[center][img]https://40.media.tumblr.com/4f0c243d80adb7364cfdd22110297d81/tumblr_o2t1ksU5vW1u5gf80o1_500.png[/img][/center] An odd man, jumping across the sky. An odd [i]man[/i]. Not a mortal, and not a god. Fun, and arrogant. Could he be..? [color=9e0b0f][i]Mysterious figures in the distance of this world.[/i][/color] An Heir to the [b]King of Gods and God of Kings[/b], too. [b]Logos' Daughter[/b]. [color=9e0b0f][i]We're getting busy.[/i][/color] [b]Meimu[/b], [b]Notte[/b] and a [b]Breezy Wizard[/b]. [color=9e0b0f][i]The gods are procreating, like any other form of life. I wonder how many I've missed.[/i][/color] An odd man. Logos. Notte and the Humans. A storm in the wastes that struck down Violet. [color=9e0b0f][i]Logos.[/i][/color] Jvan treasured up all these things and pondered them in her core. [color=9e0b0f]"To enamour him to Logos' progeny, and yet he fell for you, instead. I'm not surprised by this odd man, Notte, this flighty boy. Beneath your skin, you are beautiful."[/color] Would be even better, she thought, if the avatar showed a little more of her true nature as a thing of glass and rust. [color=9e0b0f]"There are fine stories of reckless love like this, you do know... And soon there will be many more."[/color] Most of them ended among the ashes of the glorious blaze of passion, and were all the more lovely for it. A romantic tragedy, then? So be it. [color=9e0b0f][i]I shall be the snake that first led Notte astray. Let the girl burn.[/i][/color] Maybe her [b]Dreamscript Mother[/b] would approve. A number of good tales begin with a child leaving home. [color=9e0b0f]"Perhaps you have not considered, Notte, why the Lady Ilunabar keeps her plans close to her chest? There is no danger in sharing this kind of information with me. Maybe other gods- No, I think my sister hid this detail because she is afraid of what someone might tell you if they knew."[/color] Was that a lie? Probably. Didn't matter. [color=9e0b0f]"A faraway realm, where humans live, and a young godling, heir of a keen-eyed deity. Logos created man and he has made them well. If you're looking for a place and a people to explore, look beyond Galbar. If you're looking for someone to make you feel whole... Were Logos to have a daughter as you say, then she would be the epitome of Order. Not the stifling perfection my brother Toun falters to reach, but something graceful, natural, above all else you will see in this conflicted world for some eons yet."[/color] Logos, yes. Logos. That was a close enough description of his style, was it not? [color=9e0b0f][i]Logos.[/i][/color] [color=9e0b0f]"Maybe you won't like her. Maybe she won't like you. Maybe the place where humans come from is as boring as a cloudless sky and Ilunabar is right to keep you far from it. But if you don't explore, you will never find something to fill your heart, and send you falling into a fit of glittering love. You know how to get there, now, and you can always come back before your mother and sister suspect. Break the rules, Notte. "Lose your way. Find yourself. I will be with you."[/color] The All-Beauty meant it literally. Deep within, the scintillating core of the god began to shudder and coil into sharp angles, and several events took place in short succession. [color=9e0b0f][i]"...A moment. Let me get myself comfortable."[/i][/color] [center] * * * * *[/center] For some time now, an unusual thing had been drifting towards the still grey body of Jvan over the waters. Another demigod! An ambassador? A questant seeking her blessing? It was a patient wait for the entity to introduce itself, but the deity's diligent courtesy was wasted. It was familiarity, instead, that told her what she needed to know. [color=9e0b0f][i]Oh for the love of light, not you. Not now.[/i][/color] It was too much to hope for that the skittering genocide was here to beg for forgiveness. Nope. Of [i]course[/i] not. [b]The One By Immortals Altered[/b] sliced through a sinewy fold of meat as though it were paper, leaving a tear that yawned, widened, and engulfed the demigod whole. Carmine light swirled within the sarcophagus as the demigod struggled to break free, slicing through curl after delicate curl of grey god-meat without succeeding in freeing much more than the space around her mouth. The colour enveloped Vowzra's finest, and red darkness whispered directly into the godling's mind. [color=9e0b0f]"Listen." "You hate me with an honesty superior to your maker, and I can respect that. No-one else inspires you with such ire. It was unholy prejudice alone that called you to hunt down Navy, and stand complicit to its murder. In narrow-minded rage more fitting your robotic cousins than a creature of your stature, you have dashed every Sculpture that crossed your path, and slain members of a fledgeling clade of artists who need all the support they can get. "All this I can forgive, for you love life, and treasure creation. I sense it. "And yet in your arrogance you come strutting across my ocean for no other reason than to spit in my face. "So begone with you. Take your insults to the place where I now banish you and let them stay there, in the monotone realm where there is only one God and one flesh and nothing of mine to incite your bigotry. Return to Galbar cleansed of your anger, or with the idiocy to stand against me like a snowflake before Hell, or not at all. "Know that it was you, and you alone, who started this."[/color] Thus were the motions of a small corner of the Cancer that Breathes. The rest was busy with other designs. [center]* * * * *[/center] As Notte watched, the curvilinear body cushioned itself with a fog from within. The pores stretched out against one anther until they tore, leaving the outer layer of Jvan a ragged mess of thin grey sheets and folds that were soon reabsorbed along with the jungle that had grown on them. Inside, like a moth in its cocoon, changes had already taken place. The [url=https://vimeo.com/41558647]new form[/url] was of the same substance, but spacious and rigid, formed of straight edges notched into one another, flying bridges and triangular arches. Logos? Yes, Logos. Jvan was thinking in analog, doing what she did best. The edges and angles shuffled starspecked blue energy rigidly around themselves, channelling it like geometric rivers into thinner and thinner deltas of concentration. [color=9e0b0f][i]Logos.[/i][/color] In this form, more like a device than an organ, the goddess eliminated at infinite speed every shaded niche of the universe that did not, logically [i]could not[/i] contain some aspect of the Singularity, the I Am. [color=9e0b0f][i]Where did he go?[/i][/color] One shadowed unit of the map at a time, Jvan derived the location of Arcon. The calculation was difficult, and yet somehow exciting. This was mathematics. The plane on which all else was measured. What mysteries lay here? What art could only be imagined in the most abstract of the abstract sciences before it was realised? [color=9e0b0f][i]I need to exploit this more. I'm glad I didn't ask for directions.[/i][/color] To uncover the true limits of beauty, if limits there were, everything would eventually have to be numbered and compared in its most accurate and fundamental values. [color=9e0b0f][i]I wonder... How can I apply all this to other bodies? Oh, this is inspiring![/i][/color] After not too long a wait, the All-Beauty announced, [color=9e0b0f]"It is done."[/color] The last layer of body folded over the grey god, and with it returned all the living things, the vines, the mushrooms, the polyps. It was full of gated openings, but very tidy, forming the shape of a tilted octahedron, a pyramid on its side. As a capstone, on the highest peak which had not long ago been torn open by a certain ant who remained, for the moment, trapped there, Jvan had grown a large and beautiful [url=http://www.deviantart.com/art/A7Xtest-orb-136222365]eye[/url]. [color=9e0b0f]"Look, Notte! I can see you clearly, and everything else. If you choose to explore Arcon, I will watch you for as long as I can. I know the way now, and can send whatever I want. Join me sometime, would you?"[/color] The pinnacle of the pyramid burst apart, releasing both the eye and the cocooned ant which orbited it. They blurred into a colourful streak and disappeared. [center]* * * * *[/center] Through the universe streaked a brilliant orb, manifesting in places and speeds that seemed far estranged from the location of its target. Its path was not spacially linear. It couldn't be. The distance would be too great. So the globe jittered into random corners of existence and flew out again with the living body of the First Formica in tow, each time reappearing in an exponentially wider distance from where it had begun, losing divine momentum without regard for actual velocity or direction. At last, perhaps only seconds since its departure, the eye blipped back into existence and hovered gently in orbit over Arcon. [i][color=9e0b0f]It's beautiful.[/color][/i] Vowzra's spawn was nowhere in sight. Their trajectories had been calculated to decay differently; The ant had been deposited directly onto the planet's surface. Now that Logos' domain was in view, under the light of a small, white star, the Jvanic Eye could start to pick out detail. Alone and unassisted had Logos built up a world as vibrant as Galbar, and crowned it with souls clothed in flesh almost divine. Movement. Jvan refocused her eye. Something metallic and winged, travelling on a stream of light, like a comet. The thing flew faster than any wings could have carried it, even if there was air to fill them. It became a white streak in the distance, and was not alone when it returned, seconds later. White sparks ignited out of what was moments ago nothing but low-orbit debris. [color=9e0b0f][i]They're in formation.[/i][/color] The path of the angelic creatures was unmistakeable. There were more than a hundred. In a spearhead of brilliant plasma, the Realta fell upon their target, and the Eye of Jvan evaporated into the void. [color=9e0b0f][i]...I suppose I'm not welcome, then.[/i][/color] [center]* * * * *[/center] Heartworm jerked. Its tools and arms lost their grip, allowing its current project to flop wetly back into the already reddened rain-puddle. It oozed there, clinging to what crippled life it retained. Under the scars of toothed suckers the wreck of a human face still showed. [color=f6989d][i]The source.[/i][/color] Of the many eyes embedded and estranged from its body, the one dominating Heartworm's view was somewhere north, and west. Fused into a pale yellow streak of fur that was even now shuffling and bluffing around a rickety, blackened frame, trying to herd its liege away while at once rearing like a cloud to hide the skeletal thing's direction from the threat. The [b]Wild Beau[/b] had danced his way to the straining lungs of impurity, where black paint was soon to be spilled into the final masterpiece of Galbar. The avatar hastened to pack up shop. Winds were chasing above Maize’s field of awareness, taking up the gauntlet thrown down on unforgiving earth. A wiser creature, perhaps, to beat him back; but not even the elemental forces are safe from an artist’s scalpel. [colour=f6989d][i]I remember tying down Basheer.[/i][/colour] Like a desert frog consuming its own inflated skin, Heartworm opened along the entire length of its tiny body, and impossibly slender arms dragged the entirety of its vast nest into the seething black maw. The disproportionate act of consumption concluded swiftly. Haste drove away reluctance enough for the divine neuron linking Maize and its god to blacken, and spectatorship ended while resources were devoted to the coming jaunt. Eyes-inwards, the worm sealed itself up and coiled into a sphere. For a moment the Holiest Mangle lost consistency. It pulsed like the gummy, tooth-laden blob of red from which it had begun, and crunched out of existence. A smooth warp. Heartworm swelled back into tangible space and slipped onto the sand of a desert delta, sanguine eyes swivelling. [i][color=f6989d]A storm.[/color][/i] Something was up, but there were beams of sunlight streaming through gaps in the sky, the clouds sewn together by magic. They had been forced here, dragged and beaten into place like the mass of flickers that sustained them. Unable to survive without the climatic infrastructure to bring them about naturally, the hefty grey had begun to dissipate into droplets and humidity. This place, too, was raining, and it was the rain of a battlefield complete. [color=f6989d][i]It is finished. Where is the Rottenbone?[/i][/color] Too much urgency was tensed into the teeth of the godlet to waste time resurrecting its laboratory. The fluke skimmed and rippled over the lime grit with in fluid streaks of movement that belied its size. Crimson bulbs on its surface twisted and spun as one gaze. Of the Djinni Lord, no trace remained. Whether the Vizier was dead or nursing his pain could not be discerned from the gaping lack of his heavy authority above the earth, and the ichor of his wounds was indistinguishable from the puddles and streams of the bygone torrent, the elemental essence returning to whence it had come. It was not the only blood. In a jagged spray, the stain of a punctured ventricle besmirched the stone opposite the heaved and matted body of Life’s Custodian. The worm did not slow, but skimmed towards the dark clot, the sinuous strip of its body barely making contact with the earth in its speed. Two pairs of teeth unstitched themselves to admit a bulging tongue that lapped at the sand, once, and stopped. [colour=9e0b0f][i]I… Heartworm, no! D E S I S T ![/i][/colour] The surgeon’s body stopped in mid-leap and slapped back onto the stone, twisting, contorting in resistance. Jvan seized the clutch and rammed her sub-mind into submission, and there came a horribly deep echo of reverberation from behind the Emaciator’s locked teeth, a shudder, as if of pressure building and pipes straining to their burst-point. It faded. Heartworm’s blood eyes lost their lustre and drained of fluid, becoming smoky, translucent black. The All-Beauty eased up the cognitive crank with the shaken air of a being resting its head in its hands. [colour=9e0b0f][i]I did not know! I did not [/i]see[i], as I should. I let him pass- Allure, the odd man, the curiousity. Ha! Ha… My ignorance deserves the shock of what nearly came to pass. A creature that knows itself a Beauty, and knows truly. Such a thing as falls within my own sphere. But he is not the All-Beauty that must be. I am a just critic, but for others who take that role... Is it not Nature for the strength of new genes to overwhelm its sire-species? Is it not natural for the son to slay his mother? …[/i][/colour] There was only the Goddess and her custodian, now. The former had fled with the remaining companions, saw Jvan through Maize's eye as the fiberling crooned and fussed about in the distance, flitting about every which way to watch for further danger. [color=9e0b0f][i]She is safe. The elemental forces have done their duty.[/i][/color] The latter had not stopped bleeding. [color=9e0b0f][i]No… I liked him![/i][/color] Slithering over to Esau, opening to admit a sharply jointed claw that pinned the gash shut where it was deepest. A worm admitted itself into the wound of the mythical beast and set to work, the smallest surgeon with the largest patient. The Son of the Doe was, of course, gorgeously efficient in his violence. There was very little collateral for Jvan to deal with. Sewing arteries back to themselves was easy and the Avatar of Flesh left Esau, covered in replaced blood, the manticore calm and sleeping to readjust. It was difficult to tell, and there was no one to observe, but Jvan rested her tool-body in the hearth-warm fur of the beast perhaps longer than she should have. It was comfort. Gods, too, need to readjust. Custodian Esau was not quite the same being he had once taken silent pride in being, no- Where his face and torso had been slashed was now a rosary of new eyes resting in a hairless slit of skin, and that which once lay in the jaggedly re-calcified mask was exchanged for one rippled with branches of colour, a many-pupilled [url=http://www.fractalsciencekit.com/fractals/large/Fractal-Grand-Julian-IFS-16.jpg]mosaic prosthetic[/url]. [i][color=9e0b0f]Sleep and regain your fire, Hot Thing. Your purpose is well served, Esau, and the trials of this world have shown your frame in its prime, sturdy as a stone gate. May your soul burn on to be wounded another day.[/color][/i] Maize tensed, a little startled from its role of a woven rain-shelter for the ailing deity, as Jvan vomited her avatar’s enormous vessel back up. The structure bent and sagged back into its original shape, human-like-eyes bulging at the rapidly shrinking earth below. Heartworm was a complex tool, and seizing full control of it was not easy. [colour=9e0b0f][i]Better to keep its autonomy revoked for long enough to get something done elsewhere while I have the chance. Somewhere, Amber still wanders in search of Teknall.[/i][/colour] Better to tie down other projects, simple things, until she was prepared within herself to know the Prince of Beauty. Know him truly. And see what that entailed. [colour=9e0b0f][i]I must be subtle. I must plan. And, by all that can be, I must cure my ignorance. If- I am so able.[/i][/colour] [hider=In which my character is mean to an ant]Jvan suggests to Notte that she should sneak into Arcon every once in a while, and fulfil her dreams of adventurous life there rather than be bored on Galbar. While she's at it, she picks up on Notte's loneliness and suggests that she should be the one chasing Elysium, not Allure. Toby attempts to attack a god and is restrained for her actions. She's warned that if she ever returns from banishment to Arcon and still destroys Jvan's work, the god will no longer be lenient. The temptation to open that speech with 'listen here u lil shit' was really tempting but it would be super rude and unnecessary. <3 Adjusting her body to manually calculate spacial possibilities, Jvan deciphers a 'map' to Arcon. The dramatic physical change counts as a level up. In doing so she's struck with a sudden love for the abstract, meaningless beauty of mathematics. Toby, along with a Jvanic Eye, is ejected through space and into Arcon. The Eye is promptly destroyed in orbit by Realta, but Toby, deposited more directly, seems to have landed intact. Other stuff too. 5 Might spent to level up 1 Might spent to calculate a 'map' to Arcon, counting towards unlocking Beauty (Mathematics) 1 Free Point used to deposit Toby and a Jvanic Eye on and into orbit around Arcon respectively, without having to carry them manually 2 Might Remaining 0 Free Points Remaining Level Four 1/3 Might used to unlock Beauty (Mathematics)[/hider]