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[colour=9e0b0f][i]A memory.[/i][/colour]

In the heavy waking dreams of the convalescent, even screams from above can be ignored. The burden of time becomes unbearable and the wounded god can only count the crawling seconds in an attempt to force them to pass.

Visions flicker before her, but these are her own. Aged and faded and almost burned by the light which illuminated them, Jvan Sees the stories of her own self, and then they dissolve, detail by detail, until even their number cannot be recalled. And still the light shines on. Far in the distance, on the horizon, like a guiding star. Calling her to fly on its golden rays, into the bright place beyond.

[colour=9e0b0f][i]That's what he wanted me to find. There is nothing else in me. No alternative self, no higher purpose- This is fact, is Truth. Only the same Jvan in different worlds, accumulating different quirks on the way. So which mutation is it, exactly, that the Riddler wanted me to find again? Which memory does he want me to See?

What did I learn, in a life long gone, that was so valuable?[/i][/colour]

With that thought, the bubble of thoughts popped, sending a faint ripple out over the pool of Jvan's consciousness. Then all was still again. The dreams resumed. The fragments of porcelain resting in her core remained balanced and at peace, their sharp edges far from harm.

Elsewhere, beyond the horizon, in the heat of the sun; Above the surface of the water and over the shores, in the forests and hills and in the plains and the towns, Sculptors burned.

And yet, though their guide and patron slumbered in exhaustion, something, [i]someone[/i] heard. Deep in the labyrinth of canyons and tunnels that was the All-Beauty, deeper still than the superficial über-mind that dozed and chased dreams, in the vivid abyss that was the most distant depth of all, where reality dissolved into a clean canvas and all the elusive mess of tangible life was only quanta, dancing at the measurement of a single brush. There the paint flowed, and had flowed since the moment Jvan first fled from this world and sought out the place where no concept was too abstract, no idea too strange to be modelled by the stroke of her hand. Where, long after she had left, the paint flowed still.

Something heard them. Something conscious.

Deep called to deep.

[right][url=http://emancipator.bandcamp.com/track/minor-cause-2]Emancipator- Minor Cause[/url][/right]

In the still and gentle orbits above, the bleak bone shell of Ovaedis began to spin. Decades of flourishing mauve overgrowth rippled on its surface and sparkled in the light, huge pods of imagen stirring from the noctus forest. From within, whispers began to ruffle, flowing from the ends of its horns.

On a sedgen dale where the Gate Unguarded stood restful, the Oath of Stilldeath gleamed in the light of a new morning, and the name of Spiral Palms scribed itself onto the surface of the column, now and for evermore.

From the voices of a thousand cultists, a chorus began to rise. Deep called to deep. Sculptors sang their dirge, and the sound of suffering resonated between the wounded, the hunted, the reviled. In the fires of Heaven, they had hope in one another.

A crescendo of opened hearts and shared thoughts rose higher, hummed and quavered together through the shadowed cracks that unified them. One by one, the Sculptors began to call out, in living and in dying, joining together.

And a conductor held those faint ribbons of sound, and twirled them like eddies of mist on the air. Wove them together, once, now, and into eternity, tying the artists of Galbar into one body, one family of blood. Never again alone, their whispers pulsed between one another in veins, the beat of Ovaedis' horns at their heart, facilitating the communication. It spoke to them, now and in farewell, now for the last time as a god and the first as a fellow.

[color=cornflowerblue][i]Listen!

Long have you lived, and long have you suffered. But this is not the end. Your lives are not over. Your path ends not here. Can you hear one another's call? Do you feel the whisper of ten thousand hearts beating as one? Take hope. You are few and scattered, but together you are many.[/i][/color]

High above, the gate of the living satellite yawned open, and from it spired a narrow streak of pale indigo, shining against the void. The light frayed evenly as it curved its way over Galbar in a falling orbit. Those blue streaks began to spiral and loop in smoothly erratic curls as it scattered, and streaked out over the planet, etching faint crisscross lines into the skies as the trails flew to their marks.

Five thousand, one hundred, and nineteen grains of dust, pitted grey idols, each one followed by its own tail of blue, sought out and found equal that number in Sculptors. They found them in the heights, and they found them in the depths, stopping for nothing. Diving above the mottled skyrays as they swooped between the dunes and between the legs of the brush beasts as they wandered the barrens, until they found the Sculptors and waited still. In odd glory the patient halos hovered before the cultists, tinting the air with a pale indigo glow. 

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[i][color=cornflowerblue]Look!

These are yours. Your crowns, your tools and your weapons. Don't be afraid of the Purifiers. Stand strong against the Djinni. These halos are the anvil and on them you'll test who has the mettle to stand against you and dance, tooth, nail, sword on sword.

Fear nothing. Find one another. Form your enclaves and sing your routes before they are travelled. Call to the Stonemen and assemble their ranks, for they have been wounded. Tame the fiberling and make it yours. I will guide you and be at your side, as I always have, and I will not be alone. A new day is coming.

Go, children. Go into the world and express yourself. You're free.[/color][/i]

Across Galbar, the Sculptors stirred from their hiding-places, from the caverns into which they had fled. There they had been driven by the elementals, and there Djinni and Realta alike had floundered in the labyrinth to seek them out. Only shadows and halos found them, a shining omen of exodus to the surface. So they returned.

One by one the Realta discovered the blessed Sculptors and spat their venom, but their faeries held firm, and now the Purifiers were met with a crown of iron thorns, as hollow and metallic as their own hearts. The halos found their prey and stole the brilliant white plasma with which they bleached the world, siphoned it away into the air and left only a husk of a being. And still the idols were cold. Still they hungered for warmth and magic and light.

Forerunners sang to their successors, and were followed by the unarmed, the Sculptors who heard but for whom no weapon was available. Unifying in a lattice of song-lines, they triangulated the distant intonations and found one another, and told long stories of what they saw, teaching and warning.

And the Urtelem saw that their strange allies had grown yet stranger and yet more dangerous, and the two tribes colluded with the hard determination of resistance. Following of voices and paths of memory overlapped and became one, and so began what the folken of fae and stone together called the [i]distant dance,[/i] the migrations, some of tradition or planning or circumstance and some of chance, by which the tribes and cultists found one another often and without fail even on winding journeys that crossed many miles.

Together those ranks closed and advanced on the crystal forests that defiled the world. Blazing torches were held in raised hand and talon, and breathing clean air sucked by the halos, with lungs free of tainted glass, the Sculptors torched every living thing around the contagion, every grass and flower that could seed a new grove of Acalya, leaving only ash. 

And where quartz guardians emerged to defend the colourless purgatory, they met with disciplined fists of stone- Fists that had cradled the slag of other groves, lenslings of light and colour that had brought only peace, and now returned the favour. Even as the Urtelem began to chip and glaze with the crystal plague, they held on. They held on, even as they broke their brothers who had succumbed to the mind-numbing infection and lashed out at all they held dear. For none better know that peace is precious, and lives are brief.

All the while, from the burned plains, seething like a tide, came their reinforcement- Fiberlings.

Crazed by the violation, their hand had always been the one that held measured balance, cruel to all and cruellest to the disruptor. The scales now shattered, they retaliated with everything they had. Breeding in their millions, they became ropes, and toppled the highest trees. Became nets, and caught fresh outbreaks and buried them in the ashen wastes before they could spread. Became masks, and covered the faces of the Urtelem, filtering every razor spore that dare enter innocent lungs. 

Such anger was channelled easily by the martial Artists. Tricks were learned, skills grew, and became a craft all its own. With a whisper and a wink of the mind's eye the cultists hypnotised their formless cousins, and wove whatever they desired.

Thus the ravenous tide of infection slowed to a crawl. In the light of day and fearing nothing, the Sculptors forced back, standing as a living barrier between the hatred of Arcon and all that was beautiful.

Far behind, the voice of the one who called them rested, now but a quiet sound in the chorus. Little by little, the painter let go, taught and taught until the students themselves became the teachers. It sank back into the depths. And it smiled.

A certain lordling had once struck Jvan's curiousity with their love of the small and ephemeral and ultimately mortal. Looking back, the voice started to see, maybe, a little of what they meant. And it wondered if Jvan, too, was willing to learn.

[color=cornflowerblue][i]Besides,[/i][/color] mused the quiet abstraction as it dabbed its brush and dissolved back into hedonistic obscurity within the uber-mind, its last thoughts wandering to curious memories- [colour=cornflowerblue][i]Perhaps it's better this way.[/i][/colour]