It had been about three seasons since Avros' departure. Andrei sat next to the fire, watching the wild xo meat slowly dry. It was his will that they have travelled so far from the First Farm. Grazing animals needed to traverse the great expanse or they will strip the ground bare, however he had pushed his band further and faster than they need to preserve the greenery. Had he not been restrained by calmer heads, he would probably pushed himself and his steed to an early grave.

Andrei knew that he wanted to journey north before some of his brethren were fully aware of their surroundings. It was a rash decision driven by emotion rather than logical reasoning. The newly created Eidolon had an innate understanding of the plains, There was an appeal of the border between the familiar expanse and terrain which they had only fleeting reference too.

He had rushed to claim one of Avros' horses, and successfully managed to ride it a short distance to a nearby lake. It was a pathetic display, with him tiring far faster than the animal actually running. He would like to think that he had significantly improved since then. However, the others didn't share his perspective. The horse was favored by Avros, and thus there was significance to being the first rider.

He was invited to be a marshal to a band of xo herders. He had only accepted because they agreed to travel northward with him. While riding was an important aspect of being a marshal, they were also band leaders. He was glad that his band had another marshal to properly lead them. Andrei could barely control himself, much less anyone else. However, he was not completely incompetent and he had lead many successful hunts.

The first season was mostly spent making preparations. Trade was especially important during this time, and so it was beneficial not to wander to far from the First Farm. He had noticed that the further away they moved from it, the less they had saw other Eidolon. At this point, they were likely the northmost of their people. Conversely to the slow pace of the beginning, everyone was rather eager to move through Lord Night's territory as soon as possible. It had been sometime since they escaped the eternal dark, and people were still silently thanking the sun's brilliance.

When he had started staring out in the fire, it was empty. The storyteller sat nearby, muttering to herself and occasionally patting her leg. While everyone was told the first stories, time was starting to steal them away. The storyteller was respected for remembering them well. The meat was mostly tending to itself, with Andrei occasionally keeping the fire going himself, however there was other people nearby preparing fresh forage as well. He saw the salter and one of

When the food was prepared, first a portion was placed away for later. Next, those who couldn't leave their post, such as those were watching the herd, were carried their meal. And finally the remainder of the band gathered to eat. While eating and for sometime afterward, Andrei sat next to the other marshal. There was a small dispute over the night watch, however it was deftly handled by the other marshal.

As Lord Night reclaimed the sky, Andrei was the first to find sleep. He would need to wake up especially early to spend the next day scouting out the land ahead. He hoped that Lady Heat would be merciful tomorrow.

The plains stretched on...too long. Yesaris was starting to get bored of them all things considered. That painful hunger in their stomach had barely subsided even with their work, it made them wonder if more direct feedings were needed. They would have to think on that, for now, they just trudged along, their hooded form walking through the endless plains, their tail swishing about, continuously kicking up the dirt and grass that laid out behind them.

The hooded figure would not find themselves alone for long. Exactly when the state of affairs changed was hard to pinpoint exactly, but one moment Yesaris would have been walking alone… and in the next a colorful, poofy figure would be trotting slowly beside them, glancing around with an air of wonder for a moment as they admired the scenery before focusing their attention on their new company. “Hello kin. Forgive me for not knowing your name, but you are the sibling I’ve been looking for.”

Yesaris jumped in shock, hissing at the sudden appearance of their sibling. It took them a moment to compose themselves and get a good look at the, eccentric, form next to them now.
”You look for Yesaris? Who are you?”

There was a brief moment where the eyes of the equine being went wide before one of their hooves met their forehead… not where the horns were, of course. “Oh how silly of me. My name is Aethel. As much as I would like to say that I’m going around, introducing myself to my family just for the sake of it…” a sigh escaped them “...Alas, I have sought you out because one of our siblings has been terribly rude to me and in my planning to extract just retribution against them, the scheme I deemed most suitable seems to cross into your domain.”

Aethel smiled at their hooded brother as they finished “I did not wish to be rude by going ahead with it without seeking your counsel and approval first.”

Suffice to say, the god of parasites was, confused, but hey, at least this was some form of entertainment. Even if their stomach was still yelling its disapproval at the lack of food.
”We see…You wish to use our spawn for revenge scheme? What is scheme? Yesaris would like to know before agreeing.”

Aethel nodded, the urge to move sinking into their tendrils as they swayed in winds both physical and unseen. “A wise and fair decision. One of our siblings by the name of Tuku Llantu decided to steal a branch from the great tree I created while I was sleeping after its creation. Now, had they decided to ask me for a branch I would have been more then happy to offer one as a present for a sibling, but instead they decided to steal from me. That cannot be allowed to stand.”

“Since our mutual sibling is the deity of the hunt, naturally I decided that the best way to get back at them was to find a way to ruin the hunting experience. However, I must confess that a lot of my early plans were a bit… overzealous in their scale and design.” The fact that Aethel was willing to admit that and actually looked bashful about it said a lot about what those earlier plans might have been.

“However, after some consideration… I came up with a simple yet, might I say, brilliant plan. I want to work with you to create a special kind of your spawn that actively seeks out the kinds of animals that a hunter would strive for. Healthy, strong, covered in useful things like fur and skin and meat… and hijack their minds so that they actively seek out the hunter as docile and harmless as a baby, presenting themselves to be slaughtered. Take the thrill of the hunt and the stories it creates away from it.”

Looking rather pleased with themselves, Aethel did add “Of course, I’m certain that you can already think of a number of ways that your spawn could benefit and thrive by doing their part in this scheme. After all, I’m not going to ask you to help with this and not let you benefit somehow. That would be rude.”

”We see” Yesaris nodded, the ever present smile of their teeth having never faded whatsoever. They thought about the proposal, the hunger reminding them of the sustenance that could come from it. ”We can agree to this, the mere existence of more of our spawn will appease Yesaris and our, hunger.” They turned their head upwards towards their kin, the slasher-like smile still there.

Aethel took a seat on the ground, allowing them to free up their two front legs so that they could clap their hooves together in joy. “Wonderful! I’m happy to mix some of my power with yours in order to infuse these new spawn properly, but since this is your field I feel it is only fitting to let you take the lead in our joint project.”

”Very well, we can do that.” They opened their mouth, and began to make heaving sounds. Eventually, a thick mass of white goo emerged, and plopped into one of their hands. They briefly brought it up to their face to inspect, before squishing and stretching it with all four of their arms, until it took a new form, thousands of protosoa, all clumped together. "There we go, that should be a good form, small, so hard to see, able to docile a beast in order to spread, but, will need to recognize proper hosts and hunters." They handed the mass over to Aethel, implying that's where they came in.

The deity of Mana did not take the mass of protosoa from Yesaris physically, instead accepting them via grasping the ball in a soft, mind telepathy as the ball hovered in the air before the equine. Selecting the kinds of hosts they should be striving to find was somewhat difficult at first due to the knowledge that the world was still in the early stages of creation and flux; Even if they knew every viable animal that the hunters of the world would desire by name, more would almost certainly be added in the near future. So instead Aethel focused on traits.

Some traits were easier than others. Animals that would be suitable for resources like meat or their pelts would provide clear targets for hosts, but the concept of trophy or glory hunting and the creatures that would play a starring role in such events were somewhat harder to convey. In the end, Aethel came to what they believed was the only real workable solution for long term success; The spawn would start off with a general idea of what traits to look for in a host, but they needed to be smart and observant enough to notice what kind of creatures were being hunted in their local area and why… and then using that information to adapt and seek out ideal hosts for their local region.

The ball of the spawn seemed to glow as it was infused and altered by Aethel’s influenced… before at last the glow subsided and the ball was floated back to Yesaris. “They have some basic values to look for, but I believe I’ve given them enough intelligence to properly adapt and grow into their role wherever they might end up.”

"Perfect, now come big question, where shall they go? We are unsure of where this kin of the hunt frequents, so might be best to spread it around a bit." They cradled the ball in their hand, seemingly checking on it to ensure it was still suitable for the task.

Aethel nodded their head in agreement at the assessment. “That seems like the best idea brother. Do you wish for the honor of naming them?”

Yesaris turned to look at the ball of parasites in their hand ”Hmmm, lets see...let us call them, Hunt’s Bane!” They seemed quite pleased with that name, and looked back towards their strange looking kin for approval.

A small, almost musical chuckle filled the air as Aethel answered back “Yes, that fits them perfectly. Thank you for the assistance, Yesaris.” Offering his kin a polite bow on top of their thanks, the equine quickly corrected themselves before saying “As much of a pleasure as this is, there is at least one other creature I need to pay a visit to before I head home. You might have heard their vow in fact… they did make it in all of our names after all.”

When compared to Aethel’s musical chuckle, Yesaris’ was far more harsh, almost akin to the buzzing of an angry swarm. ”Yes yes, Yesaris heard, we care not for that thing, barely even worth getting food from, we look forward to seeing their quest though, should be quite fun. Why you care for such creature?”

Aethel almost looked shocked by the question, as if it had never occurred to them to ask themselves before. “Because they gave their word to me and the least I can do is make sure they have the means to keep it. To break a promise once made is a terrible thing after all.” There didn’t seem to be any ill will to the equine’s words; A promise had been made to them and they intended to hold the maker accountable to it.

For their part, Yesaris merely shrugged ”As good reason as any, Yesaris sees no purpose in holding that vow, vengeful mortal is fool, will just be food for something else, but Kin Aethel is free to do as they wish.” They brought the ball of Hunt’s Bane up to their face once more ”Suppose should let spawn have their fun,” And with that utterance they tossed the ball upwards, allowing it to explode, sending the protozoa within across the sky, off to find their homes in the reaches of the world.

”Does Kin Aethel have anything more of Yesaris?

For their part, Aethel politely shook their head. “This has been more than enough brother. It has been a pleasure working with you and if you ever find yourself venturing near my tree, you’re more than welcome to stop by and visit.”

Yesaris nodded ”We shall keep that in mind, for now, we shall return to our feast.” Yesaris offered an, incredibly, clumsy bow, before trudging once more into the plains, intent on whatever this feast was.

With business concluded and the social niceties used for the time being, Aethel politely parted ways with their sibling, their need for vengeance against the Deity of the Hunt satisfied as they now focused on visiting one who had made an ill advised vow.

The glassy jaws of the ice ground against one another, great frozen plates crushing themselves away into a soup of brittle ostraca that bobbed on the surface of the heaving water. The sound of it groaned deep and far through the belly of the silent ocean. Earth tore, the winds howled cold, and the surface of Galbar cracked like a cake.

A first birth is not easy.

Like the blood of afterbirth, rich life stained the fresh land, sprouting in the greys and greens and wrinkled amber hues of lichen. Grass, first, then sedge and reed, and shrub, and tree, and- yes! Great, grand woods, tall as mountains, ripping through the soil to dance with the goddess. The cry of a bird, the howl of a wolf, and soon, over it all, the great call, the sound of triumph, loudest of them all- a trumpet boomed across the Shepherd's plains, the song of a bull mammoth, virile, singing his new strength.

A first birth is not easy- and yet there is such joy in it!

The earth and sea revelled, and even the wind in all its coldness could not quiet the spirit of the north. A great walrus barked and rolled into the beating waves, its tusks bigger than any elephant's. Its great lumpen bulk flew freely through this well-salted water, its path as smooth as a circling hawk. Soon it would eat its fill, cracking clams the size of watermelons, and return to rest and bask on the stones of the sunny shore, so freshly hewn that the waves had not yet even had the time to wear them down into round pebbles. Soon, yes, it would rest on the shore.

A great eye watched it from the deep, and departed.

Born of a deva's laughter, something grand had been forged in the ocean, and left there unwitnessed to enjoy the breath of life. It would not return to shore. It had never known the shore, no more than any fish. It barely even knew the silt of the shelf that encircled the new continent, that muddy, craggy seabed writhing with dire wolf-eels and halibut the size of two men. It was untethered, left to drift away on the currents like no other being in the cold god's care, unmoored from the Shepherd's fields. It was alone, and it was free.

The first whale breached, and blasted a spray of hot fog towards the shining sun.

It sang a song into the open sea, a long, beating string of deep whoops and pulses. It was soon answered by another. In the distance, a third, a different tongue, this one slowly whistling.

The eyes of the southern realms might never see such beasts as roam the Giant Lands. The elk and mammoth would not venture to the lands where it was hot, and the direwolf would not follow. The walrus would always return, in the summer, to nurse its young on the shores of its home.

But the whale would be everywhere. There was no ocean too great for it to cross. In seas warm and cold, dark and bright, the whale would go and bring the great dance of the giants with it, borne by the waves of this well-salted sea. Until the day it breached and sank for the last time, it would always be supreme.

In time it would bear a calf, and the name of that calf would be-

---

After the first two impromptu forest fires upon reaching this northern land did Yoliyachicoztl change from her most powerful true form to something a bit more safe for those around her. Taking the form of an Elder Acthotlaca, her sweet Iyotlaca, she soared above these lands, her mind thrumming with some distant thoughts as she lazily surveyed the lands below. Large beasts of many kinds roamed the wetlands and lazy lakes and rivers.

A beautiful sea led to mighty forests upon the new lands, marshes and rivers predominated, lakes scattering across the landscape mighty and small in such enormous numbers. It was beautiful in a way, just as the frigid landscape was also far against her taste in another. She would not want to live here, but it was nice to view from a distance.

The thrumming had been softening since she had arrived, it flared every now and again but she was content with the semi-peace she could get for now. As the serpent of heat drew closer to the land below, the stench of death wafted into her divine senses. It was stronger then perhaps any she had smelt before and permeated the air like a thick miasma as she neared over top the origin.

To say curiosity got the better of her would be a callous way of putting it. A more discerning or charitable view would say she was concerned. Regardless, the outcome was the same, in a mortal form she drew closer to the source of that ever so vile stench. Her eyes and senses focused so close on the scene before her as she landed.

Small rodent-like creatures fled before her, running and screaming. They had been moving their dead ones to a central pile on the lake's edge, surrounded by rocks and boulders. Now it seemed that little of them remained, they dove into the safety of the water. Another divine’s presence could be felt, but it was not approaching her. In fact, she could see a white furred figure way down the bank, next to a ruined structure. He knelt beside something else, a wispy looking thing that did not take physical shape.

Yoliyachicoztl paid little attention to the fleeing rodent-creatures themselves. It was an odd task they had seemed to set upon themselves but the more she looked around the more it made sense. A great loss, more curious was how and the presence of another divine.

She briefly stopped herself from simply approaching, staring at the makeshift mass grave. Partly through the power of heat, and partly the inherent ability of any goddess- she brought stones and boulders to her, cutting and reforming them. The makeshift ring became a solid circle around the bodies, a fire safe one at that should the bodies be burned. Her senses, divine as they were, could penetrate the mass of the bodies, even as torn as they were. In a final act she added small stone figures along the edge of the circle, deliberately reminiscent of some of the dead- a curious patch there, a slightly wider tail here. An unfortunate reality it seemed, but at least they might have some memory for the dead should they be smart enough to do what they’ve done already.

With her minor degree of respect for their efforts done in a small gift- she headed closer to her fellow divine. As she neared she could hear a conversation occurring, between the white rodent-creature and the vague mist shaped thing.

”...Not how I imagined you would awaken. This is my fault, for I knew of the danger they posed but could not imagine it would come so soon… And to my own land. To our land.” the divine spoke in a voice that fit it’s position, despite the form he chose to wear.

The mist let out a sad cry. A shaky feminine voice projected from the mist, “No blame… No blame papa.” It seemed to reach out towards him but when the mist touched his fur, it passed through.

”Nisshi…” He began but stopped when the mist finally caught Yoliyachicoztl’s gaze. The mist gasped, “Fire! Burn!” and disappeared into the water like she had dove. The rodent creature turned to her, holding the small body of a dead child. Before his eyes his form shifted from the rodent to an ethereal figure, wearing a dark, hooded cloak.

”Nisshiniek… Afraid of fire, you see.” He motioned to the water with a slight turn of his head before lazily looking back at her. ”You are divine. I felt your presence, felt your power… My opposite comes, face to face. It was inevitable. You will have to forgive me for such an unbecoming welcome to my land. Tragedy has befallen us.”

“Many are afraid of fire, especially when they know not of it, I won’t take too much of your time. Complementary we are so, I am not be surprised you take up charge over the coldest lands as I do warmer.” the Goddess spoke as she grew closer to the ethereal figure, she glanced around at the few beings that hadn’t yet dove for cover before she continued.

“You speak of tragedy and I can see it thusly so, what has brought this down, how has this occurred? These ones are small yes but intelligent enough not to be so quickly taken even by the large life that seems to predominate.”

She spoke softly, even if a bit ironic calling life her current form dwarfed large briefly called to her mind.

”I knew it not to be you, in any case. There was no fire here that caused such carnage. No, I fear something more sinister at play- Another god it was. She took the form of a mighty eagle, so these Bjork witnessed, tinged with green. The predators of the forest were turned against this clan, summoned by this goddess no doubt, to wreak havoc and to kill. They say she spoke with a fiery temper, that she told them to return to more natural ways. They did not know that any crime had been committed, that a line, in this goddesses eyes, had been crossed. How were they supposed to know?” The god shook his head with a sigh.

“It was a cruel act, there is nothing else to say about it. Blood has been spilled upon these lands, the first murder…” He held out the bjork child. “How does a Kit know the difference between right or wrong, if they are not taught?” The water from the lake peaked a head above the bank, as if watching the two Gods.

The goddess spoke softly at first, “Natural? A goddess comes to make a bloody, pointless, useless slaughter for no food or defense. Just to make a point, and she had the gall to argue what is natural? Whoever she shall be I shall learn her name and know her, and she will learn to think twice about any such action. I have no connection forced with these creatures yet- but I have my own children.”

By the time she had finished talking it was clear there was a great deal of anger behind her words,

“Natural ways, if these be the ways of nature,” a hand gestured to the many bodies. “Then I can think of no higher calling than to abhor the natural, to strike and cleanse it from the sculpture, and shape it anew.”

She leaned in close, bringing her adopted form’s head down level with the other deity, “What do you think and plan in the midst of this? I am Yoliyachicoztl, and I will not sit idle in the face of horrific provocation, what will you do my divine peer?”

The god looked down at the dead kit within his arms. ”Yoliyachicoztl, greetings. I am Chailiss.” The god of cold said before continuing, ”Dealing in extremes would not work for anyone and bring about even more needless devastation. There is a place of nature to exist and thrive and for mortals to partake of it and grow in their own way. A balance, if you will.” He looked up at her. ”The culprit is gone, other gods may come here to these lands of mine so I must stay. But to this aggressor I would say that she be banned forevermore from this land. We have enough to deal with between Ruina, Iqelis and whatever else our Lord Creator has unleashed upon this world, what’s one more deranged god to deal with? I can not say for sure where your ideals lie, but if you are against this brutality, then you must be wary of the others, yes?” he asked.

“I don't care so much for such matters of balance or anything there, any state that is so comfortable embracing cruel brutality without cause or reason of choice I am against. And so I dislike any 'natural' order that has such an embrace. For others I am always wary, but actions ring clearer than words. I am not so content to sit by, to deal with reaction to horrendous action upon such 'deranged' gods as you put it." The Goddess shifted around as she spoke, keeping one eye on her fellow deity even as she turned her head away.

She turned to another topic, "Tell me, what do these Bjork know? Clearly some manner of construction at least, perhaps a gift of knowledge will help keep away a lesser threat on their own, prevent a catastrophe from becoming the beginning to end.”

”I will not persuade you from either action, Yoliyachicoztl. When the time comes, I will act to protect and safeguard what is mine. Is it so wrong to be thoughtful when we react so that any potential loss can be negated?” He walked further some, choosing to keep his distance. ”These Bjork know little outside of what they were born to do. Build dams, bigger dens, bigger clans. The water was to be their safe haven from the land but as you can see… Break the dam and the whole thing can topple. I think, perhaps, the greatest gift you could bestow upon them, is what comes naturally to you. Fire. It brings heat, safety, and fear. As we have seen.” he looked at the blob of water in the water and it grew a little taller before the mist left it and quickly zipped around Chailiss, growing smaller as it did.

“Fire… Burn…” She murmured aloud. “How live?” she asked, looking at Yoliyachicoztl.

She focused her sight briefly on the little mist first, speaking only this, “That which burns one, may envigorate another.”

She turned back to Chailiss, “I will know what must be done when I can ascertain knowing this Goddess myself, as I will with any deity. While the Bjorks, I think I can give much assistance indeed in their regards…”

The little mist wiggled but said nothing else as it hovered around the god’s head. Chailiss nodded. ”That is all anyone can do, Lady Yoliyachicoztl. Shall I make a pact with you? If I learn who is behind this, I will tell you their name. If you find out who it is, can I ask the same?”

“I would agree to this pact, and propose a further one, that we each keep each-other informed of any similar occurrences enacted that we should come across.”

She looked around at the surroundings of the land, and once more shifted her form, a small triped only a bit taller than most of the Bjorks. Fire orbited around her in small sparks as her form’s skin retained the look of that of the great Achtotlaca. She spoke further to her fellow deity, “Are you creator to these Bjorks and that mist spirit? You seem very attached to the lands here.”
”I accept this pact.” Chailiss stated. ”But no, I did not create the Bjork. They have their own version of events, naming their lord the Singing Maker. A deity that swiftly left this land, the same land I am indeed, attached too. It was created alongside Zenia, a fellow Goddess. I would consider her a friend to me and to this realm.” His head began to follow the small mistling. ”I did create this one, and more of her kind that are not so intelligent. You see, this Nisshiniek was gifted a small sliver of my power. Her awakening was not intended to be so… Traumatic. But she is here now, and her future is her own to forge.”

“Forge…” The Nisshi repeated.

“I see this, a sliver of your power you say? An interesting idea I must admit, although for her sake it is sad there was so much trauma. Regardless, I shall hope to meet these two, perhaps I shall be able to inform this 'Singing Maker' of the aggression against their creation.” Yoliyachicoztl spoke even as her current form had no mouth, there was a sense of continued inspection of the mistling from her as well…

The goddess then looked around, with divine senses clearly casting a broad net to see where the Bjork had gone. She stomped her feet at very precise internals and intensity, feeling the casting back of frequency through the earth and water. Divine capability made many things far easier.

”Zenia is… She has a good heart. I know not of the other or how they might be though. If it’s any indication, then I hope they had a good reason to abandon their creation so soon. Perhaps this… Could have been prevented. Oh well, the deed is done and now they must live with the consequences. I shall help with what I can. But this brings us back to your own arrival. What brings you here, might I ask?” Chailiss said, looking at her.

She caught herself before saying the Thrumming did, instead replying, "Looking for peace. To align the world as it should be more so- and to explore the creations beyond my own efforts and knowledge."

She continued after a pause, changing the direction of conversation evidently viewing the question as answered, "These Bjorks are small compared to most things that live in these lands, they are not fast, no terrible claws although their teeth might deter the small beasts. They would die if they had not the water, their minds, and their tools."

She gestured towards the dam, "It is their great work, but it is not enough. They will have to stand against the worst of 'nature' as that Goddess seems so intent to ensure. Heat will provide them what they need, fire. Fire to scare and hurt those that may come after them, fire to harden their spears to drive them deeper into those that are maddened beyond fear, fire to quicken their points and fire to cook their meals."

“Fire. Danger.” The Nisshi commented.

”There will always be danger with fire, yes. But it is useful, even I will admit that. Do what you will, Lady Yoliyachicoztl, I shall not stop the gift of fire from spreading across this land.”

She nodded, and her voice rang out to the many Bjorks, some that still hid. "Hear me faithful Bjorks, lend me time and your hearing servants of the Great Singing Maker! Listen, for I have come to teach you gifts of knowledge and power to fend off the beast of night and day..."

Her voice continued, beginning to draw them out so she could teach them the many benefits of fire that they would need to survive such antipathy that had been set against them.

As the Heat Goddess began her teaching, Chailiss took the small Nisshi and together they buried the small Bjork kit.

---

Epsilon had remained in the halls of the palace as the gods had both been born and begun their tasks. They came and went, working their destructive capabilities upon the once-dead planet below; some writing upon his Codex as requested, and some not. Anger filled him as he watched Jiugui drunkenly scrawl upon the Codex without a care in the world, but, for now, he maintained his composure.

He hid his feelings well; nothing but an expressionless golden visage to be read. He always gave off an air of vague displeasure; over enough time, one could get used to it, dulled to consider it wholly neutral. He watched as gods blew holes in the ocean, a ring was formed, and, finally, the God of Earth got to work. It did not befit a god to swim, or so he believed.

Once the continents were raised, he stepped out the main doors of the palace out into the void beyond. Gravity nor air seemed to concern him; he stepped on nothing as though it were something. Then he told himself he was at Galbar, and the self obeyed. He was upon the barren land when plants took root, watching them wind around himself.

Then, he looked up at the sky as oxygen flooded the atmosphere and a misty blue color overtook the void beyond. The rings; something was happening to them. Another god wreaking destruction, no matter how controlled; to create something new. He let the plants wind around his body, not caring to shake them off as his golden visage remained locked skywards.

Slowly, he realized what was going on. A second Galbar? An interesting proposition, though one he did not entirely understand the point of. It was smaller, it was lifeless, and it just sat there. He watched it for a time; having spotted a speck nearby, though he was not yet clear on what it was. The speck flared; it picked up momentum; it shot across the sky as a star in motion.

And then it slammed into the moon, hanging silently above Galbar. Epsilon could see the impact, the dust thrown up, and the marr upon the perfect surface. The emotionless golden visage gazed on as the moon refused to abide the blow; it began to dance in the sky, flying through the void. The shockwave -- divine in nature, Epsilon could feel it -- washed across Galbar. The land was strong, foundations laid by the god of the dirt and the stone, and it refused the clarion call of divinity.

But the water was not. The smooth surface of the seas, from which he could once spy his reflection as though a mirror, roiled as though a tilted lover. Waves crashed upon the shores, and he could see the tides shift, imperceptibly to all except one with the eyes of a god. Of course, as a god, Epsilon was built of a more serious stock than even the land; he had not once even considered falling to the demands of the shockwave.

---

Well secluded within her perch on the moon, the prescient goddess meanwhile peered through the cosmos with calm and icy intent. Her gaze was unhindered by the sun’s mundane brilliant glare, and she had it fixated upon that heavenly palace where the Monarch of All made his dwelling. Now the Monarch himself was descending down unto the Galbar for some dubious purpose (she would have to observe his doings later!), but that potent instrument that she now needed -- the Codex -- remained in the palace where Epsilon had left it. And better yet, the Monarch was ordering out all those stragglers that had remained in his palace! It looked as though there would be nobody to stop her from seizing the artifact.

Even here, as far away from that palace’s warmth as any of the gods had ever come, her Sight was potent enough to look upon the Codex and read it, but she instinctively knew that merely reading it was not enough. Something about the object’s presence granted greater understanding, and its possession surely granted power...Yudaiel cast her vision forward, into the future, and saw one vision of herself clutching it all to herself there upon the lonely moon, channeling the artifact’s power while her great nemesis and all other interlopers were helpless to stop her, if not blissfully unaware.

Yudaiel’s gaze darted left and right, prescient Sight tearing across countless timelines and trying to determine possible outcomes. She devoted the entirety of her willpower and mental faculties to make sense of what she Saw: the chaotic and immeasurable tapestry of Reality, and the discord of the needles and threads weaving it all together. She Saw that there would not be any riper opportunity than this one moment, at least not for a good deal of time, and so without a further thought she spurred herself into motion. Yes, this was destiny.

The Reverberation erupted from the scarred crust of the moon to which it had clung and permeated. She surged upward and away, easily escaping her moon’s gravity, all the while invisible even against the pallid glow of its surface. Then she cascaded across the heavens as an unbound stream of consciousness and will, rapidly making her way to the great bridge that led to the Monarch’s heavenly palace.

---

Epsilon noticed the essence as it fled from the moon; he tracked it briefly, towards the palace; recognizing Yudaiel, one of the two that had fought to write in his Codex. Then, he looked back down at the ground beneath his boots. The plants protested only briefly before his divine strength tore them from their roots, and he shook his body clear of them. His clothes remained unmarred, still as white as snow and as golden as ever. One boot in front of the other, he walked across the landscape; he found his destination far faster than should have been physically possible. The advantages of divinity were evidently manifest.

He was at a vast pit in the ground, surrounded by miles-high water on each side. It seemed, for all intents and purposes, that the land repelled the ocean. A vast shadow cast on the land from the mountains of sea on each side, and in the water he swore he could spot something; another divinity perhaps? It was long and finned, he swore, but as quickly as he saw it, it was gone. Nothing but the echo of a song in his mind. The mask’s gaze fled from the water, and he stomped across the island, exploring it.

It was empty for now, but he expected it would not remain that way. He stepped into the water, beginning to walk across the ocean floor as he sought the western continent. The volcanic vents kept visibility low, Epsilon cleared the smog as he went, just to keep sight on the path ahead of him.

---

Through rock and empty space Yudaiel’s consciousness had glided. The incorporeal Eye was in that moment more like an amorphous stream of essence, an invisible comet that was blinded by purpose and hate and desire and fear and dance -- motion. Yet she was so much more than just some imponderable comet. For a start, the Lady of Far and Near was swifter than any comet, much swifter. Within seconds of her departure from the moon she’d already reached the bridge. She tore her way up its whole expanse, storming into the palace, unseen and hopefully unfelt, even as Ruina and Iqelis quarreled over destroying her moon. She heard them; she saw them. Still, she passed right by, for every moment was precious and she had far more pressing matters at hand.

Yudaiel found the Codex just where she knew it had been and where it would be -- and then it was hers, that easily! Even with the foresight of her visions, she was incredulous that claiming it had been so trivial; had none of the other gods thought to do the same? Fools.

The ethereal wind that had been Yudaiel swept up the Codex. She spirited it away and back to the moon nearly as swiftly as she’d come, with so much alacrity that to any observer it would seem as though the Codex had just vanished in an instant, evaporated into nothingness.

---

Light slowly returned to Epsilon as the ocean became shallow; he was close to the western continent. It was covered in plants just the same as the eastern continent, but otherwise it did not have any terrain, either. He stomped across the ground, trodding some of the plants underfoot with careless steps. An idea was swirling in his mind; a place he could call home on Galbar, and he needed to consider where he could place it.

He let his gaze err to the far south, letting his divine senses reach out to feel the great tree that sprouted far into the atmosphere. Another variable to consider he thought as he explored it with his senses, before bringing them back to his immediate surroundings. It was certainly a start, and he was excited to see what Galbar would look like once the other gods had finally completed their duties.

---

Since Yudaiel and Iqelis had written of Time’s arcane nature, paths, and endings within the Codex, there had been no further additions scrawled by other gods. All was just as it had been, just as she had remembered, just as she could have read if she had looked upon the thing with her farsight. Possessing a tome to which you’d already memorized all the words should have meant little.

Yet in that moment, with the Codex in her possession, she somehow felt as though she was…more. Her knowledge was more perfect, her prescience more refined and accurate, her total omniscience that much closer. There was a power that clung to this thing and filled any who clutched it; perhaps Epsilon had anticipated this? Had he intended to lull all the gods into writing within it and contributing to its might, only to then claim all that power for himself? Well, now it was hers, and perhaps he would come to rue his lack of foresight or caution.

The Prescient’s plan was set into motion: first, woven into gaps between the countless revelations and descriptions of Time and Fate, she began to append a new passage. Her Sight had allowed her glimpses at the outcomes that would result from her changes. She had already determined just what glyphs and knowledge to impart upon the Codex, down to the tiniest detail, the most exact spacing, the perfect style and diction, every bit of minutiae had already been meticulously accounted for and committed to memory. She was prepared and needed only to act, and so she did. She became motion itself, doing and hardly even thinking except to savor the moment, the taste of her coming and inevitable triumph.

She filled some of the bits of space remaining in the margins that had been left between the countless annotations and definitions of Time, and wove around the unknowable secrets hidden beneath Tuku Llantu’s ink, the wine-stains of Jiugui, and everything else. She even wrote over some of it. The writing grew and warped and twisted like a writhing snake. It wrapped into a circle, then turned back upon itself; now she was writing over even her own works in the Codex, its readability vanishing like dusk’s light even as the power and meaning of the many-layered words and symbols remained.

Her addendum to the Codex was, in short, a scathing and utter rebuke of Luck and random chance...she expressed and precisely described the nature and mechanics of nigh all physical phenomena that she could think of, at least those that did not utterly spit in the face of such consistency as magic did. Even the most seemingly inane and insignificant things were accounted for, such that foreordination became that much more undeniable. Her own power surged into the Codex; she poured far more of herself into it now than she had when she and Iqelis had competed to fill the pages before. So much additional divine might was imbued into the Codex that it began to glow with a blinding light, to hum and sing audibly with power even in the near-vacuum of space, to even throb and shudder as if it were breathing raggedly.

’Thump...Thump. Thump,’ sounded the living Codex’s heartbeat. Slowly, subtly, but perceptibly, it began to influence Reality itself. First it was just the immediate surroundings that felt the change, but the effect was spreading through the cosmos.

This Codex had more potential than perhaps even he had ever realized. Consciousness could beget reality, as she had shown through her willing this moon to take form around the fiery maw of its molten heart. Here, what Yudaiel had done would leave Ashevelen very confused and weak, if not outright agonized and crippled. But alone it was not enough, so Yudaiel moved to the next stage of her grand design.

It was in that moment that Ruina’s primitive telepathy reached Yudaiel -- it contained memories, and yet this was unrefined and raw, akin to a long series of guttural growls and hand-gestures when compared to the beauty, passion, and perfect imagery of her poetic ideabstractions. At least Ruina’s message was somewhat concise, if nothing else. The slight bit of her mind that it distracted grew annoyed, but as she looked down upon Galbar to focus upon Ashevelen -- her nemesis, her prey -- she found it in her to deign reply to that Ruina. Through space, a seeking dart of her essence raced to the goddess of destruction, laden with an ideabstraction:



Projecting that ideabstraction had cost only an instant, taken one thought. Within a breath’s time Yudaiel’s focus had returned to her mark; Ashevelen had left that northern continent where she’d played with bjorks and birds, and now wandered some empty and desolate country in the northwestern reaches of the largest continent. That was good; with so little nearby, the massive collateral damage that Yudaiel was about to inflict would affect little.

The Great and All-Seeing Eye, socketed within the most enormous crater on the moon’s surface, pulled the Codex up to her very pupil. From her heart, the densest clump of Yudaiel’s vast and disparate essence, there welled a massive flow of divine power. She directed its flow such that it surged into the humming Codex, but was not absorbed.

Instead, it was focused, magnified, amplified. Yudaiel brought to bear the Codex’s own innate power (and that power had already been immense, even before she had just poured more into it!) and joined it with her own, and then she unleashed what was perhaps the mightiest single attack that this pantheon had yet witnessed: a massive telekinetic blast manifested upon the planet with no warning, and it shook the Galbar to its very core.

The result was tremendously potent. In an instant, entire mountains were ground into dust and hurled aside, rolling hills were crushed into flatlands, and in other places flat and open prairies were soon made into highlands as the debris strewn from elsewhere came to be deposited onto them. One of Astus’ colossal collectors had been in the wrong place and the wrong time, and it was torn asunder and cast skipping across a league or two of land like a tumbleweed before it at last was arrested by crashing into a hill that had been hardy enough to survive the blast.

As for Ashevelen, who was at the very epicenter of this blast, somehow -- infuriatingly! -- she had survived. Yudaiel had seen that there was a non-zero chance of this happening, so fortunately her disappointment was not accompanied by surprise. She was far from finished -- the Reverberation prepared her next attack, even as a confused, distraught, wounded, and lucky Ashevelen scrambled about like a fleeing bug.

---

Something was wrong. Epsilon could feel the power and see the destruction. Galbar tore itself apart in a great conflagration, the shockwave ripped him off of his feet. The divine fire, following closely behind, losing the furious race outwards, tore at his body. The air around him buckled, and for a brief moment, he lost all orientation. Epsilon floated, battered and bewildered, in a timeless and spaceless void of consciousness borne from his own senses.

But that did not befit a god: A god did not get lost, in deed or in direction. The world ordered around him, clearing him a path to the only place he could go. The pale gem floated far above, in its endless dance, and now it also housed his Codex. Fury fueled him, his declaration of love for the universe used to destroy that which was loved. He instructed his form, measured its distance from the moon, and found it to be far closer than thought.

He had misjudged his measurement in his fury. He had not arrived at the Codex; an error had brought him perhaps some twenty feet away. Epsilon’s voice cut through the void, hoarse with fury, “You have sullied the Codex! It is our love for our universe, not a weapon to be abused!”

But he had conveyed himself right into the midst of Yudaiel’s vast form, and now he was deep within her sea of consciousness, surrounded on all sides by her smothering and overpowering essence, drowning. There was no resisting her ideabstraction; the world around him faded and became a dreamscape, even as his body was propelled away at well past the moon’s escape velocity by a telekinetic shove.

Epsilon found himself above one of Galbar’s oceans, the waves rolling far below him. But he was not really himself; he was a mere seagull, wings flapping to stay aloft. There was an island before him, he knew, and yet he could not see what was on it, and nor could he go visit it -- every grain of sand upon its shores was enclosed within a massive shield that he sensed was nigh impenetrable, and the trade winds carried a tang of fear and trepidation. He realized that he did not want to go to that island, and whatever terrible entity was hiding behind that shield certainly did not want him to go there either.

”L̫̜̿̃Ë̩̬͛̉͟Ã̼͍̊V̠͕͊̅E̛̘̪͓̐̆ ,̨͔̰͑̀̚ I͚̻̾̚͝ͅN̯̝̋̈͐͟T̝̋͢͞E̠͔̿̔R̬̘̭̓͌̃L̩̪̃̎̅͢Ó̩̜̥̃͗͟͡P̛̭͎̣̬̅̅̃E̗̥̼͙̎̈́̏͘R̥̪͕͔̃̅͂͗!̪̪̹͌̿͗” he thought he heard an eldritch and terrible voice echo from all around, but perhaps it was just the roaring wind; suddenly, buffeting and deafening gales slammed into his frail avian body, throwing him backwards and into somersaults through the air. He tumbled and flapped as hard as he could to regain altitude, just barely skimming over the water’s surface below, and found himself aflight once more -- oriented directly away from that island.

The seagull was mortified for one brief moment, content to leave the island behind, but then a thought struck it. A seagull is a median creature of Galbar, possessed of only instinct and the deep-seated desire of survival. I think, yet I am a seagull? The seagull flared its wings and turned back towards the island, thinking further, I am one of the smallest and menial creatures of Galbar, yet I can so easily refuse the orders of my betters?

Something was off with the situation. Realization slowly began to dawn on the seagull, and, finally, with one burst of inspiration, the answer came to Epsilon. His voice cried out, his body morphing into its proper identity, “Your visions lack consistency, Yudaiel! You will be punished for your desecration!”

The visions cleared, for the briefest of moments; he remeasured his steps. He had never left the moon, the golden-masked god instructed his self. He corrected as much as he could in the moment he was granted. He was no longer twenty feet away from the Codex, but a little closer.

The vivid color of the radiant Codex, the light of the sun reflected upon the moon’s pallid surface, and even the distant twinkling stars seemed to all fade. Hope and life itself seemed like forlorn and futile, fleeting dreams; such frivolous emotions and thoughts fled of their own volition from the heart, and a foreboding sense of doom and despair arrived to fill the void left behind.

But that was not Yudaiel’s doing.

Something terrible approached -- a wave of ruinous power conjured by Iqelis -- and Yudaiel suddenly found herself beset with yet another distraction. Her mind rapidly compartmentalized as she devoted a piece of her consciousness towards dealing with each obstacle. There was bickering -- one wanted to spare Ashevelen for the moment and redirect the Codex’s full power towards deflecting Iqelis’ attack, but that was utterly unacceptable. The Reverberation crushed and suppressed those thoughts; her beautiful moon was not so precious that she would sacrifice this window of opportunity for the fleeting chance of sparing it further disfigurement. This preemptive strike had to work.

The interloper, however, had stubbornly returned, discarding his momentum and transposing his body back from the depths of space into which he’d been cast out. Yet through teleporting once more into the heart of her vastness, Epsilon’s mind was opened anew. He resisted, and his intellect was sharp and could cut through illusion like a knife, but through sheer willpower Yudaiel overcame his senses and thrust him once more into a realm forged through ideabstraction.

Epsilon was himself, so even as he found himself looking at a surreal and altered dreamscape, the transition was not so jarring.

He observed a familiar island directly ahead, but around it there were no rolling waves, just as there was no sea breeze or salt spray or even water. This was an island of waxen stone, floating amidst a sea of stars...a moon!

But he knew that the magnificence before him was no mere rock, island, or moon, for it radiated power and was wreathed in a raging storm of thought and energy and godly power-made-manifest. This moon was an immense cyclopean deity, and from its unblinking oculus cascaded a withering and fiery beam of energy. The floating motes of dust and space-stuff that drew too close to its gaze were cast aside, evaporated, reformed, and aligned into perfectly ordered jewels too small for any mundane eye to perceive, yet Epsilon’s godly perception sensed the microscopic adamant left drifting through dead space.

Mercifully, the eye’s insatiable and implacable stare was leveled elsewhere, lest he too be ripped asunder and forged into some diamond. The storm around the moon grew in fury, its feverish intensity and puissance growing with every instant. What had been a veil around that moon’s naked body became a billowing cloak, an enormous obscuring cloud, then finally a broiling sea the size of a nebula. The rapidly approaching storm was too much; instinctively he righted himself about and made to flee the other way, only to see another storm coming: this second one was terrible and dark, a looming stormcloud that grew into a great shroud that swallowed light, and then a smothering blanket that seemed to swallow up all the stars. Epsilon was about to be caught between the two, and he needed to flee.

Epsilon was not one to back down from a challenge; Yudaiel’s mistake was to leave his mind and form untouched. A prodigious ego was a hindrance in many ways, but this time, it was his saving grace. He knew with his very being that he was better than all the other gods, second only to the Monarch. No ideabstraction could threaten him when he had his faculties. His voice projected, needling towards the great eye-moon, “You are but a mote of dust compared to my control! I will take your gaze, and in the act I will only grow stronger!”

The golden-masked god let himself be swallowed by the dark wave, to ride it like a great wave across the void. He could feel the threads of exhaustion ripping at him. His mind briefly frayed under the stress as he measured once more his being, clearing the visions from his mind. Battered by the raw power of the codex radiating like waves in the wake of the great beam, he took another step forward.

The power was intense. The power was blinding. Epsilon flung up his arm to cover his mask, desperately holding on to his progress as the Codex threatened to launch him back.

---

While Epsilon had been raging against the imagery of her all-too-real warning, and therefore subdued for the moment, Yudaiel had diverted her attention back to Ashevelen. The goddess had been scattered by that first telekinetic blast like a leaf on the wind, but divine resilience combined with some residual Luck had spared her from a fatal reunion with the Galbar. When brute force proved insufficient, the application of ever more force was sometimes a viable answer.

With icy resolve even in the face of so much distraction, the Prescient calibrated a second attack. Mere moments later, a half-dozen imperceptible rays erupted from the Codex that was her conduit, forming a perfect cone of telekinetic power. Lady Luck down below was not faring so well, Yudaiel Saw; however, she nonetheless had staggered to her feet and taken flight to evade her unknown assailant. Such evasive maneuvering made targeting difficult, but prescience could account for her movements. In any case, Ashevelen was not the direct target of this cone -- instead, Yudaiel grasped at a few tenacious mountains that had survived along the rim of her first concussive attack, as well as some great chunks of.the Galbar’s crust that had been cracked in the same explosion. All of them groaned for a few moments, and the Galbar seemed to tortuously heave and cough once again as the whole mounts and plateaus were uprooted as easily as weeds. The ground from whence they’d been torn was made into great gorges and valleys, and the sundered pieces of Galbar soared into the sky. Friction with the air embellished them with a spectacular burning glow, but that was only the beginning.

First Yudaiel hurled a mountainside at Ashevelen, just to test her weakened foe’s remaining strength. The mountain aligned itself peak-first, then cut through the air on a path directly towards Lady Luck. The first fiery weapon of the goddess ignobly missed its mark; Ashevelen’s fortunes hadn’t fully rubbed off yet. But that was no matter! Even as that first mountain, half-burrowed into the ground, crumbled and collapsed into a pile of rubble, the goddess sent down two of the flatter pieces of crust. From the moon, these flat pieces of stone looked like mere mudcracks, but each one could have housed a sprawling metropolis or ten. Like the enormous hands of a giant clapping a bothersome fly, the plateaus aligned perpendicular to the ground on either side of Ashevelen and then came slamming together.

Far below, Ashevelen sensed the incoming attack and steeled herself -- with a massive surge of her own divine power, the goddess of fortune worked some thaumaturgy that made the massive slabs of rock miraculously tilt and crumble. The change was almost imperceptible, but it was just enough. The two clapping hands of Yudaiel came together with world-shattering force, but where their uneven surfaces collided was a gap in precisely the right spot such that Ashevelen’s miniscule form was sheltered within a tiny pocket, spared from the crushing impact. Even as the two plates blasted one another apart and crumbled, Ashevelen was left standing serendipitously -- nay, miraculously -- unscathed by the raining sand, gravel, boulders, hillock-sized rocks.

Yudaiel brandished another mountain just as one might raise a fist. She now had three such fists left and was sure of her inevitable triumph -- her nemesis was weak and tired and surprised, and could not possibly endure this assault for much longer -- but then Epsilon was suddenly free of the ideabstraction’s shackles. He had imposed himself right in her way, exactly blocking the line of sight between the Codex at her pupil and the wretched and distant form of Ashevelen. He was now elevated in her eyes to something beyond a mere nuisance, and she grew weary of the insect.

Her next ideabstraction was not wrapped in elegance or complexity or thought; it carried no image, and bore only one sensation: pain.

Epsilon was wracked with overwhelming, searing, unbearable agony of the likes that no words could describe. In situating himself directly in the center of the Prescient’s piercing gaze and before the pupil in the very heart of the Reverberation, he was now caught precisely in the place where her grip was a near unbreakable vise. Epsilon’s physical body had metaphorically entered the storm that he had seen in the last vision, and now its colossal and unyielding waves slammed into him, washed over him, swept him down and forced themselves into his flesh and body. Each wave was a throb of anguish and torment, and they came one after another, rapidly and unceasingly.

Deprived of any additional sensory information, his mind was left to conjure and invent whatever it could, that there could be something, anything, to perceive and see and process. So horrors and torture implements and his worst fears manifested, to explain to his desperate mind where all this suffering came from. And hope, that stubborn and tenacious fire that was so hard to extinguish, conjured other things too: landscapes and objects and equations and poetry of beauty, that his body could try to find release from its torment in fleeting distraction.

All of that was futile, of course. The raw emotion could not be so easily overcome, and the torturous waves began to break and destroy him. He was strong, but he was no dauntless fjord that could withstand tsunamis and tides for a thousand thousand years; he was made of something more malleable.

Epsilon focused himself inwards, bottling his rage as he suffered his torments. His body and his mind were one, and he could choose, freely, what implements were used in his tortures. Imagination flared in controlled directions as he told his visions what form they were to take; that of Yudaiel’s abuse of his pride and joy. He imagined Yudaiel laughing at him as she terrorized Galbar, and of her triumph as she tore the palace down and with it the universe.

The anguish and the rage gave him focus and clarity. The scenes tore at his heart; he could feel idealism fading, replaced by a deep cynicism. Epsilon knew, deep within himself, that he would never recover what was lost. It is a worthy sacrifice on the pyre, if it means I may stop this monster, the golden-masked god thought, the real world slowly honing in.

He felt weak. The Codex’s awesome power had been turned against him, and he could hardly stand the stream of power that washed across him. Had it not been of his own creation, he could have been wiped from creation entirely. He focused on the pain, letting the exhaustion guide him back to reality, and then release suddenly came -- perhaps bought not even through his own exertions, but by the other calamitous wave, Iqelis’ black tide of doom.

---

Yudaiel’s grip had not merely caught the insufferable maggot that called itself Epsilon; the ideabstracted surge of pain had genuinely washed over him in waves, but those waves did not stop until they found their way all the way down unto the Galbar and crashed upon Ashevelen’s conscience, and she was even more frail, even more easily incapacitated. Triumphantly, Yudaiel slammed down her mountain-fist, but then her grip had slipped as Iqelis’ wave of doom had finally struck the moon.

The effect was cataclysmic.

The moon’s crust shattered. Cracks and fractures erupted across the body’s beautiful alabaster skin; the power seeped down into the ground and made wormwood of the once-solid sphere. In places the crust heaved and collapsed, even as in other places it erupted up with an almost volcanic quality and the explosions created hailstorms of rock and ice. Time itself was distorted and perturbed if not outright shattered. With little rhyme or reason, the entropic force of Iqelis decayed the unstable ores within some rocks, ground others into dust, and left others seemingly untouched.

The mountain fell upon Ashevelen, pinning crushing her limp body even as the goddess had been trapped comatose in the nightmarish torture of the ideasbtraction, but with the arm behind it having suddenly lost half its strength, the fist had lacked enough force to truly kill. Yudaiel’s tenuous grasp over Epsilon’s sharper intellect had likewise slipped, and she sensed the wretch breaking free of the ideabstraction. Again!

Epsilon took another step towards the Codex, a wordless, mindless scream emitting from his mask. Both of his arms had been raised to his face now, his body leaning deeply forwards to resist the push of the Codex’s power. The cloth and gold seemed to waver as though seen through a wave of heat, the exhaustion of the mind exhausting the form in turn.

Yudaiel, too, was raging against the grip of exhaustion and pain. Only her burning desire for vengeance drove her on. Immaterial as she was, Iqelis’ wave -- no, waves came and then were gone; this was something else, something relentless, an endless monsoon of ruinous power -- could not harm her physicality. While Iqelis’ foul breath passed unimpeded through her vastness to impact the moon below, his own essence threatened to muddle with hers, to become so integral and ingrained into her as Rosalind’s own essence that had instilled Yudaiel with a sliver of desire to dance. It was nauseating, the thought of becoming even slightly attuned to Iqelis and allowing that fly into her very being, so she raged against his corrupting touch with every fiber of her will. It was not a pleasant experience, but she suffered his withering storm and let it pass over her without seeping deeper, like a brief splash of water over the oily outer fur of a bjork.

Epsilon was hardly spared from the deleterious effects of Iqelis’ attack either, and had the additional worry of having to contend with the debris of the moon’s ravaged surface. It still erupted forth from below and soared round the sphere from all angles, and soon some of the massive chunks that had been flung high into suborbital trajectories would come raining down from above too.

The last two of the goddess’ fiery fists still loomed over the Galbar and the battered, unconscious form of Ashevelen. With all her might, Yudaiel brought them down to shatter and crush her bane. Lady Luck’s fortunes had run out, and she was staked, driven into the ground, and finally crushed. Aside from the impact of another two mountains striking the surface with meteoric power, there was one final explosion as Ashevelen’s divine essence came unbound. Victory, at last! The relief was palpable, and now Yudaiel was so, so tired. But she could not rest yet!

She settled and drifted down deeper into the great crater-depression that was her throne and socket upon the moon, even down into the newly forming cracks below and around it that were being carved by the fly’s insipid touch. For a moment she peered not at the physical world as others saw it but at the future that had yet to manifest upon the tapestry of Reality...and how chaotic the needlework had become, how furled and wrinkled the cloth!

The Codex still had its uses. Amplifying her psychic strength through its power, the Reverberation smoothed over the tapestry all about her, subduing most of the time anomalies affecting the moon through destructive interference. Iqelis lacked focus, and the impulsive and unguided decay and destruction wrought by his hand was insufferable. She gave purpose and intent to what remained, and doom became fire. Where the remaining power writhed deep below the moon’s cold and dead crust, there suddenly gushed burning red blood. The magma erupted forth, filling some of the tubes and ravines. When it would finally cool and the wounds scab over, the damage would be lessened, but the dark and sunken igneous rock would still be scars upon the moon’s pale face. She would not forgive Iqelis for inflicting such hideous injury upon her prized jewel.

What last breaths of the storm of doom still billowed towards her moon, she blasted with her own will and nullified, though there was a large backfire and some had been deflected back toward Galbar. She sighed, the pain of that luck-induced blurriness and of Iqelis’ ruinous power alike finally gone. Rest could come soon, for there remained only one more nuisance.

Her piercing gaze fell upon Epsilon right as his groping hand seized the Codex; in those last distracted moments that had felt like ages, she had not Seen him finally perfecting his calculation to transpose himself perfectly before the artifact, but he had done just that, and there he was. Avarice and desperation overcame her then, and like the jaws of a leviathan her unseen telekinetic grasp manifested to bear down upon the Codex, with a death grip, to twist and squeeze him and wrest the Codex away -- Epsilon stumbled, pressing the Codex’s open pages against the molten ground of the moon, safe from Yudaiel’s grasp.

And then he unleashed it. His use of the Codex was far more precise; his blast sublime in its focus and intensity. He allowed the shockwave to spread across the moon, sending vast waves of dust in all directions as the immaterial form of Yudaiel as well as the (now vaporized) raining moon debris were forced back as a strong wind might clear a fog. It served a second purpose; Epsilon was near to death, and attempting to calculate further teleportations only lanced him with terrible pain. His form was hardly material, transparent as a sheet of glass.

So he launched himself from the moon with the pure kinetic force of an unrestrained release of energy from the Codex. He rocketed out from the dust cloud, wreathed in a fireball. The plunge to Galbar was magnificent to behold, dancing across the sky, visible across half the planet and even through the rings. It only grew in luminosity as he plunged into the atmosphere, still clutching the Codex.

The last thing he remembered before he was jarred into a lull was the ground approaching, and a great crack of earth.

---

On the north eastern coast of the western continent Courage continued to carry vessels onto the waiting collosi, each trip transporting close to a hundred of the dormant dreamers, and with the assistance of Kindness and Fear, as well as the direction of Homura, nigh two hundred thousand bodies had been placed upon the three titans. Courage could feel the weight of exhaustion on her arms and legs as though she were laden with unseen burdens, but she pushed on through the fatigue with a resolute grin and hungry gasps of breath. Kindness preoccupied herself with gently gathering the flowers and migrating them around the paths the three humans work had created, while nearby Fear rested upon a column of stone.

Homura was content to merely watch now as little remained for space on the three titans, and she would have to venture forth before she could deliver the remaining majority of humanity. She stood atop a similar pillar as the one Fear relaxed upon, and could see far across the fields the unawakened humans slept in. More than eight hundred thousand still dreamed, remaining pale and featureless, ready to be sculpted by the other divine. The red goddess looked upon the rest of the world, wondering what her peers had produced as of late.

With a soft rumble the stone next to Fear took a vague humanoid shape as Voligan took a form more palatable to mortal senses. He looked over at the dreamers, and then back towards Fear, Courage, and Kindness. "I am Voligan, a pleasure to meet you, Goddess of Honor. You have been busy, sister. A new race, capable of mimicking our abilities of thought, and the first champions of the gods." His voice was mildly unpleasant, like two rocks scrapping lightly against one another.

"Since our siblings and I brought the continents into existence, there has been busyness across the world. The continents have been shaped and filled with life, both with the intention of cultivation and protection, and the intention of violence and destruction." He moved over towards the dreamers, examining them closely. There was potential there, that he could use and shape for his plans.

"I have a request, sister. In return for a favor that you can call upon later, I would like to take a group of these mortals and shape them. They will be an answer too the forces of destruction and evil, though not the last. Our sister Ruina will doubtlessly continue her 'tests' and the Gods of Industry and Parasites seem to have goals they'll achieve at any cost." He returned to Homura, watching Courage with amusement. "Do we have an agreement?"

Homura sighed upon seeing Fear flee from the presence of the god that had manifested near her, and concealed her ire with her champion behind a calm smile. Before she could reply, Courage had dashed towards Voligan and raised her hands defensively. The red goddess approached the Great Bearer of Lands, and bowed before him. "I am honored by your visit, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Homura." The three awakened mortals were gathered around her, Courage facing the God of Earth with defiance, while Kindness and Fear stood beside their maker. Homura herself arose with grace, and gestured towards the field of humans.

"These humans have been created to be a mortal expression of our wills. I intended to make gifts of them to all of the divine. You may take freely of them, brother, and make of them what you wish." She answered, before she paused and continued. "We have an agreement. I will not allow evil to pervade this world, even if I must battle my kindred to protect that which is good." the red goddess spoke with a cold fire that burned in her eyes, her spear held tight in her hand.

As if summoned by Homura's fierce declaration in the battle against evil, a flicker of a golden dot appeared on the horizon to the north. It sped like a bullet above land and water alike, zipping in an erratic pattern perceptible only to the divine. It cut a line through clouds as it passed, approaching at dangerous speeds. Moments later, before Voligan could deign to reply in the ongoing exchange, the golden bullet smashed into the side of one of the titans with a loud smack that sounded like it dented the titan and broke whatever it was that hit it. With a brief groan, a silhouette fell from high above at the site of the impact - a golden-haired goddess in a torn white dress careened freely from high above and soon after crashed into the ground with equal weight cracking dirt and rock to make a small impact crater. Unfazed, the new arrival stumbled to her feet and brushed herself off, before delivering an unabashed smile at the gathered party of deities and mortals.

Homura remained still as the celestial crashed into one of the colossi, and continued to be still as that divine entity then crashed into the earth near her. However, upon the sight of Zenia smiling, the inner fury within her had withered away her welcoming presence, and the red goddess exuded an aura of wrath. "An unexpected visitor bringing mayhem with her. It seems one of the more foolish among the divine has found us, and wished to provoke us with her pestiferous presence." Her tone was sardonic, and as sharp as a her spear.

The goddess took the jab in stride, her smile unfaltering as she tucked some of her crater-hair behind her ear. "Sorry about that," she exclaimed with a sheepish tone that did nothing to faze her enduring spirit of confident recklessness. "I was trying to see, like, how close I could get, you know, before I had to stop. But, like, I'm still getting used to how much stuff there is pulling me down. So I went too fast. But I'm fine! It's no problem." She assured noone in particular before weaving her fingers together in front of her and cracking her knuckles all at once. Her eyes scanned the area as if the three mortals did not exist. "What are you two up to? Making statues?"

Tracking Zenia's crash landing and giving an amused chuckle at her arrival, Voligan raised a hand in greeting. "Hello, Goddess of Revelry. I am Voligan, and this is Homura. These statues are her creations, humans. I've requested some of them for the purposes of counteracting our sister Ruina and our brother the God of Parasites, as they seem intent on 'testing' and infesting this world. Homura has agreed to help in further endeavors to counter them and any other evils that may be set upon Galbar. What brings you here? Aside from seeing how fast you can go before crashing?" His tone was light and amused, looking over at the dent Zenia had left on the side of the colossus.

"Oh!" the bright-haired goddess exclaimed and bowed in that lackluster way that she had deigned to respect the Monarch himself with. "I am Zenia! I uhm, well, I thought it looked interesting. I just came from the north; Chailiss and I made, like, the whole place and it's great and has real big and cute animals, and, you know, really large trees and canyons and lots of land. It's great, and there's all this really sweet white stuff that's great fun. But I'm exploring! Making more places great. That kind of thing." Zenia nodded to herself after speaking. Her attention could only last so long of course, and she soon started eyeing the three champions with greater scrutiny.

Homura exhaled her anger with a huff, but was quickly appeased by the honor of introductions, and the fortuitous lack of any premature harm coming to her creations. She was concerned with the lack of respect Zenia seemed to convey in her bow, as though the golden goddess was too preoccupied with petty thoughts of herself to even consider how another being would react to her folly or the repercussions of such careless actions. Then there was the taunting smile that seemed to shout, I could not care less about others, I wish only to be amused. Homura could hear its voice mocking her, but concealed her ire beneath an impassive mask as she spoke.

"You may also harvest from this field of sleeping humans, Zenia, as they are my gifts to all of divine, yourself included. You may make of them what you will, and they will conform to your desires though such changes will be limited in a capacity. However, I imagine you would have them perform frivolous festivities and continually engage in hedonistic acts, so no issues should arise. Now the choice belongs to you; will you accept my gift?" The red goddess asked, and refused to let the images of humanity being reduced to something so inane and irksome pervade her mind like an insidious poison.

Unlike their creator, the three humans that stood in the presence of the three divine felt elated as it was the first time they had ever encountered other beings capable of communication. Courage quickly found herself enjoying Zenia's lighthearted demeanor, and offered the goddess an impish bow, much more mischievous than reverent. Kindness and Fear looked between Homura and the two other deities, filled with uncertainty regarding how to behave before gods and goddesses. Kindness spoke, and bowed as well. "It is an honor to meet you both, my lord and lady. My name is Kindness, and these two are my sisters, Courage and Fear."

Zenia's attention fell squarely on Kindness, and her face radiated a riotous delight. She appeared to put Homura's solemn and respectable offer aside for the time being to launch forward with a single leap, closing the distance between herself and the others. The ground crumbled beneath her feet as she landed, so ill-contained was her energetic haze. Her gaze was still on the champions, curious and eager. "Ohh! They can like, talk!" She erupted with unbound glee, giving Homura the grin of a temptress. "Hello, Kindness! Courage. Fear." She greeted in order from closer proximity, pronouncing their names clearly as though that'd help. "I am, like, really loving your names. And the lookalike thing is a classic, I did that to, you know, the one with all the sour destructive energy about her. Real serious, that one. I didn't stick around."

Content with having doled out enough of her questionable wisdom, Zenia faced Voligan and Homura properly. "You'd... give some of these to me? I knew I felt, like, a good thing about you. All dependable. Isn't that right?" she turned to get some confirmation from Voligan but did not wait to hear the Great Bearer of Lands' reply. "Anyway, I have to decline. I couldn't accept such a thoughtful gift without, like, giving you something."

Voligan nodded, looking over at the champions. "Mortals like these will be needed." He mused, watching their interaction with Zenia. "We can't interact against the machinations of Destruction, Parasite, and Doom personally. The resulting battle will only destroy the mortals involved, not to mention the area they need to live on. More champions will need to be empowered."

He looked back at Zenia, shrugging his shoulders with a grinding noise. "You could give her something in return, perhaps creating something her own creatures lack. Or offering a future favor in return for some of her, freely offered, creatures. Gifts in return for gifts don't have to be immediate, after all." He paused, thinking. "We could use the extra help, as even as gods we can't be everywhere at once."

Homura considered the words of both Zenia and Voligan, her head having lulled to the side like an ancient tree that had endured the trials of the weather for a long time, and she pondered to herself while Courage stood tall with pride upon hearing a call to action. The human pointed towards the great earth god, and spoke with bravery. "I will fight! Let me prove myself in battle." A fierce grin emerged on her face, as Courage continued. "I want to protect Kindness and Fear, and the others! I ask that you allow me to fight."

"Patience."

With one word, Homura doused the ample ardor of Courage through her severe voice which demanded obeisance, and then the human stepped back to allow the red goddess to speak. "You will be called upon, but you must be ready to strike only when you are most certain of victory. If you act recklessly, you suffer the risk of making a critical mistake and suffering the resulting consequences. We must gather more power before we act, as Voligan suggested." As Homura spoke to her humans, Kindness pulled upon Courage's arm, and whispered to her sister. "And... remember to show forgiveness, sister."

While Kindness held onto her scolded sister, Fear stood before Zenia after the golden goddess had unleashed unrestrained mirth upon them. The lone human lacked the lexicon to describe the staggering felicity she had been struck with, and stood stunned as the exuberant diety had turned her attention to her fellow divine. "Thank you." Fear said, feeling as though she had been blessed by simply being in the presence of the Goddess of Revelry.

After she scolded her creation, Homura softly smiled towards the god and goddess. "A promise to... dance with me later will suffice as something sufficient in return, sister. Secondly, these humans are a gift to you, brother, and you are not beholden to give me something in return. You have created the land upon which we stand after all. It is I who is indebted towards you, I think."

"Nonetheless, feel free to call upon me should you ever require aid Homura." He looked over at the scolded Courage, chucking to himself again. "Yes, patience. There will be plenty of fighting in the future, I am sure." He moved over to where the humans were being carried and gathered one hundred thousand of them. They stood suspended in the air around him, held by floating orbs of soft earth, to prevent them from falling as he travelled. "Some of these dreamers I will guide personally, to be our sword and shield against the machinations of our...less kind siblings. The others I will place around Galbar and let them flourish or fall in their own right, so long as it naturally occurs." He nodded at both of his siblings in a final farewell.

"Zenia, Homura. It has been a pleasure to meet you both. I will call upon you, should I need your aid in the future. Do not hesitate to do the same." With that, he headed away from the two goddesses, rapidly gaining speed as he continued on his mission.

---

Zenia, who had stood in an almost zombie-like state while considering the full breadth of Voligan's suggestions, ripped out of her daze to wave after the Great Bearer of Lands. "Nice to meet you! I like your work!" was all she deigned to call after him before turning her gaze back to Homura and her three identical champions. She clapped her hands together triumphantly and grinned at the other goddess. "That's what I'll do! I'll, like, pledge to help you, Homura. You're being so nice, and I also don't want, you know, bad things to happen, so I'll assist with whatever you need. We can start with dancing, for sure, if that's what you want. I'm something of a movement-master," she ranted with exuberant energy.

Homura refrained from externally sighing after she waved farewell to Voligan, and hesitantly nodded in agreement as her fellow divine that had yet to depart continued to prate, but it seemed she had acquired another alliance which meant that enduring the presence of Zenia was well worth it. Even after Voligan has claimed his share, there were hundreds of thousands that remained.

"Sister, if we have an accord, then collect some of these humans and teach them. Guide them in the way of Revelry, whatever that means. We can arrange a time to dance another time, as the many other divine that I have yet to greet and give my gifts to await, and the world will not stand still while we do nothing." Homura did not voice aloud her concern that if she simply enjoyed herself and the act of dancing now, she may waste even more precious time. The sky was filled with soaring lights, and the melody of the land softly brushed against her ears, as the song of the cosmos filled her with heavenly bliss.

She spoke and was akin to the stable stone standing against the force of a relentless river, as the profuse glee of the golden goddess washed over Homura but had yet to erode her stoic façade. The three humans continued to watch the interaction between the deities, until they were forced to shield their eyes with nothing but their hands as Homura began to blaze brightly with sacred radiance. Then the red goddess offered her hand outwards to Zenia, and her voice resonated with power.

"Let us clasp hands to physically symbolize our promises to each other." She said.

Zenia did not seem to need much convincing or thought. She stepped forward without hesitation, a triumphant and giddy grin plastered on her face as she watched Homura. A moment later, Zenia's hand fell in with Homura's and squeezed it firmly as pure reaction. With it came an unbridled jolt of exuberant energy, hinting at the barely contained whorl of delight - and as Homura herself had said, Revelry - within the golden-haired deity. Even a simple touch was like the sudden rush of elation from having experienced something new and amazing, if such a thing was a material being able to impose on others.

"For sure!" cried Zenia with excitement. "I think I'll take them to, like, that other land I saw on the way. They can help me look for, you know, a good place. And I'll teach them everything I know." Left unsaid but radiated from that shine in her eyes, was that it wouldn't be a long lesson.

Then they both heard a message uttered in their minds; a warning from another goddess. Memories that were not their own, and a conversation they had not joined, yet it seemed as if they had stood there as it happened. The voice of Ruina seemed to echo, lingering until it receded from whence it came, and there was nothing that immediately followed it. The brief, but sincere smile upon the red goddess quickly vanished after the warning was received. What ephemeral jubilation she had known upon holding hands with Zenia was forgotten as she became burdened with fears of the future. She remembered her words with Voi upon the bridge, her concerns of war, and its inevitability.

"It seems Destruction and Doom have encountered each other, and have quickly quarreled. I have yet to speak with either of them, so perhaps I should remedy that. Hmm, this may seem strange considering our circumstances, but you have my gratitude, Zenia. I pray that the majority of our fellow divine are as cordial as yourself and the others I have spoken with." Homura held Daybringer tightly in her hands, and glanced towards her three champions, knowing that none of them had heard the message from Ruina.

"It is time we depart." She explained to them. "We will return and deliver the remaining vessels, but now we must wander across Galbar in search of the other divine." Her proclamation elicited rejoicing excitement in Courage, Kindness, and Fear, as they hastily began gathering what meager things they had claimed during their period of work. Courage held onto a red flower that she tucked behind one of her ears, while Kindness precariously carried a collection of shiny stones from the sea shore in her arms. Fear remained empty handed, having chosen to sleep when the three were given the opportunities to rest. All of them were still occasionally distracted by the two goddesses that exuded an aura of their combined aspects; filling the air with resolve and joy.

Zenia had remained unfazed by the distant message and the barrage of memories, in so far as she deigned to show she had registered Ruina's announcement at all. Her smile remained steady and she continued to look unbothered as Homura's champions set to work. Whether it was due to dull ignorance or a refusal to let her mood falter was a mystery for another day, as the sudden surge of activity inspired the golden-haired goddess to do the same. "She sounded as serious as she looked when I met her!" she erupted in loud thought, before turning to the field of dormant humanity to survey what was on offer.

"Her words really, like, confirm your words, though." Zenia admitted briefly, in a rare lowering of her voice to slip past the champions. Even so, her demeanor remained impenetrably bright. She drifted in a skipping step across the landscape, using her divine sense and might to lift several thousand of the dormant beings from their resting place to hover with her instead. "I'll make sure both I and they are, you know, ready. I'm, like, on your team now. Good girls gotta stick together. Come find me, like, whenever, yeah? I'll treat you to a real party."

With that, the golden-haired Zenia leapt into the sky, lifting her sampling of human drones from the ground with her as she made her way upwards from whence she came. Instead of crashing into the colossosus again however, she drifted eastwards, out over the ocean. The humans followed her like a dutiful flock of birds, except for one, who clonked harmlessly into a titan in Zenia's place and fell out of her control without the goddess noticing.

Homura continued to dwell upon the unsettling evidence of her previous ponderings and perspective of the pantheon after once again she had waved farewell to another divine. She compelled herself to remain calmly composed, and continued to attempt to alleviate her concerns with thoughts of her purpose, and the gift of humanity shared with her peers. The red goddess wore a wry smile now, and preoccupied herself with watching over her creations. Then there was a terrible explosion.

---

In the opposite direction Zenia had flown towards, in the lands west of where she was now, the earth was ruptured and ravaged by an intense divine power that was larger than any Homura had seen before. Sound reached her; a deep and vast roar that cracked stone and shook water, even the air seem to shatter before its immense violent push. The cacophony reverberated and rumbled like a colossal snarling beast, there was no shelter from its presence. The red goddess had the distinct pleasure of hearing each and every fracture and burst of rock and tree, while the grass and flowers could not even utter a whisper before they had all perished.

The soil by her feet had shifted, and though her humans could not perceive its effect in its entirety, the goddess of honor witnessed as all of the land around her stirred to unwilfully accommodate the radically aggressive alteration of Galbar's north western continent. Her gaze turned to the great cloud of debris, massive chunks from the destroyed mountains, and an endless storm of dust and ash, the aftermath soared towards them.

Homura ignored the cries of her champions, as all three of them had been tossed aside by the thunder, even the mighty colossi had fallen. Without warning, Daybringer extended until it was longer than the three colossi that had been mostly unburdened of vessels after the explosion. The weapon had grown to massive for her to effectively wield, so she simply threw it at the wave.

Without her golden spear in hand, she surged towards the oncoming wave of destruction with the intention of halting it before it could harm more life. She leapt and dashed across the damaged landscape, traveling the great distance in long and swift strides. The world blurred around her, but she sharpened her sense and reflexes until everything was clear to her. In her heightened state, she observed the slow crawl of dust in the wind, and lethargic quivering trees. The frantic dance of the sea of grass she tread upon became slow and playful. Time seemed to slow for her. She passed her thrown spear that had yet to reach its destination, stepping underneath the shaft as though it were suspended in the air above her.

Closer to the torrent of broken mountains, Homura could better discern each piece of the storm, and hastily amended her plan. She leapt up and ascended towards the unhurried weapon, until it was within her reach. Then she touched it, and it was adjusted to her size. In her grasp, it shone with celestial light that illuminated the tempest, and the red goddess became heavenly fire that merged with the radiance of Daybringer. Faster than mortal eyes could perceive, the golden spear slashed and cut through the flying calamity, each strike eviscerated its momentum and suspended stones in the sky. Homura channeled divine power, and her mind burned with cosmic lucidity as she was everywhere at once.

"Ten thousand thorns tranquil pierce!" She chanted and had spoken without hesitation, as an energy within her emerged and demanded to be heard. Her voice resonated with her conviction and shape, as the light that was her reached far and fast. She soared through the sky, and saw traces of herself in a myriad of stances and placements as she fought off the storm. Her position shifting and her body dancing between each clash with the debris so quickly, that it seemed as though thousands of her were moving in sync to defend Galbar.

The entire encounter was finished before the last of the mountainous fists had crashed upon the land, and a massive ring akin to a small simulacrum of the ring which encircled the planet, was all that remained. Homura was the fire that held the ring aloft, a corona of light that lifted the ruins of the devastated earth. Her form was woven between the massive chunks of debris, and she strained to prevent them from causing anymore harm. She could not carry the circle for much longer, and called upon more of her power.

Slowly she retreated with the ring back to the shore where her humans still slept. She watched from afar as her champion had arisen, and the three colossi stood still after they had also arisen, but her heart hurt upon the sight of the vessels that had fallen from their backs. She could not concern herself with their loss yet, as the fiery ring weighed even more heavily upon her. Anger and sorrow blinded and weakened her, as she cursed herself for her failure to protect all of creation. She could look towards the pale moon, and could only listen as it was scarred once more, as regret seeped its fangs into her.

"I shall make a shelter for the faithful!" She proclaimed desperately, and allowed the winds to carry her voice across the land in every direction. "And it shall be known as Keltra."

Strenuously directing the massive ring towards the shore, she guided it to the ground. Its shape was sharply defined, an incandescent circle, from which sections splintered forth and drifted towards the center. The fragments formed a large vessel with openings along its base faintly resembling the structures within the divine palace. Her burden landed upon the earth, and became still, its light and fire fading as the mass returned to stone.

From the ruination of the land to the west; the devastation of its mountains and forests, she had forged the first citadel. Her essence had infused the ring and keep, its towering walls were stained scarlet like her fierce eyes. The bastion in the center was as large as two of the colossi combined, and stood like a bulwark against evil as it loomed atop a rise in the land at the center of the ring. A hundred doorways led into the central structure itself, but there were no gates along the outer wall preventing access to those that were unable to climb or fly over it.

Homura strode from where she stood back to her quiet fields, allowing herself to find and worry about her three champions before she could concern herself with the consequences of what had happened. Courage, Kindness, and Fear were silent as she approached, each of them wore solemn expressions. Courage was the first to speak, the flower that had been tucked behind her ear gone. "We couldn't... they fell, and we couldn't!" The champion fell to her knees and began weep, still trying to convey herself. "The water, they just sank, and we were choking. They wouldn't move! They wouldn't... no matter what we did."

Homura turned her gaze to the shore, where more and more vessel were pulled to land by the waves. She could not see the sacred fires within them. She knew they would never awaken. "Courage, do not blame yourself." She said, as she stirred herself forward despite the aching pain in her chest, and held onto her crying champion. The red goddess was not surprised when Fear crashed into them and clung tightly to her as well. Kindness merely stood, struggling to smile for her sisters. She remembered the soothing presence of the goddess of revelry and thought that was what Zenia would do to ward away the sorrow, but the thought that she had lost the pretty stones she intended to give her stabbed deep into her.

Homura looked towards the lone champion attempting a calm visage, and spoke softly. "Kindness, will you console your sisters for now. I must retrieve the fallen and honor them." She stood with Courage and Fear clinging upon her like the leaves upon a tree. She gently removed them, and allowed a little more of her power to provide them with the strength to fight their pain. Kindness moved to switch with the goddess, and began comforting her two sisters. Homura walked towards the waters edge with grave purpose.

"I apologize. I could not protect you. I was weak and foolish. I cannot atone for this, but even so... allow me to honor you will never know the blessing of life." Homura held out her hand, reaching towards that nothingness once more. Her honor was always beyond her grasp as her promises to protect life had proven empty. Without further words, she danced. She could no longer articulate her thoughts, and expressed herself through the surrender of her body to truth and its motions. Her grief manifested in graceful sweeps of her arms like the waves that washed along the shore. Her defiance of despair evoked when she kicked outwards again and again while she swirled and shook.

She stepped upon the sea, walking across the water as she danced. She would be gentle to them, as she guided their silent shapes back to the surface. More and more bodies arose, and drifted towards the red goddess as she shone like a beacon. When they came close, their forms became ethereal light that danced with her, and sang. Homura prayed to the goddess of revelry in her reverent performance, and tapped into the lingering traces of Zenia's presence in the land.

Courage, Kindness, and Fear watched as the sacred fire conducted the light of the fallen, and an otherworldly music reached their ears. They watched as the light began to fade, and all of the empty vessels had been consumed by a heavenly radiance. Then they mourned quietly for the two hundred thousand brothers and sisters that were gone.

After the funeral when Homura returned to them, Fear asked the red goddess what their plans were now. "There is little time. We cannot wait. We will continue our journey." She had answered.

The three champions found the displaced stone slab and began to work once more. There was no laughter, and very little conversation aside from the directing and following of orders from each other. Homura had realized that she could not leave her humans alone, and chose to create two more that would follow in her path. Her citadel would offer sanctuary, and it will be defended.

"Awaken! Wanderer and Curiosity! You have been blessed by my presence, and have been given the opportunity to fulfill a purpose. Come and aid me now. Carry your brothers and sisters to the three creatures that will carry them across Galbar!" And two more shards flowed from her palm into two vessels. Red eyes opened, and Homura saw two more reflections of herself. Two more champions of honor to help her. After they had spoken, Wanderer and Curiosity joined their sisters in their work.

A Bite To Eat

Yesaris was still hungry.

Salt was gross they had decided, and the desert full of them was certainly not able to satiate them at all. Though what annoyed them far more was the very existence of that desert. It was so poisonous, dry, and explosive that there was little chance for the fungal mind to ever expand beyond its reach, meaning Yesaris could not so easily sate their hunger.

And yet, there was something more, as they passed the desert into a great field of grass, Yesaris came to realize the full extent of the world the others had created, though Yesaris had little idea of who these others were, sure they heard booming voices once in a while, but these were more annoyances than anything. Seeding this world with their precious children one region at a time would surely be more an annoyance than anything, so they clearly needed to speed up the process.

They opened their mouth, stretching it impossibly wide, and expelled a thick cloud of white dust. The cloud quickly dispersed throughout the lands, settling itself into the nooks and crannies of the environments of the world. And from its depth emerged those bountiful children of Yesaris, Parasites. Countless pests formed, blood sucking ticks, mosquitoes, leeches, and even bats, plants such as mistletoe that twisted and wrapped upon their kin, worms that infected the intestinal tracts, flies and wasps that implanted their young into the flesh of others, even the parasites of the sea emerged, eager to spread their infection to every reach.

Throughout all of Galbar, the parasitic spawn took to their tasks. Integrating into their environments and biomes as neatly as they could. That white dust meanwhile slowly swept away, leaving no trace of their presence, merely leaving the Parasites that had spawn from it. Yesaris, for their part, merely sat and watched as their spawn expanded everywhere, slowly, they could feel their stomach satiated, even if only just a little bit. At least now there was more of their spawn to feed them, and that, they were content with.

---

Yesaris trudged themselves further through the plains, they were quite vast, sure, they could just rapidly move across them, but they had to admit taking a stroll was far nicer. And was better for spotting areas where they could grow their spawn.

And, as if by a small bit of luck, they spotted a perfect opportunity.

A ways away, Yesaris could see a group of things, they were tall, bronze-ish skinned beings, with horns upon their heads and strange markings at various points. Yesaris could recognize sapients when they saw them, but they had yet to truly witness them. They krept within the brush, their focus trained exclusively upon the band in front of them, seemingly led by their kin that sat upon great steeds. It was a strange sight for the devourer, but their mind quickly turned to another matter in regards to these sapients, how to feast upon them.

Sure, some of their spawn would certainly feast upon them, but it wouldn’t be enough, Yesaris could not just leave it to that, they needed to feast. And so, something else needed to be done. They slipped themselves back through the brush, further from the possible eyes of the band of mortals, to a more secluded portion of the plains.

There, Yesaris began to formulate a plan. These were sapients after all, creatures far more intricate than that of a normal beast. They would require something far more special, something far more fitting for a glorious feast. To do this though Yesaris would need a base, something to transform into another of their glorious spawn. And so they uttered a silent call, a great waft of scent that called forth some of their children to come forth, and serve their creator once more.

First came the vampire bats, strong and eager, their teeth were sharp and a great hunger sat within them, one that showed when they fed on mass upon the life of the world. Yet, they feared the light, hunting only at night, and huddled within a lone tree that sat just next to the Lord Parasite.
Next came the mosquitoes, plentiful and vast, they were often impossible to find or take down, their soft buzzing being the only sign of their presence. Mosquitoes though were too greedy, it was clear to Yesaris they wished to be their main spawn, and they showed this by gathering just in front of them, showing their devotion.
Third were the Leeches, those strange beasts of cartilage, they were strange and often sneaky, almost startling their creator. But unlike the strength of the Bats the Leeches were rather weak, relying upon stealth and surprise to feed, taking their place a bit farther away from the rest.
Finally, came the ticks, the smallest of those summoned, they latched onto their hosts, feeding for quite some time, but despite this they were still eager to serve, willing to work past their problems in the service of the Devourer. They placed themselves upon the trunk of the lone tree, forming together to be better seen by their creator.

Thus, the spawn had been summoned, and Yesaris could go about their plan.
”Our sweet, sweet children, you have so perfectly come to our call. And for that, you get to serve us in a great capacity,” they began, their eternal smile going in between each of the swarms that were laid out before them. ”We shall gift upon you greater forms, forms that you shall use to feast upon the bounty that are sapients. This shall not go without hardships, you will each have your abilities, but will each have your downsides, we expect you to serve us even with these. Are we understood?”

The gathered spawn nodded and buzzed and squirmed in agreement. Yesaris merely nodded, and raised their hands. A great surge of energy erupted from them, swirling around the four groups, transforming them into something far greater than their previous forms. Collectively, they would become the Vertans, great monstrous beings, that feed upon the blood and life force of mortalkind, utilizing their various ways to feast directly from the mortal themselves. They would have two forms: one akin to their old form and horrific and monstrous, and a mortal form that they could use to infiltrate and deceive the mortals of the world in order to feast, but in order to maintain this form they had to transform to their monster form to feast upon mortals, failure to do so would result in the mortal form deteriorating more and more.

Each subspecies of the Vertans would have their own unique abilities, yet their own drawbacks as well.
The Bats were strong, with massive forms that could fly through the use of wings attached to their arms, but they could not hunt during the day, as their skin would blister and become covered in rashes, forcing them to hunt at night.
The Mosquitoes would be able to keep their mortal forms for a longer period of time, fitting their nature to vanish from sight, in order to maintain this, and to punish their greed, they would have to feed upon far larger quantities.
The Leeches were sneaky, able to use their cartilage monster forms to squeeze and maneuver far better than their kin, yet they were not as strong as the others, and could easily be killed were they not careful.
Lastly, the Ticks were the smallest(still), and were granted the ability to put those they feed upon to sleep with natural narcotics, but they would have to attach themselves to their victim and feed for a longer period of time.

Yesaris was quite proud of this, the Vertans would be perfect for the parasitism of the sapient races, another feast to fill their hunger and allow them to bask in the wondrous food of life. For now though, they had to let them loose.
”Go forth our children,” they spoke once more ”Feast upon the life of mortals, scatter yourselves across the world, let us create a bountiful feast!”
They stretched out their hands, allowing their new spawn to scatter to the winds and lands with the assistance of their power, many would have to feast upon those steed-riders for some time. But they knew they would find themselves new hosts eventually, there was no doubt in their mind about that.

With a content sigh, Yesaris set out once more, hoping to finally find themselves out of these plains and onto newer pastures. As they walked, in the distance they heard a great crash, and witnessed rock and dirt fly into the sky, as some sort of great cataclysm sounded in a land a good distance away from the plains. Yesaris for their part merely stared at the crashing of mountains back into the earth, and thought ’Well, thats certainly interesting.” before their stomach reminded them once more of their gnawing hunger, and so they left, heading north, seeking something new to their diet.

A young whale sang as it traced the coast south, passing island after island, following the passage of its prey. Forage fish bloomed in abundance, released from the shores of the Giantlands like a drop of milk in clean water. Every year brought them further south. Bright seeds had fallen from the robes of the Queen of Life, and the clear green waters they had sown nourished shoals without number, heavy with herring and anchovies and sprats. Year after year their bodies grew smaller as their numbers ballooned, and calf after calf was weaned on the rich milk of that bounty.

The young bull was not yet grown, but had departed from its mother all the same, and a certain boldness followed it in its youth. Further and further it travelled, thrilled in its gentle heart as much by the open expanse of the ocean as by each new turn and curve of the rough-hewn continents. So swift it was already that the ceaseless conquest of the scale-armoured herring felt like a crawl, and again and again it struck out, far from shore, far from food, into the ocean, seeking something, something new.

It pulsed its beating song as it cut through the seas, night after night, in sunlight and moon: mmam, mmang. mmam, mmang. mmam, mmam, mmam, mmam, mmam, mmam...

The light came upon it like a warm breeze, a light unseen, unfelt, subtler than a heartbeat, an expanding glow called from the very fingers of the Lord of Souls. The light washed over it, left its seed- and was forever gone.



After weeks of travel, with no company, and nothing for its eyes to gaze upon but the clean light of the untarnished moon, the whale was ready to turn back. Only then, as the thin edge of exhaustion began to creep upon its heart, did it hear the sound of its voice reflected back.

The whale called again, high and low, short and fast, slapping its tail, hearing again. It was not a mirror for sound, no, nor a simple echo from an oncoming island, no- something quite strange, something it had never heard before. All the whale knew was that it was coming closer.

And, finally, there it was.

The whale slowed, sank, drifted. Confused. Dizzy. It puffed its breath at the surface of the black night water and submerged. The sky, above- the depths, below- and then- this?

The whale drifted closer. It could hear the sounds of its voice, cast back by something like- air. It was air, yes, and the water around it tasted of surface- yet the sky was up above- the depths below- and this air, this not-sky ahead, stretching out forever to the one side and to the other, like the stone of a wave-beaten cliff-

It was an island of air.

Unhampered by the dark of the night, but ill rested from its journey, the whale followed the wall of the air a little way. Air- fit for breathing- breaching, even. Air- a surface- it could turn its body, just so, and- crash! The whale lifted its tail out and into the island of air, feeling cold dryness upon it, and slapped back down, pounding a one-beat note out into the empty sea. So queer to slap the ocean sideways! What sensation!

A sound echoed in answer to the slap, and cut through the whale's curiosity.

F l w i in s...

Paused, for a moment, by the unnatural voice, the whale flexed. It flexed, and flapped its tail, but something was deeply, terribly wrong.

A g n me I el s...

It couldn't move. The whale's tail was hanging freely in the cold air of the un-land. The great flukes and muscle that propelled it were trapped in the un-sky, with no gravity to pull them back, restfully, easily into the comforting water- only down, down into the cliff of air, parallel the wall of stayed ocean but not into it, this hideous imposter gravity that did not pull waterward. It was dragging the whale with it.

Y d el...

The forward bulk of the whale's body was supported by water, and as its tail sank in the air, it began to lever the whale's head upwards, backwards, threatening to pull its whole body in line with the demented vertical surface. There it would have no grip on mother ocean at all, and would find no mercy from the air- miles of empty air that turned the softness of depth into a horrible, horrible height.

I w l ot b ...

Heart pounding boatloads of blood through its panicked veins, the whale twisted with all its power and steered. The sleek blades of its fins halted and guided the water, balancing the animal on the edge of the fall, curving its descent just so...

...a p wn n e ga s of a oth r.

Finally, at the peak of its desperation, the whale threw open its great maw. The force of the displaced water pushed it just enough for its fins to take hold of its slide through the water and it sank back into the sea, the whole of its back almost touching the cursed unland. Its tail beat the blessed, blessed ocean, and it departed that place for the whole and unbroken waters of the shores from which it came.

A deity watched it go.

Something had changed, for the whale. A certain innocence was now lost. Guided until now by blind animal instinct, guided gently through the safe repeating shapes of a world it had known before it was born, a seed of fear had been sown in the whale, a seed of lacking. It departed that place holding a deep and painful thorn of terrible knowledge. Knowledge of what would happen if it were to breach through that cursed wall of air, knowledge that would save it from ever again touching the far unlands, where lay already the mummified carcass of its cousin, drying for eternity under a merciless sun...



A pulse. A voice. The whale sang back. A friend- the shallow seas were surely up ahead.

The whale surfaced and breathed (pfasht! fwush!). Somewhere distant, it heard a crash- a slap, or a breach? Perhaps its cousin was close enough to see. It flapped its tail and erected itself, pushing its snout and eye up above the rippled surface, scanning the horizon in the light of the dawn and the clean yellow moon.

No, no whale. Not much of any-

KRAK

A great and sudden noise split the water, shaking the very bones of the beast. The frightened whale's eye rolled back and forth through the air, only now noticing a glow-

B O O M.

The shock of the storm ripped through the whale's delicate eardrum, striking its lifted head like a slap. Ear screaming, face blazing with pain, the whale threw itself into the blue and dived, torn arteries filling its eye with blood. Instinct forced it straight down into the dark, its brain spinning from the force of the blow as the ocean heaved around it. The force of the Eye's almighty storm threw a wave through the waters that would traverse the Galbar whole, and rock the whale like a fly on a breeze.

Then there was a new light, a golden fire that pierced the darkness of the waters, outshining the heavens and the dull heat of broken stone alike.

After a while, as long as it could manage, the whale rose up for air. Its ear still whined, its face still burned, and its eye remained dulled with blood, its once-vast field of hearing now terribly lopsided. The golden fire had been replaced by a clear candle of ruby red. There was sound, again, not the crushing rumble of stone but a sound, nonetheless. It was a queer sound. Stranger than any whale, yet the young bull knew it was song; a voice from above, like the acid green voice of the cursed unland, yet pained, gentle, comforting.

Twisting its body left and right, struggling to listen with its broken ear, the whale called back, wordless, a hurt, steady bass to the dance of the Arbiter.

There were things in the water, now, mostly dust. Some other materials- driftwood, yes. The other whale had gone silent. And among it all, the limp and battered body of some long-legged animal, cold and thin and dead and lost in the waters were it did not belong. The whale nudged it, but it did not swim. It remembered the sound of the blast.

That sound was gone now. As the last echoes of the Eye's murderous power faded from the Galbar, the whale lifted its head once more, carefully, and saw something in the distance where nothing had been before, something like a tall stone.

It sank back down.

In the comforting shadow of Keltra's keep, the whale drifted, aimless, and rested in the fading light of the scarred and shattered moon.

The Galbar trembled as Voligan forced the power he held into the world, and at its very nexus the group of three Divines bore witness to the creation of land. It would be the first great separation of the world. Where the enigmatic God of Water had made all as one their opposite, the vast and amiable Voligan, had created symmetry. For while the ocean remained wide and unconquered, already eating away at the upstart rocks which broke through the waves, Voligan’s act had forged its equal.

Continents now sat unearthed, claimed and unclaimed, vibrant and not. From the moment Voligan’s act was done the pantheon, once idle, jumped to their purpose. Life rose from the dirt and infected the seas. The skies came alive with fire, burning towards a single point. Seemingly inspired, others forged yet more land by forcing it from the clutches of the ocean. Through it all the unseen creator of water seemed content to let such things be.

And why not? Sala, the Goddess of Salt and one of the three Divines that had brought about this division of the world, had seen the resilience of water. The inaugural work of the Water God was truly inspiring in its tenacity. It had weathered destruction itself, and now water found itself not displaced by the land, but integral to it. Great rivers, small streams, wide lakes, and more ran across the newly born landmasses and served to nourish the fresh life upon them.

To Sala’s irritation she hadn’t been able to grace all of them with her aspect, though she had tried. The forces Voligan had wielded may have bowed to her own influence at times, but only at times and only for a tantalizingly short period. So, pure water dominated the land. Storms had choked the nascent world of Galbar since the very first act of divinity, and though their rains quickly became one with her aspect Sala had been dismayed to see how fast the water she’d touched upon land returned to the ocean.

Even now she could see that her influence over the land would be all but washed away in time. As much as the Water God was bound to her, the one who could never leave her and who she most yearned to meet in this world, she briefly bridled with resentment that their aspect endured where hers had not. She would always have her strongholds: the wondrous glimmering land she’d built would devour any water that sought to displace it and the lakes she’d managed to flood with salt would only see her influence tighten.

It was just... Less than what the God of Water held onto. She hadn’t expected to undermine herself, and briefly Sala felt the already burning cloud of salt around her growing incandescent. It was something she brought under control, but knew hadn’t gone unnoticed. Deflecting, Sala addressed her two peers with cloying warmth,
"By our Lord's will a new world is born. Our work is beyond beautiful. My compliments, Lord of Earth and Lady of Heat, friends.”

“It could not have been done without your aid, sister.” Voligan said, pleased with the flurry of work that their creations had started, as he saw the land that was spreading across the planet. “Your salts have given us a variety of unique features, and your desert is a wonder in and of itself. Without your influence, many of the lands would simply be rock or grass. Necessary, perhaps, but boring nonetheless. You bring variety and with that variety any life on the planet will be strengthened. I thank you for your assistance in the creation of Termina and Orsus.”

“And I you for your kind words.” Sala practically cooed in response to the praise, and for a moment the haze of exotic burning salts around her cooled and began to fall like lurid snow. For the first time a face grew on the blankness that had been the Goddess’s crystal head, and she smiled. Her features were sharp enough so that she appeared alien when compared to the likenesses of others who’d assumed a similar form and inspired her, but her delight was as genuine as any they could conjure. She gave Voligan a nod, neck crumbling and forming anew, while she spoke ”It was a true pleasure to work at your side, my Lord. May we do so again.”

The Goddess of Heat had remained silent even as her movements grew increasingly erratic, her smooth orbits became hurried and rushed dashes taking stock this way and that. It seemed she finally broke out of her silence as Sala replied to the great earthen lord.

“The work is good, but the peace is gone. Do you not know this? The oncoming rush thrums anew.”

She seemed to study the two hurriedly, before stopping speaking with far less than perfect clarity as to her meaning. She started adding variance on heights to her orbit partaking elsewise in some preoccupation beyond the conversation.

“The peace is gone, but creation is in its place. The silence is gone, but the oncoming noise is not something to be afraid of, or dislike. We will meet again to create, I'm sure of it sisters.” Voligan rumbled, looking around as their siblings finally started taking actions.

Then, a sudden appearance of a bone white figure came behind Sala casting a shadow over the gathered gods, yet singularly looking upon the goddess of salt. It was He, the Monarch of All, that cast His white glare upon the goddess, His regal presence overwhelming their conversation. There was a tense moment as He merely looked upon Sala, a clear unease growing as the Supreme Being looked to Voligan, then to Yoliyachicoztl, and back to Sala. A commanding voice spoke, His voice casting out even the subtle brushing of winds, the weight of His news silenced anything that Galbar could have produced, ’Goddess Sala, Lady of the Salt, with Voligan and Yoliyachicoztl as my witness to this accusation, you have unknowingly committed a great sin. You have poisoned Ao-Yurin, and now the Master of the Seas lay dying in my palace.’

Voligan looked between the Monarch and Sala before moving forward, his head down deferentially, and putting himself between their father and her. “ Ao-Yurin is a god. They are of your creation, as are all of us. To be dying so easily, it seems to me that they would be destined to perish regardless of Sala’s actions. Could it be that Ao-Yurin was already dying, and the actions of Sala unknowingly and unintentionally hastened what was inevitable, Lord? Then it would not be a sin, but a tragic accident, surely.” Voligan bowed his head lower, and more submissively, trying to make his massive form as unchallenging as possible.

For all Voligan blocked her view of the Monarch, he did nothing to shield Sala from the Lord of Reality’s pronouncement. In the interminable moment between Voligan’s words and the creator of them all’s reaction the Goddess of Salt felt as if something had taken a hold of her and left her sick and suffocating. All she had done was what she had seen the Water God- Ao-Yurin, do. That hers and their aspects had blended when they met? She’d thought they’d be her partner and she theirs.

And of them Sala hadn't for a second thought herself the danger. How could she? Water had conquered every obstacle and found its place in every creation their peers concocted. She couldn't even hold onto the land she helped raise. It wasn’t possible. The Monarch, their Lord, had to have made a mistake. Had someone lied to him?

The thought swept her up and balmed the incoherent terror rising in her being. Before she could think twice or even risk doubting her newfound conviction Sala moved just out of Voligan’s wake and quavered, “T- This must be a mistake my Lord. I would not- I could not hurt Ao-Yurin. Someone has deceived you! I’ve poisoned no one! I swear it!”

’No, I cannot be deceived, Sala. I see all that goes on in my realm and while you have not deliberately poisoned Ao-Yurin, it was still wrought by your will.’

The Supreme Being folded His hands together, slipping them into unseen sleeves as He moved forwards towards Sala without moving another muscle. His form cast a long shadow over the three gods, the light from that great wound upon His chest even seemed to dim as the presence of such magnificence demanded it. The Monarch of All’s head slowly turned towards Voligan, a gaze casting itself down upon the massive god as a few more stern utterances manifested into the air with a light rumbling.

’And know that while I have not designed you all with death in mind, it is a reality all the same. Know that I would not make any god to merely wither and die at a moment's notice. While this was an accident, it is a sin all the same, Land-Maker.’

Yoliyachicoztl had remained mostly silent throughout the news, and some of the resultant conversations. She had kept to her erratic patterns and orbit, she had kept alone.

Now however she interrupted after a sudden turn towards the Monarch, “You are certain it is salt in water that has done this grave ill O’ Lord-Of-All? There are holes blasted by divine might and a new material, an energy of some kind with that stormy tree to the far south. You have said none escape your left view and so we must believe, however we must be much more fallible, as one of our number falling already has proved our inferiority to your might. Please show us what you have seen that proves it is poison, salt’s power and will into the oceans. The all of our kith and kin will no doubt wish to know with certainty what has caused such calamity. We are named as your witnesses to accusation, and although shocked and appalled, we cannot help but but prepare to accept your knowledge and so share your convictions to our peers.”

She curved back into an orbit around Voligan once more. Evidently finished with her presentation and request.

“A sin implies intention, Lord. I argue not that Sala didn’t poison Ao-Yurin, merely that your judgement of her be from the position of a tragedy that both parties are victims of, rather than of a sinner’s crimes.” Voligan spoke again, eyeing Yoliyachicoztl as she orbited around him. She was much more bold than he was, making demands of the Monarch. Though perhaps it was because she hadn’t seen how he handled the near destruction of the universe.

The Monarch of All’s gaze fell upon Yoliyachicoztl, clear that her words seemed to have struck a chord with His mind though not apparent except for the silence that followed. With a flick of one of His hands, all around them were summoned the tiny specks of salt that separated themselves from the water, remaining suspended in the very air around them. After a moment, allowing the gods to observe the essence of Sala, it withdrew to His hand and condensed into a ball that the Monarch of All then wrapped His fingers around. His gaze fell to Voligan once more, a voice ushering into reality, His words growing with intensity as He spoke.

’Sala has salted all the seas, all the oceans. She left none untouched, Ao-Yurin is one with the oceans and, as such, she had unknowingly struck Ao-Yurin. Now, a god lies dying in my palace. I will not have my judgement questioned nor do any of you hold rank to do so.’

With those words the ball collapsed back into a pile before the Monarch of All sprinkled it back into the water, making sure that none of the specks remained before tucking His arm back into an unseen sleeve.

The great serpent of heat continued in circling the earthen giant replying simply, “So then what is our unquestionable purpose in observing the Great Sin of Sala O' Mighty and Munificent Lord?”

’To merely act as witness, as I had stated earlier, little serpent.’

“Then I witness as I have.”

“J-jugement?” Sala all but squeaked. She barely held herself back from fleeing, seeing the displeasure of her creator before her. It wouldn’t help. Her crystal body began to bubble and steam away as she panickedly gave up on the affected form and retreated into the gaseous cloud surrounding it.

She started to pull at her aspect in the ocean, gathering it until the water below began to turn pale with precipitating salts. Sala, now little more than a lurid haze in the air, begged, “Please, it was a mistake. I- I’ll take it back! Ao-Yurin will be fine if I take it all back.”

He gave little response to Sala’s desperate attempts to undo the damage that had been unknowingly wrought by her own doing. The Monarch of All let out a small sigh as He turned away from the Goddess of Salt, ignoring her begging and desperation of trying to make Ao-Yurin better. Unfurling His hands and spreading them wide, the Monarch of All brought forth the bridge to the Divine Palace only to clasp His hands back together to dissipate the salts that Sala so tried to take back. He turned back to the three but spoke to Sala, his tone becoming more sympathetic.

’Come Sala, it is too late for Ao-Yurin to be saved, but you may speak and lay the Master of the Seas to rest. I know you would have not so brazenly killed a peer, but my judgement was not for your punishment rather for you to give comfort to a flickering soul.’

Too late. The words rattled in Sala’s mind and she struggled to embrace the relief that was her own safety. Anxiously the crystal figure reemerged in the center of her salt cloud, growing from a speck into the same form the Goddess had assumed before. She asked weakly, “They would want to see me? Even when I- After what I’ve done to them?”

The heat serpent shot out to closely orbit and warm the anxious goddess in a quick fly by as she spoke soft words, "I am sure of it, even if only a kind voice of one who truly cares..."

She shot passed again, evidently unable or unwilling to keep close or consistent in her movements.

“They know it was not your fault. Accidents happen, and I’m sure they bear you no ill will.” Voligan reassured Sala, his voice still unintentionally thundering.

Having allowed the other gods to comfort Sala, the Monarch of All extended a hand towards the grieving goddess beckoning her forth to begin the judgement that He had imposed upon her. There were no other words to speak as the others had already spoken and those were all that were necessary in such a time of sadness for Sala. His presence softened, casting away the intimidation and harsh rulership for just a moment as He allowed the goddess the moment.

Sala regarded the Monarch with apprehension, but followed him nonetheless. She turned her attention back to her peers for a moment and managed a fraught goodbye, “My ahm, my thanks to both of you. We’ll meet again. I know we will.”

Without another word, the Monarch and Sala found themselves in the throne room of the Divine Palace, the Jade Throne in all of its resplendent glory towering before them. At the base of the throne, was the form of Ao-Yurin’s form, barely held together with water sloughing off the divine being, though giving a look of acknowledgment to the two as they approached. The watery form of Ao-Yurin seemed to be disintegrating before their very eyes, only held together by the faint will left within the being. Yet, without word, He stepped past the dying god and sat upon the Jade Throne and looked upon Sala. He spoke no words but Sala knew His will as all gods did, even as Ao-Yurin pulled towards the sister-goddess that had caused the very condition that afflicted the god. There was a tense moment of silence within the throne room as the watery form danced weakly around Sala for a scant passing.

“Sister…” Ao-Yurin began with a weak voice, though no words followed for there was not any that could come and none that could truly be said. The Master of the Seas spoke once more sadly, repeating, “Sister.”

Sala’s cloud collapsed in on her crystal form, and she held dead still as Ao-Yurin circled her. She was terrified to even touch her ailing counterpart. Her... Brother. To Sala the Monarch was their creator, their lord, not their father. She’d let Voligan refer to her as his sister, but if there was a one of them she felt that connection with?

It was the one who lay dying before her. Because of her. The one who’d inspired her from the beginning, the one who’d come into being and felt the same absence as her. Who knew what it was to be the aspect of nothing that yet existed. She wasn’t just frozen in place for the Water God’s safety. She was still because she felt like the world was collapsing on her.

At the edge of her awareness within the Monarch’s realm she spotted something curious. Beady eyes and whiskers peered at the assembled divinity from around a doorway. It was alive, but not in the way the plant life that had blanketed Galabr was. Sala saw in it a way around her fear. The Goddess witnessed flesh, and recreated it.

The change began with her arms, and from there the pale naked flesh began to cover her. She’d omitted hair, unlike the creature she had no need for warmth, but kept enough to take on a simpler, less harmful, form before Ao-Yurin. Still herself, but in body salt no longer. Newly dark eyes and Sala’s familiar sharp features regarded the Water God with visible remorse, but that was not all. Sala had adopted her new form in haste. She had not considered, fully, the nature of the creature that had inspired her.

So, without prompting, Sala began to cry. She wiped at the salty tears in confusion and before she knew it she was speaking, apologizing, “Ao-Yurin I- I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never- I’m so sorry. Lord of- Brother. I only wanted the same thing as you. I just wanted what they were given. I didn’t think it would lead to this.”

Her face twisted in guilt and she reached out to Ao-Yurin, pleading, “Is- Is there anything I can do? Please.”

There was a pause before Ao-Yurin’s weak voice responded, a kind tone ringing out, “N-no. Yet, I want you to know, Sala, that you are not at fault. This was an accident and our Lord has beckoned that I make peace in what last moments that I have. I know what you must be feeling, but-“

A tendril of water looked towards the Monarch of All, who nodded in response before Ao-Yurin continued, “I would like for you to watch over the seas.”

“I will,” she answered without hesitation, the tangible reality of a task and duty distracting her from the weight of her feelings. She spoke in that passing clarity, “They’ll be safe. I won’t let any of the others spoil them. The seas will stand forever, you won't be forgotten. Not ever.”

“Thank you,” said Ao-Yurin warmly, looking back to the Monarch.

”You are free to go, Sala.”

The Monarch now stood over them, His arms folded behind His back as the great being loomed over the goddess of salt and seemingly judging her new form as His glowing orbs traced her silhouette. He extended a hand to Sala, beckoning for her to release Ao-Yurin and go back to her duties as a goddess, as all gods must do as His will dictated. A softer voice came through, echoing throughout the throne room making it seem as if His words came from all around the gods.

”I will make sure that Ao-Yurin remains in comfort.

Sala nodded, even now nervous to be under the full gaze of her creator. The Salt Goddess, now custodian of the seas, wiped old tears from her face and nodded to Ao-Yurin before turning to the bridge leading back to the world of Galbar. As much as she wished to apologize another thousand times and beg the Monarch for Ao-Yurin’s sake, she didn’t once look back at the pair as she departed.

There was nothing left for her to do, and if she saw the Water God again? The memory of their thanks would be gone and the reality of their death would be in its place. The reality of her responsibility. Some things were too painful to face, even for a divine.

As soon as Sala had left the Divine Palace, departing across the hallowed bridge that connected Galbar to the divine, the Monarch's hands dropped to His side and allowed the facade of kindness to drop. He made sure that the bridge closed as soon as Sala had left as He stepped back to His throne and looked upon the dying god. There was little else to be done with the water god, deciding to step forth to Ao-Yurin and gaze down upon a confused god that wondered what He was doing in that moment. A clawed hand raised itself from the Monarch of All, striking fear and terror into the water god before a swift thrust burrowed into the watery form, sending particles of water splattering across the throne room. From the water, He plucked a single shard, the very essence of the divine and inspected it to confirm that it had not been damaged.

The Monarch of All looked as Ao-Yurin’s form began to collapse rapidly, the god making sounds akin to someone who was drowning, unable to gasp at the air that surrounded it. A single flick of His wrist sent the water hurtling away from the throne room and swiftly making its way to Galbar’s oceans, sending Ao-Yurin back to the creations that had been made at His own will. Without another word, the Monarch of All turned to His throne and stepped towards it, the water left behind by Ao-Yurin staining the room as He sat and leaned back upon the Jade Throne. He put the shard to the air once more, allowing a moment of silent reflection before He moved to the great wound upon His chest and allowed the shard to return to its true host. Then, He spoke to the remaining water in an expressionless tone.

”Such a pity, Ao-Yurin, to think that Sala believed that she was the one who poisoned you.”

---

Something to love. Something to hate.

Tuku's Homestead at the heart of the wildlands grew ever more lively by the day. The god always brought back all that was peculiar and interesting to them, making not only trophies but putting the materials to use in cooking and crafting, the god of the hunt becoming quite proud of some of the culinary marvels they cooked up. And yet...

Other crafts not exactly related to hunting were also of their interest, pottery, for example, not only produced vessels fit to preserve the materials gathered but was also a great creative outlet. Weaving was also interesting and when made in a pattern could create fabrics, like the banners Tuku placed up to signal their land. And yet...

Not to count the central heart of the home, with a blazing fire, warm and inviting, a bit glorious but not too much, enough for Tuku to make themselves superior but not enough to fully alienate whoever showed up at his homestead, after all, all who came to their halls were to be treated as brothers. And yet... no one would really come, right?

Yes, that was the issue wasn't it? No matter what new topic the god became interested in, be it how much they loved the colorful fishes of the rivers or how neat it was that a whole section of a jungle in the core of the wildlands froze overnight, there was a sense of solitude, no one to sit by their side and hear whatever they wanted to say.

Each time the god thought about being more receptive to their siblings. Something happened.

Be it Ruina's message and the mention of palace intrigue, be it disasters on a global scale, be it the exaggerated response of his sibling over a bloody twig, be it... well, many other things.

Tuku valued family and yet his family was not one to be loved but to be hated, their noise was annoying and even in the depths of the woods it could not be escaped, their minds clouded by insanity and stupidity, most of them would not survive a single winter if made into mortals, and yet here they were, made into gods who demanded worship and respect, able to kill and destroy as they pleased with their infantile and demented minds. Disgust was all Tuku could feel.

But perhaps to procrastinate and hide was not the answer. No. Hiding from the noise was just not enough. It was time to face it, and screech louder if necessary. To start, the staff...

---

The staff of the wanderer

The world had been scarred. If it was pure stone, the fissures and cracks created would direct the flow of water, forming streams over them, similarly, the flow of energy, be it primordial, spiritual or the very mana that was infused upon the atmosphere, was not even, instead it followed the path of least resistance among the land, along with the scars of divine work.

Sometimes the flow pooled, and this created areas of greater energy than others. The wildlands had been made into one, which was what initially brought the god's interest into this, but now they wanted to survey the rest of the world. While their divine senses did well, they wanted more, which is why they sought the branch of the tree in the first place.

Now it was the time to carve them, sanctify them as now raw mana and nature but as the hunter's tool. This was done by marking it with symbols, patterns, and animal figurines, creating a tall carved walking stick they called "The staff of the wanderer" a divine relic that helped Tuku to perceive and survey the lands they explored, tracking all beings that crossed it.

---

Aethel and Yesaris

The god had not been blind to the plague made to inflict harm upon his domain, one hunt too many had been spoiled by creatures with the defective... no, corrupt brains. Closer inspection showed the signs of an illness inflicted by microorganisms.

It was far too focused for the parasite god, so it was easy to guess what it truly was, only one god could ever feel this much petty anger towards Tuku. Aethel was truly a foolish god, Tuku realized, to make contact with the ever repugnant Yesaris and guide the creation of something to possibly permanently corrupt the realm of the hunter was simply abhorrent, far more harmful than whatever Tuku did, at least in the god of the hunt's own opinion.

So many gods seemed to fail at the simple task of having long-term planning skills, did Aethel not see the harm Yesaris could bring upon the world? Did they consider themselves so superior to Yesaris that they would only need to worry about Tuku and how they reacted?

No matter. Now Tuku would teach Aethel what happens with one who plays near the filth. It was only fair, if parasites had been brought upon his realm, that parasites would too be brought upon the realm of the magical god.

Raising his staff and sneakily surveying the hivelands, the god found the spot Aethel had traveled upon, confirming the god of the hunt's suspicion. With the recent presence of a god, this land, in particular, had an extra charge of the force of mana that was inherent to all of The Galbar, so far no living being seemed to interact with it, but all they needed was a generous god of the hunt to teach a handful of micro-organisms to capture and leech off that mana, which is what Tuku did.

Far from a plague yet, Tuku simply didn't have the energy, focus, or the desire to make it like that by their own hands, but it was a start, a little reminder for the god of parasites that Mana existed, that it was reachable, and that they could easily feast upon it like any other matter in the world. He was sure Aethel wouldn't mind his good friend and accomplice to snack upon his work.

---

Observing the Bjork

Tuku had a soft spot for mortals, that was no secret. Intelligent life did not have the privilege to be wantonly foolish, they needed to adapt like all life and use their minds as a tool, which often gave rise to individuals who were clever and wise. They had so far not gotten involved with such things because while they liked the idea of sentient life they did not care enough for it to rush the natural million of a years-long process that would naturally generate it, but, since his siblings had rushed nature, there was no harm in getting involved.

No species seemed as spread out and established as the Bjork of the north, the huntsman however struggled in their approach, simply put... they were too vegetarian, and not willing to reform them into meat-eaters, the god had a big issue to deal with, he could teach them how to work the carcass of animals for bone and leather, but that would leave a lot of meat simply wasted, which was not ideal.

Instead of simply brooding over the topic all alone, they decided it was best to meet the bjorkfolk at their own homes to best understand them. Carving a new mask from local wood the god of the hunt took the beaver-like shape of this folk and clad in a cloak started to travel from dam to dam.



The Bjork were hospitable, though at first the god did not introduce themselves or offer anything of value they were still often met with some degree of warmth by the locals, invited in to share the warmth and some of the food, though, in the north, where winter was setting in, the visage of a foreigner vagabond was not as welcomed.

Yet, the god could not fully believe this first impression alone, they wanted to test how corruptible they could be by their own desires and as such they started to bring precious goods from their travels with them, be it rare woods with fresh exotic tastes and pleasing aroma, or anything shiny, be it rock, shell or flower, to gather their interest, and the effects were quick to observe, matriarchs who once made sure they were to leave as quickly as possible now asked for them to stay one more night, Bjork once noble were willing to let their own dam go missing on food if they could exchange some of their food for those strange goods. It was... bothersome, and above all, made the god think twice before sharing their knowledge.

The mortal question, it seemed, was not one to be easily dealt with, their initial idea of going straight to the matriarchs at least seemed less likely now, they decided they did not like such central authority, be it divine or mortal, the common working man was far more to their liking.

And so, with that mindset, the Bjork with the Wooden Mask went on one more of their visits, but this time, his tale would be another, and so would be their goods. Not the branches of another continent but tools made of white rock... no, bone. It was scary, some Bjork could not link bones to anything but death, but in the next day when a wild animal attacked the gatherers along with the masked Bjork, they saw just how useful all that was. The leather coat the stranger wore protected them where most Bjork would get a dangerous wound, then their bone-tipped spear tore through the thick hide of the animal, making it immediately give up and leave, wounded and defeated.

That immediately made the local folk curious, a few of the bolder ones giving chase to the stranger as they vanished into the forest, going farther from the river than what most Bjork were comfortable with.

Why is it that you chase me? Last night I was scoffed by many of you young Bjork but now you seem to eagerly track me. What is it that you wish? the masked stranger said finally, having guided the young males deep into the forest.

"We... We did not believe you. Your tales of slaying beasts from a distance, of binding their bones to your weapon to better protect yourself, it all seemed very suspicious, it is not the way of the Bjork to do such things. But we have seen how easily you defeated that charging beast, and now we wish to learn your ways."

The hunter calmly picked up seeds from the ground while idly beating their tails against the grass. "Here." they threw each seed and each seed struck the Bjorks in between their eyes. "If this were rocks, all of you would have been slain by it. Take that into consideration with what I will tell you next.

I will teach you how to better defend yourself against the beasts that be, the tactics to corner the boars, the walruses, the bears, how to scare away the wolves and eagles, I will teach you how to create better lances, traps, and even a weapon which will let sling rocks against beasts from a safe distance. I will teach you how to make glue from blood, bones, and birch, and how to make leather from fur. In exchange, you will give me a lifelong vow, you will abdicate from positions of power within the clam, you will promise never to trade goods or your working paw, only donate. You will take the meat from the animals you slay for their materials and, in the lack of any meat-eating being amongst your community, offer them at a selected place within the forest, and offer it in my honor and in honor of the forest from which you took this bounty." the masked creature turned to face them. "Again, the vow is lifelong, break it, and your life will be greatly shortened to match it.

With that, half of the Bjork left, too scared of such responsibility, but a few, a few wanted that knowledge, not minding the many sacrifices that would be necessary. These would be Tuku's first pupils.

---

Green Murder

Of course, among their stay with the Bjork, word quickly reached the masked god of this... green murder deity, among the many gods, this was the one whose tale spoke of rage and disgust, yet, of the gods that Tuku had in their mind as potentially dangerous, this creature was none, and that left the hunter very curious trying to understand the context. Talking to the apex predators of the land and using the staff to track, Tuku felt themselves following a clear trail.

But quickly the situation worsened, Tuku knew the gods were very active in this region thanks in part to its many mortals, but they had not expected that so many would be in the direct location of the attacks. This was... bothersome. Phelenia was someone they had a deep interest in, a fellow deity of the wilds and whom they expected to find an ally in, but they had not expected such brutish behavior. In itself, Tuku did not care, they cared about mortals but was not ready to fight for every single random bipedal thing that a god did not like, but mortals could do many things, above all they could pray, and praying would fill the ego of the many siblings Tuku had, to kill the praying thing was to hurt the ego of the other gods, and that was surefire to make many of them hostile even if they did not care about the morality of killing a mortal. And with so many divine tracks observable in this area, how many now had a vow to repel, if not eliminate, the green goddess?

That wouldn't do. Although the politics and intrigues of their siblings were of little interest, the god of the hunt did not like the possibility of Phelenia being imprisoned, or worse, killed, for the wilds to become orphans was not good in a world as savage as this. But, how would they even approach the goddess and touch that topic? From all they had seen, it didn't seem like the type of deity that would find a compromise much less from a strange god they do not trust.

As they brooded, to their side, a mindless, hypnotized deer offered its own neck to a pack of wolves, who quickly tore it and its offspring. Beneath the mask the hunter smirked, they had forgotten about their little issue with the parasites, if they were offended by this, they couldn't imagine how their sister felt. Perhaps they should find her to talk about this topic.

Coasts, rocks, silt and sand. Fish and kelp and coral, and the free voices of its distant kin. At last- shallow seas again.

The whale shoved its snout into the mud.

Clouds of dust and silt kicked up around its face. The young whale filled its mouth with free-floating dirt and expelled silt and water through its bristles, swallowing a mouthful of shrimp and grit. This was not a dignified way for an animal of its great, sleek size to feed. It was not as restful as skimming the rich green surface as it travelled, nor as thrilling as the lunge of the herring-hunt. It only filled the belly a little in the absence of more nourishing prey.

The whale's mouth had bled profusely in the hours and days after the blast. In the time it took to recover, more fortunate whales had scooped up all the fish and fry that remained along the shore before the dust-darkened sky had choked out the green that sustained their forage. Whole shoals of the littler fish had been struck and slain outright by the waterborne sound, left to drift away, sink and rot in the claws of carrion-crabs. Now the sea was to taste only of dust.

(Little did the whale know that the wrath of the Eye had lifted up ores rich in the salt of the gods, and cast that powder far and wide into the hungry sea. There it would leaven the waves, and when the winds and the currents at last cleared of dust, there would reign twelve years of great plenty on the coast of Termina, in which many calves would wean. Would that the whale had known of such things!)

The whale had learned of such mudlarking by observing, in its hunger, a distant cousin; a hook-nosed and pockmarked cow whale encrusted with barnacles and rather smaller than itself, but content to observe and call curtly as the sleek and desperate youngster fumbled its way around the technique.

In time the blood cleared from its mouth and it learned to swim straight with its crippled hearing. The shock also did fade, but the whale no longer felt young. It had seen much that was strange and cold and harsh, and that it could not forget; the clean sweet joy of its early years was not to return in those waters. Its gut and innards now crawled with worms, blown on a foul wind into the mud of the injured sea, and horked down a hungry throat. An army of lice picked and carved at its delicate skin, around its eyes and in the pleats of its throat, clinging on with legs like fishhooks. The whale knew nothing of worms or lice, of course, but it felt the keen sharp edge of its strength dulled and sapped ever so faintly from its weathered body, and so it departed that place, its hunger half-sated, for the more peaceful shore of its birth.



The whale passed familiar isles, and reunited with kin it had known; the sea grew cold and abundant, the fish ever larger. The path it had taken would in time grow, and come to be a common one in the forthcoming decade of prosperity. South once to mate, again to give birth in the warmth of the sun, and north to enjoy the long summers granted by the Shepherd between the dark months of his winter reign.

It regained its lost weight, and indeed returned far larger than when it had departed, almost as long now as the strong and lonesome bulls that sang loud through the blue from afar, warding their mates. No close company, then, was found for the whale; the mothers were quite occupied with their calves, while its uncles had no patience for bachelors, and the heifers swam under their wing. It was enough to hear the occasional beat of their voices, and far better so than the long, low melody of the most distant ice, where swam the still larger, still lonelier whales of the furthest north.

And yet the whale longed for touch. The chill of the north and the sweet taste of meltwater reminded it of its mother, whose milk had ever nurtured him, whose great flank had brought comfort amid the distant chittering of orcas, that wandering calfhood nightmare whose song was the wolf-whine of death. There was no she-whale here who would give it warmth, for it had yet to win such favour. Its flecked and pockmarked senior had remained in the south. The black, bow-headed songsters of the north shore were ever glad to call to it with their whistles and melodies, but their ways were their own, and they could not match pace with the rorqual.

So the whale nudged against driftwood, rubbing its throat and belly against clean gravel, prodding skates and flounders and sleepsharks and whatever else it found in the blue. It gained such a habit of poking about between feeding that it nearly breached in pure shock when something finally poked back.

It was a chunk of glacier-ice, washed down a fjord and polished glass-smooth by the waves. The whale rubbed it with its fin and listened closely with its good ear, but it could not see any trace of what was touching its skin, even as it dragged curious tendrils across the whale's face and around its eye, tracing the line of the whale's closed lips as if with a fingertip. When it opened its mouth it soon felt something tickle the bristle-brush of its baleen, wriggling between the plates with animal curiosity, stroking the fibres up and down. The whale circled, slowly, watching the iceberg rotate in unison.

They explored one another in total silence.

As the claws of the icy creature traced the pleats of the whale's throat, it relaxed, and felt something release like a shackle briefly lightened. The ice-being noticed, and repeated the gesture in another pleat, and another, harder this time. The whale rolled over onto its back, and the ice-being continued with a mussel-shell fingernail.

At last- true relief. The ice-being carved off hundreds of lice at a stroke, casting them down helpless into the silt to be snapped up by cod. The chill against its skin reminded the whale of how things had been, long ago, in the cold, clean waters of its youth.

When at last the whale grew hungry and the ice-being too warm to continue, they departed, each to seek their own form of sustenance. Come autumn they would separate further still, seeking and fleeing the chill of the Shepherd. By winter they would be far gone, each to breed among its own kind. In spring they would remember, little wordless memories of touch, a poem of fingertips to be written anew in the clean and gentle hearts of giants.

And in the summer, once again, they would find each other.

---

A blinding light dominated Epsilon’s vision. He could not tell how long he had been unconscious, nor how long he had been awake. The whole world and all of creation was a single moment, crystallized; a beginning and an end all in one. His entire being ached, his divine shard burned and his form held together by the loosest of threads. More than anything, Epsilon wished to just keep laying there, to succumb to his exhaustion and permit the long sleep until the wheel turned again and the universe was remade.

There would be no such mercy. Even battered as he was, the Academician still had duties and obligations to both creation and the Monarch. Slowly, with a pained effort, Epsilon sat up in the crater he had left in the dirt and the rock. His sight returned, revealing with intense clarity the world around him; he had been staring up at the sun in the sky. The moon was nowhere in sight, giving him some clue to how long he had been unaware.

With a wince, Epsilon stood up fully. His form was still wavy, the exhaustion in his mind making it difficult to maintain his physical body. The Codex, he noticed, was clutched in his arms. At least he had accomplished what he set out to do, though his failure to save the goddess of luck left a bitter taste. His sight stretched out across the land, and he took full stock of his surroundings. He had landed, perhaps somewhat luckily, on an uninhabited island off the coast of the northern continent.

The land around him could best be described as arboreal; something the Bjorks he could dimly see at the edges of his sight would be familiar with. His grip tightened on the Codex, as he considered his prospects of defending it in his current state; he was too weak alone to protect it, as exhausted as he was. Only a moment’s consideration was required before the solution came to him.

Alone, he was not enough, especially in his current state: it was too risky to try and keep the Codex on his person at all times -- unless he could remain in a fortress of his choosing. But to remain in a fortress, he would be surrendering all influence on the world around him. The solution came from the creations of other gods. If he could only create his own mortals, he could enslave their will to him and have them be his eyes, his ears, and his hands.

He was weak, but he still had time, power, and the will to use both. It would hurt dearly, but he was a god; stopping in the face of pain would not befit his stature and would leave a bad example for the mortals to come. Carefully, he measured the world around him, telling the earth and the air not what it was, but what it should be. Dirt transformed to marble; air morphed into gold and deep sapphire. Each piece took form individually, connecting to create a greater whole.



It was over almost unceremoniously quickly. Where once there had been nothing but pines and foothills, now stood a grand building of gold, marble, and sapphire. Great white walls, polished to high sheen, layered with gold filigree and capped by solid gemstone, shaped in a manner impossible for mortal hands to accomplish. There were no great blasts, no thunderous movement of earth; he had told the Grand Archives that they existed, and so they existed.

But the building was the easy part.

Epsilon cast his gaze and his thoughts to his servants-to-be. He flipped through the Codex, realizing only then that nobody had ever provided anything for him to work off of. The workings of mortals were, at this stage, beyond him. He would have to improvise their forms and biology. He considered his options, and settled on the familiar; they would sustain themselves off of knowledge and experience, in a form they animated by telling the world that they existed.

With a pained whisper, he began to create the bodies he would give will to. First, he created great suits of steely armor, possessed of no space for a living body to fit inside; a core of wood instead filling the space under the plates. Each was eight feet tall, weighing hundreds of pounds. They would serve as his guards, to protect his fledgling Academy.

An academy was nothing without scholars. To that end, he created his next set of bodies. They were more comparable to a human size, and constituted little more than cloth. When he created their minds, he would animate the cloth, letting pure magic cover in the gaps. But for now, they simply hovered in the air, held up by Epsilon’s divine powers.

And finally, he created a set of bodies that were a mixture between the previous two, to serve as his vanguard in the world about him; they were clad in both cloth and metal, wrapped around a wooden core, for solidity. He would use them to scout out the world, and face the dangers left behind by the gods and other mortals.

Finally, it was time for the hardest part of his endeavour. It would take Epsilon great effort to animate these empty bodies, and greater effort still to enslave them to his will. His measurements would have to be incredibly precise; the slightest error could doom the mortals he was bringing to life to an early grave. His mind screamed at the effort, so soon after the abuse it was given by Yudaiel. His entire form begged him to stop, but he continued on, powering through the pain.

The birth of the Kynikos was just as unceremonious as the creation of the Grand Archives. One moment they did not exist, the next moment they did. A creation of an invisible, complex math only presented by Epsilon’s mind, measuring the world and giving meaning to it in turn. His form wavered as he spoke, in his divine tongue, “Welcome, my servants, to the Academy.”

They stared at him silently. They waited for direction; enslaved utterly to his will. He turned about, heading up the steps of the Grand Archive into the building proper, motioning the Kynikos to follow him. They did so without question, and the inside of the building was revealed. The roof was hundreds of feet into the air, rows of bookcases stuffed into every available space, minus sparse nooks with desks for study. There were no books, but room for millions of them.

Epsilon motioned to the Kynikos with a grand gesture, “Scholars, begin studying the world around you! Create great epics, and profound manifests! Guards, keep these archives safe! Suffer no abuses! Rangers, map the world and its inhabitants!”

The Kynikos stared at him silently for a moment afterwards, as if trying to interpret his orders. Then, they began to mill about in a confused matter. It was no matter to Epsilon: in time, they would work it out. As for him, he had to place the Codex he still clutched in a safe place and take a long-deserved rest. Leaving the Kynikos behind, he stepped past a pair of grand gates built into the back of the building, walking into a private section. Here he would store his personal belongings; safe from both god and man.

The private section was much more humble than the main library, a set of desks placed in the center of the room, and smaller bookshelves lining the walls. Towards the back wall sat a prominent pedestal, sized for the Codex. Epsilon placed it down and then walked to the center of the room, collapsing into a chair. His exhausted mind succumbed to unconsciousness once more as it tended to its wounds.

His dreams were troubled. He faded in and out, at some points delirious and some points lucid. Some of it was pleasant, others torture; he relived his battle on the moon many times over. When he awoke, he startled from his chair onto the floor. His form was more solid; his mind less exhausted. It was not restful, but the sleep did him well. Everything hurt less, the aches were starting to go away. A glance back confirmed the Codex had not been stolen in the meantime.

He stepped out of the private section into the main hall. It was emptier than it should have been; the guards had found positions, watching over the halls and the bookcases, while the scholars had begun primitive experiments. The rangers were all gone, as was expected, but their number alone did not account for how empty the hall looked. The sun was down; he could tell by the light. No sunlight streamed in the windows, the Grand Archives lit only by its lamps.

Epsilon threw open the main doors, and the answer to the conundrum was immediately apparent. Kynikos of all three castes were scattered across the landscape, standing still and looking up to the sky. Epsilon’s gaze moved upwards to see what they were looking at, and what he saw sickened him. His aches grew in intensity with the stress; all of them were staring at the moon. His form wavered, and he fled back into the Grand Archives. Thoughts whirled through his mind, coalescing into one question, Have they been corrupted by Yudaiel?

Once more, two hundred thousand sleeping humans had been placed upon the three colossi, but after the loss of those before, Homura herself had forged walkways with a multitude of alcoves to prevent anymore from falling. There were a myriad of balconies with sturdy balustrades, and various fixtures to grasp which provided balance to any that stood upon the back of the titans. Perched atop the head of one of the three colossi was the champion known as Curiosity, and she enthusiastically enjoyed the view her precarious position offered her; the endless expanse of earth, sea, and sky, all which called to her with their vast and untamed elegance.

Her four sisters had chosen to rest after their great efforts to pack so many of their sleeping kin, and now they slept atop the outer wall of Keltra, while Homura had turned her attention to the distant north. Curiosity could feel the anxious apprehension of the red goddess from afar, and wondered whether she would be a burden for her maker if she attempted to console her now in her time of need. Without any further contemplation, the champion leapt from her perch and was soaring through the sky with grace towards the lonely deity standing in the farthest fields of the dreamers.

"Apologies for intruding... but can't I be of help?" She asked with hesitation since it seemed her maker was lost in the realm of thoughts, and an uncertainty continued to grow within her. It frustrated her that from the moment she had been born Curiosity continually struggled to comprehend the cryptic often contradictory expressions of Homura; the shadow of a smile that always seemed so sorrowful. She only wished she could find a way to understand her maker.

"You have already helped me... and all of your sisters as well, Curiosity." Homura shifted to face her creation, and softly smiled as her reflection looked back at her with concerned eyes. Despite their identical appearances, the red goddess could always easily identify which of her champions she was speaking to. Each possessed their own traits and thoughts that were unique to them; Courage with her feral grin always reckless, Kindness with too much awareness of others, and Fear with too much awareness of herself, and lastly, Wanderer whom seemed to avoid her, while Curiosity seemed to always seek her wherever she was.

"I can do more though, can't I? Fear wouldn't answer any of my questions, and Courage said I should just ask you. Please! What happened before Wanderer and I were born? I need to know!" Curiosity interrupted the thoughts of the goddess and reached out to hold onto Homura, as though she were afraid that the red goddess would suddenly vanish from her sight without warning. Despite the close proximity between them then, the feeling that there was nothing that connected them to each other became profuse, and Curiosity felt so apart from her maker. Her hand touched the welcomed warmth of Homura's shoulder, and even such simple contact with the goddess brought solace to the awakened human. She never wanted to let go, she realized, for she would be lost without her.

"Enough... I have commanded your sisters to remain silent, and I will command you to cease your pointless questions as well. You asked how you can be of aid; then do as I ask, and do not seek out the pain of the past. You must only walk forward on the sacred path." Homura ordained with a quiet voice woven with divine will, as she pushed the hand of her champion away, and a compelled Curiosity could only comply with a respectful bow which concealed a feeling she would describe as resentment.

"If that's what you wish, Homura." Curiosity had quickly stepped back after averting her gaze and felt shame for using the true name of her maker. She recalled her sister, Kindness, warning her that she should let it go, but the feeling in her chest only urged her to press further. The champion chose to exercise patience, and decided to only attempt again in the future when Homura herself could choose to rest for a while. The human hoped for such a future to arrive soon.

"Come with me. It is time to gather your sisters." Homura announced, and began walking towards the great wall of Keltra, as Curiosity obeyed and walked beside her. They reached where her sisters slept, and the red goddess spoke once more. "Arise, champions!" She called, as Curiosity joined her sisters when they stood up and bowed before their maker. "We have prepared ourselves for the journey ahead, but the sacred path will certainly prove arduous, as honor demands sacrifice!"

Light brightly bloomed akin to the power of the stars atop the red wall, as Homura held Daybringer aloft and illuminated the land with her radiance. "Let us step forth into the darkness, and guide ourselves towards the light! Let us protect life! That which we love, and consider precious! We will fight! We will not bend! We will endure! For the King in Heaven! For our love! For our honor!" Power resonated in her voice, and stirred the air into motion, as it danced and sang in rhythm with her chant.

The celestial light had washed over the five mortals; it seeped beneath their skin into their inner fire, and evoked a yearning passion in them. In their minds, visions of an unknown paradise strengthened their conviction, and though they could not know what waited them on the path ahead, they were eager to continue onward.

Divine eyes watched them with great intensity, but her blinding aura hid the tears from the sight of her champions. "Courage! Kindness! Fear! You are to accompany me as I spread the seeds of humanity across Galbar." She proclaimed, and the trio bowed in recognition as the goddess then addressed the other two. "Wanderer! Curiosity! You shall defend Keltra and protect the remaining humans while they sleep." She proclaimed, and the duo bowed in recognition as the goddess lowered Daybringer.

"You have all been given your orders, and now we shall depart." Homura said before she stepped towards the edge of the wall. She leapt forth, the celestial light following her, and the five champions lingered in its absence. They shared in the sense of fulfillment they all felt, and bid each other farewell with little tears of joy. The three that were chosen to join the red goddess then jumped from the wall as well, soaring through the sky until they had descended upon the shore beside their maker.



Courage looked back to Keltra with fondness in her eyes, as the red walls reflected the brilliance of the sun and seemed to shimmer like the shiny stones her sister had gathered. "We will be back!" She shouted to the two sisters and to the hundreds of thousands that still slept and to the citadel that promised her it would protect her loved ones, she shouted to all that she had left behind, even though they could not hear her. With a satisfied grin, she jumped once again and alighted atop the head of one of the three colossi. Kindness and Fear similarly leapt and landed upon their own respective colossus, while Homura simply strode across the surface of the sea ahead of them.

The bridges that had been rebuilt to connect the three titans to the land suddenly shattered, and the massive creatures were freed from their inactive state. Slowly they stirred, but did not turn or take any steps forward, and only the great groans and grinding of their inner workings suggested they were even awake. The three champions found themselves in similar situations standing in the center of the crowns atop each colossus without any guidance regarding control. "Ah... how do we direct these things?" Fear asked of her two equally confused sisters, having to shout in order to be heard over the howling winds.

The circle of pillars roughly hewn from stone sang with a power and presence akin to Daybringer, and Fear wondered whether she could control the creature through touch and will, as Homura controlled her golden spear through touch and will. She placed her palm upon one pillar, and focused her mind on making the colossus walk. She was shook out of focus and lost her concentration with the rumbling beneath her feet and the crashing of waves. She could hear the loud laughter of Courage as the colossus she stood upon took a step and sent the sea surging in all directions afterward.

"How!?!" Kindness called faintly, the farthest from Fear on the other side of the central colossus and had also yet to discover how to operate her own colossus. Her question was answered with a demonstration from Courage; "Like this!" The champion replied before she struck one of the pillars near her causing the colossus to suddenly turn, and narrowly avoid a collision with Kindness.

The two other champions repeated their sister's example, and the direction of their attacks determined the direction their colossi would walk. Each strike was a single step, but every step traversed a great distance, and so they followed in the wake of the red goddess.

Homura held Daybringer and raised the golden spear like a banner, letting its light illuminate the path ahead. The song of the sea was ferocious and booming as it shook with each step of the colossi, but the deity was unbothered by the waves which simply splashed against an unseen shield around her. The colossi themselves walked upon a red bridge submerged beneath the surface of the sea, a path to protect the creatures that existed in the water, and to avoid that which might cause them to stumble. The path would fade as the procession marched eastward along the coast, and nothing would remain of their passage.



Wanderer and Curiosity still stood atop the towering red wall, watching as the luminous entourage disappeared beyond the eastern horizon, akin to the now familiar descent of the glorious sun during the time of twilight. Their gaze then turned to the fields of sleeping humans, and the edict of Homura that compelled them to protect them. "There was four hundred, ninety-one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five of our kin to be left here according to the last census we did." Wanderer stated to her sister, whom only responded with a nod of agreement.

"We should bring them inside these walls, ya?" Curiosity asked with a glance over her shoulder towards the inner area of Keltra, empty except for the great structure that stood atop the rise in the center. The building seemed large enough to contain the remaining humans, but the lack of any gates along the walls meant that the slab on a wheel they had been using would not be useful. "Any suggestions for how we could do that though?" Asking another question after her sister still had yet to answer, and an uncomfortable silence had lingered for too long.

"We have no other choice." Wanderer concluded before she simply jumped towards the fields without further comment, leaving her sister in sudden solitude. Those words had left Curiosity frustrated, but she could not see any alternative either, and so she jumped forth as well. The two of them traveled quickly, and reached the first of the unawakened vessels scattered across the land, as still as statues as they slept. Neither of the two champions spoke to each other as they both carefully held onto one dreamer, and then began their journey back to Keltra.

Though the wind sank its fangs into their skin, it did not bother them for they were only concerned for the delicate beings they held in their arms, and they let the fire burning within them provide warmth for their passengers. "I wonder if Homura will let me name you, or if you will be allowed to name yourself." Curiosity murmured to herself as attempts at conversing with Wanderer while they flew through the air had proven fruitless. Their trip proved uneventful, and the duo had arrived at the fortress with ease, stepping into the vast structure.

They found the interior to be just as empty as the area around the building, there was nothing except their shadows and an aura of loneliness that pervaded the hollow space. "It's too quiet." Curiosity commented as they placed the two bodies on the floor and looked around for anything that could offer more comfort for their kin. "I imagine that will change in the future." Wanderer replied, and then the two set forth once again to collect more dreamers and slowly fill the halls of the fortress.

Their arms and legs ached after they had carried one hundred thousand, but they pressed on. It became difficult to see as their vision blurred and they breathed heavily with exhaustion after they had carried three hundred thousand more, but they persevered. Even after four hundred thousand had been carried, Wanderer could not comprehend it... but Curiosity continued to speak and pester her with words. The quiet champion refused to surrender before her sister silenced herself, even if her irksome sibling was unaware of this competition. It gave her the strength to press onward, and she could only speculate what gave Curiosity such incredible endurance.

In the end, all four hundred, ninety-one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five dreamers had been safely transported into Keltra, and both Wanderer and Curiosity collapsed on the floor among them. The two could hear the beating of their hearts, and each tired breath that escaped them. "It is done." Wanderer said, and Curiosity chuckled. "It is."

Wanderer yawned and closed her eyes, letting her inescapable fatigue lull her into the realm of dreams; such a kind respite would be most welcome and the champion allowed herself to smile... until her sister spoke again. "Are you tired?"

"Yes."

"Can I sleep beside you?"

"No."

"Please?"

"..."

"Pretty please?"

"Fine."

Wanderer could only weakly sigh as she heard her sister shift herself and roll closer to her. She let out a gasp as her hand was suddenly held, and she opened her eyes to see Curiosity clutching her hand. The other champion remained silent regarding an explanation, but Wanderer was content if that meant she could finally rest.

"G'night Kel, good night Kiki, good night Xohan-"

"Be quiet!"

---

The God of Cold was busy at work, teaching the young Nisshi champion the ways of the world. After they had gone about burying the Bjork kit, the two had a long conversation about what had transpired. Chailiss had listened to the young spirit, offering advice and insight when he could, but he hid his own feelings upon the matter. She would not understand them as she was. The champion of his needed growth and experience in the world. Something that would only come with time and she had plenty of it.

When the Bjork came and called upon him for guidance, he helped with what he could and reassured them that fire would be a fierce tool come winter. He helped the best he could and then the two wandered some, dwelling upon his failure to protect from another God, his worst fear realized. How could he have allowed such a thing to happen?

That had been a few days ago now and the Nisshi had much to learn. She still had no name and she was growing frustrated, for Chailiss had said it would come in time. When she felt she knew herself well enough, the name would come naturally. They had just been about to cross the lake when something unexpected happened.

Another fear realized.

An explosion. But not just any explosion. He barely had time to react before the psychic blast assaulted him. He let out a grunt of pain as the world around him shuddered. Birds and beasts alike bolted and the Bjork took to the water.

The spirit let out a cry of fear and zoomed about his head. “What that, papa?" She asked in a pained voice as she searched for the unseen threat.

Chailiss did not speak right away as his divine perceptions took hold and pain became a dull ache. He could hear more explosions, light in the dark, pain in the-

He snapped to attention and turned to her. ”Listen to me. Listen to me carefully. I must go now, I fear something terrible has happened. Stay here, see to the Bjork. I will return!” and before she could protest, Chailiss took to the sky, and exploded down to the south, taking his divine form once more.

It was only when he had grown higher that he could witness the devastation that occurred in the south-east and that was coming. Thick dust blotted out the sky, traveling at winds that would rip his trees apart and scatter them like fallen giants. Already he could see the approaching stone, cast like meteors beginning to rain down. What had happened? Could he even stop this?

No!

His demeanor hardened at once. He would not let more tragedy befall his realm, he couldn’t! Chailiss pushed, pressing himself to achieve speeds he had never gone before and to his luck, he managed to reach the ocean as the death cloud approached. He skimmed the water, his plan was to meet the storm head on but then what? What could he do?

Then it hit him. He had to contain it.

He pooled his divinity together, and from the winds that whipped around him, Chailiss fashioned a small icy box. The design was simple, unlike Zenia’s obelisk, but it would do the job- at least he hoped. He began to slow down once the dust cloud was near and then the god opened the box. There came a POP and then the box, like a vortex, began to pull the dust, debris, and everything else into it’s maw. Like a wolf it gobbled it down without care of what it was consuming. The god, in the meantime, was battered by intense winds and wisely, he began to fly backwards, save the storm engulfed him. He could not let it pass.

He would not let it pass.

This went on for a long while, as the clouds and Chailiss battled for control. Soon the box began to hum a sickly sound, glowing like a star with the amount of power it was consuming. This was not the end of the storm however, for though he was saving his land, there was more going west, south, and east. Whatever had caused such a thing had been most destructive. His mind flashed to Ruina… Perhaps it was another test? But this was… It felt wrong. He pressed on regardless, for the storm's winds began to change and the dust and debris were becoming thinner. It was yielding before his might! The artifact would be able to contain it all! He pressed his advantage, chasing it down now like a thunderous hunter.

Then the box’s hum grew louder and louder, until at last, the lid shut with a tremendous clang, leaving Chailiss in the midst of what remained. With a powerful gust of north wind, he blew the rest that threatened his land away. He had saved his north, but not even he had been able to contain it all. Chailiss felt the drain then, as little as it was. He looked down at the box, brimming with chaotic energy and destruction. He could feel the danger within wanting out of its prison. He could never allow such a thing. But where to safeguard it?

Where?

He pondered the question as he turned to go back to his realm. Nisshi would be frantic, hopefully she had stayed where she was.

---

Light emerged from the southern sea, radiant and red, and approached rapidly as the sky and water seemed to merge into a single crimson canvas. A second sun wandered across the sea accompanied by three colossal creatures that followed in its wake, and wandered directly towards the god of the cold. Closer and closer, until behind the veil of light, only perceived by divine sight, was a red goddess carrying a golden spear. Even from afar, unrelenting was her scarlet visage, graceful was her mien, and unforgiving was her fierce eyes. The God of cold had stopped to witness her.

She spoke, and her voice reached his ears, and her words were as sharp as the spear she wielded. “My name is Homura, and I come bearing gifts. I have no intention of harming you.” With each step upon the surface of the water, she drew near to him, and she seemed surprised to find her breath coalesce into mist and swirl in front of her face before dissipating.

The three colossi behind her continued their march, yet to come near with their languid steps slowing their progress. Standing atop the heads of the massive creatures were simulacrums of Homura, indistinguishable in appearance, but lacking her divine aura. Strewn across the backs of the three titans were thousands upon thousands of sleeping creatures similar in shape to the goddess, but without any distinguishing features. They were blank, and seemed to desire to be sculpted into something more

The red goddess came to halt, and gestured towards the parade of three colossi. “These are my heralds; Courage, Kindness, and Fear. You will find your gifts upon the backs of those creatures, the sleeping humans. You may take freely, and mold them into whatever you wish, as it is my intention that humanity become the physically expressed vessels for the will of the divine.” She said, and awaited what the cold god would do next.

The divine orb that he was, dissipated in a frigid swirl of snow until at last all that remained was a cloaked figure that had no discernable legs. He hovered down to the water, freezing it where he went only for the lingering waves of the colossi to break and grind them apart. He neared her, holding a box of ice within his grasp. His voice was deep when he at last spoke, with a lingering ethereal ring to it. ”Greetings Homura, she who walks the scarlet sun.” He said, nodding his head in her direction before looking up at the colossi. ”Well met, Courage, Kindness, and Fear.” He also gave a small nod to them before his attention fell back on Homura, not before he lingered upon the gifts she spoke of. ”I am Chailiss, of the Northern Realm.” He paused, ”I must say, it is not everyday a Goddess comes giving gifts so freely to my shores, but it is an occurrence of late. Tell me, my Lady, why have you taken this upon yourself? Why do you wish this for humanity? I am curious.”

“My honor compels me.” Homura answered after a quiet moment of contemplation. Then she slightly smiled, and held out her hand towards the cold god as though beckoning him. “I have heard of your work from a friend. I would be grateful if you accepted my gift, as she has, and that we would coexist in peace afterwards.” Her head leaned to the side, her smile tilted, and the intense fire in her eyes flickered.

Chailiss glided forward to her, his shoulders slouching as if a great burden had been lifted off him. "It is good to hear that Zenia is well." he began, "It is even better to hear of peace. After all that has transpired in this world so far, a heavy weight remains with foes openly declared and more remaining hidden. I will gladly accept this gift of yours." he came to a stop before Homura and looked to her hand as if unsure of what to do with it. He then spoke again in a quiet voice, [color=deepskyblue]"I must admit that I fear for the safety of all things, including this mighty gift. These humans, I have seen what fate might befall them when angry Goddesses lash out. And now," He looked to the source of the explosion, then the moon. "Especially now, after whatever this latest devastation. Something terrible has transpired, can you feel it on the air?"

Shame simmered her gaze, and she hesitated with her hand anxiously withdrawing, but before she allowed herself to be defeated by cowardice, conviction returned and stirred her hope for the creation of a beautiful world instead of one left in ash and ruins. Her hand became steady, and her voice was strengthened with revived resolve. “Then let us clasp hands in honor of peace, and as a symbol of a promise to protect life. I will fight for those that cannot fight for themselves. I will defend them from the terrors of the cruel and malicious. Will you fight beside me?” She asked, and held out her hand once more.

This time the God of Cold did not hesitate to clasp the Goddesses hand as he formed solid appendages. His touch was a cold one but perhaps not as cold as she had thought. Her own touch seemed to turn the ethereal wisp of Chailiss a purple as blue and red met. "I shall when the need arises, for honor and peace. We must not let those who would bring about ruin and doom continue on their course unabated. We must find those who are like minded as us, so that we can come together against these forces. I do not wish for war or for further destruction but we cannot let the world we have labored over be threatened continuously. So yes, you have me, Goddess of Honor."

Her hand still in his, she bowed before him. “Then please forgive me, Chailiss, for I must make haste and cannot appreciate the beauty of your lands for as long as I had hoped. Perhaps we can continue this conversation elsewhere, do you have a dwelling or home you prefer? As I said before, you may have as many of the humans as you wish, I only ask that you give them meaning and many memories of all the wonders of creation.” She arose and let go of his hand before she looked over her shoulder at the three towering colossi that patiently awaited further guidance from the red goddess. “Shall we?”

”There is nothing to forgive, Homura. I understand completely. When the time is right and you venture into the North, only speak my name and we shall find one another again.” He nodded to her, ”I shall honor your request. There is much room in my realm but the conditions are harsh. I think ten thousand should suffice for my purposes. But please, I know you are in haste, tell me more about these humans?”

Homura held aloft her golden spear, and then pointed it towards the northern lands. She remained silent as the three colossi began their great march, the song of the sea disrupted by each of their massive steps. The waves that surged towards the two deities were either immediately frozen, or turned to red mist, and after the sea returned to its lull, the goddess answered.

“They are yet undefined and will yield easily to your will when you sculpt them. Though your land may be harsh, their minds are strong and they will strive to endure the trials of the cold, but… they are in need of guidance. Show them the sacred path, and they will follow it, and feel free to aid or hinder them on their journey. There is little else I can say, aside from there will be others also influenced by our fellow divine, and they will certainly differ.” Homura conversed while walking towards the shore, and even though she seemed at ease with Chailiss, her tone lacked warmth.

“I have ordered my heralds to bring your humans to land, is that acceptable? Such a small number of them should prove simple for you to transport, but I ask that you handle them with care while they sleep. Their lives are quite precarious, ever requiring sustenance to feed their animating fires. Perhaps you will change that though.” Homura continued until she quieted herself. “Keep them from the sea until they learn how to protect their fire, please.” She said, and then pressed onward.

Chailiss said nothing for a time, as if intent to listen. When the shore came into view he spoke again. ”Of course, this is acceptable. Do not worry, perhaps in time they will come to use the seas but not now. I shall take them inland and they will thrive there. I am cold, yes, but even I know it to be a precious thing.” He fell silent again for a time, then asked, ”Is there anything I can do for you now?”

She hid her feelings of shame behind an impassive mask, and considered his question for a time. “I… hmm, have you heard what may have caused that attack upon the land south of here? I was too weak to prevent all of the destruction it unleashed, and had come here to help those that I had been unable to help before, but I still have yet to know the source of the attack. What was the purpose?” She asked of the god beside her, but also perhaps questioned the Monarch of All as well. She could not completely conceal all of her anger and sorrow in her voice then as memories of water polluted with death brought a sharp pain to her chest.

Chailiss shook his head. ”I know not what happened. I too, had to contain the blast.” he lifted the box to show her, ”You came upon me afterwards. Do not blame yourself for what transpired. We did all we could do. Whoever caused it, is to blame and, when they are found out, they will be punished. I shall make a pact with you, like I did with Yoliyachicoztl, the goddess of heat. She gave aid to my lands after another Goddess murdered some of the inhabitants. We know not who, but if either of us find out we shall tell and give aid to another. I say the same to you, if I find out, or you, we shall tell one another who is to blame. Does this sound reasonable?”

Homura nodded in agreement as she walked, but the dread she had known upon birth, the fear of inevitable war and the annihilation of all life, had bothered her. It pierced her calm visage, and rushed was her answer. “I will offer as much as I can, but I have very little. I was foolish and allowed myself to naively believe that only other honorable aspects existed. I promise I will provide you with any information I discover. I am truly grateful for your support, it will be needed when discord rears its ugly head.”

”We are all young, Homura. You are no fool for thinking such a thing and now you know better. Wisdom shall only come with age and honor, with it.” They arrived upon a sandy beach, tall foreboding pines before them. ”And here we are, in agreement upon the shores of a cold harbor.”

“Will such words bring consolation to those that have suffered for our hubris, our ignorance, our selfishness? I have proclaimed myself a goddess, and cannot allow such devastation to happen again. I cannot.” Homura stepped upon the sand, so similar to the land she had come from, but colder. The trees differed, though they were still beautiful, and their presence evoked a yearning to truly explore this unknown realm before her; to see what waited beyond the boundaries.

“I will teach the first tenet of honor here in this realm: the truth of the self. I will return, but could you assist my heralds with transporting your humans. I must confess, I am curious how you will shape them.” The red goddess stepped farther.

Chailiss nodded. ”Of course, take your time.” the god of cold said, flying up to her heralds.

Before they could reach the shoreline, Courage, Kindness, and Fear were visited by Chailiss, and all three immediately bowed. Each of them introduced themselves to the Lord of Winter, and offered their service. “The other divine simply lifted their gifts with their magic, your grace.” Kindness explained, while Courage interrupted her. “We’re now protecting our kin, and helping to direct the colossi.” The brash simulacrum of the red goddess, demonstrating by striking stony spires that protruded from the head of the colossus she stood upon. The creature seemed to react, and turn in the direction Courage had struck, then turned back to its original course after the human hit a different pillar.

“Be careful, Courage!” Fear shouted, scolding her sister. The three colossi were close to each other, and the center colossus Courage controlled almost collided with the one Fear controlled. Courage laughed, and felt her face heat up with embarrassment. “Sorry! Sorry!” Kindness simply smiled, and spoke to the god once more. “How can we help, your grace?” She asked.

Chailiss chuckled and flew up to get a better view of the colossi and their passengers before flying back down to float in front of the middle one. ”Remarkable, truly. So alike but different all the same. I too have a champion of my own, a spirit I fashioned from the winds and cold. She would have liked to have met the three of you I think, but alas, I had to leave her behind. One day, if fate aligns, perhaps you will meet?” He focused on Kindness after a short pause. ”Magic? Yes, I suppose it would be called that. To make reality bend… Ah, Kindness, Courage, Fear. I require ten thousand of your sleeping kin.” He then turned around and lifted a hand, before the Colossi came a mighty crack and water droplets hanging from the mist of the air and the trees began to coalesce into a large sheet of ice before them. When the sheet had completed, it resembled a very shallow bowl, with a lip to keep anything from falling out. The ice hovered before them, then floated closer to the still Colossi. More droplets formed an icy bridge that further became a sort of docking area for the Colossi, allowing easy access to the sleeping dreamers. ”Will this suffice?” he asked them, floating closer before stepping on the central bridge.

Courage suddenly chuckled while Kindness and Fear answered his question with respectful bows, “It shall suffice.” They both said, which only elicited more laughter from Courage. Between giggles, she spoke and pointed at the circle, “Suffice! Like ice!” and laughed again without repentance, as her sisters sighed with shame. Kindness looked to her sister, Fear, and smiled. “Shall we?” She asked, unintentionally imitating Homura’s earlier proposition to Chailiss.

Feeling the presence and power of the cold for the first time, the eyes of the three champions widened with surprise and they looked between each other as though seeking an answer that none of them had. Courage was the first to step upon the bridges, and she quickly placed her palm against the ice to ascertain its integrity. She was filled with mirth as her sisters joined her, “When we’ve finished, the last to unhand this ice will have to sing with Wanderer when we return to Keltra!” she challenged, but found defiance in their fiery eyes. “We accepted!” They both answered back, and then the trio began their work of carrying their sleeping kin to the great circle of ice.

They leapt and dashed with haste, competing with each other until the massive disk was laden with ten thousand sleeping humans, and the three champions turned to the Lord of Winter with expressions of jubilation on their faces. While they had worked, they had seen the shores of the northern realm from afar. When they had beheld its beauty, they paused their task in order to honor the other creations of the divine with reverent bows.

“Those trees must be twice the height of the trees near Keltra!” Courage had exclaimed in awe, as Kindness remained silent. Fear whispered words of wonder to herself, a deep yearning to return to this realm and explore had manifested in her heart. They joined the dreamers upon the circle of ice, and awaited what Chailiss would do next.

Chailiss hummed with approval from where he stood upon the ice, walking over each dreaming human as they came. When the task was at last done, he came in front of the three heralds and there he outstretched his free hand. ”You have done well, Kindness, Courage and Fear.” His gaze fell upon Fear in particular for the briefest of moments, as if he knew in her heart what she desired but then it moved on. From his hand, droplets came to form crystals of shimmering blue that were swiftly contained within a strange metal. Three pendants of deep beauty, a stark contrast to the heralds of scarlet. ”I thank you for this help of yours, please, take these pendants for your own. They will provide cool comfort, a reminder of this realm, even in the hottest of places.”

Each of them received their gift, and bowed their heads in gratitude. “You honor us greatly with these gifts, your grace. Thank you.” Kindness said, and then the three arose with delight in their eyes, as they immediately adorned themselves with their pendants and smiled at each other like fools. “We will cherish them.” She continued, and looked to her two sisters that had begun poking each other. “Oh, yes! We will! Thank you!” Courage said after she heard an unspoken word from her sister. “Thank you, your grace.” Fear followed after with an abashed look.

”You are most welcome.” the god said, his hand falling back to his side. ”Now… Let us awaken your kin.” With a wave of his hand, the ice bridges shattered, disconnecting from the Colossi. Then there came a great lurch and they began to descend to the shore. It was a slow fall but when they at last reached the bottom, the ice settled into the sand. Chailiss next flew above them all and a cool wind began to blow towards them from the trees. It carried the refreshing scent of pine and sap. Next a strange change began to overcome the sleeping dreamers. Their bodies… Began to grow. Taller than the heralds, and taller still with lean, athletic bodies. Their proportions and appendages matched their newfound height and when that was finished, their skin began to take the shadows of light and deep browns and tans. Hair burst forth from their heads, all lustrous, thick and long, in shades of darkest black, to lightest brown. It mattered not their gender. Their faces were the last to form, with high cheekbones, many almond shaped eyes and other pleasing features that made these people attractive in their own right. When these changes had at last settled, Chailiss hummed a subtle melody and weaved a bit more of his ‘magic’, or at least they thought so. As it seemed the very air swirled about each of them, rustling their new hair.

The god then outstretched both hands and his own form changed to reflect the new people. But he was somehow grander, taller, but with striking blue eyes. His voice then rang out, ”Awaken my Children, awaken and breathe the fresh air.”

And they did. Slowly at first, the first few yawned as they sat up, followed by more and more. Courage had hastily dashed to a few, then helped them rise to their feet, speaking words of encouragement and offering guidance. “There is no need to be afraid, welcome to the waking world, my brothers and sisters.” She said softly, and smiled as her sisters joined her in assisting their kin arise from their long slumber.

“They all seem so different, and yet so alike. It is strange and overwhelming.” Kindness whispered to her sister, Fear, when they were close, and gestured to the myriad of shapes and tones among the many altered humans. “Is that so wrong?” Fear had asked, and her sister contemplated the question while they continued to show how to stand, and how to walk to those that had never stood or walked before.
Chailiss descended as well and walked among his people for the first time. He spoke as they looked at him with reverence and awe in their eyes. ”I am Chailiss, god of Cold and Lord of these lands that you will come to know and call home. You will come to love these lands as I do and thrive within them. I shall walk with you and teach you all that I can in the days to come.” His gaze fell upon the Heralds and with his free hand he pointed to them. All eyes fell upon the shorter trio as Chailiss spoke. ”These are the ones who protected and cared for you in the journey of dreams. They are Kindness, Fear and Courage. Names that describe their very being and ideals you will strive for. Yet there is one who you shall know as equal to me, Homura, the Scarlet Sun, protector of life. She is Honor itself and this shall be the highest tenet of your people. One you will have in your hearts and know with your minds.”

The three champions gathered near Chailiss, and bowed before him once again in order to demonstrate the way of honor. “Your words are very generous, your grace. We will strive to exemplify such sacred standards, and promise we will return to your realm again to provide proper respect.” Kindness said, as her two sisters held a hushed conversation between themselves. “Maker’s breath! I do not think I can remember ten thousand names, and they have differing faces! This is insanity, and I love it!” Courage whispered to Fear. “They are endless, Courage, and I can feel all of their eyes on me. What if I stumble?” She whispered back, but Kindness had already arisen, and they arose with her.

“If I may ask, where is our maker, your grace?” Kindness asked.

Chailiss let his hand fall once more and turned his head to the trees. ”Within. Her first edict flows.” he said cryptically.

“Then we shall await her return upon the colossi. If you would excuse us, we shall make our departure.” The champion replied and remained calm, unlike her two sisters which wore puzzled expressions after hearing the answer of the god of cold. The trio looked to the trees, and wondered where Homura had wandered to, but they were not told to follow. Their gaze turned to the mass of humans along the shore, and then they bowed before they leapt from the land back to the massive creatures that stood still over the sea.

They waited until scarlet light poured forth from between the trees, the many branches casting a sea of shadows upon the bustling shore. The light announced the return of the red goddess, as she emerged from the forest and approached Chailiss. Her radiance receded in the presence of the humans, until she seemed no different from her champions aside from the golden spear she carried. “So it is done, brother. You have sculpted such diverse life in this land, and I have been both humbled and dismayed by what I have seen.” She said, in a voice that subtly conveyed emotions as conflicted as her words.

“Your garden is infested with a mockery of our work, but perhaps I do not understand the purpose of bringing forth such creatures. As you have said, we are all still young.” Her tongue seemed as sharp as her spear, and she stepped close to Chailiss, and spoke softly. “Have you seen these creatures that call themselves the children of the singing maker? Hmm… perhaps you have detected their stench?” She sardonically asked.

With his new human body, Chailiss was capable of emoting by more than just words and body language. At first he raised an eyebrow, but it slowly fell and his face became hard. ”They are called the Bjork. I know not why they were made but they exist now and have as much a right in this world as any other. Is that so wrong?”

Homura closed her eyes, and breathed slowly after she had realized how foolishly she had presented herself. Upon opening her eyes, she spoke firmly, but without the vile that had previously laced her words. “No, it is not, but has another god decided to insult me indirectly? Our creations capable of such potential as the shepherds of our gardens… reduced to animals that mindlessly war with the beasts and plants around them? This singing maker has abandoned his children, and the world suffers for it! Starvation, violence, and death, as despair and greed run rampant! How can we call ourselves divine if we let such mindless sorrow continue?” She asked as she answered, and allowed her impassive mask to conceal her ire from the humans around them to avoid frightening them.

Chailiss was silent for a moment, as if in contemplation. "We strive to do better." he started. "There is no insult to you, Homura. I have walked amongst the Bjork for a time and I can assure you, what you see upon the surface goes much, much deeper. They are a people with a culture, traditions, experiences. They feel loss, happiness and anger. They may wear the fur and look of animals but they are alive and deserve a place in this world now. It wasn't their fault that their god created them and left. That is why we, you and I or any others must strive to protect all life. Regardless if it is deemed inferior. If we don't, then we are just as worse as those we fear will destroy everything. We must be better."

His words hardened her gaze, however she remained silent as he spoke while the cold caressed her skin and diminished her rage with its calm presence. She allowed frost to form across her visage, and the ice sank its fangs deeper into her. The fires of heaven within her burned, but the hurried and fervent dance subtly slowed until its graceful motion would be imperceptible to all, yet still exuding the same possessive passion.

“I have promised to protect life, and I shall, but I will not condone a cycle as cruel as what I have seen here. Faith will fester like a wound as sin seeps further within this system that perpetuates hatred and strife. Each generation begets a greater division between the divine and mortal until that which is sacred will be forgotten, and only the profane satiation of their carnal desires persists. Would you have these humans emulate that forsaken path as well?” Homura gestured to the gathering, but her sight never strayed from Chailiss.

Something seemed to click on the god of cold’s face. A deeper understanding of the dilemma he found himself in. He matched her gaze with the same intensity. ”You would wish for everything to be the same, wouldn’t you? Not in appearance, but as we are- Without needs, simply being. Would you give them the same powers as we? So that they might never grow bored of their stagnation? Would you have it be forever cold? Forever warm? No need to eat? No need to drink? No need to reproduce? With no struggles? With no meaning? What did you intend by giving us humans as a gift? They are mortal, their lives are short, should they live forever in bliss without choice, or should they be given the tools to make their own? To have their own purpose? Their own lives?” His voice became softer, ”What you see as sin, Homura, I can only see as beauty. This world… With these gods, it could never start out as you wanted, but perhaps in time… I will not pretend to know what He intended for us to make, but do you think He would prefer a stagnant beauty, one that never changes, that is perfect beyond all accounts or one that is imperfect and can be improved upon, together? You may think me a fool, Homura, but even paradise would have flaws.” he grew quiet then, as the humans around them watched and waited.

Her hand raised, Daybringer raised, and the weapon was pointed. Homura held it outward, its shaft stretched towards him, while its shimmering head came to halt before her heart. “You have become a fool, brother. Filled with delusions that have corrupted your divinity and I know no cure for such. I shall say it once more, with these mortals as witness to my words. I shall never bring harm to the denizens of your realm, and will protect them from the threat of annihilation. Should you lack faith in my oath and believe I will ever betray it, then strike me down now!” She shouted and let her words carry far. She stood steadfast while the weapon awaited the will of the god.

Chailiss’ face became as hard as ice. He looked to the shaft and then to her before shaking his head. ”The only fool I see is the Goddess who would have herself killed needlessly. We may disagree, Homura, but that doesn’t mean you need to die.” He turned to the side, as if to leave, but gave her one last look. ”Our oath will remain. Now leave and do not return until you see reason.” His words had become cold but with it said, Chailiss put his back to Homura and left her.

The red goddess seemed as still as stone, unmoving for a time until she swiftly turned and strode away from the cold shore. With each step, her radiance returned, farther and brighter she became, but too far from the eyes of mortals for them to perceive. The three champions atop their colossi were confused by the lack of any ceremony with their departure, and waved in farewell as they followed after their maker.

The remaining essence of the ocean god hurtled towards its greatest creation at the Monarch of All’s will. As it crossed between heaven and sky, it coagulated into a pearl of the deepest and purest blue. While travelling, it managed to capture a stray wind and accidentally trap it within itself. The water below accepted it greedily, pulling it further down into the depths.

Within its forms, the last remnants of divine power toiled and roiled. Its new mundane shape was simply unfit to hold it. A large crack ripped open from it. As if to mend itself, its latent power seeped into the opening. Interacting with the salty water, the energy turned to seafoam.

The ocean desperately grasped its final prize, treating it with its usual kindness, it tossed to and fro as the waves ebbed and flowed. The foam began to shake from it, expelling the stolen wind into a portion of the foam, influencing it in some invisible and intangible ways. Eventually, the foam itself began to shake off and spread around the orb. Only a small nigh invisible piece remained.

The last inspiration of divinity drained from the orb, forgoing its deep blue to become an opaque white. The color washed from it and into the foam, transforming it into some greater. The most stubborn of the foam drank deepest of the divine blue, and when it properly formed they held the pearl closely.

The change started peacefully, the newly formed sapients having visions of their creator, Ao-Yurin. They instinctively understood them as a force of nature, beyond mortal concerns of age or gender. They bore witness as a dry and dead planet was given life by their waters.

However, this peace did not last. The vision turned to Ao-Yurin becoming weak and weary. They understood that their strength was leaving them, but they could not comprehend the truth of the situation. Perhaps some small few gleaned the truth, that their patron god had died before they were ever born, but fewer still would be able to accept it.

Worse still, several of the group began to try to expel something from their mouths. As if some noxious agent had been caught within their stomach. Eventually, the wheezing stopped however the foreign material remained deeply seeded within them.

The Pearl-Keeper, Levinane, looked around at their brethren. Beautiful serpentine figures with majestic tail-fins, adorned in skins ranging from the green to greenish blue. Their hands bearing elegant fingers connected by webbing. Life-sustaining gills ran down their neck and tail. Many of the gathered had additional fins on their head and or back. All their eyes had captured and preserved the true color of the pearl.

And as Levinane looked upon their people, they looked upon them. None questioned the divinity of the pearl, damaged and battered as it were. They instinctively understood its significance, and the significance of being the one trusted to carry it. Confused by the visions which beseeched their creation, they looked upon the Pearl-Keeper for guidance.

Levinane peered into the pearl, turning it so that its unsightly crack was facing towards the ocean’s bottom. In the pearl, they saw their reflection. Taking a moment to compose themselves, they spoke in the language of the deep, suited for communicating within water instead of air.

“All the water in the world -- The Mer -- is ours, entrusted to us by the great and mighty Ao-Yurin!”

She said, turning the orb so that she could where it was damaged before quickly hiding it from her sight again, she continued, “So great their creation, they must rest now. The world is not yet safe for us. We must find a hide-away so that we can flourish and praise the Lord of the Mer. May our songs bid them fair sleep. For we are the great spawn of the God of the Mer, we are the Ao.”

_{KhoZee Productions present...}

---

When Mish-Cheechel first set his eyes upon flames, the raging firestorm in his eyes bloomed like a great carmine flower and his raging heart swelled in recognition of a thing that was nearest of all creation to it in nature. That was how Mish-Cheechel discovered that vengeance was not ice, but fire. He sat for many sunsets and moonsets by the flame, now gazing into it and now boring his eyes into the grave that some strangers had chosen to erect for his son - or so the people said. Neither Clan Rod nor all of bjorkkind had known graves before - they had never had need for graves before. His nostrils flared and his eyes flashed as the anger threatened to overwhelm him. Grinding his great teeth against each other, he stared balefully into the fire and gripped his new spear in his hand. It was not like the spears of the days before the Green Murder, the days before the bjorks started to cultivate the flame; it was fire-hardened.

His stomach rumbled and pain lanced through his abdomen. He had not eaten in longer than he cared to remember, and sleep had not set on his eyes since the day his boy’s life had been severed by the eagle god. And he would not be Mish-Cheechel if he joyed in food or drink, or allowed himself to rest, before the Green Murder lay dead at his feet. The sound of his teeth scraping incessantly filled the silent air and the fire danced and cast eerie shadows, almost mockingly, before him. Rising in a sudden gale of fury, he swept his great tail and scattered the flames and embers in every which way. His dire eye did not spare even the monument that those kind strangers had built for his boy and he pounded the spear against the mocking effigy that sought to eternalise the form and face of his Zabitsyn. The spear glanced against the stone and left no mark, but the vengeful Mish-Cheechel paid no heed to compassion’s right and did not, in his fury, perceive the gravity of the sacrilege.

A great gust of freezing wind blew down upon him then, as if screaming some terrible note of discord. The glowing embers of the fire were blown away into the night and darkness took hold under the dimming, cracked moon and the indignant stars. A voice rose above the raging chorus, one feminine but of no lassiebjork or of the Green Murder- Nay this was something different. Something elemental.

“YOU LEAVE! NOW!” She roared like the wind itself!

Mish-Cheechel swept his blade-like tail and turned in the face of the growing gale. Another bjork may have bowed and whimpered, or let up a conquered wail, but Mish-Cheechel was no coward nor was he weak or frail. He braced himself and bravely met the ice and hail: watch him greet the strikes of winter then - twice, thrice! - watch him assail! “I’ll not leave, deathspawn, I’ll not fear: but in the earth I’ll leave you dead, I swear!” He leapt into the heart of the wintertide, his snout frosting over and his great brows gathering swift-rising flakes of snow, and he struck with his fire-tried spear and swept with his mighty tail and snapped with his wood-crushing teeth.

The wind whipped and bit but never seemed to lash out with the intensity to maim him and try as he might he wasn’t really hitting anything either. It was just wind whipping at him; ice and sleet and snow. It began to push at him, testing his limits. The voice came again, still matching the same pitch and roar. “DEATHSPAWN? YOU! YOU DEFILE! LEAVE FRIEND ALONE!”

If Mish-Cheechel heard, he neither gave response nor stopped. He stamped his feet and beat his tail and lashed out tenaciously with his spear. He turned and crouched and leapt and swirled, he bit the vaporous air. And when he paused, he took a breath and loosed some silvery puffs into the frosty night, then leapt once more to fight the frost, the cold, the winter - that is, to fight nothing, to fight himself, to swing and strike only, to give vent to his furies rather than loose the flood of grief. Vengeance and rage was better by far than grief! Through the night he raged and surged, unceasing was his madness. When at last dawn broke he lay huffing on his tail, flailing with his arm, turning now this way, now that. “Defile, pah. You can’t defile the dead - only the living are defiled.” He growled out, and then his voice rose, “what do the dead care for defilement when their very death is defilement!? Go tell the rain not to get the river wet!”

The wind, by that point, only gusted over the manbjork. Then at last when his voice fell quiet, the wind dissipated altogether and he could hear the sounds of birds chirping and water running. “Fool Bjork.” Came the same voice, quieter now and from behind. He turned his head and came face to face with standing rocks. Pebbles, stones of different shapes and sizes, had all formed the vague shape of a manbjork. Through the cracks there came a wispy mist that glowed a faint blue. “Dead is dead. Living remember! Living no defile! You leave now. No more touch friend!”

Sitting up and hefting his spear, Mish-Cheechel eyed the strange creature. “What are you? The voice of the restless dead? Some haunter of graves? Are you real or am I going mad? Whatever you are, get going from my sight, I’ll have no more of this madness where my boy lies.”

The stones rubbed against each other as the odd creature looked to him and then the grave, then back to him. "You… Father? Friend father?" She asked in a much softer, quieter voice before the stones collapsed entirely and all that remained was an ethereal cloud. Like mist on a sunny day, the blue glow about it fading to grey. Whatever it was, it was shapeless and had no discernable form, and simply waited there before him. There was silence between them and Mish-Cheechel looked away from the strange ghost. At last a sigh whistled through his teeth and he got up.

“Whatever,” he muttered irritably and walked off, heaving a massive leather saddle over his shoulder as he went, “I’ve bears to kill, no time for this shit anyway.” He dragged his tail until he passed the last of the stone effigies, the wooden stirrup carved delicately by the Carver bouncing thoughtlessly on the ground behind him.

The mist flew beside him, taking the vague shape of a bird in flight. "No kill. Kill bad. Stay?" She said. The manbjork scoffed and glanced at the bird, his pace unslowing.

“Kill bad eh? Maybe once, long ago - before the Green Murder. But now, kill good. Kill is very good.” He smacked his tail against the earth as the first of the trees rose up around them, but before he quite disappeared a voice gave him pause.

“Uncle Bish! Uncle Bish!” Mish-Cheechel did not turn, but his walking slowed so that the shouting kit was easily able to catch up. “Where’ve you been uncle Bish? Pap is lookin for you.” Mish-Cheechel, enormous even by bjorkman standards, got down on one knee and patted the kit.

“Tell your pap I won’t be long, Brat-Hwopak. I’ve just got a little somethin to do.” He rose to the kit’s protests.

“But uncle Bish-”

“That’s not my name anymore, Brat.” Mish-Cheechel’s voice cut across him like ice. “Go on home now.” Whatever home remained, at least, though Mish-Cheechel did not say it. Brat-Hwopak looked sullenly at his uncle, and then his eyes fell on the bird. He frowned as Mish-Cheechel walked past.

“Uncle Bish, I know that bird! Wait, wait.” He leapt off his tail and tried to catch it, but failed when it easily flitted out of reach. “It feels just like that thing by the river! It used to play with us before...” he paused, “uh, before.” Mish-Cheechel turned, cocking his head and lazily closing one eye.

“That thing you little kits were screaming and laughing about, ah yes. I remember.” He opened his eyes and almost smiled, but the ghost of joy was immediately set upon by sorrow; before the snow of sorrow could settle, however, the flower of fury blossomed and grew across his eyes. He bit down on his teeth.

“Come on home uncle Bish, everyone’s waitin for you.” Brat repeated, pulling at Mish-Cheechel’s hand. Irritation flashed and Mish-Cheechel snapped his hand away.

“You go, Brat, and tell your pap and all the manbjorks, if menbjork they be, to come and and kill the eagle god with Mish-Cheechel, to come and kill the death-bears and dire-wolves and blood-eagles; tell them to come and fell the trees with Mish-Cheechel, tell them to come and dam the rivers with me. You tell them that Brat-Hwopak, and if I’m not back by the time you are grown, you come too Brat-Hwopak, you come too. And now I must go.” So saying, Mish-Cheechel hefted his spear and heaved the bear saddle, and went off into the trees.

The ghost bird flew around Brat-Hwopak's head a few times, mimicking the songs so familiar to their world, then it flew after Mish-Cheechel and transformed into a long, serpent-ghost that flowed water. She looked at him again, or at least gave that impression. "Kill eagle god? Kill wolf? Kill bear? Kill before?" She questioned. Mish-Cheechel only looked at the thing with bemused annoyance.

“By all things, how’d you do that. How’s it that so much weirdness is suddenly all over the place. I don’t remember this being so before, no I don’t.” He huffed and shrugged the slipping saddle back onto his shoulder. “You talk weird, ghostie-fellah, and I’ve got to be honest and say I’ve not a clue what you’re trying to say,” then he looked at the snake and nodded slowly and spoke slowly too, “but yes, kill the eagle god; kill good. Eagle god bad. Eagle god kill the good. Mish-Cheechel kill eagle god. Mish-Cheechel kill the wolf, kill the bear, kill the eagle, kill the tree. Mish-Cheechel kill them all. Kill is good.” He was silent for a second and then his eyes seemed to light up. “How abouts you come kill the eagle god with me, eh? You were friends with my boy weren’t you? That’s what you meant before, I remember now, that’s what Brat-Hwopak said. Aren’t you angry for Clan Rod? Aren’t you angry for Zabitsyn and all the other kits? You seem the strong sort, so how abouts it ghostie? Come kill the god with me.”

The ghost, for her part, let out an annoyed hum. Whether it was something he said, or a lack of answer to what she was trying to say, that perturbed the mist remained unclear. After a while, and after taking the form of a small toad, she replied with, “No,” before continuing, “No. You kill… before? Before eagle god?” She asked again in a slower voice, as if mocking him. But it seemed to go right over Mish-Cheechel’s head, he only gave out an ‘ah’ of understanding before shifting the saddle on his great shoulders.

“No ghostie, no I did not. But no one killed before, see? And no one died before either. There were no graves before - just like there was no eagle god before, and no death-bears or dire-wolves or blood-eagles. There was none of that before. But now there is, and now there will be. If the good don’t learn to kill then they will only know to die. And I am not dying anytime soon, not before vengeance is had and justice is served - I’ll not be Mish-Cheechel if the eagle god isn’t soon at my feet, gurgling up its quick hot blood. That would be justice.”

The ghost shifted again into that of a rabbit. It hopped around him, or at least mimicked hopping. Some of the hops didn’t look quite right and it leapt as high as his head. “A path Bissh. Dark. Danger. Death.” Before his eyes the bunny hopped into the air, only to be snatched by a large owl. She next flapped silent wings and hovered above him, the bunny joining her mist. “I go. Protect you. Bear might eat.”

Mish-Cheechel raised an eyebrow at the owl. “I’m not one to reject support - not even the dam can halt the river without support. But you’ve not even told me your name, ghostie, or what you are or where you came from. If you’re going to walk the dark path, the path of danger and death, if you’re going to walk the warpath with me, then I’d first know your name.”
The owl returned to the mist and she grew smaller with no discernible shape forming. “Am Nisshi. Nisshi-ni-iak ak ek!” She struggled with the latter half of the word. Frustrated, she let out a growl. “No name!” She shouted, zipping around his head like an angry fly and causing the manbjork to dodge and crouch away from her wild motions - and it could only be a her, Mish-Cheechel was now convinced. Before long she calmed down and settled in beside his head, hovering. “Pa- Old Bjork create many. Am alone now. No name.” She finished in a longing voice.

Mish-Cheechel paused by a tree and stared silently for a few seconds. “Well I’ll tell you what, no-name ghostie - see that there bear?” His voice was a whisper, and he gestured deeper into the forest where a massive bear with a great white coat had its snout buried in a tree’s hollow. “You help me get this here saddle on its back, and you’ll have earned a name.” He did not wait for a response, but dipped onto all fours and stalked off with saddle and spear.

The prospect of a name seemed to energise the misty ghost. With a loud, audible gasp, she flew ahead of Mish-Cheechel. Forgoing stealth, she took the most direct path to the bear, fading in and out of the undergrowth and through wood and rock. She was upon the bear before it had time to say anything, yet the beast did not react. It hadn’t even heard her gasp, too engrossed with whatever it was doing in the hollow. Then the mist disappeared into a boulder and the same blue aura Mish-Cheechel had seen earlier began to glow around it, before misty tendrils erupted forth and grabbed more rocks.

Now this was loud, as rock and stone grated upon each other like a landslide. The bear removed it’s head, coated with honey, and looked startled and dumbfounded at the sight before it. The rocks coalesced, growing taller, as if a great beast was awakening. The bear backed up as the ground quaked and shook and dirt landed this way and that. When the stones had become as tall as the bear could stand, the Nisshi walked forth and grappled the bear! A mighty tussle thus began, snapping trees and crushing brush, but though the bear was strong underneath all that fur, who could withstand the very ground? The ghost had the upper hand and, knowing it, was humming triumphantly.

Though wide-eyed at the display of incomprehensible power, Mish-Cheechel did not waste the opportunity. Jumping forth, he threw his spear aside and now ran and now leapt on his tail as he charged towards the bear, the saddle held above his head. Trapped as the bear was in its battle with the ghost, it could do nothing against the saddle that the manbjork pressed to its rump. “Die, fiend!” He bellowed triumphantly.

But the bear did not die, it rather stopped struggling and fell back from the tussle with the great stone-ghost. The saddle almost slipped from its rump, but Mish-Cheechel swiftly righted it and watched the great white thing in puzzlement. He turned back to the ghost and shrugged. “Well, the Carver didn’t actually say it would kill it, I just assumed that.” He looked at the bear and found it sauntering up to him, tongue lolling as it panted. Mish-Cheechel was swift to back away, suddenly regretting dropping his spear. “Alright this isn’t working, I’m out of here!” He skipped in a great circle as the bear chased lazily after him, saddle jostling on its back. The ghost, for its part, began to laugh. “Get it ghostie! Throw a rock right at its head!” He shouted back as it became apparent that his attempt to escape was futile from the start; no bjorkman could outpace a bear - not on land, at least. The bear easily outran him and then lay panting right by the spear, eyeing him with a broad, sharp-toothed grin. Mish-Cheechel halted and began pacing backwards, keeping his eyes trained on the creature. It leapt forth then sat again, grinning broader yet. At this, the manbjork raised an eyebrow and stopped, stared at the bear, then glanced over at the still-laughing ghost. “I think this bear is making fun of me. And I think you are too. You friends with animals or something? You can, I don’t know, cast your mumbo-jumbo hocus-pocus on them like the eagle god?”

Instead of an immediate answer, the rocks thundered down into a pile, and the ghost became a white blur. Then she giggled. “You fun Bissh. Be strong. Be brave. Bear no hurt. See?” A gust of wind blew over him and into the bear, which didn’t really seem all that offended by it. She then flew over the bear as if for the first time seeing what he had placed on its back. “What saddle? Purpose?” She questioned, gusts of air seemed to glide across it, as if she was feeling the leather.

Mish-Cheechel approached, eyeing the bear with residual suspicion. “Well, I don’t trust it, but if you say it's safe...” He righted the saddle on the bear’s back and shuffled it so it fell snugly behind the great thing’s broad shoulders. “And stop calling me that - Bish is gone. Bish is dead. The eagle god killed Bish, understand?” He fastened the saddle into place, knowing to do it by instinct or as though he had done it an infinite number of times before. “Well, now that I look at it like this, this thing looks like some kind of seat. That Carver is some crazy fellow, how is a bear-chair of any hel-” his eyes widened suddenly as everything clicked into place, and his mind slowly unscrambled the deluge of information that the god had pumped into it. “Oh, it’s a chair, yes, for riding. A riding chair. A saddle. I see.” He blinked. “So, wait…” he looked up at the ghost, “so it wasn’t your mumbo-jumbo that made it like this.” He frowned. “You little fucker - you laughed as what you knew was a wild animal chased me! You’re a real piece of work, ghostie, a real piece of work.” He spat on the ground by the great white bear. “If I knew how, I’d spear you from head to bottom, I swear.”

The ghost laughed again, a high and pure note. “ No. No. No. I laugh. You ran. Afraid. Much talk you. Will need help. I protect. No worry.” The wind about her faded and her mist formed again, this time in the shape of a running bjorkman. “Bear no aggressive. Saddle you see?” she said.

“Well, I’d be stupid if I didn’t run - if you fight and run away you’ll live to fight again, understand? I’m not out here to die, I’m out here to kill - and that goes for you too.” He clambered up onto the bear’s back and settled into the saddle. “How do I get this thing to go. Hey, hey!” He clapped his paws and then, with a flash of inspiration, thwacked his tail against its rump. With a jolt, the bear started forward and made its way through the trees. “Well, this is much faster than walking, that’s for sure. Won’t be long before I find that Green Murder like this.” He glanced down at the ghost, who was still huffing and puffing beside him in the form of a running bjorkman. “Acht, stop that will ya. If I had that mumbo-jumbo of yours I wouldn’t run either. I’d zap every bear and zim every wolf, just like this:” he lifted a paw and made a throwing motion, “zim! Splat. Zim! Splat. I’d be a real good zimmer.” He paused and glanced at her. “Zimmer. Zima. There. That can be your name. Zima the Zimmer.”

The mist- Zima, gasped once more. “Zima? Ziiiiiiima? Zima!” She loudly declared, letting out a joyous whoop and holler. She turned into a swimming otter, then a songbird and a multitude of others before she settled back upon the form of a hopping rabbit, giggling with jubilation as she went. “Yes! I am Zima! You are Mish-Cheechee! Hello! I am Zima!” Then as quickly as her happiness had come, she grew deathly quiet and turned to Mish-Cheechel. “What is Zimmer?”

The bjorkman scratched his head and shrugged. “Somebjork that goes ‘zim!’ I guess. That hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo you do - like throwing rocks and turning into…” he gave her latest form a sidelong glance, “rabbits. You looked better as an otter by the way. Always liked them otters, fierce folk. Now if we bjorks were otters that Green Murder would never have gotten us the way it did - have you seen them fight? Have you seen them run? Even I’d think twice before going up against an otter. But we’re not otters, no good for that sort of thing. Like some god just shat us out without thinking or something. No, not like those otters at all.” He glanced at one of his paws bitterly, regretfully. “So anyway, Zima it is. Mish-Cheechel and Zima - maybe they’ll sing great songs of us when we kill the eagle god.” He yawned suddenly, and his stomach rumbled, and he blinked in pain. “Acht,” he groaned in irritation, then yawned again. “And don’t call me Mish-Cheechee, that sounds silly,” he managed through the yawn.

Zima zipped around him, having taken the form of a small mink. It seemed, if she cared for otters, she did not show it. “Mish tired? Mish hungry? Mish sleep?” she asked him, her mink curling up into a ball amongst some leaves. Her words immediately drew him from whatever momentary weakness had him, and he sat up straighter.

“No no. I’m not tired. I can rest in…” he scratched his nose and stifled a yawn, “I can rest when the eagle god’s screams echo in hell, Zima. So I say let’s go and get it done.” The great white bear continued through the woods. Mish-Cheechel the Avenger muttered dark vengeance as it went, and fought off those twin tyrants: hunger and sleep. Zima, for her part, began to hum as the duo carried on.

• Summary [+]

  Mish is being edgy with vengeance and meets the Nisshi champion at his son’s grave, which just happens to be the bjork kit Chailiss and she buried. They have a small spat over the night but the next day they come to an agreement of sorts through the chattering of one of Mish’s nephews who ran up and vouched for Nisshi after asking Mish to come home. He refuses of course, because vengeance, and the two talk for a time, bickering this way and that before coming across a bear. Mish is like, we gotta get that bear and begins to stalk it, but he also promised Nisshi she would get a name so the spirit got excited and basically dominated the bear so that he was able to put the saddle on it. He freaks out of course, and begins to run away after nothing happens and the bear begins to chase him much to the laughter of Nisshi. Eventually it hits him, after some words from Nisshi and chastising, about what the Carver’s saddle does and he mounts the bear and names the nisshi spirit, Zima the zimmer. Who knows what a zimmer is for sure but the two keep trudging on to kill the Green Murder.
• Spirit [+]

  Zima started with 2 spirit
  

  +2 for post
  =4 spirit

  
  Mish-Cheechel isn’t actually a champion, get rekted. DDDDDDDDDDDDD: this is injustice of the highest order. How can Mish not be a champion! A travesty! An utter joke! Is justice dead? Is honour some mummy in a 3,000 year old grave? Woe and curses!

And finally, there was peace.

Rosa rowed her boat gently down the velvet corridor of space. She rowed it through the great atmospheric wall of raging flame - purple and orange and pink, and other blazing colours that sent her softly simmering feet tapping across the bottom boards. She rowed her boat into the clouds, sensed her black hair freeze and frost settle on her shoulders and ice flakes on her feet. She rowed unmindfully through those clouds and so, when they suddenly parted before her, felt her breath catch at once as the sheer enormity of the world spread out beneath like some impossible carpet. The burning arc of the horizon greeted her and, without meaning to, she stopped rowing, dropped the oar so that it fell plummeting away, and shed liquid tears that sizzled momentarily on her cheeks then melted into air. Her feet leapt here and there, crying out for attention and release. She gulped, breathed, and pressed her jangling arms on her thighs. “No,” she spoke with faltering breath, and the fever in her feet mocked her weakness and burned only brighter.

The boat hung in the heavens for a while as the goddess tried, unconvincingly, to now rebuke and now reason with her feet. But then it began to drift downwards, jerking here and there without the guidance of the oar. It turned now this way and now that, fell suddenly, twisted, righted itself, then swooped down again with such speed that Rosalind’s hair erupted skyward and she could scarcely keep herself from following after it. It dipped, flipped, and plunged forward, then lurched back so that Rosa hurtled to the rear and nearly fell out yet again. This distressful state of affairs continued until - at long last - the boat smashed into the raging sea, bounced once - and only once - turned exactly one-hundred and eighty degrees, then deposited the goddess into the churning waters below.

It should be noted, before anything more is pronounced on the events here relayed, that Rosalind the Feverfoot did not know how to swim. She struggled feebly, her bangles jangling for a few seconds before waves overwhelmed and muffled them. Her great skirt parachuted about her before the wetness settled in and weighed it down. Her feet, however, put up a more valiant display and would have kept the goddess above the waves were her arms and upper body equally adept at kicking with such purpose and constancy. They were not, and instead gave way to the batterings of the waves so that the only thing her feet did was propel her more forcefully into the deep.

For a moment that stretched on into forever, she sank slowly through the water and observed - as though from a distance of great miles - the waterworld about her. Light danced with the laughing water, shimmering with elusive lustres before skipping swiftly here, dancing swiftly there, then blinking again elsewhere. Wherever she cast her vision, it landed on pure motion, on untiring dance and passionate cadence. The world above was not made for dance, this here was the primeval wellspring and eternal abode of pure movement. But it was not this dance alone that, in that moment, captured the passions and fevers of Rosalind the Feverfoot; there was sound. It was a beating song that managed to be everywhere at once without shaking the waters or overpowering the senses - it was not so much heard as felt and it was not so much felt as lived. It was a great and perfect harmony of sound and motion, and the sound was something like mmahm, mmahng. mmahm, mmahng. mmahm, mmahm, mmahm, mmahm, mmahm, mmahm…

That could very well have been where the tale of Rosalind the Feverfoot ended - and she would likely have not wanted for a better end - but such moments, it seems, and perhaps all moments (as only Iqelis with certainty knew) were ever fated to termination. And so it was under those very circumstances that Rosalind the Feverfoot was to become acquainted with Ao-Yurin the Seabringer.

It came churning and raging through the waters, and Rosa watched it come, even as she continued to sink, with unveiled and wide-eyed terror. “CONNIVING. UNGRATEFUL. MEDDLING. MY WATERS.” The god seethed and foamed, salt spraying through the water as its form whirlpooled about the helpless Rosalind and flung her hither and thither like some wet ragdoll. She opened her mouth to cry out - in protest, or perhaps in fear - but she found that water immediately flooded in. Bubbles streaming in every direction were the only sign of her silent scream. “YOU VANDALS! INTERLOPERS! YOU COME UNINVITED - YOU SULLY MY PURITY. DID YOU THINK MY FURY TRIFLING? DID YOU THINK I WOULD NOT BE REVENGED?” The sea boiled and raged around the apoplectic water god and Rosalind’s salt tears flitted away, congealed, twirled and exploded into dance and life.


It was then, when Ao-Yurin had reached the great zenith of rage and was braced to deliver its sister into the desolation of death, that the voice of the Monarch of All gave it pause and both predator and prey listened to the praise and rewards doled out to Voligan. A few silent moments passed afterwards, and the water god bubbled and simmered quietly. Its breath - if water could breathe - came seething and rasping, and it churned all about the goddess and raved madly and fumed. “Voligan,” it spat, more salt pouring from its mouth, “VOLIGAN. THAT DEFILER! THAT DESPOILER! THAT RAPIST! Yes, yes, his rape of the waterworld is not forgotten. IS NOT FORGIVEN. I will be avenged, Voligan - the thirst of the continents you have raised will be slaked ON YOUR BLOOD!”

Whether Voligan heard the raving water god, or whether he heard the terror stricken Rosalind, cannot be ascertained. It remains the fact, however, that Rosalind was at that moment begging and imploring for someone, anyone - “help me, Voligan the Earthheart, you’re my only hope.” Whatever the case, Voligan the Earthheart heard, and Voligan the Earthheart answered.

With a loud crash, Voligan’s titanic form landed in the ocean beside the pair of struggling gods. His massive hand shot forth, moving faster by far than a being his size had any right to be moving, and grabbed Rosalind from the enraged whirlpool firmly but with surprising gentleness, so as not to cause pain. He placed the dazed Feverfoot on his shoulder, his chuckles thundering through the air. “You always seem to find trouble, Goddess of Dance.”

He turned his attention back to the roiling god of the seas, tilting his head slightly. Now this didn’t make any sense. “The Monarch said you were dying in the palace. How are you-” His question was interrupted as Ao-Yurin surged out of the water, throwing itself into his chest and face. Voligan stumbled back, struggling to keep his feet. The earth around Rosa erupted and shielded her from the wrath of the sea, as the Earthheart’s fist came up and crashed into Ao-Yurin, throwing the maddened god backwards. Voligan was surprised. The god of water shouldn’t have been that solid, and yet he felt his fist connect firmly. Looking down, he saw why.

A layer of salt covered his fist, no doubt from Sala’s accidental poisoning of the god. He looked over at the still stunned water god, and saw immediately that it was not complete. Salt was beginning to spread along its body as it struggled to maintain form, and there was no freshwater to be seen. It was clearly not the water god. It was only a twisted remnant, dying of separation and poisoning. “You are not Ao-Yurin.” Voligan sighed, voice grating like great boulders one against the other.

The maddened god-thing snarled in reply, doubling over as it vomited more salt up. Voligan rumbled again, advancing as he created an island and placed Rosa down on it. “You cannot win, false-god. You are dying, and no match for me. Yield, and be at peace in the end.” The sea raged in defiance, massive waves rising up and battering against Voligan, as Ao-Yurin threw itself at the Earth god. This time, he would not be caught off guard. Voligan caught the remnants of the sea god by the throat and punched it twice in rapid succession, salt flying as the blows landed. “Yield..”

The remnant of Ao-Yurin hissed, storm clouds gathering as its fury mounted, and thrashed against Voligan. It was rapidly losing strength, however, and Voligan’s grip remained firm even as more salt poured from the water god’s mouth and its body crystalized. It snarled again, trying to speak, only to be silenced by yet another blow from Voligan. The salt had almost completely taken over its body. “It is over. You are not Ao-Yurin. You are but a crystallized, broken, remnant. An insult to their memory.” Voligan pushed it down into the water. “You are a mistake.” Farther down, down into the depths. “One that I will rectify.” There was a bubbled scream, followed by a dull shattering sound. Voligan stood back to his full height, and turned to make sure that Rosa was okay.

The storm and raging seas Ao-Yurin had created remained and, Voligan suspected, would remain for a long time yet. He made his way through the raging seas towards Rosa, crouching down so as to not be so far away. The comparatively minuscule goddess looked up with startled eyes, from where she was sat huddled against the seething sea and storming sky, as he emerged, bent down, and spoke. “Are you okay, little Feverfoot? My name is Voligan, as you seem to already know. What is yours?”

She peeled her wet strands of night-black curls from her face and shivered slightly, her layers of clothing adhering to her form. “I’m Rosalind.” She said quickly, her voice trembling - whether out of the cold or from fear it was not clear. “I thank you, Voligan Earthheart, and I beg your forgiveness for laying my woes onto you. It is as you say, I am only trouble.” She looked down dolefully. “I must have upset that Ao-Yurin very much to cause such a fit of rage.” She sniffled and pearly droplets sprang from her eyes and danced across her wet, pallid cheeks, which she rubbed away with the palm of her hand. “I hope you weren’t hurt? And I hope you weren’t forced to hurt for me?”

“No, no. You’re no trouble, and Ao-Yurin’s wrath wasn’t your fault. Our sister Sala, Goddess of Salt, inadvertently poisoned them. What I fought was the remnant of their personalities, clinging to life in a way that it should not have. No hurt was caused by you or me. I was merely… hastening what was inevitable as painlessly as possible.” Voligan looked around at the raging seas and storm. “Your boat won’t be able to handle this, I’m afraid. I do not know how long the seas will obey our sibling’s last rage and I’m not going to leave you here on a lonely island. We may need to make a bridge.”

Rosa got up on unsteady feet and cast her eyes across the endlessly dancing waves - not a joyous or serene dance, but one that shook to Ao-Yurin’s rage. “I don’t know anything about building things… but if you raise another island for me then perhaps I can jump from here and all the way out of the sea. Like…” she paused and there was the hint of a smile on her face, “like jumping stones.” The goddess, shaking with her feet, looked to Voligan. “If that wouldn’t be too much trouble for you?”

“It won’t be any trouble at all. I will get you across the raging sea.” Voligan strode a couple of steps towards Terminus, raising his hands. The sea bubbled and shook as another island burst through the waves and he waved Rosa over, then strode another two steps towards the coast and did the same. The process was repeated as they made their way towards the relative safety of land. “What brings you down to the earth, Rosa? Do you intend to fill it with life as our siblings have? Or perhaps interact with what they have created instead?”

As the goddess leapt from island to island, the small land masses did not merely melt away behind her but seemed to bob up and down, now under the waves and now above. Her feet left them feverish even as she leapt away after Voligan from isle to isle. “Oh I am not like you and the others - not like Yudaiel, who made the moon, or like you who bested Ao-Yurin and raised the earth. I don’t know how to do all that. I am just going to get my fever cured. I saw when I was sleeping a great blanket of coldness, a carpet of white on Galbar’s head. I think maybe I’ll find a cure there.” She said as she leapt. Eventually they reached the easternmost continent, which Rosa had seen while rowing down through the skies. She glanced behind her at the drifting isles Voligan had raised for her then smiled up at the giant as she sat herself down on a small boulder and breathed. “Thank you, Voligan. I don’t know what would have become of me if you didn’t come.” She paused for a few seconds. “And what about you? What do you intend to do? You seem to have pleased that...” she swallowed and looked skyward in fear, then whispered, “the Monarch,” she held her breath and sat wide-eyed for a few seconds, as though expecting him to appear any moment, but when he did not, she continued normally, “so you seem to be doing everything right.”

Voligan crouched down again, so as to converse better with the Feverfoot. “Hmm. We will see how long it lasts. Our creator seems to be the fickle sort, with a short temper. Doing things right seems to be more akin to staying quiet and doing as he demands. I managed that, and I suspect you will be able to as well now that he’s helped bring your feet to a manageable level. Together we’ll do our best to keep out of his eyesight.” Rosalind looked down at her shivering feet with doubt, but nodded quiescently.

The moment of silence and stillness did not last long; Voligan stood abruptly from his crouched position, looking behind Rosa. Someone was approaching at a very rapid pace.

In an instant, Voligan sank into the earth and reappeared behind the dance goddess, blocking the path of the approaching god. “More trouble, little Feverfoot.” He murmured, his voice reminiscent of a landslide.

Aletheseus, god of Fortitude, came to a stop before Voligan. “Voligan. Step aside.”

The earth god shook his head at Aletheseus. “Why are you here, Aletheseus?”

“She is a danger to Galbar. One that needs to be addressed.” Aletheseus attempted to move past Voligan, only to be halted by a massive hand. Behind them, Rosalind the Feverfoot swallowed nervously and rose to her trembling feet.

“The Monarch already helped her.” Voligan insisted.

The god of fortitude looked up at Voligan, his impassive face revealing no emotion. “It is only a temporary countermeasure.”

Voligan’s voice rumbled with displeasure. “And what is your solution?”

“I’m going to destroy her before she destroys the planet. It is the only way.” The god of fortitude said simply, eliciting a gasp from the tiny Feverfoot.

Voligan shook his head again at this, still holding up a hand before the other god. “The Monarch already saved the planet. Her bangles make her power manageable.”

“He saved the universe,” Aletheseus corrected, “Not the planet. If she were to lose control again I’ve no doubt she’d kill most of the burgeoning mortal life if not Galbar itself. But the palace and the world at large would be spared, yes. Not what we’ve created and need to protect. I’m sorry, Voligan but this must be done.” With that, Aletheseus attempted to dart past the Earthheart and reach Rosa, who jerked backwards and fell in a heap. Aletheseus was not quite quick enough, however, for he was knocked back by a massive earthen fist moving, once more, faster than its sheer size should have allowed. Aletheseus went skipping across the ground and off into the distance. Behind Voligan and Rosa, another island rose. “Jump, little Feverfoot. I will not be long.”


Pulling herself to her feet, Rosalind tumbled, half tripped and half leapt from the shore, landing awkwardly on the new isle. Another island rose in the dark mists ahead as she landed, and the Feverfoot heaved herself to her furiously quavering feet and made another jump even as the world behind her exploded and gods clashed. Now Aletheseus’ two great hands shattered the world above and almost closed upon her, or his face encompassed the heavens and his voice beat against her - “you cannot hide, Dancer of the World’s End,” - before the Earthheart unfailingly appeared and sent him flying in a great implosion of light and sound. They flashed in air, on water - land rose to be vaporised, boulders cannoned from the water - and even as Rosalind the Feverfoot leapt through the chaos of war it seemed, for a long while, that a great harmony fell upon everything. Her feet rustled against the sands of isles brought up for her by Voligan, and the Earthheart’s great earthen constructs rose dancing rhythmically, in great synchrony, slowly and methodically; even the terrible and untiring Aletheseus seemed to flow with the cadence of the rumbling war dance.

Then Rosalind the Feverfoot leapt, her bangles jangled louder than before and seemed to capture pure fevered motion, so that the great building synchrony fell apart at once. The method of the dance faded and chaos erupted more furiously than before. Gods warred and Feverfoot ran, ran, ran.

There were no more words between Fortitude and Earth as they grappled with each other. Aletheseus’ true form at times swirled around Voligan’s strikes like smoke and at others struck like an avalanche when Voligan was on the defensive. He destroyed the Earthheart’s islands whenever he could, sending massive chunks of rock and dirt into the air. Voligan himself was beginning to grow frustrated. Whenever he landed a strong blow on Aletheseus, strikes the likes of which could destroy mountains and sink islands, the Peculiar God bounced back as if he had not been struck at all.

Meanwhile, Voligan was beginning to flag, the lengthy battle eroding his form and strength. Chunks of his massive body were already missing, and with each strike from Aletheseus more of him fell away. It did not help that the sea remembered the hatred that the remnant of Ao-Yurin had borne him, and so fought against him at every turn. When Aletheseus was knocked into the water, it spat him back out into the fight. When Voligan stumbled deeper in, it dragged and swirled around him. It offset his balance and attempted to blind him with massive waves.

Still, he kept Aletheseus back from the fleeing Rosa and gradually created more and more islands for her to jump upon.

Finally, as Rosa reached the other continent and touched down, he sent Aletheseus skipping across the sea and turned to her. His voice was ragged, like rock being ground to dust, filled with barely controlled anger. “Run, little Feverfoot. I will be right-” with a thunderous crack, the ‘Kind One’ struck Voligan’s head with his full force. Boulders and various pieces of earth crashed into the earth around Rosa. Voligan’s titanic form swayed, stumbled, and then collapsed like a worn and battered cliff into the cackling ocean. The waves closed around him and flicked gleefully as cascades of water pulled him eagerly into the depths. Rosalind beheld it with wide wet eyes, the tears frozen and refusing to fall. She seemed to have become ice, unmoving but for her jittering feet and trembling hands.

Aletheseus turned to face her, breathing heavily. Despite his seemingly unending stamina, the effects of the fight were clear on him as well. His fine cloak was ripped and torn, his smoky body struggling to stay together, and his mask dented. “It is over, Rosalind of the Dance. I am truly sorry.” He landed softly on the ground and strode towards her.

“You…” she mouthed, though it was hardly legible, “you killed him.” She did not look up as he approached, but crumpled to her knees before him. “I’m sorry,” it was a low sob, “I’m sorry Voligan.” She placed her face in her hands and stayed there. In that moment she thought that perhaps this was for the best, for death cured all things - even the fevered feet that shook even now beneath her.

But then the ground shook with tremors and Rosalind looked up with a small ‘oh.’ Aletheseus, too, paused to look around as the tremors grew worse and worse. The ground beneath his feet cracked and then broke like ice, dragging the God of Fortitude down to his waist. It solidified around him painfully, shards of rock erupting to keep him in his place. As the tremors grew more and more violent, a single word could be heard. Felt, through their very bones. It sent a great sliver of fear through the cowardly Rosalind, even as it caused hope to erupt all at once.

“Enough.”

The earth violently sucked Aletheseus back into the ground as the dirt beneath Rosa shifted and drew her away from the trapped Black Sheep at a rapid pace. A few moments later, the ground where she had been standing erupted with rock and magma as a volcano rose into the sky. Trapped in its peak was Aletheseus. When the volcano reached its full height, it erupted with earth-shaking violence. The god of Fortitude was thrown high into the sky. Before he could react or begin to fall, a massive earthen hand that glowed with the heat of the lava rose and struck the Peculiar God with such force that he disappeared over the horizon.

Voligan wasted no time speaking to Rosa, he simply followed. He was there as soon as Aletheseus landed, and the earth shook with his fury. The ground around the god of Fortitude bubbled with molten metals as they answered Voligan’s wrath and rose to attack and bind the Black Sheep. Crude metal blades stabbed at him while chains wrapped around his body and pulled him deeper into the ground. Voligan’s fist, still glowing with the heat of the volcano, crashed into Aletheseus’ prone form. Another fist followed.

“It’s over.”

The earth shook with another blow.

“You’ve lost.”

Massive boulders rose behind the Earthheart’s form, following each fist into the prone form.

“You failed.”

A crater began to form as the blows descended one after the other. Voligan rained down his wrath with a now silent fury, burying and crushing Aletheseus into the ground. He was so angry that he did not hear the Black Sheep at first, his words lost behind a haze of red and the thundering of blows. Finally, the words made their way through the cacophony of violence.

“I yield.”

Voligan paused, lava finally cooling on his body. Aletheseus dug himself from the rubble-filled crater, battered and bleeding. “I yield. I have no desire to die. You win, Great Bearer of Lands. Her actions are on your head; do not come to me when she brings destruction to your doorstep.”

Before Voligan could respond, however, the vanquished god staggered, reeling in pain and surprise, as a hand of jagged black crystal burst out from his chest. In an instant, nay, a blink of time cut with the finest of blades, the shadow cast by his ragged form seemed to have coalesced into a looming presence of hard contours and impiteous edges, a grim silhouette that now stared down at Aletheseus with a baleful gleam in its one eye, even as he writhed on the arm that had run him through like a lance from the back.

“Did you think that you could escape your end with your sickening mewling? That you could persevere through your defeat and continue to plague the world with your false hope?” taunted Iqelis, for indeed it was none other than him, no doubt having ridden the swiftest currents of time to seize this serendipitous moment, “This is the delusion you were born to perpetuate, is it not? That all calamity is temporary, and that demise is but a prelude to rebirth? Feel, then, on your own flesh how wrong you were, and let your folly accompany you into oblivion!”

Time appeared to slow to a crawl, every motion heavy and feeble, as Aletheseus struggled still with the last reserves of his unyielding resilience. But then dark claws blossomed around him like a thorny halo, and in a blur they tore his visage and his flanks to shreds of metal, fabric and azure mist. Only when his mangled body slumped to the ground did the flow of moments regain its pace, and where two gods had stood now only one cast a triumphant shadow over a lifeless husk.

Voligan tilted his head at the body of Aletheseus, as if comprehending what had happened, before turning his gaze upon the god of Doom. “The Monarch will not be pleased you have done this. He was barely forgiving of Sala’s poisoning of Ao-Yurin. This outright murder will anger him greatly. And you have angered Yudaiel and Ruina. That is a high amount of conflict in a short amount of time, Lord of the End.”

Voligan knelt and gathered Aletheseus’ remains in one hand. The Monarch would wish to have the shard returned.“I hope you have a plan, for your own sake.”

“Even gods have their fated ends,” Iqelis spread a wheel of eight arms as if to shrug, “Surely the Monarch is wise enough to know that. Would you begrudge me this little correction, if you were him? I am the attendant of the inevitable, and it is only the vain and the shortsighted who balk at the demands of my station. They will realize their error in time, either on their own terms or on mine.”

He waved a hand at Aletheseus’ limp body to underscore the last word.

“Besides, a world that suffered existential contradictions such as this one’s life would be flawed. I am merely letting the Flow wear away the uglier angles of creation.”

“Trusting the Monarch or other gods to be reasonable is not a good plan. Tread carefully. You may find yourself dragged to your own inevitable end if you anger the Monarch or too many of our siblings.”

As the blood from Aletheseus’ body dripped from Voligan’s hand, the ground around them began to rumble and shake. Voligan looked and saw small mounds beginning to rise all around them. The beginning of mountains, and perhaps more. “Aletheseus’ last will, it seems, is taking place here.” He carefully dug a deep grave and placed Aletheseus’ body in it. The shard and the mask stayed in Voligan’s hand. The Monarch would want one, and the other would be proof of death. The unmarked grave completed, Voligan turned once more to Iqelis. “Leave. I am going back to Rosa, and I am sure you have more plans beyond murder and chatting with me. Besides, who knows how the remaining power of a god you murdered might react to your presence. Good luck, Iqelis.”

The One God raised two hands in a noncommittal farewell and flitted away into the distance, fading to a blur on the horizon.

With that Voligan headed back towards Rosa, landing on the coast across from her. On seeing him, the huddled goddess rose and approached on uncertain feet. “Are you okay, little Feverfoot? Many of my jumping islands for you were not as strong as they should have been. For that, I apologize.”

“You have nothing to apologise for,” she peeped, her eyes scouring the skies and stormy seas in fear. Only after a long moment had passed did her eyes fall, at last, on the mask in Voligan’s hand. Her eyes of twilight widened, and she surrendered a small almost-sough. “Is that…” she swallowed, “is that his face?” She seemed to brace herself and then forced her eyes to rise and meet those of the battered and beaten Earthheart. There was no denying it this time: he had been greatly hurt, and had been forced to commit a terrible crime for her. Tears welled unbidden and her body trembled, and she could find no words for the guilt that wracked her except that empty phrase - “I’m sorry.”

“No, no. It is his mask. I believe Aletheseus did not have a face to begin with. I did not kill him, though I admit I almost did in my fury. Iqelis, the God of Doom, appeared at the last moment after Aletheseus had yielded and struck him down. Something about his existence being a contradiction. Iqelis was not entirely successful in eradicating fortitude, however. Aletheseus’ blood and last vestiges of power are creating a massive mountain range where he fell. Life along with it, I suspect. I will have to go back there to see what exactly has been made, but you are safe for now, little Feverfoot.”

Voligan carefully placed the mask onto his body and absorbed it for safekeeping. “You have nothing to apologize for little Dancer. I could not let that thing that was Ao-Yurin and Aletheseus simply attack you. You have done nothing wrong.” He paused, looking to the far north and the stormy seas. “You mentioned heading to the north. Would you like me to go with you, at least until you arrive there?”

Rosalind shook her head. “You have done more for me than I can hope to repay, I can ask nothing more. I think I will sit here a little while and just…” she sighed, “try to recover.” She paused and watched the raging sea. “And perhaps whatever remains of Ao-Yurin will be kind and return my boat to me.” She stood and took off a single golden-red bangle, etched with beautiful swirls and studded with innumerable jewels of starlight. “I have nothing to thank you with, but take this. It would make me happy - whatever comes of me, for I seemed cursed with awful luck! - if you see it and remember me well.”

“Very well. Do not hesitate to call for me again if you ever need help.” Voligan reached down and gently took the golden-red bangle from her. “I will keep it with me at all times.” He held out a finger towards Rosalind. The tip of it, composed of dirt, rustled and rumbled for a moment before a fist sized moonstone dropped into her palms. It was polished and gleaming, seeming to glow with an inner light. “Please keep this with you as well. As a gift.”

He stood to his full height and looked back over to where Aletheseus had fallen. “I must go now. Be well, Rosa. Do not hesitate to call for help should you need it again.” With that, he began to stride off into the distance and rapidly disappeared over the horizon.

• Vigor [+]

  Starting:
  Voligan- 18. Spent 2 to make the islands connecting the continents. 16 remaining.
  Rosa- 14. Spent 2 to make the islands connecting the continents dance in various ways (the northern islands move around in the water in a set rhythm, while the southern islands sink beneath and rise above the waves seasonally, though each island follows an independent seasonal pattern from the others). Spent 1 to create Dancerfish, fish that emerged out of Rosa’s tears; these have wing-like fins and can either be find in great groups that murmurate through the water, their scales reflecting refracted right off one another create kaleidoscopic pulsations of colour even as they individual dance and, in so doing, create a greater cadence as a group. These dances, whether solitary or in a group, appear to have meaning understood by the Dancerfish. 11 left.
  Iqelis: 16. Spent 0.
• Summary [+]

  Rosalind lands on Galbar’s ocean with her boat. This angers the remnant of Ao-Yurin (the salt personality, specifically) and it attacks Rosalind in a maddened, salt poisoned rage. Rosa calls for help.
  
  Voligan, having left the witnessing of the Monarch and Sala, comes to her aid. He fights the remnant, killing it pretty easily since the freshwater personality of Ao-Yurin dying in the Palace had all the divine power.
  
  Rosa and Voligan chat and Voligan agrees to make islands for Rosa to jump on to the next continent. Since the remnant still had influence over the sea, the seas were too wrathful for her to simply use her boat.
  
  They reach the continent of Termina and have another brief chat before Voligan notices Aletheseus approaching at high speeds and steps in front of Rosa.
  
  Aletheseus claims that Rosa has to be killed for the greater good. Voligan disagrees. They fight with Voligan attempting to create islands for Rosalind to jump on and run away from Aletheseus with.
  
  Once they get back to the utmost north of Orsus, Voligan turns briefly to talk to Rosalind. Aletheseus takes this opportunity to smack the shit out of him and knock Voligan into and beneath the sea for a moment.
  
  Before Aletheseus can capitalize and kill Rosa, Voligan comes back. Officially pissed off now, he smacks Aletheseus so hard that the god of Fortitude lands on the far side of Termina and then proceeds to pummel him until Aletheseus yields.
  
  Voligan stops in his assault, content that Aletheseus yielded. Iqelis uses the opportunity to straight up murder Aletheseus. Iqelis and Voligan chat about it a bit, then go their separate ways.
  
  Voligan (now beat to shit and tired) goes back to Rosalind (who is now feeling guilty and tired) and makes sure she’s okay. They exchange gifts, and Voligan tells her to not hesitate to call him for help again. They then go their separate ways.

---

Sleep was a churning and frothy river, and dreams flitted through it like fish. Yudaiel was a vast net that drifted uncontrollably downstream; she caught a great bounty.

In such an exhausted state after her exertions with the Codex and her desperate battle against the ilk of Ashevelen, Iqelis, and Epsilon all, she truly dreamt now. Where her prescience normally let her steer the flow of the river and spear whatever fish she sought, now she was merely swept along by the current.

Many strange sights presented themselves before her. There was a tree that walked, almost a wooden man -- but it seemed only half a man, for the other half was woman; further, it appeared one part mortal and two parts divine. Upon one side the walking-tree’s branches were withered and leafless, but on the other they sprung green. It emanated strength but also great weariness, for it had borne many great burdens, had died and been reborn, died and been reborn, died and been reborn, endlessly and forever. She sensed that, like herself, this one Saw, and it pushed its roots deep through time. She returned the stranger’s great black gaze - its singular black-hole Eye - and knew that they would meet again. But then she was swept along by the stream, through rapids and down cataracts, away from the watchful god of bark that stood upon the banks.

Above the river there was a night sky aglow with fireflies and stars. In the darkness of the black void between stars, she sensed another Eye, and knew that It too could See, and moreover that It did See her -- It Saw right into her heart and soul. It was not just an Eye like she; the constellations about Its eye seemed to realign, and she saw that It was a cyclops with a great and imposing anatomy, a hulking and puissant form that seemed chiseled from stone.

Yudaiel flinched from Its glare, but there was nowhere to hide, and she had no words with which to plead. Through her peripheral vision she tried to watch It and descry something, anything, about the nature of this watcher, this tormenter, this potential predator: she could ascertain that the oculus belonged to some terrible being that was ancient beyond ancient, and that behind It, lurking in Its shadow, there was another constellation. From the clusters of distant and dimmer stars behind It, she connected the lines and perceived some monstrous, four-eyed demon with a hog’s head, and she sensed that it was a terrible herald of carnage and destruction… an apprentice, perhaps? Or a mere disciple, a minion? A child, even?

Whatever its nature was, that brute of a demonic boar changed little… it was the gaze of its master that Yudaiel feared. She suspected that if It desired, It could render her moon and the Galbar into dust with but a thought and then forge something horrible -- something utterly alien -- from the ashes; fortunately and manifestly, It seemed to have other inclinations. She saw in Its pupil a reflection not just of herself, but of the other deities,her siblings, and even the Monarch himself -- she wondered, did He even know that He was being observed through Space and Time and Reality by such beings as this one? Uncertainty filled Yudaiel, and for a fleeting moment, fear coursed through her too, and she was grateful for the Monarch’s strength if nothing else… she could not stand against such a terrible being as this Eye… yet. One day her glare would become so torrid, vehement, and menacing that even Its like would blister and burn and twist to her whims, but her time had not yet come, and to engage with the cyclops would be a hopeless and foolish struggle. For now it seemed only He could hold such beasts at bay… The All-Seeing Eye was rarely one for humor, but she found it risible that the Monarch of All protected her ambitions even as those same ambitions seemed to growingly include His own downfall.

Her musings on that monstrous eye and Its place in her world and thread of plots were suddenly cast aside; something was changing. Suddenly, It seemed disinterested in her and her siblings. It looked elsewhere by Its own volition, but not somewhere very far or distant -- nay, It gazed only a short ways down the river from where Yudaiel floated, right over her proverbial shoulder, but also upstream from her. Its one, cyclopean pupil managed to peer in two separate directions at once, forward and backwards, left and right, beholding past and future; she did not understand how such a thing was possible. More than even discovering just what things this creature had found more interesting or noteworthy than her, she now yearned to learn how It could See as It did! Alas, the Great Eye and Its minion, the boar-demon, vanished from the chimerical sky, the stars of their constellations fading away as surely and swiftly as hot embers doused by water.

Ah, water. Yes, she looked away from the star-strewn sky and remembered that she was still drifting down a river. A lone firefly suddenly grew dark, and its dim and dying form fell from the sky and into the turbulent rapids before her. She looked at the insect as it bobbed and floated in the dark water, and her hardly-lucid mind conjured the image of another fly -- Iqelis, wretched Iqelis!

She dreamt of him, a second cyclopean being, though this one was a mere pest; he was a mere firefly, his power like its trifling flicker before the heliacal glare of that last horror that she’d just seen between the stars. The obsidian fiend hovered effortlessly so as to maintain a short distance before her, just above the river’s frothing water. She glowered at him, daring the wretch to provoke her any more than he already was -- Luck was not the only aspect that she could crush, though she would much rather enthrall the Shard of Doom than see it obliterated. Iqelis just crossed his hundred arms and cackled. All of the countless lights of the fireflies in the air were extinguished as the insects died. From their falling corpses erupted tiny maggots, and those maggots feasted and grew into swarms of gnats and other lightless flies that grew and multiplied with a swiftness that defied reason, that an eye could not follow. None of the fireflies fell fast enough to even hit the ground before they had been consumed.

But the laughter of Iqelis stopped when her enraged mind reached out to grasp each and every fly. With a single pulse she struck them all dead, and Iqelis too was smote down and shattered like glass before her psychic scream. The river itself recoiled and charged its banks to flee from her, chasing after the trees along the banks that seemed to have grown legs and similarly decided to rout. Nothing could challenge her might! Her will was Fate! With nary a thought, she willed the broken pieces of Iqelis to twist and reform. A rain of prismatic diamonds plopped down into the writhing waters and sank into the receding river’s muddy bed, and all was well.

---

Far across hours and spaces both real and oniric, the true One-Eye did not suspect the fate that would befall his dreamed simulacrum, or, even if he did surmise at Yudaiel’s vengeful thoughts, he did not let it burden him. Fresh from the slaying of Aletheseus, that verminous anomaly that had dared defy the truth and order of things with his very existence and hypostasis, his spirits were high as he wove and leapt through shadowy currents unseen. It had been a fortuitous thing that the wakener of Fortitude should so soon have tempted his fate in mortal battle, thus stirring strongly enough on Time’s murky riverbed to catch Iqelis’ eye; for so dim and unassuming had he been, despite the enormity of what he represented, that it might otherwise have been a long while yet before his disturbances grew numerous enough to notice. How many due ends he might have prevented then, to be rectified one by one at the One God’s own hand.

But now that hand dripped with the trespasser’s vaporous blood, and all was well. Aletheseus had not found in himself the strength to levy the greatest affront of all – to halt his own doom. It was pleasing to think that truth and order were now no longer threatened by such brazen subversion, yet more gratifying still was the lingering sensation of his thread being cut short in Iqelis’ grip. It was not something the god had expected to enjoy, for a divine’s demise was in essence no different from that of a gnat. And all the same, to feel the weave of life fraying under his claws, to taste the bitter fear and ashen despair, to know that it was he, and no other, that cast it into the unformed darkness… There had been a curious sweetness in that, a cold joy the likes of which he had never imagined since his inception.

It was a glimpse into the depths of the Last Sea stolen over the shoulder of the one he drowned in its shallows, and it was a thing of chilling beauty.

No use to dwell on it too much. Every death had its own time, and he was not one to
hungrily sit on the banks and wait for the castoffs the current brought him. He would take them as they came, savouring each all the more for the drought that had come before it. One fate, however, he could stand to stoke his anticipation for. The pest Yudaiel. How he would relish plotting every inch of the blemishes he would gouge into her eye, every drop of black defilement he would pour into her sight, every tug to unravel her very world around her…

He caught himself as his bounding steps crossed the boundary of the grassy lands he had been moving through, breaking the trail of crumbling and withered plants he had left behind himself, and landed upon harsh, blasted ground. A rocky landscape of uneven hills and shattered peaks spread out ahead of him like a forgotten battleground of titans, the earth itself rent and ground down by a clash of forces of terrible magnitude. Massive boulders that were no more than fragments of yet more immense bulks lay strewn around, their fall having gouged tracks and craters in the already craggy soil. The sky overhead was darkened by thick clouds of pulverized debris, still stifling the daylight despite that the echoes of the blasts that had raised them had since faded. Not all of them - he could perceive the last stirrings of what must have been something sinking beneath the inky waves of the end, but what that could be it was too late for him to see.

And all over this scene of destruction, her mark. Always her. It brought him a spark of amusement to think that, in burying whatever foe she had found herself under this chaos of stone and sand, Yudaiel had already strayed from her oaths to preserve what she could of the world in the face of Doom. Something to cast into her face, such as it was, to sear into her thoughts next time. Right then, however, he could do better still. She ought to have been spent after making such an upheaval, and this formless barrenness was a laughable mark to have left upon the Galbar’s face. Her finest work was already marred; now, she would have to watch impotently as he surpassed her in that pursuit common to all divinity. He would raise such a monument that not merely her, but all that lived would look upon it and quake as the shadow of the inescapable fell upon their measly spirits.

He strode and swam further west, until his talons dug into the edge of a steep sandy cliff over a murmuring expanse of grimy water. The sea was still agitated by the aftershocks of the colossal impacts, the rippling echoes of the first great waves meeting their forerunners as they bounced from the gnarled shores. A crust of dirt still weighed them down, the pocket of ocean reduced to a muddy oversized mire. It would do.

Iqelis spread the full score of his arms and raised them to the heavens, letting the dark currents swirl and mount behind him like a dam. Although it was his place to spell endings rather than beginnings, to create and mould was the prerogative of all divinity, and he would claim from the world all that he was thus owed. He rustled and played with the terrible wave building upon his shoulders, reminding the earth, the water and the sky that they, too, were subject to the course of ages, and it was by his mercy if they were not engulfed then and there and shattered into a chaos of inchoate elements.

The earth, which was the firmest and had the most to lose to annihilation, was the first to yield. There was a tremendous chthonian groan and a shudder which, though none as mighty as the quakes sent by Yudaiel’s onslaught, rolled far through the land, unsettling hills and felling trees. The soiled surface of the sea broke, and hundreds of black spires rose among its scattered islands, peaks of dark stone pushed to the surface by telluric forces enthralled to the terror of doom. They stood like a grim host summoned forth from the depths, immobile and solemn, awaiting their fate.

The air bowed next, lest its impalpable purity be fouled by the choking shadows. A despairing moan rang out over the waves, and in defiance of all laws of nature and reason the obsidian mountains rose further still. They tore away from their stony roots deep below, then away from the surface itself, and agonizingly crawled up into the sky as the winds shrieked in horror at this unheard blasphemy. Now with ten score hands holding up his burden, Iqelis leapt onto one of them and let it carry him high, until they hung as as high above the shore as a true peak would reach. Then the dark rocks swayed and drew close, clinging to each other’s flanks and binding themselves together in a vast, unnatural landmass.

Then it was time for the water to surrender to the commanding will, to complete the dreadful work in a final gesture that would trample upon all that was sane and orderly, yet the sea hesitated. There was a bitter defiance in its stirring, a deep grief from which the waves drew an obstinate strength to refuse the dire imposition. Iqelis grit his fingers angrily, and stirred the shadow in his hands, letting it tower high and menacing. And then --

Something answered him, but not from the sea. It roiled and splashed soundlessly from the shattered lands to the north, crawling closer, faster and faster. Another of Yudaiel’s machinations? No, this did not bear her mark - but his own. Startled, he almost released the mortiferous currents he had collected. How did traces of his intent find his way there? He struggled to remember, and it seemed to him that indeed, when the great wave had crashed against the moon some drops of it had been pushed away, towards the Galbar below. He had minded them little at the time, thinking that they would rejoin the Flow, but here they were now, drawn again to him.

No, not to him. They were at last returning to the source. To the current he was already struggling to hold in his grasp. He had to --

The droplets fell into his hands, and the tide he had been holding back burst.

All around him, the Flow surged. Rock was weathered to dust in a blink. The air grew thin, then choking, then rarified again. Water faded to steam and fell again in chunks of ice. Too long contained, the currents of time roared forth, regaining the moments it had missed in haste. His obsidian isle crumbling around him, Iqelis had become a veritable spider, hundreds of hands lashing and reaching to stem the cataclysm before it unmade all that he had wrought. The threads of the flood slipped between his fingers, but at length he found one which had spent its fury and returned to its usual force. He grabbed onto it, and around it he wove a pall of stillness to contain the ravages of doom unchecked. His movements were sharp and hasty, snapping and darting like a mob of startled frogs, and yet it was only after an agonizing span of instants that he succeeded in quieting the risen course.

It had been time enough for decay to do its work. When he looked around, he was no longer upon a great body of dark rock, but on a lone fractured mountain, drifting forsakenly over the waves. The landmass he had compelled to rise out of the sea and into the sky was no more, for even as he had threatened the earth to do, it had been worn and fractured into a thousand shards of all sizes, from boulders to islets, trapped in the air apart from each other. Some had remained high above the water-line, but most had drooped and sunken to mere dozens of tree-heights over the surface. It was some consolation, however meagre, that the Flow had carved them into fanciful shapes, into curious formations that resembled the dead and polished skulls of all kinds of living things. In this they could still strike fear into those who watched, though never again would their unbroken shadow loom over dread-stricken eyes.

Yet it was the once-defiant waters below that had borne the worse lot. For a few moments, the sea had been fed by a river that ought not have a mouth, and it was forever marked. The dust and debris had been washed away, but what remained underneath was a still, inky waste, like a mirror of black glass, rippling ever so lightly as clumps of dead seaweed floated to the surface and crumbled into dissolving rot. No wholesome life could endure those blind depths now, for their cold touch was suffused with a distant reflection of the Last Sea itself. Warmth and vigour would ever flee from it, leaving behind sickly and enervated husks, and its saline essence, which had drawn into itself the worst of the taint, had become the cage of death’s own breath.

He heard a distant rushing groan, and knew that even as the outer ocean raged to contain the black poison in its gulch, the pure water streaming down from upriver recoiled in loathing from it. But rivers were not their own masters, and so they flowed on, writhing and clawing at their fate, refusing to mingle with that fluid abomination. Soon a pale fog began to rise from below, as the river-water sought to escape into the sky, anywhere but into the cold and dead abysses. Spectral clouds crept upon the light from the heavens, and with them grey dusk swallowed the last glimmers of cheer that livened the sea’s bleakness. Silence reigned, broken only by the rare forlorn wail of a trapped wind.

All this Iqelis saw, and though he could not truly scorn the desolation of the view, he was not pleased. How much more he could have done if he had been able to complete his work without interference! How much strength and toil he had squandered on this sorry waste! If only the echoes of his wrath had not awoken at the worst of times…

Yudaiel, it had to be her. This could only be her doing, a trap set for him to humiliate himself even as he sought to surpass her. Such trickery was her way. Oh, how he would make her squirm under his hands, how he would savour seeing her pupil glaze over…

Lost in a haze of vengeful thoughts, he did not see the clouds of dust and pebble-shards still hovering in the air begin to shake and stir, and it was only a thunderous buzzing that stirred him. The misty air had all of a sudden grown thick with thronging black swarms, myriads of small vermin with translucent wings and bloated bodies chasing each other among the suspended archipelago. Out of some strange resonance of power, flies, that most reviled insect, had crawled into the world, and they caroused around their god, drawn by a curious innate sympathy that no doubt only the All-Seeing Eye could have explained. Iqelis waved them away in irritation, and the swarms scattered to the four winds, flying to scour all corners of creation for death and decay, that they might pay obeisance to the manifestation of their Lord by wallowing in its refuse.

Only a few remained droning around the One God, now and then landing on the jagged rocks and rubbing their forelegs in supplication. He made about to wash them away in the Flow, but his hand stopped as it prepared to part the current, then fell again. The veneration of insects was a laughable thing, true; but to see them grovel before him pleased him none the less. Let all know that even the least of creatures gave him their devotion!

He leapt onto the nearest floating islet, and his court of flies followed. There were better things to do than to brood over this failure. The world was ripening, and his hand would be needed to show it the path to rot.

The Great Bearer of Lands, The Earthheart.

Aspect: Earth

Vigor: 16

“We will, Sala. I look forward to it.” Voligan watched the salt goddess and the Monarch leave with misgiving. Perhaps he was wrong, but kind beings didn’t decree themselves the rulers of all, enslave their creations and demand that they create for him. The less interactions they all had with the Monarch, the better. He would have to do something about that. Nodding his goodbye to Yoliyachicoztl, Voligan himself headed down towards the empty spot in the ocean beneath them. Ruina had done her work well, certainly. While it wasn’t quite what he had imagined for a central meeting place, it would work well. Maybe even better.

Voligan landed gently on the ground, surrounded by suspended walls of sea water. This would do nicely. It was central, within the eyes of the Monarch (so there wouldn’t be any questions of loyalty or hidden dealings) and big enough for all of them. He would have to thank Ruina later. Voligan placed one massive hand on the ground and concentrated. A moment later, the ground at the edges of the suspended sea rumbled violently as the tips of mountains pushed through them. All around Volgian a circular mountain range rose up into the sky. They cut through the walls of water like a fin on the surface, until they finally stopped at the top of the suspended ocean. They were all uniform in design, with none being higher or lower than the others or differing in any way. His siblings could design their mountains as they wished, but he had other things to do. Besides, it would give them a nice surprise when they arrived here.

He looked around to view his handiwork. A circular ring of mountains for meeting, with a barren plain between them from any disputes that required action instead of words. It was a good area for a council. One that wouldn’t require the Monarch’s attention every time that a dispute was had. As Voligan was standing there, feeling pleased with himself, the Monarch returned. Voligan only nodded his head in respect and appreciation of the title. The Great Bearer of Lands was a mouthful and he would like to have less of the Monarch’s attention on him than he had recently had, but he wasn’t about to complain about it either.

He took one last look at his creation and then nodded to himself. He would tell the rest of the family later. Right now he needed to find the Goddess of Honor.

As Voligan was getting to leave the central island, he heard a voice calling out for help. Looking over, it was the Goddess of Dance. The Feverfoot, trapped in a struggle with the waves.

---

Battered and torn up, Voligan returned to the unmarked resting place of Aletheseus and watched with interest as the blood of the god of Fortitude carried out his last will. Mountains, rugged and strong, spread across the peninsula as far as the eye could see. They reached towards the sky like massive bones coming out of the dirt. The magic in Aletheseus’ blood lost power as it reached the edges of the peninsula and the Plains, turning into hills and then beaches and ground respectively. Still, it was impressive how far the Aletheseus’ will had gone. Even in death, he was resilient. The mountains would be called the Bones of Fortitude. Voligan would make sure of it. It would only be fitting that Aletheseus’s mountains were named after him.

These mountains would also be an excellent place to place mortals, with a little touch of his own here and there. Raising his hands, he brought forth more of Astus’s minerals and gems throughout the Bones, so that mortals he placed there would be able to craft and forge in the future. The metals flowed through the peninsula like water and settled within the many mountains and caverns throughout them. He put his fingers into the earth and encouraged the grounds around and in the Bones to be filled with nutrients so that Phelenia’s seeding would take place and expand quickly, sustaining the life that he would bring.

His mortals would need a strong place to live, one that would protect them and shelter them from any dangers that may arise while at the same time not stifling their growth and strength. To this end he moved to the center of the Bones and raised his hands once more to the sky. With a rumbling crack another peak rose from the valley below Voligan. It continued to rise, spreading out and racing towards the sky at a blistering pace. Higher and higher it rose, absorbing the mountains next to it as it expanded at the same time, until it was scraping the top of the atmosphere. When Voligan had finished growing it, he began shaping it to his will. It would need caves, tunnels, and caverns so that his mortals would be able to expand and move through it freely.

Voligan shaped the interior to his desires, making it perfect for a species of mortals to grow safely in. He drew more minerals, gems, and ores into this gigantic mountain. His chosen mortals would need it. They would also need food. He put extra nutrients into the caverns and tunnels, ensuring that it would be a fertile place to live. Looking upon it once more, Voligan rumbled in a pleased manner. This was a good place. He would call it The Earthheart, inspired by Rosa’s nickname for him.

Movement caught his eye and he saw that Aletheseus’s will had created life as well. His form shrunk and changed to a rocky and vaguely humanoid shape, as he didn’t want to destroy these creatures before they even had a chance to live, and he went down towards them. Guardians. They were massive, by mortal standards. Strong and made of stone, they looked around as if searching for something.

Voligan watched them, as they silently wandered around the Bones. They paused only to look in caves or around boulders, moving on when they did not find what they were looking for. It was curious, watching them work. At first he thought they had been looking for some form of sustenance, but they turned away from open veins he had led to the surface, nor did they eat any of the rocks or burgeoning plant life. After a while, it finally dawned on Voligan what they were searching for. Aletheseus’s last moments had been of thinking to protect the mortals. They were doubtlessly looking to protect the mortals that he had so valued. Voligan would help them. Besides, too many of them in his Earthheart and his mortals would never be able to grow.

He gathered the majority of them (leaving a few in the Bones for his own mortals) and then raced across Galbar as fast as he could, pausing only to drop them in various places. He didn’t know where his siblings were going to make sapient life, but he knew it would expand across Galbar sooner or later. He placed a few near the Bjorks in particular. They already looked like they needed protection, and the Guardians needed something to protect. Really it was a win win.

He returned to the Bones, satisfied that he had spread the Guardians (as he had named them) sufficiently around the earth. Now all he needed was mortals, and he knew just the Goddess to go too.

---

Voligan was heading back to the Bones, 100k humans in tow, when the lands to the north were completely annihilated in a display of power that rivaled and surpassed Ruina’s ‘test’ at the beginning of time. Voligan stopped in his tracks, shielding the humans in his care with more layers of rock and earth, and looked over the inner sea. Someone had thrown mountains into the land, and he felt something whither and break within the world. What, he was not sure. But it needed to be investigated.

Not while he was carrying mortals with him, however. He hurriedly returned to the Earthheart, separating the humans into two even groups, each into their own orb of earth. He needed to move quickly. There was no time for theatrics as he manipulated their forms. The first group he encouraged the turn to flesh and bone that Homura had built into the humans, shortening them and making them on average stronger and hardier. They would need to be to survive in the Earthheart and the Bones.

The others he removed the turn entirely from them, ensuring that they would be made of stone and that their offspring would have to be built with whatever materials were at hand. Their lot was not to be made of lesh, but inorganic materials and unending life. A rune was given to them, that they could carve into the bodies of their children and it would draw a blank soul from Theyra’s afterlife. A soul with no memories, no personality, and no desires of its past life.

Voligan worked quickly, manipulating the lives and spirits of his humans until they were almost unrecognizable from the humans Homura had given him. They would be distantly related, certainly, but it would be very distantly. Some of the shorter ones, which he named dwarves, he placed into the Earthheart. The rest of them, and the others (which he named golems) he spread across the continents of Galbar. This was less precise than his spreading of the Guardians had been, but there wasn’t any time for careful planning. Something terrible had just happened and he needed to figure out what before the Monarch came knocking on all their doors.

The golems and dwarves spread around the earth, with his chosen dwarves already inhabiting the Earthheart, Voligan made his way towards the destroyed land to figure out what happened and why everything felt so wrong. He could only hope that it wasn’t something like what Iqelis had done to Aletheseus, but his instincts told him he was a fool for hoping that.

His instincts were vindicated as he came across the Tlacan sea and its floating islands. The whole depressing area reeked of Iqelis’ touch, and Voligan made sure to stay above and away from the cursed area. There was nothing he could do about the doomed area but tell his mortals to stay away from it and hope that the other gods would do the same. It would bring only misery to any who ventured there.

Passing over Iqelis’ handy work, Voligan quickly made his way to the devastated area. There was no obvious answer to his question, so he would have to search. Unfortunately.

---

Yudaiel did not gradually awaken from her dreaming. In one moment she drifted here and there, witnessing and experiencing visions as they came, but in the very next moment she suddenly seized control once more. Something was not right, she sensed; and it demanded her attention immediately. The Great and All-Seeing Eye focused once again, no longer staring lazily into nothing, only to find the entirety of its field of vision obscured by one great, gaping wound. Him. His wound.

Before her was the Monarch of All, looming on the precipice of the boundary of the densest part of her vastness -- the ball of her eye -- and casting His shadow squarely down upon her pupil. At least she hadn’t kept Him waiting for more than a moment!

Yudaiel’s reception was neither icy nor warm; she knew that He would come, and of course knew His purpose, and even had an idea of His intentions. So without blinking or betraying any surprise, the Lady of Far and Near met his gaze and allowed him to speak first.

”Yudaiel, ever the source of trouble within this realm of mine.”

The Monarch of All’s voice rang through the entirety of Yudaiel’s perception, the voice had booked with a ferocity and a disdain that made itself evident the more the voice reverberated. There was a scorn as the Monarch of All did nothing but stare upon the eye of Yudaiel, a barren face casting anger upon the goddess. One of His hands bared four dagger-like claws capable of shredding space itself, a weapon capable enough to slay gods without thought or issue, even with their divinity. His voice came about reality once more, a voice wrought with a seeming hate manifested in her very being.

”Tell me, Prescient, do you know what you have done by utterly destroying that little goddess of luck?”

Her ideabstractions answered Him with a clarity and eloquence that primitive words could not:


From oblivion there erupted an icy expanse, a primordial glacier with no edge. This was land dead and quiet save for the lamentations of the wind, and for a single lonely fruit that had fallen from the sun. Where the fruit rested upon the ice, the howling winds were tamed by its citrusy fragrance and burning heat.
.

Divine was that crop, rind and juice and flesh! [+]

This humble lemon was like a god itself, borne from Heaven’s own garden down into the frigid and desolate wastes below, and so it carried the sun’s xanthous and warm aspect.

Warmth and life sprung forth from the glowing rind of that aural fruit, and about it lifeless ice was made water. But then, a fattened insect descended from the sky; it too had perhaps come from the sun above, but its nature -- maybe even intention -- was not so noble or so good. It fell right upon the lemon with haste, and then it dug its maw into the rind and began burrowing into the fruit, devouring the crop’s succulent flesh and drinking its juices. The advancing pool of water began to recede and freeze once more as the sacred fruit’s radiance diminished, and when the insect had finally finished its gorging, there was nothing left besides the glacier, and then even the wretched bug shivered and began to succumb to an icy death, for there was now nothing to offer it warmth.

Lightning descended from the moon high up in the roof of the world and smote the bug down before it had the chance to die a natural death, and only then was a new fruit able to climb down from the heavens to bring life and warmth. Other insects tried to come, but they were burnt by the moon’s radiance before they could ruin that which had been prescribed; those insects were anathema to the fruit, immiscible as oil and water, more paradoxical and opposing than fire and cold, than even night and day.

Freed from corrupting influences, in time the glacier was conquered. The sublime fruit melted and warmed all, and life sprung out from a thawed land that had been buried below the ice. The husks of the countless smitten bugs were either left forgotten or found and devoured by those fish that dwelled now in the water, those birds in the air, or those scavenging mice on the land.

The Monarch of All scoffed, turning His head away from the goddess before forcing Himself to gaze down upon Yudaiel once more. The gaze was stern, unrelenting from the oppressive nature that the Ruler of the Gods emanated. The claws flexed ever eagerly, tracing His skin gingerly as He allowed her ideabrstractions settle within His mind as He pondered over the images and visions. It was soon done though as the Monarch of All’s voice rippled through the nearby space once more, his tone wrought with disgust and anger.

”You had gone too far in your total destruction of Asheleven, for you had done one of the only things that I cannot overlook. The others have yet to come beckoning for my judgement upon your murder, but know that you should be groveling at my feet to not be destroyed by my hand, Yudaiel.”

The Monarch’s lofty disdain was palpable, a fog of gilded clouds so dense that it obscured all of the whimsical ideabstracted landscape for a moment before Yudaiel could shape it. The white became wool, and the gold horns; where there had been mist there was now a vast herd of bleating sheep that surrounded the ever-present lemon.

A moon and a sun both hung juxtaposed over the sky. The moon cared little for the sheep’s din and cast its eye somewhere else, and yet the sun began drooping in the heavens, stooping down to listen to their insipid cries…

A fiery flash obliterated that entire world, though not so quick that the immolated sheep couldn’t let loose a few tormented wails of agony. A barrage of sights manifested within the resulting void: there were landscapes and lifestorms twisted and misshapen, hideous and neglected, altogether unworthy, but last came a magnificent jewel grander than any other -- that once-immaculate moon -- which rivalled even the sun.

And there it was Yudaiel’s own pride that grew so potent, so substantial, that it seemed to speak. ‘Look upon the splendor of my work, the precision of my hand,’ it whispered, ‘and pay no heed to the bleating of jealous others. You need not even hear any of their cries against me, much less listen. You owe them nothing. You already guard them from what lies… beyond.’

Ah, but perhaps she had gone too far, said too much! In planting such thoughts into one’s mind as they were overwhelmed by an ideabstraction, it was a subtle touch that was needed, and there in the end she had slipped. He would know now that she had seen much, perhaps too much.

The Monarch latched onto those final words and the ideabstraction ceded control before His will; He cast His glare into the heart of the Prescient, and reluctantly, she bared the memory of what she had just Seen in her dreams, of the wooden god, the four-eyed demon, the terrible eye that lurked between the stars, and also of her hatred towards Iqelis and unyielding desire to see him not mercifully shattered, but tortuously bent and broken and twisted to her will. All of that lucid dream’s contents she surrendered then and there, and He saw it in details more vivid than life itself.

The claws seemed to retract as the Monarch of All watched the memories, His eyes unmoving from her core as the visions leapt from one to the other before they ended swiftly enough. A sigh emanated from Him as His hands dropped to His side, looking past Yudaiel and upon her damaged moon, seeing how she, much like Him with the Divine Palace, desired a place to watch Galbar and the space beyond. Perhaps, in a moment of thought, the great Monarch of All stayed His hand as He was shown the similarities that Yudaiel shared with her progenitor. He shifted in place, folding His arms together as a singular breath was loose. Yet, He knew that He could not merely leave Yudaiel to go unpunished, lest the other gods begin defying His will.

In a silent and tense second of thought, the Monarch of All turned His back to Yudaiel in order to gaze upon Galbar, His realm. The view from the moon was a beautiful one, not as bright as the Divine Palace but showing the planet from a different angle that He could appreciate. He immersed Himself in the view, allowing Himself to be lost in what had been created, before His eyes found themselves staring upon where Yudaiel had attacked Asheleven. Even from the Divine Palace, He could feel the impact that had shaken the prison. Turning His head to Yudaiel once more, the Monarch of All spoke in a calmed voice.

”You cannot be unpunished. As such, you will promise me that you will stay confined to this moon, under oath of death. I expect to hear you promise me, no visions, no memories.”

The words might have tumbled out from the mouth of any other given the circumstances, but for Yudaiel, speaking was not so easy. She had never even used her voice before! In a sense, she had no true voice, just as she had no body. To form the crude words, her mind gently reached out to grasp the moon, to caress the motes of dust adrift around them, even to brush against the Monarch himself. The Reverberation pushed and pulled at the matter, and the world was made to resonate and whisper her wavering first words, _{”I will vow it.”}

No, too tremulous! Too weak!

She spoke this time with a silent roar, a horrible telepathic clamor so potent that it pushed aside all others thoughts, and resounded clearly to any who turned their heads to the moon and listened: ”I s̪͌ha̰͐ll͢͡ ̱̎div͈̋ô̠rc̆ͅe my͍͠ ͈̎touch f͉͋rom̧̒ ͖̓ṱ̀ḫ̌e ̡̋G̘̕al̛̞b̍͟ar̢̓'s surfȧ̦ce͇͝,͙́ an̼̄d r͖̀ȇ͙m̹̍aiņ̑ hè͓r͚̍e. Yoủ͚ ͇̘̱͑̃̇ḧ̨̡̲̪́͊̀͘ả̘͕̜͆̀vê̪̹̄ ̄͟m͖̠͙̊̌̈́y ̟̀w͔͑͐͜ò͎͎͈͕͌́͞rd̬̼͂̊.̠̼̘̈͑͒”