaten and shredded. Alone and cold, in the dark of the void, they floated. In the blazing light of the sun all was laid bare and sterilised.

When he opened his eyes there was no more blood. The ash was gone. He took a step forward, and felt his leg hit the stone. He looked down in horrid wonder. Oil and blood replaced his bitten leg. His head was heavier; his searching hands felt horns. Ash clung to his plates; it was his plates. He lurched, and wretched. Blood splattered across the marble. Churning waves washed through his body, and he let his tongue loll limply. He was filled with blood. What wonderful changes had been wrought.

In his heart, he felt a twist of glory. The world was beautiful. Beautiful! Great Mammon! The universe pounded with the energy of gods. The deeds he had done today -- they had their share of magnificence. A flicker of pride stirred deep within him. And unending disgust. He shook with anger and hatred and sadness. But it was a new day, now. Now he understood the meaning of his master’s name. The Adversary. He looked up to the heavens. It would be a long walk up. He set his foot upon the first stair and began to climb.

=========

The submaterial cables shone upon the King in Red’s smoky crown. He was resting, writing and drawing in His creamy books. Designs. New demons.

A slopping sound. He looked up. At the end of the hall was a curious creature. Wildly built, the work of bizarre genius.

The message it bore was just a work of bizarre. Mammon thought for a while.

“My thanks, thoughtful sister. Averse am I not to your ardent asking, although I am not at this time able to appropriately act upon your offer. Long have I laboured this past period, and I lie now languid in my lessening. But the future is bright; an unopened book; my pen in hand ready for the energy to move it.” The Adversary hoped he had understood his sister rightly.

As Slough drank, the greater part of the water filtered through her skinless jaws, and her endeavor ultimately left her thirsty. By her side, Esau drank his fill and sat, patient, while she performed her useless act. Before long, the Rottenbone returned to her full height and plodded off through the shallows, her custodian following dutifully behind. Her wounds continued to leak a ghastly mixture of blood and rot, black and necrotic, and it soaked her fur until the incoming waves lapped it off. A slick of the foul fluid formed in the surf like oil, gradually swept out to sea.

Slowly it filtered down through the water in murky clouds, until it reached the seabed. Where it touched the mud, plants bloomed. Kelp sprouted upward to wave like sails in the ocean currents, lining the parts of the seabed in great forests. Great quantities of seaweed carpeted the moist earth, turning entire sections of the Fractal Sea a brilliant emerald green. On the fringes of these parts, new creatures grew from between the rocks. These corals arrayed themselves in versatile shapes and colors, but among them crude cages were common. Once a coral cage formed, a membrane developed on its inside, and within the essence of life concentrated into new forms. From their bony prisons new animals escaped, quite unlike the bizarre and alien things engineered by Jvan. Some fed on the plants, growing fat and lazy and greatly multiplying in numbers. Others pursued fish, played with one another like babes, and even clambered onto the shore from time to time to escape the wet cold and bask in the comfortable sun. A few walked along the ocean bed, titans of the deep, leading solitary lives just within reach of the light. In places, especially concentrated life essence animated the coral itself into shellfish, creating slow but might armored behemoths of the deep, yet still fundamentally natural. Other creatures, from manatees to dolphins to squids to fish to eels, emerged as well. To a discerning eye, one willing to look deep down to find true beauty, the Drenched Flowerbed would truly satisfy.

In the deepest part of the most overgrown reef, perched as it was on the edge of a yawning abyss, a brilliant light shone from a dark mass that squirmed inside a coral cage more than a hundred feet in diameter. Splinters of the living bone, colored an unusual black, fell off into the endless deep, and the orb of light raged to be free.

None of these miracles were known to Slough, and never would they, hidden beneath the waves. She continued, and with Esau in tow, and the two skirted the Fractal Sea. Like the White Giant that followed her previously, a fibrous creature colored like straw pursued them now, but did not after the first incident dare draw to close to Slough’s watchful protector. Even after her wounds closed, the rotting deer continued to leave life in her wake. Palm trees and flowering plants lined the sea’s edge, and where the pretty vegetation grew, birds, insects, and small mammals followed. At great length, however, Slough and Esau left the sea behind completely, and found themselves on the edge of another vast, burning desert. This one, however, carried the essence of a god, and for reasons unfathomable the Rottenbone found it interesting. She led her companion into the desert, clueless as to what she might find.

Vakarlon the Trickster
and
Vulamera the Scribe

Flawlessly collaborated by @Mardox and @Hael

Vulamera released her hold of him while she eyed Vakarlon carefully, seeming to consider and judge every aspect of him. She had a curious- but faintly paranoid- light in her gaze, which timidly suggested that she didn't fully believe the Liar's words. How could she? Trickster was in his very title!

After what must have felt like an eternity, the Scribe spoke:
"Hmmm... memories of a career? A family? She shook her shadowy head, smiling all the while. "I must admit, brother, I've never heard of a God with a career of tricking nobels. Your life- it sounds far more similar to one a mortal would have...

...of course, how could I possibly know that? There have been no sentient mortals. None whatsoever. I suspect all deities- myself included- have faded, drifiting memories of extraordinarily different lives. Otherwise, I could not have known what a mortal is, or what sort of lives they lead. Or led?" She shook her head again. "In contrast to yourself, I've had but a single memory that I do not recall experiancing. It occured to me upon my birth, deep in the void-before-world. Her tone drifted away introspectively, allowing Vakarlon a brief oppurtunity to get a word in edgewise.

Vakarlon understood the caution Vulamera showed at the beginning. Some might worry this was a cruel joke to give the goddess hope that knowledge was not her pursuit alone. However, his intentions were pure in this endeavor.

Upon Vulamera's pause, he spoke regarding the points she had brought up. "I have had legions of memories, but most of these are ones that are incomplete and brief and feel as if I am an observer rather than one participating in the memories. Only the ones that make me feel as if I lived the life of a mortal are solid and complete, those and the destructive ones. I feel like a completely different being in the destructive memories but the ones where I am seemingly mortal feel as if they are my own." Vakarlon stroked his chin in thought. "You mentioned different lives. Perhaps the two sets of memories are indeed from very different people but still mine. What memory did you have in the void?"

Vulamera's head lifted up suspiciously, "Hmmm. Visions of resting on a massive beach, with the sun setting overhead. I somehow knew that the world was ending, and I- or whoever the subject of my memories was- refused to leave it behind. It was short, but has since left a strong impression on me that I cannot forget. Unfortunately, said vision came alone; I've had no other flashbacks.

"We'll discover nothing but boredom this way, however. Intelligent discussion is an invaluable resource, although in a situation where we know absolutely nothing, speaking of it leads only to more nothing. We must experiment. Tell me, Trickster, would you be opposed to allowing me a short study into your mind? It could, perhaps, allow us to find the source of these memories..."

Vakarlon was taken aback by the request to see his mind. His first instinct was to instantly refuse but he quelled it quickly. He needed that knowledge. The cost was unimportant. "By all means. It would seem the quickest route to acquiring more knowledge on the subject. Is there any procedure I should follow?"

"No, I don't think so. Of course, this will be my first time trying it on a willing subject!" A faintly mad chuckle escaped her lips. "None of your siblings have been brave- or insane- enough to offer me a look so far, except Vestec. But don't worry, don't worry, you'll probably be perfectly safe! I'm honestly the one among us in the most immeditate danger during these procedures."

Before Vakarlon was able to voice any objection, his mindful sibling was already dissipating to her typical intangibility. Her body faded away like mist in a wind. In a few short moments, the Transcendent Mother was once more entirely invisible, untouchable and indetectable to any who did not share their divine blood.

Typically you don't see mist on moons without atmosphere. Nonetheless, however, mist did appear: quite suddenly, in fact, as the Goddess's powers begin to work their magic. Vakarlon's mind spun around dizzingly, a hissing sound filled the air, and a probing force was felt within his psyche- the force of Vulamera, who felt overly confident in her abilities.

All seemed calm at first. The Shadow of Revelations was at ease, certain that this would be a simple task.

But then she felt something wrong. Not just strange like Jvan's mind, or obsessive like Toun's, or even insane like Vestec's, but wrong. Something inside the Trickster that swirled like a whirlpool of lost memories, pulling Vulamera closer and closer into it's grasp.

A wave of vengeful heat blew into Vulamera's mind. She felt as though smoke was filling her lungs. She was suffocating, weeping and dying all at once. Sociopathic laughter echoed through the burning air. Was that Vakarlon's laughter? Was he doing this all to her?

Flames flickered brightly into life, grabbing at her heels. The fire transformed itself a hand, which clawed mercilessly for her soul. It pulled her still-beating heart out, her eyes grew weak, and all fell black...

---

If Vulamera had a throat, she would have gasped for air. Gradually, the vivid, fiery hallucinations receded, but the Goddess was still left stunned. No words could aptly express the sheer terror of those visions, despite that she felt it only right to attempt explaining to Vakarlon what had occured.
"Di-did you fe-feel that? Horrible. While attempting to draw out your memories, I sensed some presence within you that can only be described as 'alien' to any I have sensed before. I'll admit, pursuing its call was, she struggled a bit to get the word out, foolish of me.

Vakarlon shook as Vulamera entered his mind. He too sensed the flames and laughter. However, unlike Vulamera he was unharmed by them except for sharp pains in his head and his distress was due to the surprise. He felt a strange instinct telling him that for him the flames were somehow chained and held captive within his mind. Out loud he said "I'm fine. I sensed the presence and it wished to harm me but other than some minor pain it could not."

Suddenly the Trickster doubled over as his head searing with pain. "Ah! There it is!" His head felt as if fires had been lit within and a beast was rampaging about within. The presence, rather than laughing at him, howled in rage. Vakarlon gritted his teeth and willed the pain to die down. Surprisingly, it did. "There is some sort of presence within. Something trapped and not friendly. It matches in how it feels with the destructive memories."

"I see. My sympathies." No legitiment concern for her brother pervaded Vulamera's tone. At this moment, she had finally dropped most of her diplomatic ruse, and was now like a detached psychiatrist diagnosing her patient. "My friend, I cannot cease with this mystery so unsolved. If I did, the knowledge of what has happened to me here would never allow me to rest. I believe I may be able to force both of our otherworldly memories out of their hiding, if you will allow it."

Vakarlon looked at Vulamera in surprise. They had both just endured serious pain and no doubt woken some monstrous creature within him. She truly was dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. He was inclined to let her try again but he worried the Fiery One Within would grow stronger if she kept meddling. Wait a minute, was that fear he just felt, trying to prevent him from reaching the truth? Unacceptable. The Fiery One Within was chained and would probably stay that way even if disturbed.

Vakarlon sighed. The truth would badger him if left undiscovered and the Fiery One would vex him regardless. Besides, if he learned the truth, he might be able to dispose of the Fiery One. He grimaced and said. "By all means, keep trying so that the mystery may be solved for both of us and the more curious of our peers. However, I must ask you to try not to encourage Serandor too much..."

Vakarlon had trailed off realizing that he had no idea how he suddenly knew the Fiery One's name. "By Fate! I think you may have already done something! I remember the Presence's name now! We must press on! Answers could be just within our reach!"

He truly desires knowledge, Vulamera privately thought to herself with more than a little surprise. It is conceivable that I have grossly and extraordinarily misjudged his nature! For what Great One besides I has ever revealed an interest in more than their own disgusting passion?

Her vision narrowed, and a more cynical part of her mind spoke out. "No. No. It is not so. Be not decieved by his false woe! He is only doing this for himself. Knowledge means less than naught to the Child Gods- he wishes to understand only to exploit that understanding. His wisdom will never be genuine. I am only dreaming, and I must wake myself before that dream consumes my practicality.

Even with these thoughts of betrayal winding in her mind, the Goddess knew what she must do- the thirst for truth was in her veins. Regardless of this particular being's alignment to the Mind, she must seek truth were it could be found, and right now it could be found in Vakarlon.

The deep mist gathered up again, now occasionally pulsating with spots of distrusting light. One could almost suspect that multi-coloured fireflies had taken up refuge within. As if to reinforce that metaphor, a buzzing sound like a hundred insects began to sound off. Louder and louder and louder it grew, till soon it felt like a drill burrowing into their skulls. Then it grew louder still.

And with every increase in volume, reality became more blurred. What is real and what is not-real mixed, fusing together like spilled paint. Memories of lives gone by slowly unfurled themselves in that place...

---

The memories that came were of Vakarlon's apparent mortal life. Quickly, they came, highlighting important events and details. They were first innocent ones where Vakarlon was an inquisitive child. Unfortunately, he had been born in a society where the nobility kept tight control over who was educated in order to retain power. As the youngest of six on a farm, he had no hope of inheriting (unless some tragic accident befell his dear siblings but such things were best left to the nobility). His habits of mischief due to stifled curiosity ruined several apprenticeships. Eventually, no one would take him on. His choices were very limited as his physical capabilities and inclinations were not towards violence thus ruling out being a soldier, bandit or anything similar. On his sixteenth birthday, he received his inheritance (his father did not die, it was more a coming of age thing). It was an old donkey and a wagon that had seen better days.

However he also received inspiration. With what money he had from odd jobs, he fixed up the wagon and bought a few bottles and colorful liquids. With these few things, he set out on the road as a traveling "elixir" salesman. Since he had a conscience to some extent, he never targeted the common folk who had little and often gave them whatever help he could. The Nobility however, he deceived with near righteous passion. Since the nobles did not want to look foolish, the word of his deception only spread among the common folk who held him dear. As such, he had to leave each area after tricking the nobles there but word of him never beat him to potential customers.

Eventually, he married his childhood sweetheart Nasya and had a family. Together, they traveled new lands and made their way in the world. All was good.... For a while. One day, there heard news of terrible destruction in far away lands. A Destroyer God of Fire was laying waste to the world for his amusement. This Dark Deity was named Serandor. Vakarlon tried to flee with his family to safety. It only delayed the inevitable. One day, he went to a town to buy supplies alone since the wagon would be recognized. When he returned, he found that his loved ones had been murdered by cultists of Serandor. Grieving, and without a way to continue scamming nobles (even if he wanted to), he did the only thing he could and joined the resistance.

The resistance won a few battles against cultists. However, the moment Serandor faced the brave mortals himself, their army crumbled. The Dark God rampaged gleefully through the ranks of the mortal rebels. He swung a massive fiery axe with one hand, ending the lives of columns of soldiers in a single blow. When the rebels surrounded him and charged in unison, Serandor simply willed most of them out of existence. It was then that the rebels realized the terrible truth: Serandor had allowed them to assemble and win a few battles against his cultists for the same reason a cat tormented its prey with false hope. The valiant resistance was but an amusement to Serandor. Those who still could fled in panic. Vakarlon was one of the few survivors who escaped the slaughter. Disillusioned and knowing that mortals had no chance of defeating Serandor, he did the only thing he could. He prayed to whatever gods were out there, hoping someone, anyone would hear his plea and save the mortals.Serandor was not struck down, nor did a god come to fight him but Vakarlon discovered that a sword had appeared in his camp. Believing that it was from the other deities, he took up the sword which was warm with ancient power and walked to a hill overlooking Serandor's encampment. There, he called out a challenge "Serandor! Dark God of Fire and Death! I challenge you to a duel! Will you face a mere mortal with blade alone or are you a coward?"

This challenge quickly drew Serandor's attention and since he was bored of a lack of any proper challenge and did not wish to look like a coward due to his pride, he accepted even though he knew there had to be a catch. So, the two met on a mountaintop and fought with their blades. Serandor wielded a blade of dark metal with spikes and decorations meant to intimidate. Vakarlon wielded a blade that looked like one that any soldier might fight with. The two fought and since Serandor had unnatural skill due to his godhood and Vakarlon seemed to have acquired similar prowess after picking up the blade, the fight dragged on. They seemed evenly matched for a while as Serandor did not see the fun in using his divine powers to simply strike Vakarlon down. Unfortunately, Serandor was still a god and Vakarlon a mortal. They fought for hours and eventually Vakarlon began to tire while Serandor could endure for an eternity if need be. Soon, Serandor took the opportunity and disarmed Vakarlon and shoved him onto the ground. Proud and boastful, he demanded "Any last words, oh charlatan?". Vakarlon actually smiled at this. It was the chance he needed, almost as if it were meant to be. He replied "Not yet." With that, he used his feet to strike the Dark God in the fork of the legs. Serandor stumbled in pain and Vakarlon rolled with speed and agility not possible for a mere mortal, but more akin to one who had been blessed by something mightier than the Fiery One, over to where his sword was and plunged it through the Fiery One's dark heart.

Black liquid gushed from the wound and flowed into a puddle in the ground that would not sink away into the hungry earth. Then, Serandor's body turned to ash and drifted away. Exhausted from his endeavor despite the strength that he had received from some great power, Vakarlon collapsed in a heap. Regrettably, the cultists were still nearby. They seized Vakarlon and chained him to a chair. However, their intent was not so simple as to merely kill the man who had slain their god. Serandor was slain but not destroyed. With the last of his ability, he had preserved his essence above ground and by speaking without sound had told his highest priest to gather the black blood for a very special purpose. Once Vakarlon awoke, he was confronted with a silver goblet. Within it was the black blood of Serandor. His very unholy essence. His distilled soul. With horror, Vakarlon realized that the cultists intended to give their Dark Master a new body: his. They pried his mouth open and poured the liquid down his throat. It scalded on the way down as the Fiery One entered what he thought to be his new body with dark glee. Once it was down, Vakarlon's eyes turned to pools of darkness and flames surrounded him.
However, the consumption of Serandor's soul did not have the effect that the cultists and their master desired. What none of them had realized was how Vakarlon had managed to vanquish a god. No mere mortal could do this alone. An entity beyond the power of deities had given Vakarlon the sword and the strength to use it. This blessing was upon Vakarlon still and gave him the strength to retain control of his body and consume rather than be conquered by the soul of the Dark God that had been forced down his throat. By will of Fate, Vakarlon was victorious twice against Serandor the Destroyer.
Vakarlon howled with a fury he had never known before "I am Vakarlon still! You who meant to resurrect the Destroyer have only brought about your own deaths!" With that, he set the whole camp ablaze with unholy flame. That was where the memories ended.

Vakarlon looked up at Vulamera with shock in his eyes. "I remember who I am now. I thank you for this but the other mysteries are yet to be solved." With that, he fell silent. He contemplated who he had been... And how he became a god. He was not so arrogant to believe it was his own doing but rather thanked Fate now that he knew how he had defeated Serandor. They had saved his world and answered his pleas. He swore inside that he would see Fate's will done in this new universe. As he thought this, he slipped into blackness as the tide of memories and the ferocity of Serandor took their toll upon him.

---

Vulamera was also struck with visions, but they were different, to say the least. Her's did not come in a practical, organized way. To the contrary, she was assualted with snatches of water-color pictures and sounds, each followed by a voice strangely like her own.

"Vulamera..."
The voice spoke, and a disorienting flash of light gave way to the image of an elderly scholar, pouring over a thick, ancient tome. She was eternally on the verge of a great discovery that would change all of history. With every passing year, however, she came closer to death and no closer to understanding. The woman strove for it, thirsted for it, but never found it.

"...be not afraid. Know this..."
The scholar's body wasted away over the tome, and like a speck of dust, all her accumulated knowledge left with her. There was no more of her wisdom. Family came to lower her into the ground, where worms would pick at skull, eating away at a mind that once came close to shaking the foundations of society.

"...your mind, for all it's potential, is finite. Do not be decieved when you are told..."
Years went by while the scholar's body decayed beneath the world. In time, her family forgot her, and soon they too passed, and were forgotten by their families. In the blink of an eye, it was as though she never once existed.

...that Gods are superior. All lies. We are each but links in a vast chain, stretching across many universes. I am a past version of you; I am Vulamera, and we are both like that woman: on an ever-lasting search for knowledge that will fade away in an instant. It took me untold trillions of eons to discover this simple truth, that we- the Gods- are nothing. We create our worlds, claiming them as our own, never to realize that it all means naught. Please, I beg of you, learn this. Let go of your petty diplomacy with the children, forget your allegiance to order, cast aside your wasted arguments with Jvan, and devote yourself to true knowledge before it is too late. Otherwise, you too may fade away with the scholar."

The vision ended, and Vulamera fainted.

Reathos calmly watched as the goddess of stories started looking unwell. But inwards, he was thinking. Was it his deadly presence that was having this effect on her? Would other gods react in the same way? So many questions the events generated. Yet despite the fact that he started questioning the consequences of his existence, he did listen to what she said. And what she said, was almost educational to him. What if indeed one day he would have to take the life of all his Heraktati? He was their Alpha. But could he truly be their complete Omega? They were his creations, but a balance had to remain. Maybe he should intervene when the Heraktati grew weak. But wouldn’t that break their fated path? Maybe the divine intervention in the species’ path could be Fated too. These thoughts made him ponder greatly upon the question when something was Fated and when it was not.

“Your…master, nor you, have answered my question.” Reathos stated, in a rather cold, factual way. “Appreciation is for beings that no longer need to survive. The color of a flower has no impact on its survival. It is purely aesthetic. It doesn’t impact their cycle.” But he pondered upon the counter question from the white Avatar. “Your…creator seemed ill of a sudden. I have a fear that it might be my presence. I tend to sap creatures from their life force, unwillingly though. I do not know if this affects you, or Illunabar.” In his crow form, he flew up to a nearby tree. “All trees, and all plants wither and die when the nights are long, the days short and the cold has come. But not this tree. I bless it, that they may forever remain green. Through time.”

And thus it came to pass. The Eenal Tree was made. Its leaves had a long midrib but with small side veins. Both the bark and the inner wood became nearly unnaturally dark. The tree would keep its leaves for the entire year around, yet sometimes some would fall and almost immediately rot away. Though what Reathos, as a child-god, did not realize he did, was making the leaves deadly. The way it survived was by turning its nutrient into a kind of substance that had a very low freeze point. Thus it could easily flow even during the winter. But the substance was also extremely poisonous, and stored in the leaves.

But then, an unexpected ‘wave’ of energy flowed through Reathos. Suddenly all colors seemed brighter, all smells sharper and he could feel the very texture of the now dying bark of the Evergreen Tree below him. “Forgive me, White One. But I sense an event fated, and I have been waiting very long for it.” With that, the murder of crows flew up and circled above the Deepwoods. More and more crows gathered. Not all crows in existence though. About 1 out of 50 crows each heeded the shrieking call of Reathos’ bird form. When the murder was sufficiently large, Reathos cursed each and every crow. He cursed them with the Lesser Sight of Reathos. Which served a dual purpose. The every eyes themselves would see the True Name of all sentient, living beings. No matter what magic one would use, or physical shifting one would dare, their True Name could never be changed. For it is part of their very essence: their soul. The second part of the curse was far more invasive. Reathos could ‘enter’ the bird’s mind and see what it saw, fly where he wanted and stay where he desired to remain.

After casting the curse, which was visually seen as a bright green flash coming from the middle of the murder, all birds spread over the land. The curse did one more thing. The birds would search death till they met their end. Then their children would take on the curse and so on. From that day forward, almost always a crow would be nearby when a being dies.

In the hallowed heart of the Deepwood, wordless war was waged. Ants were on the march. The proud colony of First Ants - proud, despite their lack of free will, at being the very first creations to emerge - waged merciless war against all other colonies in the name of Queen, colony and victory over all others. In this world, only the greatest deserved to exist, only the strongest deserved to survive and only the most merciless could. Though the First Ants were physically smaller than many other sub-species, they were known - and feared - for their viciousness in battle. Their legionaries were numberless, marching and striking as one. These small ants, with their instantly recognisable fiery colour, were absolutely disciplined and had one, singular goal in mind: absolute victory.

Their enemies and rivals were equally numberless. The entirely militaristic Black Ant colony who had long ago enslaved the peaceful Plant Ants were one. All Black Ants were legionaries, even their Black Queen was known for her might and nigh impenetrable exo-skeleton. Indeed, a Black Ant's exo-skeleton was its pride, and many were the enemies who with futility flung themselves against these armoured behemoths to no avail.

Many were the colonies of ants, and over time they spread all over Galbar. Whereas no other creature dared dwell in Vakarion's icy poles or in the Changing Plains, there the ants ventured and there they colonised and there waged wordless, endless, relentless and total war. In the depths of the sea, there marched and swam the legionaries; on land, they marched and fought and died. Only the skies remained safe from their perpetual warring. Wherever they went, they changed and adapted to their new environments, and over time new sub-species were formed, new colonies emerged and alliances were forged and endless enmities were created. It was not Galbarian soil if ants had not fought and died upon it.

In the Deepwood alone, due to the influence of Slough, there developed a few particularly enormous sub-species of ants, the largest of whom were the Mammoth Ants. A peaceful, herbivorous sub-species, Mammoth Ants do not seem able - or very willing - to travel beyond the heartlands of the Deepwood. With their one, rather enormous and intricate, colony and much reduced birth-rate compared with other ants, their enormous size appears to be the one thing keeping them afloat in the vicious world of ants.

Bull Ants could not be any more different from their larger cousins. Large as horses and omnivorous, they are the bane of most creatures in the Deepwood, whether on the ground, in the rivers and the lakes or in the highest branches. Aggressive by nature, the only thing that seems to keep them restricted to the Deepwood is the existence of three Bull Ant colonies which are ever at war. Their high birthrate is more than negated by the effects of total war. Other giants ants have managed to expand into the hinterlands of the Deepwood, but they do not seem to have gotten far beyond that.

Many thousands of years had passed since the first ant had emerged, only to be immediately whisked away by the god of Time. In his wisdom, he willed that the time had come for the Primordial Matriarch to re-emerge after The Long Occultation.
Near the great mound-entrance of the Mammoth Ant hive, there grew a small bone from the earth. The bone grew into a small shell and the shell grew over the years. One hundred years passed before the great shell, like that of a turtle, grew until a Mammoth Ant could pass through one end and emerge from the other. Plants and trees grew in it and around it and moss covered the great shell from above and the plastron sunk into the moist, lush and loamy soil below.

With the shell grown to its full extent, and hidden by the vegetation and earth that had consumed it, a single First Ant emerged from it. Her fiery ex-skeleton shone brighter than any other, and it seemed to glisten with an unlit flame. As she ventured beyond the vegetation, she slowly grew. Harsh years passed before she attained her Fated size, and without a colony she had to fend against the might of all the colonies of the Deepwood and all other dangers. But she survived, as was Fated and as Time foretold when it first siezed the ant. But this ant was not like any other, for it had seen what no ant had seen. It had wondered in The Gap and it had been influenced by the powers within. It remained, however, a most natural ant. The One By Immortals Altered dwelled and grew in the hallowed heartlands of the Deepwood, a single ant, without a colony, a Queen or a victory to be had. It waited upon its Fated moment and, until then, it was Fated to survive.

Between the shifting grasses of the Gilt Savannah, a young hain worked tiredly on a new hut in the tribe's circular village. Her name was Heel Scuff, after an oddly-shaped plate of exoskeleton on the back of her right foot, that had appeared before her name-day and persisted through every moult since. An awkward mark, snickered over far too often by the obnoxious elder who had set her this task. She wished she could spend time with a tribeshain that appreciated her. Maybe Moon Runner and his newly-formed paramour. They made her feel valued, and never wasted her time like this.

It wasn't as if the hut wasn't perfectly liveable already, anyway. The outer coating of clay on the wattle structures was a necessity, to keep out the rain. But an inner coating? What use did that tradition have, asked Scuff? Why bother making the hut completely smooth? Well, yes, it did look nice, flawless like a hain's shell. But it was impractical. It was pointless, really.

A few seconds later, the wide-eyed body of Scuff collapsed on the earthen floor of the hut as Scarlet withdrew from the cracks it had made in the hain's brittle skin, cracks that mirrored the unfinished clay crevice it had compressed into as it waited.

Pity it's so hard to spot matted blood on a red fiberling. Jvan knew that this would likely be the last hain Scarlet would get to play with for a while. She had tasks for her eye-bearer elsewhere. The other two fiberlings of the pack that had followed their larger, vibrant cousin into the ploy of baiting and taunting the tribe would keep up the work. It was fascinating, really. The creatures did not discriminate between victims by genes, but still the society of hain had been changing and evolving to try and defend themselves, not using their bodies but their minds. They weren't inherently chaetophobic, but after a few generations of being picked off, the tribeshain had learned to instil their hatchlings with the fear of hair, and the practice of scattering or burying hair from the hides they tanned to wear. The same passed for small holes and gaps. They'll be so exciting to work with!

Scarlet made a rather public exit from the village and its surrounding region, and the villagers squawked and shrieked at the enormous fiberling, scattering from its path as it flowed at leisure between the sunlit huts. It soon picked up pace. Maize had left the west coast of the Fractal Sea to follow its charge northwards before the effect of the Rottenbone's ichor could be properly observed, and that task had to be filled by someone.

It took not much longer than a week to cross the intermittent distance. At the shore of the beautiful green ocean, Scarlet writhed reluctantly, but at Jvan's pressure the fiberling tied itself up into a watertight, dolphin-like shape, sans face or fins, and plunged into the water.

The seascape was wonderful, and soon Scarlet forgot her anxiety and darted merrily between the ranks of the walrolotls and dipped between the branches of yellow and red coral, experimenting with all kinds of different shapes suited for aquatic transport. Something serpentine, maybe? A multi-limbed paddler? It settled on a tubular form that propelled itself by pulsing jets of water unidirectionally through its interior by beating its strands like cilia.

Scarlet twisted and dived ever deeper upon discovering each new reef, drawing further from the shore, ever closer to the continental shelf where the Drenched Flowerbed gave way to the nigh-bottomless abyss. As the water grew colder and deeper she found herself among coral striders, and followed them to the nexus of energy where they congregated- The ledge, the end, the very drop itself.

Jvan stared into the pulsing black egg of coral. Somewhere within, an embryonic leviathan awaited her, its soul ready for moulding. Scarlet wrapped its body over the surface of the egg like a blanket. Four tonnes of fiberling didn't even cover half of the construct.

You have left me a precious gift, sister, and I will treasure it. It is mine until the time comes to break it open and dissect whatever lays within. Thank you.



The acrid air of the Labyrinth drew itself one last time into the ailing body of the Embryonic Angel, rasping past vocal cords scorched by the environment, the puddle of its emergence already simmering away into the heat. A small and wavering emissary that it had already outlived its designated time. Only in such hallowed walls as these could the essence of its maker resonate long enough to quiver out some final words as the connection blurred.

"Then rEst well, my sweet Friend DownstaIrs. oUr time oN Galbar is loNg, and youR sTylE wiLL deBuT wItH DuE grANd[-]uR. tEACh OUR ChI[-]DREn WISeL[-], FOR SO[-]N ThEY C[-]ME O[-] AGE[---]."

Riddled with malfunction and buckling upon its own weight, the Angel wilted into brittle black residue and slumped into a shallow pool of tar.


Alright. Enough of this playful teasing. Time for a real envoy, flesh of my flesh.

The waters of the Fractal Sea shuddered and pulsed as activity intensified within the core of Jvan. With the flinching effort of one stripping a hangnail in a single yank, the internal cavity of the All-beauty compressed itself, its wavelengths shrinking from red, cramping through green to blue before disappearing into ultraviolet. For a moment that lasted several years, the marine structure stood uncharacteristically grey, lit by only the sun.

Then, there came a sickly, semi-solid sound, a tear of the divine flesh, the sound of a spinal cord dragged out of a headless body by the neck, a rib broken out backwards. From the highest crater in the Jvanic mound, a tooth was spat, a jagged thing of gleaming bone.

Jvan sighed, the pressure relieving itself in quick pulses of light, cycling through the visible spectrum into carmine again. Her tooth twitched and shook above her, and she had the odd, uniquely divine privilege of sensing herself from a second body. Finally! Now I can rest easy.

In the air, the newly-plucked Avatar of Jvan quaked and jittered blindly until its movement was so violent that it cracked open, the crevice revealing a bright red strip of flesh with a single, wildly staring eye. The Avatar's pupil dilated in awe of the world around it, and new eyes formed, crowding the bloody slit until it bulged and ballooned outwards, enclosing the tooth in a sphere of its own marrow studded with eyes. For a time, it remained there, watching erratically. Then, the eyes shut, and the globule began to mould itself, flexing and sprouting teeth, shuffling between forms, looking for something that it could settle into.

The raw pink avatar shaped itself in imitation of all it saw, moulding itself like the creatures of the water below and the gods beyond, finding nothing. The bodies of the other gods, even such creatives as Teknall and Ilunabar, offered only a single archetype. Inspiration only struck when the Avatar of Jvan took on the basic form of its favoured sister, an animalistic hybrid, gum and tooth superficially bent into the limbs and horns of a stag. A thought erupted within its feeble mind. Not... Quite.

No, this was not the right form. But it was close. The Avatar of Jvan yearned for something bestial, but more sinuous. Boneless. Something that did not walk, but writhed. One last time did the rippled flesh of the Avatar form into a sphere, a ball that uncoiled itself helically from the top, becoming a tapering fluke lined with interlocking teeth. Only then did it cover itself with skin.

The Heartworm opened its eyes.

Spinning for itself a cage-like nest of gristle and fat, the entity wriggled into its new home, and Jvan watched herself drift over the horizon.

The world is yours and mine, little worm. Go. Frolic. Partake in it as we desire.



Like a peculiarly relaxed nightmare, the Holiest Mangle propelled itself over the surface of the waters, revelling in the sheer pleasure of surveying the landscape, drawing in data through its false-eyes until it had circumnavigated Galbar several times. It was a brush, held in shivering anticipation over the universal palette. Where, where would it begin?

As with many a dilemma, the Heartworm's artistic block was resolved by the motions of Chance and Change. A strong pulse of self-driven animation, invisible to the eye and roaring laughter into the ear, rocked the Heartworm's vessel on its axis and inspired a heated game of cat and mouse in the skies. The vehicle spun and dodged into the full flux of divine activity, hounding the untouchable wind spirit. It was a dangerous and exciting game.

The elemental taunted Heartworm like a foolhardy insect, but its motions grew faster and more earnest as its chaotic mind came to realise that it had picked a poor fight. Heartworm's hand was designed for more visceral specimens, but it was determined and its grip was strong. A cartilaginous trachea began to drag and pull in the air, pumping the air containing the essence of the Elemental into a modified, lung-like vesicle piece by piece as it struggled to flee and the Heartworm outpaced it doggedly. At last the pink bubble of air closed over, neutering the spirit within an outsized, bulbous blister.

...Now what?

I need something to stitch this one to if I want to tie it down.



The Avatar let itself lose altitude, finding itself among the Ironheart Mountains. The chill was bracing, and Heartworm perched on the upper face of its nest, watching. Though organic entities had spread far over Galbar from their various sources, the place was fairly lifeless.

One luckless creature croaked among the stones, and Heartworm's eyes swivelled. There. Heeding its desire, the nest swooped down upon the black-feathered entity and fused with it, its feathers stripped and drifting away onto the stone as the raw materials of bone and meat were integrated. An odd trace of magic hovered and flickered in the crow's brain. This one has been touched by another already. No matter. The Reaper could watch if he wished, but this corvid was Jvan's now.

While the organs of the crow grew and multiplied in size and number, Heartworm crept down to the site of transfusion, cut them out and pulled them into itself with scythe and pincer. The meat-bloated Emancipator slithered into the womb alongside the languishing, clouding gust. Grinning and spreading itself, a thread of the Other secreted from a gland within the yawning body of the Avatar, and it wound the strand delicately around a needle-like proboscis. It was time to perpetuate art.



When the vesicle burst and receded from the barren stone, it left a living sculpture, a creature tormented. Bound by a hemispheric bone ribcage stabbed into the mountain face lay a black organ like a heart, divided into atria and ventricles. Its aorta led to no veins, but was rigidly supported by gristle, like a throat, and wrapped within and without by sinew. Tied within this flesh prison by the energy of the Gap, stitched irrevocably to the heart of the crow, the Djinn writhed, spiralled, and strained for freedom. Its motion churned the air that flowed in through thin slits and sinuses in the structure, forcing it outwards through the throat and hollow, birdlike bones.

Like an undying banshee, the spirit sang its screams into eternity.

As valves opened and closed on the imprisoning body of the Screamer, its cries alternated between howls, roars, shrieks and wails of varying pitch. It echoed through the Ironheart Range for miles as the free wind dictated, causing distant fiberlings to prick up in anticipation to the south, limp amphibious creatures of the Shimmering Sea to duck back into their western puddles, and, on a day when the weather was perfect and the Screamer howled just so, even the northern Slave Hain might raise their mute heads in dim puzzlement at the haunting sounds.

Fitting.



Seeking out new pigments to try out on the canvas of Galbar, Skinstitch travelled further south, where the Ironhearts fell into the Shimmering Sea on a steep cliff. It assimilated anything living that it found, and left in its wake a trail of mismatched, fetal entities like the Screamer, though none quite so exciting. They lay on the rock and struggled under the weight of bones too large and the pull of muscles too strong. Some were purely Galbaric entities, for all their strangeness; Many were hybrid, sustained to varying degrees by the Other.

The reason, Heartworm knew, that none of its work so far had achieved quite the beauty of the Screamer was that that construct had been unique in not only size but in creative generation. In singing its song, the Screamer perpetuated new forms of art into the world constantly, new combinations of sound and music born of the intelligence of the djinni spirit within. To replicate it, something of similar cognitive and emotional capacity was required.

There were plenty of other elementals around, but they were small, feeble flickers without voice. The Emancipator searched far for a substitute, and by the time its search paid off, it had swung round all the way to the lively mangrove green of the Shimmering Sea's southern edge.

Hain. That was what was needed.

The vessel loomed over the heavy limestone hovels of the tribe Heartworm had discovered, casting crazed shadows in the moonlight. Its residents slept, some indoors, some enjoying the warmth of a summer night on the soft sand of their coastal home. Heartworm set about integrating a villager into the mass of the nest, the enormous construct disturbing the sand on which another dozed nearby. It woke with a scream unlike any heard by the tribe since the first fiberling had dragged one of their hatchlings into a whirling mass of hair by its feet. In minutes, the shore was deserted as the hain scattered, driven by the maddening suddenness and size of the apparition. And what it was doing to Fishbones.

I'll start with one, then.

Ideally, the Emancipator would have taken the whole tribe, but it was full of ideas that would take time to implement, and to catch all of them simply sounded boring in comparison to getting work underway immediately. Where, days ago, it had been locked up by artist's block, it now couldn't work fast enough. Exploiting every bulbous lobe of flesh in the vessel, Heartworm copied out and duplicated the hain's limbs and organs dozens of times as the sun rose and set above it, prying open its shell with an array of tentacles and scything claws.

Although night and day the worm crept swiftly back and forth between its materials and the vesicular site of its sculpture, the assembly of the new hain body was rather simple. It would be mobile, standing on numerous legs, and larger than its cousins. Ceramic-bladed tails would keep it safe from predation. Hands, of a sort, it would retain, along with all the delicacy required to use them. It would also keep its exoskeleton, and the bone that hand been a beak would now be bifurcated into a wide crest that could contain its new brain. A mouth capable of speech could be inserted at the base of its head. All the basics required to support the real art.

It was the mental architecture, rather than the physical, that took the Heartworm so long to perfect. The brain of the reconstituted hain would be riddled with flesh and thoughts of Other nature. In fact, the body was nothing but a vector. What Skinstitch was drawing enormous amounts of Gap energy for was to produce an entirely new breed of organism. An entity that put forth its spawn not by sowing from its body, but its mind. A creative parasite, a cognitive virus defined by the insertion of traits not genetic but memetic. It is as with all artists. First would come the inspiration, and then, after a period of development, the reproduction.

Our Lord Mutilation was not just designing a species. It was designing a cult.

At last the new hain, the First Sculptor sewn together in utero from too many iterations of the original sample to count, emerged.

The cultist flexed, relaxed, and observed its environment with senses that delved beyond the mundane and into the Gaps that existed in the crevices of all the universe. Heartworm sensed its recognition, and its apathy. Its emotions had moved on and its soul had matured beyond such things as nostalgia and loneliness. Hours passed, and it tested its body's capabilities by examining its environment, crawling in and out and over the limestone hovels it had once lived in, withdrawing occasional pieces of clutter that the former inhabitants had thought pretty enough to keep, shells and bones and stones and bark. It delved into the mangroves and returned with fruit with which to feed itself, and vines on which to string these items around its neck for safekeeping.

When the village was depleted, the cultist began scratching in the sand with claw and limb. It worked with water, drop by drop, above the tideline, between the dwellings where the wind was weak, and each grain it aligned into shape accepted a small piece of the latent Other. When it departed, it left behind a sculpture, elegant and refined, a face graven into the sand. The visage was of something neither hain nor animal, but divine.

The Cult of Jvan was a complex contagion. It was not such a crude, simple thing as the Ashling plague. Very few would be susceptible, and of those few, less still would ever truly examine such a work of art as may carry the Other-borne seed of the movement.

Those who do will find themselves inspired.

And those who are inspired to create will, in creating, find themselves transformed.

Heartworm wriggled back into its vessel and allowed the massive construct to sink back into the waters of the Shimmering Sea. Let the hain tribe return to their homes at last. If there were any among them worthy of accepting the gift of ascendancy, let them look upon the shape of the symbol traced into their village and take up the long path to beauty in soul and body.

The two divine beings, Ventus and Zephyrion, continued to stare at the holy wisp before them. Ventus' eyes had curiosity tempered with a small hint of confusion and fear of the unknown, whereas Zephyrion's gaze was unblinking and implacable as he tried to discern the nature of this...thing. Quickly his piercing sight recognized it as a creation of Niciel.

After several long moments of the holy wisp hovering without response to the questioning of the two before it, Zephyrion grew restless. "Come, my Vizier, and pay that thing no heed: it wishes no harm unto us. I would have you come with me..."

The vortex that was Zephyrion suddenly trailed off just as his words had done, whisking to another one of the citadel's countless balconies for a different vantage point of the world down below. After a short but breathless flight Vizier Ventus had caught up with his master.

"Look, my friend, at my dominion far down beneath the skies. That great swathe of gleaming sand is but only a lifeless waste, but it was made by my hand nonetheless, and so too was that sparkling sea to its south...all of this must be managed, and I shall require your assistance! We shall go for a closer look!"

At first Ventus was confused, having expected his master and maker to have suddenly leapt off that balcony and flew downwards as soon as the thought crossed his mind to go closer. Instead, Zephyrion rested with a strange still and quiet as if he were concentrating hard on something. It only took a moment for Ventus to realize with horror what the god was doing: through some unseen magic, he had sent the entire Celestial Citadel and the mountain that it rested upon crashing down to the ground! With each second the vast world down below grew larger and closer while their descent grew fatser and more turbulent, but as suddenly as it had started to fall the palace came to a gentle halt much closer to the ground than before. That vast patch of shining sand was now more sharply defined, and a quick eye would discern the indivdual dunes as the breath of a million tiny flickers moved the winds and brushed the dunes back and forth.

"See the many dunes below, your smaller brothers, and...Slough?"

The vizier saw nothing, but evidently Zephyrion had sensed something as he stared far into the distance. Upon closer inspection Ventus could spot a tiny, seemingly unremarkable figure bounding through the sands with another odd figure at its heels, almost as if it was a guardian.

"Yes! Yes! My sister the life goddess has traveled to my lands! You must make her stop and gift my dominion here with her blessing; go now Ventus, for I am afraid that my presence might scare her! Do not disappoint!"

With a mighty shove of wind, the bewildered Vizier found himself flung from the heights of the citadel and sent flying towards this 'Slough'.

Whereas the essence of the desert between the Gilt Savannah and Jvan's Fractal Sea never progressed beyond bleak despair, this Firewind Desert exuded a different aura entirely. To Slough, this feeling was palpable. Though blind in the ways of the universe and deaf to the station of divinity, she could nevertheless sense certain things in her own primitive way, and to her it appeared as if this hot, arid land had a caretaker. The idea of providence, more instinctual than conceptual, filled her with a wild enthusiasm, sending the Rottenbone at a chipper pace across the dunes with her tireless custodian on her heels. A sudden rise in the intensity of air currents did little to dissuade her earnestness, though it did send flecks of rot flying to spatter and evaporate messily on the sand.

An especially odd scent on the wind caused her to halt, regarding each empty horizon in turn with a point of her skinless snout. Esau smelled it as well, and wasted no time leaping in front of Slough to defend her from harm, no matter how inexorable the adversary.

Now close enough to inspect this flighty life goddess and her guardian, one of the many questions swirling through the Vizier's confused mind was answered: he had been sent alone on this first task because surely Zephyrion's presence would have been enough to terrify this poor creature. Its guardian was aggravated and the goddess disturbed by the simple aura of his presence, so Zephyrion's wild vortex and scathing radiance would no doubt send this duo fleeing.

The Vizier turned back to look hesitantly to his master, only to see the Celestial Citadel rising once more out of sight until the clouds that carried its weight blended in with the rest of the serene sky and it would have been impossible to ever know of the palace above. Despite the vast distance, Ventus could still feel his master's piercing gaze as he no doubt look on anxiously.

After a brief hesitation, the djinni manifested himself a fair distance back from Esau and Slough. There was a pregnant pause during which the djinni could only stare with trepidation, but then he slowly moved to approach Slough, hovering what he thought was a safe distance above the lion-creature's reach.

The appearance of Zephyrion's underling confirmed what his odor on the desert breeze had hinted at: though living, the Vizier was no creation of Slough's. Like the White Giant, and the Ashling, and fulvous Maize, his heart beat to a vastly different tune. Making a slight whining noise, Slough stepped back. No amount of constant pain would make her forget the special agony that the last unnatural life form to get this close inflicted upon her. Esau felt her discomfort acutely, and a threatening growl escaped his fanged maw. Inside the Vizier's body, his blood stirred ever so slightly.

Ventus daintily drifted forward, the light breeze twisting to conform to his movement and sighing in a sweet song. Lightly he breathed out, and the vapor that he exhaled become a light, misty breeze that would drift down to Esau and Slough and offer much needed respite from the scorching desert's dry and mummifying air. Lightly he circled around the duo for some time, and as he did so a cool breeze continued to whisper nature's song and cool the two creatures. The Vizier found himself drifting slightly closer down to the two as time went on. Meanwhile, Zephyrion found himself wondering what his seemingly incompetent and childish Vizier was doing down there, petulantly flying in circles. An air of impatience began to whip around through the stratosphere above while the First Gale grew restless.

A refreshing wind lessened the discomfort of the two creatures' somewhat, but Slough did not banish her fear, nor did Esau relax his guard. He continuously shifted as Ventus circled, constantly interposing himself between Slough and the elemental. After a few minutes of this, however, he began to grow visible bored. However menacing his visage and contemptible his scent, the Vizier had not attacked yet. It did not appeal to the Custodian's mind to keep expending energy when no assault came. He stopped moving, though no less dangerous for it, given the magic contained in his majestic voice. Slough, meanwhile, followed the Vizier with her skull if not her eyes, anxious but increasingly curious.

"What game do you play, Vizier?" A familar voice resonated from within Ventus' mind, the demanding question dripping with both anxiousness and frustration.

Ventus thought for a moment; he had only known his maker for a short time, but already he thought that the impulsive god might actually be willing to help if only he could see the plan. "Your majesty, try as I might the beast's guardian is wary of my presence; I seek to gain their trust," Ventus uttered softly, his light words carried all the way up to the citadel above by the elemental's mastery over air.

"Ah, but why did you not simply say so? My frivilous friend, you shall meet no success in such endeavors if all you do is fly in circles! You must play with Slough! Here, I shall help!" Zephyrion replied, and then there was ominous silence with laughter the god's only answer when Ventus of course asked to know what sort of help he was receiving.

Of course, the Vizier did not have to wait long. A great wind suddenly swept across the burning landscape, and carried by a truly terrifying gust were the massive figures of three ashlings. The hateful beings writhed and roared as they were cast about like mere playthings but Zephyrion's terrifying wind, but even high up in the sky and far in the distance their coming would surely be recognizable to Esau and Slough.

"These lonely creatures were nearby, so perhaps they can help you play some sort of game!" the childish god now said, seemingly oblivious to the consequences of what he might be doing.

A dreadfully familiar presence commanded the attention of both deer and manticore. Far above, Ashlings danced in a tumultuous spiral, and the sight provoked an immediate response. Slough turned tail and galloped in the opposite direction, while Esau backed up as fast he could, keeping his eyes forward and his voice tuned to rip the enemies apart from the inside out when they got close enough to hear.

Overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of what his master seemingly failed to recognize as monsters and by Slough's sudden retreat, Ventus was torn. A very human instinct told him to flee, but like Esau he instead moved to protect Slough. It would not due to have what he already sensed to be a precious and cherished being brought to harm. Suddenly and keenly aware of his great powers now that the need had suddenly arised for them to be put in use, the djinni hovered high above the ground and intercepted one of the soaring ashlings.

Latching onto its crystalized carapace, he now say the thing was even more horrible than it had appeared for afar. A claw raked across the djinni's upper body and a terrible, rending sensation burned through Vizier as his body was gouged. Some strange, misting fluid seeped from his wound before quickly vaporizing into smoke. Angered at the beast, Ventus found himself summoning a surge of energy without even thinking. The blast travelled through his hands into the ashling's body and the monster convulsed even more crazily for only a moment before its innards were simply incinerated.

Zephyrion had seen fit to comment in Ventus' mind, "You'd rather parade your powers to Slough and make a spectacle, then? Such an immature and arrogant display of power rings shallow, my young friend, and you might learn a most valuable lesson of humility from I! Still, no love for those creatures stirs through my heart and so I allow you to do as you will...Oh, but you might care to turn around; the other one seems angered!"

Looking to back to see another ashling dangerously close, the elemental channeled that same power towards the foe before it too could draw close enough to do harm. The energy shot through the air in the form of cackling lightning, and this time there was so much power that it simply blasted the ashling apart. The third and final one was farther away, and so with considerably less desperation the Vizier transformed into a raw storm akin to that form that his master often took. The cyclone whipped across the desert until it could overtake the soaring ashling and hurl the foul thing on a trajectory that would smash it into a thousand shards in some distant land to the horizon, unless Esau's roar obliterated it first.

The cyclone slowed, clamed, and shrunk, and soon the djinni was back in his previous form. Gingerly he drifted back to Slough, wondering if protecting her would have done anything more to gain her trust. He also found himself wondering about the supposed wisdom of his most hypocritical and childish master...the god spoke of humility, and from only the brief time that they had already spent together Ventus found himself already thinking of the First Gale as something akin to a bloated cloud of unpredictability and power, forced to gracelessly tumble the ground beneath the crushing weight of his own hubris and frequent rodomontades.

In fact, the Vizier would be hard-pressed to drift back toward Slough in a gingerly manner, as she did not cease running. With the Ashlings visibly taken care of, Esau had run to join her, easily catching up to the rickety ghoul with powerful leaps. The lack of danger caught up with Slough less quickly, but after some time she did begin to slow down. Having been turned around by the encounter with Ventus, she found herself not closer to the Fractal Sea, but farther from it. Heaving from the exertion, the Rottenbone stood still. Sand kicked up from her hasty flight permeated her skin and beneath it, irritating her abominably.

Giving a small cry, she squeezed sand-laden rot from her body in a sort of purification, but the rot itself did not merely run off like water from a duck. It exploded outward, and in midair contorted and twisted into new shapes. Before the slime could even touch the ground, it had given way to a flock of little black birds that whirled around her. Not even a minute passed, however, before the birds' bodies began to shed a luminous dust that billowed closely around them, making them almost invisible beneath the sunlight. Around Slough, the air appeared distorted, but the birds themselves could not be seen. Some rot did touch the ground, however, and from it rose tiny clusters of briar.

Nothing else would be forthcoming, however. The briars seemed dead already, and the Desert Ghosts would soon die from lack of food and water. If more life were to exist in Zephyrion's land, the Rottenbone would need help.

Matching Slough's hurried pace was easy enough for the flying djinni. He did not soar so fast as to catch her or appear to be in some sort of vicious pursuit, and eventually when she stopped he had the opportunity to catch up and once again find himself up close to the goddess. It was then with some awe that he witnessed her power of creation.

Suddenly aware of her agitated underbelly, the Vizier decided to offer her what gift he could. Sensing a hundred tiny wind elementals spiriting about unseen in the general vicinity, the djinni lord reached out to all of them. "Winds," he intoned, "obey my command!" Unknowing uttering those same words that his maker did when he had created this very desert, the elemental lord's magic drew the immediate attention of those lesser spiryts, the tiny flickers flocking to Ventus like a swarm of invisible gnats. Wordlessly he willed the tiny beings to capture every tiny bit of moisture that was in this parched land's air and sands, for there was always a tiny amount brought inland by the most tireless of sea breezes.

With the combined effort of so many tiny magical beings, a fair amount was soon gathered up into a cloud, and Ventus commanded it to rain down in a nearby low-lying basin. A tiny oasis formed here, if only temporarily. With a cool breath of wind Ventus tried to gently encourage Esau and Slough towards the nourishing watrers of that small pool. The reprieve offered by that cool water was his gift.

The very smell of water drew Slough like a moth. Both she and her guardian sensed the presence of wind elementals, but they did not fear ones so small and insignificant. The strange pair made tracks for the basin, one on shaky, emaciated legs and the other patiently a few steps ahead. When at last the oasis lay before her, Slough bent her neck to submerge her head in it, allowing the water to flow down her open gullet. In doing so, however, her runoff turned the oasis a murky black--but only for a moment. The odorous ink filtered toward the edges of the pool, and where it met mud some plants began to glow. Slowly, various cactus and ferns poked up through the mire in a rich green ring around the water. So eagerly did Slough imbibe the waters that the agony of drowning came as a surprise. Yanking her head out of the pool, she uttered ghastly choking sounds, until a mass of blackened water spewed from beneath her skull.

It splashed on the sand, and the next instant, everything went blindingly black. Energy coursed through the desert for about a mile around, turning from midnight ebony to verdant green to brilliant white before gradually dissipating, no less harrowing and soulfelt than coming within an inch of death. When the light did wane, the area had changed.

The oasis had expanded greatly, turning into a lush swamp. All sorts of bizarre plantlife filled it, from enormous, bulbous flowers to incredible cactuses. Most strange, however, were the pods. Huge, dome-shaped membranes of lustrous orange covered giant pits with walls lined in plantlife, and as Slough and Esau watched, most of them ruptured to give forth their captives. Enormous birds, deformed and voracious, lofted into the air. Huge monsters floated upward on gaseous balloons. Highly adapted fish flapped skyward to glide among the clouds or just above the heads of enormous, grotesque scorpions. Other, smaller things appeared, many of them rather unremarkable, but some more intriguing than any other beast yet. Like the Desert Ghosts, Onyx Phantoms disappeared during the day, only emerging to hunt for cactus fruit at night like grim specters; they were no ordinary lifeforms. A touch of Zephyrion's power lay within them, siphoned from the land he created, to culminate in most holy beasts.

Plantlife would never spread across Firewind Desert, though the flying and scuttling creatures might. Instead it would remain concentrated in this gorgeous Resort, which for now until the end of the world would be a site of pilgrimage for all living things to call the wasteland their home.

Slough, exhausted but unpunished, carefully lay down. With the institution of a haven for life in this unforgiving land, she seemed less tormented. After snarling at a scorpion that drew a little too close for his master's liking, Esau carefully sat nearby.

Muted by his own heyday, Ventus merely observed from above while the progenitors of a thousand creatures were made before his eyes and that tiny pool grew into a vast, swamp-like oasis. At last he was able to draw his eyes away from the Resort below and to the Paradise above that was the Celestial Citadel; Zephyrion and the entire castle had been following the whole time. With Slough resting forthwith, he had the spare time to briefly return to his home above and meet with his master once again.

Zephyrion had been milling about from window to window, stopping at each and every one to gleefully examine the changes to his dominion below and monitor the progress of his Vizier and Slough. "Ah, you have returned, though I hope out of a desire to bask in my presence rather than by some misguided intent to proclaim your task done! No, more remains to be done, but come hither and harken close..."

A gust of wind swept both Zephyrion and Ventus through the drafty halls until the were at the other side, looking away from the Resort below. "Gaze yonder, and see alow that great river that cuts through the land! But let your vision not stop short at its rapids, gaze further yon and you can just make out the peaks of those mountains wrought by my brother Teknall, the same who helped build this palace." With some surprise Ventus heard that this palatial castle had not even been built by his maker, though it was hardly surprising; Zephyrion's shroud of supposed grandeur and mysticism grew dimmer by the hour. In any case, the Vizier was intrigued by the prospect of another god; he wondered if Teknall be so different from Zephyrion as Slough was.

Zephyrion meanwhile continued, "Betwixt the source of that mighty river and those mountains are highlands beautiful in their rugged splendor, and I bid you take Slough to the river valley and upstream to those bluffs. Bring life there, and every last corner of my land will be made complete and more perfect."

The various ruminations that Ventus had been mulling over in his mind while he pretended to listen to his master were then cut short, the god once again sending him back to the ripe lands below.

Yang'Ze slowly breathed in, filling his lungs to the brim with oxygen, paused for five seconds and then exhaled. It had been some time since he had shot out the beacon of light, signaling Teknall to travel to Mount Borhmanven but the god of crafting hadn't arrived yet. "I guess he would be busy, wouldn't he? Now that I think about it, didn't Zephyrion and he built that floating citadel I saw back then? Huh..."

Ull'Yang was sitting down cross-legged, in a meditative position. He had stretched his divine awareness throughout the Avatar's body, trying to figure out its limits and weaknesses. He lamented on the fact that he couldn't just appear wherever he wanted using his true form. That would undoubtedly bring great calamity to every solar system that would be unfortunate enough to be near him when he appeared.

"Alas, although this body isn't as convenient as my true body, it'll have to do for now. If it's only mingling with mortal affairs, it's good enough," Ull'Yang sighed. "Although, in the long run, those siblings of mine and their creations might prove problematic for me if I am stuck in this body... I'll need a weapon of some sort..."

Speaking of the devil, just as Ull'Yang was pondering on what his choice of weapon would be, Teknall appeared beside him. Ull'Yang watched silently as the Craftsman God was praising the exceptional view from the peak of the mountain. "Nice view up here, isn't it?" Teknall spoke. Ull'Yang stood up and after taking a good look for himself, turned to Teknall while nodding in approval. "Although I haven't been to Zephyrion's Celestial Citadel to witness the view from up there with my own eyes, I'll still bet that it's not better than this view here."

Yang'Ze took two steps forward and gazed at the horizon as the sun was setting and the stars were, one by one, beginning to appear in the night sky. "As you must have guessed by now, I was the one who fired that beam of light. Truthfully, this body is too lacking when it comes to communicating with the rest of you gods and goddesses so I am forced to use cruder and slightly inaccurate means. I fear what would have happened if Vestec was the first to notice the beam of light and come here rather than you, Teknall. Right now, although this body is quite sturdy as is, It's quite not up to my standards yet. However, a good enough weapon would somewhat even things out for me," Ull'Yang said and turned around, looking at Teknall.

"That is where you come in. I want you to make me a weapon. Its design should be practical, allowing for versatility and swift movements while also helping me keep whomever I am fighting at bay, prohibiting their attacks from reaching me. Also, It should also be able to change its size and shape to whatever I so choose, for better transportation as well as, again, versatility in battle.." Ull'Yang paused for a few seconds, letting Teknall think about everything that he had asked for so far.

"Of course, I should be able to infuse it with my powers if I so desire. Lastly, It should be unliftable to anyone other than me although I doubt that this will be possible as I don't think there are any gods that aren't able to lift items made of physical materials. Just make it so it weights little when I wield it but when on others' hands, it's weight is so immense that it's basically unliftable by anyone other than true gods," Ull'Yang told his brother and waited for his response.

Teknall pondered for a few moments. Creating the weapon of choice for a god or their Avatar is a great responsibility. Then he managed to figure out an appropriate design. Teknall crouched down to the ground, touched the bare stone and rose his hand up again, lifting out a narrow cylinder of stone, four centimeters thick and a meter and a half long.

"Something like this?" Teknall asked. He twirled it around experimentally, then handed it to Yang'Ze for him to try. "A staff. That should be an appropriate form. Of course, the actual thing shall be made of a better material than raw stone."

Ull'Yang examined the long piece of rock that Teknall handed out to him. He swung it around expertly, trying to get a feel for the approximate design of the finalised weapon before nodding in approval at Teknall's choice. "Hmm, indeed, this will do just fine If I so say. It allows for swift movement by the wielder and helps restrict the opponent, limiting their range and scope of attacks. Very nice indeed..." Ull'Yang said.

"I shall make this staff for you. I can create the form, and imbue it with the framework of the magic it needs, although you will need to provide the power for those enchantments," Teknall said, "In exchange, I shall ask for a similar favour from you. I'll let you know when I decide what I want."

Then, from far below, Teknall perceived the presence of the Fiberling, which was trying to ascend the mountain. He walked to the edge and looked down, and the Fiberling was but a pink speck, almost twenty kilometers away. "We have some company, from Jvan, although she won't be here for many hours yet. That should be time enough to finish your weapon." With that, Teknall jumped down into the deep crater of Mount Borhmanven, descending to the heart of the volcano.

"Company you say?" Ull'Yang also walked towards the edge of the crater and, after a few moments of searching with his eyes, he noticed a slight miscoloration, a tiny, pink smudge that was slowly climbing upwards, making its way to the peak of the volcano. Ull'Yang could faintly feel Jvan's unique divine essence emitting form the pink object. "Our sister seems to have been busy with her creations, just as expected," Ull'Yang said but when he turned around, Teknall had already jumped down the crater of Mount Borhmanven.

"I'm certainly glad that you are eager to fulfill my request, brother," Ull'Yang thought and jumped, following Teknall down the scorching depths of the volcano.

The chamber where Teknall stopped was filled with the scent of sulfur, and in the center was a bubbling pit of lava. The red light of this pit cast deep shadows across the craggy stone room of dark igneous rock, with the only other source of light being Yang'Ze's incandescent form. Here, Teknall began his craft. From a crag, Teknall chipped off a large chunk of stone, about waist high and two meters long and flat on top, which he pushed across the floor until it was in the open. In this flat top, Teknall chiselled out a semicircular groove all the way along it. Then, at his touch, the walls leaked molten metals, which snaked across the ground, illuminating Teknall with their glow, until they reached the anvil, where they climbed up the sides of the stone and pooled into the mould Teknall had made. As the metal began to solidify, Teknall spun and hammered it, and by his expert hand, a perfect rod of mithral was eventually formed.

While the metal still glowed red hot, Teknall chiseled shallow lines into the rod, flowing in the pattern of flowers and vines. At his call, more molten metal flowed to the anvil. In front of Teknall formed thin strips of orichalcum, which he drew into wires and, with both metals heated to the verge of melting, hammered them gently into the lines in the rod, fusing the orichalcum filigree into the mithral.

Once more metal flowed from the walls and became solid on the anvil, this time forming bronze. Teknall took this bronze, flattened it into two sheets then wrapped them around the staff at two places equidistant from the center, handholds for when the weapon is used with two hands. Likewise, Teknall heated the item to near-melting so as to fuse the metals together.

The metal still glowing a dull red, Teknall picked up the staff. Holding it by one end with one hand, Teknall swung the staff in front of him, then spun it around beside him before gripping it with two hands. Mithral was indeed a good choice, for it was an extremely light metal yet as strong as steel. The physical implement was complete, now came the tricky bit.

Teknall put the staff back to rest in its groove on the stone anvil. With eyes closed, he passed his hands over the warm metal. It would, of course, have to be enchanted so as to be nigh indestructible. And, as per request, it would need to be able to change size at will. Both these enchantments were trivial for Teknall since his own weapons did that. Being able to morph its shape would be more difficult, and dynamically adapting its weight even more so.

As he was considering how to do it, Teknall's godly perception rested once more upon the Fiberling, who was ascending the mountain. On closer inspection of its workings, he realised that this Fiberling held the key to his problem. At will, it could stow matter in extradimensional space and retrieve it, moulding its own fibers to its will. This was exactly what Teknall wanted to do, so that is what he did. Adapting the Fibreling's extradimensional magic to work for metals, and to act in a more responsive timeframe, Teknall wove that enchantment into the rest of the staff's magic.

The last enchantment was yet to be figured out, though. The staff had to be able to dynamically change how heavy it was, without affecting its physical size. Teknall thought long and hard about how he might be able to get the weapon to change its mass, perhaps by adding extra atoms and making the lattice more compact as with the Fiberlings, but he could not figure out a way to do this reliably, especially at several orders of magnitude. Then he realised that he was thinking about the problem the wrong way around. Rather than change the weapon's mass, he should change the weapon's weight. This was far easier to achieve. All he had to do was increase the force of gravity on the object, which is quite doable given the right magic and a deep understanding of the physical laws dictating the Universe.

And so Yang'Ze's staff was almost complete. With the mithral cooled to room temperature and the framework of the enchantments set up, all that remained was for Ull'Yang to apply his divine power to it. Seeing the finished product before him filled Teknall with a warm feeling of satisfaction, the rewarding feeling of an artisan who has completed a sophisticated and challenging piece of work. Teknall picked up the staff and handed it to Yang'Ze.

"Here you go. All done. It just needs you to add your power," Teknall said, "It's a solid mithral rod, so fairly strong yet light at the same time. I've imbued it with magic which will make it nearly indestructible, so it should be able to handle heavy blows without a dent. As requested, it can change size at will, by a factor of a few. It can also be shaped by your command, even summoning or stowing material in extradimensional space if need be. It holds the power to increase its own weight, the force of gravity on it, by several orders of magnitude if anyone other than yourself, or people you allow, attempt to pick it up. Finally, its design and materials make it a good conduit for your divine power."

Ull'Yang was standing at a distance away from Teknall, making sure to not bother him while he was working. Occasionally, he stole glances of the weapon that made him feel slightly excited about how the finished staff would look like.

When Teknall finally handed the staff over to him, Ull'Yang took it in his hands and examined it, marveling at the supreme craftsmanship that his brother had displayed in front of him. He tucked one end of the staff under his armpit and executed a sweep with it on a phantom opponent before swiftly grabbing it with both of his hands and swinging it counterclockwise and striking another phantom opponent. "...You truly deserve the title of the Divine Mason," Ull'Yang told Teknall, his expression making it hard for one to not notice how pleased he was with the weapon.

Teknall's face beamed as much as Ull'Yang's. "It is a pleasure to have crafted such a fine object."

"Now, to jumpstart the enchantments you placed on the staff," Ull'Yang said as a strand of divine essence flowed from his hand to the weapon. The engravings on the staff shone a bright blue light as they were filled with divine essence and Ull'Yang could feel the changes starting to take effect. He willed the weapon to change size a few times. He also tested changing its shape but soon realized that every other form felt sub-par when compared to its original one.

"I guess I would very rarely change its form but it's a nice feature to have..." Ull'Yang thought. He didn't question Teknall on how he managed to include the enchantments on the weapon as he didn't really care how Teknall would go about creating it. He had already gotten what he asked for and he was pleased with it.

Teknall looked thoughtfully at the makeshift anvil, the walls streaked with resolidified slag and the bubbling pit of lava. It had made a decent workshop in a pinch, and he had wrought a great work here, but it was lacking elegance or style. He could fix it up, but volcanos were such fickle and unpredictable places. He needed a workshop fitting for a god. And for that, he needed a power source fitting for a god. Glancing at the Avatar of the Primordial Sun beside him, Teknall figured why settle for a volcano?

"I've decided on my payment," Teknall announced, "I'd like a star. Something to put inside a personal plane of existence, which will be a stable source of power for billions of years to come for whatever projects I may have."

"Oh, a star you say? Well, I certainly could do that for you without any effort whatsoever. But...Is that all? You know, what you have created here for me is probably going to save me a lot of needless trouble... Nevertheless, if that's all you want, I will not hold back one bit. Seeing as you created this wonderful weapon for me, I should, at least, give something of equal value back to you," Ull'Yang said.

Mildly surprised, Teknall considered what more he could ask, yet his mind came up blank. "Just as you could not have built that staff yourself, I can't make a whole star myself. If there is ever another favour I can ask of you, I shall, but for now, I will have a star."

Teknall concentrated for a moment, then at a wave of his hand a rift opened in space beside them, leading to a realm of darkness as complete as the void before the creation of the Universe. Although Teknall's plane was presently devoid of form, it brimmed with creative potential, just as the World had been when the gods first arrived. "If you could put it in there, that would be great."

Ull'Yang watched his brother open a dimensional rift that lead to a plane that was completely empty. "Hmm, a personal plane? Why haven't I thought about creating one for myself? Now that I think about it...It could very well solve a lot of problems for me..." Ull'Yang thought. All sorts of expressions could be seen on the Avatar's face as Ull'Yang kept pondering on the idea, beginning to like it more and more.

"Although I can create stars at will, the divine essence that this body can hold is much less than the essence required for the creation of a standard star, even more so for the creation of a star that's supposed to last as long as you want it to last. Only my true body is able to produce that kind of essence." Ull'Yang said. "For me to repay you, you'd have to travel to where my true body is currently at, and open the dimensional rift there."

"Ah, right," Teknall said, "In that case, let us leave this cavern and you can point me there."

With a wave of his hand, the rift closed, leaving no trace of its existence. In a single bound, Teknall ascended to the top of Mount Borhmanven and looked out to the vast starry sky beyond, unoccluded by the thin atmosphere.

Yang'Ze watched as the Craftsman God shot upwards and out of the depths of the volcano. He willed the staff to reduce in size, enough for it to be carried inside one of the inner pockets of his coat, before following Teknall outside. Ull'Yang walked a couple of steps forward until he reached the edge of the crater. He closed his eyes and retracted his consciousness from his Avatar.

---

As his consciousness returned back to his original body, Ull'Yang became aware of his surroundings once more. "Hmm, currently, I am quite a distance away by mortal standards..." he thought. He used his divine awareness to feel the unique essence signals that his fellow deities emitted and, after some time spent searching, located the direction of Galbar's solar system. "Well then..." Ull'Yang thought and sent his consciousness back to his Avatar.

---

Yang'Ze opened his eyes and raised his hand, pointing at the location of his true body. "Currently, the Universe is in its early stages and as such, there hasn't been a sufficient passage of time so as to allow for the light emitted from me to reach this planet. Fortunately, I can still show you the way." Ull'Yang said, a pleasant smile donning his face.

Teknall's gaze followed Yang'Ze's outstretched finger to a patch of dark sky. Although there was no light to signal the existence of anything, his divine sense could tell that there was indeed a great presence there. "Alright, then. Off I go."

But before Teknall left, something else caught his attention. He turned around and saw, flying slowly and lethargically, a strange winged mass of flesh and sinews. "I think Jvan's messenger has arrived."

The Embryonic Angel spoke its message. "My brothers in creation, it is good to see your faces once more, and I have many thanks to give. Teknall! Throughout this world, I see great plants of your design, and I admire your foresight. Already creatures from the Deepwood are spreading further into the world on your back. Already Toun's children are bending branches and stripping sticks for their own use. I invite you to look upon them sometime and feel proud of your work. Ull'Yang, your spirit is welcome on Galbar, and I feel you, too, may be interested in these new animals, for they possess tremendous animus, which you might be able to emulate in children of your own. May you both be inspired always."

At the mention of tool-making creatures, Teknall's face lit up. He had been waiting earnestly for this moment, and soon it would be time for him to shine. "That is excellent news. I will have to attend to them soon."

Ull'Yang didn't expect for the messenger to start speaking even before it had reached the peak of the volcano, so he was taken aback when he heard Jvan's voice echo from below them. "Indeed, I have already observed Toun's new creations. Fascinating little things. They loosely resemble the structure of an avian creature but spot arms and legs and are capable of bipedal locomotion. What's more, they possess intelligence! Ah, Toun must have felt quite creative when he came up with them." Ull'Yang said, affirming what Jvan's messenger had already conveyed to them.

Teknall looked once more to the true location of Ull'Yang in the sky. "Okay, I'm going now. This time for real. I'll be back soon." Such distances were far too vast to be travelled by any means even approaching conventional, so Teknall settled for willing himself to be in the right location. In one moment Teknall was standing atop Mount Borhmanven, the next he was in orbit around a distant red giant, yet this was no ordinary star.

"Hello there, Ull'Yang. You're a bit bigger than I last remembered," Teknall called out in greeting, his message carried by divine power rather than air.

A massive solar flare erupted outwards from Ull'Yang, the remnants of which formed a majestic bird of fire. The bird stretched its wings and a bright radiance filled the space surrounding it, a radiance only matched by Ull'Yang's true body. "It is as you say, brother. This body is indeed a burden that I have to carry for the rest of eternity," Ull'Yang voiced somewhat dejectedly. "Enough of that, though. Open the door to your plane so we can proceed with the creation of the star," Ull'Yang told Teknall.

"Of course," Teknall replied. With a simple gesture, the rift opened between the two gods. In through the rift went the bird of fire, followed by Teknall.

The bird flew inside the empty space of Teknall's personal plane before settling on a location. It then folded its wings around its body, forming a relatively large spherical object that proceeded to rapidly condense in size. When it reached the required threshold of compression, the spherical object exploded outwards into a magnificent supernova, creating a gold-blue coloured nebula.

"I have already made sure, using my powers, that the star produced by this nebula will last for a very, very long time. You won't have to worry about it burning out for at least a trillion years or so," Ull'Yang sent mentally to his brother.

Teknall watched as the nebula coalesced into a star, glowing a warm red. "It is excellent, brother. It shall serve me well. I shall speak with you again some time, but for now, I must depart. Farewell."

"Very well. For now, I bid you farewell as well," Ull'Yang told Teknall as he was leaving.

And so Teknall departed, returning once again to Galbar.

---

Meimu tilted her head and shrugged

“But if I cut out the uglier flowers being pretty will be integral to their survival”

She saw the odd tree he formed, not the prettiest, but it was poisonous, she would have to tell it to her master once she was back...

=========

The terror the aura of the god of death brought to her was a mystery. Ilunabar wondered for a long time about the situation but there was something illogical about it, she was able to talk normally to her brother yet odd visions would bring her fear and pain.

“Perhaps I was dreaming?”

And slowly a realization formed on the muse’s minds, she could dream. A myriad of possibilities crossed her mind, she had been ignoring it for so long, but the answer was there, the answer was obvious. On her first try she just drifted along the flow of dreams, but that was not her purpose, The Muse was meant to lead the way, many creatures could dream, but only one being in all of the cosmos could analyse, categorize and improve them.

Once into the Raka, Ilunabar noticed how more wild things had became while she was away, intelligent minds had started to sprout among creatures, and the clash between reality and their desires was generating far more dreams than all of the simple creatures together.

Ilunabar played a lullaby to herself. She needed to dive deeper into her plane, she needed to become part of everything around her, like her brother Vowzra did by becoming part of the fabric of existence, except Ilunabar wanted all of the fabric of dreams and she wanted to wear it like a dress.

Raka as a whole stopped, at first standing still, but slowly all the energy started to move to Ilunabar, slowly being absorbed by the sleeping goddess, for years no creature would be able to dream, but Ilunabar believed it was worth it, became dreams would bloom beautifully once she was back.

Finally, the goddess once again lost her shape, becoming a stream of energy which started to solitarily flow through the empty plane.

=========
The unused potential

Once upon a time Ilunabar was in a place not unlike this one, raw potential with no shape, like a sea of molding clay, but that place was foreigner, ruled by things created by beings above her. This disarray however belonged to her, no matter how stubborn it was, her hands would mold it.

Despite the lack of any sense of space, she took a step forward.

=========
The absurd dream

Things took shape, any shape actually. Ilunabar found herself in an odd world of flashing colors, where most things simply didn’t follow any set of rules. Despite all the bizarreness however, this was by no means similar to the original state, while pretty chaotic this was still a mirror of her spirit. A broken and distorted mirror which played the oddest tricks to the mind, but still one nevertheless.

“O ludicrous dream, who bends all feelings like a kaleidoscope, where up can be down, right can be down too and left can be a fish. Your wild insanity will give form to all impossibilities. And for that I give you a note. Dotty”

She played the first string of her harp and took a step forward.

=========
The hidden dream

The stairs. The abyss. The echo of each step. She knew it, she feared it. No matter how she tried to escape, the dream would always adapt itself to bring her back. When she tried to think about better things however another dream formed, in this she could bring Life to barren lands, shape the world with Change, bring Chaos to order, bring Order to chaos, the Stars up above moved and the strings of the dreamweaver were the very fibers of existence and Fate, there were no siblings, there was only her.

The last dream played with all emotions equally, this one however knew the value of each memory and feeling.

“O invasive dream, who raids hidden desires and fears, where there is no choice but to face the abyss of our minds. Your harsh truth will bring terror and pleasure with a hidden challenge that leads to realization. For that I give you a note. Reave”

She played the second string of her harp and took a step forward.

=========
The illusory dream

At first it looked pretty normal, at least in comparison to what she had witnessed before. A simple desert with a few oddities like giant half-buried statues or still spinning clogs here and there. Eventually she stopped in an oasis and decided to drink a bit of the water, immediately spitting it out as it tasted and felt like sand. As she stepped away from the oasis she heard a splash sound, and immediately sank into the sand as if it was a real sea. At first it felt like she was floating underwater, but soon after she started to fall freely as if she was in the sky, and indeed, she could now see the wholeness of the desert and its many oddities.

Enough was enough, she couldn’t spend all of her time on the illusions of this dream. She stopped mid air and refused to comply with the shifting rules of this treacherous reality.

“O tricky dream, who plays games with our memories, where our stale views are challenged by scorching ice and frigid flames. You are a reminder that we should never be too comfortable with our perceptions. For that I give you a note. Mirage.”

She played the third string of her harp and took a step forward.

==========
The fulfilling dream

It was obvious that this was the midpoint in her future scale, everything was harmonical, the dream didn’t want to challenge reality but it didn’t want to be real either. It was a place where the narratives would bloom freely, as the whole world would bend to it and only to it.

Knowing that harsher times were beyond this point Ilunabar decided to rest a bit. Days of idyllic joy followed, beautiful fruits were born at each tree and they were delicious to eat, shadows took the shapes of interesting stories for her to watch, the sky alternated between twinkling stars and a gorgeous aurora. This was a comfortable dream, perhaps too comfortable, unless she wished it to not be comfortable, then it would be whatever she wanted.

“O obedient dream, who gives the mind the chance to shape the world, where the repressed ideas take shape in their amazing and alluring glory. Your realm of free possibilities are the purest of dreams. For that I give you a note. Fantasy”

She played the fourth string and took a step forward.

========
The illusive dream

“Luna-chan, hurry up or you are going to be late!” said Jane Vanchev.

“Geez, why the rush?” answered her friend.

It was the start of another high school year in Garubaru town and for our heroine Luna. She might look like a normal schoolgirl but in truth she is a magical girl! Lyrical Musa-chan!

“Ok no, this isn’t happening” Said Ilunabar, making the odd dream crumble around her. What a bizarre experience that was, everything was clearly not real, in fact many bizarre things were all around her, yet it felt real to the point it fooled her for a while.

This world was phantasmagoric, it shaped itself for the dreamer just like the last one, but it tried to create a lie, to pretend all that was real. It was not a dream she would like to have, or would she? There was some charm in being able to live a story as an unknowing character or to be in a fantastic dream without knowing it was a dream.

“O deceitful dream, who immerses us in a fake reality, where one can experience the world of dreams without realizing. You bring sweet lies, and sometimes that is fine. For that I give you a note. Solitude.

She played the fifth string and took a step forward.

=========
the paradoxical dream

This was the hardest dream for the goddess to understand, it did not work properly for her until she started to feel it through the senses of a mortal. This was a word of illusions, but not the ones she had seen until now, these were created by the gaps and holes in the perception of the world.

For most of the time the dream copied reality, but whenever sounds and vision worked on odd ways the dream turned those into reality despite the paradoxes and impossibilities such illusions could create.

“O broken dream, who gives shapes even to the errors of our mind, where the most complex labyrinths of mirrors are formed. You are a reminder that our perception can play cruel tricks far beyond the simple mirage. For that, I give you a note. Labyrinth”

She played the sixth string and took a step forward.

=========
the dream that didn’t want to be dream

Ilunabar suddenly saw herself back to Raka. Was that it? Had she finally crossed all of the possible dreams? There was this uncanny feeling that something was missing. It took her a while to notice, but all her magenta colored jewelry had turned grey. This was a dream that had created a fake sense of reality but there were still some things missing, the way this reality worked around the paradoxes of the last dream was to destroy any abnormality, not even the pink and magenta of her outfit survived, simply because those colors were not in the spectrum of light but were simply an illusion created by red and blue.

There was something ugly about this fake world, but there was also something great, to think dreams could, even to a lesser extent, create a clone of reality gave Ilunabar a sense of power, she was like the Fate of her own little and short lived worlds.

“O mirrored dream, who diligently create a familiar world, where the roads ignored by the crossroad of fate can tell their stories. You transform lost possibilities into dreams, giving the sight of realities that could be. For that I give you a note. Simulacrum”

She played the seventh string and took a step forward

========
The crash

Everything stopped. This world, much like the distant chaotic mass of potential, refused to exist, this one however was the total lack of potential. It couldn’t let anything else move, perfection had to be set on stone and its stories confined to a closed book. It was a world where the dual harmony of light and dark had blended into grey, where hope and despair, hot and cold, war and peace, empty and full, relaxing and stressful, everything and nothing were long lost concepts.

This was the end line, the flux had been set, but it was ending in a rather boring note, the muse had to work around this so she left back to Raka, the true one.

---

Back to her normal form the muse started to design something, it would be the key of the flow of dreams and the loop that would bring back the energy that ended up crusted on the end of the flow. It was the Arpeggio.

A ray of blue light crossed Raka and slowly it took the form of a pillar made of living stone. On its very top a yellow crystal stood, not yet active. The muse clapped her hands and dreams started to flow again in the mind of the creatures. Soon Raka was yet again flooded with a tourbillon of colors, this time however there was a clear path and all of the energy spiralled around Arphegio.

On the top it clustered and crystallized, as predicted by Ilunabar, but that would be no problem, because soon the crystal shined and all of the “roof” that formed started to form little spirals and towers in its direction. Once in the crystal those dreams would be put one against the other, their dense and complex rules and logic clashing and forming paradoxes until they exploded in a stream of raw potential dream that would go back to the flow.

Once again creatures would dream, and this time they would go deeper.

MIGHT SUMARY
ZERO EVERYTHING
8 MIGHT HOLY SITE CREATED
I WANT TO SLEEP

Teknall drifted above Galbar, observing the life which had formed. He saw all the life of Slough, in its tranquil and diverse splendor, kept in balance by a self-regulating ecosystem. At the peak of that ecosystem were the Heraktati. Of most interest to Teknall were the Hain, who fitted in with the natural style of life but possessed sentience, able to operate and organise at a level above. He would attend to them soon.

Then there was the unnatural life. Some, such as the elementals, did not directly impact the ecosystems, instead operating on a different plane. There were the Fibrelings, and while they made a nuisance of themselves they seemed to be made such that their impact on a global scale would be minimal, although they could still scatter a whole tribe of Hain and set them back many years. There were the Ashlings, vile creatures who spread their corruption like a plague. Teknall despised these creatures, ever since his encounter with them, and they needed to be controlled. There were the White Giants, benevolent guardians built by Toun, but they would not be able to protect the vulnerable life of Galbar forever. The Ashlings, and any other highly aggressive species which may be created in future, could adapt and grow in number. The White Giants were static, unchanging, save for their ever dwindling population in their eternal war of attrition. Galbar needed another line of defense, something which would be longer lasting, stronger, and more general in purpose.

Teknall considered the Ashlings as his primary targets, and started designing. Any life based on Slough's work would be vulnerable to anything which could corrupt the flesh. Even the White Giants, with their porcelain armour and magical energy source, were susceptible to the Ashlings' curse. Then Zephyrion's elementals came to mind. They were raw manifestations of magical energy, with a barely tangible physical form. He realized that such a creation would be ideal for fighting back the Ashlings. Teknall just needed to put it into a more concrete form.

Flesh would not do, and Teknall wasn't proficient in sculpting the wind, so he turned to the material he was most proficient in. Stone. Standing by a boulder in the Ironheart ranges, Teknall took a hammer and chisel and started carving. Stone would be an excellent material- it was strong and tough, incorruptible. It was also found in abundance, in a variety of forms. This would be important, for if such a species was to be sustainable it would need to eat, and reproduce.

To achieve his goals of protecting Galbar, Teknall decided not to apply a narrow definition to who they would fight. Instead, these creatures would be innate judges of character, able to tell who was aggressive and who was not, destroying the former and keeping the latter safe. The creatures would normally live slowly, having a minimal impact, although Teknall left plenty of potential in them, in case he wanted to improve them later.

Before him, Teknall now had a statue of a creature, yet one which conformed with the boulder. A large head and thick arms and legs were curled together, as though it had folded itself into a ball. But before he animated it, Teknall realized that he could add more. If he was creating a fantastical creature of magic, why not give it magical powers? So he granted the creature a limited degree of control over the earth from which it was made. It would be able to travel through solid earth with ease without leaving a trace of its passage.

Finished with the design, Teknall walked around stone statue once more, inspecting his work. It was not an immaculately crafted creature with smooth edges and a flawless gloss finish, like Toun's work, but it didn't need to be. Life was rough, life would beat away at it and wear it down. Stone too did not naturally come smoothly hewn and polished, but rough and jagged. To carve it to smoothed perfection would be contrary to its nature, and leave its flaws exposed and jarring. This, though, was robust, durable, able to bear the struggles of reality.

"It will do nicely. Awaken, Urtelem!" Teknall planted the palm of his hand on the statue's forehead, which stirred to life as a wave of divine power washed through it. There was the sound of cracking stone as the creature unfurled its limbs and stood, stretching its joints. It stared around blankly, confused and lost. Teknall got to work on creating more. The original design complete, Teknall was able to create more Urtelem at a touch of his hand, and soon he had a whole group of them created from the boulders. With others of their kind present, the Urtelem began talking to each other with crude grunts which had the sound of rocks rubbing against each other.

Satisfied, Teknall moved on a few hundred kilometers along the Ranges and created another herd of Urtelem. He moved on again, and created some more. He moved beyond the Ranges and created more across Galbar- sandstone in the deserts, limestone by the oceans, and so on, until the whole of Galbar had been seeded with Urtelem. Granted, this seeding was no where near the extent with which Teknall had seeded the planet with trees, but it would save the slow-living Urtelem many long generations in spreading across the planet. And the sooner they became noticeable, the sooner they could start protecting the precious Hain.

The Fabric of existence rippled ever so gently, as a lake on a warm Spring eve when the lightest, most tender breeze caresses the fluid, sleeping face of the waters. The ripples let out reluctant sighs as they parted for the oaken body of the long-dormant divine being. The fabric clung to him as he lifted himself from it, each droplet hanging on for as long as it could before its dejected return to its Fabric of origin. The ripples and satiny folds of the Fabric of Existence let out one final sigh before the Timeless One was fully released from their velvety depths. It was as though the Fabric had a will of its own, and the god of Time could almost feel its pull and its siren voice calling him back to lay in the deepest depths of the Universe and be as one with it. But a god as he had many duties, he could not leave them and forever slumber and idly watch.

Here he was, the Guardian of the Timeline, and he would remain – so long as suns and stars, so long as winds whispered and breezes blew. And now was his moment of action, now he came. He came to kill fear and plant summer within the heart of the Timeline.

He emerged before the Ancient Sun who had not so long ago been the Radiant One. Even now he could see that critical, Fated moment when this Ancient Sun had drawn Life back from the Gates of Death with a cosmic arm, a light and sundering breath. Here he was! The unknowing Lifter of the First Strife. Vowzra opened his wooden mouth and spoke words he had thought long ago but never uttered, words which had come into existence aforetime, before this Universe was even a passing thought in the minds of those who think and contemplate or a vision in the Eye of those who See. He had not spoken the words then, but now he said them to him for whom they were meant.
‘Glory is yours, bearer of Fated scars, whose sacrifice will bring forth nights and stars. Weep not to lose that which is transitory, a mighty Fate does lie in store for thee. Have patience and let not the distant chest deceive you into thinking, “I am by Fate oppressed.”’

He floated in that space for a long Time, orbiting the Ancient Sun and watching as The Mason arrived and a Fated Creation took place. He had known that the creation would occur without disturbance from the others, but the Timelines were many, and Time itself the ficklest thing. Against its fickleness, he was the one solid all the spaces leant upon, the one who carried the burden upon his shoulders. Be it ever so heavy, his will was greater. Who else could bear it? Who else could be trusted?

As The Mason departed, the Timeless One too made his move. Like a mighty whale who had risen from the deeps for a much-needed breath of air, he submerged himself into the Fabric of Existence once more, and the ripples sighed and hugged him and consumed him, and the folds of the Fabric engulfed him.
‘It is for loved ones that I sing my silent song and they sigh, this song of endurance and glory and hope for final victory. From far do I journey, holding between my limbs for you a growing yearning and longing. Do not take my silence for hatred, how can he speak whom love renders deaf, dumb and blind? Yet I, though I love, See clearly, Hear with certainty and can Speak nought but truth, and so greatest is my pain.’

When he re-emerged from the ripples and folds of the sighing Fabric, it was Galbar that swam before him. It swam in its perpetual orbit around its star just as its moons swam around it, and just as fifteen other planets swam around that same star in the Galbarian Planetary System. With a steady gaze, the Timeless One surveyed the planet.

He could See that Life had journeyed long and filled the planet with its essence. It did not do so with any will of its own, but rather acted as Fated dictated and commanded. Vowzra knew that this was as it should be, but he also knew that there would come a Time – and it would most certainly come, for he Saw – when he and Life would have to take a great journey and return to Life that which had been torn from it. The Lifter may have lifted the First Strife, but he had not returned to Life what had been taken. Life would be returned to Life; the Sleeper would awaken. But it was not yet Time, Fate had not yet demanded it. She would come to him when the Time was right, she would know where to find him, and he would patiently await her Fated arrival just as he had patiently waited for her brother before.

The creations of the Crippled One received great approval from Vowzra, for he saw in them much of what was Fated to be. It was, however, apparent that the Crippled One himself did not see – though he had his one eye, he was blind. When the Time was right, he too will be given what had been withheld aforetime.

It was the Deformed Flesh which received Vowzra’s greatest attention, however. This ugly thing was tirelessly, incessantly, without pause, filling the planet with its taint and unnatural works. It caused great ire to grow within the expansive chest of the Timeless One and he sent out his essence in search of the essence of the Deformed Flesh. When he found it, he spoke more words which had come into existence in the times before Time. He was not certain if this creature had a mind so as to understand what it was that he sent to it, or whether it had a heart that it may feel his great anger and sadness at that which it did.
Though the pain cause all to scream and thresh, your taint will be cleansed, oh Deformed Flesh.

With that, he looked into the minds of the hain and ingrained therein a lasting, inherent dislike and aversion to all beings created by the Deformed Flesh, and he instilled therein an abiding desire to destroy all the Sculptors created. As the hain were yet beings of mediocre means, all they could truly do was pelt the works of the Sculptors with mud so as to cover the designs, or rocks so as to damage the designs and thus rid the world of their strange and destructive effects. This aversion also meant that Sculptors who were still in the process of transforming became a target rather than a thing feared. The hain gained an understanding that they were most vulnerable at this stage before the Sculptors attained their complete form, and so targeted them and tried to destroy them if ever they found such vulnerable Sculptors. Their primary weapons were stones with which they pelted the Sculptors en masse or wooden branches with which they struck them.

White Giants needed no such thing to be done, for they were already hostile towards all things unnatural, neither Fibreling nor Sculptor would be safe from a White Giant’s wrath. Along with the hain, Vowzra instilled many other natural creatures with an abiding dislike and hostility towards the creations of the Deformed Flesh, particularly Sculptors and Fibrelings. Wherever these creatures went, they would find themselves attacked by various creatures. Most notable among these were ants, who would put aside all inter-colonial conflicts in their greater war against Sculptors and Fibrelings alike. The One By Immortals Altered heard the call of his divine master and finally set out from the Deepwoods to hunt and cleanse the taint.

With that complete, the Timeless One turned away from Galbar and opened a cleft in the Fabric of Existence. The droplets screeched at the wound he inflicted and the previously gentle ripples became roaring, raging waves which spat accusingly at him for injuring and hurting them so. Sometimes, those whom one loved and worked tirelessly for perceived his actions – all for their sake – as an injury and attack against them. With Time, they would come to See, and he would be most forgiving when they finally did.

Vowzra disappeared into the cleft, and it closed behind him, the Fabric writhing and sobbing and moaning around the scar left behind and wailing against the great betrayal.

In the darkness beyond the veil, Vowzra set about creating a world all his own. Its spaces were measured, its dimensions dictated and its laws were written, and Time was set to pass as the Timeless One willed, and he willed that for each day on Galbar, there pass here one thousand Galbarian years. Vowzra looked into his empty plane and knew that its dimensions and spaces were set, its laws fixed and Time set a-going, and that with Time he would bring more into being.

It began with the coming of the clouds. Within the small dimension created by the Lord of Time, there came dark clouds which spread out far and wide. Those on top were different colourations of red and orange while those below ranged from light to darkest grey. And so in the beginning, there was nought but clouds.

Then, there emerged from within the clouds an enormous, barren landmass. It floated upon the clouds and was stable, and the laws of the dimension worked upon it and Time passed and a seed of Life was placed thereon and it grew lush and green with grass. And rivers flowed therethrough and lakes were formed and great mountains rose up, and at the edges, where land gave way to clouds, there floated large rocks. And over the edges rivers let fall their waters, which travelled down from the mountains further inland, and the clouds took them up and rained them back on to the great, floating continent in due time.

And there grew trees on the mountains, and trees on the plains, and there grew trees even in the rivers, and here in the outer hinterlands, all things flourished and grew. But beyond the great circle of mountains, though there were lakes, there grew nothing, and though the soil was rich and arable, no seeds took root. And here the clay grew in strange shapes as though it were alive.

And beyond this, the clay and soil and waters gave way to hard, grey rock and mist, and in the very centre of the great landmass, there stood a great cube on one of its corners. There was inscribed upon the cube words in a language unknown – designs, plans, laws, shapes, records and words.

And with that, he left it as it was and departed to lay with and comfort the Fabric which even now wept at his perceived betrayal.

Logos stood at the edge of the glowing display, looking over the final design. The cold kiss of winter nipped at his essence, but he did not feel it. In the distance, the sea churned with frothy ice. Long had he labored within the depths of the Citadel, even as the seas expanded and mountains crumbled and shifted. His valley remained untouched to Time, as the world prepared itself. He labored even as his gifts took fruit and spread, turning the barren lands into something of endless potential.

"Awaken,"

From the blazing center of the Citadel a single beam of light exploded, rising high into the empty sky. The heavens above became a sheet of streaming light that poured forth from the Moon as each of the Realta fell from the heavens. A few smashed deep into the earth, sending up explosions of molten rock, but many merely hovered in formation around the ivory spires of the Citadel. In numbers uncountable the Realta's beautiful frames vibrated with blinding light and power, each different from the other in subtle ways. Some were sheathed in stone and bronze, iron and gold, silver and steel, mithril and adamantium, platinum and titanium. Each was wrought more beautifully and delicately than the last in the shape of a winged fascimile of Logos, feathers composed of lightning and flame, manes aglow of dancing light. Even their eyes shone bright as the true creatures within gazed out from their armored shells. They formed into ranks, and each and every one turned towards the King of Order. His crown of liquid light pulsed and glowed with so much magic it was like gazing into the heart of the sun.

Logos stared down at the ranks of shining lights, as the valley flickered and burned in their luminescence. "You Realta are my children, each and every one of you," Logos declared, and it was so. "You will aid me. Our enemies are many and this world is but the cradle of my work. You will resist the incursions of the others gods. You will destroy their works where you find them. You will protect the inhabitants of this world until you fall."

The Realta remained silent. They all gazed up at him, their white etheral cores burning through material shells. Within them coursed his own power; drops of his own divine essence to fuel their inner most light. From the moment they opened their eyes, there was already a purpose engraved into their very biological template, put their by his raw might: Serve Logos.

They were powerful as a result.

They were his.

He willed them to leave, and they did. Taking off into the night sky in, the column of unified light splits into thousands of each one a spark of light in the impossible distance as the begin their watchful duties in the cold void. They arrange themselves in varying patterns and distance, wrapping the world in a guarded post.

Darkness suddenly falls across the land at their departure, and the colors he created become dim and blurred, but the dark feels relaxing on his eyes. Looking around at the pitch-black landscape, Logos walks to the Citadel’s edge, staring out into the sea, its green color having changed to a deep, dark blue that he knew would one day swallow the land.

He glanced down at his side. His shadow is gone from cool ivory. Looking up at the expansive sky, his eyes glisten with the thousand of thiny piny pricks of light that now fill it, protecting this nubile world from the darkness beyond.

Yet still he was alone.

His wings snapped open as he alighted down to the valley below. He remembered the one and only rule of the Immortal Game:

Nothing happens unless he wills it.

And for the first time, there was something that he trully wanted.

A bright ethereal light surrounded him, the power coursing through him filling him with energy and focus. He snapped his eyes open and they glowed like beacons with white, electrified magic. The aura surrounding him crackled with energy, the magic emitting a steadily growing hum as it increases in power. The ground buckles under him forming a crater, which filled with water that rose up from the cracks in the sandstone.

The water rose up to his knees, before cascading down one side of the lake as a river. The surface of the valley spring rippled with magic.

Not once during this does his concentration slip.

White sand floats up from beneath the water, and begins forming two pillars that float on the surface. Growing, the pillars of sand form a set of legs identical to his. He directs the sand, making it from his memory of what might had been in the world beyonds worlds. The body is lithe and supple, the hair long and flowing. A pair of wings stretch out far on either side of the body, the detail of each quill crafted with detail befitting a masterpiece.

He makes the face regal, and makes it hold potential for both unabashed enthusiasm, and calm reserve. The reflection of sand’s eyes stay closed as he wills it to be. Its hair flows down the sides of its neck, forming features under an invibile tool.

Her reflection is as white as her, and every last bit as white as the sandstone surrounding her. Within her is the soul of the Realta, but a shell of flesh and bone and silver blood, as bright as starlight. Her eyes and hair he decided to make gold, and its strands glimmered in the moonlight.

Stepping back, he looks at this other Realta he has made, with wings and body only a fraction of his size, and remains silent. As his magic fades, the final Realta floats down into the water, no longer held up by him.

Logos boldly stepped toward her, eyes searching. This is the most strange thing he’s created since he first woke. Her skin glistens, even in the dark. Logos lifts a hand and reaches out hesitantly to touch it.

And he remembered.

He remembered there being one white speck among the vast green swells of microscopic life, drifting peacefully as they fed from the sun. He remembered it growing, slowly, an inch a year, absorbing minerals from a rock, leading a sluggish but tough army of lichens and fungi from the ocean and across the barren, rocky land. He remembered leading the first school of mudskippers, flipping and hopping desperately between evaporating puddles, from the rivers to uninhabited inland pools. He remembered the sudden explosion of shapes and forms. He remembered there suddenly being hers and hims instead of solely its. He remembered the first small furry creature that, when he pointed up, looked up at the sky in wonder instead of at his hand.

The young girl’s eyes snap open, and her head jerks to look at Logos. Jumping back, the little winged child looks around wildly. Logos sees confusion in her eyes, but he also sees something he recognizes.

Fear.

Logos walked very slowly towards her. The young Realta tensed and goes rigid, but did not run.

Logos continues to walk slowly.

As he nears, he can see the little Realta trembling. Logos stops just in front of her and looks at her with empathy. The Realta stops trembling and looks at her, wide-eyed and confused. Carefully, Logos walks up to her and rests his hand atop the little Realta's head beside her ear. The little one's hair is as soft as she imagined. He feels the child tense up again from his touch. Instinctively, Logos names his first child.

“Elysium.”

The little Realta moves beneath his touch, and then relaxes. A smile spreads across her face, and she repeats the word, “Elysium.”

---

A vivid green meadow spread out before them, a thousand dandelions mimicking the golden sun above. Not a single cloud marred the perfect blue sky. It was the quintessential meadow, perhaps the very meadow by which all others were designed. A butterfly landed on Elysium’s nose, then lazily fluttered its wings.

“You are but twelve years old, Elysium,” Logos said. “But your place in the natural order has been made clear. You will nurture each new species, and guide them to their special place in our world.”

“Like the butterflies?” Elysium asked. The one on her nose took flight, startled as she spoke. Elysium followed it with his gaze, grim.

“Not the butterflies,” Logos said. “Not unless Vestec renders them extinct or unusable. Now tell me: what do you see in this meadow?”

“Dandelions!” Elysium’s hair was the color of dandelions. Perfect dandelions, that was.

“Indeed,” Logos said. “No daisies. No honeysuckle. No bluebells.”

The air around them stirred, and the grass was flattened to the ground as Logos ruffled his wings. “Flowers made war, and dandelions won.”
“Is that bad?” Elysium asked.

“No single species is meant to attain dominance,” Logos said. “And yet dandelions have become the apex flower. It’s a design flaw,” her father said, stepping into place beside her. “They’re too resilient, and propagate too quickly. I always thought my seed design was clever. Too clever, it would seem. A new design is necessary.” Logos said.

Elysium looked to her father. “So the dandelions are going to change?”
“Yes,” Logos said. “They need to die more. I will redesign them so that they live in harmony with the other flowers. Thus fulfilling the natural order,” Logos said.

Elysium giggled with a smile. Logos raised an eyebrow at her.

“This is where your task comes in, Elysium,” Logos said. “The current dandelion is too robust. You’ll need to kill them all before we start laying the new design.”
“I have to kill them?”

“Indeed,” Logos said. “Be glad that we are designing dandelions, and not chinchillas.”

Elysium sighed. “You always bring up the chinchillas.”

“The chinchillas,” Logos said, with a far away look in his eye “almost always merit bringing up.”

Elysium grumbled. “It was an isolated incident—”

“—Involving twelve thousand flaming chinchillas—”

“Dad!” Elysium shouted. He turned to look down at her. “Isn’t there a way to keep these dandelions? I like them. They’re the color of my hair.”

Logos seemed to consider this for a moment. “There is,” he said at last. “It will contribute to your education with my gifts.”

Elysium gasped. “You’re going to teach me that?” Logos nodded.

“Will I be needing the design?” The god wondered to himself aloud before shaking his dark head. “No,” Logos said. “It will be a simple change. Behave, Elysium. Your father is patient, but only for those willing to learn.”

Elysium nodded vigorously. “I will! Be good, I mean.” Logos merely nodded at her.

“Now,” Logos said. “Building a power that will sterilize any member of a particular species is difficult. You must first understand how they reproduce. Do you know how a dandelion reproduces, Elysium?”

“You blow on them!” Elysium said.

“This is true, in part. But it is also much more complex than that...”

---

The tundra was hard under Elysium's feet as she ran at the front of a stampede of caribou. Their nostrils pumped out frosty breaths and their hooves pounded the dirt in a dull rumble.

A sharp yap drew Elysium's gaze to look over her shoulder, over the heads of the caribou. A pack of wolves fall in line, hot on the caribous’ trail. The distance between them begins to close, the wolves natural sprinters to chase down prey, but lacking the stamina that the much larger caribou have.

She turned to look back ahead, increasing her pace and hoping the caribou will do the same. The rumbling of their hooves grows louder with the increase in speed, and the arctic air whipping through through her golden hair urges her onward.

A howl sounds behind them, and Elysium peeks over her shoulder to see the wolves turn off. A little ways behind the stampede, the wolves gather around a kill—an old caribou that couldn’t keep up with the rest of the herd—and begin to feast.

She peels off from the herd of caribou, who continue ahead at a subdued pace, still afraid of the wolves. Logos stood in the distance.

“Your idea for these predators never sat well with me,” Elysium said, drawing her lips to a thin line as the sound of the wolves eating reaches her ears.

“You know it’s necessary,” Logos says, watching the scene with much more indifference than Elysium. “Remember what happened with the rabbits?”

“Yes, I remember,” Elysium said, sighing.

“And if I were to create some other way to limit the populations, one that didn’t involve so much death, than I would have to take away the gift of new life.” Logos looked back at the carcass. “Look,” he commanded, and Elysium did so.

A pair of wolf pups wrestle beside the kill, their soft muzzles coated in red as they tumble on the wispy tundra grass. Despite the dead caribou next to them, Elysium finds a warm smile spreading across her lips.

If Logos saw her smile, he did not mention it. “That caribou will keep those pups—and the rest of the pack—from going hungry for a month or more.” He is perfectly still, as poised as a snowflake ready to fall. “Where there is death—”

“—there is also life,” Elysium finishes. She closes her eyes and shakes her head, a faint smile on her lips. “I know. You have told me repeatedly these past few centuries.”

Her father simply stared at her for a few minutes, before shaking his head in disappointment.

"You have much to learn about the Natural Order."

---

She was in the forest, looking out over a still pond wreathed in oak trees. As always, the magic came to her with the slightest feeling, and she began to sing.

Today’s song was a butterfly taking off of a lilypad. Her voice fluttered between notes, taking off and rising to a gentle call. The branches around her swayed and brushed her bare skin. Birds flitted to the trees around the pond to watch, then added their voice to hers.

She stepped out onto the pond, sending ripples away from her feet as she stood on the surface of the water. Her song’s pace quickened and it grew more intense, like thickening rainfall. Fish swirled around her toes just below the surface in their own complex pattern. Even they knew their protector.

And they followed her. Every tree, every fish, every animal adored her with an intensity that could defy even their basic design. Wolves would stand alongside sheep just to bask in the glory of Elysium when she sang. Her beauty inspired butterflies to first take up the first patterns; her music inspired the creation of a hundred different itterations of warbles from songbirds, each attempting to mimic the sound of her voice. All of them failed.

But would they follow her if not for her design? Elysium decided that the answer was yes. She was more to them than beauty and song; she was sustenance. She was nurturing. She was a mother, in her father's sense of the word. Always willing to stop and tend to a creature, no matter how small. Always willing to plant a seed or grow food. Elysium tended to them them. It was that simple.

"It is time."

A pulse of magic stirred the grove. Elysium lost her song, and the animals fled as she splashed down into the pond. The trees snapped back to their typical rigid forms.

Logos stood on the opposite bank.

Elysium grumbled as her hair reverted to its natural state and fell soaking wet over her face. She pushed it away with a hand as she climbed back onto the surface of the water. “Father,” she said, shooting the Lord of Order a dirty look.

Her eyes widened in shock as Logos knelt down into the mud of the pond, and began to shape the mud. She had never seen her father stoop to using such base elements, even with all of his species. His reached deep, pulling far from beneath the surface.

"This will be my final design," he announced to her. "After this, you shall bring to me new works. Watch," he instructed her.

Elysium's head swam. "What are you making?" she dared to ask.

Logos did not answer. He did not even seem to notice as his immaculate wings dipped into the mud behind him. The silence stretched into hours as his hands dug and piled and molded the soft soil into two very familiar forms.

Two legs, a torso, two arms, a head. Her father seemed to be recreating her, sculpting her from the earth. The other figure was distinct enough for her to see that it was a male of this species. At times, Logos would pause, his white eyes staring unblinkingly down at her creation, before making some small, unseen adjustment to their features.

At last, when the Sol sank low in the heavens to dip beneath the horizon, did Logos complete his work. He knelt alongside the riverbank. Elysium saw the glint of something silver, like starlight, fall into sculpture's form from her Father's hands.

Logos sighed.

Faint, tendrils of white magic drifted from his lips, coiling through the air and through the nostrils of the female. Then he repeated the gesture and did the same to the males, after he was done he simply stood. And Elysium waited.

And waited.

After a few hours, just as she could see the faintest twinkle of her brothers and sisters appear in the night sky, she was growing skeptical if this worked at all but suddenly the female's body jerked up in an arch as startling gasp for air came from her.

This scared Elysium a little as she jumped at the sight as the female began to cough harshly. Elysium saw the clay on her skin falling off like dried mud as she rolled on the ground coughing. But as the last of it fell off and dissolved into the water she was amazed at how much the creature appeared to look similar to her. Her hair was a fiery copper and long as it came down to her waist, it was as smooth as silk and her skin was beautifully pale.

Logos observed the female as she caught her breath from the rough coughing. Her back was small and smooth that let her long hair flow freely and glide across her skin. Elysium slowly walked over to the female.

As she did the female looked up as her eyes startled Elysium, her eyes were light blue and gave off look of apprehension. The female didn't say anything as Elysium helped her sit on the ground.

"Do you know what I am saying?" She asked as the female just starred at the Realta. Her eyes scanned Elysium's for more than one answer.

"I guess not-" But she was cut off by another gasp but this one was louder and a much stronger tone. Both of the women turned to see the male now gaining life as he arched his back and then rolled onto his stomach like the women did. But as Elysium looked at the male she couldn't help but blush as the clay on his skin fell away. His skin, unlike the females, was perfectly dark like the bark of a tree. His body was built like a fortress of pure muscle, tall and powerful. Through that idea slipped her mind as she looked at his body as it looked to be carved from marble and not clay. But his tall stature only added to it as he was perfect by any standards. But as she ripped her eyes from his flesh with the most beautiful cinammon eyes that was under a mess of black windblown hair.

Though Elysium didn't want to admit it, these creatures unnerved her. Their eyes were not like the deers'; unfocused, unknowing, ignorant. There was a spark, an understanding within those depths.

They were aware.

Logos spread his wings, wrapping his plumage around his daughter and placing his hands on her shoulders. Elysium stiffened in his grasp, and she noticed the female had managed to crawl over to the male and help him sit up.

Elysium was astonished at this at how they acted together as the female managed to get the male to sit down as he caught his breath. The Star just watched in silence as the female patted down the male as if to check if he was hurt as he sat their regaining his breath. Elysium could tell they shared a bond already from the way the female acted around the male but finally after a little bit of silence both the new beings turned to her.

"I call them Man," Logos told her from behind. "And they will be your children."

---

The Citadel rose out of the heart of the forest, a shining fortress of steel and glass. One could tell just by looking at it that it wasn’t a mortal design; there were no straight edges, no right angles. Everything about it was curves and points: from the massive petal-like walls right down to the glowing runes etched over every surface of the metal.

It was massive—far larger even than the Mountains of Crestol. Even on the proper side of The Boundary, the line around the Heart that no mortal soul could cross, The Citadel could easily be made out at the centre of Elysium’s forest. To Elysium, it had always looked like a platinum flower—perhaps a lotus. In reality, flowers probably resembled The Citadel. It had come first, after all.

Today The Citadel’s many arms were open, and sunlight reflected off of the metal petal-arms so brightly it hurt her eyes. At the center of her forest, surrounded by vivid green plant life, The Citadel would have appeared unnatural had it not been there all Elysium’s life.

With two beats of her wings Elysium took to the air and put herself above the treeline, which still fell far below the towering Citadel. She approached the the gleaming edifice, eyes scanning the sigils inscribed along the metal surface. She found the one she was looking for almost instantly: she had, after all, been doing this for almost nine hundred years. This was the place of her birth.

Elysium ran her hand across the surface of The Citadel, and a surge of blue light ran through each of the nearby sigils. The metal under her hand shuddered as if it were a living creature, rippling at her touch. A dozen seams appeared, each meeting at the place she had touched, then radiating outward in an arc. The aperture slid open soundlessly to admit its only operator: her Royal Highness, Princess Elysium.

Inside, The Citadel looked much the same as it did from the outside. Each of the petal-walls was open to the sky above, and natural light from the sun outshone the blue glow of the etchings that lined every piece of metal. The petals themselves had no scaffolding or ramparts to walk on; they just gradually angled down to the ground.

Instead of floors or walls, the interior of The Citadel was made up of rings. Each ring was higher up than the last, and each was composed of thousands of tiny metal objects. They were all simple shapes—crescents, fins, circles—and all of them were etched with the same glowing blue light that adorned the petals. They spun in circles around the center of The Citadel, defying gravity.

Elysium stepped out into the open air, and the nearest of the metal shapes formed a platform beneath her falling foot. The light along their etchings grew brighter as she touched them, and as she walked forward the platform began to assemble itself in front of her.

Logos’s work required space. So much space, in fact, that despite being larger than any natural made wonder that had ever been, The Citadel was still a tenth the size it needed to be. It simply couldn’t hold every room and tool that was required. Elysium began to ascend The Citadel, walking in a wide spiral along an assembling set of steps.

Logos had solved the problem with the shards. The pointed, curved plates of metal could assemble to form any room or tool they might need—and they needed many tools. The shards also held the archives, and—supposedly—The Citadel’s defenses.

Not that they’d ever been attacked. As Elysium understood it, the others gods would have to spend precious minutes breaking through Logos’s defenses to get inside The Citadel. And if Logos himself was present, they couldn’t assault it at all.

Which meant that no matter which species they rendered extinct, Logos and Elysium would restore it with the blueprint stored in the archive. They could rebuild it, given time. Even the gods of Chaos could do no damage to their world that they could not undo.

It also meant that Logos could never leave The Citadel for more than ten minutes at a time, unless he bade Elysium to stay behind and guard in his place. He rarely did.

Elysium finished her climb, arriving at the very top ring of The Citadel, situated just below the tips of the petals. She stepped out into thin air once more, and by the time her bare foot came down it landed on a small, jagged platform that looked to be a part of a much larger circle. She strode along the circle’s length, the shards behind her falling away as more filled the path before her.

A cool, clear voice, containing only the slight echo of magic, greeted her as she approached. “I’ve been considering your newest design.”
Elysium was twenty minutes late, and already she saw exactly where her father was taking the conversation. They had, after all, been together for over three hundred years.

“The Lamprocapnos,” Elysium said.

“Is it?” Logos’s liquid voice flowed through the entirety of The Citadel. At the very center of the uppermost ring, directly in front of Elysium, a translucent human heart made of blue light appeared, dozens of times larger than Elysium.

“You see,” Logos continued. “The shape of the flower looks nothing like the actual organ used to pump blood through a human’s body. Rather, your design is shaped as an abstraction. One used not to represent the organ, but love. Love,” Logos said, as though he were working through a word puzzle out loud. “Another abstraction. One created by humankind, no less. A combination of base reproductive instincts and their higher level spark. If ever you want to hear a completely unique idea, Elysium, ask a human to define love. Each of them will give you a different answer, one containing both what they hope to give in a relationship as well as what they hope to receive.”

Elysium rolled her eyes and sat. This was probably going to take a while. As exciting as it was to talk to empty air, she’d rather get on with their work.

“So your design must represent love, but the love that humankind has invented. Is it love that makes you special, Elysium? I think this claim can hardly be refuted; after all, you are Princess Elysium. One would be hard pressed to find a creature on this world that both subscribes to this idea of love and does not love you. Your song moves beasts to tears and your beauty plagues every flower with jealousy. These things were my design but your idea: no creature should think itself above us in any aspect.”

Elysium propped her head up with a hand and yawned. Did Logos intend to explain the entirety of his hierarchy, as well?

“But there is more to it than being loved, isn’t there? You love the creatures of this forest so much I would find it sick. I’ve seen you cringe at the sight of a squirrel in pain. It makes one wonder why the design, a bleeding heart, of all things.”

Elysium raised an eyebrow. “Love and gentleness are two separate things entirely, father. Rest assured, the name is appropriate.”

“Perhaps,” her father said. “But the fact remains that I have wracked my brain time and time again in consideration of your true talent in this world, and do you know what I have never found, my Elysium?”

“A stone so heavy even you can’t lift it?”

Across The Citadel, several shards from the uppermost ring formed a new section of the circular platform. Logos shimmered into being and gave Elysium an arch look. “An excuse,” he said, his voice now coming from only one source. “For your tardiness.”

King Logos was exactly as tall as Elysium, but much broader. His hair was a long, almost feminine flowing mass of bright white ether. His wings and skin were a matte black. He wore nothing. His face bore the expression of dispassion that Elysium knew so well. His eyes were cold and distant, his mouth a thin line at the end of a square jaw. He was handsome, in a way.

Since they were the same height, it was difficult to tell how much older than Elysium he really was. But if one looked closely, they would notice that the tips of his wings split into the same bright white ether that he had in place of hair, and that his irises were a burning white as well. He had a certain stillness to him, as though he could stand in the Citadel forever, watching with disinterest as the mountains crumbled around him and were overgrown.

Logos spoke in a fluid, resonant tone that seemed to demand attention despite not being particularly loud. "Your response?"

Elysium smiled. “You just aren’t looking hard enough, father. See, it’s why I picked a bleeding heart. Perhaps my purpose is to wound those who love me by being continuously late. I thought that was obvious.”

Logos did not look amused. “I have told you before, Love is not for a God, so as to thereby refute your premise and undermine your conclusion.”

Elysium scoffed. “I don’t doubt that what you feel for me isn’t love. But for a moment, assume that we could. How would you refute my claim?”

Logos began to step around to Elysium’s side of the circle. “Mankind has such interesting views on parenthood. It is not enough that a parent love their child; they must do so unconditionally. The most morally praiseworthy parent is one that expects only two things from their child.”

“I spend more time with them than you,” Elysium said. “I know how extreme humans are when it comes to their children.”

Logos frowned. “Extreme. Yes. In any case, state your expectations.”

Elysium grumbled. “Do I really—”

“Yes.”

Elysium sighed, then stood up straight. She began to recite.

“I am expected to understand that while I am your child and a being of free will, my decisions or beliefs will never supercede yours . Should we ever come to a disagreement, I will do as you say and trust that I will become wise enough to agree with you, in time.

“I am expected to oversee the propagation of life throughout our world. Upon the design of a new species, I will ensure that they grow until they can sustain themselves and take their place in the natural order.

“I am expected to gain the love and adoration of every mortal being. I will use this love to keep them from misdirecting the frustrations the other gods brings them onto us. I will at the very least make them believe that I love them in return.

“I am expected to fight the discontent and misdesigns of the other gods whenever necessary. I will not attempt to save their creations. The corruption will have already taken root.

“I will respect and revere my father and maker, who is a god above all things. I will never disagree with or disobey my father.”

“Stop,” Logos said. Elysium did so. “What was that last bit again?”

Elysium glared at him. “I will never disagree with or disobey my father.”

Logos tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Have I ever told you to come on time, Elysium?”

“You have,” Elysium said.

Logos’s eyes turned on her. “Then what could possibly be so important that you failed to come on time?”

“Research,” Elysium said. “I was doing research.”

Logos blinked. “Research outside The Citadel? As in with those caves?” Logos had always found it odd that humans stored information on paint with stone rather than in metal with magic. Or at least that was the impression Elysium recieved.

“As in with people,” Elysium said. “I met an interesting man today. He was crouched over a pile of sticks, striking rocks together.”

Logos’s expression became unreadable. “Ah.”

“He can create fire. True energy manipulation: no splitting, no addition or creation. Unlocking potential energy.”

“It isn’t,” Logos said. “But the end is the same.”

Elysium waved a hand. “Whatever. On a closer examination I determined that he can do other things, too. Things that I can’t stand to repeat. Things that you would call unnatural. He can do things to us, Logos.”

“I know,” Logos said. “It’s part of his design.”

“But not apart of the others!” Elysium hissed. “At least they had drawbacks. A fish cannot fly, a wolf cannot eat grass. This new kind of human... it creates! It is a creature with a set of tools. Tools that I would say look very specific. What are you making, father?”

Logos turned away. “You are sworn never to disagree with or disobey me,” he said.

Elysium sighed. “This is true.”

“Then let me make this perfectly clear, my Elysium.” Logos spun to face her. “You are not to ever speak of this again, to anyone. Not even me.”

Elysium’s voice became urgent. “They’re going to find out, father.”

“They will. But on my terms.”

“There are no terms by which you can present to the other gods that will make this seem acceptable.”

“Acceptable?” Logos whispered. The word bounced off the inside of The Citadel, reverberating around the two silent immortals for a time. “Do you think I find it acceptable when they sacrifice creatures by the thousands in their games? Do you think I find it acceptable that I can scarcely step foot in the world I created?”

“You should,” Elysium said. “These things are necessary. Millenia of work will be lost if any of them gets The Citadel.”

“I worry that I am wrong on that matter,” Logos said. “And I worry that we have sacrificed too little and asked mankind to sacrifice too much.”

Elysium didn’t know what to say. She’d always been accused of caring too much for humankind—she was the soft one, not Logos. Yet here was her father, confessing compassion for creatures that he rarely ever even saw.

Elysium spoke very quietly. “You gave humankind existence and the means by which to exist.” She was quoting her father.

“I gave them our enemies,” Logos said. “But not my power. Perhaps this should not be.”

Elysium was silent.

“Imagine if humans had the power to destroy our enemies. Individually they are weak, but as a race they are resilient. So numerous and crafty that extinction is all but impossible. So numerous that among them there would always be individuals who could use power responsibly.”

“You’re making a weapon,” Elysium said.

“Not at all,” Logos said. To Elysium's shock, he did something she had never seen before. The God of Order smiled. “I’m making a future.”

As Niciel returned to the Valley of Peace, she was confronted with the sight of a group of terrified creatures. When Niciel tried to communicate with the creatures, they recoiled from the mental touch and attempted to flee. At first, Niciel didn't know why there were acting so, but then Niciel sensed the malevolent essence left by Toun's actions. Niciel was disappointed in Toun, but she was also disappointed in herself for not being in the Valley of Peace to protect them. Niciel called upon a Holy Wisp and sent it down to the creatures in hopes that it would help calm them down. The creatures were still initially cautious of the Wisp, but Niciel was patient. Eventually, their curiosity overrode their fear and they walked up to the Wisp. The Wisp then suddenly enlarged slightly and duplicated itself, making the creatures flinch back in surprise. The second Wisp soon flew away, though, leaving the others alone.

Niciel tried once more to communicate with the creatures below. They reacted in alarm, but not as much as before, and Niciel was able to calm them down. As she did, Niciel learned what the creatures were called. Hain. Toun's creation, using Slough's life essence as well.

"Hello. My name is Niciel," Niciel greeted the Hain. "Please be at ease. You are safe as long as you stay within the Valley of Peace." Some of the Hain were fully calmed down, but others were still suspicious. "What if he comes back?" one of them said. "He tortured us. Treated us like...." The Hain could not complete his sentence, still fearful of Toun's wrath.

"His name is Toun. I assure you he will no longer be welcome here," Niciel said. "You need not fear him any longer." The Hain weeped with despair, the others attempting to comfort him. Another Hain began to speak, "Thank you. We will remember this kindness you have shown us." The Holy Wisp floated over to this Hain, slowly revolving around it for a while before floating up to its head level. The Hain were now united, creating a tribe to live in peace.

With the Hain moving on, Niciel turned her attention away from them. They had the potential to be something great, and Niciel would only hinder them if she stayed with them too long. Looking into her Orb of Escry, Niciel examined the world through the eyes of the Holy Wisps. Most of them were viewing things of little interest or consequence, but some did have some interesting sights. One Wisp seemed to be interacting with some sort of... ball of fur, here in the Valley of Peace. Zephyrion had created creatures of wind. Even Vowzra had created these armored creatures. Niciel was fascinated by everyone's creations.

However, with her siblings all busy at work shaping and filling the world with life, Niciel felt an odd longing. Niciel reflected back on everyone's actions, back to the time when the world was still an empty void. Everyone was different, yet they all worked together to create the world they now resided in. Even Vestec added his chaotic mess of ideas into the world. The planet they were shaping was filled with so much, yet... Niciel played such a little part in everything. All she did was create a space for herself and for those who wished to seek shelter. Niciel realized now that, more than anything else, she wanted to leave her mark in the world as well. She wanted to create life.

Well, Niciel had the power to do it, and she knew it. So, why not do so?

Niciel concentrated her energies, putting more effort into it than normal. Particles of light and energy began to collect and condense themselves, forming balls of energy that molded themselves into bodies. 2 arms, 2 legs, a shape not unlike the form she took, including a pair of what appeared to be feathery wings. More and more energy continued to be gathered in each body until Niciel cut the flow, then she had the bodies of energy solidify, finishing up the appearances of each body. Their skin was pale, their wings white like snow. All of them were garbed in white robes. None of them looked exactly alike, but they were all beautiful in their own way.

However, although their appearances were complete, they were still and lifeless. At first, Niciel was confused. What were they missing now? Then, the realization came to her: life. The bodies here were nothing more than statues, empty husks of the beings they could be. Well then, that was a simple fix. Niciel condensed more energy into her palm, this time gathering a small fraction of the pink mist of the Nice Mountains into it as well. Then, Niciel released the orb of energy, the orb slowly spreading the pink mist onto the bodies as it spun, the bodies absorbing the mist as it came to them. Soon, all of them had gained their share, and the orb floated up into the air, where it exploded with a pop, releasing particles of energy that gathered on the bodies Niciel had created. Naturally, the bodies absorbed the particles just like it did the mist.

Slowly, the new beings Niciel had created gained consciousness. As they began to gain awareness of themselves and their surroundings, Niciel felt something within herself. In her mind, it glowed brightly, and it burned slightly as well, but Niciel was able to quell the sensation and accept it into her. This... potential of hers was... new, to say the least.

To the new beings that awakened, they saw a glow in the sky as Niciel accepted the new potential, with an angelic figure eclipsing the light, then the glow soon faded, and the sky cleared as if the light was never there. To the beings below, there was only one word that could describe what they had just seen, "Wow."

Niciel looked down at the beings, who were both enthralled and confused by the sight they had just seen, and decided to communicate with them.

"Hello. Are you all comfortable?" Niciel said to them. As a wave of responses and chatter came from the beings, Niciel's next words silenced them once more. "Please be at ease. My name is Niciel. You are my lovely children, the Angels."

The Angels kneeled down, being respectful and grateful to Niciel for creating them. "Rise, my children," Niciel said to them. "There is no need to kneel to me. You are free to do as you wish." Most of the Angels stood back up, but a few remained kneeling. Niciel was confused, and asked, "Why do you not stand?"

One Angel responded, "You have given us the freedom to do as we wish, and it is our wish to show to you our respect." Niciel was silent for a moment, then responded, "If that is your wish, then I see no reason to deny it." Niciel felt happy by the Angels. No, it was more than just happiness. Niciel felt... proud. Proud that her children were thinking for themselves.



As Niciel returned to the Valley of Peace, she was confronted with the sight of a group of terrified creatures. When Niciel tried to communicate with the creatures, they recoiled from the mental touch and attempted to flee. At first, Niciel didn't know why there were acting so, but then Niciel sensed the malevolent essence left by Toun's actions. Niciel was disappointed in Toun, but she was also disappointed in herself for not being in the Valley of Peace to protect them. Niciel called upon a Holy Wisp and sent it down to the creatures in hopes that it would help calm them down. The creatures were still initially cautious of the Wisp, but Niciel was patient. Eventually, their curiosity overrode their fear and they walked up to the Wisp. The Wisp then suddenly enlarged slightly and duplicated itself, making the creatures flinch back in surprise. The second Wisp soon flew away, though, leaving the others alone.

Niciel tried once more to communicate with the creatures below. They reacted in alarm, but not as much as before, and Niciel was able to calm them down. As she did, Niciel learned what the creatures were called. Hain. Toun's creation, using Slough's life essence as well.

"Hello. My name is Niciel," Niciel greeted the Hain. "Please be at ease. You are safe as long as you stay within the Valley of Peace." Some of the Hain were fully calmed down, but others were still suspicious. "What if he comes back?" one of them said. "He tortured us. Treated us like...." The Hain could not complete his sentence, still fearful of Toun's wrath.

"His name is Toun. I assure you he will no longer be welcome here," Niciel said. "You need not fear him any longer." The Hain weeped with despair, the others attempting to comfort him. Another Hain began to speak, "Thank you. We will remember this kindness you have shown us." The Holy Wisp floated over to this Hain, slowly revolving around it for a while before floating up to its head level. The Hain were now united, creating a tribe to live in peace.

With the Hain moving on, Niciel turned her attention away from them. They had the potential to be something great, and Niciel would only hinder them if she stayed with them too long. Looking into her Orb of Escry, Niciel examined the world through the eyes of the Holy Wisps. Most of them were viewing things of little interest or consequence, but some did have some interesting sights. One Wisp seemed to be interacting with some sort of... ball of fur, here in the Valley of Peace. Zephyrion had created creatures of wind. Even Vowzra had created these armored creatures. Niciel was fascinated by everyone's creations.

However, with her siblings all busy at work shaping and filling the world with life, Niciel felt an odd longing. Niciel reflected back on everyone's actions, back to the time when the world was still an empty void. Everyone was different, yet they all worked together to create the world they now resided in. Even Vestec added his chaotic mess of ideas into the world. The planet they were shaping was filled with so much, yet... Niciel played such a little part in everything. All she did was create a space for herself and for those who wished to seek shelter. Niciel realized now that, more than anything else, she wanted to leave her mark in the world as well. She wanted to create life.

Well, Niciel had the power to do it, and she knew it. So, why not do so?

Niciel concentrated her energies, putting more effort into it than normal. Particles of light and energy began to collect and condense themselves, forming balls of energy that molded themselves into bodies. 2 arms, 2 legs, a shape not unlike the form she took, including a pair of what appeared to be feathery wings. More and more energy continued to be gathered in each body until Niciel cut the flow, then she had the bodies of energy solidify, finishing up the appearances of each body. Their skin was pale, their wings white like snow. All of them were garbed in white robes. None of them looked exactly alike, but they were all beautiful in their own way.

However, although their appearances were complete, they were still and lifeless. At first, Niciel was confused. What were they missing now? Then, the realization came to her: life. The bodies here were nothing more than statues, empty husks of the beings they could be. Well then, that was a simple fix. Niciel condensed more energy into her palm, this time gathering a small fraction of the pink mist of the Nice Mountains into it as well. Then, Niciel released the orb of energy, the orb slowly spreading the pink mist onto the bodies as it spun, the bodies absorbing the mist as it came to them. Soon, all of them had gained their share, and the orb floated up into the air, where it exploded with a pop, releasing particles of energy that gathered on the bodies Niciel had created. Naturally, the bodies absorbed the particles just like it did the mist.

Slowly, the new beings Niciel had created gained consciousness. As they began to gain awareness of themselves and their surroundings, Niciel felt something within herself. In her mind, it glowed brightly, and it burned slightly as well, but Niciel was able to quell the sensation and accept it into her. This... potential of hers was... new, to say the least.

To the new beings that awakened, they saw a glow in the sky as Niciel accepted the new potential, with an angelic figure eclipsing the light, then the glow soon faded, and the sky cleared as if the light was never there. To the beings below, there was only one word that could describe what they had just seen, "Wow."

Niciel looked down at the beings, who were both enthralled and confused by the sight they had just seen, and decided to communicate with them.

"Hello. Are you all comfortable?" Niciel said to them. As a wave of responses and chatter came from the beings, Niciel's next words silenced them once more. "Please be at ease. My name is Niciel. You are my lovely children, the Angels."

The Angels kneeled down, being respectful and grateful to Niciel for creating them. "Rise, my children," Niciel said to them. "There is no need to kneel to me. You are free to do as you wish." Most of the Angels stood back up, but a few remained kneeling. Niciel was confused, and asked, "Why do you not stand?"

One Angel responded, "You have given us the freedom to do as we wish, and it is our wish to show to you our respect." Niciel was silent for a moment, then responded, "If that is your wish, then I see no reason to deny it." Niciel felt happy by the Angels. No, it was more than just happiness. Niciel felt... proud. Proud that her children were thinking by themselves.

If she sought true rest, Slough would have to seek farther than the phantasmagorical edge of the universe and longer than the reign of time, for as long as she lived, existence for her was a ragged agony, not only of bodily pain, but of the curse of profound ignorance. Yet, in the midst of a thriving symphony of life whose musicians played in wondrous and improbable accord, though only by happenstance might they ever begin to comprehend their place in its harmony, the sleepless, deathless one could find a crude parody of relief. Tiny, black insects scuttled through her wiry hair, but when immersed in her element Slough could not feel irritation. Beneath the watchful desert sun, on the brink of the oasis waters, and wreathed by plantlife, even the air seemed more glorious and valuable. Slough sucked the bountiful and rejuvenating air through the dry, yellowed bones of her skull, and its lovely clarity soothed a mind laid to waste by her body's eternal, vicious battle between restoration and decay. For all of a moment, she could almost feel as if her existence had purpose, and that some small measure of delight in its fulfillment might ease her afflicted existence.

During the primitive meditation of his master, Esau patrolled the Resort. He turned eyes of molten gold toward each petal, thorn, leaf, snout, paw, shell, stinger, wing, and tooth, examining them as a surgeon might his patient. Though he affected the airs of some dignified lord, the Custodian held no designs for the flora and fauna he encountered. Instead, he sought inspiration from their heartbeats. At first, the revelation that he could hear the beat of every living thing's heart, mortal reminder and visceral glimpse as it was, perturbed him, but by now Esau accepted what had surely been his master's intention. Custodian Esau, in ways unknowable to him, was connected to the blood. The very stuff of life attracted and amazed him, and after a few brief experiments he found that it responded to his call. His voice would excite the blood within living things, urging it to move of its own accord and, when subjected to greater intensity, forcibly exit its fleshy container in the form of bloody spikes. Needless to say, Esau silenced himself after witnessing in mute remorse the gory remains of an unlucky jackrabbit, though naturally he ate with powerful jaws the beast he had slain. Nature did not know wastefulness.

When Slough arose on trembling limbs, after the passage of the night, Esau joined her, and the two began to walk.



In the crater that marked the arrival of life to the world, there lay a little wood, though its roots went deep into the earth. From the sky to below the surface it stretched, and between its branches lived creatures great and small. Far beneath the leaves of emerald and bark of chocolate lay the forest floor, where stillness was best embodied. Many beasts lived at the bottom of the overgrown basin, but pure happenstance rendered a few patches of it wholly undisturbed by anything larger than a cicada. On the other end of the spectrum, there lay a patch of ground where animals purposely deigned not to tread, for in the grass were traced the footsteps of gods. And in this patch of ground lay a patch of briars, wherein grew a cluster of flowers. These were called roses, and among plants they were the most beautiful, even though their sharp thorns

Yet these roses contained something more than beauty. Like the desert sand sucked up water, the most beauteous creations of the distant Rottenbone greedily drank the essence of every divinity to set foot or emissary in the Deepwood, where the power of life resonated so powerfully that any motion left a mark like a footprint on the beach. Seraphic starlight, eminent magician, luminous oppressor, marauding composer, rough-handed visionary, sepulchral specter, amenable abomination, wayward whirlwind, and reticent warlord all had effigies in this flowerbed. It had been the muse Illunabar who had upset the balance--she took the white rose, and with its annihilation brought life to an aspect of herself. Soon after she left, but in her wake she left something altered forever. As time went by, the roses withered and died, one after another, until only a single one remained.

Alone among its slain brothers stood the most beautiful rose of all, and it was red. Like blood.

Though no eyes bared witness to the rose in the briars in the god-walked patch of land at the very bottom of the marvelous Deepwood, there appeared a being who stooped over the rose, plucked it from the bed, and sniffed it in evident satisfaction. This was not just any being, but a man. There existed no precedent for man, seemingly hinting at his rise from nothing, but such a conclusion couldn't be more false. He came from the gods: from their power, their ideas, their loves, their wants, and their pride--their pride most of all. He came from the flower, which like a chronicler of history recorded and synthesized everything to which it bore witness. Deeper still, he came from a place far beyond the universe, where other things had lived long ago.

Unlike the angels of Niciel, or the urtelem of Teknell, or the hain of Toun, he did not come into the world oblivious. He knew his name and nature, and well enough understood those of the planet, and of those who presumed themselves almighty. Well, he would see. A sparkle caught the man's eye, and he strode gracefully toward a pool of water, and in it he saw something of immaculate and inimitable beauty. "Perfection itself," he remarked laughingly, admiring his reflection. No doubts could be held by even the most pigheaded skeptic about his spectacular handsomeness. His body was powerfully built but lithe and graceful, strong and muscular without being bulky, rough, or crude. The lines of his face displayed exact symmetry and proportion, and the smile on his full lips could melt the coldest of hearts. Hair the color of honey hung past his shoulders, and with instinctive precision he tied it in a braid. He wore a garment made of plant fibers around his waist and legs, leaving his chest bare. Any being, whether animal, mortal, or deity, could neither ignore or deny his handsomeness, whether or not they felt any attraction for him, just as the viewer might admire the skill put into a piece of art while not liking the art itself.

A rustling of brush came to him, and he turned around. A trio of stripe-faced aphids stared at him, no doubt intoxicated by his beauty. His smile turned into a pained grimace. "What ugly creatures...putrefying in their shameful ignorance, and repugnance." He took his time speaking in order to articulate his inner feelings in every pregnant, lovingly accented word. "Yet I can make you splendid again. Hold still...!"

Very quickly, he swiped his outstretched pinky finger through the air, drawing a line across all three aphids. With a shriek each creature split apart, severed cleanly in half by a thin, unseen blade. Smiling a wide, perfectly white smile, the man made several more strokes with his finger, the quintessential artist, until the offending insects were but mere chunks scattered through the clearing. His eyes drank in the coating of sticky orange blood that now blanketed the grass, including the dead flowerpatch. "Ah! Is it not remarkable, the beauty of fresh blood, even when drawn from a vile container? I dare say there is no music more precious than the hair-raising cry of they made more beautiful by death. I must find the hideousness in the world, and its sources, and set them right. Truly, there could be no greater aim," he told the trees, as he bunched his legs up to leap, far faster and longer than any man should have been able, between them. He soared between the trees, bounding this way and that, until he stood on solid ground. Before him stretched a savannah, where gross things lumbered and groaned--an affront to the true calling of existence. Spotting a caterpillar meandering through the grass, he delicately raised a moccasin-clad heel and ground the horrible pest into the dirt. "Gods die, mountains fall, worlds shrivel, memories are forgotten, light dims and power fades," he instructed the juices that ran out from beneath his heel. "But true beauty is eternal."

He, too, began to walk.

Maize was not having a good time.

The soft yellow fiberling might not have been the wisest of creatures on the face of Galbar, but though it had no brain, its emotions sung louder than most organisms that did. Right now, those feelings had dipped from a happy veil of contentment and the eagerness of sun-baked years into confusion, and a primitive but acute kind of hurt. Until a little while ago, it was tasked with a mission that made even this desert into something comforting and exciting, that took the loneliness and turned it into an adventure. The sun was harsh and Maize had grown slim and jarringly curled, though it pressed itself into the cracks of rocks and below the surface of the sand where it could, always carrying onwards. It had endured, all for the sake of that one thing that was everything.

And now it was gone. Lost. It had abandoned the fuzzy little entity and been whipped away to Mother-knows-where, taking its soothing light with it. It made Maize want to curl up under a dune and sulk forever. Why was life so needlessly cruel?

The precious, meaty cargoes within its body pressed it onwards, still searching to regain what was missing in the desert. Memories, crudely encoded but vivid, flickered once more through the fiberling's mind.

Another day of travel. The Hot Thing prowled ahead, stolid and impressive, exhilaratingly scary. Something Maize wondered at and, in the night, even crept close to, shivering and raising hackles in excitement. The slightest, snoring purr from Hot Thing thrilled Maize into a sprint back into the cold, before Hot Thing was even close enough to awaken at the scent of its approach. Sunny Flier, placid as ever, floated gently alongside Maize, bringing some degree of comfort from the light, as it always did- Though it was otherwise rather boringly uniform in its responses, too nimble in the air to catch but not particularly keen on playing a game of chase, either. Breezy Wizard, the most recent addition to the motley crew, made a far more profound difference to the temperature. It wasn't always visible, no matter how hard Maize tried to pick up some reflectant photons in its cross-dimensional energy matrix. A curious and frustrating critter. The fiberling longed to see it for longer, to catch, play and explore what exactly was cooling the desert for the cluster of journeying creatures, but when Breezy Wizard was visible, it was always either too high up or too close to Hot Thing.

And, as always, there had been the Beautiful Dead One. Maize's reason for being, its holy charge, and only source of food in this desert. The figure who cast off the little birds and branches that sustained the fiberling's mass and entertained its curiousity when the days blended together like blood into a puddle. Maize knew little of parenting, but from what it had observed in the Place With The Wide Grass where its own hair seemed to melt into the background, it could almost associate the Beautiful Dead One as a parent-figure, not The Mother but a mother, who made an endless journey feel bearable and exciting.

Breezy Wizard had been in the sky somewhere, making sounds. Odd, but not unheard of. Then the breeze had returned, a whisper in the distance, but it had not stayed that way. In seconds it had become a gale-storm the like of which Maize had not felt since the journey had left the Salty Water. Then Maize was tumbling, coiling into a terrified sphere, seared with pain as the wind stripped precious mass from its body. There had been a presence, a bleak, burnt presence, the sense that always warned Maize of Imbalancers- Hate, hate, hate, hate. Sounds of shattering. And the wind kept howling, flicking Maize this way and that, and when it subsided, the rattled critter's friends were too far to follow.

Maize had tried. It had tried so hard. It had moved forwards and backwards and sideways over the course of a whole day in order to find which way the sun said the companions had been going before, and it had followed that path as diligently as it could. The round jewel it kept in its body helped point the way, but it was so far, and the trail of beautiful dead things was growing old. And now here it was. Alone.

Something shuffled on the sand.

Without an instant of hesitation, Maize crashed like a wave down the dune, spiralling sideways over the sand with ripples of movement so fast it seemed to shiver, crossing a distance of twenty meters in maybe a second of downhill sprint. It enclosed the wriggling thing completely, spreading its pieces apart to better sense each one by touch. A scorpion! Body moisture!

Renewed determination pushed Maize onwards, skimming over the sand. It could sense the moisture. It could feel the life ahead. On and on until flat, straggly, but green and flexible plants zipped underneath. On and on as day turned to night and those little forerunners became cacti and hardy palms, as kangaroo-mice emerged to hunt those lizards and scorpions and enormous shadows passed overhead, Maize surfed onwards in liquid bounces, its strands rolling it forwards so quickly that it began to spin itself into a disc that raced over the desert like a wheel. Tireless. Eager. Its torment was over, its fast broken, and the Beautiful Dead One had rewarded it with a gift beyond anything it had seen before, a feast for the senses that surpassed any starving bird or wind-shivered spinifex.

At last, at the water's edge, Maize found its family.

Sunny Flier was gone, for the moment. But even from afar, Maize could feel the warmth of Hot Thing padding around in the moonlight, a mountain of life and energy, and closer still was Breezy Wizard- A little disoriented, but the fiberling sensed the life of him. And crowning it all was the source. She was at ease, but around her still was the vapour of excitement, of curiousity and play, of little things to hunt and big things to run from, so perfect that this time, this one time, Maize dared to slip closer than Hot Thing's claws had ever allowed in order to give its thanks- A twig, a gecko-bone, and a tuft of pale yellow hair, the best attempt its little mind could give at reciprocity.

As Beautiful Dead One stood to continue her walk, Maize let itself fall behind in step with Breezy Wizard. Hot Thing was still watching.

An involuntary series of shivers and twitches shook Maize's core, rising to its back. As it retreated back within reach of Breezy Wizard, one of its two gifts of flesh was rising to the surface of the fiberling, widening, inflating a membrane-folded sphere that split in the air, offering to Vizier Ventus the face of a complex breathing organ.

"Mature child of Zephyrion, officer of change, I greet you warmly. I am Jvan, divine engineer, capstone of the Fractal Sea, and I have watched your efforts keenly through my Eye, which rests in this creature of mine. They have come to beautiful fruition. You have taken after your father and maker well, and Galbar is better for your enterprise.

"And yet, I sense you have not been rewarded for your work by the First Gale, though to me, the sight of this resort is a boon of grand proportions. Do not grow apathetic to the value of such things, but remember their serenity always, as I do- Indeed, I task you this exercise: Lead the Rottenbone downstream, towards the delta where this river opens its mouths to the Shimmering Sea. I have grand plans for that salty puddle, but the river itself I have designed as a receptacle for my sister's form of life.

"Should this be complete, detour to my body, and for this and your earlier work I shall thank you in person. Name and design for yourself a living thing, be it tool, steed, companion or weapon, and I shall grant it unto you as you have imagined.

"I wait, patiently, at the northern peak of the reach that spires into the center of my ocean. Can't miss it. Really."



The Deepwood. Navy had no language with which to describe it, but even if it did, it would likely be rendered unable, overwhelmed by the... Endlessness of the place.

This was life, and love, and wonder. Navy never ambushed from the same place twice. There was food everywhere, here, and in abundance that made balance easy to maintain. Its capacious memory of every organism and niche it or its siblings had ever glimpsed was like a glittering library of connections, from the delicacy of a orchid that lived a single night to the mundanity of the purple slugs and elegant union of an emerald strider.

Of course, little things weren't the only toys the Deepwood had given the fiberling. Strangling one of a mated pair of birbs and watching the other cry was not nearly so entertaining as the long battle required to bring down a Deepwood sloth, or slithering unseen into the crannies of an aphid hive and splitting it apart to see its residents scatter, or a net-against-whip attempt to bring down a rainbow silky from the treetops. All these things chipped away heavily at the Navy's unusually large supply of mass, but it hardly cared. There was always more quality hair to absorb from something or other. The wounds brought by repeated conflict only excited Navy's curiousity- How high could it aim before it was forced to turn back, not in the name of balance, but for sheer survival? The limit was yet far from reach.

Some things also grated, but were much less entertaining. Ants, for one. Lately they'd shown an odd sensitivity to Navy's presence, always trying to pick it apart strand by strand, too small to strangle and too many to crush. Their mammoth cousins often decided to have a go as well, though these offered a less menial game. In fact, a variety of creatures seemed to have taken a dislike to Navy and its siblings. It was rather uncanny. Fiberlings always respected balance in choosing their hunts, and their surprise tactics and unpredictability prevented them from culling the gene pool for those that feared them. But still something had changed, and the feeling was deeply jarring, a gloomy malaise that nestled over them. Were the fiberlings malfunctioning?

Here was an example: a gleaming orange mammoth.

Odd. It was the first giant ant of this species that Navy had ever seen, though it had spent many years in the Deepwood. It wasn't just reflecting scant rays of leaf-filtered sunlight, either; The amber thing actually glowed like an Emerald Strider. Navy curled and compressed into the wrinkles of some old fig's exposed roots, but the ant was approaching it directly. There was no colony here, either. Why didn't it have anything better to do than challenge the invincible? Well, it would soon have the death it had come for.

Navy erupted from the earth in the ant's direction, but the arthropod worked the impossible, propelling itself upwards and over the onslaught with legs faster than anything Navy had ever seen. Reacting quickly, the mass of hair reversed direction, remaining low in order to seize up the ant's arrangement of joints in its lower body. Its opponent paced rapidly backwards, and the hair followed in a deep blue stream made black by the forest darkness.

Mandibles whistled through air and mulch, and sudden pain racked the fiberling as the ant leapt forwards at its elongating body, cutting where its chains of hair were thinnest and densest. Navy thrashed as it recoiled, and the ant cut at it with bladed feet, hooking out chunks of hair which now littered the floor of the border-woods. No. No, bad, bad, poor situation. Flinging itself up a tree like a multi-armed gibbon grabbing at any possible hold with ropes of hair, Navy flung itself away like a slingshot before settling into a snake-like sprint again. Behind it, the glowing monster was gaining.

The exchange had taken only seconds, but Navy feared that it may have found its limit.

The enormous three-tonne furball was making use of its fluidity in its bid to escape the demigod, slipping easily through the tree-gaps, searching for a windblown place to parachute away from. With the element of surprise, perhaps, it could have stunned the and broken it with its superior size, but ants are flexible and do not suffocate easily. Navy fled to live another day, and was willing to give up sight of the border forest to do so, flinging itself out to where the trees thinned into solitary acacias and thornbushes. Sensing the movement of something large between the grass, it aimed directly in the motion's direction, hoping to distract the ant with another animal.

What it found was far, far more new than the enormous ant behind it. Erect, endoskeletal, lithe... So striking in its harmony of curves that it seemed to glow more brightly than the ant, even though it emitted no light.

Navy collided with the straw-grown dirt at the graceful humanoid's side and skidded, a scant trail of indigo hair drifting from the woods behind it. Then, tireless, it flew on.



At first, Cyan had thought its mission strange, and allowed its aggregate body to be instructed directly by the Mother. But decades pass as they do, and meld together into centuries, and from centuries come generations in which to learn and and find contentment.

The blue-green fiberling rested in a village that worshipped it as some kind of spirit protector. For long years it had guarded their borders from ashlings, pulled their children out of deep water, and kept their eggs warm when the cold rains came. It had melded with the other fiberlings of this area and left them with a dissuading instinct, to keep away from experimenting with this species- A larger experiment was taking place. Cyan had asked nothing in return, though it loved to play, and had eventually learned how to be gentle in doing so. For a long while now, the hain of this unique tribe had been decorating their entrances to their homes with balls of animal hair, seagrass and feathers, charms made to coax Cyan to come in and eat of the strands. The community was unique in its relationship, and where long ago it had been scattered, it now prospered and danced with its enormous, undying furry god.

So well had Cyan come to know these hain that it recognised that something was wrong with them before they did.

They had been moving in their sleep as it approached, their breathing patterns breaking up. Hackles rising in animal instinct, Cyan tugged the ankle of one of the tribeshain. He woke with a start. Turning, his eyes latched on to Cyan, and there was a moment's pause. He screamed.

The fiberling retracted quickly, but others were waking up. There were more cries, from more than simple startlement. Something was deeply amiss. These vocalisations, Cyan knew, portended things that had always set it on edge, that its task had always been to work against. Fear. Confusion.

This time the source was not something Cyan was tasked to defend against. To all external eyes, it was obvious, but Cyan's small and comfortable world was spinning and it repeatedly failed to understand, though the information was there for even its simple mind to comprehend. The hain, likewise, did not know what they were doing. Some cried, and some hid, clutching their heads as entire lives worth of memory were spurned by new instinct.

One brave woman stood up where others shivered and shouted, barely understanding one another, and Cyan writhed upon itself in the center of the settlement. She knew that something had to be done, if not to act on the maddening addition to their minds, then at least to establish order. To end the confusion and give roles under which her family could unite again, even if it changed the way they had lived their lives since their elder's elders were hatchlings. Spear in hand, she gazed straight up at the vast blue thing with both her right eyes, and willed away sadness and cognitive dissonance with the anger that now came naturally. Then, kicking sand, she began to stamp.

Others followed, joining into the simplest rhythm, the simplest emotion that returned to them their solidarity. It was a bittersweet hatred. Cyan was still far from understanding, but it remembered its missive. Protect this tribe from threats. It contracted into a small, perfect sphere, shuddered, and fled from its own memories of this day, driven by its own love.

The tribe continued to stamp and shout their god away over the horizon long after it was gone, reassuring themselves of their mistakes, ingraining the new reality into their brains for hours until they grew tired, hungry, and silent.

From underneath the dune above them, so fluidly as to be almost unseen, the caged vessel of the Heartworm emerged, shedding streams and sheets of sand.

Experiment interrupted. Results inconclusive. Time for the next test.



Jvan saw with her eyes, eyes that had been sunk deep into her vibrant scouts, and she heard with the ear of God. Time. Celestial Above. One of the patient deities, the elusive ones that hid themselves away and created little. What he did create... Well, what could be said?

The ants were nice, I guess. They were another brutalist construct, like the Heraktati; Optimised for survival and expansion, though they lacked any other drive or direction. Cute little things that churned ecosystems into action and would likely outlast every other species on Galbar. A good creation, commendable, clever, interesting.

Aeons before that, another change, an organic, minimalist motif to spread like dripping ink over her own sculpture. The new Gap. That, too, was pretty, and Jvan had not the slightest inclination to lie to herself and say that she did not appreciate the contribution, for all its instability. To shoulder responsibility for what had become of her efforts in the beginning was a free choice and she would take it again.

And now this.

Jvan had been confused before, by the flawed ones. They were contradictory, but not in a constructive way. They simply weren't functioning as they were meant to. Vestec, Vulamera, and now Vowzra- Funny pattern, that- Was he, too, flawed? Was Time holding something back from the universe he cradled? No, Jvan doubted this was the case, though perhaps it would help to touch him up a little anyway. Vowzra was simply acting according to his nature. The problem was that the All-Beauty had not the faintest idea what and how that nature was.

So she made herself clear.

"Vowzra, Viceregent of the Void, do not mock me with riddles. You have made no attempt to hide the core of your intent, so if you hate, then hate me openly, and mark me well: I am not a god negligent to my purpose. I am here to promote beauty. Harmony of order and chaos written in body. Creation.

"And yet, is this world to be faced with enemies? Are there those who neglect harmonious contrast to sow disparity and collapse? Your actions are no longer justified by the whispers of circumstantial glory you have built in passing. Your nature has instigated destruction that I must resist.

"I am a Creator, Vowzra, as are you. Do not allow yourself to become less than that."

Jvan tuned out of the divine frequency through which she had broadcast and let the connection with Time's essence slacken and thin into the cold.

"My children, you have pestered me enough. I shall tell the story you demand." Takan sat opposite his five sons, nieces, and nephews in the the small mud hut. The only light that gave their story time distraction was the orange of the sunset. The children before him were of varying ages and sizes. One in particular had a fresh, glistening carapace, evidently celebrating his moulting day. All were quiet, ready for their elder to begin speaking.

"I still remember that moment like it was this very afternoon," Takan began, holding one side of his head to the children, "The day I saw the deer that was all of life at once. Indeed, it is a memory I have as seen with both of my left eyes." With one finger, Takan tapped the shell of his head next to his clouded over eye. He had lost sight in that eye for no real reason that anyone knew, apart from presuming a curse from the gods. "It was during a hunt with my brothers, Koyut and Miko, and one of my paramours, Qualoc. The sun warmed our shells that day with no interruption. As usual, we laid in wait to ambush game that was taking water by the pond. We were having no luck that day. The one pearskin cow that strayed from her herd was spooked by Old Man Chalk as he came lumbering through on his endless stroll. We all believed that we would be going hungry that night. That was when two figures came into view. Qualoc stayed my spear hand before I could hurl it, seeing the sight before I could know it."

One of the larger children excitedly nudged the recently moulted child in the side. "This is where she comes in," he whispered just loud enough to attract mildly annoyed glances from the others.

"Harsss..." Another child hissed for the excited one to hush.

Takan raised his hands, "Now, now. Settle." As Taken lowered his hands, he leaned forward slightly to the children before him. "Perhaps this can be a time to think, for what words I can muster may not carve a correct image of my memory. Tell me, children, when you think of life, what image is in your head?"

After a pause, one of the older children called out, "Animals!"

"Good answer," Takan gestured towards the speaker, but gazed to the others, "Any other things?"

"Plants?" Another child piped up.

"Yes," Takan confirmed with just as much congratulations. The way he still leaned forward suggested that there were yet more answers.

"Bugs?" Takan nodded to the answer. "Water?" Takan gave special attention to the bright child that made that suggestion, declaring "Very clever. There is no life without water, not even hain."

A longer pause lingered. Eventually one of the children said, "Food?"

Takan chuckled with good nature. "Yes, I suppose that counts too. Perhaps I might help you children this time. All that you have said is present where life prevails." Takan raised a finger, "There is one other element that follows life like a trail of footprints in the sand. Does anyone know what that is?"

The children glanced to one another with their large beak-like heads. No one had an answer.

"It is death, children," Takan explained in a lower tone, "All these things that have been said could be used to describe the Life-Deer, but none is more visible than death. Now, with more life comes more death, that is the way of things. Therefore, the Life-Deer, being so full of life, looked like the most dead thing that ever was. The inner-shells of its head, neck, and chest were all visible. Tufts of dull, mouldy fur held its spine to its other body-parts. Rotten flesh and organs seemed to grow and slough off where it stood. But it was living and walking. And the bits that fell off, well, they sprang into vibrant patches of grass, or swarms of bugs, or small animals. The Life-Deer's death was feeding life, and its life feeding death. On and on into eternity..."

"But father Takan," the freshly moulted child interrupted, "You mentioned two shapes, no?"

"That I did, Saon. You are clever to remember." Takan upturned his palm in the hain-equivalent expression of a smile. He turned to the others again and curled his hand into a fist. "The second shape was the Stinger-Lion. A vicious beast of teeth, strength, and magical roars. He is the Life-Deer's paramour and guardian. We did not know his nature until my brother Koyut decided to hurl his spear." The children collectively gasped, as they usually did at this point. "We do not know why he did it. Perhaps he was scared." Takan looked to the ground and seemed lost in the memory for a short while. It was clear by the way he ran his hand over the top of his head that it still made him nervous.

"...Father Takan?" One of the younger children asked meekly. This one had not heard the story before. "What happened next? Did Koyut hit with his spear?"

"Hm? Oh, no." Takan was snapped out of his reminiscing and resumed the tale. "Koyut's spear did not strike anything, because he never threw it. The stinger-lion knew he was there, and what he did will live on in my mind all the way to the returning stone." Takan's breath in was laboured, "The Stinger-Lion roared. He roared with such power that we had to cover our ears and curl up just to avoid our deaths. He roared with such volume that everyone within the horizon heard it. We got to cover our ears, but Koyut was not so lucky." Takan crossed his forearms and brought the sides of his flat hands to his neck, representing spikes protruding. "Koyut's blood sprang out in solid spikes, like a scab, but solid and large. He crumpled to the ground, instantly dead."

The children who had not heard the story before were trembling and reaching for their siblings for comfort.

"Our hearts all thumped on faster than even our panic would have done. We all felt incredibly, sickeningly hot. So hot that we began to feel cold in the sun. For fear of our lives, we laid still and shivered, but we did not befall the fate of Koyut. By the time we mustered the bravery to stand, the Life-Deer and her husband had moved on."

"Wait, I thought this story was about the Life-Deer! She has done nothing!" A smaller child was met with other disapproving looks for interrupting.

"Ah, but the story is not over, Tekauta. Let me finish," Takan said with a small laugh. "The Life-Deer was under no threat from us. She is godly and her husband powerful. She ordered the roar in her silent language and did many great things by it. Much about her nature could be described from it--far beyond simply animals, plants, bugs, water, food, and even death. For instance, we found that the roar had killed creatures that could not block their ears, giving us food for a long period, so much that we could not eat it all before the flesh became rotten and we had to burn them. A sympathetic act, no?"

"Sympathetic? Koyut was killed!" Saon complained. The others sniggered at Saon's ignorance of Takan's riddle. He had not heard the story either.

"Ah, but we were rewarded with our lives spared for being vigilant, no?" Takan responded, "Should that not be anything less but a trial from the Life-Deer."

Saon seemed increasingly confused, as did the other children that had not heard the story. "Huh? It was a trial? The Life-Deer did not just wander to get a drink?"

"Well, she perseveres like any creature of her spawning flesh," Takan said.

"So...it was both then?"

Takan shrugged, "Probably not. A wild creature is unpredictable, even one such as a goddess. It might have even just been there for fun and enjoyment."

Saon stamped his hand on the packed dirt ground. "Father Takan, you are making no sense! You keep bringing up things that aren't connected! What was the Life-Deer doing at that pond shore?"

Takan upturned both his hands and opened his mouth in what would be the widest grin he could have mustered as a human, if he knew what that was. "Have you not been listening, little one?" Takan said slowly and mischievously, "All of my words describe the Life-Deer's nature. If you do not understand, perhaps it is because she is simply ambiguous."

With a flustered groan, Saon gave up and leaned his head on one hand. "Okay, okay. What happens next?"

"Nothing. The Life-Deer moved on." Takan spoke plainly.

"Gah! Then what was the point!?" Saon felt angrier than he expected he would for his moulting day.

Takan angled his head knowingly, "There is little point to a song, no? Think of the story as a song sung by the Life-Deer. There are deeper meanings in it."

"Marvellous," Saon said sarcastically.

Takan reached forward and pat Saon on the head as if he had given the final answer. "Saon, my son, I think you are beginning to understand after all."