Ea Nebel is a divine gravedigger and keeper of graves. Her task is to remember the dead and where they lie, and see to it that their remains are given the dignity they deserve, even if that be as simple as a prayer or as little as a glob of spit. She may be found at any place reserved for burial, cremation, or other correct treatment of cadavers, and has a great talent for discovering lost bodies and forgotten bones.
The Maiden watches over all those who take care of the dead, and who preserve their wisdom and history. Maintaining tombs and traditions with a pure heart may earn her blessing. When the bereaved come to a grave to mourn, she remembers them, and may appear as a spirit or animal to comfort them. When tombs and cemeteries are threatened, Ea Nebel may even manifest in person to defend them.
Sometimes, where some great being or army has fallen and none remain to bury them, Ea Nebel will accept the work of gravedigging personally, and build a monument for the dead as she sees fit.
To defile a carefully laid tomb arouses cold displeasure from Ea Nebel, which she discharges with straightforward curses in proportion to the offense. She is not a cruel god, not even especially harsh, nor omniscient, but she is without remorse. Neglect of the newly dead may yield a similar response.
Ea Nebel does not concern herself with matters of the soul. If a right burial is necessary for a spirit to pass on, she may grant it, as a mercy, but her duties are to attend the body and its memory in this life, not the ones beyond. Nor is it her duty to deliver justice- but on this her heart is not nearly so hard.
Persona
Ea Nebel was born with her duties already assigned to her, and nothing on Galbar could be more important for her. She brings her limited powers and knowledge to bear fully, and rarely rests, even though she needs it. With so much of her spirit invested in her task, it's no wonder that she so quickly becomes defensive when they are taken lightly.
For all her power and purpose, Ea Nebel is plagued with (usually) well-hidden insecurities. She knows that she has been charged with a task fit for a god, and fears that under the skin she is only a mortal with extra muscle; she fears that one day her sense of purpose will flag, and this doubt brings its own sense of guilt. She compensates by allowing herself no mercy in her work. If she has yet considered that this attitude may be the very thing that will grind her down in the end, she does not speak of it, especially not to herself.
Rare moments where she lets herself set her work aside reveal that Ea Nebel is not, in her heart, sombre. She laughs, she cries, she can clap, she can kiss. She understands death and has seen more of it than any man, and wants nothing of its sorrow; her heart is just too soft, and that is why she hardens it. Being among mortals makes her acutely self-conscious of her age and their relative innocence. The (impossible) thought of abandoning her station to embrace life and joy and beauty is yet another source of deep fear for Ea Nebel to feel guilty over.
Form
Ea Nebel is but a demigoddess; the body you see is all that she has. That body is no titan, and may not even be fully immortal. Her armour is divine stygian steel manifested by her strength of conviction, as are her many weapons, of which a few are the longsword, lance, sabre, halberd, javelin, and crossbow. Beneath it, her colourless skin is wrapped around a body with only the meanest feminine grace. Her strength is divine, so she has little muscle; she rarely eats, so there is little softness to her. She is uncommonly tall, nearly six feet without boots. Her blood is black, and hot as fire; her scars are the same colour, burned into her by the supernatural heat with which they close, minutes after being opened.
Her eyes, of course, are blacker than the darkest pearls, and number four.
Divine Form
There are certain elements common to many fine graves and temples, which, brought together, are sacred to Ea Nebel. She is far more likely to speak or manifest where they are present. Were she to have a truly divine form, it would probably exist as a collection of these properties, not limited to any one particular shape, place, or time.
They are:
Darkness. Night is the best time to speak to Ea Nebel. The shade of a dense canopy or a church with closed windows will do just fine. Caves and tombs, of course, are ideal.
Light. As small as a candle or as bright as a lighthouse. Moonlight will suffice- on some nights, even starlight.
A Boundary. Something that marks the space as sacred. Walls and fences are good, as are caves. Full enclosure is good but a single marker is enough.
An Icon. An image, effigy or symbol representing Ea Nebel herself. Her depiction may vary widely from one culture to another. A drawing of her face- three eyes on the right, one on the left- may be enough.
A Watcher. A living thing through which the Maiden may speak. Usually an animal, such as a moth, an owl, or a cat, though Ea Nebel may possess mortal gravekeepers or priests directly. If nothing else is present, a moth or spider usually presents itself, though if need be, Ea Nebel can talk through one's own reflection.
A Message. Written or spoken. Prayers, songs, and written stories or aphorisms are all appropriate. They do not have to be directed at Ea Nebel specifically, but if they are clearly not meant for her, she will not come.
A Gift. Ea Nebel will accept a wide variety of offerings. It is said she enjoys flowers. In times of need, a teardrop will do.
Note well that no grave or memorial is necessary for Ea Nebel to be present.
Mamang wanders the oceans in darkness and silence, hunting, dreaming. The thoughts that cross its simple mind are few and without words. The instinct that guides its elder heart is sovereign and pure. It is a whale.
Life
Is Mamang a god? No. Mamang commands no divine principle and wears no sacred crown. It is a whale.
Will Mamang die? Yes. In time Mamang will die. It is a whale.
Perhaps Mamang will be reborn.
Perhaps Mamang is not one particular whale, but a Whale, whose name endures long after any one Mamang's bones lie buried in the deep silt.
Perhaps a whale swims as it pleases through the ocean of time itself, and is not bound, like man, by such things as years.
Perhaps Mamang is simply long-lived.
After all- It is a whale.
Can Mamang be slain? Yes. Be it by demon, by man or by god, Mamang can be slain. Its fate is guarded by nothing more than the strength of its body. Its death is lured by nothing less than meat fit for one thousand men. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be recruited? No. Mamang does not speak. To bargain with Mamang is a fool's errand and an insult to the dignity of both parties. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be blessed? Yes, Mamang can be blessed. It is a being of grace, ancient and innocent. It is a whale.
Can Mamang be cursed? Yes, Mamang can be cursed. It is a wild beast, fierce and without mercy. It is a whale.
From where did Mamang come? From the sea did Mamang come. It is a whale.
Unto where will Mamang go? To the sea will Mamang go. It is a whale.
Aye, it is a whale, now and for ever more.
Addenda
Mamang will continue swimming with no particular aim until it is killed. As it is not a god, it will neither gain nor spend any units of Vigour. Instead, its presence will influence the lives of nearby mortals simply by virtue of being a 150-tonne rorqual.
Only mass and bestial willpower stand between Mamang and the divine forces at work around it. Any enchantment that falls upon the whale by will or by accident will be both wielded and suffered to its greatest extent. As time passes, it may become something like a canvas reflecting the falling inkdrops of the celestial arts, or a sponge steeped in the grime of heavenly negligence.
Edit: Ea Nebel's armour is not her standard attire. Her costumes vary, but typically include a black jacket, boots, and hat. Some combination like this is typical.
The grey goddess took a deep breath, pressed her flat hands tightly together, fingers over her mouth, inclined her eyes towards Heaven, and exhaled. "You need," she said, very slowly, "to take a long stick, with a wide tip, dig a hole with that stick, put her inside the hole, and then- listen very closely- you need to cover her up again with the dirt that was in the hole." She stared intently into the eyes of the two elves standing in front of her, her own elf-ears stiff with trepidation.
The two elves looked at one another. The male one, Phathed, briefly looked down at the ground and scratched the back of his neck. "Does... the tip of the stick have to be wide?"
"No," said Ea Nebel, her hands still pressed together, punctuating her words with a downwards movement, a nod, and, still unaccustomed to this body's remarkable sensory apparatus and its delicate musculature, a little ear-wiggle. "The stick doesn't have to be wide. It can be a pointy stick or a really blunt stick. It doesn't matter. You just need to dig the hole." Preferably a few feet deep, but over the last minute and a half Ea Nebel had lowered her standards... appreciably. Another pause transpired.
"I prefer digging with my hands," said the female.
Ea Nebel clenched her teeth behind her lips and made no further movement.
"If the stick doesn't even matter," said Phathed, frowning a bit, "why did you tell us about it? Is there anything else about this whole thing that doesn't matter? Does... does any of it?"
"We can find you a stick if you really want," the woman said hurriedly. Her name was Tohnayl. Previously it had been Clover, but she had swapped it with another elf, who hadn't been too happy with his for some reason. She raised her hands reassuringly. "Really, we can get you all kinds of sticks. There are lots of them about. This is a forest," she said, gesturing helpfully to the canopy around her. Phathed nodded. It was clear that they would have to take things slowly with the stranger.
"I told you about the sticks because I thought you might have some tools," said Ea Nebel, rubbing her forehead, her free hand clenched tightly around the hem of this impossibly short dress. On top of covering barely her shoulders, it was just... hideously white, glittering so bright she felt she could outshine the Moon. "Tools would help you dig faster, and some sticks might help you dig without getting your hands and clothes filthy. If that doesn't matter, you can use your hands."
"We can wash in the lake," said Phathed. "It doesn't matter if we're filthy. We can rub it off, see? Our clothes all clean up nice and easy, too- hold on, wait." He tapped his lips with a finger, then raised it. "Hold on a minute. Didn't you say, right at the start, that we had to bury the body because it was 'unclean'?"
"We don't mind if it's not clean," added Tohnayl. "We weren't going to touch it anyway. And Ternyp doesn't mind either. Because she's dead. Dead people don't care about that kind of thing very much. I think."
Ea Nebel laced her fingers tightly, turning around to the Iron Boar for help. The giant hog, for its part, had selected a warm patch of sunlight, laid on its side and made itself very comfortable. It met her eyes (still four) for a moment and then closed them again, untroubled. She turned back.
"Ternyp," she began, "is very dead, and that means she's going to stink. She'll stink to high Heaven and attract all kinds of wolves and raptors that you don't want anywhere near your obelisk. She'll also bloat, and rot, and fill up with maggots, and that's going to be a horrible thing to look at for anyone who walks past her, especially any of her friends. And if you don't put her in the ground now, while she's fresh, it's going to be much harder to put her in the ground later. Because she'll stink. And- let me be very clear on this- if you handle her with your bare hands once she is rotting, you will get her juice all over you and you will start a plague. Did you get any of that? Please, please, Heaven help me please, tell me you understand."
The two elves pondered, then slowly, solemnly, began to nod. An exhausted, broken smile began to leak from Nebel's lips. Then they opened their mouths.
"Once she stinks, we won't go anywhere near her. Promise."
"No one else will go there either. She'll be too stinky."
"The raptors can have her. They'll be too busy to bother with us. Everyone needs to eat, right?"
"Ternyp didn't have any friends anyway. She was too busy climbing trees all the time."
"That's how she died, you see."
"You can bury her, if you really want."
"We won't stop you at all. Really, be our guest."
"Would you like a nice stick?"
Ea Nebel chewed on her knuckles, hot tears welling in her eyes. She turned around to lean her head against the nearest tree and let out a defeated sob. When she realised what that was probably doing to her clothes, she quickly grabbed the back hem of the dress with a fist and held it down. A second later she dispelled the elven form and garb altogether, grabbing the sides of her broad hat and pulling it down around her face.
"Just leave her for the vultures," she mumbled, walking quickly away into the woods where the Iron Boar stood waiting.
Tohnayl waved. "Bye-bye!" When Phathed, feeling rather bad for the bizarre yet clearly well-meaning apparition, moved to follow her into the woods, he saw that both she and her animal had somehow disappeared. With a sigh and a shrug, he turned to Tohnayl, who was smiling happily.
"What's a plague, anyway?"
Ea Nebel meets some elves and quickly discovers that her job is going to be a lot harder than she thought it would be.
Voligan sifted his massive hands through the devastation, spreading his senses throughout the rock and dust, searching for whatever it was that had caused such a physical explosion and a magical tearing. He knew frustratingly little. It was divine in origin. There had been an attack, or an accident. Both, maybe. It had changed the entire universe on a fundamental level, ripping something away and tearing it into pieces. Throw in the fact that Iqelis’s touch was all over the sea not too far away, and Voligan had more than enough incentive to figure out what had happened. Not that he was having any success in that.
Chucking another large piece of mountain away, Voligan continued his slow steps towards the center of the devastation. Perhaps he would find answers there. At the very least he would be able to say that he tried to find the truth of whatever had happened here. After a few minutes he stopped and placed his hands in the dust again, digging through the earth as he extended his senses. Every piece of gravel, every grain of sand, every boulder, and every speck of dust he examined thoroughly and then moved on from. Each one was useless. They all told the same story. Something of terrible divine power had destroyed them. Whatever had happened had either included so many gods that it was impossible to differentiate, or one very careful god had covered their tracks.
He had almost disregarded another piece of gravel when he noticed something odd about it. It only had the touch of two gods on it, rather than many. More importantly, it was moving. Well, attempting to move. It seemed to struggle with purpose, despite failing to move past the pit of dirt it had fallen in.
Voligan moved quickly towards the struggling gravel, scooping the earth around it and bringing the entire pile up to his eye level. With a gesture, all of the dirt and rock disappeared and left only a very small simulacrum of Homura’s standing in his palm. It was different though. Something was off. Another god's influence, perhaps.
Voligan’s head tilted in slight confusion. “You are very far from home, little one. Where are you going with such determination, in this cursed graveyard of land?”
“...-”
The little shell jerked forwards as if wracked with nausea, jelly-legged and quivering. Its head rolled, trying to direct its eyes up towards the sound of the great voice, but it could make no steady movement. It seemed barely to move under its own power at all- some queer impetus threw it around from inside, almost bulging from the skin, as if animated by the flailings of the newly blind.
“I- heard- her-” the simulacrum’s lip shook, its body thrown stiff and then slumped forward. Its eyes bulged. “-crying...”
The shell’s movements changed in character. Something pushed from inside its thorax, splitting the skin of its upper back, twitching as it emerged, black as jet. The tiny shell sagged as its stuffing drained out of it, the grisly erection sucking away the fire that had filled its skin, starting from the fingers, and the face; when it was finished, only the outer layer remained, an oily, dead splat of empty skin heaped around its base in a sagging inhuman mess of lips and limbs.
The chrysalis stood silent. Now as tall as a man, it stretched up to the sky as if embedded in Voligan’s steady hand, and throbbed slowly, irregularly, filled with unseen fire. It was an obsidian monolith- it was a figure clothed in dense black silk, veiled by its hat- it was a suit of heavy armour, crawling with scrapes- it was a seething pillar of flies- it was a tower of macabre motifs cast in an iron sarcophagus- it was a drop of ferrofluid, stretching and straining on the natural magnetism of Voligan’s body.
And there it stood, soaked in the gaze of the gods, unable to answer.
Voligan stared at the chrysalis for a few moments more, waiting to see if there would be any more changes. There were none. Its shape only melted and reformed in simple cycles, breathing. At least he had discovered something in his trip here, though what he was not sure of yet. He looked over in the direction that the shell had been heading, musing aloud to himself.
“Hmm. Crying is more than I have to go off of, little Shell. Let's go see whose crying you heard, and perhaps you will come out by the time we arrive.”
He began walking in the direction the shell had been attempting to go to, talking aloud to the chrysalis. “The flies and general dark choices of your shell tell me that Iqelis had something to do with your creations, though if it was intentional or accidental, I am not sure. The iron and fire could be Astus’ touch, though I doubt he has left his workshop since he had a place to put one. One could argue that the iron and ferrofluid were my influence, but I would hope that I’d remember creating you. Especially in this devastation.
“But nonetheless, there are two gods who took part in your creation, willingly or not. We will have to find the other one later, as it is important to know where one is from. You do not need to meet Iqelis, though I suspect he will shove his way into your matters. He is self important like that. If you’re lucky, you will only ever hear of the Monarch and not meet him. Our creator, and ruler, is quick to temper and strikes me as harsh. Not someone you want to be interacting with regularly.“
Voligan continued like this, telling the chrysalis of the gods, goddesses, and the various goings on that he knew about until he noticed it’s shifting form begin to change again.
Before it had time to settle into any one shape, however, a dim blur swept by at the edge of his vision. A loosely measured fraction of a moment later, a large rough-hewn stone stood suspended on empty air by his arm, held aloft by a palpable sense of intimidation more than by any concrete force. On top of it squatted the all too familiar crystalline figure of Iqelis, surrounded by a throng of agitated flies. The god's eye was fixed on the shifting cocoon so intently that he appeared oblivious to the titanic Earthheart's presence altogether.
"The Flow brings us together once more," he greeted, his gaze unmoving even as one arm gestured widely around, "A strange lodestone you have there. Did you pry it out from under one of these rocks?"
Voligan’s fingers closed around the chrysalis, blocking it entirely from view. He shifted so that his body was mostly between Iqelis and the chrysalis.
“I found it wandering this devastation. Searching for someone’s crying. You wouldn’t have anything to do with this destruction, would you? Perhaps you found another god that ‘went against the Flow’. Though I must admit, blowing up an entire peninsula doesn’t strike me as something you would do.” He glanced over his shoulder back towards the Tlacan sea and its floating mountains. “Quietly poisoning an entire sea and then floating mountains over it seems more within your preferences. Anything is possible, I suppose. Especially if your victim wasn’t already beaten down and caught off guard.”
The light in Iqelis' eye flared up with the wrathful glow of a dying star at the mention of his exploits over the great water.
"For that," he snapped with uncharacteristic vitriol as he pointed almost accusingly in the Tlacan's direction, "You have to thank the noxious meddling of our dear sister of the moon. She would sooner tear up the entire Galbar than let me work without her verminous webs sapping my every effort."
He quieted down somewhat, the light in his eye fading to a less scorching intensity, before continuing. "And it is her, I suspect, that wrought this ruin around us, surely to crush some other wretch that had displeased her. I have been seeking their name, as well as something that walks and should not." He did not budge, but a few flies sat down on Voligan's closed hand.
From between those azoic fingers, inaudible to any mortal ear, came the finest, faintest little voice: “Her name was Ashevelen.”
Voligan let out a deep sigh, foregoing his reply to Iqelis as he uncurled his fingers and raised the chrysalis back to eye height. “I see you’ve found your voice, little Shell. You say her name was Ashevelen. Do you mean Ashevelen, the goddess of Luck? And do you know where Ashevelen’s resting place is?”
The chrysalis continued to morph in silence. For a few seconds, the stone-god appeared to have spoken to nothing. But the voice within only hesitated so long. “I think so. She was... the little lady, who rests between the mountains now. I just...” Another soft pause. “...can’t see.”
”It speaks.” Whatever Iqelis’ interest in the victim of the world-quaking rampage had been, it had evaporated in a moment under the unexpected rejoinder. His words were harsh and cutting, not charged with the same spite of when he had spoken of Yudaiel, but laced with a wholly new shade of menace. ”And it knows the annals of the dead better than us. Just as I feared, it has become much more than it ought to be.”
Voligan ignored Iqelis’s ramblings, bringing the chrysalis closer to his body as he began walking once more. “Well little Shell, we will continue heading in the direction that you were attempting to head before I found you. That might lead us to these mountains that Ashevelen is laying in. If not, I’m sure you’ll be able to guide us when you come out and can properly see.” He turned to look at Iqelis. “You are welcome to come along. I imagine you are as curious as I am as to where the final resting place of our sister lay.” The words, as was Voligan’s habit, were spoken calmly. No malice, no excitement, just an unwavering rumble that remained unperturbed in the face of Iqelis’s venom. The other god drifted along in silence on his rock.
No more than two of the Earthheart’s great footfalls had dented the dust before the hidden voice chimed in, once again, from its silk-iron-charcoal cocoon. “You won’t find her this way. I… was dizzy…” The speaker was soft, distinctly human, muffled but perhaps female, and underlaid by a faint crackling buzz that came neither from the cocoon nor from Iqelis. “I’m sorry… Voligan. I-” Another violent twitch shook the structure from within as it morphed from whirring scarabs back to iron-oil, and the voice seemed to break. “I’m stuck.”
”Some things should not be uncovered,” the One God thrummed without looking.
“Hmm. We can’t have you being stuck if you are our guide to Ashevelen’s resting place.” Voligan mused. “We’ll have to rectify that.” He gently tapped on the chrysalis until a crack appeared along the top of it, careful not to bring too much force down onto the chrysalis. A strong white light shone through, flickering like a candle made of snow.
“Come along, little Shell. The world awaits your arrival, and we need you to give our sister proper rest.”
The sarcophagus shuddered. Two sets of almost human fingers emerged from the top of the crack, curled outwards to grip the crystal surface, and tore the peak of the chrysalis wide. The hair it revealed was filthy, soaked in fly ichor and tar. The crack widened, exposing the light that shone from a twisting mass of clay simulacrum-flesh that boiled like bitumen.
One eye- one white, blazing eye of crystal fire inherited wholesale from the Lord of the Flies. It could not survive. Drowned in mortality, the eye flickered, dividing again and again into twin globules of white that crawled outwards across the face before fusing or sinking or shattering into smaller spheroids as the white fire flared once more, filling the wet ash of the Shell with dozens of rejected imitations created and resorbed in moments. The grey skin churned tirelessly, drawn like water to settle into its natural human shape, only to be boiled away by those eyes. Again and again the one-eye of the One God refused to be subsumed into the two-eyes of Man.
But this little spark was not the Eye, and this one little god was not the One God.
The face raised itself up to the imperial Sun, uncovering the black lips below, its hair falling wetly away to reveal the profile of a face so like its mother. There, under the dry light of Heaven, the boiling slowed, and the face hardened. The white crystal burned itself off, dulled by the brighter light, and tarnished to grey-brown, then, slowly, to black. The eye continued to bifurcate as it cooled, once, unevenly, then again, the larger sphere yielding three more- and there it settled, divided into four, unable to reform, locked in place.
The grey fingers holding open the chrysalis wavered, and the obsidian skin forced itself shut, again, sealing tightly. From within, pounding- then a scream.
“Hurrghh- aah- AAAAAHH!”
The chrysalis tore open, revealing empty air. A pale white body staggered somewhere on Voligan’s raised forearm, dripping odious fluids, cradling her head. It sealed itself, and she was nowhere to be found in the puddle- until there she was, crouching on the Earthheart’s titanic shoulder, rocking back and forth with her face in her arms. The broken sarcophagus melted, only to surge, leaping upon its escaped contents in an inky streak, knocking her back and staggering almost off Voligan’s shoulder as it wrapped itself around her, swathing her in black, unable to let go.
And there, at last, she lay, clothed now in a veil of carcass-flies, and now in a long coat and boots of finest black, holding in limp fingers a wide-brimmed hat as her uncovered hair dripped onto the living stone.
Voligan’s voice rumbled, pleased that she had been able to free herself. “Well,The flies, glowing eye, and human form answers the question of who helped make you. Welcome to Galbar, our canvas. What is your name, little Shell?”
While he waited for the newly created demi-god to gather herself, he turned his attention towards Iqelis, turning so that the shoulder with the little Shell was away from the god of Doom. “I’m going to assume that Homura came by and gave you some of her humans. Does she know what you and her have created? Or is it a surprise to the both of you, the path that the Flow has taken?”
”She knew no more than I did when she left this place,” Iqelis, who had been following the newborn with a grimly intent gaze until she disappeared behind Voligan’s mountainous bulk, craned his head forward in an absent nod, a faint bitter sheen in his voice. ”And had I foreseen that this might happen, I would have cut its germ in the bud while it was in my hands.”
He raised his eye to look into the stony visage that towered over him, its glow curious, prying. ”Tell me, brother, what would you do if in a thoughtless moment you sank all the lands you had raised back into the sea, and then plunged its bed so far into the deeps that no scrap of earth might ever see the light of day again?”
“I would raise new lands, or recover the old ones. It wouldn’t be difficult, since that is why the Monarch created me. I have control over all the lands on Galbar, just as you have control over all the ends of Galbar.” Voligan replied, casual certainty filling his rumble. “I do not know why you wish to destroy her. She is the only thing guiding us towards Ashevelen’s resting place. Unless you’d rather wander aimlessly through these shattered plains for who knows how long.”
”Ashevelen is a thing of the past,” Iqelis waved a hand dismissively, startling a few flies, ”Now that I know who has gone out the mouth of the river, I have no more need to dredge out her memory. She, however…” He jabbed a finger towards the stone-god’s far shoulder.
”Do you remember when, over the body of that living mistake, I named myself the attendant of the inevitable?” He pensively looked ahead again. ”I serve the law of the one truth, which says that nothing can be endless. None can overcome it, but even to attempt that, to try and bestow eternity on a shard of existence, is sacrilege. That hatchling has all the markings of what passes for an immortal, and it was I who made her so. I have transgressed in the gravest way against my own highest purpose, and the only expiation is her doom.”
“I’m sorry.” The new voice, still backed by that alien drone, was still as soft as it had been a minute ago. The newborn godlet had sat up with her face buried in her knees and her arms wrapped around them, darkened by her hat, facing outwards and away from her divine seniors.
“You have nothing to apologize for, little Shell.” Voligan reassured, not taking his eyes off of Iqelis. “If you have no desire to find Ashevelen, you may leave then. I intend to find our sister and mark her burial place. It is a dark thing, to lose three gods so soon after their creation.” Walls of metal rose from his shoulder and surrounded the godlet, protecting her, and muffling the words he spoke to Iqelis.
“Before you go, I have a question. You say you are the servant of the one truth. That you ensure nothing is endless. Does that mean, brother, that you intend to actively ensure the ends of the Monarch, yourself, and the rest of us? If yes, then that is a dangerous game to play, especially with our ruler. You will have made enemies of everyone, and only given Yudaiel allies in the quarrel you two have. I would request that you leave now, lest I have to fight a second god before the sun has even set.” He turned to fully face Iqelis, still calm and relaxed. “If no, then I see no reason to bring doom upon the little Shell. We will all face our doom in the end, and there is no need to force what will happen naturally.”
"That is the one truth, brother," the One-Eye spoke tonelessly, his voice the sussurrant sliding of a mirror over ice. His gaze had dimmed, barely brighter than the mere refraction of the sunlight above. "Things must run their course before they meet their end, that is not for me to change. Aletheseus was an anomaly, opposition to the highest law in the flesh. There is no other divine fate that I must sweep along by my own hand," he stopped, staring into the jagged horizon for a moment, as flies hummed around him, "Besides one that was thrust into the Flow by that same hand, in defiance of its duty. She is sinless, and yet…"
There was a long spell of silence and buzzing, before Iqelis turned to meet the larger god's eyes again.
"Let me see her, Voligan." His words could barely be distinguished from the wind tearing itself as it blew over stone spikes and broken gulches, a low, hollow, almost lifeless hiss.
“There’s no need for that,” said the woman who stood there, unbound by such simple walls as iron, facing the One Eye with four as black as pearls. Her stance was tall. Her coat whipped in the alpine wind, spun over grey skin the shade of boiling water, over bones as white as marble. The air inside her fizzed with alien power, and black fire was her heart. “Here I am- Father.”
Iqelis slowly rose from his crouch, crystalline joints grinding and crackling as he drew himself up to his full height. Against the sun, he was a gaunt, uneven shadow, looming over the godling like the echo of a troubling dream despite the distance between them. Then his hands, which had been resting by his sides, snapped up, manifold and faster than the eye could follow.
He was before her, a hand's length away, before the fragment of stone his foot had dislodged in leaping away had the time to fall the minuscule span below it. His arms were a canopy of skeletal branches around them, outside of which everything, from the flies to the wind to the distant extremity of Voligan's limb, floated in an invisible sea, sluggishly forcing its way with agonizing effort.
"Swear it," came the urgent, almost imploring whisper of fine quartz breaking far away in the night, "Swear that when the day comes, you will not flee from the end, that you will not refuse what you will know was meant to be. Swear it," the quartz shattered into a thousand tinkling shards, "my child."
“I’m not afraid,” said her lips the shade of bitumen. Even her hat lay in mid-air, unable to fall before she had spoken her vow. “I knew what was coming from the moment I heard your voice. I swear it, father. It is no burden.”
The one eye lost its dimness and blazed from within, blindingly white, and it was gone. After the passing of its glare, the silent ocean was abruptly no more, and the wind howled and the flies buzzed and the pebbles fell. The day itself seemed brighter, as if a shadow had been washed away that no one had noticed while it had been there, but all perceived keenly in its aftermath.
Iqelis was crouching on his rock again, eye fixed on what was, beyond anyone's doubt now, his daughter.
"The stain I take on my hands may never be washed," he crackled somberly, "Make it worth, somehow. I will ask no more."
The demigoddess picked up her fallen hat. “I will deliver no less,” she said. She shivered, slightly, as if the light of Heaven were cooler than the haze which had passed. “I can already hear bones clattering from every corner of the world. They weren’t like me. They didn’t remember that they would die.”
“Then it is settled.” Voligan spoke into the silence, leisurely dropping the massive boulders he had raised into the sky and his skin around the demigoddess descending from its sharpened form. “I am going to find the resting place of Ashevelen. Little Shell, I request your help in finding it. Iqelis, you are welcome to come along. If not, I hope our next encounter is less tense.”
The ground far below trembled faintly as a would-be bludgeon returned to its place in the peaceful earth. The demigoddess rested a hand on a retracting outcrop, staring back up at the titanic face shadowing her, smiling a small smile. “I’m sorry, uncle. I didn’t mean to worry you.” She planted a boot firmly against his skin, catching something in the arch of it: the cocking-stirrup of a large arbalest, which she cranked with a short grunt. She raised it to her shoulders and loosed a bolt, scratching a thin line of black far across the sky.
“That way.”
Voligan followed the black streak, ambling along at a gentle pace. “You have nothing to apologize for, little Shell. It is not your fault you were created.” A moment passed in silence before he spoke again. “What do you call yourself, child of Doom? I can’t imagine little Shell is your name.”
“I call myself Ea Nebel,” said the woman, her gaze fixed far on the horizon. “A god for the grave. I don’t have a name yet.”
“Is Ea Nebel not your name?”
“No matter who I am, I would still be Ea Nebel,” said Ea Nebel. “The rest… I think that might take some more time.”
”And time you shall have,” Iqelis mused, drifting along on his rock.
“Fair enough, Little Shell.”
They soon came to where the black contrail ended, gently resting in the center of a massive crater that was taller than Voligan himself. The walls of the crater were covered in glittering blood red diamonds that each radiated a small piece of divine power. Voligan knelt and gathered a handful of the gems into his hand, bringing them closer for all to see. “Hmm. It would seem that Ashevelen didn’t go without leaving her last mark upon the world. Luck is gone, but her presence is not.”
“It was a cruel fate,” said Ea Nebel, staring at the misshapen core of rock at its centre. It might not have been easy to spot, but from this close, even she could recognise the remains of the twin hammers that had crushed her in a stolen memory. “It’s over now. Nothing left but an echo.”
”It was what it had to be,” came the crackle from above. Some flies set down on the gemstones, rubbing their forelegs and marvelling at the absence of carrion in a place of death. ”Fate is never cruel, though those who enact it may be.”
Ea Nebel tightened her mouth, slightly, remembering the child’s yell that had sounded from underneath those rocks mere days ago. Cruel, indeed.
Voligan looked over towards her, ignoring Iqelis’s dramatic ramblings. She was now somewhere about his feet, though she had neither climbed nor fallen. “I am going to make a mountain range to both mark her grave and help this battered land heal. Do you have any ideas or requests about marking Ashevelen’s resting place?”
A voice fizzed up at him. “I think we should cast the dice, and let them land as they will,” said Ea Nebel, rolling a tiny red diamond back and forth between her fingertips. “It’s sad to see a bright heart stilled. But the little lady wouldn’t have wanted us to cry too long. Let fortune have its last play.” She looked up to Voligan from his shoulder. “There will be people here, one day. They should have a chance to get lost, or be found.”
“Hmm. Very well.” Voligan created a small plateau that mimicked the crater with a pile of blood diamonds on them. “Roll your dice, and we shall see how they create fortune’s refuge.”
She nodded, taking up a chunk of chalk that lay in the stone altar and, with a few strokes, dividing a flat part of it into larger and smaller sections, marking each one with a little sign. Taking the diamonds into her hat, she shook them briefly, inclined her eyes to the Sun, and let them fall among the symbols. “In the north region… Six caves. Eleven arches. Nine lakes… but only one valley. Two waterfalls. Thirteen peaks, one double. A scarp. A tor.” She counted all the fallen diamonds, then scooped them up again. “In the western region...”
The plateau rose and crumbled as she counted its landforms, one by one, modelling her words. It was crowded, chaotic, and, by the time she was finished, densely packed with more shapes than she could easily count. Every hidden corner of the land would have its own hideaways, wonders, and perils, carved in rock and snow and river-gravel. A wild garden it was, rich in sights for the bold fools who would one day dare to map it.
Voligan raised his hands and as he shaped the area around and in the crater as the rolled dice dictated, the blood diamonds sinking into the earth and across the destroyed land. Voligan continued to spread his fingers and send more mountains growing across the horizon, creating a mountain range similar to that of the Bones of Fortitude. “The blood diamonds would only bring greed and conflict here. She would not have wanted that.”
Ea Nebel nodded, watching the horizon far as Galbar creaked and rumbled and shaped itself all around her. “It is done.” A chorus of flies sang its assent.
Voligan nodded, pleased with what they had done. It wouldn’t make the crime go away, but it would help the world heal from it.
“Hmm. It is. And I believe we have answered our questions and settled disputes. I must go back to what I was doing before her death. Iqelis, I hope that our next meeting involves less death than the other two. Good luck in your endeavours.” He turned his attention to Ea Nebel. “I imagine you have things you wish to do as well, little Shell. Do you want me to drop you off anywhere before we go our separate ways? Or would you prefer to stay here for a little while?”
“I need to find my feet.” Ea Nebel raised a hand to the light, watching red sunlight sparkle away from the tiny diamond set into a grey-iron ring on her finger. “I need time to pace every corner of Galbar, so I will know it. I can find my way.”
A distant crash joined the rumbling of the final ground-shifts as Iqelis' rock went plummeting down, no longer compelled by incorporeal threats. The god landed on the Earthheart's mighty shoulder, close by the younger divine, this time with no distortions of time's flow to hasten him along.
"Sometimes, you will be the one who must deliver something to its end."
One of his hands took hold of another's finger and wrenched, snapping it off with a dry crack. Severed and struck with a deeper rigor than was even usual for its glossy skin, it looked like a short, recurve obsidian blade more than anything else. Iqelis tapped its base, and a length of porous grey stone slid out of it, as though it had impossibly always been inside it.
"I am sure you will know when to use this." He tossed the curved dagger to Ea Nebel, holding an intact hand outsplayed behind it to slow its flight to a leisurely crawl.
The godling raised a soft, pale hand, allowing the hilt of the glass knife to settle between her fingers as lightly as a feather. Ea Nebel wrapped her fingers around it, squeezing her fist as she turned it around; they oozed with tar as the darkened blade reflected across the featureless surface of her three right eyes. When she loosened her hold, a rubber coat had bonded to the scoria. She saw the light of Iqelis’s eye glint in its surface.
“Without flinching,” she murmured, and meant it. She looked up again, the white fire now glinting on her own tarnished eyes, where before they had been dull. “I… I will honour you, father.”
“Hmm. One should never walk the earth without companionship, even if she does have weapons for protection.” Voligan leaned down and touched a finger to the earth, pulling a large porcine figure crafted from hematite to the surface. A small moment of concentration and he filled it with life, igniting the eye holes with a soft green glow. It’s shoulders matched Ea Nebel’s own and it looked over at her expectantly.
“They will be your companion as you pace through the world and lay to rest those who require it.”
Her eyebrows rose. Ea Nebel tilted her head, took a hesitant step towards the sculpture, watched the green fire within follow her, its sleek ferrous body unmoving. She lifted her hand, then lay it on the figure’s back. For a second it was cool- then she recoiled, the glossy mineral body burning a dull incandescent red, the boar’s back licked by a mane of green fire as it forged itself into life. The hematite settled swiftly into a hard skin of iron and rust, and grey metal dust spiked into fierce bristles along its back as if clumped on a magnet; Rippled crucible steel were the tusks that sprouted from its maw, and glossy were its hematite eyes. It dipped its head as it examined her, breathing and pawing the earth, embers of green fire flying from its footprints.
The godling grabbed its tusk, and the boar allowed her to pull its mouth slightly apart before shaking her off, a single heave of its neck throwing her almost to the ground- and she laughed. “I love it!” The beast grunted dismissively as she took a nearby spike of Voligan’s skin between her hands and kissed the stone. “I will call it the Iron Boar. Thank you, uncle.”
“Hmm. There is no need to thank me. It will help you find your way and aid you in your purpose.” Voligan rumbled, pleased with himself. “But now I must take my leave. Unless you wish to come to Aletheseus’s gravesite as well, you will have to hop off my shoulder.”
"I have seen enough of that one," Iqelis gave a macabre chuckle to the notes of snapping bones, "Farewell, brother."
He took a stride forward and lay a cold, hard hand on Ea Nebel's shoulder with a low "Keep afloat, daughter," before vaulting off the titanic god and vanishing beyond the crater's embellished edge in a gleaming blur.
Ea Nebel watched the empty space where the One God had been. Her hand was raised slightly, but he was already gone. She clenched it briefly, but still waved, a little, to the empty space. “Goodbye...”
The hog grunted again. It was time for her to depart.
“Farewell, uncle,” said Ea Nebel. “I will always remember you, as long as there is earth beneath my feet.”
“Hmm. I would hope we’d meet again so that you don’t need to only remember me. If you ever want my assistance, simply call out. I’m always listening.”
She smiled. “I will.” Ea Nebel hauled herself onto the back of the hog, who accepted her without a shrug, and cast out her arm to the many mountains of Serendipity’s End. “Fly!” The stones did not yield to her command, but she flexed her grip around her father’s fingernail, and they quickly fell in line. The hog’s feet clattered against stone after stone, the great weight of it tilting the platforms one by one as the goddess descended, holding firmly to her hat.
They struck the ground in a cloud of dust, and then there was no sight of her.
In a little gulch, under a tree above a pool filled with the brightest of blue water, behind a garden maze of stones that stood and leaned and tumbled about in a thousand sheltered sanctuaries that the sun would not reach at its highest and hottest, there stood a little buff stone. It had fallen from a sprouting mountain and been washed clean by a waterfall, and at the end of its journey it lay here, sleeping in a sunbeam, warm as a laugh.
That stone beckoned the lost, the lucky, the castaways of fate, calling them to hide among the many hollows of its home, and find their way out again. They would all find their way out, in time- maybe not home, for the spell on the stone made few promises, but always somewhere with a hint of good fortunes, or at least exciting ones.
Luck is gone, read the woman in the veil, her eyes resting on the sacred symbols written in the rock. But her blessings remain.
She looked around one last time at her uncle’s work, the seen and unseen magic of a grave for a goddess they had never known. For a moment she thought she saw something sparkle at the bottom of the pool. Then she sighed, lifted her gaze, and was gone.
-Voligan is ineffectively searching through the devastated ruins where Yudaiel whacked Ashevelen, looking for the source of all this destruction when he comes across the very small simulacrum that Iqelis lost. He asked it what it was doing, and it said ‘I heard her crying’ then turned into a chrysalis.
-It seemed to be heading in a specific direction, and he had nothing better to go off of, so he started heading in the same direction with it in tow. He idly chatted to it while walking along, filling it in on some divine goings-on. The cocoon itself is mute.
-Iqelis shows up and asks him where he found it. Immediately protective, since he knows how stabby Iqelis can be, Voligan gives a brief answer before distracting Iqelis by bringing up Yudaiel. It works like a charm and before Voligan can continue, the Chrysalis speaks and names Ashevelen as the one slain here.
-Iqelis immediately gets unnerved because he’ll have to pay child support because he fears he might have created an immortal (with Homura), which is anathema to his purpose. Voligan, meanwhile, asks for information and helps the demigod out of the chrysalis shell.
-Iqelis states that his purpose is to ensure the end of all things, and that he has created an immortal. Voligan uses this to ask whether or not Iqelis intends to actively kill more gods, not-so-subtly hinting that if the answer is yes the other gods will gang up with Yudaiel and kill Iqelis. The answer is fortunately no.
-Iqelis demands to see his daughter, as Voligan is shielding her, and she comes out to face him. They have a discussion where she swears she won’t try to escape her fated end and he won’t try to kill her then and there. Voligan drops the massive boulders he had picked up, and backs away from fighting Iqelis.
-Iqelis’s daughter points the way towards Ashevelen’s resting place, and on the journey there reveals that her name is, probably, Ea Nebel.
-She and Voligan chat briefly about Ashevelen’s fate and what should be done to mark her place, before deciding to make the Mountain Range Serendipity’s End and the randomly-generated Monument Fortune’s Refuge. While doing this, he spreads the last remnant of Ashevelen’s power Blood Diamonds far away and across the land, to minimize greed and conflict in Fortune’s Refuge.
-Their work here done, Voligan offers to keep ferrying Ea Nebel around, but she wants to wander. As a parting gift, and perhaps a reminder of her job, Iqelis snaps off one of his fingers to make an enchanted obsidian knife for her. She promises to use it.
-Voligan, as a parting gift alone, creates an extraordinary pig-like creature that will serve as Ea Nebel’s companion and guardian. She very creatively names it The Iron Boar (Mk. III copyright license pending). Ea is delighted, the Boar less so.
-Voligan tells Ea that if she ever wants help to just call out to him. She then hops on The Iron Boar and rides off into the mountains.
"The Flow brings us together once more," he greeted, his gaze unmoving even as one arm gestured widely around, "A strange lodestone you have there. Did you pry it out from under one of these rocks?"
Voligan’s fingers closed around the chrysalis, squishing it. “Perhaps.”
The other god drifted along in silence on his rock, sipping his latte.
No more than two of the Earthheart’s great footfalls had dented the dust before the hidden voice chimed in, once again, from its silk-iron-charcoal cocoon. “Uh, hey, i'm really sorry, but I'm kinda stuck in this-'”
”Good,” the One God thrummed without looking up from his phone.
The broken sarcophagus melted, only to surge, leaping upon its escaped contents in an inky streak, knocking her up and off of Voligan’s shoulder.
“Shit.” said Voligan.
“I imagine you have things you wish to do as well, little Shell. Do you want me to drop you off anywhere before we go our separate ways? Or would you prefer to stay here for a little while?”
“CAN WE GO TO DISNEYLAND PLEAASE MY DAD DOESN’T TAKE ME ANYWHERE”
“Well, it is the most magical place in the world.” And off they went. It was awesome.
The godling raised a soft, pale hand, allowing the hilt of the glass knife to settle between her fingers as lightly as a feather. She wrapped her hands around it, squeezing the hilt. “omg my hand went numb ufcckkfuf-”
-Ashevelen’s death resulted in Blood Diamonds being created. Small red diamonds that, when used by mortals, grant the user a euphoric sense of joy and happiness and magical powers that don’t rely on the Tree and are based on the personality of the user. (2 vigor from Ashevelen before she died.)
-Voligan spends 2 Vigor to make the mountain range Serendipity’s End. A large mountain range marking the area that Ashevelen died in.
-Volgian spends another 2 vigor making the Monument Fortune’s Refuge. A magical area that draws the unlucky, the despondent, and those who need help and safety. It is a magical maze that ensures that no one ever needs anything in it, and that finding your way in with hostile intentions is impossible without divine aid. Those who wish to can leave, exiting anywhere in the world. It is a place where people can be lost or found, as they wish. At its center is the spot where Ashevelen died, marked by a simple headstone that reads ’Luck is gone. But her blessings remain.’
-Voligan spends 1 Vigor (total of two, but halved due to the earth aspect) to make The Iron Boar an extraordinary creature that serves as Ea Nebel’s companion and guardian. 3 Remaining Vigor at the end of this post.
-Iqelis spends 2 Vigor (discounted from 4 by the Doom aspect) to make a dagger that sends those it strikes to their premature end, via burning through their remaining lifespan in a moment. It will also hasten the decay of inanimate objects. -This brings him down to a total of 2 at the end of the post.
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.
VI
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.
Mamang continues to deal with the fallout of the blast, then heads back to the Giantlands.
It encounters a Nisshiniek, and they examine one another. The Nisshi learns that it can help clean the whale of recently-created parasites, and doesn't seem to mind, since these species were made by an unknown god in an unknown land. This interaction will probably spread and repeat in future years, as the Nisshiniek and whale territories overlap nicely in the summer season.
Man, this chapter is just maximum whaleposting. Mucho texto about types of whale, their movement and behaviour. I do not apologise.
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.
III
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...
IV
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.
Mamang weans and sets out into the ocean between the continents. The fish created at the edge of the giantlands (and other biomes) are thriving and quickly spreading out into the ocean, loosely following the coasts. Thanks to their rapid turnover and the selective pressure of expanding quickly, some of them might evolve to become more normal-sized over time. The same might happen to whales, but Mamang is already here.
Voi imbues all future living beings with souls. As Mamang has already been born, he is- probably, maybe- not granted a soul, but he is given the seed of future souls that will live in his descendents.
Later he encounters one of Ruina's holes in the ocean, ironically at around the same time she sends her message about Iqelis. The warped shape of the ocean nearly kills him. He escapes, in a way passing his own test. He learns a lesson about things that are known and unknown. Other whales have not been so lucky.
Shortly afterwards, Yudaiel's orbital strike on Ashevelen catches Mamang at the worst possible time, bruising his head and deafening one ear. Water and distance protect him from the rest of the explosion, but he witnesses Homura's fight to contain the blast, as well as her dance for the slain.
A worthy submission! As we're in no hurry here we'll take our time and a review may not come for a while yet. I will say that as the first demigod submitted, one thing that I think is crucial to know is what origin and/or parentage you'd envisioned for Ea Nebel.
No problem, no rush. I've already sent out a mass ping in the Discord, but we have a good range of parents in Iqelis, Homura, and Voligan, depending on who's available. Zelios, Aethel, Voi and Epsilon also welcome to help out somehow depending on the specifics, though I wouldn't want to drag out the introduction too long.
@DrRtron Yes, yes, very good, now put your kidney in the icebox.
Ea Nebel is a divine gravedigger and keeper of graves. Her task is to remember the dead and where they lie, and see to it that their remains are given the dignity they deserve, even if that be as simple as a prayer or as little as a glob of spit. She may be found at any place reserved for burial, cremation, or other correct treatment of cadavers, and has a great talent for discovering lost bodies and forgotten bones.
The Maiden watches over all those who take care of the dead, and who preserve their wisdom and history. Maintaining tombs and traditions with a pure heart may earn her blessing. When the bereaved come to a grave to mourn, she remembers them, and may appear as a spirit or animal to comfort them. When tombs and cemeteries are threatened, Ea Nebel may even manifest in person to defend them.
Sometimes, where some great being or army has fallen and none remain to bury them, Ea Nebel will accept the work of gravedigging personally, and build a monument for the dead as she sees fit.
To defile a carefully laid tomb arouses cold displeasure from Ea Nebel, which she discharges with straightforward curses in proportion to the offense. She is not a cruel god, not even especially harsh, nor omniscient, but she is without remorse. Neglect of the newly dead may yield a similar response.
Ea Nebel does not concern herself with matters of the soul. If a right burial is necessary for a spirit to pass on, she may grant it, as a mercy, but her duties are to attend the body and its memory in this life, not the ones beyond. Nor is it her duty to deliver justice- but on this her heart is not nearly so hard.
Persona
Ea Nebel was born with her duties already assigned to her, and nothing on Galbar could be more important for her. She brings her limited powers and knowledge to bear fully, and rarely rests, even though she needs it. With so much of her spirit invested in her task, it's no wonder that she so quickly becomes defensive when they are taken lightly.
For all her power and purpose, Ea Nebel is plagued with (usually) well-hidden insecurities. She knows that she has been charged with a task fit for a god, and fears that under the skin she is only a mortal with extra muscle; she fears that one day her sense of purpose will flag, and this doubt brings its own sense of guilt. She compensates by allowing herself no mercy in her work. If she has yet considered that this attitude may be the very thing that will grind her down in the end, she does not speak of it, especially not to herself.
Rare moments where she lets herself set her work aside reveal that Ea Nebel is not, in her heart, sombre. She laughs, she cries, she can clap, she can kiss. She understands death and has seen more of it than any man, and wants nothing of its sorrow; her heart is just too soft, and that is why she hardens it. Being among mortals makes her acutely self-conscious of her age and their relative innocence. The (impossible) thought of abandoning her station to embrace life and joy and beauty is yet another source of deep fear for Ea Nebel to feel guilty over.
Form
Ea Nebel is but a demigoddess; the body you see is all that she has. That body is no titan, and may not even be fully immortal. Her armour is divine stygian steel manifested by her strength of conviction, as are her many weapons, of which a few are the longsword, lance, sabre, halberd, javelin, and crossbow. Beneath it, her colourless skin is wrapped around a body with only the meanest feminine grace. Her strength is divine, so she has little muscle; she rarely eats, so there is little softness to her. She is uncommonly tall, nearly six feet without boots. Her blood is black, and hot as fire; her scars are the same colour, burned into her by the supernatural heat with which they close, minutes after being opened.
Her eyes, of course, are blacker than the darkest pearls, and number four.
Divine Form
There are certain elements common to many fine graves and temples, which, brought together, are sacred to Ea Nebel. She is far more likely to speak or manifest where they are present. Were she to have a truly divine form, it would probably exist as a collection of these properties, not limited to any one particular shape, place, or time.
They are:
Darkness. Night is the best time to speak to Ea Nebel. The shade of a dense canopy or a church with closed windows will do just fine. Caves and tombs, of course, are ideal.
Light. As small as a candle or as bright as a lighthouse. Moonlight will suffice- on some nights, even starlight.
A Boundary. Something that marks the space as sacred. Walls and fences are good, as are caves. Full enclosure is good but a single marker is enough.
An Icon. An image, effigy or symbol representing Ea Nebel herself. Her depiction may vary widely from one culture to another. A drawing of her face- three eyes on the right, one on the left- may be enough.
A Watcher. A living thing through which the Maiden may speak. Usually an animal, such as a moth, an owl, or a cat, though Ea Nebel may possess mortal gravekeepers or priests directly. If nothing else is present, a moth or spider usually presents itself, though if need be, Ea Nebel can talk through one's own reflection.
A Message. Written or spoken. Prayers, songs, and written stories or aphorisms are all appropriate. They do not have to be directed at Ea Nebel specifically, but if they are clearly not meant for her, she will not come.
A Gift. Ea Nebel will accept a wide variety of offerings. It is said she enjoys flowers. In times of need, a teardrop will do.
Note well that no grave or memorial is necessary for Ea Nebel to be present.
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-
The whale is born. Between Sala's extra salt making the oceans more dense and Zenia's decision to make gigafauna, the fin whales that come from the Giantlands are gargantuan, possibly 200 feet long. Unlike the rest of the gigafauna, some of them can cross oceans, ensuring that Galbar will have titanic whales wherever the local fish and krill can support them.
0 Vigour gained. 0 Vigour spent. 3,626 whale points awarded for being a whale.
574 whale points awarded under the new fraudproof system ARE YOU HAPPY NOW CYCLONE
Bromwell took a short deep breath, squatted down and took the last Guild crate into his wide blue arms. This one was particularly heavy- Tins of paint? Tar for the Guild building's cracks and crannies? It was probably just bottles of some-or-other ointment. Nothing burned through medical supplies quite like a guild's worth of explorers, not in Nockwood or for many miles around. Bromwell personally had gone through more bandages in the last twelve months than the average paddy-farming Politoed would need in a decade.
"-hoof!"
He set the crate down in the loading area under a little wooden shed in the Guild's shadow, next to the day's orders of sugar, lamp oil, and straw. There was a ramp under the roof that led directly up into the Storage Area's back door, but much of this stuff would go straight into the kitchen. Most of the rest of the Guild's everyday bulk supplies lived here just about permanently. Last Bromwell had heard, the back door to the Storage Area had been firmly rusted shut.
That was probably for the better.
"Mornin', Rosalinda. Good day, rookie. Who dented the wall?" Bromwell aired his questions cheerily to his fellow bruisers as he rolled his shoulders and scanned the hall for any sign of a belligerent Sylveon. "Any special news today? I could hear the quartermistress yellin' all the way from the river. Right down the river, too, I may add." In a few seconds he'd bumbled his way down to the noticeboard and squinted at it over the sparky Pachirisu's tail. "Mornin' Apri- oh, and you too, Clay. Good to see ya join in."
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