SPONTANEOUSLY INSPIRED, LET'S RAM OUT A POST

[Antarctic Termite]

[ DIAPHANE WHISPER HEADER ]

Hunched over sparse woodlands, the ruddy granite outcrop cast no shadow in the unnatural cold. Infernal blazes of sheet lighting seared the artificial night only to die and give way to darkness again. Skies glowed blue on the far horizon, but the sun- The sun was silenced by a blasphemous shade.

High above the cacophony of shatter-stone and thunder, and sounds of eldritch rending, the titan loomed, hateful, a harbinger. It was a vast grub, hungry for the blood of the earth, untouchable, unshakeable, and its presence was a monstrous reminder of the dwarving of mortals beneath the heel of God. This beast had come to end and to kill, and no force on Galbar could raise a hand against it.

The Mother Suprema.

Through the eyes of the apocalyptic colossus, Diaphane Whisper watched blood being shed with a steel-hard determination that resolved itself out of battle rage and wired her with burning tension. Sweethearts swirled around her body like panicked shoals. Radiation streamed from her, the big sister's voice relaying and receiving constantly from the little Diaphanes at her left and right. Whisper's words streamed from the mouths of the beast, saturating her sisters below with curt commands in their own tongue.

Then, suddenly, a message directed to the copilots alone. "I'm going down there."

"Did they send for help?" asked one of the younger sisters, knowing that this wasn't the case.

"No," answered Whisper. "But they need it." The elder flowed out of the beast's brain, her fluid body content with moving in any direction without turning. "You and Sprint stay here. Keep singing."

"Take care, Diaphane," flickered Sprint as the doors closed on the elder, her voice hiding a thrill of excitement and muted bloodlust. Whisper was taking to the battlefield.

In moments, the big sister was swooping down towards the outcrop, a falcon honed on prey that trailed a narrow streak of brilliant smoke.

Murderous energy roared below.

Cathode's lightning struck from nowhere and everywhere, and his sons bullied entropites out of the air even as their numbers dwindled in the gale. The wind spirit had buried the butte in a black billow of savage rain, deepening the darkness cast by the demon above. Deep booms sounded from the stone itself, the voice of the Lord Feldspar as her stone joints cracked.

And still casting their too-vivid glows even as the land and sky fought to kill, the change-eaters retaliated.

Like strange fish drawn by a child's unsure hand and painstakingly rendered back into reality with exquisite detail, their uncanny shapes and excessive colours untouched, Whisper's sisters dogfought in loose clusters. Their teeth chewed up the air and gouged rock as it rose in jagged spikes to crash against them. At the heart of the violence, Diaphane Wander shone, and scythed against the Stonelord.

Whisper's first-sister had taken on her favoured battle stance, a scalene thing with no axes of symmetry, caged in tubular armour that sprouted vicious spines and a single, tasselled blade. A whip-tail snapped and coiled around Wander, drawing long, thin cuts into Feldspar as she orbited the djinn, shying from some blows and meeting others with her knives that burned rock.

She was hurt. Whisper fell into her own stance as she approached.

"Diaphane!"

[Antarctic Termite]

'spontaneously inspired let's ram out a post'
'posted one month ago'

hahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahok bitch. let's fucking do this.

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The voice resounded a hundredfold, a call of recognition, of family in pain, and- A roaring warcry in a foreign tongue.

"DIAPHANE!"

Whisper's fluid streams coalesced further into solidity. Four slender beams were cast off from her body behind a bladed wedge of a head, and, as one, cracked and snapped into multi-jointed arms. Behind, her tails fused one by one into the segments of her new body, maned and many-eyed, until they finally twisted into her tail-fin.

Lord Feldspar had seen the light of her voice, and raised a massive palm to intercept her, without even turning from Wander's burning scythes. Undodging, Whisper's long arms whipped forwards faster than even her body was moving, seizing the hand by the folds and guiding her skullhelm into the stone like a battering ram into wood.

Light cut into the rock faster than any steel in a flash of granite shrapnel that burned in too-pale eldritch shades. Feldspar jolted as her arm jarred into her, and did not stagger. New stone spiralled around her broken wrist.

"The creature called Wander would abandon our duel at the first sight of loss," said the high Djinn, musing, unperturbed. "Disappointing."

A twist of her hand and the ground below exploded. A thousand axehead-obelisks levitated from the ground below. Then they shot upwards.

Whisper's grip on the giant was not relinquished and she bolted forwards, each handhold chewing into earth's bone. "Wander!" Feldspar's arm fell, rapidly exposing her back to the converging weapons, and she was forced to turn and face them head-first, shattering through the fastest and closest boulder with a leap like cannon's shot.

Unfazed by simple tricks, Feldspar's weapons reversed direction instantly, but now Whisper controlled their chase and Wander demanded blood.

The knot of blades and armour wove a close spiral around Feldspar's far hand, spinning counter-wise as she moved, each thorn hacking deep. Wander left an unbroken trail of open wounds as she moved from wrist to elbow to shoulder and crossed the Stonelord's chest from end to end.

Feldspar defied pain. Closing her eyes of golden pyrite, she shed the damaged arm, mocking Wander's efforts. It cracked and reformed into a jagged ball, fragments hovering between her and the fresh weapon like chain links. The flail slashed out and downwards in a wide arc, catching Wander by her sword as she fled, and tossed her away, spinning.

Whisper still could not throw off the axeheads. She had accumulated enough distance only to turn and force them to follow her in a straight line as she swooped towards Feldspar's head, caught it by the sides and ripped at it as she threw herself around as a pebble flies from the sling. The stones, following, scattered upwards and out, refusing to touch their master.

"Juvenile," commented Feldspar, bringing the flail back up as it met the lower peak of its arc and continued behind her to where the abomination had fled.

Whisper had not been blind to Wander's half of the combat, and when the granite maul came, did not run. Again, she met stone with the hammer of her skull, and was sent reeling as it cracked, diving downwards as shining liquid streamed from her face. The maul halted its path as promptly as the stones had, and turned like a living thing to pursue the trail of blood-

-Which led it past the point where it could bring its swing's momentum forwards again to where Wander was moving.

Her sword pierced Feldspar's chest but did not impale, for Wander's whip had snared her damaged wrist and yanked the faceless monster down to where her sister was pursued, pulling the stab wound into a wide, deep exit gash.

"Whisper!"

The sisters passed and Wander collided with the maul from one side, tossing it sharply downwards as two bladed clumps of war-fury met.

Free of pursuit, Whisper's desperate escape became the offensive it was meant to be. She hit the ground with two limps and used it for a springboard, swinging forwards as the Lord Feldspar anticipated her and raised her remaining hand to meet the savage light. Her palm injured, the still-flying obelisks formed her shield, and more rose from the ground Whisper touched, once again pursuing from behind, forcing her to execute the manoeuvre and be crushed between the two.

But Whisper's body was not static and her wounds so far numbered one. She collided as liquid and the impact morphed her, becoming a studded ball of mismatched plates that sat and cracked as stone after stone pummelled her and Wander rose from the ground.

Still leading the granite maul, the bladed sister did not collide with Fledspar, but her whip was still tight around the Stonelord's wrist, and it cut without mercy as she flew. The stone morningstar pursued her helplessly as she amputated Feldspar's remaining hand in a single, easy loop of flight. It fell away into more airborne shards.

Whisper liquefied as best she could and streamed down, trailing hefty chunks of her own body, still painfully kicking. Freed though she was, only a handful of jagged obelisks pursued her. The rest fled.

For they were pursuing Wander, and there was not a living thing on the face of this broken earth that did not recognised the Sorority's greatest warrior.

Her whip stretched to full length as it swung away from Feldspar's stump and forwards, exchanging hand for neck. The stonelord's ruined arm blocked the whip before it could begin its lethal swing, though it cut deep into her stone. Her pyrite eyes shone as the jagged boulders pursued Wander, daring her not to back away from Feldspar's face, but open her iron skull and be crushed in turn.

Wander didn't even try. She had already let go of Feldspar's neck and was instead leaping for the maul, the clustered stones that leapt to end Whisper where she lay. That she hit, and cut, and forced down as the granite maelstrom hit her and shattered the weapon on which she stood. Between the collision of rock and her own shrieks, the sound was cataclysmic.

In that hurricane of earth and Diaphane blood, Feldspar's last weapons were locked. For one, final, fatal moment, she was disarmed.

"Whisper!"

Feldspar could only focus her eyes on the quiet Sister that came for her, and stare in cool defiance as a single eye opened on a rush of bleached colour and the burning fluid entered her by the wound on her chest.

The Stonelord fell to one knee. Her stump hit her torso and she tried to crush the eldritch creature with the weight of her body, but too much of her had been lost. She ignited, trailing great shafts of light as she finally fell.

Whisper consumed what she could manage in a second's time and erupted from Feldspar's back, combat form restored, albeit still bleeding heavily. She blurred towards her sister.

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[Antarctic Termite]

"Wander!"

"Whisper," wheezed a voice, laughing, from within the shattered heap of bladed stone. Whisper shoved aside boulders as if they were leaves and sticks, though she only acquired more tails of blood as she did so.

The final impact had happened faster and harder than either of them had truly seen, and Wander's armour had not held up to the punishment. Most of the links in the cage-like armour that was her body were broken, solid but warped and only raggedly connected, and her sword had snapped in three. Whisper's spindly arms lifted her from the ruins and cradled her like a child.

"I could have lost you," she whispered, voice soft in the chaos.

"You didn't," crowed Wander, melting away as much as she could to return Whisper's embrace. Her own voice, too, was dim, for reasons entirely different. "We didn't lose a damn thing. We won, sister! We won!"

"I could have lost you," repeated the pilot, seized by a sudden urgency.

Wander was not deaf to her sister's pain. The wreck of her body dragged itself further into the embrace, the voice within at odds with the violence this form had been made for, and seen. "I'm not lost, Whisper. I'm okay. I'll survive. You saved me. And as long as you're here, I'll never be lost. Ever."

Whisper held her tightly, silent, as a pack of her grandaughters and nieces pinned Cathode to the ground somewhere and extinguished his lightning forever, his final roars booming over the shadowed landscape. And she knew, in a sickening revelation that she could not explain, that Wander was wrong.

One more voice rumbled out into the moment.

"So this is how I die," observed Lord Feldspar, her voice unbroken even as her body lay crippled and dying. "Torn limb from limb in a war I never started, by creatures who are made of love for their own and hatred for everything else." One golden grain at a time, her eyes were crumbling away into nothing. Whisper watched with the eyes on her nearest side.

"I know not whether I should be happy, or disgusted. But I fought. I fought to the end, and thus, while you live your lives in fury, I die in peace."

Feldspar's lips began to flake and collapse as her Flicker tried to burrow away. Whisper carried Wander as they floated towards the spark of energy. The wounded sister would eat, and she would heal, and they would return to the Mother at full strength once more.

"Do you understand what she's saying?" wondered Wander dazedly.

"No," she lied, though Whisper had seen and heard more Djinni in her time than any other change-eater, and knew that some words did not need translating.

* * * * *

[Antarctic Termite]

------------->

I feel proud of this fight scene

This event takes place before Whisper's heroification (still claiming khookies though because it's a flashback). During a change-eater raid on two powerful elementals, one Skylord Cathode and one even stronger Stonelord Feldspar, and their respective retinue, Whisper descends from Mother Suprema to join her struggling sisters, leaving her daughter Sprint in charge.

Wander is duelling Feldspar alone and predictably losing, despite her prodigious skill in combat. Whisper joins her, and though the Stonelord rebuffs their early efforts easily, the tide rapidly turns when the sisters start fighting as a unit. Wander is heavily injured but Feldspar is brought down.

Whisper panics for fear of Wander's safety, but Wander, being a more typical Diaphane and therefore the type to take brutal physical combat with a lot more levity than Whisper, doesn't seem all that disturbed. Whisper realises that Wander's fearless enthusiasm will carry her to the grave.

Feldspar watches their embrace and quietly comments on the irony of the love they show in the face of their incredible violence. She 'dies' (loses control of her extensively damaged body) knowing that death brings her peace and continues the natural way of all things, while the sisters will only ever know death as a source of misery.

Wander consumes Feldspar's Flicker and is restored to full health. Off-screen, their sisters subdue Cathode and the many minor elementals that partook in the battle (not without losses, mind! Their side of the battle just isn't mentioned).

Later, Whisper reflects on the battle before she is interrupted by some of her descendants and young cousins. She sings them a lullaby in true Diaphane style- Vastly romanticising the details of the First Diaphane's birth and death, while going into grisly detail about the murder of Elementals. She's revealed to be increasingly uncomfortable with her own stories, and she leaves Lex on an unknown mission involving Toun's blessing.

It's worth noting that during the combat scene, the change-eaters are no longer morphing randomly. They choose specific 'combat stances', or forms, each with their own strengths and techniques. These can change at a moment's notice in order to change tactics, flee, or surprise an opponent, but are designed to enable the Diaphanes to specialise and work as a diversely skilled team in battle.

This elaborate martial art is called the Lexite Melee, and can potentially be taught to any shapeshifter with both a solid and a liquid form, provided they are willing to do some real bizarre shit to their shape. It was, of course, handed down by Jvan for 1 Might. Diversity in all things, kids.

Also, at some point Whisper got heroified, so that's a Might point too. Both from Ovaedis.

Diaphane Whisper(?)
18 Khookies
Level One

Jvan
8 Might Ambient
3 Might in Ovaedis
1 Free Point
2C / 0D
Level Five

[Antarctic Termite]

"Hey, grandma!"

Whisper's memories were interrupted by the voice of a youngling. Her core form rested in a meteor cave she had concealed with noctus fronds; The very same, had they known it, that Toun had left her in so very long ago.

There was no chance that they had found her by accident. Her fluorescence was now too dim, too mingled with the inky brown blood of Jvan, to be seen at any distance. She shuffled Toun's calligraphic mark to a nook of her core form where it would brighten up her surface more visible without being too obvious itself, and drifted from her place of pondering.

Four of them, two of Stellar's line, one of Wander's, one of her own. "Hello, Melody, hello Twist," she greeted individually. It was one of the quirks they came to see, her ability to remember every name in Lex. "Hello, Auricolor, hello Dust."

The children giggled and her heart melted for them.

"Can you sing us a lullaby?" said Auricolor.

"Stalk said she ran out," said Melody.

"And then she said that she learned all of hers from you!" finished Twist.

Whisper let herself wave a little as if deciding. If she moved her light around her body, it made her look better than she really did. "Oh, alright," she said smilingly. "How about I make up a new one, just for you?"

The daughters all made eager commentary, all but Dust, who pretended to be lost in awe while she stared at the murk within her great-grandmother. Whisper knew she was her own.

A long few moments wait until the children's demands piped down. "This one," she opened, "is about Galbar."

The four change-eaters wormed their way into the folds of her body for warmth, Twist wrapping herself in a frond. The story began.

Eevee- I wonder if we're dead

"In quiet days,
There was a time
Of silent Rings
And untold rhyme

When Sister's ways
Were still to come
When nothing sings
And Lex was dumb.

'Twas not up here,
Between noctus frond,
That we began
The Sister's bond.

On Galbar dear,
Our story starts
Where waters ran,
God made our hearts.

First there was one,
One Diaphane.
One joyful voice,
Between the rain.

She had her fun
Within the sea
And made the choice
To craft us three.

From Firstmother,
Did Stellar rise.
Then Wander, too,
And Whisper wise.

A third of her
A sister each.
And say it true,
For this I teach:

She lives on still,
Within our reach.

In Lex's light,
We came to be.
We live here now,
Above the sea.

But when we fight,
When we draw blood,
We travel down,
Into the mud

Where Grandma First
Her teeth first bared
Her tails first whipped
Her claws first shared.

We do our worst.
The spirits bleed
As they are ripped
Their Flickers freed

And so we feast
On bodies fresh
The earth we burn
Its crop we thresh.

From west to east,
Lex hears our song.
The world will turn
And we live on,

So thank God, daughters,
For a rich life long."

The children were quiet. Melody, Twist, and Auricolor had fallen asleep. Dust was still listening.

"That was a lovely story, Whisper," said she.

"Thank you."

"Can we have another one?"

Whisper looked closely at the child. She was still fascinated by the Jvanic stains that riddled her ancestor. She'd fall asleep after another song, but she couldn't help trying to stay awake until she'd figured out what they were. For a moment Whisper was silent. The two of them were so similar.

"Maybe one day you might find out, Dust," she answered, no longer talking about the song. "But I can't stay."

"Oh," said Dust. "Goodbye I guess."

Whisper carefully left the sleeping children behind and waved farewell, dissolving as she did.

The story had been formulaic. Most Lexite lulls were similar in tone and content. Whisper knew that well- There wasn't a song she hadn't sung, and she'd authored more than half of them.

The longer she thought about it, the less moral her poems seemed, the more guilt piled on every time she repeated them for her children- The more contaminated her body became.

She looked down at the bright red sigil, then up towards the blue glow of Galbar. She made a decision.

Drawing energy from the sepia blood until her whole body seemed to reach the point of igniting, Diaphane Whisper kicked off against the vacuum and shot towards the planet, tails streaming. Only Dust saw her go.