The memories of the dancer began to mingle with the visions of flesh in Toun’s mind. Enough was enough. He could not let those mix or else be further haunted by the one thing that he kept coming back to. He needed something else to occupy his mind. Within the gleaming expanse of the Cornerstone, there was little distraction, so he had to look out further. Behind all the paranoid proddings and machinations of those divine beings around him, there was a calming cacophony of the voices of mortals. The way they mixed into meaninglessness allowed for a strange peace. At least, until Toun inevitably found a flaw.

There were some calling his name. They were calling for help, too.

Curiosity tempered by caution took Toun. He suspected a trap, especially since the harsh utterances could only be from the throats of Rovaick. As Toun listened more closely, he pinpointed the location of their prayer.



Sularn wearily went through the ritual one more time, intoning the names of the Gods whose aid he needed. It had been three years. Magic continued to crawl forward at an agonizingly slow pace, and there was a giant on the horizon. A monster that spewed flames and shattered mountains. And still the Gods did not respond. Gruik continued to accompany him, assured that Teknall was merely busy with very important things. It was actually quite impressive, how much dedication Gruik had to this. And no doubt it saved him from one of the many deaths by stupidity his brethren were experiencing. Ah, to be as stupid as a goblin. That would be blissful. Sularn thought, going through the motions of the ritual.

However many years the tradition was kept up, the creature known as Sularn would not receive routine silence this time. In his ritualistic chamber, the atmosphere changed. The musty, particular air started to clear. As it did, all present noticed their lungs tightening as if there was less air to breathe in the first place. Cracks and blemishes on all things mundane polished to newness. In the centre of the chamber, beads of perfectly white fluid dripped upwards out of the gaps in the floor.

Sularn stiffened in alarm. Not just from the change in atmosphere, the fact that everything was returning to perfection, or that there beads of pure white fluid rising from the floor. No, it was the sense of magic and power that was flooding into the chamber that gave him his alarm. He tightened his grip on his staff warily, watching as the beads began to take form. Hopefully, this was one of the Gods he had been seeking.

The beads coalesced and melted together into a form that was awfully familiar. The shape of an Azibo began to be seen in the details that formed. Indeed, by the time the air’s pressure returned to normal and all breathed freely, Sularn was looking upon a perfect white porcelain sculpture of himself. Its face was severe indeed.

“Mortal,” the sculpture intoned with a voice that dissolved thoughts. “For what purpose do you call my name?”

As Toun spoke, Sularn could only wince as Gruik threw himself on the ground so hard that his head hit the floor with an alarming crack. The Goblin would be fine. He had a thick skull after all. It was how Toun would react to such stupidity that had Sularn worried.

“Lord of Perfection,” Sularn spoke as he bowed low, “I call upon you to recognize a simple fact. We are not Vestec’s creatures. The Mad God created us, took some of our brethren, and then abandoned us to our own devices. We do not worship him. Unfortunately, your White Giants do not recognize this fact. Whenever one of them grows close to our homes outside of these Mountains, it attacks and attempts to kill us. Our tools are not enough to defend ourselves, nor is our burgeoning magic. Which is why we call upon you for aid, Perfect One. We ask that you convince your White Giants to not attack us, as we have done nothing to hurt any other life forms than is necessary for our own survival.”

A long, pregnant pause filled the chamber. Not a single twitch was betrayed on the face of Sularn’s clay doppelganger. For those moments it felt as if the air was thinning again, though it was not Toun’s doing this time, but simply a reaction to his presence. He did not need to demonstrate his power with how it hung in the air around them.

Eventually there was a silent movement from the statue. Its left hand ascended with grace and extended in a stretch, the arm thinning as it did like taffy. The hand slowed to a stop cupping Sularn’s cheek. “Let me see you.”

Sularn immediately lost track of all of his senses. They were replaced by rushing images of his thoughts and memories, invaded by the gaze of a crazed blue eye. All those he had lost to white giant attacks and all the efforts to save themselves. All of the near-misses and terrors of the world upon the mountains that were his home. Before he knew it, he was in front of the statue again, still in the same room as if nothing had apparently happened.

The statue’s arm retracted back into place but its eyes did not break their gaze with Sularn. It resumed its domineering words, “Typical of my brother to throw together such potential with such glaring flaws in the same. Tell me, mortal Sularn; what would you do with your fleeting life and the lives of your people if you could roam without fear of my servants?”

Sularn, still stunned from suddenly having his mind invaded, took a moment to respond. Shaking himself to clear his thoughts, he slowly began to reply to the God of perfection. “We’d expand outside of our Mountain keep, establishing contact with the other races. Making trade, alliances, and helping defend against Vestec’s, Zephyrion’s, or Yah-Vuh’s incursions against us and the others. Keeping the peace as best we can amongst us.” Sularn spread his hands in a slightly helpless gesture. “We’ve already enough conflict in our world without turning on each other like starving Goblins.”

The statue scrutinised Sularn with a narrow-eyed stare. It seemed to pause to take a breath, even though it did not breathe. It simply expanded its chest in a similar movement. “Peace.” The first word in reply came suddenly. “Peace and prosperity. You would wish this.” The statue turned and began to pace with heavy clay clinks against the floor. “I can tell you now that you are currently incapable of doing anything more than surviving, day by day, even without the threat of my servants. Such a wish is useless and would not better the world.”

The statue stopped and extended its staff onto the floor in front of it. With a slow sweeping scrape, it began to draw a circle around itself in the dust. “How would you know how to better yourselves and the world around you if you do not even have the time to think beyond survival?” The circle was complete and the statue turned to pace out of it.

Clink...clink...clink...clink…

As soon as it was far enough away from the first, it traced another circle. “There are things you do that take up far too much of your limited time, mortal Sularn. Sleep is the most, though that is not to be helped. Other little spare times are spent beseeching myself and my siblings, or socialising, mating, fighting, leading. There is one more that takes up more time than you have to better yourself.” The statue finished its second circle, having made them adjacent to one another by their edges. It paced gracefully to that intersection point.

Clink...clink...clink...clink…

“Can you recognise what it is I speak of, mortal? It is common to almost all living fauna.” The statue’s staff extended to begin drawing a larger circle to enclose the smaller two while it waited for a response.

Sularn listened quietly, not daring to speak while Toun was busy with his drawings. One could never be to sure with the Gods, something he was surprised Gruik knew. The little Goblin hadn’t so much as twitched the entire time they were talking to the God. If it wasn’t for the fact that he could see him breathing, Sularn would have thought him dead.

As it became clear that Toun was waiting for a response, if not clear what exactly his purpose in drawing the circles and speaking was, Sularn began to puzzle over the question. The God had spoken of most of the things he and the other Rovaick spent time doing, along with the brief glimpses of other races they had, with only a few missing. He immediately dismissed the idea of it being relieving wastes.

The scraping of the clay staff against the floor came to a halt as the third circle was completed. Uneasy silence pervaded until the statue stood up straight and faced Sularn. “The desire pulls you as we speak.”

Sularn’s stomach grumbled.

It was fairly easy, after that, to know what the God of Perfection spoke of. “Eating and drinking, Perfect One? The former takes mere seconds at times, given that any Rovaick can easily pick up a rock and gain sustenance from it. Wherever we go, we will have food. Provided whatever we ingest is not poisonous, that is.”

There was an air of disgust that permeated from the statue. Its upper lip lifted for a moment and its grip on the staff tightened. The disgust might have turned into threat, but it receded before there was another response. “Go on then, mortal Sularn. Eat a rock, take no more than a few seconds. If you are so confident that you will not starve if that is your only meal for the day, you may continue surviving like an animal for ages to come.” The statue tilted its head slightly. “Unless, you wish to better yourself and your people?”

The statue offered a hand. “There are ways to gain sustenance without subsisting on what Slough leaves unsupervised. You can do so without taking all your time and thought. You can become greater, smarter, more powerful. Your magic may even flourish as I know you desire it to. I can provide this to you beyond mere safety from the white giants so you can be capable and learn to make this world better. What say you, mortal Sularn? Are your people animals, snuffling along the ground? Going nowhere from this mountain range? Or are you more than your sire abandoned you to be?” Before Sularn could answer, the statue added. “I will have something from you in return, to prove your worth.”

Sularn kept his mouth shut, idly waiting for the God’s tirade of insults to end. He didn’t call up on his help to be told what he already knew. That without help they’d be in their current state for far longer than they’d like. He paused, waiting for a moment when Toun would give him the opportunity to speak and secure his help. That opportunity did not take long.

Sularn stared at the offered hand for a few moments before taking it. “We are far more than our sire ever imagined we will be. And we will make him regret the day he decided to create us.”

As soon as he touched the statue’s hand, the circles inscribed upon the ground began to glow red, turning to a bright pink light spreading over all exposed surfaces. It came with a rush of apparent power with potential only limited by Toun’s fathoming.

The statue did not express any particular emotion, but its intonations held an air of ambition reflected from Sularn. “It will be so.”

The statue then pinched Sularn’s hand and forcibly turned it such that his palm was exposed upwards. The white staff began to shrink until it was the size of the length of Sularn's hand and tapered to a spike so sharp that the thought of its touch sent tingles down the spine. Sularn resisted the urge to yank his hand back, feeling the power rush through the room and the spike. A thick, opaque red liquid was hinted at the end of the spike, brighter than blood, but just as hungry to spread.

“With this power I bestow, mortal Sularn, creature born of chaos, a compact is sealed.” The statue lowered the spike to Sularn's skin. “You shall carry my essence, both to represent my will upon your people and to be recognised by my servants as an ally.” The spike ran across Sularn's palm, apparently cutting open his flesh at first, but with no pain or shock. “You may bestow this essence upon any creature that agrees to these conditions.”

Sularn stared at his hand as it was cut open. The words resonated in his mind, as he felt the power rushing through him and the conditions beginning to bind his soul.

The spike finished inscribing one character, one that seemed to carry in itself the entire meaning of the statue’s following words. “You must always strive for improvement of your mind, your body, your soul, and the world in which you live. This shall stop at nothing but perfection.”

The second character was given next to the first. It exuded connotations of harmony and yielded arms. “You must never do harm to any of my servants, be they white giant, hain of my home, or similar purposeful creature.”

Sularn noted, at the back of his mind, that he and his people were not under any similar protections. He could only hope Toun never turned on them.

The final character was especially jagged compared to the other two. “And you must oppose chaos wherever it encroaches.”

That was a given to Sularn. Fighting against Chaos was what the Rovaick were going to do, with or without the help of the Gods.

The statue’s spike was pulled out, brought back, and turned once more into a staff in exact replica to Sularn’s. “If any who have taken these vows break them, their mark shall disappear. They shall be hunted by my servants once more, forsaken from my favour.”

Before Sularn's eyes, the runes torn into his flesh with such a dissonant lack of pain had become simple red marks on his hand without him even noticing. Not even a scar remained. Still, the characters now inscribed felt now so integral to his being that the flesh may as well have been traumatised as he had witnessed.

“Of course, my lord. Anyone who breaks this vow will be hunted by your servants and us alike. But I will choose those who get blessed by you wisely. ” Sularn said, bowing low again. “What will you have from me, Perfect One, to prove my worth?”

The statue’s head angled back, looking down upon Sularn with blank consideration. “Once you have realised the salvation of your own local people, once they have bettered themselves and are on a course to continue to do so, you will travel.” The statue gracefully swept one hand through the air between them, “Show the world the way of your newfound prosperity. Every single one that can listen, Rovaick or no. This will all be for your sake, of course…” The statue’s head peered down and its voice hushed, “...but I shall call upon all with a mark such as yours eventually. Your oath shall be fulfilled on a day of sweeping perfection, where my servants pave Galbar in white and peace. A paradise shall reign. The oathbound shall contribute and then enjoy it for eternity. And they shall never fear or suffer for anything again.” The statue’s head and voice levelled. “The time that this day comes is known only by, if anyone, Fate herself. Be prepared for that day, mortal Sularn.”

At this point, the glowing circles around them had slowly faded. In their place were inscribed more red runes in the shape of Toun’s insignia. The statue pointed to them. “So that you may begin your travels before the end of your lifetime, gaze upon my boons. You will need more than rocks to fulfill your tasks.”

From any distance beyond a few paces, the writings seemed alien and unintelligible. Up close, however, their forms were strangely intuitive. Further inspection quickly revealed that their meanings were obvious to any creatures with eyes and sentience. On one end of the circles were characters that evoked thoughts of animals; local mountain and grassland grazers, big and small. Around them were some enclosing marks, as if they were in pens, but these seemed more soft and benevolent than simple traps. It was as if whatever was enclosing them was protecting them for some kind of service rendered. On the other end of the circles were various edible plants from the lower mountains. Rice, onions, and others could all be seen. In addition was how to collect their seeds and the way their seeds fascinatingly grew from moist, fertile soil. Funnily enough, there was an organisation to them. The way the seeds grew were in rank and file, unlike the haphazard sprouts in nature.

The runes described more and more as they circled around, giving an overwhelming level of information and insight. To those that might have already known them, irrigation, fence building, milking, and stock driving techniques were all very vaguely imparted without explanation. Unfortunately, just as the symbols started to get into the whys and hows, they seemed to shrink as the curves of Toun’s insignia tapered. Soon enough they could no longer even be read as the size of the text shrank to the point of disappearing. The ever-increasing detail was from there lost in the limits of mortal optics, perhaps restricting the execution of these advanced concepts until a foundation was built. Nevertheless, the inspiration was there for any who could decipher it.

In the end, this boon left for Sularn was not something that could be analysed as a complete piece. It was the opening chapter of a guide to cultivating food from one’s own efforts, leaving much to learn from practicing its concepts. This would take a long time to work out. Luckily, it seemed as though the runes were engraved into the floor and nothing short of digging them up looked likely to disturb them.

Sularn studied the complex markings in the stone Toun had left. They were new, and unfamiliar, but they did not seem too terribly complicated. “Yes, yes.” He murmured to himself. It wouldn’t be hard to implement these, and use them to their fullest ability to support and improve the Rovaick.

As Sularn gazed upon Toun’s writings, the statue suddenly perked its head upwards and slowly rotated to look at a seemingly inconsequential detail on the far wall. As it was when it manifested, no expression betrayed the statue’s reaction. Soon, Sularn felt what demanded the statue’s attention. Another presence was beginning to manifest itself in the chamber. The stone of the wall rippled and bulged, the distortions taking a humanoid outline before the figure of a goblin stepped out, the stone receding back to its normal position as though it were a pool of water which he had just emerged from. Although the body of the new arrival was that of a goblin, it was evident that this was no normal goblin. His posture was upright and confident. His skin and hair had only a tiny amount of grit in it. His physique was healthy and strong. His clothes were of the utmost quality, with a sturdy leather apron bearing multiple pockets. And he held an air of authority and intelligence far greater than even the most powerful Azibo.

It was in this form that Teknall had decided to manifest himself to the Rovaick. As he stepped out from the wall he quickly twisted his face through every possible facial expression, adapting himself to having an actual face once more, before settling on one of amicability. He rolled his shoulders, flexed his joints and stretched his spine briefly, adjusting to this new endoskeletal body. His eyes looked to the statue, then Sularn, then the spiral of calligraphy on the ground, and then to Gruik. Finally, he said to the group, “Hello. I hope I’m not too late.”

The statue blinked, indicating at least a sign of surprise. “All before you is self evident, brother,” the statue replied, before turning its head back to Sularn. “You had prayed to us both,” the statue stepped back from between them with another sequence of ominous clinks. “I do not intend to deny you its answer, mortal.”

He was taken from his study by the feeling of immense power approaching once more. He straightened up and bowed as the God of Crafts took form of a Goblin. “Welcome, Master Crafter.“ Sularn looked over at the still for prone form of Gruik. Why wasn’t he gibbering in excitement at the sight of his beloved God? Suspiciously, the Azibo poked his goblin friend with his staff. Gruik rolled over, snoring gently. Sularn gave a sigh. The fool knocked himself out in his eagerness to profane himself before Toun.

“I apologize, Lord Teknall, Lord Toun. In his...exuberance, Gruik appears to have knocked himself out.” Sularn gave a small smile. “Though perhaps that is a blessing, as I suspect he would have gibbering in excitement at meeting you, Master Craftsman. Making my job of asking for your help much more difficult. Trust me, excited goblins are quite...entertaining.”

A little smirk crept onto Teknall’s lips. Gruik’s predicament was quite ironic. He had half a mind to awaken him, but that would be best saved until after negotiations were completed.

Sularn continued, “The Rovaick would like your help as well, Lord Teknall. The goblins are quite skilled at crafting, but with your help we could become even better. Create these new tools Toun has given us. Arm and armor our allies and own troops against Vestec’s armies.” Sularn threw his arms wide. “We are sitting in your Mountains, that are filled with your minerals and ores. Why not enable us to use them against Vestec as soon as possible?”

Teknall smiled. “You are observant indeed to have noticed that these mountains are filled with my blessings.” He walked over to a wall and, at his touch, a lump of ore emerged from it and into his left hand. “To a civilisation which can harness it, it is a mighty blessing, one which will lead to countless more.” The lump of ore in his hand began to glow red hot. “And to harness it, you often need only heat.” The ore began to melt, and weep a smooth incandescent yellow liquid which Teknall collected in his cupped right hand. As the molten metal began to cool, Teknall moulded it with his fingers and his will into a tiny copper hammer. Then, holding the hammer lightly in his hand, he tapped it against the stone wall, and the room rang for a moment with a gentle metallic chime.

“From that information alone you could spark a technological revolution, given time and commitment to develop the techniques and build the infrastructure. I have been tracking Vestec’s hordes closely, and can tell you that none are coming for these mountains. So can you give me any reason for me to provide greater assistance? And who are these allies you speak of?” Teknall inquired.

The statue, listening patiently to the goblin, slowly turned it's expressionless face to Sularn. Something unsaid was in his demeanour, though it was evident that it chose not to speak just yet.

“If we react to the marchings of evil only when they threaten us, when they do threaten us, we will find that we have no one to turn to for aid.” Sularn replied, glancing at the melted ore. “Our allies are every race who seeks peace rather than war. The Hain. The Angels. The Urtelem. Yah-Vuh’s Sculptors. United, we have a chance. Divided, we will surely fall, piece by piece, to the machinations of Vestec, Zephyrion, Astarte, and any others who find joy in the chaos.” Sularn began to pace in front of the Gods. “It is true that with time and effort we could unlock the secrets of your blessings. We have the will, the minds, and the effort. But we do not have the time. By the time we have unlocked these secrets, it will be too late to help aid those fighting for their lives. It is up to you, Master Craftsman. We will aid those outside our Mountains. But when is up to the aid you give us. The Rovaick can either help defend the Nice Mountains and the Hain, or we can wait to expose ourselves to the world.”

Teknall nodded, clearly pleased with Sularn’s response. “You show global awareness and foresight, and I have seen that the Rovaick are industrious and hardworking. You have earned my favour.” He then paused as he thought. Metalworking was a big step for a civilisation. It would take time and effort to properly teach them, yet this world was getting increasingly busy so another sabbatical into mortal circles might not be viable. Then he remembered the words he had spoken with Illunabar, her Muses and the different voices they had, and he came up with a plan.

“To teach you the ways of metalworking will take time. It is not likely that you will be able to arm yourselves to fight Vestec’s hordes this time, although when you are next needed you will definitely be ready. I shall send to you a helper, and that helper will teach you how to refine and craft metals, for the benefit of all,” Teknall said, “This skill is to be used to advance your race and the races around you, to defend against the forces of destruction and to protect others, and to be a boon for all races on Galbar who align with peace. Beyond that, it is to be used as you and your kind see fit, although do not make me regret granting you this blessing.”

Sularn bowed low. “You will not regret this, Master Craftsman.”

Teknall looked around the room one more time, and his eyes came upon Gruik. He paused for a moment before approaching the unconscious goblin. He knelt down next to him and gently tapped the little copper hammer on the ground next to his ear, a resonant tone ringing from the hammer and stirring Gruik from his slumber.

Teknall looked to Gruik with a warm smile on his face. ”Hello there, Gruik. I’ve heard you are quite the devoted goblin,” he said. ”I must leave soon, but you can keep this as a souvenir of my visit.” He laid the little copper hammer down next to Gruik, then stood up and stepped back.

“Eh?! Whoze iz there?” Grui suddenly shot up to his feet, looking around wildly. Evidently this wasn’t his first time being awoken from an accidental slumber. When he heard Teknall’s voice his eyes went wide and his jaw visibly dropped. He carefully picked up the hammer, holding it in shaking hands as he carefully examined it. The goblin was crying and grinning, muttering, “Iz been blessed, Iz been blessed.”

”Yours is now a destiny to remember, mortal Sularn” The statue gave its words again, finally. ”Do not disappoint me.” The statue, showing an inflection of approval in its resonant voice, then turned its head to Teknall and spoke. “Until the next time, brother.”

Teknall nodded in response.”Until then, brother.”

With that, the statue seemed to lose its animation and assumed a position of standing guard. Some of its features flattened and lost their intricate detail. With the changes, the power in the atmosphere faded up like a cloud of smoke from one’s eyes. Toun was gone, leaving behind a clean room and a hollow white porcelain statue in Sularn’s likeness.

”You’ll hear from me again soon,” Teknall said to Sularn. He waved the two Rovaick farewell before stepping into the wall and disappearing the same way he came.

Sularn bowed to both before gesturing to Gruik. “Come on. We’ve got changes to make.” The little goblin began to immedaitely babble to him. “Did youz see what he gave me? Did youz? Did youz? Iz been blessed I haz I haz!”

During the Phantasmorgia

Bez

"Cowards! Weaklings! Fools!" Bez snarled, waving his sword in front of him. Rovaick made of blinding white stone surrounded him, having already cut down his people. He felt their spears and blades growing ever closer. How had it come to this? He had been so sure of the Chosen Rovaick's dominance. The others were so weak. So peaceful. How had they become so numerous? So emotionless and ruthless? "You've given yourself away! Sold your souls! You're not true Rovaick you bastards, you're statues! Lifele-" The blades entered his body and he screamed in agony. They stabbed into him again and again and he still couldn't die. The white light of all of the Rovaick in front of him grew to consume his entire vision, until all he knew was blinding whiteness and pain.

Bez suddenly woke up, sitting up with a roar of anger and surprise. It was a dream. It had all been a dream. He looked around, staring at the night sky as it moved past him, shining with the Phantasmorgia, Grot carrying him and the army off into the night. The flames of another Hain village,turned to ash by Grot's flames, were quickly receding into the distance. They hadn't even been allowed to fight the Urtelem, Grot crushing them with his control over the earth as easily as a child knocked down dirt walls.

Bez looked across the land, seeing the Nice Mountains grow ever closer. "Soon." He murmured, feeling the edge of his stone spear. "Soon."

Tular

Traitor...Traitor...Traitor...TRAITOR...TRAITOR!! Tular suddenly awoke with the angry snarls of his dead family and tribesmen still ringing in his ears. He glared up at the night sky, the strange color going through it seeming to pulse in times with their snarls. It had brought back the nightmares, and that bothered him. No. That infuriated him. The fury grew and grew until it seemed like it was going to consume his entire being. He stood and began to pace, unable to find anything to do with his anger. It was like a fire, burning through his body, roaring beneath his carpace. There was nothing to kill, nothing to fight. Since their defeat at the hands of the Urtelem, they hadn't done anything. He was so sick of doing nothing. The fire burned down his arm and to his hand. With a shout of anger, threw out his hand. A compressed ball of air shot from his hand and crashed into another Hain next to him. The unfortunate victim exploded in a violent shower of gore.

Tular paused for a moment in shock, looking at his hand, before baring his teeth in a smile. "This...this I can use.

Present time

Vestec wandered around the planet, zooming about and looking for interesting events to catch his eye. This was how he found Slough, shivering in her pit. He looked around, standing next to the poor life Goddess. "My, my. What did you do here, Slough?" Vestec giggled, noting all the souls and power in them. "Interesting." He glanced down at the shivering Goddess. "You poor poor thing," Vestec cooed. "Forgotten by those who said they would be by your side. By those who offered you themselves, who begged you to never give up. You have been forgotten by those who claimed they were good and just and helpful." Vestec crouched down next to Slough. "But I haven't forgotten you. I haven't abandoned you. We outcasts have to stick together, and while I can't help you, I can bring people who should be able to. I will not abandon you, Slough. Never forget that."

Illunabar, Astarte, Niciel, Vulamera. Slough needs help and surely one of you four or all five of us can do it.

[@DoublyCapybara] @Frettzo @Scarifar @Hael

A little, or a lot of days later, Vesamera and Belvast traveled down a wooded path, shade lingering over their bodies as they further wore down an already exhausted forebearing of leaves. "So, young bug--" Vesamera began to say, before she realized that, the small halfling had fallen asleep in a sunny patch on the trail. With an exhausted sigh, she confided to sit beside the feline. He had the right idea. The library came to rest in the scholar's corrigible lap, the edges pressed into the fabric, and it became lifeless as it too rested.

It seemed that Vesamera could only surround herself with geometrics, artificial beings, slivers of her own being that could hardly forebear any interesting conversation, or dictate its own beck and call. She found it boring, but also comforting to fit into a sort of trance within her own personal circle. The only thing of flesh that she really trusted had been Lakshmi, however, she did enjoy investing some form of trust in her other, dear friend, Allure.

He was a character.

Vesamera liked that in a person, genuinely, well, Lifprasil did, but so did Vesamera.

However, Vesamera enjoyed Belvast's innocence much more. In her other life, she had been born into something similar to adulthood, a sort of knowing that only a creature of sentience itself would be capable of knowing. Others knew that, of course, the minute creatures that held the scope of Galbar in their collective consciousness did, which is why she had created this personality in the first place; to know the only creatures capable of the almost exclusive pain of mortality. Maybe she would fix this, in time.

This mortal plain, however, was not the only place that possessed life...

That was a more pressing matter for a more pressing time, however, because Vesamera's mind wandered, to the project her friends had upheld in her stead.

Elsewhere, within the confines of the very drab Celestial Citadel, a giddy Lifprasilian perused the mute halls, to Illunabar's sanctuary in the complex. What she held was some living devices, and a heavy hand of scrolls that she had prepared, and jotted upon her plans for the settlement that Lifprasil was planning. Following her was a troupe of guardsmen, whose armor was twinkling with much more silver, the much more extravagant armor having been draped in cloth of bright purple.

Each one carried sticks, and at the end of these sticks were a fusion of pike and a blunt rod - strange hammers that had the explicit purpose of fighting the horrors of the surface.

Lakshmi, however, only carried her collapsing pile of items as she hurried into Illunabar's compartment. "H-hey!" she exclaimed, trying to catch the scrolls and knick knacks that were being reclaimed by gravity. "You guys ready to go?" she asked nobody in particular while her guards simply watched in silence.

"Chill" Notte said nonchalantly "There is no need to go anywhere right now"

Piena intercepted the conversation from across the room "Lakshmi, you can send your guards back, we still have preparations to do, you stay however, we need you" the stern tone of her voice was only amplified by the contrast with the sillier sister's first comment.

"U-uh. Oka-y." Lakshmi stuttered, shooing the guards back to whence the came, and piling her things into her lap. "It-t's ni-ice to be needed for s-something other than L-i-ifprasil's usual duties."

"Do not value yourself by the use others have for you" Meimu commented, as she arrived in the room and closed the doors. "Anyway, dear heart, do want tea? biscuit? coffee?" she continues, as a few marionettes walked into the room.

Soon after the cordialities were done, the lights of the room became dim, the only bit is not darkened being the fountain in the middle. With a sweep of Piena's hand the thing turned into a green land with gleaming rivers. A touch here and there would make the rivers rise or the land to turn orange, snow white and then green again.

"You are Lif's folk right?" Piena asked, sternly, as always.

"Just relax dear, do you like music? Do you know what music is?" Meimu tried to counter the cold steel of her sister, but she had to admit that flora was easier to deal than fauna

"Che, stop the silliness" Notte walked to the side of the nervous guard. "First step!" she forced a glass of wine into her hand and helped her to drink it down. "Second step!" she gave Lakshmi something similar to a pencil. "Now, draw us a home or something cozy"

Lakshmi felt overwhelmed, needless to say, and with the change in scenery, and the sudden inclusion of alcohol, she felt even more so. "U-uh... Is this a-all real?" she asked, having broken out into a nervous sweat. She didn't even bother to grasp the pencil, as it had landed in the vegetation beside her.

"T-that was fast..." she added. Her speech had become scatterbrained in every respect of the word.

Notte threw her arms up in the air but the other two kept calm, with Lakshmi that is, the middle sister would get some scolding later. "We just want to know where you would like to live, we have no idea about what would be ideal for your folk, and using their home here in the citadel would be a bad idea, since its merely inhabiting other's work" Piena explained

"Just relax, and think of a place where you can be quiet and comfortable, no people yelling orders and making your nervous" Meimu said, trying to loose up the guard.

With a shudder, Lakshmi finally depressurized, and began to think. The Citadel was all she knew, so when she took pencil to paper, what she created was the shape of a castle, although the gothic architecture made much more room for living space. Great walls surrounded the settlement in layers, separating living, from farmland, from the fortress in the center.

The architecture of the fortress was something that had been hard for Lakshmi to visualize, but what she wanted was windows a-plenty to admire the lush landscape around her, spiraling towers to see as far as the horizon would permit in such a place, and an interesting causeway system that would interconnect the triplet walls. When she handed the paper back to Meimu, the concept was in its beginning stages.

The settlement would not be roman-esque, but it would be impressive for the time.

The three divas stared at the project for a short while, then a few notes were made, observing how it all could possibly evolve. Usually, the triad of designers worked as individuals, but today, on this drawing table, they were in perfect synchrony.

"These road designs are far too claustrophobic, as it's expected of someone who lived her whole life in a little sky house" commented Piena

"Do you propose avenues then? We could use mirrored stones and make the path reflect the sky. We will need to mix some beyond colors to make the effect work, like something to ignore living beings and something to add a dim feeling" continued Notte

"I believe each sector could use a different kind of effect, let's not use the mirror stones on the main path, though, leave it for the gardens in the middle of the walkways"

"Speaking of gardens, a handy way to make these towers would be with vines, I can quickly come up with a plant that goes up to these heights and then calcifies into gleaming white towers" added Meimu, in her first collaboration "Oh, I also believe we could make this more vertical yes?"

Piena took a minute to think "Probably, but we would need a lot of glass if Notte agrees I believe we could make elevated and layered walkways like this"

"This would elevate the population a lot no? Do you believe the defenses will be enough?" Meimu questioned

"That is Lifprasil's problem, we merely have to make the city aesthetically pleasing and efficient" there was a third, untold directive: Something that would make pretty ruins.

The elegant town of hanging gardens and stained glass, full of lively avenues and with whole neighborhoods layered over each other, showed up in the drawings of green hills.

"Now onto the logistics..."

"Well, Marionettes should be able to do most work"

"They do have weak arms, though, far better for chipping stone away than carrying it, and this will need a looooot of stone"

"Slave Hain perhaps?" Piena proposed, without a worry

"What? Are you mad, we cannot use slave force to build the city"

"And why is that? Without it, we will never be able to finish this is the next millennium"

"Toun and Ilunabar would never agree with such idea"

"True, that is a good point, I will need to rethink this solution. Perhaps have a chat with our lady master and see if I can convince her to help our cause out" the steel-like sister sighed.

Lakshmi seemed to agree with most of the propositions - save for the slave labor. "I b-believe the Lifprasilians would be interested in helping build their new home. They've all had nothing but cultivating a culture, garden-i-ing, and training to keep themselves occupied. I thu-think under the premise of conquering Galbar, and a grounded place on this planet, they would immediately leap to your aid." she assured the muses, managing hardly without a stutter.

Piena raised a finger to her chin and re-analysed the situation, in truth, she did not know much about Lifprasilians, and at first, she had miscalculated how submissive they were to their master and their cause. "Truly, willing slaves are by far the best" she thought before commenting aloud "Well, I'm sorry for the previous doubt over your species' abilities, now I see that you are very capable of doing this task." she nodded.

"I-I t-thank you, t-the L-fprasilians will not disappoint." Lakshmi said with a raised index finger. She seemed much more relaxed, now that the gears of progress began to fall into motion once again. "What d-id you have i-in mind for s-s-stones, anyway? I-is there a q-quarry nearby?" she questioned, the feathers atop her imbued horns wavered in the artificial wind - along with her avian hair.

"Oh, many" Notte commented "Both Tounny and Kyre blew up large bits of land in the area, there is stone everywhere, right out of the crustiest bits of the earth."

Meimu felt like adding a logistical question "I believe it would be best to send the Marionettes first, since they need no food and are never tired" she pressed her fingers softly against some of the bits of the map, drawing up a few lines "They are a bit wonky in the crafts, but still competent enough to set up the camps and farms that Lifprasilians will use"

Lakshmi gave a satisfied nod "T-that sounds perfec-c-t. I c-can ready the local Lifprasilians for their new vvventure while your M-marionettes work. How long do y-you think it would take the-em?" she questioned, preening the errors and folds in the cloth encapsulating her body.

"We can separate them in groups so they can arrive in progressively larger waves. At first, I think in..." Piena stopped and waited for the marionette weaving sister to talk

"Two days, if it doesn't rain" Meimu added

"In two days we send in the first wave, fifteen lifprasilians at most. They can bring the crops from the citadel down there and we can get the farming out of the gardens and into the fields. A week later a larger group arrives and we start housing. Then across the months we send in more and more lifprasilians until they are all down at the settlement" Number crunched Piena.

"Of course, we will not settle the folk at the same place as the future capital, we will take a spot closer to the sea. It would simply be terrible to have the workers dirtying up what is going to be a beacon of elegance" added Notte.

Another nod came from Lakshmi in approval. She pondered the Lifprasilians that would be sent, and she only thought it fitting to send the woman-class, the gardening individuals, first. "I t-think I already have a roster that I can organize, w-what size will the other waves b-be?" questioned the Lifprasilian commander and general, and for now, the Lifprasilian Queen.

"I would wait for the success of our plans involving the large scale gardens. If its bountiful, we send in a lot, if not, we regulate the numbers according to the resources available" Piena explained.

"Yoo-hoo?" There came a lighthearted call from behind the obscuring illusion. Without an invitation, the handsome caller waltzed right through the false wall, not walking but quite literally dancing across the ground. He moved with careful grace and precision, executing each flair of the hand, an extension of the leg, whirling spin, and daring dip. Coming to a stop in a supplicant position, Allure executed a practiced bow. [color=E62020]"I am honored to be in the presence of the artisans of the muse!" he declared, not meeting their eyes. His braid hung over his left shoulder. "So rare is comeliness on the face of this contested world that a so much beauty in so little space is a paradise all its own." When he regained his full height, he found that he towered a head taller than the loftiest among his associates.

His hazel gaze fell upon the schematics on which the attention of Piena, Meimu, and not lay. Bending his elbow and laying it across his pectoral, he rested his head across the back of his hand and remarked, "That must be the plan for the grand community service project that is to come. As happy as I'm sure you are to realize that I, Allure, hero of beauty, will be lending my artful services to your build, endeavor to keep in mind that my talents lay for the most part outside the realm of creativity. Now, anything you need cut, crushed, carried, et cetera, that I would be pleased to do. On two whims I have pledged myself to this little diversion, and I will ensure that a gorgeous edifice never stood."

"Ah, Allure, I heard a lot about you, but so far I never had the chance to meet you in person" Piena moved on to greet him with a polite and firm handshake. "I'm pretty sure you know Notte already, and the other one is the oldest sister, Meimu."

The champion of beauty offered Piena a dazzling smile. This woman charmed him with her officiousness, and the austerity of her dress, form, and manner. When she shook his hand, his touch indicated that the gesture was unknown to him. "A shame that my eyes have never alighted on your before, madame. Notte neglected to mention sisters in our chance encounter."

"Hello" Meimu bowed from across the table "To think that despite the fact we were born from the same land, from the same plant even, we are only meeting now, after such a long time" she pondered.

This musing of Meimu's brought an odd look to Allure's flawless features, somewhere between amusement and confusion. "Born in the same land, from the same plant? How very...bizarre. My first memories are of awakening from a deep slumber next to a bed of dead roses." He cast a curious, almost suspicious glance Meimu's way.

"Now, about your works... Yes, you could help us by slicing up stones. But that would be a blink of an eye for someone like you no?" Piena added "I believe this is less of a request of services and more of an offering. Is there anything you want? Being on the ugly sides of the Citadel must be terribly boring!"

"Truly," Allure conceded, "My abode is agonizingly bland."

"We have a bit of everything, we have art supplies, we have good food, we have comfortable beds and the finest bathhouse in all of this land... also the only one" Meimu added

"Just please don't slice up our servants" Notte sighed.

Notte's preemptive disappointment brokered a light chuckle from Allure. "You mean the little-animated toys? Such contraptions are not subject to my criteria. Would you seek beauty in a slab of wood? Anyway, I would be most pleased with food and a more comfortable resting place than a stone slab. And while I'm certain the dust clinging to me adds a certain rugged appeal, I would delight in a chance to bathe. Of course, I haven't the slightest idea how. Perhaps I could request from one or more of you a demonstration?" He tilted his head back and chortled. "Ah, hah hah hah! I kid." Folding his arms, he awaited some sort of instruction on the divas' part.

Lakshmi watched the whole ordeal with a frown, sitting cross legged in the illusion that the muses had placed. She certainly didn't like Allure - but comparing his former behavior to what he had been expressing throughout the encounter gave her the feeling that he was...

Trying. That's a good start.

Whispers did not carry far between the colourless mass of root filaments. Those who come here lose their voice, and never regain the thought to try and speak. Some fall silent before they even arrive. Perhaps they see where their own feet take them through and beyond, and guess, in the dark part of the soul that knows the day and hour when death is due, that no other place will hold them than this.

But Jvan did not whisper.

"You summon the wrong gods, Fallen Devil."



To call it decomposition wouldn't be quite right, because Maize's corpse had been rotting as soon as it grew too lethargic to eat. It had relaxed, as an atrophying muscle relaxes, stretched and hung as the years began to blur into the constant sensation of roots creeping, creeping, almost audibly growing into the fiberling and encompassing it. The last visible strands of straw-yellow still stood in rigid alignment against a great drooping mass of sodden brown, but only because, like its permeating leafless tendrils, the cadaver had settled into a shape that would balance against gravity until eternity or the much nearer prospect of degradation.

It, too, had lost its voice, its ovary of speaking-angels assimilated into the growth. Only the glass machine still survived where those of the Hot-Blooded Guardian had shattered with the passing of that soul, and even this eye had cracked. The Jvanic orb glitched and malfunctioned in a rivulet of its own leakage that grew wider and duller with each passing year, like resin from a wounded tree.

What it saw creaked out into space, and only fragments of it echoed into the ears of its god. No need. It had been easy enough to watch the halt of all things in the aimless time. Curious, in the startling way of the unexpected twist, and Jvan had been relieved to go back to the rhythms of life. But wasn't the forsaken cragland more than compensation enough for the lapse? Melancholy, haunting was the place, and in so being, it was good.

So the device sat and seeped. It viewed little of much, and a great deal of little, for the vine-runners alone grew in around and over it, sprawling over its surface, hanging undisturbed by any wind. Through the years the sphere listened to soothing nothingness, and when that nothingness was punctured, the voice of the most dangerous god echoed deep into the canyons of Jvan's faraway mass, amplified with every bounce. Vestec had broadcast himself into the ether without a care, and his undisguised voice cut like the sight of a lit match surrounded by so much precious tinder.

A helpless speck of space ground its teeth, and the sagging cartilage and fat of the Holiest Mangle erupted, spinning, into being between the vines. Her gaze was wide, her pupils small.



"And for the wrong reasons."

The spinning mass of skin stopped dead; a dozen tongues screamed, roared and lolled. Its widest eye seized upon Vestec with an iris grained in shapes that were very far from human.

And instantly the shuddering hulk was linked to the tiny, colourful body of the mad deity with a carmine cataclysm of scalpelled fog that rent Galbar's universal laws with such brutality that they splintered and left only the twisting shapes of an Other-body below, a backbone, a lamprey that seared through the humanoid god and beyond, leaving only teeth and momentum. Momentum that blasted Vestec within and without, smashing him through the core of the planet and out far beyond the other side in a nanosecond.

Adrenaline unsteadied Jvan's gaze as she assessed the damage. There was a Vestec-shaped disruption in the earth, but no hole; She'd blasted him out with too much divine energy for physics to register the problem. He should have emerged somewhere in the East Metatic Ocean. By then he'd have lost some considerable speed, enough for the particles he passed through to undergo nuclear fusion from the force of impact. A sizeable explosion, but the worst it could do was leave some radioactive water on the ensuing tsunami. I think he'll be back. By light and life, let him. I'll be ready. For now, the peace of the Sepulchre had been preserved.

The pit was too small to admit Jvan's vessel, but she had given herself eyes to see and so she saw. Yes- Sister! There lay the Rottenbone, as she had been set down and laid still waiting. What was left of her.

"You are unhurt," whispered the goddess to the imperceptibly rattling skeleton under a pool of decay. "On my name, you are unhurt. Thank you. Thank you." Jvan released a deep, sour breath of anxiety. Her sister's death had gone undisturbed. The Deadwood remained silent and hollow. "And so it shall remain, if nothing else. And so it shall remain. This creation is a sacred place, and I shall not see it broken." Her eyes clinched shut against the coming water.

"I shall not!"

The command resounded and splintered on its echoes as it collided with the tangle of roots, a pulse that echoed until the echoes unwound back into a low groan. And, sinking into the hardened roots of the Deadwood, that groan expanded of its own accord. It was the rasp of creeping life, the slither of expansion, and it rose into a powerful crescendo.

Like a river tide that chases the sea, the vines and tendrils of the Forgotten Craglands sang outwards, cascading down the stone peaks to crawl over any obstacle they should encounter. Like an insidious odour, the mist followed behind the seething growth, and the two expanded southwards as one, assimilating the shapes they stood before them, crowning stone, strangling bone, following the lines of the rivers that were, the mouths of the long-silted Mahd. And when they tasted salt, the creepers only enlivened their surge to choke on the water. On the northern shore of the Sparkling Sea and beneath its waves, a leafless eldritch wood gnarled from the water, and slow, eyeless things with no legs and no brains crept up out of that stagnating broth that buried sea under the shallows of the Caliginous Mangrove.

Jvan, too, tasted that salt. Long after that cry faded, her eyes remained closed, her thoughts still deep. Her mouths bit her tongues, trying to force her throats to seize up.

We loved her too much. We let her lie down too quietly, and destruction nearly came upon her in the dusk. Now the stagnation has come to an end. It is inevitable.

There would not have been any way to block the call. Others would come, now, and some among them may be helpful. Jvan trusted the Muse and had faith in the Mother. The other two... Vulamera was likely as apathetic to this as to most sources of beauty. Astarte was lively but far from dangerous. Nevertheless, Slough's sleep would be broken, sooner or later, and change would come.

"Then let it be, sweet sister. It's time to wake up."

Jvan opened her eyes, and from them dripped a steady flow of stinging brine that fell onto the rim of the pit and became a river. Before it, the roots were bleached and stripped, and they came away in splinters. The thickened puddle of decay was dissolved, as were the leathery, hardened tatters of meat that had settled on Slough herself, showing white bone and faint traces of paler, fresher flesh beneath.

The pit became a glittering blue bath, and in it a washed skeleton, cleansed and freed from the prison of many years.

"Rise at your leisure, Rottenbone."

And so Jvan waited for the gods who were summoned to arrive, and for the first globules of new blackness, new putrescence to drip back into the pool and taint it once more, that the once-glorious cycle may resume.



Not so far away, Jvan caught herself looking at herself with her own Eye. Maize's corpse, too, had lain long, but it curried no such favour. "You've served your purpose well enough," muttered she, and the brittle straw wreck cracked and wrested its way from the dead growths, an empty pelt hovering as if from a peg, carrying great chunks of spongy root it was still embedded into and the remains of fetal speaking-angels that had popped out of the ovary as it decomposed. "Go." At her word the floating mess of hair was tossed deep into the tangle, where its weight cracked down into a serpentine nest of vines over which great horns of colourless trunk had grown, and some kind of bitter sulphur powder had crystalised upon the grave. A soul-glow twinkled, but Jvan was not looking to see the first rays of dragon-fire that reclaimed the body of her once-servant.

The Aimless Time had hit Galbar (And theoretically, Arcon) to its core, for a whole year life was neither dead nor alive, it was plastic, not at all different from whatever flower she might paint on a canvas. By a chain of events, that had also hit Ilunabar to her core, her nature made her easily bored even with a living universe, with a still universe, however...

Of course, she is not an explosive goddess, so one looking at her might not have a notion of how frustrated she was, the only hits being the constant frown, the restless leg and the occasional nail-biting. The anxiety made weeks look like longer periods of time than the eons between the beginning of the universe and the birth of the first cells in Galbar.

While at first she spent most of her time internally cursing the inability of her siblings or regretting the fact she gave the diva so much freedom just so they would spend their time with romance and silliness instead of producing interesting works. At no moment, she considered actually going after a solution for the Aimless Time, first, because she feared that the source of all this was going to be something as icky as the core of Jvan, second, because thanks to Piena's surreptitious use of Might to benefit the Furls, Ilunabar felt particularly weak.

By the last quarter of that time, however, she decided to take the chance, now that both Galbar had halted and Raka was somewhat vacant, now that nobody dreamed, to spend a time reviewing herself and her plans for the future. Creating a dreamland Arcadia for this purpose, she spent the last bits of the Aimless Time meditating and resting.

The return of the flow of dreams announced that it was time to focus on the real world again. Now with a renewed set of plans and a deeper understanding of herself, Ilunabar felt ready to start her post-phantasmagoria era.

She teleported into the Citadel, usually, that meant a beam of light and divine energy being left all over the place, but in this case, it didn't, on the contrary, it was a quite restrained and elegant arrival. While meditating in the temporally empty Raka, Ilunabar focused on controlling her energy, archiving a more balanced and contained aura, this, of course, had the practical effect of making her more "stealthy", but for her, it was a question of making her spiritual being as graceful as the visual one.

Back at her current "headquarters" in Galbar, Ilunabar felt like resuming her tasks, the course of action was now self-evident, as the stay in the emptied Raka also gave her the time to properly analyze the situation of heroism in Galbar, while there were some genuinely good-hearted heroes in the land, like Gerrik, Susa (*Lif's collab, coming soon) and Niciel's squad of angels, they were all very practical, with almost no worry for their image and legacy. Ilunabar wanted something beyond, true cavaliers, and she had found the perfect candidates for the roles, all she need to do was to find a particular fallen angel and one of Diaphane's eggs

But the muse barely the time to take a few steps into her study before she received the divine calling off her brother, Vestec. "He, of all beings, calling me? And to help Slough? I wonder what is going on" and with that, the muse traveled to where she had been called. To her surprise, once she arrived there, she did not meet the chaotic sibling, but her sister-in-arts Jvan.

Before she could question what had happened, however, she took notice of something quite disturbing: Slough. Somehow things had turned worse for the being, last time Ilunabar had cared to look at her she was adventuring with other beings, now, it had somehow turned into this disgusting sighting.

"This explains the terrible time of boredom that just transpired" she whispered, no wonder even Vestec had decided it was time to stop giggling around and do something

"But, I do not see a course of action I could take, this is not something a song or a dream could fix. Unless its expected of me to create an illusion around Slough to make her look less skeletal." in a sense, yes, she could, if she spent her energy or somehow used Meimu's mixed aura, but why do that if others would probably fix the problem for her? In her mind, it was a justified decision, her ambition was more important than looking like the nicest sister.

Life had Died. But it had not died on Galbar. It had died long ago, and all knew it. What lay before them now was not the final resting place of Life. Its final resting place had been somewhere aforetime. Life itself had known that simple fact, and had wept to know it, and had run from it and striven to forget it. But forgetfulness could not remove the truth: Life had never truly blossomed on these Galbarian plains. Only the mockery of Life had, only the shadow of her glory and beauty had entered this World. And that was why those who professed to be lovers of beauty had hated her so, had hunted her so, and had sought her death with such vigour and resolve.

Ignoring the Jvanic presence and the Chaotic One who had been so unceremoniously removed by it, the Vicegerent descended towards the resting place of the deer. Even as he descended, its corpse rose up towards him, carried by a large, living tree trunk. As he looked, a small forcefield grew around the deer and the oaken trunk grew around it and created a cocoon for the body not dissimilar to the one they had housed it in so long ago. But he had not contributed to the cure back then, for it had been utterly futile. They had worried over her and created a ruckus, and they had raced to influence her all. Never could have a healthy fruit bloomed from so many divided wills and messages. What Life had needed then was a united, singular, Fated will. That it had not received, and it had not been Fated to receive. This Time it would be different. This Time it would be given what it needed to bloom.

He could not say with certainty that Life would return to Life - for only Life could will such a thing - but he could offer it the power, the will, and the Time it needed. Not merely length of Time, but the ability to return to that brief moment in pre-existence, to that brief moment in Time before Time, when Life beat strongly within the heart of Life.

But it did not matter, in the end, how earnestly one led the thirsty animal to water; how sincerely one led the flock to safety; how truthfully one endeavoured towards the salvation of one's brethren, if the creature, the flock, those brethren did not wish for any of it. You could lead the horse to water, as the saying went - though he knew not who had first said - but you can't make it drink.

And so he strengthened the forcefield with his own strength, and he placed within the bark of the cocoon his own bark and wood, and he imbued it with the supreme energies of the Timeline and severed all ties between the present of the world outside the cocoon and the reality of what was within the cocoon. None would be able to penetrate it in order to affect the deer. None divided purpose or will would there be this Time. And as Fate willed, so would it be. And as the energies of Life willed, as they fought and struggled for survival, so would it be.

The wooden cocoon was severed from the trunk and Vowzra, without a look towards the Jvanic entity which stood guard nearby, considered something strange. He considered, for a few brief moments, going agains the direct will of Fate and blasting the unnatural creature into nothingness, but he knew that there was a certain djinni out there whose honour that would one day be. Till then, even this unnatural entity had a Fated purpose, even if Vowzra, with all his Sight, could not entirely See it.

There was, however, something else that he had not Seen before, but could now See. His gaze turned and his Eyes pierced one of the tombs. In it was an all too familiar soul.

Without further comment, he melted away into the fabric of existence, taking the cocoon - and the familiar tomb - with him.



Garagogarag Ogorogo knew not what to make of the strange wooden orb that had appeared overnight and embedded itself into one of the living root of Old Bark-Skin. It was a rather large orb, there was no denying. Large enough to fit two Treeminds inside it with ease. Those who had seen it when it came said that it came from the skies, from the Solitary Mount itself. Garagogarag Ogorogo knew not what to make of this, but he told his Tree-Arms to stand down. It would do no good for them to destroy something that had come from the holy mount, and he would not be the Tree-Claw who brought calamity and strife upon the Treeminds.

'Let the Heaven-Orb be, the Life has brought it here. Who are we to question the Will of the Life? We must as the Life commands obey,' and with that the Tree-Claw and his Arms turned away from the strange orb, and the young cubs came towards it, and touched it, and they climbed upon it and found comfort in it and warmth, and they slept upon it and beside it, and perhaps the orb found comfort and warmth in them too.

Might: 14

Freepoint: 2

Vestec became wary as soon as he heard Jvan's voice. It didn't sound like the voice of someone trying to help. Slowly his colors turned the red of violence, and he looked around. "Now Jvan...lets not do anything stupid." Somehow, he doubted that the Goddess of Beauty was going to be sensible about this. As the avatar suddenly burst into existence, he threw up a shield of chaos energy around him. It turned out to be a good decision. He only had a moment to brace, and suddenly he was being through through the world. Well, not precisely the world. More like the fabric of the world. Point was, his shield was gone and he was flying through the planet at a very fast speed. Something's going to die when I reach the other side. Vestec thought, giggling.

He could, of course, have just gone to his realm of Madness. But where would the fun have been in that?

BOOM!

Vestec exploded on the other side of the planet, evaporating hundreds of gallons of water in an instant. Of course, the waters all around him began to flood in to fill where the water had gone, but the Metatic ocean wouldn't be the same level for many years. Without missing a beat, Vestec drove himself through the planet, tearing a small hole through it and appearing back where he had been. "That was rude." Vestec giggled. "Amusing. But Rude." He cracked his neck, shaking bits of lava off himself. A completely unnecessary thing, given he could just will it all away, but it gave him something to do other than stand there looking at Jvan's horrific Avatar. "Don't do something like that again, or there will be consequences. I'm here to help, not harm...this time."

He looked up, just in time to catch Illunabar's fleeting essence. Refuse to help now, Sister, and I will make you regret it later. He called out.

Then of course, Vowzra had to shove his nose in the business. Without so much as a 'hello, it's me' or a 'goodbye' he entombed Slough, and took her and another grave away. "So many people being Rude today!" Vestec giggled, following Vowzra. In an instant he was in the far frigid north, looking down upon a very large forest, and a small clan of bears. Walking bears. "My, my. Vowzra, what have you been hiding from me?" Slough was safe in her cocoon, and evidently nothing was going to be getting to her anytime soon. Besides, he had much more interesting things to play with now.

It didn't take long for him to find a tribe. They were few, these Tree-minds, but there were several different tribes to choose from. "Yes...you'll all do nicely." In a flash of multicolored light, they were gone. The Tree-claw, the Hunters, the cubs, all of them. Nothing but an empty clearing where they had been.

A message from Vestec, followed by a burst of divine energy the likes of Jvan's. Then a hole was torn right through the planet and shortly after, the Divine Scene was relatively quiet again.

That's when Astarte chose to reply to Vestec's message, by nothing less than showing up at the place from where he had sent it from.

It turned out to be the Deadwood Sepulchre, A small playground of sorts to Slough. Only it wasn't a playground, and it wasn't small. Truly, Astarte doubted anything or anyone would ever dare play in the place. The mere air seemed unnaturally still. So Astarte looked around.

"AH!"

She jumped behind a nearby rock once she saw the thing. The thing was an abomination. Horrifying, ugly, shouldn't even be alive and in need of being subject to Illunabar's prettifying touch. It seemed to be investigating a place nearby. Where Slough had been up until now, Astarte expected.

Ugh, Astarte groaned and brought a hand to her nose, this thing reeks like Big after two months of not taking a bath.

The thing's ugliness hopefully wasn't contagious, so Astarte had no reason to keep hiding. She stood up, walked over to the gag-inducing bunch of flesh, and spoke up.

"You should go ask Illunabar for a perfume, Jvan's mole." Astarte said as she avoided looking at the thing. With that, Astarte disappeared from the Sepulchre and sent Vestec a message.

'Vestec! You send me a message and when I go meet you, you're no longer there. Tell me where you are now so I can drop a rock on your head, you faceless loony.'

Niciel had received a message from Vestec, which immediately put her on high alert. After his little stunt last time, she certainly had no reason to trust him ever again. Niciel was certainly unwilling to accept the invite in case of a possibly disastrous face-to-face meeting, but with the mention of Slough needing help, she couldn't bring herself to say no. Even so, it took her a while to finally come to accepting it and teleporting to the Deadwood Sepulchre.

A number of Gods and Goddesses had already arrived, whether by Avatar or in person. There was Jvan's Eye and Astarte's lingering essence, and Niciel could even feel Vowzra's powerful essence coming from the cocoon of bark, suggesting that he had appeared as well. One quick look at the cocoon was enough for Niciel to tell that there was no need for her to help Slough now. She couldn't even tell if Slough was actually inside the coffin, but considering the nature of the situation, Niciel doubted that there could be anything else inside it.

However, even though there was no need to help Slough, Niciel felt bad for the deer goddess. Niciel realized that she had been spending too much time on her own problems with the Angels, so much that she had neglected the other Gods and Goddesses to the point of nearly forgetting a number of them existed. Niciel intended to make up for it, at least a little, by helping out in her own way. Raising an upturned hand, Niciel concentrated her power, creating six green Life Wisps that revolved in her palm, all of them more powerful than the ones Niciel had at the Nice Mountains. Then, Niciel drew from each of the orbs a bit of power and created the Orb of Life. Were it not for Vowzra's barrier, Niciel would have given the Orb of Life to Slough immediately. Despite that, though, Niciel had an idea. Placing the Orb of Life on top of the cocoon, Niciel created a barrier of her own around it, weaker than Vowzra's, but definitely powerful in its own right. It would fade almost immediately when Slough would be freed, and the Life Wisps would present it to Slough as a gift.

Niciel pondered the idea further, wondering if it could be perfected further to ensure that it would not go awry, and decided to call upon a few nearby Wisps to ensure that the barrier would hold until the time was right. The Life Wisps would revolve around Vowzra's cocoon, waiting for the time to come, while the other Wisps would revolve around Niciel's barrier that held the Orb of Life, ensuring that it would hold and alert Niciel through the Orb of Escry should something go horribly awry. Satisfied, Niciel looked at the cocoon one last time before returning to the Nice Mountains in a flash of light.

What an amazing bravado, Ilunabar thought, all Siblings were created somewhat equal, but the ones that decided to lounge simply drifted away in the ever changing cosmos, with that in mind, Vestec decision to antagonize with every single deity in one way or another was interesting and surely something that would keep him away from becoming irrelevant on Fate's parade... In fact, there was one who had similar ideas once, one that promised to test everything, yet the challenge never arrived, at least not trough his words.

"I will keep that in mind brother, it was never my will to offend you, I'm merely fatigued" she explained, knowing very well it didn't matter "Good luck, too" she said as he vanished, and it was a somewhat sincere wish even if it had little goodwill beyond her simple quest for interesting tales, after all, he would need it, Tricksters are not unlike Acrobats, they might put up an amazing show, but a single error is enough to send everything down into the ground.

With Vestec's, Vowzra's and Niciel's departure, the Slough Situation was apparently finished for the time being. "And I do hope I never have to go trough the Aimless Times again, or else I will be forced to make some serious artistic interventions" she whispered to herself, biting one of her nails out of habit. "Now excuse me, sisters, Galbar moves again and I have to make sure the actors are ready for the next act" and with that, she was back at her quarters in the Celestial Citadel.

Piena could very well be here to help her with the next actions, but she had promised herself to not pull the Diva's strings, they provided a much needed second opinion on many issues and it was not the Muse's wish to change that. Oh well, Beauty finds its way. Furthermore, the task to bring Heroism to Galbar wasn't particularly hard, it was merely tricky, especially because heroes already walked the earth, all they lacked was a proper imagery, a transition from the champions of the gods to the champions of the mortals.

"I have yet to fully take account of the interaction of Mortal and Gods, but considering recent events, it's hard to wait any longer until taking action" mused the Muse.

---

Angels were quite a folk, the perfect expression of Niciel's style, down to the color coded hair. In times of past they lived under Niciel's protection, recent actions, however, forced them to spread, taking on the noble mission of gifting mortals with Niciel's womb-like warmth. Which in Ilunabar's opinion is fine, not exactly her taste, but among the everloving chaos of Galbar it was a nice change of pace.

But of course, there was more to parenting than nesting. Sometimes parents had to teach their kids not to play with fire the hard way. Lifprasil was already studying the meaning and application of authority, but it was mostly based on commanding, the average Hain and Human parent worked differently, they didn't drag or hypnotize their kids to their bed, they simply said "Go to sleep, or else...", this places the responsibility in the hand of the youngling instead of the authority figure.

More research was necessary ,however, Ilunabar really wanted to understand the oddities and interactions of the mortal family, but the key moments were far too short lived and the examples far too small for a goddess to understand, and while gods did at times create children, the prospect of developing some sort of union of care and love between deities was laughable. "And thanks Fate for that, imagine poor Lifprasil having to share a house with Vulamera and Vestec, being a quasi-orphan is clearly the merciful end"

Either way, the solution to the complication was obvious: "Let's create some sort of superior parental figure", a being whose name would be the one used to convince kids to sleep on time, but also to reassure them that there is no need to worry about monsters under their beds. A paragon of what mortals consider "good", but not an enforcer, at least, not all the time.

And naturally, the chance to create such figure was present trough Angels, creatures born from the motherly love of Niciel, but, as mentioned before, just Niciel wouldn't do, thankfully Vestec's actions had led astray some Angels, not all of them being the corrupted creates of his army.

One, in particular, was exceptional, she always had a problem with the way Angel society was structured, despite their kindness, being a lower cast was still being lower, and that would be alright if she did not feel she was in a lower position for the wrong reasons, see, genetics is a wild thing, perhaps thanks to the wild nature of the creator of life, Slough, and mutations just happen. One such involved the daughter of two yellow-haired angels, Falasha, and Theofeleios, her hair was black, of course, everyone, in their kindness, told it was nothing, no problem, but still, "Isn't it odd? To not follow Niciel's design like that?" and of course, once the war started, "Fallen Angels also lose the color of their hair, not implying anything, but, you know..."

This physiologically set up her in an odd way, in which while she resented the society, she also had the ambition of becoming a paragon of its values. Once the patrols ventured farther away from the Nice Valley, she decided to go beyond simply hunting down chaotic creatures of Vestec, but to outright stamp out wickedness and villainy among mortals. It felt righteous, and the cheers of villagers were somewhat addicting, even if...

"You know those are not the ways of Niciel, right?" said a mysterious woman, the angel did not know from where she came from, but somehow she felt compelled to answer

"But it's not wrong either, is it?" said Makeda "I'm protecting those hard working people from vile raiders. If it is rightful to slay vestec's monster, why shouldn't I do the same to a Hain who steals?"

"Perhaps, but is it effective? To hunt down robbers in the night while hiding from your comrades. You know they have been commenting about how tired you are during the midday scouting, there is even talk about a demotion, another rank away from the caste of your parents! I do wonder, why! Are you truly that incompetent?"

"Wha..." Makeda had no idea how that woman could possibly know such secrets, was this a trick by the armies of chaos? She didn't feel any corruption in her, though.

"But you truly don't have to worry about that anymore, most of your patrol is no more, ambushed in the dead of the night by the corrupt. Now half of your team fights the other half, and I doubt they will last much longer" the stranger smiled "Thankfully you are here and not there, you can easily escape back to Nice Valley"

"Half of the team? That would be what... 5 soldiers? I can't possibly fight them all"

"There is no shame is going home, little Makeda, you know they will be nice to you, and offer the kindest words of consolation. Of course, you also know, there will be whispered comments, just like the old ones..."

"Damn it all to the depths of the void" the angel thundered before taking flight

The woman followed her with no effort whatsoever "Now listen, dearheart, first things first, no tears of anger, they will blurry your view. Second thing, your armor is pretty dull..."

"My armor is not a sword, you... you... kooky phantom!"

"It might not be your sword but it is your main piece dear, and you need a piercing look for what you are going to do, so here" with a swing of her hand, the armor of the Angel becomes tinted in a glittering gold color "See, pretty knightly, plus gold goes well with your beautiful dark hair"

"It isn't b..."

"Sugar, I'm the final word on what is beautiful or not, and it is. Now focus! See your camp down there? You want blunt force so make a mace or a hammer out of your angel energy. In their point of view you are no different from a twinkling star in the sky, and we want to use that to strike an image, I'm going to make an attention grabbing sound so they look up, then you dive down in blazing glory and take out that one guy there in a single strike"

Makeda is confused, but at this point, she has no option, so she might as well follow everything the woman says. She isn't with the hordes so clearly she can't be that bad. Suddenly dropping from the sky, a move considered "reckless" by her combat instructors, the angel dove right in the middle of the ongoing combat, smashing one of the corrupted angels to the ground as she landed.

"Okay! Critical time, I made a few illusory lines on your vision, strike with a sword on the red line then throw knives behind you using the blue line"

And she follows it, slashing open the neck of a fallen angel with perfect timing before throwing the knife over her shoulders, hitting the forehead of an unsuspectingly fallen ambusher who was ready to attack her. Curiosity peaked, and she tried to look back to see if she had managed to successfully kill the enemy, but soon she noticed her head was locked in its position

"No looking back! It's dead, trust me. So, I have lent you a bit of my power to unlock the magic potential unlocked by one of my sisters, but don't just go spell slinging, do it with style, here, follow what I say..."

"By the countless suns of Ull'Yang, begone fiend!" and with that flames burst from the angel's hand, she knows it's merely a burst of her own energy with some sort of stylization, still, it made one enemy burst into flames, that is all she could ask for.

"Enemy to your left, just stare"

And with the mere glance of Makeda's eyes, the last angel freezes in its place. Perhaps the illusions of otherworldly terror cast by Ilunabar into the fallen's eyes did have a part in that effect, but that was a detail that the angel in golden armor didn't need to know. Finally, the corrupted mind starts to "recover itself" and the chaotic angel moves again. Sadly for it, a lance of angelical power quickly pierced its heart in response.

Only now, as the heat of the battle died, did Makeda realize what she had just done. To her side her surviving, not-corrupted companions, stared in bewilderment, they had all seen warriors far more skilled than even the heroic Makeda, but never like this, never with such a timing, with such glory. The dark haired angel didn't respond to the curious looks of her friends, for the phantom woman who had been talking to her had just revealed a most concerning hero.

"Lahabiel. Stand up"

The inquired angel's face suddenly filled with horror

"Isn't it mysterious? That half of our team abruptly succumbed to corruption?"

"It is...W-Why?"

"Corruption has many forms, the lowest of them, is the willing one, dear brother."

The angel felt without action, one side wanted to react violently or flee, but deep down, he knew it was of no use. All he could do was tremble in fear.

"The All-Seeing eye of Vulamera has revealed thy crimes" as she spoke, phantasmagorical images and sounds of the angel's crime formed around her. His boredom in the valley, his wish for more, his greed, the slow mental corruption that the forces of Chaos had merely to call into their wicked quest.

"Those are depraved actions, but you are still within the responsibility of the ever merciful Niciel. Perhaps she might gift you with the chance of redemption." She stared at him with cold, golden eyes.

##########

"Why couldn't I judge him myself? He is a wicked fiend!" Makeda complained

"He probably won't ever think of anything vile ever again, and this should make the waves of your action a bit more positives among the angels of the valley and Niciel herself"

"A bit more? Why do you think they would be negative?"

"Well sweetie, you are technically a fallen angel. You have forsaken Niciel's care to seek powers from beyond."

"Wait, did I?" She inquired

"Of course, you did, Endless Suns of Ull'Yang, All-Seeing Eye of Vulamera, which were fake back there, but are true things, and I doubt you aren't feeling curious to get to known what they truly are"

"I am..."

"And of course, the direct help of your PR agent, Ilunabar. Either way, did you like the feeling while you did what I said?"

"It was... pretty swell"

"I didn't do anything but to help you deal with your potential, that person was you. Do you want to be like that? "

"Will you teach me?"

"I will give you the chance to learn"

---

"I shouldn't really be getting out on experimental tangents, but truly, it's a bit too tempting, the consequences of failure are soft and the possibilities are high," said Ilunabar to herself as she kept examining the egg she had tracked down.

While Makeda would surely work well as a tradition hero, a golden knight of very strict codes, once she was properly trained, Ilunabar wanted to bend the concept a bit more. She knew the angelical heroine would be distant, a concept who acted in key situations to make sure her prestige is well known, all of course, with the imagery to make her look heroic.

And that was perhaps the key of why she wanted to create a second hero, even if she ascended a Hain, a Pronobii, a Human, they would still be of this world, they would still know that heroism isn't what storytellers tell. Even the innocent angels of Nice Valley knew very well about orders, castes and that tales of justice are just tales. The reality, like cancer, corrupted the fantasy.

There were exceptions however, some beings were better at deluding themselves, first and foremost, Ilunabar herself, but that wouldn't do. Then there was Jvan and Zephyrion, and by Fata's chance, there were little spawns that mixed Zephyrion's haughtiness and Jvan's outlandishness, a perfect recipe for a person deranged enough to believe in justice even when tedious reality yells the opposite.

To add to the confusion, Ilunabar was not planning to let the child born from the Diaphane's egg grow on Galbar, oh no, the whole place was tainted with Logos' rules and Vestec's reactivity, Change Eaters feed on energy, and the Muse had a whole dimension full of that. That was killing two birds with one stone even, since it would also be a good way to continue the testing that the Phantasmagoria was.

Ever since Vowzra's visit, some dreams in the Raka had a flow of time a bit different than the normal, that would be the perfect place to grow the egg. In the heights of the Simulacrum, Ilunabar shaped a comely world, where a child could grow without having to worry about horrors or even chores, instead, she would be feed a lot of stories about fantastic acts of heroism. This was what the muse called Phase 1, an idyllic childhood in a green paradise.

Of course, before that she would need to shape the shapeshifter, Jvan's designs were... peculiar, and while interesting trough the revolting, they were not the kind of imagery that would become popular. Yes, Ilunabar's plans with the second here were to create something ludicrous, that didn't mean the heroine had to be hated, on the contrary, to have the mortals of galbar actually believing in her nonsense, would be the best scenario possible.

"And that is why I called you three here, I know you are busy with Lifcity, even if oddly unable to actually tell me what you have done. First, the name, I'm thinking in Chroma..."

"Mahocromatic" suggested Meimu

"Mahocromantyc" countered Notte

"Captain Mahocromantyc, The First Jvanger" finished Piena

"Nah, you know what, I can do this myself. Go back to Lif and Lakshmi. Oh yeah, Piena, you are trying to make the Quara Korala survive right? About that, there has been another Tsunami on the Porcelain Sea."

"What? Again? I cannot believe this, I'm trying my best but disaster just keeps striking. This can't get any worse"

"Did I say that the wave was also radioactive?"

Heartworm's vehicle drooped a little and then stiffened again, a tired little full-body nod. "Wise enough call, dear muse. We each have our style." Of course Illunabar had been the first to come, and of course her own view mimicked Jvan's reluctance to intervene. Were they not sisters? Yes, and the Rottenbone was its own artist. Let there be collaboration; Let there also be diversity.

But there are those, ever, who wish to stifle diversity and crush it underfoot.

At least this time, the Timeless Abomination did not hide his true face with mockery and jest.

It was horror such as Jvan had never imagined and was forced to watch unfold as surely as if she had been tied back with chains, for Vowzra had always committed crimes in his own time, and all other events are viscous and slow in the face of him. Watch she did.

The Riddler indulged himself in lavish irony, imprisoning the Deer God in a box that lived, that fetishised one of her moods and ignored the plurality of what she was. And a horrific dungeon it was, for in it was poured unspeakable power, creative energy not only wasted on destruction but on the suppression of life and beauty. Blasphemy against the Rottenbone. Heresy as the Universe had never seen before.

The birth of Vulamera and the corruption of Vestec paled before this, the zenith of all chaos, the pinnacle of divine abuse.

And Jvan was forced to watch...



The coma broke. Some time (TIME) had passed.

Jvan had some memories in the period between now and... What had transpired. She remembered Illunabar (TRAITOR SISTER WHY), leaving, quietly, and as she had promised, without intervention (NO THIS IS DIFFERENT). Then Vestec (JUST A JOKER WHO CARES) had made his way back and said some words. She thought she could recall screaming at him. Maybe through a speaking-angel, maybe directly through the ether, who knew? Something along the lines of (I'LL SHOW YOU HARM LITTLE BOY I WILL REPEAT MYSELF A THOUSAND TIMES TO DEFEND HER BUT NOW SHE'S GONE HAHAHAHA LET ME DIE), but the memory was rather foggy, and she couldn't say for sure what words she'd used. A saviour had come in the form of Niciel, who had blipped in (HELP) and back out to chase the egg (BLASPHEMY HERESY CRIME ABOMINATION DESPICABLE WHY) and, most likely, pursue her duty to rescue Slough from its cruelty- But what could she do, really? Their sister was sealed away so tightly she might as well never have been born. Jvan knew exactly where, as if it mattered. She had thrown eyes at it, straight out of the sockets she had borrowed from Heartworm.

At some point Astarte had come, spoken (THIS WORLD IS RUINED WHY SHOULDN'T I REEK), and left, and Jvan thought she had envied the innocent purity with which she ran through life.

And then she was alone.

"...Why is it all so damn cruel?" And then, taking her borrowed body as if in a great hand, she had thrown it at the bottom of the Deadwood where it cracked and splat. "Why?" The body rose, high, and she tossed it down again, shattering wood and cartilage. "Why?" Jvan wailed like a child.

Again and again she smashed her loyal undermind's body against the earth below, and each time screamed that syllable, 'why'. She tossed the increasingly broken toy left and right, faster and faster, tossed it down into the valleys and up against the cliffs, leaving smears of pink and grease and bits of gristle, only to feel it come apart in her grip- Good! -and ditch it at the ground with all her strength until the stringy veins and tendons that still held bits of it together started to come apart and she did not stop until there was gore everywhere and the last piece was too small for her to pilot and she was just a worm, just a toothy little worm with blank eyes, just curling up on a misty rock against the cold and the loneliness and the failure and

And far away her true, grey cathedral body cringed along with her mind, ground itself into the ground and tried to chew itself up and shake itself apart and bite and vomit and twist and

And there was a point where the effort wasn't really going anywhere anymore and there was nothing left of the vehicle to break anymore and Jvan wasn't even looking anymore and somewhere in the Deadwood an unwatched worm's grey eyes began to inflate with blood like they had been waiting to do as soon as the leash was cut and it could slip away again and be free and experiment and

And in the ocean that sheltered the greyness the Child God grew sick of herself sick of the world and sick of watching time pass and just wanted to sleep and hide and go somewhere else, anywhere else, and so she took up her body like it was a great blanket and hid her mind deep down in it, and burrowed, burned, chased the shapes that had once been so pretty, fell down into the scintillating fractals that led down and down and down into forever. And she followed them.

Drowning out the world, shutting everything off to hide, Jvan looked into herself and took up the colours and patterns that she had come from in the pre-world. This was the basic unit, the simplest, most abstract form of all there was. Down here in the hedonist mathematics, nothing mattered. No emotions, no desires, no memories and no restrictions, only shades of paint in a place without the burden of watching time pass. So Jvan painted.

And painted.

And painted.



Jvan woke up and she was tired. I'm a mess. And, yes, she was, internally. Inside her there was a slew of patterns and weavings, shapes and angles of absurd complexity. They'd been made without the assistance of time, and would likely take an eternity to unravel, but she did not mean to go over them. Those patterns were already well known to her. For a while, they had been all she'd known, and, deep inside, Jvan knew that some weighty chunk of her had been irreparably rewired. Would always think in the abstract. Was too wounded to ever fully return to concentrating on the superficial things like life and love.

Oh yes, she was a mess, in body and mind, though to Jvan those two things are synonymous. For now she was recovering, piece by piece, but it would still take time.

Time. Damn him.

How much time had passed in the real world? Not very much. In the end phase of her sickness, she had blotted it out and discarded the concept. Its passage reminded her too much of the blasphemous thing (HELP) that had happened.

Clink.

Vowzra needs to die. While the tyrant lived and still reigned supreme over the fundamental measure of universal progress, this world could never be whole. No wonder he listened only to the void, and proclaimed himself its viceregent! Vowzra was no god, but some horrible, powerful thing that had crawled out of the Hells of Time to bring chaos to Galbar. Jvan doubted he could ever be repaired. Vestec? Infuriating. Also passing. Such meddling was mild compared to the imprisonment of Slough Rottenbone.

But... Not now.

Her wounds were still tender, the broken memory still fresh. No, not now. Not even soon. She didn't want to think about it. For now, she just wanted to sleep a while. Run away from the world a little longer.

Astarte has the right idea.

Ruins, death, despair, fear, that was all that remained here. Kyre's form walked through the remains of a Hain village, bodies strewn about the the place. All of them beaten and bludgeoned to death, some buried in the rubble. He caused this, he gave Vestec motivation to do it. And it was entertainment to him. Kyre heard movement to his right, and with hope he was there.

A hain, crawling across the destruction with one arm, the only limb on it not broken. But... It was in vain, for upon Kyre letting his senses reach out to the area, he knew him to already be dead, a corpse continuing to move through sheer force of will from when it died. He looked to see where it was going, and his eyes closed in sadness. The corpse's goal, was its family, its wife and child that died huddled together against a small rock wall, their cause of death no different from the rest.

He walked with it, slowly, matching its pace, matching his pace, until the Hain reached its destination, its body collapsing against the pair, now reunited. He could've sworn he heard a whisper in the air, Thank you...

Kyre, guilt heavy in his heart, walked and floated to a nearby hill overlooking the area. There he sat, for the first time since he came to be not sure what to do.

Yet Kyre had not been sitting for too long before he was joined by another being. Flying in a rapid arc across the sky, then slowing to a gentle landing not far from Kyre, came Teknall. He walked up next to the god of war and stood beside him, looking upon the ruined village below. His eyes and beak drooped in sorrow at the sight of the needless slaughter which had taken place, the loss of life and talent, and for a minute of silence he shared with Kyre in his mourning.

Finally, Teknall spoke, softly yet seriously. "It is a dreadful thing Vestec is doing. I have done what I can to stop it, though. A large army of Urtelem is on the way to intercept the horde of Ashlings and ice people. I have fortified a village and prepared an ambush from the earth and sky in the path of the corrupted Hain and Angels. I have roused Zephyrion and his elementals against the corrupted djinn. The horde carried by the gargantuan beast, there wasn't much I could do, but others are already moving to stop it." Despite the likely victories which Teknall spoke of, his tone was still sombre and melancholy.

"But my preparations so far will all be for naught if Vestec's Avatar remains in this war. You may have noticed it. I am not sure what its capabilities are, but it will be more than enough to overwhelm any mortals in its path." He swept his hand out over the ruined village ahead of them. "If we don't stop it, then there will be countless more scenes like this."

Kyre was grateful when his brother god had found him, and instead of immediately speaking, shared in his mourning. Then, he spoke, and Kyre listened while his gaze remained fixed upon the village. There was a pause after Teknall finished, "It... It is all my fault. I made the mistake of speaking to Vestec, confronting him about the hordes he was building, and in response he sent them on a march to kill and destroy anything in their path." Another pause, "In my anger at what I discovered of the Pronobii, I asked Vestec to ensure they are set back and I would do what I could about the hordes in a way that..."

"In return, he tried to make a deal with me, and I refused for how vague it was. As a result, he decided to create that avatar you spoke of, and sent it to lead a horde..." He looked to Teknall, his expression giving away guilt and sadness for what he felt he had caused, "Tell me, just what can I do that won't make things worse? I am... at a loss."

Teknall paused for a moment to digest what Kyre had said. It didn't shock or surprise him nearly as much as might be expected, for he too knew how much Vestec could distort words and intentions. He replied, "The way I see it, there are two ways you can help stop the Avatar. The easy way is to agree to Vestec's deal, which I have negotiated down to just one favor to remove the Avatar.

"However, I can understand if you object to that. In which case, the second option, the hard way, is to help me kill it. You can create an Avatar of your own to fight it, although you won't be alone. I'll make my own if we go down this path, and I have a favor I can redeem for a third. Either option is adequate to avert the devastation which will be caused by Vestec's Avatar, although the choice really rests with you."

"Negotiated down..." His gaze shifted to look at their surroundings, taking in the sight of the terrain as he watched in thought, "You struck a deal with him, didn't you? Tell me the truth, brother. Tell me what happened." Kyre now looked to Teknall again, his expression harder to decipher this time.

Teknall's face drooped in shame. Slowly Teknall told Kyre, "I was there when Vestec's avatar arrived, and Vestec came to me soon after. I knew that it would be able to kill any mortals in its path, and I had far more at stake than you do. Seeking to avert the disaster, I offered him a favor in your place. However, I was unclear in my wording, so he twisted my intent, so rather than removing his Avatar, he merely delayed the horde, 'slowed them down', for thirty days. That is how long we now have to prepare."

The Warrior God's expression blanked, the realization that another had tried to make a deal in his place sinking in. Who else might try to do the same? Would he let it happen again in his place?

Would he...?

No, he would not. He will not.

Slowly, Kyre stood, resolute determination clear. "A month to prepare, for that battle alone. You have already told me of your other plans, and that the gargantuan beast is being prepared for by others." Kyre's form changed, morphed, from an armored statue into the form of a Hain of powerful stature, a spear of stone appearing in his right hand, "No more will I be an observer. It is time I became involved on Galbar," He raised his left hand toward the ruins of the village, and suddenly it all appeared to disintegrate into ash and flow towards him, "First, where is our fellow god of chaos?" The ashes gathered and condensed into a ball in his palm, the only sign of there once being a village being the worn paths through the grass and the patches of dirt where the homes once were.

"Last I saw him, he was near that horde of Hain and Fallen Angels," Teknall replied, pointing in the direction of the distant horde. "Although even if he isn't there, his avatar is, so it'll be a good place to find him."

"Very well, would you lead the way?"

The two gods flew across the sky until they were hovering high above the bog where the horde led by Violence was camped. The horde was oddly...lethargic. Shambling about from place to place, sitting on the ground staring at nothing, not seeming very motivated to do anything. They were spread out, clearly not ready to do anything more than roll over and die if the fight came to them. An air of depression hung over the camp. The only thing that was lively and happy in there was Vestec's Avatar, juggling balls of chaos energy in its hands as it looked around and giggled at its all imposing army.

"Kyre, Teknall!" The Avatar greeted as it sensed the two Gods floating above the mob. Its voice carried enough that the two could hear it perfectly. "I see Kyre has come armed this time. No favors then? A pity. The Hain would have appreciated a break."

Kyre floated down to the Avatar before he responded, "I have indeed come armed this time, but you have assumed wrong. Is Vestec listening through you?"

The Avatar shook it's head, as if exasperated by the lack of knowledge displayed. When he spoke, it was as if to a small child. "I am Vestec, Vestec is me. His body is elsewhere, our mind is focused on both of these things. What deal do you propose, God of War?"

If Kyre was in the mood to, he would have smirked and rolled his eyes at Vestec's response and tone, as if chaos really cared about such things. "I simply felt I should ask anyway." A pause, before he continued, "Teknall has told me of the deal he already made with you, so here is mine: Both Grot and the horde he is with are to be slowed down for as long as this horde is, what do you say of this?"

"What are you offering in return for me slowing down Grot and his friends?" The avatar inquired. Vestec, after all, wasn't going to just do it because the God of war asked nicely. There would have to be recompense for slowing down his men.

"A favor, which is what you wanted before, the ability to call in that favor whenever you wish. However, it will only involve a blessing or curse." He waited.

"Hmm. This is acceptable." Vestec's avatar snapped it's fingers. "There. All slowed down." It giggled. "For thirty days."

A nod from Kyre, and the god of war drifted back up to Teknall. After getting far enough away from the avatar, he spoke, "Where is this battle to take place? It is time I taught combat to sentients."

Teknall pointed westwards, where Kyre would see a village over the horizon. "Preparations are being made over there. You will find my servant Gerrik Far-Teacher organizing them. I'm sure they will appreciate some formal training. In particular, if you can teach Gerrik to use his bow better, that would be good. He is a skilled hunter, but not a warrior, so learning to fight properly will be of benefit for him."

"Very well, he and a few others will be the first I teach. Shall we be off?" Kyre turned and flew off toward the village, thinking Teknall would follow him but not expecting him to.

"Yes, it is time to prepare," Teknall said. "I shall go make other preparations, although if you really need to you can liaise with me through Gerrik. I'll see you again soon. And don't take too long to prepare your Avatar." Teknall waved farewell before he split off from Kyre and flew in a northerly direction, towards the Deepwood.

It was very early in the morning, the sun could not even be seen on the horizon, and yet, the forest of Deepwood had already come to life. All sorts of animal life had woken or was just about to wake up and go about its business, continue their monotone and routine lives.

A group of five Stripe-Faced Aphids led by a single alpha, as evident by its larger build when compared to the rest of its companions, were slowly traveling through the forest in search of a suitable tree hole to live in. You see, they are what one would call "colonists," forced to leave their previous hive by the rest of their kin due to the shortage of space in the tree hole. In reality, since the Aphids themselves did not really possess the intelligence necessary to comprehend a notion such as colonialism, they simply opted to follow their instincts and search for a new home.

After walking through the forest for a couple of hours, the six aphids came upon an unusually large and tall tree. With their hopes up, they started searching for any holes that had the prerequisites necessary for an aphid home. Little did they know, higher above them lurked a pair of marble-eyed gargoyles that were preparing to attack, should the opportunity present itself. Sure enough, when they saw the group of six split up, the two hunters immediately made a beeline for one of the smaller aphids each, not daring attack the larger one.

Suddenly, just as the two gargoyles were descending with great speed, a beam of sunlight shot out of nowhere at an even greater speed that didn't leave much room for dodging to the first gargoyle, hitting it straight on the forehead, instantly burning through its flesh and skull and coming out the other side, leaving behind a hole on the creature's head. The second gargoyle wasn't any luckier than its companion, the only difference being that it managed to move its vitals out of the way of the beam which instead bore a hole through one of its thighs. Screeching loudly in pain, the remaining gargoyle quickly flew away to safety. However, it too died a couple of hours later due to excessive blood loss.

The subsequent crash of the first gargoyle's body on the ground from above scared the six aphids out of their wits. After calming down and realising that the gargoyle was not actually moving from its initial place, the alpha reluctantly came out of its hiding spot and walked closer, only to find out that what they thought was a predator, had actually been killed by something. With a signal, the rest of the aphids came out as well and returned to their searching.

At the same time, a couple of kilometers away, a man was sitting cross-legged upon a big boulder, a strange black stick was hovering a few inches above his head. Yang'Ze retracted his finger and resumed his meditation once more, a faint smile appearing on his face.

The figure of a Hain in a leather apron manifested itself behind Yang'Ze. "Nice shot," complimented Teknall.

"The rule of the jungle is a notion I find quite detestable. Of course, someone could call me a hypocrite for saying this, since here I am, overwhelming inferior creatures with my powers... Why should I care what they think of me?" Yang'Ze said with solemn voice.

He slowly stood up and turned around to face the Craftsman God. "What brings you here, brother?" He asked Teknall while sizing up his new get-up. "You lost a few inches since our last meeting, among other things..." he added with a smirk.

Teknall looked down at himself. "Indeed. It is far easier to interact with the mortal races when I appear as one of their own," Teknall said. He looked back to Yang'Ze before continuing. "I see you have been practising your combat skills. This is good, because I'd like to redeem the rest of that favour you owed me."

"Ah, so that's how it is. Well, I indeed have been in seclusion training since you helped craft my staff. I've also given it a name, by the way, Sunderer. Quite fitting don't you think?" Yang'Ze said as he grabbed the floating staff with one of his hands, spun skip caught it with the other before bringing it under his arm in a ready position. "I presume what you want doesn't have anything to do with star forging since you pointed out me practising my skills... Tell me, brother, what is the reason for your requiring my assistance?"

Teknall knelt down to the boulder on which they stood and touched its surface. Small lumps of stone buldged up and carved themselves into a horde of two hundred and fifty life-like minature figurines. Two hundred of these were Hain, complete with tiny stone weapons, and fifty were Angels, actually flying a couple of centimeters above the rest of the horde. "I'm not sure how up to date you are on current events, so I'll explain. A short while ago Vestec sent several hordes, such as this one, to slaughter all in their path and wreak chaos. Additionally, he forbade the direct interference of the gods themselves.

"These hordes I could handle. They are just mortals, after all, and what is made by mortals can be destroyed by mortals. The horde isn't what I'm here to ask your help with." Teknall touched another patch of stone, and from it sprang a perfect minature stone replica of Violence. The figurine of Violence leapt into the horde, and the horde raised their fists in silent cheers as the newcomer turned to lead them onwards. "I seek your help in killing that- Vestec's Avatar. Nothing short of another Avatar will stop it, and if it isn't stopped then all in its path will be slaughtered."

Teknall stood back up and looked at Yang'Ze. "I do not ask you to fight it alone, though. Kyre and myself are both sending Avatars of our own. But a third will further help to ensure our victory. What do you say?"

"Of course, I will assist you in this endeavor, there's no denying that" Yang'Ze immediately said. "A simple star, in my eyes, is little to no compensation for your help in creating my Sunderer. I had already told you to not hesitate telling me if there was anything else you wanted. If it's in my power to do, I will do it" he told Teknall.

Ull'Yang, and Yang'Ze as a result of being his Avatar, valued words above all. He would never go back on his word once he gave it. So when Yang'Ze's brows frowned, giving his face a gloomy and troubled expression, it wasn't because he was not willing, no not at all. What, instead, troubled him was Vestec's Avatar, Violence.

"Say brother, this Avatar of Vestec's. Have you tested its power? I would presume that since it's an Avatar of the god of Chaos, it should have quite the battle prowess. Do we know anything about his abilities? What sort of attacks he has or any sort of unique weapons we should be wary of?" Yang'Ze finally asked Teknall. Inside his mind, he was already devising countless plans and strategies to combat this new foe Vestec presented them with.

Teknall too frowned. "I too expect it to have ample battle prowess, although I do not have any information on it. The point of this preemptive strike was to destroy the Avatar before it had a chance to use its abilities to kill anything." Teknall knelt back down to the figurine of Violence and touched it. Illusory flame-like light glowing a writhing mess of colours was added to the living stone sculpture. "What little I do know was self-evident from first inspection. It has some armour, and it is also overflowing with Vestec's chaos energy, which can be used for a variety of offensive and defensive energy magic uses. Other than that, I don't know. This is one reason I want all the help I can get, to overcompensate for any uncertainties."

Teknall straightened back up. "Are there any further questions?"

Yang'Ze zoomed onto the stone figurine, taking in and imprinting Violence's appearance in his mind so that he will be able to identify Vestec's Avatar immediately amidst the battle. "I have just one more question. Is there some sort of plan to drag Violence away from his army so us three go against him or do we just sneak attack him and his minions? Since he drags around mortals, I expect that they will have to set up camps. Do we wait until that moment when they don't expect it and then attack their camp or what?" Yang'Ze asked.

"Ah yes, that." Teknall waved his hand at the model horde, which reenacted the moment at which Violence told them to settle down and set up camp. "They have settled down to camp for thirty days. My preference would be to lure Violence out of the camp, so we don't need to worry about the horde. I think both you and I would agree that this is not a fight we want distractions for, and I doubt we could really sneak up on an Avatar. Although I must admit I do not yet have an actual plan of approach. Perhaps Kyre will have a good plan when we meet up before the fight."

"Although I doubt that we won't be able to take down one Avatar with three of our own, having a plan of action ironed out beforehand gives us an additional layer of assurance in case something goes wrong or something unexpected happens. It is Vestec that we're talking about here..." Yang'Ze said with a serious expression.

Slowly, however, a smile appeared on his face. "Nevertheless, until we actually attack, even if we formulate thousands of plans and consider every angle, it will all be in vain. I am as ready as I will ever be. I've actually been itching to test these new skills of mine that I've been honing these last few years."

Teknall nodded. "That is true. That is why my personal plan is to attack with more than enough force, and I suppose the rest will be subject to improvisation." Teknall gestured at the ground one more time, and this time a model of a fortified Hain village grew from the stone some distance ahead of the horde. In it scurried miniature Hain, living out their lives in real time. "Around this village would be a good rendevous point. This is where I had originally intended to meet the horde with forces of my own. Kyre has gone to visit it, so you can discuss plans with him. Although avoid being seen by the Hain, of course, because they aren't familiar with your body form." Teknall pointed in a southwards direction. "It's that way."

"Very well. I shall be on my way," Yang'Ze said after throwing a glance at the horizon, where Teknall was pointing at. "I trust that I will see you, or I guess in this case your Avatar, pretty soon," he told Teknall.

"Good. I should meet up with you in a few of days. I have a lot of construction to do," Teknall replied.

With that said and done, Yang'Ze sat cross-legged on top of his floating Sunderer and promptly flew towards their meeting point, only a faint gold light left behind by him being the only indication he was ever there.

Before Teknall left, he waved a hand over the stone figurines once more, and they melded back into the boulder from which they came. Then a black rift tore itself in the space in front of him. Teknall stepped through the rift, which closed behind him, leaving no trace of his presence.

Lissean blinked one side of eyes as he tiredly noticed the drizzle resuming. The march through the forest was like this from the day they left; a sudden unseasonal front of rain as opposed to the dry summer before. Everything was muddy and soaked. The dirt in these tree-covered hills had become slippery and black, squelching with every footstep. Rilan, the clever hain shaman that he was, built sandals from sticks, hide, and lashed vine in a way to spread the load of their feet. This little victory had sped up the march for the dozen of them as they held their spears close. Lissean now cared about the rain about as much as his brethren around him. A fire burned in all of their hearts that all but dried them off. They were armed with spears.

The hain of these lands never fought with spears before the last few years. The tips would glance off the shell of an enemy hain tribesman. However, they were not out hunting for beasts or fish, or even fighting hain, for that matter. They knew that their new enemy was clever enough to be above such stations and they were definitely not hain.

"Keep all your eyes peeled, we're in the fibrehead territory now." The leader, Tarok, scanned the branches above as much as the undergrowth below. "They're cleverer than fibrelings and stay in bigger groups. Don't let them surprise you or their hair will suffocate you."

Lissean shuddered. Disgusting creatures. the fibreheads were not furred like most beasts, but they had long strands of oily fibres growing from their heads. Those grotesque heads. Most of their body was similar to a hain, if imposingly taller, but their arms were shorter, their feet were warped, and their heads were blunt and sunken. They had no shells either, they had bare skin and bones, like beasts.

"Is it true, Rilan?" Lissean whispered ahead to the clever hain.

Rilan turned his head to look behind him with wizened eyes.

"Are the fibreheads made by Jaan?" Lissean asked, "Will we turn into them if they capture us?"

Being a more rational sort, as well as the clan shaman, Rilan solemnly shook his head. He had made his protest of this attack clear, citing how little was actually known about these creatures since they started contesting the tribe's hunting grounds. "Lissean, I can tell you that Jaan's creations put a fear in one's heart that is not present with these fibreheads. It does not serve a benefit to feed such paranoia."

Lissean huffed and narrowed his eyes. He always hated when the shaman spoke without certainty. He was meant to listen to the gods! "We will wipe them out anyway! They took the life of my grandfather! The gods are with us against these murderers!"

Rilan looked ahead again and sighed through his nostrils. There was no contesting with the revenge in young Lissean. He should know -- he had attempted it on the road for the past few days. The foe's nature would not matter.

"A tragedy it was, but as for the gods-" Rilan cut himself off as the entire band halted. Tarok had put up his fist to halt everyone.

Lissean's rage was replaced with an alertness bordering on fear. Even with the drizzle becoming rain, he had heard it, too. There was rustling in the bushes ahead. His head flicked this way and that, angling to look at the branches above as well as the ground in following his leader.

There was a bloodcurdling shout of rage as a tall, bronzed shape leapt out over a fallen log, an axe held high in one hand. Weled barely had time to raise his shield before the slate axe landed upon his head with a disgusting crack. The scraggly hair flowing from the fibrehead's scalp was its last movement as it halted, impaled on Tarok's spear. Weled crumpled to the ground and the situation was realised with the blood spilling from his split white skull shell.

"Ambush!" Tarok shouted as the initial attacker's scream was joined by several others. The tall, fleshy, hairy, deformed hainoids leapt out from behind the log, in turn, each with stone mace or axe in hand. Lissean shouted right back and rushed for the nearest one he saw.

Lissean thrust his weapon, the spear was deflected. This fibrehead had a smoother face than the first, but his eyes were just as wide as Lissean's. Lissean feinted forward to fend the creature off. "I'll kill you, you twisted freak!" Lissean's language went completely unrecognised by the fibrehead. "I'll kill you like you killed grandfather!"

Around Lissean, the fight was swiftly causing many injuries on both sides, but it was not looking good for the hain. Tarok was fighting valiantly, but he took a strike on his forearm that put a nasty crack on his shell. Sil and Polian had been knocked unconscious. The hain were tougher but the fibreheads were bigger. The rain fell down harder around them.

"DIE!" Lissean thrust his spear forward again, but as he stepped, the sticks of his sandal snapped. He fell beak first into the mud. He rolled his head to one side and immediately closed his eyes against the incoming stone of his opponent's mace, but instead, there was quite another sensation. A cry of alarm from the fibreheads sounded. Many squelching footsteps faded away in the beating rain.

Lissean stood up quickly, observing the fibreheads retreating one way and his companions retreating the other way. Unlike the fibreheads, the hain were climbing trees. In this weather, that could only mean one thing.

"Flood!" Tarok shouted. Lissean heard it for a second before it washed his ankles and threw him off his feet. The black, watery torrent was irresistible as it tossed him over and spilt into his mouth. He was blind and deaf from the noise and muddy water. He held onto his spear as tightly as he could.

He felt it tug suddenly as the direction skywards suddenly became clearer. He couldn't let go against the force of this flood djinn. He couldn't or he would die.

He grabbed onto the haft of his spear with his other hand as well and surfaced above the rushing water. Screaming fibreheads were being swept away, but Rilan, the shaman, was perched on a branch with Tarok, holding onto the other end of Lissean's spear with all his strength. "Pull yourself in, Lissean!" the shaman shouted over the water.

Lissean could feel the pressure of his blood against the back of his eyes. He could do nothing but obey. He climbed up his spear with Rilan's help. There was a slide down the spear haft and he gasped. He reassured his grip. Hand over hand, he edged his way up. Both Rilan and Tarok pulled Lissean up with a strained vocalisation onto the branch. Lissean he promptly slumped against its solid, safe surface.

The water rushed on below. They all caught their breaths. The mourning over their fallen brethren would have kept them silent, had the indomitable Tarok not lent his comment.

"That was lucky," Tarok said over the rain, nursing his cracked arm. "The gods must be watching you, Lissean."

Still shuddering from the fear of his near-death experience, Lissean pushed himself upright to see the scenario around him. All except the three killed hain had made it into trees. Weled, Sil, and Polian were friends of Lissean. Their families would lament their fates. Lissean's own grief was held behind temper, built by curiosity. There was not a fibrehead in sight. "They're all dead, aren't they?"

"As far as we know," Rilan replied, looking into the distance. "They have not witnessed a flood season, judging by the way they acted. They tried to outrun the djinn." Without prompt, the rain began to settle into a drizzle again.

"But you can't outrun a flood djinn. How did it come so suddenly?" Lissean snapped his head to look at Rilan. "Was the djinn there to help out battle against the fibreheads!? Zetiron has blessed us!"

Both Rilan and Tarok gave Lissean a look.

"What? Surely we have victory today because of him!"

Lissean extended an arm to the point in the distance he was staring at before. "Lissean, look."

The young hain craned his body to one side to see. He simply saw more flood waters. "What are you pointing at?"

"Look closer, see how the water eddies upwards there?" Rilan spoke softly and reverently.

"Upwards?" Lissean angled his head toward the distance in confusion. The point in the distance suddenly exploded in water as a shape flew into the air, double the height of the tallest tree in sight, and curved back. It was followed by an even greater splash as a wave swelled without prompt and engulfed the lesser shape. The smaller shape leapt forth a few metres away, travelling fast.

"The flood djinn are fighting. They care not for us." Rilan explained. The shaman turned his head to Lissean once again and offered a downturned palm, "The lord of the sky, Zetiron, he commands the djinn. But if he were involved, it would not be to bless us. He merely wanted our defeat to be changed into a victory."

Lissean narrowed his eyes again. He hated when Rilan spoke without certainty, but ambiguity was worse. "Fights against the fibreheads have always been indecisive. How could this not be assistance?"

Rilan continued to watch the roiling elementals dancing in the distance. "It was indecisive. That's the point. Zetiron does not bless or curse anything. He merely changes things that have gone unchanged."

Lissean slumped onto the bough again. He wasn't sure whether to be joyous or despondent.

The Venomweald and its surroundings were usually abuzz with a thrum of its own: there was the slithering of all manner of horrors upon the dark jungle floor, the chirps and clacks of innumerable insects and birds, the woody snaps of carnivorous plants taking their prey by surprise, the roar of great monsters...

No other place on Galbar had such a unique cacophony. Now, however, all of that din was drowned out by the rumble of the grey skies above. A Stormlord or three had seen fit to bring rain, and so the showers came down in deluges. The choking vegetation, so thick and rapidly growing that the jungle managed to sometimes strangle itself, eagerly swallowed all the rain that was offered. The rainforest always thirsted for more, the oppressively humid air never enough to satiate the parched plants. Meanwhile, the animals sought cover and tried to endure, for the damp itself had a way of rotting one's flesh to the bone. Here, what didn't kill you just hadn't finished yet.

Yet on the outskirts of that twisted jungle, there marched a procession of ogres. Even now their march was done barefoot and barely clothed; their hides were thick enough and their bodies stout enough that the paid little mind to the deadly jungle, much less to its rain. If any were fit to thrive in this hellish place, it was these ogres. If any were fit to rule the ogres, it was Ommok.

From their nearby burrows and hollowed hills that they called home, they marched to the bluff where Ommok lived in his cave. Where the others had carved out their own homes in the dirt, here Ommok lived in a natural and spacious cavern of rock, for he was King and so he had to tower over others. If they lived in dens of dirt, he would live in one of stone.

Each one holding great bundles of meats and fruits haphazardly to their chests, they marched in and deposited the week's tribute in a great heap at the feet of Ommok, who sat upon a boulder in the back of his cave. Ommok was a giant among giants; the tallest ogre anybody had ever seen and also one of the fattest. He was also the eldest of his kind, his first memories seeing the Big Sky God touching the Urtles and making the first ogres. Ah, Ommok had seen the birth of those first of his kind and then of their children, and their children, and their children, yet still he stood strong. While the others of his generation had by now all been devoured by horrors in the jungle or succumbed to old age, the mystical power of Astarte's rock had spared him from death. So it was that he had sat upon that rock in his cave for countless years, having the others hunt and forage his food for him for he no longer had an appetite for such menial tasks. In return, he was king and so he settled whatever disputes arose.

The rest of his time he devoted to three great tasks: eating, painting, and dreaming.

Eating, ironically enough, was perhaps his least favorite of the three. He ate all the tribute that the others brought him so that he would stay the biggest and strongest of all ogres; if any grew bigger, then they might have a claim to be King.

Painting was the one task that he took most seriously as King; it was his duty to share knowledge, and so he worked tirelessly to do so. After countless years of toil, only perhaps a quarter of the cave's surface was covered in painting. There was much more to be learned and shared, it would seem. He spent the greater part of the long day gathering that yellowish brown clay called ochre (that pigment was the color of ogre skin, and so of course they had named it after themselves) and smearing it across the walls of his cave to make pictures. The pictures depicted the history of the ogres and all that he could remember, for he had been alive to witness everything. Young ogres would go to the first few chambers of Ommok's cave and have their elders show them the pictures that depicted what to eat, what to kill, what to eat once it was killed, and other important lessons. As they grew older they would be taken into deeper and deeper chambers within Ommok's cave, until at last they could come to the very back and then meet their King upon his boulder. After that, it would be their everlasting privilege to bring the wise King tribute at least once each year.

His final great task was dreaming. Each and every night he went to sleep clutched a flat rock, and each and every morning he would awaken and paint pictures upon that stone tablet of all his dreams before they slipped from his mind. It was known that sometimes the Spirits came down from the sky to teach the ogres new things, and so Ommok dutifully dreamed to listen to their gifts of wisdom. There had come the time where the sky itself was painted odd colors (on the night that others called Phantasmagoria) and on that single night Ommok had dreamed of a hundred things that he painted down and then brought into fruition. From dream to picture to real thing, the ogres were avancing whether the gods had intended them to or not.

Susa was not a woman that liked to idle, her previous life as a huntress and adventuress was now lost to her thanks to a leg injury, but she would not stay still, for the mind and soul were like the water: At the first one might prefer the calm pond to the turbulent ocean, but the pond will eventually putrefy and all life in it will die, while the ocean goes on, living and breathing trough crashing waves.

Her techniques of leatherwork brought many wise humans (and other odd beings) to the village she was forced to accept as her home. With time, she learned many secrets. Some secrets were mundane, like the ones that the bird-like chippers would bring, others were odd, and would be delivered to her in secret midnight meetings with oddly deformed creatures.

Eventually, she compiled a few of the repeating motifs in all that info into a few practices, similar to those of the many shamans across the known universe, but particularly effective when it came to tracing the zones where energy flowed and communicating with the odd energy creatures that flocked to this place. She was smart enough to avoid too much contact with the large ones, but the small ones, the little sprites of water, wind and fire, they were far more amicable... Provided one knew the techniques and had some sort of gift or food for the little tricksters.

Every eight days or so she would visit the ponds near the village and spend some time binding with the spirits of the elements. This day was a bit different however, few spirits flocked the energy infused grove and there was an odd stillness in the air.

"Something bad I bet" she commented to herself, looking to the pale winter sky.

In silence, an entity wreathed in shabby leather and cloth manifested behind her, carrying a black cube in one hand, a quill in the other. It took the form of a female, but the Divine energy that resonated off of the creature was beyond any common sprite, or any of the 'larger' entities that Susa had learned of.

"Prosit." it said, its voice carrying the charisma only a ruler could, or a god. "Winter days are the worst for travelling, you know." the newcomer added, before it, or she, knelt by the water's edge beside the former huntress.

Meanwhile, a very well-dressed cat...at least as far as cats went, was peering into the pond, curious as to whether there were scaled and delicious treasures hiding within. Licking his lips for a moment, Belvast swatted his hand beneath the calm pond...finding nothing. He'd try this at least six time before accidentally falling in, his momentum finally carrying him along with his frustration. Pulling himself from the pond, the now wet cat demigod stood beside the scholarly wanderer, not even as tall as they were with them crouching. "Nice to meet you." he would say, his child-like voice making seeming oddly fitting, given his short stature.

Upon hearing Vesamera, the former huntress immediately sidestepped out of her position and placed and tightened her hands around her walking stick. Her eyes scanned the person and the area quickly, it was odd that someone was able to sneak up on her, usually even mosquitoes had a hard time hiding from her trained senses. But outside of that the person looked somewhat harmless, odd jewels in her hand but no sort of weapon in sight.

She tried to build up a response, but soon an odd animal caught her eyes, actually, despite the cat looks the thing acted pretty much like a human or the bird bones people. Perhaps in the past this would be more shocking, but she had seen a lot recently, so she simply accepted it was a species she had never seen before.

"Traveling is always hard for me, used to be very easy, but then destiny decided to play tricks on me" she sighed in response to the human-like one. "Huh, Hello. First time seeing one of you" she confessed. "I'm Susa by the way, now might I ask what in Juan are you two doing in this simple grove carrying all this fancy shinning stuff and kicking the water?"

Somehow, Susa knew this was going to be one of THOSE days;

"Not kicking, fishing," Belvast stated, before he added: "And, not much brings us here. We're travelers, of a sort you could say." After a moment, Belvast would remove his hat, the slight crease on his forehead where the Portcullis Eye would open might have looked a bit odd as he fished around within the cloth head-wear, until he pulled out half of an already eaten fish, which he started to eat raw. Realizing that he was being rude, he pulled a whole fish out. "Are you hungry? I have some of my catches left over."

"Oh, that makes sense. I used to be a traveler too, I would get into random places all the times and find all sorts of people doing all sorts of things. Then my legs got bad and now even a quick stroll to this place tires me" she sighed before gasping at the eye.

"Oh, that is an odd feature." she leaned over to watch the odd mystical cat creature closely "I'm fine thank you, I do not eat meat others have caught, a bit of a huntress honor code I kept even after my hunting days ended"

Belvast nodded, before stuffing the fish back into his hat. Plopping it back on, he covered the eye and said: "I'm sorry to hear about your legs Ms. This is a nice place to visit, I'd imagine." as he adjusted his hat over his ears, twin tails lying flat against the grass. "Did you used to follow herds to hunt?" he questioned, genuinely curious. That was the only real way he could imagine hunters and huntresses who travelled.

Susa shook her head. "When I was a teenager I used to go after heards. But that was tiring and dangerous. With time I learned how to make traps that would bring down even large animals and also how to use a bow to strike birds out of the sky" she commented. Though ever since she lost her mobility she also stopped using the bow. "I travelled simply because I like to do it. And why do you do it?"

"Because Fate said I should." the little cat replied simply, skipping a stone across the pond, twice it bounced before plunking down into the water. "I'm sorry about your legs Miss." he said, bowing his head to her, the weight of the fish making the hat almost fall off as he held it down with a free hand.

Susa moved her hands to help stabilize the hat. "Hah, may destiny rot in the depths of Juan, I do not like people telling me what to do you know? Fate decided I would not walk well anymore, but that will never stop me from learning and wandering"

Vesamera monitored the exchange, and then with a shrug of her shoulders, laughed heartily at all this talk of Fate, and the likes. "Fate has spoken to me, and Fate is a fool - I find the beast's power... Superficial." she explained, as the floating quill that had rested upon her palm flew like a fleeting butterfly; whisping silently as it went. "A sense of wanderlust is always an admirable trait."

With this remark, the scholar took a seat in between Belvast and Susa, adjusting the scarf that had hid her petite lips. "Who instilled it within you?" she asked, shooting Susa a characteristic smile.

Susa gulped and stared at the odd remark "Are you fine?" she said with a strong skeptical tone in her voice. Truly, they had their tricks, but so had she, the bird people and even the odd persons made of muscles and teeth. "You talked... With Desity?" she said slowly, making sure her question was clear.

The last question however took her by surprise, people always asked her what she knew and who she is, this was one of the few times anyone had asked her what she was before. In a rare moment of introspection she confessed: "It is a complicated thing, one that happened in the distant past, there was this boy, at times a brother, at times a sweetheart, he could like, read dreams, and he always told me many amazing stories about what the world was like beyond the horizon."

((1 Might spent to teach certain groups the power of oneiromancy))

A smile appeared on her face and her eyes flashed in a vivid cooper colour "So many stories of so many places. I just wanted to see it all, to see the spires hidden under eternal darkness, to see the fabulous cities in the sky, to see the paradise of the hermit god, the realm of dreams, the isle of impossibilities..." noticing how over excited she was, the huntress controlled her tone and ended the sentence with an anti-climax "And that kind of place I guess"

"When I was born, Fate spoke to me, the entity that ruled over even the gods that you recognize now, and allowed me to grasp the book of creation itself. It is the same with my companion Belvast. People cut from our divine cloth are of the same consequence: we speak to the highest order the universe will ever know." Vesamera explained, topping off her speech with a long-winded sigh.

"A boy? I know one, or a couple. I too am on a journey similar to your own. A woman, who spoke in many tongues, surrounded by muses and strange marionettes, told me that if I was ever to achieve greatness, I would have to become familiar with our world and its people. So I've journeyed to the deep South to witness the fall of the Pronobii, played games with this cat, and have even met the great Jvan. Now, I meet another strange character; a Huntress of whom Fate chosen to be lame." the daughter of thought finally finished, laying back into the dying, amber colored grass beneath her.

"Yep, definitelly one of those days" she thought as she was left with little reaction to what she was wearing, all she could do was to narrow her eyes, tilt her head and do any other possible body lenguage that expressed the weirdness of all those words.

She placed one hand on her hip, the other on her walking stick, as always, and kept looking baffled for a while before saying "Yeah, well, I made a nice pair of boots that don't get my feet wet when it rains." A gift for a friend that asked this a long while ago back in her home village, truly, she should go to that place one day, even if it meant traveling with her bad legs. "Look, my mind tells me, hit the crazy lass with your stick and get out of here. But I wouldn't be able to run, and the cat person being is cute, so I will buy your tale, Ms Divine Cloth"

Vesamera shrugged in indifference "I would have to say that I'm glad I brought him. Perhaps I could tell you more of our divinity within your stead? The night draws close, and I'm sure you have a dwelling, Good Hunter." she asked, fondling the light absorbent cube.

She rubbed the back of her head "The situation is that the villagers have a complicated relationship with me and the sort of odd folk I attract. I mean, you look somewhat normal, but Bell-Vaste would need to be a bit discrete, I believe" with that she took a step forward and raised an arm to the traveller who spoke some odd stuff "My name is Susa" traders usually liked names, village people however usually just referred to each other by their role in the community.

"Susa is a nice name." Belvast interjected, now idly swishing his tails across the surface of the pond, while he also started to sift through various pebbles and rocks at the shore of the pond, looking for little bits and bobbles to add to the Mobius board for later.

"I'm sure Belvast will have no trouble being discrete. In fact, he has a special ability that would allow him to appear in your stead undetected - why don't you show her, Belvast?" Vesamera asked, throwing him a silvery rock with a lovely sheen.

"Okay!" Belvast said as the rock vanished into an azure portal, another appearing above him to drop the rock into his outstretched palm. "I can create temporary gateways anywhere I want. And I can let people and things go through them to go somewhere else." The demi-cat explained, the third eye opening beneath the cover of his hat.

"That is, handy" she noted "Might I ask for a favour? If I show you my home from here can you just door us there? I usually take a while to walk across the forest thanks to the injury the long Twilight of the goddess Twilight gave me."

Belvast nodded quickly in response to Susa's question, standing up. "You bet I can. Show me where it is and I'll get us there fast. It doesn't hurt at all. Just tingles your toes a little." he said, before looking at her legs. Would tingling toes that didn't work right hurt?

"Alright, here, I will take you up" without much concern she raised the cat-demi up to her shoulders "Just look over the bushes and you will see a little village in the distance, look for the house with drying racks, which are like, sticks with animal hide in them"

Belvast looked over the bushes, very appreciative that he was being given a boost. Being short had little positives, and many negatives. Scanning over the brush, he spied the village and nodded. In the distance, Susa might have been able to make out a very faint blue light beside the wall of one of the house with the drying racks, before a familiar blue portal appeared close to Susa's feet. "Be careful when you step in. The portal will have you facing where we are now, so just step like you're walking forward." he said, figuring that dropping Susa with her legs in the state they were would be the worst idea ever.

Vesamera observed "Go on now, I'll be right behind you." she reassured the pair, still lying upon her back. "I should warn you - passing the portal does give you quite the buzz." the scholar added, stretching out into an arch upon the ground.

"As if I have ever been scared of some pain" the huntress said, before raising her walking stick and taking a step into the odd mystical portal. Indeed it was quite an impact, even if her legs were fine, however with all the rough adventures she had in the past it was ultimatelly something manageable, even then, she still decided to sit on her bed to let her legs rest.

Now all she had do to was to wait for the two strangers to show up into her simple clay house. The main difference between it and any other human hovel on the region was that it was extremely organized, no basket of grains or leather cloak was left out of its place, the only exception to that rule were a few souvenirs of her adventures and trades and the little altar she had built for a couple of gods.

...Given that Belvast was kind of still on her head, one demigod was already there, rolling off of her and onto the bed, burying his face in the sheets. "How are your legs Miss Susa?" he asked, concerned that she might have hurt herself, even with how slight the adjustment had been. "If it still tingles, you should tell me."

Within minutes, Vesamera followed, carrying her eyed quill, and her fractal library in either hand. "It's much more cozy than my former home - did you build this yourself?" she asked, taking a seat beside Belvast.

"It is fine, it does not hurt a lot, the main problem is that when I'm trying to run it hurts constantly, so even if its a small pain, it gets the better of me as time goes by" she answered to Belvast before looking at Vesamera "Not really, I just took over the place of an old lady who passed away. I wouldn't be able to build something like this nowadays. Now excuse my memory, but I do not remember if you introduced yourself, miss Divine Cloth.

Cordially, Vesamera bowed to Susa. "Prosit - I am Vesamera, the Wandering Scholar, Daughter of Vulamera." she said, gripping her cubic device. [/color=orange]"I apologize for not formally introducing myself earlier."[/color]

"She doesn't have a pooper!" Belvast said, like that was something to be impressed about.

"Oh? Like the Goddess? Are you truly saying you are the daughter of a divinity?" Susa was seeing a lot of strange happenings, but still, it was outlandish to think all those claims could be true. "Ah, well, that must be very uncomfortable" she added in response to Belvast's odd statement.

Belvast nods, glad someone agreed with him for once.

Vesamera chuckled at Belvast's interjection, and then crossed her arms. "I am the daughter of the Divinity, much like many others that walk this planet. If you would like, I may prove it to you." she openly invited, despite the close proximity of the village's populace.

Susa took her moment to stare at Vesamera "Well, perhaps, but I also need to make supper and today I'm making food for three, so I hope its not something that takes too long" in truth, she knew gods where there, she was directly hit by the little tricks of one of them, and she didn't doubt they would have eventually breed like the little worthless things they were. "But let's see what you can do, if its impressive I can even cut up some extra meat for your soup later"

She blinked, Vesamera, impressed by the sheer lack of caring for the claim. "...Huh..." she huffed, and then turned around, contemplating the strange display of worldly ignorance, or just the lack of impressionism the idea had left on the mortal before her. She was not used to this. "I'll make it quick; in the palm of my hand I hold an infinite library, that which I've used to chronicle my journeys throughout Galbar. Since you're so interested in travel, perhaps you would like to read the manuscript I've gathered over these years?" Vesamera questioned, having come up with a solution - perhaps to edge this strange character into journeying in her company.

"The script I have written contains the secrets of what lies even in the deepest depths beyond the horizon; provided you're able to read." the Scholar offered, her ebony cube having broken into neatly assorted pieces as she spoke.

"Ah, no thanks" she waved it off immediately, almost as if scared of the thing. "But I want to explain why I do not want it" she added, no need to be rude to a guest, she guessed. "See, Bell-Vaste, let me say a thing to you, imagine that in the next minute I will make you experience every single tasty food that can ever be. Every single one. All the fish, all the fruit, all the bread. You will taste them all in a few seconds and then its over, no new tasty food will be left. What do you think about this?"

The most blank of stares crossed Belvast's face as he heard those words, before saying: "No thank you." and quickly going back to looking around Susa's house. "I've already tasted the things I've found. If I don't find the best things to eat, there's no point in tasting them." the Demi-Cat said, his short form trotting around the house, examining Susa's living space. "Thank you though."

Vesamera was stumped. Again.

This 'Susa' was full of surprises, and self-control. "Hm... Perhaps an excerpt regarding the 'Pronobii' which I had discussed with you earlier? While you cook?" she asked, crossing her legs with an uncomfortable smile.

"Ah, now that is more like it, I like stories, specially when they are told" The fact she did not know how to read was probably a factor too "That is what kicks my desire to travel, the tales of distant places, but if you just sit down and describe everything, all the mysteries, all the sights, all the trees and its twighs, I'm going to end up napping" with that said she stood up and moved to the small corner she called "a kitchen"

"That boy I mentioned, his end was exactly on this kind of bad stuff. First he discovered a plant that made he dream vividly, and while at first it was a little thing, it soom took over his life, he would stay all day on bed, living in his dreams where everything was easy, slowly putrefying like still water in the swamp." she started to fill a clay pot with water and beans "I think, that is why I like to walk so much, especially into the unknown." with that said, she left the house with the pot on her hand.

Vesamera nodded, and watched as Susa departed to the outside. She then looked over to Belvast as the cube exploded into a multi-axial orbit of scrolls, that which encompassed the now lone pairing. "Hm - what do you think of her?" she asked, searching for the section on the Pronobii. "I like her." Vesamera informed the small cat, before she began tracing her finger along the yellowed paper of the library.

"She's nice." Belvast stated, before he tossed the silver rock that Vesamera had tossed him into the air, catching it in his hat. "Fate seems to have given her a bum hand, as it would seem. Hey, do you have any scrolls on fish?" he questioned, tail swishing around one another as the rock plunked around amongst fish, bits and bobbles, and various other knick knacks inside of his hat.

Belvast was overrun with tendril after tendril of scroll.

After a couple of minutes the former huntress returned to her house, the pot now full of water, meat and vegetables. "It will be done in an instant, I just need to boil it" she informed. "So, what is a Pronobii? You made me curious"

Vesamera smiled when Susa reappeared in her home, and began referencing from her reading.

"They are, or were, a race of creatures manufactured from ice by the god of death - I witnessed their fall to my--Vestec's Horde of Chaos, they were a militant group, much like the Lifprasilians but the Horde of Chaos had been far too much for them. It was sad, really, seeing thousands of creatures become displaced by the foolishness of the Pantheon." she explained, running through the scrolls that had, apparently, all stemmed from the box resting in her lap.

Susa frowned, but didn't stop preparing the meal, in fact, she waited until it was done to properly respond. "Its a bit hard to understand all this. What is a Vestec? What is a Horde? If they were made from Ice did they turn into water when spring arrived?" As she finished her third question she had already put the soup into bowls, which she shared with Vesamera and Belvast. It was a simple cassava based soup with bits of fish and chicken meat along with carrots, potatoes and some sort of bean that had yet to be properly named.

After a few sips of soup had been taken, Vesamera decided to explain. "Vestec is the god of Chaos, a Horde is a large, unorganized gathering of ruffians, and the Deep South of Galbar is wreathed in an eternal winter; spring does not arrive at the bottom of the world." she finished, before she used a spoon proper, and began consuming her soup.

Belvast, looking very unpleased at being covered in scrolls, formed a portal and plopped himself beside Vesamera, taking his bowl and blowing on the soup for a few moments before starting to drink it, broth, chicken, fish, and all. The bowl was emptied within a minute, and Belvast gave a content sigh, a smile curling o his lips. "That was great~" he chimed, before setting his bowl down and flopping back into the pile of scrolls to pour over the wonders of fish.

"There is more if you want, Belv" she said, the worst of Vesamera were still foreigner to her knowledge "Well, that sounds like a dangerous bunch. Oddly I used to call the god of chaos Ztec, but I will take you name over the one from the village, since you are Divine Cloth and all"

"Now, why did this horde even go down into a place that doesn't even have winter? Sounds silly, at least in my mind"

"That's precisely why he would - his chaotic nature dictates his actions, and his actions usually stem from getting a reaction out of people; usually negative." Vesamera explained "I've been personal with him, as well."

"No thank you. But thank you. It was delicious." Belvast said, continuing to read through the scrolls. Good thing Vesamera had...well...taught him to read.

"So, this person is going beyond his line to simply cause a reaction? Wouldn't it be simpler to just ignore him?" at least that is how she dealt with trouble makers back in her childhood, that and the good old luring a bear to their tent prank, but she was sure this would not work on this situation.

Vesamera shook her head "Ignorance only spurs him to further reaction, and leaving somebody like that unchecked is... Disastrous. Were you there for when he tried to destroy Galbar with one of its moons?" she asked, as if Susa was that old.

"With only a moon? They are so tiny, I can't imagine them hurting a lot. The sun however? Now that would be trouble, imagine trying to pick that up" she shuddered "Well, what worries me is that from what I hear the, uh, gods right? Seems like the tiny kid who always danced the way the bully wanted. But maybe saying bad things about gods isn't a good idea, Twilight already did a number on me and I don't want another one of those"

Vesamera cocked her head, slightly "Twilight? Is that a god?" she questioned, confused.

"Yeah, the one who did that night thing, she is the dreams on right? I never had a name for her so I decded to call her twilght 'cause of the twilight thing she did" lenguages had made things a bit more complicated for mankind

She nodded solemnly, Vesamera did "Ah yes, Illunabar, the night of the Phantasmagoria was a strange, twisted night. This 'Twilight' you speak of is the one that sent me on this journey, and she is, currently, one of my many mentors of the Divinity." she explained, before she suddenly stood, ejecting the now floating cube from her lap.

"I find it within my right to fix the wrongings of my teacher, then." said not Vesamera, but Lifprasil, as the clothes around the former scholar's body turned to glimmering armor of blues and yellows. "Would you like that? For me to mend that leg of your's?" asked the King, whose own voice had deepened, and whose pleasantly colored olive sash had turned into a living sword.

"Of course I would like it. It has been a burden and it was very unfair, as I'm usually careful" she confessed, no signal of a second opinion anywhere on her mind. "You can do it as payment for the free meal, yes?" she expected it to not be enough though, from what she had heard gods were tricky, and the sudden turn from cloth to armor left an odd impression.

Lifprasil gave it thought, his now golden eyes flashed a sort of metallic brightness as he mulled it over, before he simply nodded. "That is fine, yes, hospitality should be rewarded by those capable. One that travels as far, and as happily as yourself only deserves two functioning legs; and the time permissible to explore all things." Lifprasil finally responded, reaching forward with his armored left, his right hand holding fast the convulsing handle of the Chaotic Blade.

"I am Lifprasil, the child of Vulamera and Vestec, and tonight, you join the Divine Cloth." was all he said before his palm connected with the top of her head.

With a buzz, not only were Susa's wounds healed, but she was given the power of might. The process was not lengthy, if anything it came and went with the grandeur of a rock into a pond.

"Uh, my legs are surely not there..." She tried to jest before the sheer impact of Lifprasil's might knocked her out, it was a short moment, and soon she opened her eyes again. "Ok, what was up with that?" she complained raising up.

Raising up, without her walking stick. "Oh? Oh. Hah." there was a bit of joy, but also some worry, she was one that usually jumped into the odd with no fear, but this was by far the strangest happening. "On a side I kinda wanted to use these to kick the shiny lights goddess because of the legs, on the other, since they are fine now, well, I think I can let old rivalries die"

She was amazed, really, she would be jumping around if she didn't found that to be silly. "Vesamera, I mean, leaf... uh, what was it again? Really sorry for this"

"For what? I have only fixed you, and made you into something greater." Lifprasil stated, simply "You can do great things with the power I have bestowed to you, I can only hope for your companionship, if you're willing to give it." he offered, as his armor shifted back into clothing; and his form and voice became feminine once more.

Lifprasil had turned back into Vesamera.

"Greater huh?" It was hard to tell if anything was truly different, the simple difference from her crippled feet to the current situation was already enough of a shock. "Well, to be sincere, I would go on walking around again eitherway, so I guess there is no problem if I follow you, but tell me, what exactly is your mission?"

"In this form, as the Wandering Scholar, to traverse the world and catalogue and befriend its inhabitants. In the one you had seen before, as Lifprasil, to rule a kingdom that spans over the entire planet, and to make sure misgivings such as your own do not plague the world in such frequency." Vesamera explained, taking a seat once again.

She then finished off her soup, and let out a satisfied sigh [color=orange]"This is quite a bit delicious - have you heard of 'wine'? Illunabar, or as you call her, Twilight, gifted me some if you're interested. I don't like it all that much." Vesamera then offered, ruffling Belvast's fur upon his head.

"Huh, the whole world? Isn't that a bit big? You will need a big stick for that one" she kept making the same skeptical face from before "Oh well, if it stops me from getting stuck again, its fine." Upon hearing wine she immediately changed her face "Oh yeah Wine, what a mess it was, it didn't help that the girl trading it was such a fox."

Vesamera's head tilted. Again. "So you've had it before? Well, I think you would make much better usage of this. Who gave it to you?" Vesamera questioned, before reaching into the ebon cube, and pulling two of the three luxurious bottles of wine she had taken from Illunabar.

"Whoa, this is tottaly different from the vials the girl had" she said, trying to open the complex thing "It was a girl, skin a bit paler than mine, purple eyes, ponytail. She showed up twice here, and the difference between the first and the second time was huge. As I said, a true fox that one, I doubt she got all the wares she carries with nice words and good trade" the once again Huntress sipped a bit of the wine, it was heavenly. "I guess I can forgive Towa after all, this is nice"dn

"You can keep it - where does this strange person live? They sound interesting, and knowledgable about some areas of the world." Vesamera asked "If you know, we could depart in the morning after them."

"I don't know, neither would she tell, its a dangerous thing to do you know?" she informed, already used to Vesamera's lack of knowledge about the mortal dangers of the world "But since Towa gave you wine, can't you simply ask her where she is?"

Vesamera shrugged "The gods do not care much for the individual - although there's no harm in asking. What say you about sending the teleporting cat to coherse with a god?" she questioned, before she gazed down to Belvast.

"Um...I could, but I do not know how well they would take to seeing me. Some may not find my face as adorably approachable as others." the demi-cat stated, papping his own cheeks.

"I'm sure Illunabar would be entertained by your presence - there's only one way to find out, however." Vesamera responded, and pressed a hand to Belvast's head, instilling in him memories of Illunabar's quarters. "How is that? Can you visit my mentor, now?" she then asked, giving Belvast a reassuring smile in exchange for his services.

Belvast stared blankly as he remembered things he never remembered. "Please don't do that next time..." he said, rubbing his head. After a moment, Belvast formed an azure portal and slowly stepped through, ready to go visit Illunabar. Slowly stepping into the domain of Illunabar, he slowly looked around, wondering if he should have knocked first.

Ilunabar was not too far from the main room, and quickly arrived to welcome yet another visit. "Oh, Belvast, its good to finally see you in person." she had an idea of who the demi-god was, but a distant one, in fact, she expected him to be closer to what his parents were "What business bring you to my quarters today?" she said, with unnecessary politeness.

"Hello Miss. Um..." Belvast started, bowing his head in respect. "I bring a request from Lifprasil." he said, keeping his head bowed. He had never really personally enountered another god save for his parents and he wanted to leave a good impression.

"Oh, so polite" and shy, Ilunabar thought, it looked like personality wasn't exactly hereditary for gods "Ah yes, I did notice that you and Lifprasil have been adventuring the world together for a while now. So, do tell me, what is this that Lifprasil ask?"

"On behalf of a mortal woman, Lifprasil requested me to request that you find the location of a girl with pale skin, and purple eyes." Belvast said, removing his hat and holding it to his chest. "She sells wares between towns, and has vended wine."

"Ah, which girl has Lif met?" it was a rethorical question, for Ilunabar was already spying upon the demi-god while she asked. "Susa, good choice, she will surely help a lot in the future travels. I always felt bad for breaking her legs..." Ilunabar took a minute to write something up "This is a somewhat direct route to the girl you three search, I took the time to make sure you will be avoiding any hellish danger, but do keep your eyes open, Galbar has been dangerous, and it is not getting any better".

Belvast accepted the written directions, even making his own copy to ensure that he would remember. "Many thanks, Goddess of Beauty." he said, bowing his head once more respectfully. He hadn't expected her to be so...well...nice. And helpful. From the stories that Lifprasil had told him of Zephyrion, he couldn't help but imagine that one wrong word would have spelt "D O O M", but was very grateful. "Should you need something done within my abilities, do not hesitate to ask." the demicat said, figuring that now he owed a debt to Illunabar, one that he intended to repay.

"Well, there might actually be something I had in mind for your abilities". The goddess gave the feline demi-god a sincere smile "See, you sleep right? And when you sleep you dream right?" she asks, just to be sure, dreams of heroes and other divine creatures are usually veiled away from her

Belvast gave a simple nod. "Quite often." he said.

"Ah, good, so when you are back to adventuring, try to remember those dreams, just like you do with a place you want to teleport into." she proposes "And, if you feel like it, see if you can actually open a portal to there. Just, uh, try to do it to a nice dream, I don't want siblings yelling at me because there are living nightmares walking across the land" upon saying that Ilunabar looked outside, to the horizon, where she, with her divine vision, saw Vestec's hordes, the depths of Mammon's realm and whatever was the thing Jvan had made into the sky "Thinking again, I guess they wouldn't mind it"

Belvast wasn't sure what Illunabar meant from the last statement, but simply nodded. "I will do my best to do so. I am not sure if I can...but I can try." he said, unsure if he could do that himself. He'd never tried to flex his powers in his sleep.

"Good, thank you. Whatever result you get, feel free to come back here and report it to me. I will make sure that next time there will be fish and milk for you here"

Belvast's lips curled into a smile as he bowed like...four times to her. "Thank you very much!" he said before opening a portal back to Susa's house and hopped through, flopping onto the bed. "I got it!" he said cheerfully, the portal closing behind him.

Vesamera smiled, upon seeing the parchment that Belvast carried with him "Good work, my feline friend." she said, patting the tiny Demi-God upon the back. "Now - why don't we get some sleep." she then offered, enjoying the prospect of dreaming. It was purely recreational, of course.

"I was actually making my bed already" Susa added "Sorry, its just that it has been a long day, and I'm not made of super god stuff like you two" she said, in fact, she was already under the leather and fur sheats of her bed. There were two others beds made, somehow she managed to make something fit for Belvast's size.

Vesamera blinked, but climbed into her bedding regardless, the squalor the people of the surface lived in was remarkable, and within the confines of fur and leather, upheld by the hemorraged parts that nature would provide; she found herself taking note of this. For centuries she resided, As Lifprasil, within the luxurious hallways of the Celestial Citadel, and her people were juxtaposed with Divine aid and prosperity while the people of Galbar suffered as Susa had suffered.

She fell asleep, eventually, but the night became cold before she did, and her thoughts restless. There had to be a way.

Belvast dove into the bed prepared for him, yawning and stretching out before simply closing his eyes. A bed was nice, especially since he wasn't all that used to it. He wasn't raised with one, and very rarely was he ever given the chance to sleep in a friendly stranger's house. At this point, he was just happy to have a place to rest his head.

/////////////////
Vesamera would find herself in a familiar place of her dreams, the Celestial Citadel, a very real looking one, as most locations in the upper octaves of the Arpeggio where, but, there was something odd, usually the dreams were filled with servants, Lifprasil's own people, today however, there were none to be seen.

Lifprasil paused - this was an abnormality, an unforseen one, and within his mindscape, he found the halls of the Citadel barren, tinted gray, rather than yellow within the throws of life and its practice. "Hello?" he probed, wreathed in silence.

The only words that came back were his own, as the "Hello" echoed trough the still halls of the citadel. Even the wind was still and quiet, and so was the mess room where Lakshmi's guards usually stayed at when not on duty. In fact, the ever-buzzing was only a few steps away from Lifprasil, eerily quiet, as everything in this dream.

With all sense of tenure lost, Lifprasil stepped forward with a face that did not carry his confident placidity - something scared him about the absolved nothingness of the landscape. It wasn't right, for the universe to be so unfulfilled like this.

For his surprise, he would find the typical crew sitting on their tables. For his horror, they would were not the lively folk he was used to, instead, they all looked devoided of life, yet not dead either, for the dead rested peacefully, and the beings Lifprasil saw, were on the opposite side of that, starved, skeletal bodies, breathing in agony, with blank faces, as if their minds had withered away.

He was repulsed, Lifprasil, he staggered backwards, tense at the sight of what had befallen his comrades. "What..." he growled, reaching for his blade.

As he reached for his blade, the first signal of movement happened in the room. His comrades stayed still, but something else was moving, an odd, sinister looking beast, its repugnant smell filling the room. The creature charged in Lifprasil's direction.

Lifprasil, almost immediately, swung at the monster, fear guided his blade, and he would hope the Many Headed Beast would aim true, his breathing having become hectic in its presence.

The blades swings and slashes the beast near its cheast. The creature, now scared, stops its movements. There is a brief second of silence, then the screaming starts. Not from the creature, but from everyone in the room, and from beyond the room, across all the citadel, and down in Galbar, even across the sky, in a distant planet guarded by an exiled god. All living creatures (if living still applies) copy the same chest cut that emperor-to-be Lifprasil had inflected in the repugnant, deer like ghoul, that had charged against him.

Lifprasil took pause, shaken by the suddeness of all this. Had he killed Slough? What had he done? Doubts, for the first time in his life since Illunabar's teaching, washed over him.

The orchestra of painful noises continued, but slowly, as if giving away to the weakness of their bodies, the creature and the lifprasilians started to move and tumble down, until they all knelt before Lifprasil. Slowly the mess hall gave away for the yet-to-constructed halls of the yet-to-be-named citadel Lifprasil comissioned, more and more half-alive creatures walked into the halls, Hain, Angels, Humans, even chaotic beings, all slowly dying, yet knelling towards their king.

A soft female hand touches Lifprasil's shoulder. "Father and Mother will be proud, they finally respected Lifprasil as their king. We did well" says Vesamera.

"No, this isn't what I wanted." Lifprasil stated, and shrugged off Vesamera "I just want what's best! This isn't what I planned!" he exclaimed, dizzied by the scope of this fever dream.

He, or she was dizzied when she awoke, disgusted by her form in the dead of night, the form that had congratulated himself, Lifprasil, upon his conquest. For a moment, he felt the same primeval fear - he just wanted to leap from his skin, from this shape.

But he did not, she did not, as Lifprasil settled back into being Vesamera.

Slough was dead, Vesamera was sure of this, the womb of the universe was emptied, barren. What would come next?

"Still awake?" Susa whispered, it was a bit hard to see her in the darkness of the night, but the sound of rattling ceramics could be heard across the room. "I said that I was tired, but can you believe I had a sudden insomnia? I'm just feeling bad again, kinda like when we first met." she walked back to the bedside carrying two cups with some sort of liquid.

"Do your kind of people have tea? It's good to ward off the troubles of our mind" she said, casually offering it to Vesamera. With that, she went back to her own bed, covering herself with the furs.

Vesamera held the cup of tea in her hand, and took a sip - it was bitter, but better than wine. "N-no... What do you mean by... Bad feeling?" she questioned, before she took a second sip, and wavered from the suffocating muzzle of the bedding.

"Eh, its a bit hard to explain, kinda like when you are walking down the forest and suddenly all birds go up flying and making their craw craw craw sound. Its just something bad, maybe its related to that war you talked about, I don't know really, its just my hunter instinct telling me to watch out". she sighed and kept sipping her tea.

Vesamera nodded, slowly, "I guess I've been having the same premonition..." she muttered, before she took a jarred sip of tea. "Susa; what do people want in a ruler, do you think?"

"Ruler?" She questions, frowning "Well, I'm not exactly in need of one, thank you. I mean, I get my own food, I do my own chores, I have friends to look after me, a master would have to offer me something more or take those from me" she ponders

"I see." spoke Vesamera, before she coiled to her side, and pulled the bedding she had been given over herself - and did not sleep.

There was a void, the inky black sky completely devoid of stars, save for one. A red dwarf was the sole occupant of this miniature universe, and although it was one of the humblest of stars its light and warmth radiated throughout every corner of the plane.

Yet it would not be alone for long, and the power it radiated would be harnessed. Teknall pushed himself into an orbit about six million kilometers above the star, and from this vantage point even though the star was physically a quarter of the size of Galbar's Sun it appeared hundreds of times the area, a great orange disk interjecting itself upon the inky black backdrop. The solar wind beat across his face and glanced off his shell. The power produced by any star, no matter how modest in cosmic terms, is incomprehensibly massive compared to all mortal and planetary metrics, and is even a respectable level of power compared to the gods. The only challenge is harnessing that power.




But before he could have that energy, he would need matter to harness it with. While the vacuum around him was devoid of material save for the traces of hydrogen gas and solar wind leaked by the star, the unique properties of his personal plane allowed Teknall to conjure matter just as he did in the void before the Universe. So at a wave of his hand atoms materialised out of nothingness- silicon, oxygen, iron, carbon, aluminium and others. Yet to have to forever summon elements manually would be tedious and inelegant, so the first part of his new workshop was a solution to that problem.

After perhaps an hour of mixing elements to form new materials and sculpting those materials by hand and with tools, although time was difficult to track in this featureless void, he had finished the framework. It was a wall of large boxes, each about a cubic meter in size, stacked on top of each other. The wall was one box deep, 33 boxes long and up to 7 boxes tall, although large parts of it in the middle were only one or three boxes tall, totalling 97 boxes. Along its length the wall curved upwards, as though it were designed to fit within part of a large circle. The composition of each box varied, although similar compositions tended to be grouped together. Some were built of ceramics, some stone, some adamantine, some solid diamond, but all were non-reactive, heat-resistant and durable. Each box had a hatch on it, allowing each to be opened and sealed, and due to these hatches most of the boxes were indistinguishable. For some the hatch was a relatively simple design, but for some boxes, namely the uppermost two boxes, all of the leftmost column, and a selection of those in the top left corner, had more solid hatches with airtight seals. The interior of each box was, presently at least, empty, but while many boxes were spacious on the inside a few had their interiors extremely restricted such that they could contain only a small volume of substance. These restricted boxes occupied all of the bottom row and a few in the second-lowest row. At present, this oddly shaped wall floated freely in orbit around the red dwarf.

With the physical structure complete, Teknall moved up close to give the wall function. At each box, starting at the top-right box and working his way across and down, he reached in his hand and etched symbols and numbers into the back of each box with raw creative essence, symbols echoing his own writings within the Codex of Creation and written in the pure language of mathematics fundamental to the majority of the Universe. After carefully empowering each compartment, Teknall sealed the hatch and moved to the next, until he had finished all 97.

Finally he had finished this strange wall. While it wasn't as big or impressive as the red dwarf sitting in the middle of the plane, its function would be just as important, if not more so. All that was left was to test it.

Teknall stretched out his hand, and the first hatch, one of the tightly sealed ones, flew open and out poured a stream of gas. Then the eighth hatch, of similar appearance to the first, also flew open and a gas poured out of it. At his command the two hatches closed, leaving the two clouds of gas floating in the void. Then Teknall brought his two hands together, and the gas clouds coalesced, mixed, compressed, and then exploded in a nearly perfectly spherical red fireball. From this violent combustion of hydrogen and oxygen came water, which hovered in the micro-gravity environment as a cloud of steam.

Teknall gestured again, and this time the 26th door opened, and out poured a red-hot stream of molten iron. The 6th door also opened, and a small amount of black powdered carbon came out. Half a dozen other doors also opened, releasing a small trickle of other molten metals such as magnesium, molybdenum and chromium, as well as mithral and adamantine. Once he had a few kilograms of iron, he closed the doors again, and then he mixed all the metals he had retrieved together into several different alloys of steel, shaping them into ingots and casting them aside to be used later.

With his tests, and through what he could see with his Perception, Teknall was quite pleased with what he had built. This device was the most important in his soon-to-be workshop, for with it he could summon any pure element he wanted. Each box represented an element, and they were all ordered by nuclear charge and grouped by electronic quantum numbers. From hydrogen in the top right corner, all the way to plutonium in the leftmost spot of bottom row (although it was closer to the right side of the wall than the left, for the bottom row only extended a third of the way across), and every element in between, including mithral, orichalcum and adamantine, they were ordered in what mortals might one day call the Periodic Table of Elements. And to this means of conjuring industrial quantities of pure elemental matter from the creative potential of his plane, Teknall gave the name the Elemental Siphon.



Immediately he put it to use, extracting large quantities adamantine and mithral. He fashioned these into long thing alloy rods which he wove together as a mesh around the Elemental Siphon, as though he was outlining where walls would go. He also took some of this metal and made them into larger beams, which formed a solid skeleton. Then he extracted even greater quantities of silicon, oxygen, calcium, aluminium, sulfur, iron, hydrogen and a few other trace elements, and he fused them all together to form a sort of stone paste. He took this paste and layered in over the metal mesh, such that the metal mesh would be a reinforcing skeleton for the concrete once it dried. As he poured out the concrete, he took out a flat-edged tool and smoothed over the walls, and used his command over stone to prevent the liquid concrete from floating off into the vacuum of space. While the concrete set, Teknall took some magnesium, silicon and oxygen to create a fibrous stony insulator which he layered over the outside of the walls. Then he took aluminium and mithral from the Elemental Siphon and coated the exterior of the workshop like some kind of metal skin, one which reflected the sunlight and provided an extra layer of sealant.

After a few hours of work, Teknall had finished building the walls, floor and ceiling of the workshop. But the microgravity environment provided a unique design challenge, for it made little sense to create a classical box-shaped room when there was no 'up' or 'down'. And a microgravity workshop had disadvantages, for any small items, from nails and screws to iron filings and dust, would float freely and make a difficult to control mess.

To overcome this problem, without going to the extent of magically creating an artificial gravitational field, Teknall instead designed the workshop to be shaped as a ring, about 60 meters in diameter, 190 meters around the circumference and 20 meters deep. The 'floor' was the inside of circumference, curving up and around such that the floor on the other side of the workshop would curve above his head. The Elemental Siphon was built into one of the walls, where the curvature in its design allowed it to fit seamlessly. Several openings of various sizes were present across the structure like doorways. However, while the structure floated motionless the full reasoning behind the circular design was not evident.

To bring it into motion, Teknall flew outside the workshop, gripped the outer wall along the circumference, and then pushed it. And he kept pushing, until the whole thing was spinning fast enough to make a full revolution every half minute. Then he flew back up to the axis, entered through an opening and climbed down the wall slowly, until he reached the floor. Out at the circumference, the rotation of the workshop was such that the centrifugal force mimicked gravity to the strength of about one tenth of Galbar's- a modest quantity but adequate nonetheless. Teknall hopped a few times experimentally across his workshop floor, then dropped one of his tools, watching it lazily fall to the ground over a bit more than a second before clinking noiselessly onto the floor, the sound not propagated in the vacuum of the workshop.

Before he could work on making more complicated things, though, he would need more complicated tools, including larger tools than he could plausibly pull from his apron pocket. So he got the materials he needed, including steel for the bulk of them with adamantine or diamond as the working edges, and assembled a selection of tools he thought he would need. Over his workspace he made a lathe, a drill, a guillotine, a couple of presses, a saw, a couple of rollers, three anvils of different kinds.

Teknall had materials. He had space. He had tools. Now all he needed was energy. And now that he had the first three, he could build the means for acquiring the fourth. Teknall collected large quantities of orichalcum, tungsten and iron, and fashioned them into a large flat hexagonal alloy plate, about the size of a house. In this plate were many coils, angled panels and parabolic disks, connected on the rear of the plate in an esoteric geometric pattern which made it look almost like a Jvanic reinterpretation of a snowflake. Then he conjured carbon, silicon, oxygen, boron and aluminium, and fashioned those into highly heat-resistant composite ceramic and carbon tiles, which he affixed to the front of the alloy plate. Having finished one, Teknall built more and more until he had around two hundred.

To clear some space, Teknall pushed the plates out of the largest doorway in his workshop, which was level with the floor. The massive plates tumbled away from the workshop as they left the doorway, flying tangentially from the point where they were released because of the circular motion of the workshop. He would have to create a more elegant solution for offloading objects through this door, but for now he could retrieve them later.

Then Teknall started building something bigger, out of similar materials to the panels. This was some construction of tubes, prisms, and parabolic dishes. It was twice the size of a house- so big that he had to make it in quarters so he could get it out of the door. He offloaded those parts, then built enough for three more, dropping those into the void outside as well.

Then Teknall created one more machine, but this one he built into the workshop. Up at the axis of rotation, where the simulated gravity was zero and high above the workshop floor, Teknall sunk pillars of adamantine into the concrete, using his powers to meld the concrete around the metal. Then he constructed a large toroidal chamber, with thick walls of refractory tantalum hafnium carbide insulation, wire coils made of orichalcum and of a complex highly conductive alloy, heavy adamantine and tungsten plating, and an intricate web of pipes and nozzles. Some of these pipes and nozzles led from the inside of the chamber to the rest of the workshop, with highly insulating silica foam pipes inlaid with tantalum hafnium carbide to safely route their contents to their destination. The nozzles on the bottom of the chamber led outside the workshop and connected to a large parabolic dish, pointing towards the star.



Now that he had all the parts, Teknall flew out of the workshop to start bringing everything into position. With each of the large plates he had constructed, he flew them into a circular orbit 1 million kilometers from the star and oriented them to face the star. And with each one Teknall imparted a tiny drop of his power. After the two hundred plates were aligned into their orbits Teknall took the four giant machines, assembled them, blessed them as the plates, and set them into an orbit thrice as far from the star as the plates. Their orbits placed them high enough and at the correct spacing such that between the four of them they had clear line of sight to each of the plates.

Finally, Teknall returned to the workshop and approached the central chamber. Slowly, he drew near the metallic wall and laid his hand on it. A golden light suffused the workshop as he channeled his power into the machine, kick-starting it. The workshop reverberated with a hum as the grand mechanical network Teknall had built came to life. Above the surface of the star the plates, with the sides facing the sun glowing red hot, began converting and capturing the energy the star radiated at them. This power was transmitted by invisible high-energy beams to the larger relay stations, which collected the power in their parabolic dishes. The relay stations then pumped all that power towards the single collector dish on the workshops, the beams still invisible in the vacuum of space but seething with incredible amounts of energy. Finally, this energy was funnelled into the toroidal chamber and only there did it become viscerally tangible, roaring into life as a cyclone of incandescent star-fire.

The Stellar Engine was now active, and though it was only operating at a tiny fraction of its potential it still provided an enormous amount of power for the workshop. For his next project, this would far exceed Teknall's energy demands, and as such it was adequate.

To use some of this power, Teknall built a furnace down at the floor and attached it to the Stellar Engine Core. A valve accessible from the floor allowed the flow of star-fire to be regulated, and the shape of the furnace controlled and contained the stream of raw heat. Now that he had a proper forge and tools, he could finally make his Avatar.

Before hammer struck metal, Teknall took out a sheet of parchment and a charcoal pencil from his pouch, not too dissimilar from how he had for the Codex of Creation, laid it on a slanted table of aluminium and sketched out his design. The Elemental Siphon and Stellar Engine, while complex in their own right, had very few moving parts, while what he was drawing now had many, many moving parts, which all needed to fit perfectly. And unlike the Elemental Siphon and Stellar Engine, which were sitting safely in this dimensional haven, this Avatar would have to be able to withstand substantial physical punishment and still be able to operate effectively. After filling the paper with sketches and designs of increasing intricacy, Teknall finally put his pencil down and got to work.

There was, of course, no compromise in the materials. Having an intimate knowledge of the elements, Teknall prepared an alloy of adamantine which exceeded even that superlatively strong metal in strength and durability. Joints and sliding surfaces were laid with sapphire bearings, a material both hard and with astonishingly low friction. And being a god, he was able to excise every impurity and defect from the materials which might compromise their integrity.

Many parts were built, from interlocking armour plates and a metal beam skeleton to perfectly sized joints and sliding clamps and pistons. These parts and others besides were all brought together to form a terrific metal beast. This beast stood upright, at an intimidating 3 meters tall. Its overall body structure was generally humanoid, yet each of its arms was split into three and legs split into two, such that it had six arms and four legs. Into two of its arms were integrated mechanical crossbows, and on another two arms were attached metal bucklers. Each of its feet had six great claws which radiated outwards and gripped the ground. A thick armoured carapace encased the beast's torso and armour plates covered parts of its limbs, although even the parts which didn't have additional armour were still made from the same, tough metal. In the center of its chest, where the sternum would go, was a circular aperture in the armour, leading to a darkened spherical chamber within. Its head was angular, its neck short and well protected, and its face was like a mask with two pairs of eyes, currently glassy and lifeless.

Yet this beast was no use lifeless. Teknall ascended to the core of the workshop and screwed an elaborate mechanical cap onto one of the outlets. From his fingers grew an orb of golden light the size of the cap, with which he tapped it and the light entered the cap, although a cord of golden light connected his fingertips and the cap. He descended back to the metal beast, and through the opening and into the heart of the beast he planted the other end of the golden cord. The light then faded, although the ethereal connection remained.

Then he tapped the side of his own head and drew a cord of golden light from it. Similarly, he planted the other end of this cord on the side of the beast's head. Again, the connection was formed and the glow disappeared. Yet this time the beast came to life. There was a deep and visceral roar as the spherical cavity in its chest was filled with a spiralling vortex of star-fire direct from the Stellar Engine. Its eyes were lit by a fiery red glow. Its once-still joints stirred and stretched, adjusting its stance. Over its new heart of star-fire closed a thick, armoured circular radiator, which warmed to a red glow in a few seconds. This metal beast was now alive, and it stood tall awaiting orders.

Teknall stood before this metal beast, which was several times his own present height. "You are Goliath. And you are a projection of my will." The beast seemed to shift its head slightly in acknowledgement.



Teknall had designed Goliath to be fast, efficient and deadly in combat. Its six arms and four legs were all perfectly coordinated and capable of moving at superhuman speeds with superhuman strength, unhindered by its mass. Its perception and reaction speeds were godlike, as would be expected for an Avatar. For even greater mobility a jetpack was integrated into Goliath, granting it flight. And it was programmed as a single-minded entity, bound to follow Teknall every mental command and optimised for the task of killing.

Additionally, he had engineered Goliath to be robust. Aside from wearing thick armour plating and being built to be virtually indestructible, every single system was redundant to some degree. Six arms and four legs meant Goliath could still operate close to maximum if missing a couple of limbs. There was similar logic behind the four eyes, although in reality Goliath's entire head was optional, for its semiconductor mind was backed up in a couple of locations in its chest along with modules granting the sense of Perception. Goliath could even keep fighting if its connection to the Stellar Engine failed, for it had excess energy stored in three accumulators distributed inside its torso and two plutonium-filled radioisotope thermoelectric generators for backup power.

All that was needed was a few more weapons. From the same, nigh-indestructible metal he had built Goliath from Teknall forged a spear, two war-hammers, a battle-axe and four swords, and blessed them as well as the weapons already integrated into Goliath with his power to enhance their strength. As each was finished, Goliath reached down and picked up the weapon with its metallic hands in a seamless transfer from Teknall's own hand.

Finally Goliath stood steadfastly, and Violence would soon witness the power of this fully armed and operational battle robot. "Now we are ready," Teknall announced, "Vestec's going to get one helluva shock when we move in for the kill."

Teknall stretched out his arm and a inky black rift tore open in the fabric of space inside the workshop. Goliath bent down and pushed through the rift, disappearing from Teknall's plane. Before stepping through himself, Teknall looked back at the workshop he had built. It was currently a concrete husk. There was no air. Only a few sources of light existed to illuminate the darkness and cast great shadows across the mostly barren floor. And due to the close proximity with the star temperatures were already reaching stiflingly hot temperatures. For now he had more pressing business, but this workshop was far from complete.

Then Teknall stepped through the rift, which closed behind him, and the miniature Universe of his plane was uninhabited once more.

Sunrise from space reminded Jvan of Arcon.

She'd seen it for... Minutes, maybe, but the memories burned clear through the intervening years and filled her with longing. Another explorative mission she had not yet wagered; Logos, whatever he was behind his veil of distance, had become a jealous god. There was a year and a day in which it was right to take away the obsession of the jealous, but that day had not yet come.

And after all, the view from Ovaedis still remained beautiful beyond purposeful comparison.

As the fortress drifted betwixt the river of meteoroids, it shed a thin trail of colourful fractal spheres into the floating, silent din. They fell from the overgrown clumps of eyes bulging at the end of its stalks like berries from an unharvested orchard, spinning into the silicate stream, embarking on the long, long, but long plunge down to the gleaming and colourful surface of Galbar, transmitting their gaze as they twirled into the airless fathoms below.

There was plenty to see. Always plenty to see.

Hordes of the Devil, marching, camping, waiting. Elementals, slaving arduously behind the beck and call of their useless instincts. Angels, marshalling in the mountains and beyond it. A tree Jvan hadn't seen before, standing in the high north, beside a stormcapped mountain the like of which was only challenged by Bormahven itself. Beneath it... Bears? Huh.

The spires of a Celestial Citadel were visible from above, now, as well as from below and within. Still the creatures inside it remained a mystery to her, those of grey complexion and unknown origin, tall, disciplined. Jvan could not place their origins, and had put them out of her mind.

An unexpected and uncomfortable link was soon to bring them back.

One of her eyes dove over a forest, the incline of its flight so shallow as to be almost parallel with the ground. A glassy thing, almost a metre across, its transparency defying its great weight and all the inertia that came with that. Moss and twigs it tore like paper, and heavy boughs only bent its path before they snapped; It skidded when collision finally forced it to kiss the earth, a momentary gouge, a bounce.

It came to a halt jammed between the sides of a stream-ditch before it stopped spinning, but mud did not cling to its frictionless surface, and the delicate patterns painted into it tightened and focused.

A flutter of book-paper did not fit in to the scenery.

Oh. Oh. Uh oh.

The air tasted of deity, and that taste was bitter in its foreigness. Dangerous.

A twang of memory somewhere in the distant hulk of Jvan struck lively, and the face of the choking humanoid in the Citadel danced there. Not entirely foreign.

Just enough to be unpredictable.

Vesamera, having been left alone by Belvast, again, found herself surprised by a guest. "Oh, hello." Vesamera greeted, buried deep into the infinite scrolls residing in her fractal library. Seeking the source of the voice, the eye tried to squint into the nest and failed. The construction was familiarly complex, but its mystery robbed it of allure. "Would you be my father? Or maybe Teknall? Although your nature defies the logic of both deities." she fussed, already packing the information into one of the many scrolls, that which created a rough cocoon around her.

With a huff, she stood, and dispelled her former clothes - which morphed from cloth to glittering blue and yellow metal, this then took shape as ribbed armor throughout; restoring her, or should I say, his, regal glamour.

A god!

Curiously enough, the divine protection seemed almost... Alive, it swirled around Lifprasil, and pulsated with its own breath, constrained by the Chaos Blade that had sheated itself around his waistline. "One must present themselves around guests, as Zephyrion would always say. Who sent you, curious creature?" the soon-to-be lord asked. "I am Lifprasil, Child of Chaos, Child of Thought, and one day I will rule this world and its inhabitants."

But the words struck only a steadily dilating pupil of jittery panic.

A hybrid demigod. A mixture, a mongrel- Do they lie? Was there any other explanation for the entity's words? Yes, there was. And truth is ever the most dangerous of causes. Madness has ever followed the mind, but how this? What is it? How? Who put such such zoetic weapons in their hands and on their shoulders? Why does it threaten so?

What is Zephyrion doing in that palace?

Lifprasil was his name, and, standing before her eye now, they were far too great a variable for Jvan to ignore- Too strange, too bizarre. The glass sphere cracked over its entire surface, spilling glass and colourful ichor into the stream. From within there came a sound of grinding teeth, and a tightly curled ball of skin swelled from nothing. Its surface was studded with sooty, blind eyes, drained of sentience to make room for the goddess herself.

Heartworm's puppeteered body uncoiled as the last of the orb collapsed into the creek, a little worm in a puddle on a curved piece of glass. Jvan spoke from a distant place behind its clenched teeth.

"That so, Lifprasil? Then I present myself, for you are yet a guest on my world." Better to set boundaries. No safe being carried such a hungry sword. "I am Jvan, All-Beauty, Engineer, whom some call Horror and others Divine. I watched Vulamera's stillbirth out of the void in the before, and I saw Vestec's descent into rampage in the now. And today, I find myself listening to a child proclaim themself King."

"Who are you, child of one accident and another? Who are you really? Abomination, maybe?" There was a faintly teasing note, there, but it was wary, not friendly. "By what right do you claim so much? The simple sword, or the conceited crown? Might or reason? Speak to me, yon strange bastard, or fight me!" said the little worm, squirming in its puddle. "This world is far from no man's land, Lifprasil."

Lifprasil smiled at the strange creature that stood before him, and then, he began to speak. "I read about Jvan in the Codex of Creation when I held it upon my birth, I have a knowing of this world and its inhabitants, and I know that you don't concede alone. I proclaim myself King for the Greater Good of all things sentient and immortal, and for the Greater Good of this universe, for collaborative purposes." the Demi-God explained, releasing the handle of his sword, before cordially extending a hand to the Avatar of Jvan.

That's not very... Vestec of you, answered she, but silently. It was tough not to cringe back from the hand in its pulsing gauntlet.

"If this world is yours, I would ask your permission to allow my lordship to extend along its borders and be recognized. As equals I wish the god all-beauty not a single bit of grievance from my budding regality, and my people, just that we can speak on an equivocal level." he smiled, as his hair moved with grace against the winds.

And what could stand against that smile?

...They're their mother's child, aren't they? Permission. Rationality. A well-crafted body, even, to smooth out Vulamera's fatal flaw. He was reasonable, damn him!

As it was, Jvan did not shake hands. Looking at the demigod, his muscles not tensed against their armour, his smile not too wide, it panged to turn Lifprasil down. With the faintest tremble, the row of teeth on Heartworm's underside unlocked just long enough for a hair-thin antenna to reach up from within and tap each gloved fingertip in turn.

They clamped shut once more. Still too close, too untested. Too good to be true. Too good, fin.

"I guess we can speak, then," echoed Jvan. "An empire without hierarchy or strain is... But, stranger things have been made. We are not well met, Lifprasil, as, maybe, you wanted to be." Her eyes, many, gazed into his own softly gleaming pair. Doubt is a hefty burden.

"There is a race," keep talking keep asking don't show weakness "That resides in the Celestial Citadel. Militant, passionate things, of robust design. Are they yours? Your people? Did you make them for your kingship? Or will you simply rule, without creating?"

Lifprasil nodded, retracting his hand, while his smile dawdled and remained. "They are of my mother's creation, but I manipulated them into my own - I created them for my kingship, and am in the process of building a kingdom for my kingship." he then explained, keeping a hand on the writhing hand of his sword throughout the encounter, always.

"I do not intend to rule without creation and the like, without these things I would simply be an antagonistic beaurucrat. Not a king." Lifprasil then finished, having become very prideful, and confident in his own diction. His lapse brought a faint thrill of safety to a keen audience. Not entirely flawless. "What interests you in my people?"

"What interests you in my planet?", returned Jvan, Lifprasil's confidence breeding her own. Not a challenge, maybe, but her head-end jabbed the air along with her tone. "Only divine nature. If yours is in rule, mine is in design."

Sensing that she had opened a note that could be pried to her advantage, Jvan seized it. Heartworm's stolen body flipped upside down, and that tight clamp of lower teeth stretched impossibly wide, disgorging a great blurring rush of skin and eye and gristle and tongue that sagged and cracked and tightened in the air to its full, roughly spherical size.

"Design," repeated the voice behind the again-locked teeth.

It was conversational cheating, Jvan knew. The bulge-eyed meat nest had always been Heartworm's laboratory, but there was no reason for Lifprasil to know that. Better they think she had created it on the spot. The worm flicked its tail and leapt up to the lowest bough of ancient-oak-sized vehicle, finding an arteriole to crawl into.

"Join me, Lifprasil. I'll never be able to outdo Wise Brother Wind, but I can at least pretend to play host. Where shall we go?" The intertwined branches of the loosely hollow thing seemed to sag downwards, offering purchase. Condescending? Maybe!

Lifprasil took the offer, and with a step ascended into Jvan's grasp "Wherever you may choose, Engineer." he said, and stood tall in the grasp, and at the mercy of a god.

"Collaborative, and friendly bonds are best formed on one's own homefront - correct? Why not take me to one of your creations?" Lifprasil suggested with a keen smile.

And the vessel's eyes smiled back. The fish swims into the barrel.

The tangled vehicle tensed, and leaped skywards without releasing its muscles nor losing momentum as it rose. It pushed itself through yielding air until the distant peaks of mountains, rivers and plains were visible from above, and its skin began to ripple and fold absurdly against the wind. Cold, and colder, and gales whined through the branches of the net.

Jvan carried Lifprasil atop a spire of brilliantly twirling contrails until the sky deepened its blackness and daylight stars speckled the view; Too little moisture remained in the air to continue the trail. They did not slow. The night widened and the blue sky receded until it was only a glow around the horizon, and the horizon was shrinking, falling back, curving away behind them and losing meaning. The entire daylit face of Galbar basked beneath them, and above, the Ring glittered.

In the silence of the vacuous void that Galbar had been suspended in for eons, Lifprasil's armor reacted in silence, and with the same silent motions as the machinations of the cosmos, shifted its helmet into place.

The helmet generated a sort of atmosphere for Lifprasil to breath inside of, his armor generated the same protection, allowing him passage into space.

Cold, colder, colder still. The surface of Jvan froze over and began to desiccate. There was an icy crackling noise as she exhaled a warm cloud of fog to cushion the vessel against the vacuum. Heartworm would never have approved of her abuse of its property, but Heartworm was silenced.

There was very little sign that they were moving any more, though they hadn't stopped accelerating, either. The duo was sinking into the emptiness, and the further one looked, the smaller one seemed. A grain of dust in the night wind.

"We're approaching my machine. My factory."

Lifprasil gazed at the blackness encompassing him, fascinated by the vastness of what he was witnessing... "So... This is the greatness of the Universe..." he muttered, humbled by the presence of distant stars.

Their voices carried through the mist but no further; Even then it was like a shout against the quiet. The isolation was absolute. It took a while to dawn on Jvan that she was not, after all, alone in the silence.

"Lifprasil." She was back on her guard. "If collaboration is best forged on the homefront, then where is yours? Why do you stay with my brother when you could have already sprouted a place of your own, from which to expand?"

Simply, Lifprasil responded to Jvan "I have naught but a single land of my own, my friends, and Illunabar, however, they build a land for my people as I realize the complexity of Galbar; but up here it seems so..." he paused, gazing down at the speck that had begun fading into nothingness.

"...Small..." Lifprasil said, a sort of wonderment having taken to his flightly voice. "What is your factory like, Jvan?" he then asked, peering into the blackness - punctuated by tufts of light that he would soon hope to be his.

"It is an observatory-fortress, and within it a device with which to sample flesh from the Other with utmost ease." Trickle by trickle, the sparkling reflections of Galbar's ring were drawing near. The slowness of approach was only an illusion- They were very close, and drawing closer.

Waving away the shrieky complaints of conventional physics, Jvan killed their momentum as the orbiting shapes drew near. The ring was narrow, for all its magnificent breadth, only a few hundred metres thick, loose, shuffling. And in that river a great grey iceberg with frayed horns, and eyes on stalks.

"I have claimed much and many, but this ring is to be mine and mine alone. Galber is a tangled wonder, but there is plenty of space here." She spiralled around the listening-horn, and down, to the cervix. But-

"...I, ah. I haven't tested it out yet." Hardly impressive. "But it does work! I can prove it to you! You are a new god, and I have yet to give a birthday gift to match your sword and crown. Name your desire, nibling cousin of mine."

Lifprasil paused at the offer for a gift, stilling himself upon the approach to Jvan's living fortress. He ruminized upon the idea, another offering from another divine power.

"I would like help from you - I feel like we can both learn valuable things from comradery and good will, dear uncle." he replied, his mystified expression having been replaced by another smile. "With your flesh engine, we could do great things." Lifprasil then said, turning his head down to the glimmering nothingness that Galbar had become; before craning his eyes to look at the magnificent forefront of the universe behind it.

That premonition would not be upheld.

"There is always something to learn from any being," came a not impatient reply, especially the dangerous ones. I'd rather learn sooner than later. Still, Jvan doubted she could just manufacture friendship, even with this facility. Even with those smiles.

"And great things it was made to do. And can and will. I'm not sure where its limits are; Maybe your imagination can stretch them." The gristly joints bent to lean inwards, bringing a small cluster of eyes very close to Lifprasil's craned head. "Do you see all that? It's closer than it looks. Distances are great challenges, but no barrier. The grandest empire is united by its highways- If you would pave."

"And pave them I will," Lifprasil smiled "With your help, of course, and Illunabar's, we will make Galbar beautiful and peaceful." he then said, and looked down to the eyes that surrounded him. "I would like you to build me a mount. Something mighty, and elegant, something for a ruler - something that can show me your potential, and Galbar's. Can you do that?" Lifprasil questioned; an excited grin on his face. Despite his position, gifts were still something beautiful, especially when dutifully offered from a new compatriote.

"Only on condition that you will take it far and ride it hard," but Jvan's tone was rising, and as she felt the swell of creativity, the sound of a pen tapping on an inkwell, the fortress itself began to tilt, swivelling in its river, until the grand gate was aimed at the blue-green dot of Galbar. And keep it close by, so that I will not have to be kept in the dark over any sneakery. Lifprasil had commissioned the perfect work, and now Jvan was in her element.

"A steed for the rider- A throne for the sovereign!"

The rounded portal contracted painfully open and a faint thrum rose from within. It was the Ovaedis' maiden voyage, and though strange, its engine lit up with the exhilarating buzz of a mechanism working as planned.

Against the darkness, it was hard to see the vast stringy tangle of matter that stretched from it, like thread being spun from a fleece, into the open space. Harder still to guess its scale, but it was growing, and then shrinking. Unweaving and recoiling in an ever larger jungle of dark tendons, and at its core the living fabric condensed tighter and tighter. As the gate behind it closed and the collapsing ball grew smaller and closer to critical mass, it began to glow.

The weak white luminescence, like moonlight, cast soft shadows throughout the inside of the still-coiling feltwork creature, outlining the surface of a face. A smooth, gently rounded rectangular face, and on it on features but for a set of flimsy teeth at the jawless end, and two little pinpricks of light hidden in the sockets of a skull.

A flicker. A blink. The creature was tiny, now, in comparison to the ball it had come from, the size of a foal. And like a horse, it was maned. What thread remained uncoiled was too fine, too delicate and smooth to tangle into the glowing body, and so it formed a black cloak that hid the newborn's entire body, like that of a priest, an executioner, a scholar. Its legs- Though perhaps they were tails, and they numbered three- Were hidden. But the great hunch of its shoulders led into no arms, and the soft fur that hung from them were no sleeves.

They were wings. And, like a foal must stretch its legs and stand from birth, the child spread them wide. Wider. Wider still! Taller, too, somehow, as tall as three men. Its wings were sleek, curved things, furred, and at the elbow of each, where a pterosaur's hand may have been- Well, would 'turbines' be too misplaced a word?

Abruptly the grey glow from inside the hand-engines brightened and two pulses of pure white moonlight jetted out, lighting up the entire meteor ring, launching the awkward young foal forwards, into the void. Somehow it managed to brake with its thrusters and silence them, hiding under its cloak, suddenly very small again. Frightened by its own body.

"A shadow complements its caster, and this is yours, given flesh. It will grow," whispered Jvan, as if surprised to find herself not at all tired from creating the reaper-angel. "Not much more, but within a day's time it will be large enough to support a throne-saddle on its hunch even when upright, and cover forty men in its wings, when it has not folded itself to child-size. Of its mind, I- I'm really not sure. It is not exceptionally clever, nor can it speak, but it is aware enough to feel shy. It will imprint on your face, if you would go to it, and trust no other. From then on it may become the squire at your side, or the war-strider beneath your feet, or your wings. It is your shadow, the long shadow that a king casts in the glory of dawn, or of dusk."

Lifprasil was shocked by the intuitive design of the monstrous machine of flesh, but still he floated down, into the fray of tendons, into the hive of flesh, and reached past the wall of organs and spacious design to reach out to his new companion. He rested an armored hand to its extensive, spearheaded forehead, and felt the streamlined skin of the beast.

"Prosit," he cooed, and smiled past his helmet down to the monster, gently petting its still growing body.

There was a little flinch, from the movement, but it did not recoil as Lifprasil's fingers ran over its silken hair. It was still jittery in its movements, and it let the hooded face drift closer to his own several times before twitching it back again, as if to practice to focusing the hollow eyes behind the soft cloak. The longer his hand remained the more it seemed to swell and relax under the pressure, finding home.

It had a voice, and it sang back, in a faint sound like a low-pitched flute and wooden wind chimes in a secret garden. At last it looked away, staring at the stars and the rocks and Jvan, perhaps not so scared to look anymore.

"Alas, space is not particularly stimulating, but it will feel safe to explore anywhere as long as it is with you." She seemed to smile. "Does it suit?"

"It suits well, thank you, Jvan. Build on, and I will put your machinations to use." he thanked, gently pulling the creature's head to rest against his chest. "Now I must return to Galbar, and finally, my home, any of your people, and your creations, are welcome within the protection of the Causeway of the Phantasmagoria - provided they live in harmony with my own. This new friend, this... Oevadia, will be proof that such things are possible." Lifprasil said, before he looked into the socketed eyes of the creature gifted to him.

He then looked back to Jvan, and the form she had perused for her own motives. "I now see the beauty in your ways, and I'm sure there are those that will see it as well. They must be willing to see this on their own accord, however, as I will spread your word, I will create willing subjects from it, not slaves." Lifprasil then announced. "Prosit, my relative, and now, my friend. You have my gratitude." he finished, before he mounted the shadowed beast.

After that, Lifprasil commanded the creature, and he soon departed on his new steed... Back toward Galbar.

Jvan watched him go. "And fare ye well, little sovereign!" She wasn't sure if her voice had carried, but it could hardly matter. The twin blazes of white that propelled her nibling on were goodwill enough.

For the first time in a little while, she breathed, mentally. Lifprasil.
The last few hours had been... A rush. She had made some choices that had seemed right at the time, seemed comfortable. Now that they were gone, Jvan was no so sure. Something about Lifprasil did that to you, she supposed.

But what, really, had she lost? She had tested Ovaedis, and had learned about the new deity, who had bid her welcome in their spaces, and marked her a friend. The promised quest meant little to her, for she did not fear much from fear of her. Then again, there are the Urtelem. Those who call me Spiral-Palms. She liked those. Did Lifprasil see all mortals the same way?

"Maybe a little harmony would not go amiss."

...A transmission. Maize's corpse. The voice of Vestec. The grave of Slough.

"No!"

Heartworm consumed its nest immediately to prepare for the jump, and divine energy was racing through her like hot blood. The Devil himself, so close to the peaceful grave- So close to a disastrous awakening.

The rapidly fading light of Oevadia was the last thing Jvan saw before she entered the Deadwood. She remembered that the willing people are ever the most vulnerable, and the most dangerous. That the rogue she was going to fight was the very father of the charismatic child she had lent her hand to freely. Then there was no time to dwell on her mistakes.

"You summon the wrong gods, Fallen Devil..."

Powerful and laced with grains of truth as the murmurs of Vestec were, they struggled to resonate with the dry, meat-speckled bones of the accursed corpse goddess. The attack made to him, enough to crumble mountains and reduce to atoms any living thing not granted eternity through godhood, eluded any remnants of sensory power Slough might have had even more deftly than it eluded the laws of physics. Jvan calmed herself to examine Slough, and by an eccentric definition of ‘unhurt’ decided that she fared well enough. On the heels if this pronouncement came a torrent of creative power, exuded from the all-beauty’s consciousness and bestowed upon the lifeless tangle of former plantlife that pervaded the Craglands. Given new strength and purpose they surged to immerse themselves in poison far below, birthing from an association never meant to be a new, waterlogged forest in the grim shadow of the sepulchral cliffs. Even a beast so primitive as Slough understood the animalistic urge to embrace what bettered oneself, so the pursuit of a medium antithetical to needs -be it made by empowered roots or a fleshy aberration beyond nightmares- would have baffled her. Fortunately, the portion of her rotted brain not yet eked out through the holes that signified her ears could not fathom this unintuitive conundrum.

Were it so easy that a soothing deluge, meant in comradeship and love, could negate a virulent curse! When the bones of the Deepwood Ghoul floated to the surface of Jvan’s kindly bath, they displayed an appropriate paucity of life, but their solemn visage masked at least a glimmer of fortune: the bones did not drift apart, and remained united, as any worthwhile testament should. Though faultless in her consideration, Jvan had erred. The pit served as Slough’s prison no more than a riverbed did its river, or the soil the roots of a tree. Around the singular spot where she fell the Forsaken Cragland had arisen to accommodate her; the roots lay as her own bed, and the Aimless Time as a grave sigh, product of her last ragged breath. There lay a question, unasked and unanswered: from where did Slough’s malignant curse originate, if not from Galbar?

Banishing all pretenses, the muse, having arrived, poetically emulated a leaf on the wind, for only whispers and unhelpful flutters accompanied her presence. Even if she could not help the Rottenbone, however, she gave comfort still: in song, at least, Slough could be immortalized. No bard would sing of the brief age of stagnation, but his matron knew, and in memory would preserve she who was responsible.

Next to pay his respects came the lord of time, though he offered his affections strangely. From Jvan’s basin of blue he raised the cleansed corpse, and with no doubt good intentions he wreathed her in incomprehensibility. Into this divine envelope, secured as it was against all outside intrusions, he placed fragments of his power for Slough, like a skittish woodland creature scurrying to a backporch at night, to feed upon. His gifts did not go unnoticed. The cocoon cut Slough off from the world that, more than any god, was her lifeblood, leaving only her most singular and profound essence, that untapped and troublesome life-power, so wonderful in potential and catastrophic in consequence, behind. It devoured bark, and wood, and time—that poor, unfortunate soul.

To Slough, the time and events that passed outside mattered nothing. Perhaps nobody would remember Vestec’s conquest, or Niciel’s gift, or even the horrific despair of Jvan. The circular cocoon of the Rottenbone seemed to be an epicenter for spheres, orbs and eyes both. In truth, it wasn’t long before the egg of life began to crack. No fissures ruptured its surface, however. When the time came, the entire shell simply melted away like ice in the summer, or ash in the wind, or a dream in daytime. In the clearing, empty but for rotten things once called eyes and vigilant motes of light, Slough emerged. Within the cocoon she regained a semblance of her former shape; she was a deer of wood. This gnarled, gnobby, gray-green wood, however, seemed of the Deepwood Sepulcher more than anything fashion by Vowzra. Root spikes were her teeth, branches her horns, and trunks her hooves. From her back extended two great fans of wispy roots, crude and cruel imitations of wings. More unnatural by far was the light in her right eye. This white eye shone with an intensity not of this earth, brighter than the stars in the night sky as Slough turned her head upward to peer at the heavens. She felt a conscious pull to a certain point in the sky, but she began walking south. No time could be wasted on this perilous but necessary journey.

Vestec, God of Chaos

Might: 13

Freepoint: 2

Vestec looked up, hearing Astarte's call as he experimented on the Tree-Minds in his Realm of Madness. Just here, making new things with Vowzra's Tree-Minds. He's been hiding quite a lot of things from us, you know that? Join me if you want! He looked down at the screaming bears, writhing on the floor of the little chamber he had created, safe from the screaming of Julkolfyr and the other damned souls imprisoned in this place. He was slowly changing the Tree-Minds. Three of them at least. He still had yet to decide what he wanted to make the other three into, aside from more of the same. "Hmm, yes, longer bodies...sharper teeth...a little Herkati in them...some Ashling for ferocity...." Vestec began manipulating and adding the creatures to the three Tree-Minds under his control. "Yes..that will be perfect." Vestec looked down upon his new creatures, giggling. "There we go! Some nice predators you will be for the Tree-Minds."

Vestec briefly waved his hand, a portal showing Grot and his horde on the way. "Hmmm. You will need help against the Angels and Niciel's Aura...." He reached through the portal, a multicolored mist covering Grot and the horde. The Azibo on his back writhed and shook with new power, trying out the gifts Vestec had given them. Fire, ice, boulders, and other elements began spewing off of Grot's back as they began testing out their new powers.

"There." Vestec said with satisfaction, waving away the portal. "That solves that problem!"