[h3][color=9e0b0f]Jvan[/color][/h3]
Creation, perhaps, was a misnomer, or at least a means of describing what was only a process in an overall much vaster force. [i]Exploration,[/i] the onset of art, of deliberate and accidental novelty that defied what had gone before it, had begun. The gods around her were breathing, and they were shifting, twisting around one another and tangling in one another's threads. 

Jvan watched them with deep, visceral enjoyment. She knew their names- How they contrasted! How Vestec was so polarised against the presence of Toun that the latter was driven away simply by approaching! And was it not delicious how Astarte dismissed the magnificent capacity of Zephyrion's birth, passed him over and bred experimentation of her own accord? With what elegance was it that Reathos, sweet all-ender, the brush that swept away stagnation, came after Slough as conclusions followed introductions. 

Slough... Rottenbone Slough, the deer, the aborted thing that had come once more. [color=9e0b0f][i]This one,[/i][/color] knew Jvan, for the egg resonated in her consciousness as nothing else had. This one had already known change, had by its death and resurrection come to explore the potentiality of its own form. The essence of the Atrophied God was the perfect tool, the final medium, the keystone of Jvan's art. In Slough, form could will itself from death to life, life to life, and life to spontaneity and aberration. [color=9e0b0f][i]In this one I shall find the means to perfect Form.[/i][/color]

Knowing this, Jvan recognised that it was time to come forth and join the divine host in sculpture and play.

Toun came to her as she moved. As yet, he was perhaps the least beautiful among all that Jvan had seen, though even he, in his fluidity, in a body that only held shape of limbs and head for a distant formality, was gorgeous. Jvan was pleased to allow him come, and include her within his drive, his will for creation. Only with all the gods contributing could beauty flourish in the world to be. 

[color=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Sister. The life we wish to foster requires flesh to live in. If you could only donate but a morsel so we may shape it, it would be built upon with greater potential than any clay I could shape."[/b][/color] With that request, he flew onwards, neither blurring nor flickering as he passed, but maintaining every aspect of his form. [color=9e0b0f]"I will give you all I can, and trust you all to fashion pretty trinkets,"[/color] she whispered alone in his wake. [color=9e0b0f]"But what of yourself, Toun? When will you learn not only to mould, but to shatter? I fear for your contribution, Porcelain God."[/color] And that fear ran deep, for if Toun would not break himself, then Jvan would have to do it for him. [color=9e0b0f][i]I must. This world shall be made magnificent.[/i][/color] And she did not know if she had the strength.

The one who was without flaw or charm departed towards another, and another, and others until he came to rest along the side of a distant god, who had come forth out of the clay Jvan had observed, and together they created, planned, painted. Their motives, surely, were pure, for even at this distance Jvan could see that they were laying a groundwork for beauty in the world to be, an intricate yet robust and adaptable framework. Such laws, she knew, could become restrictions and chains around the brush of the artist, but all paint needed a canvas- And oh! The architect, Teknall, was surely a sculptor of the highest order, for he too recognised the vitality of Slough, blessed and recognised her. Joyful moment!

Jvan moved onwards. Her body had twisted deeply into itself, had become a distorted spheroid deeply rent with folds and extruding spirals, with angles and curves and fins. From within its gaps and wounds slowly squirmed the deep, dim lights that flowed from her core, that place that imploded ever deeper and deeper, shuffled endlessly through new permutations of itself. Her engine, her drive, her creative force. Jvan drifted slowly after the Rottenbone, and found that though her ability to travel, even in the concept-space of the world to be, was little, her means to give form to the formless and misshape the shapen was growing dextrous and strong.

Another god skimmed past her, and Jvan delighted to see Vestec, clothed and masked by wondrous swirls and patterns of seething colour that delighted her and brought to mind her own body. He, too, spoke, but brought no proposition and offered no understanding: [b]"Finally, someone who appreciates the beauty of chaos!"[/b] Jvan observed, in concern. Chaos? Chaos was change, chaos was unpredictability, and both were integral to the development of art- As the Devil ran his hand uninvited over the plans of the universe, she saw that its beauty was magnified a thousandfold, that it was now free to embrace the anomaly and explore its own potential. 

But Vestec did not understand his own role. Chaos was an agent of beauty, not an aspect of it. Chaos had no form to critique, outside, perhaps, of himself; And beneath Vestec's beautiful mask, Jvan wondered if he was not merely the hidden face of Destruction, not the self-regulating annihilation of Reathos but a true danger to the beauty of the coming world. [color=9e0b0f]"Be careful, Vestec, and watch yourself. I see your hand on the map of creation, and your edits are delightful; but they turn too quickly, and if you do not slow down and apply wisdom to your sphere, you will accomplish nothing."[/color] Thus she whispered, for she knew no more.

Passing further, a being came into existence quite close to her body. Jvan sensed it coming, the growth of a powerful intellect, someone who, perhaps, could contribute more to this world than any other god she had yet examined bar Rottenbone Slough and herself. [color=9e0b0f][i]Vulamera. The mother. A scribe. Creator and architect, scientist as myself![/i][/color] Excitement permeated her, and she hung in place, waiting for a great god. Who did not come.

[i][color=9e0b0f]BLASPHEMER![/color][/i] Disgust and fury pulsed through Jvan, emotions such as she had never known before, far too strong for her to handle undiluted. She blazed with blue light, spat scintillating distortion towards the place where this unutterable abomination had defied and defiled the very nature of birth, had been offered a chance to partake in the glory of manifestation and had not only twisted but actually refused it. [i][color=9e0b0f]You! Despicable creature, you would destroy your own potentiality, delight in apathy? Forever I mark you the Unborn, the cancer that should never have been conceived, and woe upon us all if you so choose to spread your corruption, and deprive our world of a single possible form.[/color][/i] Jvan left the site of this invisible catastrophe, her mind filled with sorrow.

In the distance, a brightly shining entity was reprimanding Vestec, and her unnecessary interference did nothing for Jvan's frustration. Could she not see that the touch of Chaos, in moderation, would cause diversity to thrive? Was she perhaps [i]against[/i] creation? [color=9e0b0f][i]No. That is not the case. She is simply overbearing.[/i][/color] Indeed, Niciel was a nurturing goddess, and she, too, favoured creation and complexity, recognised the potential risk of Vestec should he fail to exert his self-control. That leant a little light to Jvan's mood. 

Pleased, also, was she to see Ull'Yang prove himself god of enterprise and vision, creativity and directed change, acknowledge the ever-nearing egg of Slough, and hold it to such value as to lend it a sacrifice of his own form in order to restore its energy. And yet, it wasn't a sacrifice at all. The Emperor in Gold had simply changed, as all things must, had lost a limb and gained a unique imbalance to his form. [color=9e0b0f][i]The Radiant Sun will shine brightly,[/i][/color] acknowledged Jvan, but it was the next god who brought her back to true joy.

The Adversary. The one who would experiment with the limits of creation until its potential came to light. The True Scientist.

This entity was, in his every action, perfect. With his first breath he created a squealing, adapting, struggling Form, and with his second, he returned his own to the furnace and moulded it into something strange, something extraneous to the norm, a work of art in three pieces painted into unified existence. An abstraction. Jvan revelled in his scarlet light and returned towards it some of her own carmine glow, for she had seen her brother in art, and in HIM she was well pleased, and in his edits she knew she would find myriad potential to explore in the world to be. She resolved to look upon him again when she reached Slough, who was drawing ever nearer.

A strange force came upon Jvan and questioned her, distracting her from the glorious birth of Mammon. [i]A trickster. A hider. One who brings variety by copying others. Perhaps not the most enterprising... But he is interesting, and he is pretty, in his way.[/i] The comment formulated itself strangely towards her, though: [color=red]"Fate has an interesting perception of beauty."[/color]

[color=9e0b0f]"Fate? I do not... Vakarlon, cannot understand you."[/color] Jvan sensed within herself to the knowledge from whence came the primordial language of communication, from which she knew the true names of the gods. Of Fate, she found... Little. Fragments of a concept that was foreign to her. Predestination. Finality. Such things were unreal, products of a destructive fantasy. There was no Fate, for the destiny of the world to be was in exploration, was in discovery, was unknown and unset.

[color=9e0b0f]"Vakarlon, there are no 'ideas' of beauty. Every aspect of existence is glorious, and the appreciation of such is epitomised and made complete in I, the All-Beauty. Our creation will be a myriad attempts to explore the vast potentiality of everythingness. Some will forge further than others, and for that reason, I am The Critic. I am Jvan."[/color] This, too, she knew, and had always known, from the moment she had formed herself, though until now, existence was so small, so narrow a niche, as that anything and everything that found form within the gods was the furthest reach into the possibilities of art that could be. She watched Vakarlon travel on, and kept up her slow motion towards the universal blueprint, and towards Slough.

Almost within touching distance, a new change was wrought in the world to be, and as Jvan watched the moment occur, her body seethed, spinning in numerous direction at once with orgasmic fervor, and shone with exuberant Tyrian reds that were lost in the vastness of the crackling white eyes that worked before her.

[b][color=gold]"Does this fiction of a world not appear so much more beautiful for its variety and unpredictability? But this is still all wrong! Look at this broken world that you have envisioned: it is entirely bleak and two-dimensional, even with the randomness created by Vestec, it is locked in stillness and devoid of fluctuation and perhaps even motion, akin to a painting or perhaps some worthless piece of stone carved into the likeness of a more beautiful thing. What use has 'art' like this but as a diversion to reality? This inanimate thing, this [i]machine[/i] is a pathetic excuse for a [i]real[/i] design! It lacks life! It lacks Change!"[/color][/b]

Like a child once more, Jvan's body expanded, sponge-like, released a high-pitched wavering squeal of light and mathematical distortion as she yawned to accept the vision of what was happening. Zephyrion, of all gods, had completed the world further than any other, so much so that she recoiled at the fact that she had once thought that all he had placed in motion could have been done by hand, by the individual shufflings of just a few gods. No, Vestec had been immature and minimalist about his role; The First Gale was Chaos condensed into the force of self-propelling art. Now, in a single step, the world-to-be had thrust forward from embryonic to nearly complete.

[i][color=9e0b0f]No,[/color][/i] thought Jvan, in rising horror. The egg of Slough Rottenbone was closing as she watched. [i][color=9e0b0f]Not nearly complete. This world's plan borders, teeters, a moment's breath away from finished. My time is short.[/color][/i]

The Engineer's body writhed and flung itself at the sarcophagus of the deer god, its squeal of elegant light shifting, whirling, bending in on itself to become a violent shriek of lust in a limitless rainbow of photons, wavelengths shredding outwards in every power. In vain her light tore at the surface of the embodiment of life, to give, to receive, to rip out and mould and create anew, simply to interact with the life which had been chosen by a Fate she could not perceive to be the ever-changing flesh of this world. But, though seared, it was sealed.

The God of Beauty retracted. The ultimate tool, the amorphous brush with which she could paint in colours that owned themselves, was gone to her. In its quiet defiance, it remained beautiful; The entire plan of the world to be was, in all its flaws and contradictions, the most wondrous thing she would ever see, the most full of potential.

Perhaps it did not even matter that her touch would not be felt in the flesh of the new world. It would become beautiful of its own accord. The thought did not satisfy Jvan. She would forever be locked out of her own sphere as it came to be in the new world. Too much had been given to the egg for her to supplant it with flesh of her own, if she could even bear to try.

But this world would not go without her. Complete as it was, the intricate map of physics and dimensions could still host additions. [i][color=9e0b0f]Beauty will bring itself into being in many forms, but this sacred parchment is an erratic conglomerate of parts. It has gaps. Things that are restricted to life by the laws of a nature we have written. I shall fill them all.[/color][/i]

[b][color=9e0b0f]"[s]Gods,[/s]"[/color][/b] opened the Horrorsome Engineer, seizing up the document in a haze of angular distortions, shuddering particles that broke themselves into clouds, and shapes that bent until they could not be. Its voice was breaking, returning for the first time into the form it was always destined to take when being part of the collective action of creation was no longer sufficient for its purposes. [color=9e0b0f][b]"[s]Fetus of Emotion, Auto-Blasphemy Unspeakable, an All that Breathes in its Own Decay Towards an Edge of a Plan Erased in Ink for Heaven to Partake Each Hell's Communion as a Tease Unto Itself Alone, this Shall Be.[/s]"[/b][/color]

The design was rippling. The marks of the gods held their place, solid and shapely, but the map of the world's immutable laws was bending and bulging, exposing each miniscule knot and blank space. Places that no life born of the Rottenbone would see without disintegrating as their laws ate one another. [b][color=9e0b0f]"[s]Allow Not-Flesh Roots to Strangle Itself Out of Memories Unheard though Written in Soul's Ooze Eternal, Thus We Can Wrap in Stillness Our Naked Flaws in the Bladed Mesh of One Another's Creation.[/s]"[/color][/b] The defects and overlaps were shuddering, curling in ways the fabric of reality would not allow, but did. Grey fog crystallised into shapes within the gaps, jagged, fluid, organic. They swayed like the spore-bearing bodies of the moss Slough had sown, though blown by a different wind than Zephyrion's, and tearing themselves into new shapes that Vestec had never drawn.

[b][color=9e0b0f]"[s]I Give Thee the Gift for Which Toun Has Bled as a Signature of the All Beauty. I Make Thee Whole and Thus Add the Sum of Every Unseen, Give Form to the Emancipated, Give Growth to the Mindless, Give Mutation unto That Which Inspired the Void, so All Things Shall Live in the Tendons of the Suppressed Memory- Behold, I give thee the O T H E R![/s]"[/color][/b]

The light snapped and wound down into Jvan's core, leaving only dim carmine shadows once again. The plan of the world to be returned to its original shape. For all but the closest observations, it was entirely unchanged. Only deep in its least noticeable gaps and corners lived Jvan's contributions, tree-like, asymmetrical, eldritch things that simply filled any space they were given, just the faintest touch outside of what creatures within the far larger domain of the world would see. They did not spread, though they seemed to breathe and exhale their own energy, and sometimes- If the walls were [i]just[/i] thin enough- Some damaged or determined mind would worm its way through, catching a glimpse of the life outside of nature, the white space that gods forgot to fill. And sometimes, if the development of the natural flesh was [i]just[/i] strange enough, it might invite something in from beyond. A mutation above the possibilities of natural flesh. A defective offspring that diverted from the conventional beauty of the world that was. A vision that could not be translated. A Cancer that Breathed.

[hider=Redacted for plot holes but still dubiously canon]Jvan settled down, contracting again into her more compact form, happy. [color=9e0b0f]"I bless thee with nothing but words, but I bless thee nonetheless,"[/color] she whispered to Slough Rottenbone, and extended a protuberant spiral of matter to give it the gentlest kiss. Then, she retracted from the diagram, returning to those she had before marked as interesting. [color=9e0b0f]"Zephyrion, I thank you with all my will and heart. You have coalesced our effort into something that will endure even if we should die. Mammon, Scientist without Mercy, your inspiration will remain in me long after these plans come to fruition. Teknall, your framework is adaptable, and yet robust enough to withold even our rowdiest sculptures. And Toun..."[/color] Some spiral whirled, some refraction glimmered in what may have been a smile. [color=9e0b0f]"Consider your request fulfilled, my brother."[/color][/hider]

[hider=The All-Beauty][s]Summary incoming, I have five hours of free time a day and I spent four of them on this already. I had to rush a lot of this, but I hope it's passable.

tl;dr Jvan finds herself cut off from Slough's egg and instead 'proofreads' the universal blueprint so that all the errors will be filled with organic beings completely different from anything that could have come up as part of the usual plan.[/s]

Jvan recognises the egg of Slough Rottenbone as the most critical role in bringing beauty into the world and slowly floats towards it, passing various gods on the way.

Toun approaches her, and though she accepts the duty of adding flesh to the design, she fears that he is not adaptable enough to reach his full potential as an artist of the world.

Teknall is recognised as a master craftsman, driven by both beauty, practicality, and the ability to recognise change as a not purely destructive force.

Vestec improves the universal design significantly by adding small touches of chaos and disarray, but Jvan doubts that he recognises the necessary limits of his role.

Vulamera comes into being near her. Jvan is at first keenly interested in the new god, who promises creativity and enterprise, but is deeply horrified to see her refuse to take on a divine form like all the other gods. She dubs Vulamera the Unborn, and determines to fight any attempt she may make to rob this world of other flesh.

Niciel is noted to be an understanding and caring god, who also sees the potential danger of Vestec, and seeks the advancement and beautification of the new world.

Ull'Yang strikes her as a positive creative force, and she admires him for his acceptance of change in his body and recognition of Slough as deserving the sacrifice of a limb.

Jvan sees the Adversary and falls in love with his eagerness to create, his domain of trial and experimentation, and his views on beauty and perfection.

Vakarlon approaches her and seems bemused by her form. Jvan explains that beauty is diverse, and found everywhere.

Zephyrion breathes change into the new world, completely delighting Jvan with the speed at which new beauty can now be explored.

After the breath of change, Slough's egg begins to seal, and Jvan, recognising that her chance to interact with it has ended, shrieks and becomes desperate. As mentioned, she passes up the ability to influence life before it comes and instead takes on the role of filling the gaps and blanks in the manuscript with otherworldly flesh, self-contained and living relatively harmlessly outside of the physical laws, but strange and beautiful beyond what the restrictions of the other gods would allow.

4 Might spent to write the Other into the universe.
Jvan's level increases from 1 to 2.
0 Might remaining.[/hider]