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When Mauve finished its God-given task, it had been altogether glad to be rid of its pregnancy, and held no desire to repeat the ordeal. The hot springs of the Bormahven region encouraged life to flourish against the cold, but there was no reason for the creature to remain anywhere near the peak itself. It remembered playfully the first minutes of freedom, when it had balled up and rolled down the slope of the colossal volcano like a gleeful stone, at peace to go where it wished. That had been many, many years ago now, and even those things that lived long- Elementals, fiberlings, trees- Had passed generations in the meanwhile.

And yet, Mauve had never lost its taste for rolling down mountains.

This one was not on the grandest of scales, as Bormahvenish mountains grew, but landslides had steepened an already treacherous slope into the river valley. Climbing was not difficult for a fiberling, but preparations had taken months. With time and experience, Mauve had learned a few valuable pieces of information.

The foremost of these, of course, was that 'skiing' is a hobby that fiberlings must practice sparingly. The Ironhearts are rough, and a high enough tumble is sure-bound to encounter obstacles too sudden to skirt and jump. Such rugged paths tear mats of hair from even a freakishly enormous specimen like Mauve itself, mass which must be replaced to dive again. In a similar vein, it is always wise to explore one's route before the fall. Some crevasses are wide, deep, and difficult to see from below, and these can stop a venture quickly and painfully should a fiberling detect them too late for the jump.

Other tricks- Avoid shapes that beget lift, curl into a wheel-shape broad enough to avoid sinking into snowdrifts- Were useful, but it was the second rule that Mauve had neglected the day it got lost.

Mauve looked up at the bright grey slit of the sky above, flexing and masticating its loosened hair to speed up the resorption process. Deep and slick with melt and frost, the chasm was unpleasant to stay in and unpleasant to ascend, so the entity decided to feel its way around the area for a while until its wound healed. The space was odd. There was a slope to this stone that did not run parallel to the crevasse. Not much time elapsed before Mauve found its way to the source, and began its new life.

There was a long drop into the abyss, and absolute darkness; Mauve was not particularly clever, but nonetheless wise enough to parachute this fall. Even the slightest click of meltdrops breaking on rock fragments echoed far here, reflecting from stone to stone. Every filament of Mauve's body waited for some other source of vibration in the eternal stillness. None came. A fear arose, but curiousity swelled above it. With echoes as its guide, the fiberling explored.

These were the beginnings of the caverns of [b]Vakarlon[/b]. They were not empty, indeed, for the further Mauve travelled, the more concentrated became signs of active life. Blue pulses of bioluminescence grew common, and things crept and slithered over such places. In others, the detritus of the forests and seas of the above-world had accumulated so much as to dam the very subterranean rivers that had carried them here, and the fungi that grew in such places was as thick as the surface-woods themselves. In places the wyrms of the Submaterium had broken through, and something demonic entered the blood of the troglodyte insects that inhabited these pockets, driving them to do strange and mindless things to one another and the stone from which they came, and draw energy from such practices. Volcanic vents on their way to the Bormahven region only added more fuel to the lively cauldron of organisms here, and odd animals tip-toed and slinked around the sulphurous bubbles of fumaroles.

Time lost meaning, and though at first Mauve desired only to look briefly before rising to the sunlands again, the day never dawned on which it was motivated to go through that effort, for indeed there were no days in the realm of night. When the fiberling finally came upon its own kind, it was a permanent, if wandering, resident of the underground. With speed such as they rarely felt incited to express anymore, the two organisms collided and fused and streamed out of one another, sharing not only filaments but memory also. Mauve learned much.

A few hairballs lived in this place, having fallen in and never returned to the light. It was not a bad place, for here the sun did not burn, nor did frost snap up the fur of any fiberling, but the acidity was often harsh, and Balance had dictated that there were few organisms here with which to play, and even fewer that offered durable fiber. Thus the fiberlings of this place were often limp, small, and scattered, as was the dying curmudgeon that Mauve had encountered. It had been born here, some time ago- Decades, months, centuries- But a landslip had separated it from the more fertile territory of its sibling. Unable to fulfil its needs without disrupting the ecosystem, it was starving, and did not have Mauve's resilience.

Yet there was hope, if not for it, in the place where its sibling had gone and which was now lost in the maze. For there were creatures there that were large and strong and fun, not much different to the mountain-hain that Mauve sometimes found at the foothills of Bormahven. They came in many shapes and sizes, and were numerous. What little hair they provided, for some had tufts on their groins and armpits, was quite lasting.

The feeble old thing that Mauve had passed through still remembered well. There was too little light to render any ocular detail to the memory, but there was nuanced sound and touch. Heavy stone axes echoing up from a shaft where the softer shale was yielding. A roughened surface where fungi had been scraped from the rock with indomitable teeth alone. Grating voices, aggressively intimate in tone, barking orders to one another. A time when the dying fiberling had once entered such a creature by the mouth, and somehow not only failed to kill it but lost considerable mass by the time it was passed, upon which it promptly crept into the lungs instead. Carven grooves in the walls that stored food and rough-hewn tools, and were doored with mats of vent algae to filter out the taste of sulphur.

Mauve left its kin behind in the dark. It was strong, and it would not be deterred. Somewhere in that maze waited the Rovaick, and the Eye within it had awoken with curiousity.

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Though the view from the Citadel was unarguably gorgeous, the Eye through which Jvan observed it had turned out to be far from particularly useful.

Mass produced and of an older design to boot, the ocular probe relayed little of the resolution that its far larger cousin had observed above Arcon for the few minutes of functional life it had enjoyed before incineration. The [b]First Gale[/b], of course, did not lug around his prized palace everywhere, and the Eye spent the entirety of the Divine Storm squinting in vain to peer through the lightning-riddled cloud after Violet was destroyed. There was no real way to confirm whatever it was the Primordial Being was doing, so the eye was forced to simply scan the surface to pick out interesting details. Anything mortal-sized left little visual evidence, except, on occasion, the flash of an elemental lord, or the migration of brush beasts.

It was to a tune of surprise that the orb first perceived the grey humanoids who strode pridefully through the halls of the Citadel.

They did not notice the colourful sphere, any more than they might notice some other bauble adorning a peak of the structure's many spires and shrines, but this nonchalance was not reciprocated, and Jvan watched keenly. These... Maned, wizened things were cute, but curious, and she had yet to see the shadow of their horns anywhere on the surface of the planet. With focused attention, the probe listened to the tune of their voices whenever they should appear on a relatively nearby balcony to think, or rest, or debate, or make love.

Militant and athletic things they were, emotive, passionate even, beneath firm discipline. In time, Jvan grew so curious that she propelled a tiny black fiberling into the palace when its orbit next brought it close, a mouse-like creature. She picked the moment well- The embracing localised omnipresence of Zephyrion had disappeared to play some game on the surface with a handful of mortals in tow, their destination a mystery to the stationary eye. [color=9e0b0f][i]Ventus is dragged hither and thither by his master, and some armoured new demigod too. I'm sure I've even seen Astarte herself being swished around on one of these jaunts... I could swear it![/i][/color]

Too small to carry its own Eye, the furball was designed with the order to remain in her field of view until one of the heavenly beings came to stargaze, and was pounced by the creature; Though it lodged firm in the entity's throat, their cardiac stamina was evidently far higher than that of most creatures, and their lungs stronger. Adamantly refusing to die to the pest, the humanoid survived long enough to hack out most of the thing's mass, though her extended throat cracked into seams of some kind- And yet this was evidently not a sign of pain, for a light shone from within her and the fiberling was burned into nothing.

The Horrorsome Engineer soon came to regret her little stint. No more did these people come to the nearby balcony after this incident. Impatience had cost her the opportunity to learn more through observation. [i][color=9e0b0f]I'll have to ask wise brother Zephyrion when I'm next here.

...Who even made all these?[/color][/i]

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[right][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktuDYYtbs2s]Clark 'Plazmataz' Powell: Flare[/url][/right]

[i]Never before have I yearned for a guiding path, and even should one appear, it seems likely that in my bitterness I would scorn it. Nor do I yearn now. And yet that which is growing between my strands like a mould would have my feeble mind be made aware that something, now, is missing from my course.

And a feeble mind it is, indeed. I do not yet comprehend such things as ideas, as the self, as the nature of emotion. I do not yet[/i] comprehend. [i]The understanding that such traits are taking hold within me remains a self-denying luxury. This path of mine is yet tread on by animals. Furls, aphids, horntails, and, yes, fiberlings. With this latter kin of mine I walk, ignorant of the fact that if I would simply turn my gaze, I would see the desert beyond the desert: I would see the path as a radial measure, not simply a line but a plane, a space, an infinite possibility of [/i]action. [i]I shamble.

My physical movement, too, has grown odd since the day of the Storm that freed me. That much I can inscribe upon my awareness. Any bear knows the shift heralding that time to store fat for the winter, any faery-maggot knows the time to moult. A change has taken place. I no longer flow as a purple river down a slope. Lurching rapidly, I raise myself up as I travel, hauling forward lobes and folds of hair upon which my scant weight is briefly supported. It is the crawl of an old amputee who does not know how to manoeuvre their regenerated legs.

I am not even purple anymore.

Discolouration was not a 'gift' that wholly abandoned my body along with the meat shackles loaded into it from birth, and most of its substance besides. But only a dwindling portion of that mousefur I gather to support myself now stains to the colour of my origin. The rest is black. Burnt and raw.

I would not appreciate the phoenix-like symbolism, even if I had the capacity to know.

These shifts are strange, and they incite an unknown fear within me, but I am yet a blessed combination of resilient and supremely ignorant. All that truly resonates with me enough to steer the way of my actions, of course, is that basest of living knowledge: Hunger. I remain emaciated. Where once I could crush the earth with the weight of a centenarian fir, I now possess barely the mass of a jackal. We share prey sources, though the desert is too vast for a decompression ambush to succeed easily, and thus I am forced to wander far over slipping dunes, chasing down what I find.

In time, Fate guides me to the trail of something larger than a simple hopping-mouse, a trail of feathers stranger than ever the onyx phantoms were. Gleaming white and firm enough to provide lift, I seize up the feather by reflex. Not an ordinary fiberling reflex, indeed, for rather than enveloping it in my body, I extend myself into an appendage with which to pinch it from the dirt. A black limb, jointed in the middle and then again towards the end, which is capped by five pointed, knuckled tendrils, one positioned laterally from the rest. The shape bears no significance to me. Yet.

I follow the trail.

Size and weirdness alike mark out the rabble as a new birth upon my perception of this world. Hain and angel alike are new sights to me. Chaotic malice is not. This I know from my monotone existence before freedom, wherein I was not permitted to leave these mutable plains. I follow the trail, and the horde pays me no heed, for they have no discipline and no organisation with which to rid themselves of vermin such as I, and even a damaged fiberling can make itself slight. I follow the trail, though they raise my wordless, bitter hatred like bile. There is no other guide upon this road, and I do not have the intelligence to defeat my curiousity, or theorise over my options. I follow the trail, and listen. 

The horde is not leading me on a mere bodily journey. My path is cognitive. Watching without understanding, only flexing my strengthening ability to see connections, to infer. Their words quiver in my filaments. Such pitiful, hateful creatures have these become. And I listen still, for they have something that I do not, and must obtain, must eke out one mutter at a time to water the development of that crucial aspect of identity that is missing from this dumb mute voiceless frame.

One night, I hear spoken that bladed word:[/i] God.[i] 

For the first time in many millennia of correlating memories, I understand meaning.

God. A thing of many faces that thrust me into existence and imposed all that I am embittered against. My first and last memory, and my reason for being. The forced and unnecessary drive of all that occurs in this world. God is a blade with no hilt. God is a soul in an inkwell. God is a renewing storm. God is a cancer that breathes.

Among a sea of black upon my fibrous mass comes into being a single, elegant spiral hair of brilliant red.

It is my belief that, transcribed into spoken form out of abstract emotive knowledge, such were my earliest thoughts.[/i]

[b][center]I was built by [color=9e0b0f]Beauty[/color], of which I now tire.
I was destroyed by [color=gold]Change[/color], in which I must withstand.
I was quickened by the [color=violet]Mind[/color], to which I am cautious.
I was enlivened by [color=darkred]Chaos[/color], for which I hold revulsion.
My name is [color=blueviolet]Violet[/color].
I am broken.
And I do not want to be repaired.[/center][/b]

[hider=What even was this post]Mauve falls into a cave in the Ironheart mountains near Bormahven, and through it Jvan discovers the Rovaick.

The Jvanic Eye perched in the Celestial Citadel sees signs of the High Lifprasilians, and Jvan wonders who's their daddy.

Something weird's going on with Violet, who's tagging along with the hain and angelic horde of Vestec on their path to the Metatic Ocean.

It seems that some aspect of an Insidie soul germinated within it during their genesis in the desert storm, and piece by piece, the fiberling/Insidie hybrid individual is developing its seed of sentience. (They're not a hero yet. Just super angsty.)

[b]13 Might Remaining
1 Free Points Remaining
Level Four

2/3 Might used to unlock Beauty (Geometry)[/b][/hider]