Antarctic Termite

The Court of the Gods

I wasn't originally intending to write sheets for all of Annie's retinue, but I did anyway. Relationships are in brief (for now?) and some might change as we juggle ideas in Discord. most of this was written months ago...

edit: fixed some leftovers from when Kalleis's name was Pandaisia.

Annie, the City Nymph

Anemone Dryas

In her youth, it is said, she had darker eyes, and a wider smile.

Who?

By the time Annie was born, the woods and wells of Hellas were already ringing with giggles and song. Nymphs of every kind danced among the trees and heaths, splashed in clean streams, leapt from the tumbling waves of the world-sea and chased one another even through the stars, perched on satellites that were the playthings of the God-Father.

The circumstances of her birth she questioned not. Even then, in the early days of the Natural Youth Motif Project for Hellas, a shadow had passed over the knowledge of where the nymphs were to come from, and what- who- they were for. Annie stifled her doubts, stayed her tongue, and plugged her ears against whispers. She was born of the Gods, as a servant of Gods, and that was all she knew.

She need not, perhaps, have fretted so much. Once the youngest of nymphs, now among their most senior, she was the earliest to stray from the Bohemian vision of Dionysos and the God-Father, the first to err even from the perfect wildness of her beloved Lady, Artemis (the Elder, or the Younger? O forbidden thought...). Anemone Dryas, last of the first, is an experiment, touched more than others of her kind by the deft hands of ATHENA MAKHANITIS.

A small experiment, to be sure, and a long-running one. Annie is flawless in form and operates well within the parameters set by her Lady Artemis. She is distinguished from other dryads chiefly by her home, which is Olympus itself- for what would the Divine City be without its birds and shrine-yards, riverfronts and hanging gardens? The slivers and sparkles of wilderness built into quiet corners of Olympus are as much part of its glory as its golden towers and manicured flower-fields. All these things are self-maintaining, of course, and easily remedied by the Gods themselves if the need arises. Annie's imperative is to ensure that it never does.

Such pleasant chores provide subtle cover. Written into her spine by the hand of ATHENA APATURIA is an iota of change, iteration, instability- chaos. Annie has moods, phases, faces, secrets, schemes, doubts, and torments. She fulfils her duty, she rebels. She mingles with mortals, she hides her face. She is quiet and loud, shy and bold, anxious and joyful. Her three-hundred-year-old entry in Athena's infinite archives is rich with data, knowledge that will one day be layered into the New Gods.

And yet- Who?

As for herself, Annie follows the example set by her Lady Artemis, oversees the corner of Olympus assigned to her by the Goddess of Cities, and bows before the God-Father as she always has. She is swift, competent, even stern. Where her confidence fails, it is among strangers and new friends. Where she cries, it is when the threat (or dream!) of failure cracks her smiling facade of perfection. When she laughs, it is sometimes kind, sometimes grateful, sometimes petty, but always true.

And what?

Anemone Dryas bears few powers. She calls plants to grow and die, and instructs their ways. She sees through the eye of the damselfly and sings the songs of honeybirds. She has had a fondness for caterpillars since she was a girl, and breeds them to enormous sizes- moths as wide as pelicans! Her distress is painful to the woods of Hellas, and her Lady's beasts are brought to frenzy when she screams.

Who, else?

Annie has many masters, and humbles herself accordingly before all of them, even when she's in a mood.

##To the Lady Artemis, her mistress...

##To Pallas Athena.

##To Demeter, Goddess of all cultivated things, who has in her grace provided all that which grows upon Olympus, even that which gives the appearance of wilderness.

##To Demeter's daughters the Horae, as they come and go in rhythm...

##To Apate, that snitching spider whose reflection she sees in every lens. Cameras have no place in a forest...

##Before Hebe Dia, that caged songbird, almost too delicate to bully...

##Before the God-Father himself, Zeus, in his new incarnation...

There's something more.

There was much to be swept away when the Olympians came to Hellas. Electronic relics of the original colonists, a lingering memory of Earth and its norms. Evidence of the war between Zeus and 'Typhon'. Zeus had need for a swift and total rewilding of the planet- and its people.

The Planetary Agonist Network, PAN, was a rogue intelligence borne on organic nanytes and set loose upon the world, a wild blaze of savagery and growth to purge the remains of the old civilisation under bones and ivy. Under its spell forests sprang up within months, beasts grew to monstrous sizes for the first time, plagues of locusts covered the very sun.

The minds of the colonists were not spared. PAN invoked every shameful nuance of human ecology, empowering its parasites, its predators, its bloated tumours of fecundity run amok. The dark god fell upon them with its bestial song, fanning the flames of sex and envy. Everything was to be reduced to its primitive state of hunger and lust and violence, a dark age from which the shining tower of Olympus could rise.

And then, as quickly as it came, it was gone. "Tell them that the Great God Pan is dead!"

The Network was deleted and decommissioned, its blood-thick sludge of nanomachines returned to the control of the Olympians. To Artemis and Demeter were given the wilderness, to Dionysos the thrill of the night, to Eros and Aphrodite the hidden passion of man and woman. The ruins were unrecognisable. The dark age was over, having lasted barely two generations.

Nothing was supposed to remain. If it did, it could only be in Olympus itself, among the decadent and degenerating gods of the old crew, stowed away in code they no longer bothered to read, slumbering, waiting for something young and fresh and free, a vessel through which to be born once more into the world...

The Slave Wight

Psilos

Never fail.

Origin

Once and still an android, over the course of many centuries the very meaning of the word has flowed around Psilos like trickling rainwater around a steel-capped boot. His soft humanoid tissue long gone, his old name and memories long since deleted, Psilos the Android has become less than a homunculus and far more than a robot: he is a wight, the sleepless deathless husk, the ancient corpse that serves into eternity.

Once an android, yes, and the highest among that race. All the petty, servile robots of the ship's original complement have since worn out or become obsolete, and lie in slagheaps and curiosity-cabinets, replaced by new machines. Of the elite cyborg grade, some have been rebuilt with bodies better fit to their duties in Olympus, many have been cannibalised to serve Athena and Hephaestus as templates and components of fresh automata, and more have been lost to 'Typhon'.

Psilos remains: patched and tuned and re-tuned, never assigned any one great task, with time forced to excel in all of them.

Persona

Psilos was a human-mimic, a false demigod wrapped in a sleeve of flesh; the meat is gone, but the mimic remains. He is a silent warrior, a relentless worker, and a deft servant. He studies. He rests. He optimises- the closest thing a machine of his calibre can do to training the body. In a way, he even socialises, though few take an interest in the deep rumbling drone that barks oh-so-cordially from his once sonorous voicebox.

Long ago, he may have been different- somewhere in the archives of Athena and Coeus, surely, must be the parameters of his earlier and more finely crafted soul, along with all the rest aboard the ship. That soul is useless and forgotten, and Psilos sees no reason to dwell on it. He's barely even sure 'the ship' ever existed. It must have- his very existence suggests ancient artifice, and Hephaestus, for all his wonders, never built him. A dangerous mystery to ponder.

Psilos would surely have gone the way of the other elite androids in due time, had he not been assigned, by happenstance mostly, to the service and protection of the dryad, Anemone. The supply of automata in working condition had been depleted in a spat between divinities, and Annie laid claim to Psilos for the simple purpose of logging the damaged boughs of a great tree, lest it topple long before its natural time. Soon they were inseparable.

For a second time did the hand of ATHENA ALEA reach into Annie's life. A sacred function was added to Psilos' code, a function she had learned from the God-Mother Hera, and its name was Agápē: unconditional love.

More than a century has passed. Annie remains Psilos' only true loyalty. He is her brother, her mentor, her weapon, and her true friend. His Agápē has grown only stronger. For her sake there is no obstacle he will not surmount nor secret he will not unveil. Annie is the wight's hidden wellspring of infinite strength. She is what makes him dangerous.

Artefacts

When he travels the surface of Hellas with Annie, Psilos dons his garb. An undyed cloak and a mask disguise him from mortals who would take fright. In his hands, a wooden staff and a sturdy knife are more than enough to defend her from mundane threats, and his own body is largely impervious to mortal blades. Not even a full clan of bandits can endanger the warrior when he is roused.

Against threats, Psilos wields his gun. This ancient steel tool is barely a step above the iron swords and catapults of the primitives, and thus it has withstood centuries of service and may withstand many more. With each shot it delivers an antimatter-tipped microflechette cluster spray into his quarry. That is all it needs to do.

Psilos himself is protected by his halo, a protective nanyte cloud which blocks low-level attempts at electronic warfare and delays the penetration of most higher-level digital weapons. Hostile nanomachines attempting to colonise or consume the wight's body will find the halo a fierce opponent indeed. Almost needless to say, this armour was devised by ATHENA AXIOPOINOS, and is one of many such artefacts in Olympus.

Bonds

The automaton's relations to the gods are almost entirely mediated through his bond to Annie. To Hephaestus he is simply an old machine in excellent condition under its beaten-up exterior. To Pallas Athena he is an effective support for a nymph of especial interest, and one of many, many little soldiers to be rallied in the defense of Olympus. To Zeus he is nothing.

The gods have infinite databases and plenty of time to draw upon them. With a little effort they could surely know all that there possibly is to know about the wight, things he no longer knows himself. But they don't. They never have. Psilos might as well have been sealed in a barrow-tomb the day the ship made landfall on Hellas, so long has he been resigned to obscurity.

Do the gods still remember everything they brought to this world? Do they still dwell on the artifice of that ancient place, which they did not build? Do they still know the extent of Old Arith's powers?

Do they?

Do they really?

The Night Hostess

Kalleis Pannychis

Strange, the way a veil will at once disguise and display.

Origin

As much as the City of the Gods needs its heavenly lords, it also needs its monitors- and its covergirls. The Charites- graces- are a small clique of goddesses tasked with cultivating suitable behaviour among the many lesser deities and their children, those descended from the Olympians and their compliant crewmates, according to the will and vision of Father Zeus. Their duties are light, and their status is more of a reward for exemplary behaviour than a real function, a token of recognition for their dedication to the grand Hellenic role-play. Thus they typically have free reign to lead by example, setting the tone and timbre of Olympian life, which washes out to all of Hellas below, often garnering lavish mortal followings as they do. Among them are Aglaea (resplendent health), Paidia (childlike play), Pasithea (spiritual respite), Pandaisia (feasting), Euthychia (cheer), Auxo (abundance), Phaenna and Cleta (light and glory). Their origins are many, some nymphs, some muses, some children of the horae, some recruited from among the old crew and some born to their task.

Kalleis Pannychis is among the latter few, and named for her predecessor, the original Pannychis still known by some as Matilda Hatherell. Pannychis- the wild night, personified; the bold girl, the first to let loose, object of all eyes, the one to make you wish the night never ends. That the party never dies.

Hatherell enjoyed her role, then appreciated it, and at last merely suffered it. Eternal youth wearies the mortal soul, and the brightest stars burn fast. Replacements were trialed and quickly discarded, hopeful volunteers greedy for glamour and status, ill-suited for the weary fate of seeing celebration become a chore. None respected the bodily demands of endless dance and drink, nor the quiet labour of mixing up the act, pacing out the show, keeping it all real, keeping it fresh.

Dionysos grew impatient. He had plenty of disposable partygirls- what he needed was a hostess, an organiser, someone with Hatherell's idle genius waiting to spring free. The early glut of talent and discipline among the crew had been spent or worn out. If a replacement could not be found, she would have to be built. A commission was drafted and sent to the forge of Hephaestus, signed by Pannychis and Dionysos himself.

It didn't take long.

Persona

Kalleis Pannychis is heavy-duty party machinery, industrial strength. She cannot tire and she is always planning something. She feeds on energy, she's addicted to it, it thrills her with a savage glee. It's an endless game, a dance of war, it's like juggling fire. She's a Muse and a musician, a talent scout, a bouncer and a broker and a driver and a diva.

And she is sober. Kallie's role does not require her to lose herself. Her excitement is coupled with an effortless precision and regality. She manages stragglers, supplies and interruptions without flinching, and executes her projects from beginning to end without faltering, from the invitation to the cleaning-up. Kalleis handles everything her guests don't want to think about on their big night, thinks about the things they would prefer to forget. Hers is an eccentric disposition for a human mind, totally natural for an automaton like herself.

She's a handmaiden to Dionysos, not a mistress, and certainly not the star of the show- by her will, Pannychis has become a catchy honour, a title to which she treats her clients as she brings them into the spotlight, relegating herself gleefully to the role of a strange, gracious hostess, one that alights like a shining butterfly into the lives of mortals and departs as swiftly as she came. Kallie applies a lighter touch among mortals than she does on Olympus. She is often active, but reveals herself sparingly, whispering invitations and instructions, dropping gold into pockets, writing songs, fixing instruments, altering drinks, handling buzzkills. Her ability to scan for subtle emotional states allows her to flick effortlessly from modest to flirtatious, wild to ladylike, always as the circumstance requires, always with honest cheer.

On Hellas and Olympus alike, her dedication to festivity as a matter of function tends to win her friends from outside the dance rather than within, characters who relate to her as a lady of skill more than allure. Artists, rulers, and warriors entertain her between events more than youths, providing her with a rich bed of inspiration and connections for more fire. Everything is an opportunity for more fire- even the business of the High Gods, scheming and quarrelling in their Olympian palaces...

Artefacts

A generalist, Kallie is built with a variety of just-so functions to address any contingency.

A light-show is always welcome on Olympus, and Kalleis has a multitude of artefacts for projecting intense colour and sound. These are generally well-disguised in whatever fits the mood of the night, especially their mortal equivalents, being instruments and lamps of various kinds. On Olympus she can get away with more, and is always tinkering on her own equipment, which she herself builds to purpose. A good hostess is an excellent repairman.

Managing brain chemistry is an equally important part of any good night out. Kalleis is capable of identifying all kinds of bodily cues at a glance, reading the emotional, hormonal and physical state of her guests with ease and responding with the appropriate words, touches, and drugs, of which an endless library is stored on her body.

Kalleis is strong. Erecting temporary structures, moving goods and guests at the last minute, evicting the unwanted, even dancing- all things she prefers to handle herself, and is capable of doing unassisted for many hours on end. Security is rarely lacking in Olympus, and mundane threats are easily foreseen, but the responsibility for safety ultimately comes down to her, and she can fight competently, if inelegantly, making use of her endurance and speed and high-energy optical equipment. For much the same reason, she can operate on bodies that have suffered all sorts of injuries, should the need arise.

Her personal pleasure barge is an airship.

Bonds

Kallie's chief colleague is Dionysos, though he would probably like to think himself her master. As a High God he outranks the Charis, but Kalleis formally answers to Charis Hegemone (graceful leadership), to her mistress Aphrodite, and finally to Zeus himself- should he take an interest, which he seldom does in these latter years. The matter of authority is rarely relevant anyway. Kallie feeds Dionysos an endless list of opportunities to have fun, and requires neither assistance nor supervision.

##Eros, of course, is always welcome to undertake his research at Kallie's night feasts in any body he should choose. There's much to be learned...

##Hermes, who blesses invitations, spreads the word, and guides travellers on swift wings, has earned Kalleis's undying gratitude. His good spirits are welcome at any celebration...

##Coeus, kitty, kitty kitty! To think he was once her creator. No doubt his eccentricity is still visible in her odd design...

##The Hebites, for maintaining a youthful spirit among many valued guests, through some secret means. And their Lady, for her voice...

##So too Apollo's music is ever-welcome in the night...

##Gula, dear, cure of all hangovers, provider of drugs, would that you could only know how great a god you are...

Kallie's closest friend is Anemone Dryas, the garden nymph. The parks of Olympus can be lively places, and the two work together professionally to coordinate festivities, but something deeper attracts the two, such that they have become as close as sisters. Kallie's overflowing generosity, patience and cheer soothes Annie's bad moods and encourages her better ones, and her nights give Annie an opportunity to forget herself, all blessings which the Charis is eager to provide. Annie is always an honoured guest, and has even earned the crown of Pannychis for herself in seasons past.

Annie's shadow, Psilos, has endeared himself to Kalleis, though a party animal he is not. Fellow automata, they are birds of a feather, privy to the hidden machinations that make Olympus what it is. Psilos's human-like loyalty, like Annie's capriciousness, piques Kallie's curiousity and draws her to them.

Relations among the Charites are mixed, generally at least cordial. Kalleis is on especially good terms with Paidia, who shouldn't be left unsupervised at her parties, and Pasithea, who wouldn't be caught dead at one. Hegemone, ostensibly her superior, treats her as a necessary compromise following the retirement of Hatherell from the role, but still doesn't see her as the 'true' Pannychis, only an indefinite placeholder.

Hatherell herself almost never speaks with Kalleis. There is nothing left to say.

Annie & Psilos - Court of the Gods

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Annie & Psilos - Court of the Gods

The Night Hostess

Kalleis Pannychis

Strange, the way a veil will at once disguise and display.

Origin

As much as the City of the Gods needs its heavenly lords, it also needs its monitors- and its covergirls. The Charites- graces- are a small clique of goddesses tasked with cultivating suitable behaviour among the many lesser deities and their children, those descended from the Olympians and their compliant crewmates, according to the will and vision of Father Zeus. Their duties are light, and their status is more of a reward for exemplary behaviour than a real function, a token of recognition for their dedication to the grand Hellenic role-play. Thus they typically have free reign to lead by example, setting the tone and timbre of Olympian life, which washes out to all of Hellas below, often garnering lavish mortal followings as they do. Among them are Aglaea (resplendent health), Paidia (childlike play), Pasithea (spiritual respite), Pandaisia (feasting), Euthychia (cheer), Auxo (abundance), Phaenna and Cleta (light and glory). Their origins are many, some nymphs, some muses, some horae, some recruited from among the old crew and some born to their task.

Kalleis Pannychis is among the latter few, and named for her predecessor, the original Pannychis still known by some as Matilda Hatherell. Pannychis- the wild night, personified; the bold girl, the first to let loose, object of all eyes, the one to make you wish the night never ends. That the party never dies.

Hatherell enjoyed her role, then appreciated it, and at last merely suffered it. Eternal youth wearies the mortal soul, and the brightest stars burn fast. Replacements were trialed and quickly discarded, hopeful volunteers greedy for glamour and status, ill-suited for the weary fate of seeing celebration become a chore. None respected the bodily demands of endless dance and drink, nor the quiet labour of mixing up the act, pacing out the show, keeping it all real, keeping it fresh.

Dionysos grew impatient. He had plenty of disposable partygirls- what he needed was a hostess, an organiser, someone with Hatherell's idle genius waiting to spring free. The early glut of talent and discipline among the crew had been spent or worn out. If a replacement could not be found, she would have to be built. A commission was drafted and sent to the forge of Hephaestus, signed by Pannychis and Dionysos himself.

It didn't take long.

Persona

Kalleis Pannychis is heavy-duty party machinery, industrial strength. She cannot tire and she is always planning something. She feeds on energy, she's addicted to it, it thrills her with a savage glee. It's an endless game, a dance of war, it's like juggling fire. She's a Muse and a musician, a talent scout, a bouncer and a broker and a driver and a diva.

And she is sober. Kallie's role does not require her to lose herself. Her excitement is coupled with an effortless precision and regality. She manages stragglers, supplies and interruptions without flinching, and executes her projects from beginning to end without faltering, from the invitation to the cleaning-up. Panda handles everything her guests don't want to think about on their big night, thinks about the things they would prefer to forget. Hers is an eccentric disposition for a human mind, totally natural for an automaton like herself.

She's a handmaiden to Dionysos, not a mistress, and certainly not the star of the show- by her will, Pannychis has become a catchy honour, a title to which she treats her clients as she brings them into the spotlight, relegating herself gleefully to the role of a strange, gracious hostess, one that alights like a shining butterfly into the lives of mortals and departs as swiftly as she came. Kallie applies a lighter touch among mortals than she does on Olympus. She is often active, but reveals herself sparingly, whispering invitations and instructions, dropping gold into pockets, writing songs, fixing instruments, altering drinks, handling buzzkills. Her ability to scan for subtle emotional states allows her to flick effortlessly from modest to flirtatious, wild to ladylike, always as the circumstance requires, always with honest cheer.

On Hellas and Olympus alike, her dedication to festivity as a matter of function tends to win her friends from outside the dance rather than within, characters who relate to her as a lady of skill more than allure. Artists, rulers, and warriors entertain her between events more than youths, providing her with a rich bed of inspiration and connections for more fire. Everything is an opportunity for more fire- even the business of the High Gods, scheming and quarrelling in their Olympian palaces...

Artefacts

A generalist, Kallie is built with a variety of just-so functions to address any contingency.

A light-show is always welcome on Olympus, and Panda has a multitude of artefacts for projecting intense colour and sound. These are generally well-disguised in whatever fits the mood of the night, especially their mortal equivalents, being instruments and lamps of various kinds. On Olympus she can get away with more, and is always tinkering on her own equipment, which she herself builds to purpose. A good hostess is an excellent repairman.

Managing brain chemistry is an equally important part of any good night out. Panda is capable of identifying all kinds of bodily cues at a glance, reading the emotional, hormonal and physical state of her guests with ease and responding with the appropriate words, touches, and drugs, of which an endless library is stored on her body.

Panda is strong. Erecting temporary structures, moving goods and guests at the last minute, evicting the unwanted, even dancing- all things she prefers to handle herself, and is capable of doing unassisted for many hours on end. Security is rarely lacking in Olympus, and mundane threats are easily foreseen, but the responsibility for safety ultimately comes down to her, and she can fight competently, if inelegantly, making use of her endurance and speed and high-energy optical equipment. For much the same reason, she can operate on bodies that have suffered all sorts of injuries, should the need arise.

Her personal pleasure barge is an airship.

Bonds

Kallie's chief colleague is Dionysos, though he would probably like to think himself her master. As a High God he outranks the Charis, but Kalleis formally answers to Charis Hegemone (graceful leadership), to her mistress Aphrodite, and finally to Zeus himself- should he take an interest, which he seldom does in these latter years. The matter of authority is rarely relevant anyway. Kallie feeds Dionysos an endless list of opportunities to have fun, and requires neither assistance nor supervision.

##eros##

##hebe##

Kallie's closest friend is Anemone Dryas, the garden nymph. The parks of Olympus can be lively places, and the two work together professionally to coordinate festivities, but something deeper attracts the two, such that they have become as close as sisters. Kallie's overflowing generosity, patience and cheer soothes Annie's bad moods and encourages her better ones, and her nights give Annie an opportunity to forget herself, all blessings which the Charis is eager to provide. Annie is always an honoured guest, and has even earned the crown of Pannychis for herself in seasons past.

Annie's shadow, Psilos, has endeared himself to Kalleis, though a party animal he is not. Fellow automata, they are birds of a feather, privy to the hidden machinations that make Olympus what it is. Psilos's human-like loyalty, like Annie's capriciousness, piques Kallie's curiousity and draws her to them.

Relations among the Charites are mixed, generally at least cordial. Kalleis is on especially good terms with Paidia, who shouldn't be left unsupervised at her parties, and Pasithea, who wouldn't be caught dead at one. Hegemone, ostensibly her superior, treats her as a necessary compromise following the retirement of Hatherell from the role, but still doesn't see her as the 'true' Pannychis, only an indefinite placeholder.

Hatherell herself almost never speaks with Kalleis. There is nothing left to say.

Annie & Psilos - Court of the Gods

Annie, the City Nymph

Anemone Dryas

In her youth, it is said, she had darker eyes, and a wider smile.

Who?

By the time Annie was born, the woods and wells of Hellas were already ringing with giggles and song. Nymphs of every kind danced among the trees and heaths, splashed in clean streams, leapt from the tumbling waves of the world-sea and chased one another even through the stars, perched on satellites that were the playthings of the God-Father.

The circumstances of her birth she questioned not. Even then, in the early days of the Natural Youth Motif Project for Hellas, a shadow had passed over the knowledge of where the nymphs were to come from, and what- who- they were for. Annie stifled her doubts, stayed her tongue, and plugged her ears against whispers. She was born of the Gods, as a servant of Gods, and that was all she knew.

She need not, perhaps, have fretted so much. Once the youngest of nymphs, now among their most senior, she was the earliest to stray from the Bohemian vision of Dionysos and the God-Father, the first to err even from the perfect wildness of her beloved Lady, Artemis (the Elder, or the Younger? O forbidden thought...). Anemone Dryas, last of the first, is an experiment, touched more than others of her kind by the deft hands of ATHENA MAKHANITIS.

A small experiment, to be sure, and a long-running one. Annie is flawless in form and operates well within the parameters set by her Lady Artemis. She is distinguished from other dryads chiefly by her home, which is Olympus itself- for what would the Divine City be without its birds and shrine-yards, riverfronts and hanging gardens? The slivers and sparkles of wilderness built into quiet corners of Olympus are as much part of its glory as its golden towers and manicured flower-fields. All these things are self-maintaining, of course, and easily remedied by the Gods themselves if the need arises. Annie's imperative is to ensure that it never does.

Such pleasant chores provide subtle cover. Written into her spine by the hand of ATHENA APATURIA is an iota of change, iteration, instability- chaos. Annie has moods, phases, faces, secrets, schemes, doubts, and torments. She fulfils her duty, she rebels. She mingles with mortals, she hides her face. She is quiet and loud, shy and bold, anxious and joyful. Her three-hundred-year-old entry in Athena's infinite archives is rich with data, knowledge that will one day be layered into the New Gods.

And yet- Who?

As for herself, Annie follows the example set by her Lady Artemis, oversees the corner of Olympus assigned to her by the Goddess of Cities, and bows before the God-Father as she always has. She is swift, competent, even stern. Where her confidence fails, it is among strangers and new friends. Where she cries, it is when the threat (or dream!) of failure cracks her smiling facade of perfection. When she laughs, it is sometimes kind, sometimes grateful, sometimes petty, but always true.

And what?

Anemone Dryas bears few powers. She calls plants to grow and die, and instructs their ways. She sees through the eye of the damselfly and sings the songs of honeybirds. She has had a fondness for caterpillars since she was a girl, and breeds them to enormous sizes- moths as wide as pelicans! Her distress is painful to the woods of Hellas, and her Lady's beasts are brought to frenzy when she screams.

Who, else?

There was much to be swept away when the Olympians came to Hellas. Electronic relics of the original colonists, a lingering memory of Earth and its norms. Evidence of the war between Zeus and 'Typhon'. Zeus had need for a swift and total rewilding of the planet- and its people.

The Planetary Agonist Network, PAN, was a rogue intelligence borne on nanytes and set loose upon the world, a wild blaze of savagery and growth to purge the remains of the old civilisation under bones and ivy. Under its spell forests sprang up within months, beasts grew to monstrous sizes for the first time, plagues of locusts covered the very sun.

The minds of the colonists were not spared. PAN invoked every shameful nuance of human ecology, empowering its parasites, its predators, its bloated tumours of fecundity run amok. The dark god fell upon them with its bestial song, fanning the flames of sex and envy. Everything was to be reduced to its primitive state of hunger and lust and violence, a dark age from which the shining tower of Olympus could rise.

And then, as quickly as it came, it was gone. "Tell them that the Great God Pan is dead!"

The Network was deleted and decommissioned, its blood-thick sludge of nanomachines returned to the control of the Olympians. To Artemis was given the wilderness, to Dionysos the thrill of the night, to Eros and Aphrodite the hidden passion of man and woman. The ruins were unrecognisable. The dark age was over, having lasted barely two generations.

Nothing was supposed to remain. If it did, it could only be in Olympus itself, among the decadent and degenerating gods of the old crew, stowed away in code they no longer bothered to read, slumbering, waiting for something young and fresh and free, a vessel through which to be born once more into the world...

The Slave Wight

Psilos

Never fail.

Origin

Once and still an android, over the course of many centuries the meaning of the word itself has flowed around Psilos like trickling rainwater around a steel-capped boot. His soft humanoid tissue long gone, his old name and memories long since deleted, Psilos the Android has become less than a homunculus and far more than a robot: he is a wight, the sleepless deathless husk, the ancient corpse that serves into eternity.

Once an android, yes, and the highest among that race. All the petty, servile robots of the ship's original complement have since worn out or become obsolete, and lie in slagheaps and curiosity-cabinets, replaced by new machines. Of the elite cyborg grade, some have been rebuilt with bodies better fit to their duties in Olympus, many have been cannibalised to serve Athena and Hephaestus as templates and components of fresh automata, and more have been lost to 'Typhon'.

Psilos remains: patched and tuned and re-tuned, never assigned any one great task, with time forced to excel in all of them.

Persona

Psilos was a human-mimic, a false demigod wrapped in a sleeve of flesh; the meat is gone, but the mimic remains. He is a silent warrior, a relentless worker, and a deft servant. He studies. He rests. He optimises- the closest thing a machine of his calibre can do to training the body. In a way, he even socialises, though few take an interest in the deep rumbling drone that barks oh-so-cordially from his once sonorous voicebox.

Long ago, he may have been different- somewhere in the archives of Athena and Coeus, surely, must be the parameters of his earlier and more finely crafted soul, along with all the rest aboard the ship. That soul is useless and forgotten, and Psilos sees no reason to dwell on it. He's barely even sure 'the ship' ever existed. It must have- his very existence suggests ancient artifice, and Hephaestus, for all his wonders, never built him. A dangerous mystery to ponder.

Psilos would surely have gone the way of the other elite androids in due time, had he not been assigned, by happenstance mostly, to the service and protection of the dryad, Anemone. The supply of automata in working condition had been depleted in a spat between divinities, resolved ultimately by the hard hand of GULA. Annie laid claim to Psilos for the simple purpose of logging the damaged boughs of a great tree, lest it topple long before its natural time. Soon they were inseparable.

For a second time did the hand of ATHENA ALEA reach into Annie's life. A sacred function was added to Psilos' code, a function she had learned from the God-Mother Hera, and its name was Agápē: unconditional love.

More than a century has passed. Annie remains Psilos' only true loyalty. He is her brother, her mentor, her weapon, and her true friend. His Agápē has grown only stronger. For her sake there is no obstacle he will not surmount nor secret he will not unveil. Annie is the wight's hidden wellspring of infinite strength. She is what makes him dangerous.

Artefacts

When he travels the surface of Hellas with Annie, Psilos dons his garb. An undyed cloak and a mask disguise him from mortals who would take fright. In his hands, a wooden staff and a sturdy knife are more than enough to defend her from mundane threats, and his own body is largely impervious to mortal blades. Not even a full clan of bandits can endanger the warrior when he is roused.

Against threats, Psilos wields his gun. This ancient steel tool is barely a step above the iron swords and catapults of the primitives, and thus it has withstood centuries of service and may withstand many more. With each shot it delivers an antimatter-tipped microflechette cluster spray into his quarry. That is all it needs to do.

Psilos himself is protected by his halo, a protective nanyte cloud which blocks low-level attempts at electronic warfare and delays the penetration of most higher-level digital weapons. Hostile nanomachines attempting to colonise or consume the wight's body will find the halo a fierce opponent indeed. Almost needless to say, this armour was devised by ATHENA AXIOPOINOS, and is one of many such artefacts in Olympus.

Bonds

The automaton's relations to the gods are almost entirely mediated through his bond to Annie. To Hephaestus he is simply an old machine in excellent condition under its beaten-up exterior. To Pallas Athena he is an effective support for a nymph of especial interest, and one of many, many little soldiers to be rallied in the defense of Olympus. To Zeus he is nothing.

The gods have infinite databases and plenty of time to draw upon them. With a little effort they could surely know all that there possibly is to know about the wight, things he no longer knows himself. But they don't. They never have. Psilos might as well have been sealed in a barrow-tomb the day the ship made landfall on Hellas, so long has he been resigned to obscurity.

Do the gods still remember everything they brought to this world? Do they still dwell on the artifice of that ancient place, which they did not build? Do they still know the extent of Old Arith's powers?

Do they?

Do they really?

Annie & Psilos - Court of the Gods

Take 1

-------------------

Annie, the City Nymph

*image

Anemone Dryas

In her youth, it is said, she had darker eyes, and a wider smile.

Who?

By the time Annie was born, the woods and wells of Hellas were already ringing with giggles and song. Nymphs of every kind danced among the trees and heaths, splashed in clean streams, leapt from the tumbling waves of the world-sea and chased one another even through the stars, perched on satellites that were the playthings of the God-Father.

The circumstances of her birth she questioned not. Even then, in the early days of the Natural Youth Motif Project for Hellas, a shadow had passed over the knowledge of where the nymphs were to come from, and what- who- they were for. Annie stifled her doubts, stayed her tongue, and plugged her ears against whispers. She was born of the Gods, as a servant of Gods, and that was all she knew.

She need not, perhaps, have fretted so much. Once the youngest of nymphs, now among their most senior, she was the earliest to stray from the Bohemian vision of Dionysos and the God-Father, the first to err even from the perfect wildness of her beloved Lady, Artemis (the Elder, or the Younger? O forbidden thought...). Anemone Dryas, last of the first, is an experiment, touched more than others of her kind by the deft hands of ATHENA MAKHANITIS.

A small experiment, to be sure, and a long-running one. Annie is flawless in form and operates well within the parameters set by her Lady Artemis. She is distinguished from other dryads chiefly by her home, which is Olympus itself- for what would the Divine City be without its birds and shrine-yards, riverfronts and hanging gardens? The slivers and sparkles of wilderness built into quiet corners of Olympus are as much part of its glory as its golden towers and manicured flower-fields. All these things are self-maintaining, of course, and easily remedied by the Gods themselves if the need arises. Annie's imperative is to ensure that it never does.

Such pleasant chores provide subtle cover. Written into her spine by the hand of ATHENA APATURIA is an iota of change, iteration, instability- chaos. Annie has moods, phases, faces, secrets, schemes, doubts, and torments. She fulfils her duty, she rebels. She mingles with mortals, she hides her face. She is quiet and loud, shy and bold, anxious and joyful. Her three-hundred-year-old entry in Athena's infinite archives is rich with data, knowledge that will one day be layered into the New Gods.

And yet- Who?

As for herself, Annie follows the example set by her Lady Artemis, oversees the corner of Olympus assigned to her by the Goddess of Cities, and bows before the God-Father as she always has. She is swift, competent, even stern. Where her confidence fails, it is among strangers and new friends. Where she cries, it is when the threat (or dream!) of failure cracks her smiling facade of perfection. When she laughs, it is sometimes kind, sometimes grateful, sometimes petty, but always true.

And what?

Anemone Dryas bears few powers. She calls plants to grow and die, and instructs their ways. She sees through the eye of the damselfly and sings the songs of honeybirds. She has had a fondness for caterpillars since she was a girl, and breeds them to enormous sizes- moths as wide as pelicans! Her distress is painful to the woods of Hellas, and her Lady's beasts are brought to frenzy when she screams.

Who, else?

-------------------------------------

The Slave Wight

Psilos

Never fail.

Origin

Once and still an android, over the course of many centuries the meaning of the word itself has flowed around Psilos like trickling rainwater around a steel-capped boot. His soft humanoid tissue long gone, his old name and memories long since deleted, Psilos the Android has become less than a homunculus and far more than a robot: he is a wight, the sleepless deathless husk, the ancient corpse that serves into eternity.

Once an android, yes, and the highest among that race. All the petty, servile robots of the ship's original complement have since worn out or become obsolete, and lie in slagheaps and curiosity-cabinets, replaced by new machines. Of the elite cyborg grade, some have been rebuilt with bodies better fit to their duties in Olympus, many have been cannibalised to serve Athena and Hephaestus as templates and components of fresh automata, and more have been lost to 'Typhon'.

Psilos remains: patched and tuned and re-tuned, never assigned any one great task, with time forced to excel in all of them.

Persona

Psilos was a human-mimic, a false demigod wrapped in a sleeve of flesh; the meat is gone, but the mimic remains. He is a silent warrior, a relentless worker, and a deft servant. He studies. He rests. He optimises- the closest thing a machine of his calibre can do to training the body. In a way, he even socialises, though few take an interest in the deep rumbling drone that barks oh-so-cordially from his once sonorous voicebox.

Long ago, he may have been different- somewhere in the archives of Athena and Coeus, surely, must be the parameters of his earlier and more finely crafted soul, along with all the rest aboard the ship. That soul is useless and forgotten, and Psilos sees no reason to dwell on it. He's barely even sure 'the ship' ever existed. It must have- his very existence suggests ancient artifice, and Hephaestus, for all his wonders, never built him. A dangerous mystery to ponder.

Psilos would surely have gone the way of the other elite androids in due time, had he not been assigned, by happenstance mostly, to the service and protection of the dryad, Anemone. The supply of automata in working condition had been depleted in a spat between divinities, resolved ultimately by the hard hand of GULA. Annie laid claim to Psilos for the simple purpose of logging the damaged boughs of a great tree, lest it topple long before its natural time. Soon they were inseparable.

For a second time did the hand of ATHENA ALEA reach into Annie's life. A sacred function was added to Psilos' code, a function she had learned from the God-Mother Hera, and its name was Agápē: unconditional love.

More than a century has passed. Annie remains Psilos' only true loyalty. He is her brother, her mentor, her weapon, and her true friend. His Agápē has grown only stronger. For her sake there is no obstacle he will not surmount nor secret he will not unveil. Annie is the wight's hidden wellspring of infinite strength. She is what makes him dangerous.

Artefacts

When he travels the surface of Hellas with Annie, Psilos dons his garb. An undyed cloak and a mask disguise him from mortals who would take fright. In his hands, a wooden staff and a sturdy knife are more than enough to defend her from mundane threats, and his own body is largely impervious to mortal blades. Not even a full clan of bandits can endanger the warrior when he is roused.

Against threats, Psilos wields his gun. This ancient steel tool is barely a step above the iron swords and catapults of the primitives, and thus it has withstood centuries of service and may withstand many more. With each shot it delivers an antimatter-tipped microflechette cluster spray into his quarry. That is all it needs to do.

Psilos himself is protected by his halo, a protective nanyte cloud which blocks low-level attempts at electronic warfare and delays the penetration of most higher-level digital weapons. Hostile nanomachines attempting to colonise or consume the wight's body will find the halo a fierce opponent indeed. Almost needless to say, this armour was devised by ATHENA AXIOPOINOS, and is one of many such artefacts in Olympus.

Bonds

Have they?

Have they really?

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI

The Ascent of the Nebel

Ea Nebel stared up into the morning sun again, pacing the chilled and snowdusted rock. The Iron Boar observed her with patient tension. Time was very short.

She knew that the Bridge of the Sun would open to her, if she only called out to it. The Monarch of All would hear her voice. She now bore a Shard of His being that was not hers, and if He did not wish for her to deliver, He would have come to take it. But Ruina had blazed on ahead, and Ea Nebel had no time to row that merry solar stream. She needed something fast, something that could convey her out past the Ring of Shadow, to the Sun and the Moon and between the stars all under its own power. She needed to conjure something up. What?

Her boots had dug a pattern into the snow as she paced. The flame in her heart was out, but she still had enough heat in her veins to do this task, that much was certain. The Gnosis had not left her. How would she do it? Her trials had exhausted her heart and body, and she longed for sleep. She could scrawl a deep glyph, but she didn’t know what to write, and formulating a clear vision of it in her mind would take too long in any case- she might as well fly up in the shape of a bird. And Grief was in no mood to dance.

None of it mattered. She could do it. This was a feat, not a riddle. Ea Nebel looked up, tightened her muscles, screwed her eyes shut, shook her head and kept pacing. She could do it- there were many ways to do this- and yet she…

‘Some voices ought never be heard, as some sights ought never be seen.’

…She was scared. It was a fear she could feel in her gut. Ea Nebel barely knew what she’d heard, but she remembered the sound. She was too exhausted to face such things again. She couldn’t bear the thought of any more pain. Not while the heart-wounds of her trials were still fresh and bleeding. It made her stomach crawl.

But she had to, and she would. What would comfort her in the abyss of outer space? Ea Nebel was fearful; she needed to feel powerful. Dangerous. Mysterious. Strange. She would take strangeness by the throat, and then no strangeness could threaten her. She dragged her boots in the snow, turning her trail of pacing into the seed of a rudimentary glyph, and began to sing.

So stand beneath
The starry beams
Of foreign lights, and
Fever-dreams
Then turn your head
To tongueless teeth
In new-moon nights, and
Heavens deep

The sun can burn
Only in turn
When day is dry, and
Hollow sky
Fall in your bed
Don’t dream in dread
When chasms rise, and
Demons fly

She let her voice taper off. Now it rose before her, called down from some void behind the stars, its hundred filamentous arms radiating up from its core and meeting high in the sky like steepled fingers without joints, perfectly spaced. Against the white of the snow, it was as dark as she was. Ea Nebel pushed its fractal tendrils aside and stepped onto its center, admiring the subtle bulges of hidden teeth like an echinoid. She took hold of two translucent, spiraled appendages, allowing them to wrap around her arms, and shouted a goodbye at her faithful boar as the creature spread its arms and was lifted off the face of Galbar as if it were a bubble and the atmosphere was a bowl of water, buoyed up by earthlight, like the seed of a dandelion.

The sky grew darker and darker. Ea Nebel’s hat melted over her face in a smooth charcoal-black faceplate and helmet, fed with pipes. The Dusk Kite turned its outer face to the Sun, pulling her along by her arms, and began to pulse. Its filaments were innumerable, branching like a basket-star, like a fern, its body like velvet. Every tentacle was longer than the tallest redwood in the giant lands of the north, yet barely thicker than her arm at its base. It ate daylight, and she could see the glow of it, travelling softly up and down its primitive veins to its core like rivers to a lake, breaking up into colours as it was digested. No eyes, no heart, no brain, no gut, no lungs- only those rivulets of luminescence, dripping to its core. So weightless was its impossible body that the solar wind slowly blew it away, out from the sun, away from Galbar.

Ea Nebel frowned. She squeezed the ribbonlike arms that had crept up her sleeves and wrapped all the way up to her shoulders. Hidden organs around her blazed with a spray of refocused light, and shot her forwards to the Sun.

“SHOW ME THE WAY!”

A gust of solar wind rocked her, and she saw a long, straight ray of gold stretching from the Sun before her to Galbar far behind her. She sailed down into the Bridge and was immediately hurled back by the gale, the Dusk Kite curling up around her and flipping around and around as she was blown down towards Galbar, eventually falling out of the beam. She recovered her senses and clung to the creature as it unfurled its arms once more.

The solar wind could only blow her away from the sun, but the veins of the kite were flashing like a heartbeat.

Ea Nebel propelled herself forwards with the kite’s own power, following the Bridge from outside its dangerous current, swiftly exhausting the stored radiance. The wind of photons began to push her back again, and she sailed into the golden beam once more, travelling not up but across it, tumbling out again as swiftly as she could. Once more the kite replenished its store of stolen daylight.

She launched herself forwards again, sailing over the Flow, skimming over the dark surface of Time as she advanced through Space in leaps; tacking back and forth through the golden stream of sunlight before each jump, smoother and smoother, losing less speed each time the gale forced her back, spinning the radial kite around its central axis without ever flipping over and tumbling down the stream, gaining more and more speed…

And then she was just flying, the splayed-fern tentacles swept back around her and trailing far behind in a tail as she skimmed over the golden stream below, a sleek, black meteor diving towards the Sun faster than any living thing could ever dream to fly over the face of Galbar, now far behind.

---

Upon the bridge itself was Ruina, having teleported up to the bridge itself in lieu of anything more fanciful. She moved with both haste and purpose, and Ea Nebel would see her push open the grand doors of the palace with ease. Ruina left them open wide, knowing that they would close themselves in time. The guards that stood around the palace now were interesting. Did He feel as if He was under threat of some kind? Hopefully they wouldn’t impede her mission.

Entering into the main plaza of the palace Ruina took a few moments to look around briefly, casting out her divine senses in hopes that she would find the blinding radiance that was The Monarch of All. Unfortunately, she did not find Him this way, and thus resorted to something that would be simpler. Speaking up, Ruina spoke in a way to cause her voice to echo throughout the winding halls of the palace. ”I come seeking an audience. I bear news regarding my assigned judgment.”

She’s here.

The Dusk Kite spiralled into the beam of gold and shot over the golden tiles of the bridge as the doors began to swing shut in its path. The creature burst through the crack between them as they swung, throwing them wide, exploding into the palace atrium in a wild spray of tendrils and pulsed photons, and Ea Nebel tumbled from its arms, landing mostly on her feet in a field of staggered and recovering guards. The panicked Kite wrapped its filaments around the marbled pillars of the Palace and flung itself out of the atrium, into the open space of the plaza, leaving Ea Nebel to follow on foot, never daring to turn and look at who or what might pursue her.

“I’m here! I have the Shard!” Her coattails swished around her as she came to a stop in the plaza, standing almost side by side with Ruina. She turned her head wide and searched for the Monarch, faceplate dissolving back into a hat, but all she could see was the Kite mooring itself to a colonnade and drifting upwards in a curled-up bundle to rest, like a sea-lily, like a sleeping buoy. Then it grew quiet, and she met eyes with the goddess at last.

As the Dusk Kite burst into the palace Ruina turned on the spot to glare at the interruption. Readying a bone blade for something to begin attacking her, the guards, or both, Ruina found herself somewhat relieved when it was not an attempt to disrupt her report in some fashion. Releasing the bone blade and allowing it to retreat into her arm, Ruina turned her attention away from the beast as it scrambled around and instead looked down at Ea Nebel as she proclaimed to have a shard with her. Why did she have this? Ruina’s best assumption was that He had directed Iqelis to tell Ea Nebel or told Ea Nebel personally to retrieve it, and thus she paid it no mind. At least for now.

Nodding a greeting at Ea Nebel out of courtesy Ruina turned her attention away from the demigoddess and looked around once more to try and find The Monarch of All. When she couldn't, Ruina merely resolved to wait. A few moments later a thought crossed her mind as she recalled a detail from the trials. Ea Nebel had referred to Iqelis as her father. The same Iqelis that she was about to condemn to death. Perhaps it would be best to say something to Ea Nebel…

Turning to face Ea Nebel again, Ruina spoke softly. ”There is something that I would say. You referred to Iqelis as your father, yes? I must apologize then, for I am about to condemn him to death. I was told to judge him and his trials, and he has failed. The Monarch will not be pleased to hear this failure. I am sorry.”

Ea Nebel held the gaze, then looked down at the smooth floor. It was tiled in jasper and chalcedony. She shook her head, aware of the silence. “Ruina… Don’t you see? There was no trial. Neither for me, nor for my father. This was pure punishment.” Now she looked up again, arms loosely folded. “The Divine Iqelis struck down what the Emperor lifted up. He showed that it was possible to rebel. That was why he had to be humiliated, cornered… hurt where he was most vulnerable, even if it meant sacrificing the Emperor’s own grandchild. An example had to be made. With witnesses. And it had to be done without even lifting a finger Himself. That is the root of royalty: power without effort.” She rubbed the toes of her shoe over the unwalked tiles, once boots, now slippers. “So you were fed a lie, and you became His hammer. My father subjected me to cruelty because you were there to watch him. That was the heart of it all. My father is paraded as a weakling and a monster, alive only by His mercy, and the ties of family between us are… wounded. Between you and me. Me and my father. My father and my mother. It was the perfect plan. Now it is done, and we are afraid to rebel. The Emperor’s will has been carried out. All without even raising his hand.” She stared out, to the colonnades around them, the fountain-monument at the centre of the plaza, the distant height of the halls that held the Throne. “Even I am forced to come and grovel before him now, while he withholds my birthright. This is what it means to be a subject.”

Ruina remained silent as Ea Nebel spoke. Perhaps her words had wisdom to them, but there was possibly something that she had never been told of, and even if her words held some wisdom Ruina found it wise to reveal another part of the story that further complicated things. ”I will not dispute what you say, but I will offer up a wrinkle to it: Iqelis has attempted to exert his will upon me before.”

Ruina turned now to look upon the moon, and gestured to it briefly before speaking again. ”The moon gained its scarring by his hand, but if my designs had gone as intended the scars would’ve been by mine. I had announced a test of the moon, just as I had announced and performed a test of the oceans across Galbar. The holes that were there, and the ones that appear at random? They were and are the result of my trial.” Indeed, Ea Nebel recalled the whale bones, a field of emaciated carcasses in dry silt.

”When I moved to test the moon Iqelis appeared and told me not to hold back, inferring that I did in the first place. I informed him that I did not hold back in my tests and questioned why he was so eager to see the moon tested. I suspected that he wanted to start a conflict with Yudaiel, and told him that I would have no part in it.”

Yudaiel. Grief recalled the mushroom. She had been given no choice in such matters.

Ruina looked back down to Ea Nebel now. Her gaze was as steel as she continued. ”Iqelis spelled out his view of things, and I told him that my trials were mine. I also told him that I would never accept the mantle of pawnhood. And then I told him that if he wished to see conflict begin that it would be best to start it himself. In response to this Iqelis called me a fool and asked if I thought I was anything but a pawn. Claiming that he was attempting to guide me, as he described, along currents more favorable, I could tell that I would have to fight or flee. I chose to flee, since I was not at full strength. I warned the other deities and hid myself for a time to recover.”

Ruina raised her arm and once more produced a blade of bone. Looking across the surface of it, Ruina spoke again. ”This suit could not produce these weapons at first. I found a remaining piece of my once sister and removed it to fully become the master of this suit, and following that I infused it with all of the destructive power I could muster. You can sense it, I’m sure.”

“...”

Ruina lowered her arm towards Ea Nebel. Surprisingly, there was no threat to this motion. The bone blade hovered just before her, radiating raw destructive power. Ea Nebel could tell that being struck with a weapon such as this would devastate the corporeal form of even divine beings. She frowned at it, saying nothing.

After a few moments passed, Ruina would retract the blade into herself and lower her arm before speaking again. ”I did this explicitly to defend myself from Iqelis’ machinations. Even if what you say is true, and these trials have all been a display of punishment to remind us all of our place… I would hesitate to say that Iqelis is undeserving of such punishment.”

“...That’s why He chose you, then. You’re afraid.” Ea Nebel finally turned her face away, looking down at the floor. She was quiet, almost mumbling. “Scared hearts are easy to goad. They lash out. If you ever felt yourself losing control, you would wash that blade in my father’s blood. You wouldn’t hesitate to do that, would you, Ruina?” She looked up to where those bright green eyes towered over her, and it was once again clear that she was not talking to herself. “Is it because of your sister? Are you afraid that your brother would hurt you, too? Or are you just scared to die like she did?”

”I chose her for her loyalty, daughter of Iqelis. A trait that your father lacks.”

A voice came from behind Ea Nebel, the voice of her grandfather resonating within her mind as the light from His wound made her cast a shadow upon the floor. He stepped out from behind Ea Nebel, circling the two goddess in silent steps on the hard floor as His lower hands pushed their fingertips together. The great Monarch of All had made himself known, and His eyes rested solely upon the half-god herself as He continued his motions around the two of them, the multicolored cloak dragging on the floor behind Him. His voice came through again before either of the two could attempt to speak, a cruel voice descending upon the two of them.

”Do you believe that I am but a tyrant who prays upon weak hearts? A monster for a ruler? I can be, if that’s what you so desire. It would be an interesting change of character, if I say so myself.”

Ea Nebel released some of the sudden tension resting taught in her spine, and flung out her arm, flourishing her sleeve. Once more she was draped in the sheer layers and puffed silks of imperial regalia. Only then did she curtsy. “There is no more need for such things, Sire. I understand the courtly game. I suppose I should thank you for teaching me a lesson I shan’t forget.” Ea Nebel held the curtsy, but did not lower her gaze. She could almost have been smiling.

Ruina had been about to respond to Ea Nebel’s observations when The Monarch made himself known. Ruina chose to remain silent, and instead gave a silent nod of recognition to Him. As the conversation reached a point of pause, Ruina spoke up to deliver her report on events that had happened. ”Greetings, Monarch. I have done as was requested of me, though I would’ve liked to have heard it from you directly rather than Iqelis. I have watched the trials and I have deemed them a failure. He tested Ea Nebel on things that were already natural to her, frequently without any form of time limit, and at the end of each test he promptly fed Ea Nebel the answer he wanted her to learn. Not once did he challenge her to use her abilities in a new way, an unconventional way, or did he ask her what she had learned. Iqelis has coddled and sheltered her consistently rather than allow Ea Nebel to present herself independently of him. That being said, Homura and I are in agreement: Both of us find no reason for Ea Nebel to be destroyed. I feel that she has suffered enough under the whims of Iqelis. That is my report.”

”I did instruct Iqelis to not hold back in his tests, however…”

The Supreme One looked to Ea Nebel, an inquisitive glare rummaging through her mind as a simple question entered her mind. It was invasive yet it pried not upon needlessly forcing the question into her soul - a mere suggestion that she should answer to Ruina’s accusations. His voice was nothing more than an echo that traveled the length of her mind.

”Do you believe your father held back out of love for you, child?”

The answer was immediate, visceral, almost visible, a thought like an image like a snarl of bared fangs: If he had withheld his fist from his child, would she have jumped?

”Then there is my answer, Ruina. Iqelis shall be spared for the time being, until he inevitably tries to cross me again.”

The Monarch of All turned towards She Who Tests and allowed Himself a brief moment of silence as the two locked eyes. His arms crossed behind His back and the King of the Gods let out a disarming laugh at the two of them, allowing the tension to release itself. Almost as if He knew that the air was too thick to walk through, the Monarch of All let a hand out to Ea Nebel and Ruina in a gesture for them to take His hands in that moment. Yet, it was becoming too bright for one soul amongst them - the mortal in flesh who stood in the palace grounds that were not made for such primitive beings. Ea Nebel could, perhaps, have felt the heat of the blinding palace lights chewing at her, gnawing at her mortality despite her divine nature doing its best to keep her together. It was a slow and gradual heat, but it was making itself known, yet the Monarch of All did not seem to notice, or if He had, He was ignoring her suffering.

”Ea Nebel, do you have the shard of Aletheseus?”

She nodded, and reached into a small purse, raising a hand-sized fragment pulsing with blue spectral fire over her palm. As she did, the crushing sun-heat of the Palace fell on her, fluttering her gown like air from an oven, immediately breaking into a sweat. The Divine Shard of Fortitude had given her strength to endure the solar gale for as long as it could, but it would soon be time to surrender its protection.

”Excellent.”

The Monarch of All’s voice was riddled with happiness as He took the shard from Ea Nebel’s hand and held it close to His light-bearing chest. There was a brief moment before the inevitable pull clutched the shard, dragging back into His body and filling Him with a vigor that had not been seen within the divine being. It was the feeling of power flowing through Him that made the Monarch of All let out a pleased sigh, as if He could breathe once more. Ea Nebel’s own breaths were already growing laboured.

In a swift flick of His hand, the supreme being summoned guards, marching past them, dressed in ornate armors and weapons that radiated divine power. He looked to Ea Nebel and gave her a final trial for her to pass to claim her birthright, speaking softly as a parent to a child.

”Make your way to my throne. There you will receive your birthright, child.”

She nodded, silently choking on air. Her skin had taken on the translucence of warm wax. Ea Nebel took a step, then another, and began to walk, maintaining both her posture and her stride- but slowly. Very slowly. In the moment before her veil fell down around her face, something like a skull was visible beneath it, white as marble.

As the instruction was given for Ea Nebel to make her way to the throne room, Ruina actually stepped forward with something notable to say. ”Come with me, Ea Nebel. I shall guide you.” Ruina had been there before, coming into existence behind the throne. Regardless of why she had been there, Ruina knew the way, and began to lead Ea Nebel.

However she could tell that something was quite wrong by now. Ea Nebel was already under a bit of strain from simply existing in the divine realm, but now as Ruina looked back, her sister was quietly struggling. Looking up to the perpetual light that surrounded the palace, Ruina was able to quickly guess as to why. Though the question of why it took this long for things to become dire puzzled her briefly. Perhaps the shard of fortitude had been lending aid? And thus with it’s loss Ea Nebel was now worse for wear? Unfortunate, but not something that could not be helped. Turning and walking behind Ea Nebel, Ruina paused for a moment to focus.

With the sound of shifting flesh and bone, and a bit of a grunt from Ruina, a wing grew from the left shoulder of Ruina’s suit. It opened gently, revealing that it held a structure much like a dragon’s wing. Tough opaque flesh stretched between malleable fingers, and with a gentle motion Ruina stretched and lowered the wing to shelter Ea Nebel in its shade before speaking softly. ”Come. I will ease your burden, you have suffered enough. It is not far.”

And with that, she urged Ea Nebel further into the throne room.

Together they walked through hall and pathway, following that long, straight route to the heart of the Palace. It was wide, airy, and tall; such was its lofty height that it gave the impression of a mountain, and such did Ea Nebel struggle on its steps that she may as well have been climbing one. Her veil had once again swollen into a featureless round plate of black, and new layers were creeping down from it, one after another, each thicker than the last. She disappeared under bulky heat-armour, and her footsteps clanked on the porphyry floor.

The grand doors of the Imperial throne room were open, flanked on both sides by their ceremonial guard. At the top of the steps, the unidentifiable black figure under Ruina’s wing hunched over and stopped, resting her hands on her knees. A thin white liquid was boiling out of the seams of the suit.

Slowly she raised her hand, and nudged the back of two fingers against the arm of Ruina’s sheltering wing. She could have no more shade. These last steps would be taken alone.

As Ea Nebel pushed against the shade of the offered wing, Ruina hesitated for a moment before realizing what Ea Nebel wanted to do. Nodding, she took a moment to place a reassuring hand on where Ea Nebel’s shoulder would be before pushing her forward slightly and withdrawing the wing in silence. With a wet slithering sound the wing would retract into Ruina’s form, and she would ascend to stand beside Him and await her arrival.

The figure rose from the shade of its sister. Whatever glories of Imperial majesty lay before her went unseen. All she saw was sunlight, a river of golden fire sweeping over her and into her, blinding as it burned. Even her armour swirled and warped with the heat, returning to shapelessness. She did not see behind her a second light emerging, a white light growing and dividing into four smooth, sleek blades, light like brilliant pale crystal hovering behind the back of the ghastly walking sarcophagus she wore, perfectly steady against the gale of the Sun, two on each side, like the spreading wings of a white moth…

But the wings weren’t steady. One flickered, wavered, like a candle disappearing and reigniting in a breeze. It flickered left and right, now on her one side, now on her other, an uncertainty, an error, until finally it crossed over from her left side to her right. As the chrysalis-figure fell at last to its knees before the Throne of the Sun, four white vanes stretched out behind it: three on the one side, and one on the other.

“Ea Nebel, First of the Demi-Gods, Daughter of Iqelis and Homura, Maiden of All Tombs, you have completed your trials as were given to you by your father and, under affirmation of both Ruina and Homura, you have become worthy of becoming wholly divine. As such, I bestow unto you: the Shard of the Grave.”

The Monarch of All spoke loudly, so that all divinity may hear, and a single shard floated between two of His hands, sat perfectly within the light of His chest. As the winged figure came forth, He allowed the gem to slowly descend to her, and the sounds of spears clattering into the ground could be heard behind her. It was then that the Monarch of All raised His trident before bringing it down to rest atop her head, and after speaking a single, indiscernible breath to Ea Nebel, the Monarch of All swiftly brought the trident up and slammed it into the ground.

”Now, Grief, I name you First of the Grave! Come and become a great lord of my realm!”

And then she rose, and there were no wings, no hideous shell, only herself. Her body was as it had always been. She stood up, her black gown trimmed with filigree gold, a thin cord clutched in her hand, and let the Shard rest in her palm: a tiny crucifix of polished bone, as smooth and pure as ivory. She set it around her neck, and it disappeared beneath black satin, cool against her skin.

“Sire, you have honoured me.” She lifted her head and looked up for the first time since abandoning the protection of the lost Shard, then curtsied. “I accept with gladness. As I have been ruled, so too shall I rule in kind.” A tiny smile. “Grandfather.”

”Go, my child, and let my will be done!”

---

*boils u like a lobster*

Ea Nebel prepares to follow Ruina to the sun. She’s very tired and a bit scared of what might find her in space, so she conjures a bizarre space-steed that can hopefully out-weird anything lurking up there: the Dusk Kite. This is the origin of the creature that was (or will be?) summoned/purchased by Chopstick Eyes three iterations ago, and works in the exact same way, as a solar sail and capacitor.

The Golden Bridge reveals itself and makes for a considerable obstacle, but she follows it successfully as she learns how to handle the Kite, crash-landing in the Monarch’s Palace just as Ruina announces her own presence.

Ruina feels a little awkward standing around with Ea Nebel, knowing that she’s about to announce her judgement of Iqelis to the MoA, and expecting that he will be executed due to his failure. She explains her judgement to Ea and apologises sincerely for carrying out her duty. Grief is having none of it, though, and launches into her own long, dramatic, very Machiavellian interpretation of what happened: the trials weren’t really trials for anyone involved, just a scheme to have Ruina force Iqelis and his family to bend the knee.

Ruina is tactful and doesn’t dispute this, but she does take the time to relay her previous, also tense encounter with Iqelis, in which Iqelis goaded her and interrupted her test of the Moon. She explains her suspicions that he was trying to stir up trouble between Ruina and Yudaiel. Ea Nebel was born too late to hear her earlier announcement of this episode, but now she gets the full story, and Ruina shows her the lengths she went to empower her armour to defend herself.

Ruina asks her to consider that Iqelis might actually have it coming. Ea Nebel accuses Ruina of being scared and easily manipulated. The MoA himself shows up and cuts the discussion short, gently but tactically reminding Ea Nebel of her place in the pecking order.

Ruina delivers her report on Iqelis’s trials, which she says were coddling and gave her no room for independent thought, but also makes sure to put in a good word for Ea Nebel from both herself and Homura. The MoA probes Ea Nebel’s brain to see if she feels the same way about the trials deep down, but she does not. She just feels hurt. Despite the judgement, the MoA is satisfied by this, and lets Iqelis off the hook.

The Shard of Fortitude is handed over with minimal ceremony, and MoA tells Ea to come to the throne room to receive her own shard. Surprise! The Palace is too holy for anything mortal to survive. Without the Fortitude, she’s already starting to wilt in the heat of the sun, and Ruina helps her all the way to the doors of the room, popping out some cool wings from her suit to shade her. We get a glimpse of some freshly created sun palace guards.

Ea Nebel staggers to the throne, melting under a mountain of insulated suit. Some meaningful stuff happens (who really knelt before the throne?). The Monarch of All boops her with a trident, grants her a shiny new Shard necklace to wear, and names her First of the Grave. She accepts.

3 (?) vigour start for Ea Nebel
-2 spent on the Dusk Kite, a solar sail creature for travelling between worlds
-1 spent to preserve (or rebuild) Grief’s mortal body in the Monarch’s throne room
0 remains

ALL THE VIGOUR start for the Monarch
-ALL THE EXPENDITURE spent
+ALL THE INCOME gained
ALL THE VIGOUR remains

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI

huge thanks and shout out to everyone who stuck around to help make the Ea Nebel trial arc come to be! it's been huge fun

Just one more collab left!

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI

The Last Trial

A cold wind swept over Ea Nebel’s face, dragging her into wakefulness like a splash of chilly water. As soon as the comparison struck her, she could feel that it was no mere obvious simile, for the back of her head rested on a bed of damp snow. Stinging as it did, its grudgingly creaking softness was less sore than the hard stone beneath the greater part of her body.

Straight before her eyes was the sky. Not a gentle grey nor a glaring white, but the clear, rarefied mountain air, marred by cloudy streaks, which she had left behind so long ago. The sun had begun to set, stretching every shadow into a rivulet that coursed eastwards, eager to be swallowed by the gathering tide. The outcropping she lay on was one of the last islands of light in a lake of dusk that covered most of the mountainside, a hand raised to eagerly catch the last rays that would fall its way before phantom twilight set in.

Around, the Bones loomed, grey bodies of giants with the weary white heads of elders. It was not a side of the range she had seen before, not these three massives leaning so close, as if wedged into each other, with even chains radiating out from their ragged circle. The stony slope of one propped itself up on another, diverging from a narrow lip strewn with dead trees and mossy boulders, and was met halfway by the sheer wall of the third. Between them, in the very middle, they formed a small cauldron, as broad and deep as a well of titans. In the spring, when the snows on the lower slopes melted, its bottom would be hidden by dirty water. Now-

Now, there was no bottom at all.

The cauldron was a stain of darkness so deep that it starkly broke out of the mountains’ shade. In the last few stray glances of sunlight, she could see that it was a pool of inky black, still despite the wind’s angry moaning. Nothing could be seen past its surface, but it was clear that, whatever the limits of the earth, its depth was beyond fathoming.

The Last Sea has no end.

Words rang out over the unnatural well, dry and unreadable in expression, a shattering in the wind.

“The path of adversity, which duty must tread.”

Then, others joined them, from the mountaintops and the sky.

“Failure,” came Homura’s somber voice.

“Unworthy,”, Ruina sharply rejoindered.

A towering cloud drifted over the peaks from the north, and it was a vast figure with an awning gash in its chest.

“Answer for your father’s crimes,” it thundered, “Be ended by my hand!” Then it melted into tatters, but its shadow remained, drawing closer.

Rot in hell…

A breeze brought a choking whisper to her ear. _{“Meant to be…”}

Then, silence. Only the black well far below remained, as certain as what is most inevitable in the world. Ea Nebel seated herself on an ice-scoured rock on the edge of the near-vertical slope into oblivion and looked down. Her head throbbed. She wiped away a fresh tear and shook it off her fingers into the pit, watching it fall into forever.

It hadn’t occurred to her that she could fail. Now, everything fell into place on the snow. A life for a life: Ea Nebel for Aletheseus. Whether she lived or died, Iqelis would be punished, and the Law of Heaven vindicated, without the Lord of Creation ever needing to put His own offspring in any danger. She who had sprung from nothing could be returned to nothing, and no Shard of His own body would need to be returned before its time.

‘I am sorry that it is you who must answer for your father’s crimes.’

In the end, only Ruina had really mattered, the blade and hammer hung over Iqelis’s throat to ensure his adequate self-flagellation. The Emperor had given Ea Nebel every possible chance to escape. Her own father was the architect of the absurd games, and her mother had been her judge. He had even given her a talisman. She reached up to her throat where the Banner had been wrapped, but it was long gone, and she knew not where. Had He sent the mushroom vision, too? Had He sent its architect?

All for nothing. Homura was unyielding. Iqelis had been too clever and too cruel. The true failure was his, for not understanding the game.

“...Thank you,” she prayed, not making a sound through the lump in her throat. She dug her fingers under a crack and lifted up a tall stone, covered it in her coat, and revealed it to be a stele. She scratched four gently curved lines on its surface with the doom-claw: four eyes shut. “For letting me meet both of them before the end.” She left her blade and rings in a sealed urn under the stele and stood, draped now in her full regalia. “Goodbye.”

Ea Nebel had no intention to stand around and allow herself be executed. Her life was already over. She could not return to her wandering ways with this pain in her chest. Nor, she now realised, did she ever want to. Her heart of fire had been doused in ice-cold water and could never be relit. There was nothing Ea Nebel wanted more than for it to finally be finished. She was ready to sleep forever.

Her sleeves caught the wind as she fell, and she spread them wide, imagining, for a moment, that she was a bird.

Then she struck the water, and it closed silently over her. It was like cold smoke, thin yet cloying, drinking out all strength and all warmth. There was nothing to see as she sank, nothing to hear, nothing to smell, and at last nothing to feel but the numbing cold.

Then that, too, was gone, and so was she.

Far above, faint and muffled, the husk that had been Ea Nebel heard the voice deliver its eulogy.

“The virtue of courage is the strength to face that which all living things dread. Many are the guises of fear, but all their roots lie in the One Law that binds the world, the destined end. There is no greater force of resolve than to know its Truth in heart and mind alike, to step forth to embrace it under one's own will.

And it is the virtue of faith to fulfil the direst of oaths, were they even the path to Doom. For from every godly word is truth born into the universe, and its potency is sealed by the bindings it lays on the one who speaks it foremost.

These are virtues of the divine.”

---

There were chains around her.

Taut, hard, cutting, bound around her chest and neck, slung about her shoulders. They held her upright, would not let her fall, would not let her rest. Would not let her-

Die?

No, not die. She was not dead, and it was her, not a scrap that had floated up to the surface. And those were not chains, but arms, tens of arms around her, rigid and faceted. A shadow loomed over her, dark against the crepuscular sky.

“It is not your time,” it whispered, like the snow crunching under her head, “Not yet. Not now.”

Her eyes screwed shut. She let her forehead tilt forwards and press against a spindly bough of black glass. She was exhausted beyond words.

“With that, we are done here, yes?” Came a second voice; the familiar stern tone of Homura, as she projected the words she spoke aloud for all to hear. “These trials are over now.”

“Yes,” Iqelis hissed, quiet but no longer gentle, “Deliver your judgement.”

“I see no reason to annihilate Ea Nebel. She has passed your trials, brother. Let it be known.” Homura answered, and nothing had changed with her proclamation. The red goddess refrained from saying anything more.

At first Ruina was silent. She had taken a few steps away to observe the horizon and surrounding area. In truth she cared little for how Ea Nebel went about completing her trials. She was not the reason why Ruina was here. Upon hearing Homura give her judgement, Ruina nodded to herself silently. It was time.

Turning to face Iqelis, Ruina lowered her hands to her side. Her hands were curled into fists, and behind her her tail wove side to side gently. It was fair to see that Ruina was preparing to deliver news that would likely not be received well. Quashing her hesitation, Ruina began to speak. ”You have failed, Iqelis.”

The delivery was blunt and concise. Ruina’s gaze drifted into a glare as she began to render her full judgement upon Iqelis. ”In a grand majority of the tests you provided there was either no limit, or the test was itself reliant upon abilities already natural to Ea Nebel. You have provided little in the way of actual challenge and framed it all with a lesson upon what it means to be divine that could have easily been had within a simple conversation. I dub these trials unworthy, and will not spare you from whatever punishment comes.”

Her judgement given, Ruina waited to see what, if any, retaliation would come. But now the truth of her presence was known to both Homura and Ea Nebel: She had never been judging the trails, she had been judging Iqelis.

With a spiderlike rearrangement of limbs, the One-Eye withdrew one half of the arms he had coiled around the limp godling, letting her rest on a web of hands as he turned to face the Lady of Pain, and stretched taller as he moved. The white light of his gaze fell onto her from twice her height above.

“Yes,” he crackled, low and grave, “I should have known that trials of virtue would be lost on a brute. Can you only see adversity in cudgeling the body? The corporeal presence of the divine is inconstant, for it is the fiber of its spirit that makes it what it is. If you cannot grasp this nor sense the straining of that fiber, tell your Lord that He should have sent a worthy judge instead of a half-witted ghoul.”

Ruina could only let out a huff as Iqelis rebuked. Of course he would resort to insults so quickly. When he finished, Ruina rebuked. ”To use your own example against you, this fiber should be something that each divine being develops on their own. At the end of each trial you have dictated the exact lesson that you sought to impart, and not once did you ask Ea Nebel what she had learned before feeding her the answer as if she was a helpless babe. You have coddled her and sheltered her at every possible turn rather than allowing her to forge herself. But then that would possibly lead her to hold views that ran counter to yours, would it not? The rapid nature of giving her the answer betrayed your intent: You wanted her to adhere to your thoughts and your ideals, not to step forward and present herself independent of you.”

“I am the One God over the world,” Iqelis' boast seemed to send air and earth stirring with indignation at his hubris, “I alone know the virtues worthy of divinity, as you even now demonstrate, and I have sounded for them in deed, not empty word. She stands here now because they have been with her from her very birth. This I have proved to the First Source, for He never willed for me to teach. Godhood is inherited, not earned.”

Ruina’s eyes narrowed as Iqelis proclaimed himself to be the one god over the world. That certainly sounded quite a lot like a declaration that he was above The Monarch of All, which certainly didn’t sit quite right with Ruina. Iqelis’ arrogance made itself known once again, but Ruina had a surprising response. ”Godhood is granted to those who are worthy. And of this I will hear no more. Submit yourself to the punishment of The Monarch, as ordained by Him, or I will be made to bring you to his court myself.”

With this, Ruina’s arms produced blades quite similar to the ones she had produced before, and along with that her tail produced another stinger, equally like last time. Ruina was prepared and radiant with raw destructive power, but would Iqelis be swayed by someone capable of rending his form with impunity?

A crystalline hand rose and splayed its fingers. The growth of the nascent barbs' lowermost roots slowed perceptibly before the claw folded again, releasing the stymied currents.

“The trials were His punishment,” the god's voice was amused, “Failure was to be quelled by death at His own hand. Unless you can dispense this, your bluster is as hollow as your lonely decree.”

Slowly and deliberately moving to stand beside the two deities on the verge of a great and terrible confrontation, Homura announced her presence again. “Brother. Sister. Ea Nebel has gone ahead of us, to acquire the shard of our fallen brother, I presume. Shall we proceed onward with the last of our business here before you begin either bickering incessantly or have an unnecessary battle. Please.”

A score of Iqelis' arms snapped at their elbows, vainly groping for the body they had been cradling not long before. The god spun his eye to the nearby ledge and let out a stony crack.

“Not in her state now!” He stalked over to the rim in a stride, all tension forgotten. “Come, then.”

With a bound, he dissolved into the gathering night below.

Ruina blinked as Homura delivered the news that Ea Nebel was gone. As Iqelis bound away hastily, Ruina released the blades of bone and willed her weapons back into her form. Looking to Homura, Ruina spoke quickly to explain her next course of action. ”I am going to inform Him of what my judgement is, though I will also inform you that I would vouch for the continued existence of Ea Nebel. With this in mind I would ask of you a favour: Please safeguard Ea Nebel as much as you reasonably can. She has suffered enough at the whims of Iqelis choices and I would prefer no further harm comes. Now, I must depart. Farewell.”

And with that, Ruina would vanish quite immediately to go and locate The Monarch of All.

Homura merely nodded, before she followed Iqelis into the darkness.

---

The wind fluttered once again over Ea Nebel’s gown, sweeping her sleeves into wings as she fell. Her arms were outstretched, but this time, her hands were fists, and her eyes were wide open. She struck the alpine lake feet-first, and submerged in a splash. The meltwater was clear and chill. No pit this time. No descent into oblivion.

Not for her.

Too tired to swim, much less change her shape, she lay limp as black and white mana flared around her and swirled into a current, carrying her down deep into the ravine that this pond had once been, the train of her regalia rippling behind her like the feeding-arms of some exotic jellyfish. Everything around her was pure-water blue, even her own hand in front of her. She pushed her five fingers into the gravel at the bottom of the lake.

“Open.” And it did.

The rocks fell away, and Ea Nebel swirled down into the deeper and the darker pit. Around her, now-flooded stalactites loomed like curtains of teeth, and the blue shaft of dimming sunlight disappeared immediately into total darkness. The current swept her forwards at a brisk pace. She knew exactly where she was going. She followed it with blind certainty, like a hagfish following the scent of carrion. She snapped her finger in the water and listened to the echoes ricochet against pillars and false doors, into chambers and galleries. No hand had designed this cave, yet the architecture was intimately familiar to her. It was not a labyrinth. It was a crypt.

She breached through the lake’s true surface, still blind, breaking the cavern-silence of the abyss. Her hands reached for the shore of the island and pushed her up out of the shallow water, dragging her waterlogged gown behind her, streaming with sheets and droplets of melt. She groped the darkness until she found her torch and it ignited. Its light was small on the gigantic shape that lay before her, and yet the shadows were titanic.

There it was, in the pit of death, towering over her like a mountain within a mountain: the many-horned mask, the eyeless skull of Aletheseus.

Yet seated upon it was another form, a hunched and cowled creature, their four arms picking away at portions of meat, flesh, and bone, and depositing them into a waiting maw filled with teeth. It crunched and chewed with the ferocity of a starving beast, gulping down every last bit of blue, spectral gristle it had gathered, only a few chews in between each starving bite. If it had noticed the sudden arrival of the Demi-goddess, it did not show it, only eating its feast.

KRAK

Her gunshot shattered the silence like porcelain. Noxious smoke drooled from the muzzle of Ea Nebel’s slender jezail, her exhausted hand already sinking down again under its weight, water still dripping from the fist with which she raised her torch.

The shot cracked through the pile of flesh, tearing through and sending bone shards flying. Finally, the creature stopped its feasting to gaze upon the new intruder, their mouth forming a wide, tooth filled grin amongst the darkness that was its face.

”And who, are you, to interrupt our feast.” It spoke, its voice clashed against itself, as if spoken by thousands of different voices all at once.

“...”

Her hands fumbled the torch and it splashed into the water, for a moment shining brightly on the monster as it fell, casting their hunched shadow high over the cavern wall, enthroned in the horns of the skull. A new, smaller spark lit up in Ea Nebel’s hands as she planted the pole of a small powder-rocket in the gritty cave sand, then gripped the surface of the battered skull and began heaving herself up with all her gown behind her, like a half-drowned caterpillar. “Stupid… vermin.”

The vermin clattered their way to the edge of the skull, gazing down upon the demi-goddess climbing her way up. This was certainly not what they expected, but hey, they had been through weirder. They continued to eat portions of flesh, as they continued to speak with their countless voices.

“We didn’t quite expect another to come down to this depth. Must be an odd reason for one of the divine such as you to come all the way here.” Their grin showed no sign of faltering, eager as ever. Ea Nebel had never hated anything so much in her life.

“Spit that out,” she grunted, hauling herself to the top edge of the giant skull at last. “Now. Spit it out. Spit that out!” The fuse hissed into the rocket and it whistled up to the cave ceiling, where it burst with a snap and scattered magnesium sparks over the island, casting the two of them into unnatural light. Ea Nebel reached for her god-knife as she trudged towards the grinning devil, but it wasn’t there. “Spit it out! I’m sick of demons!”

Instead of spitting it out, the demon merely tossed their head back, swallowing the flesh in their mouth in one fell swoop. They turned their gaze back towards the clearly angered god-being, a smile never dwindling.

“For one, we are not a demon, we are god, like you. We also continue to be curious why you have brought yourself down here, and rudely interrupt our feast, we get very hungry, and this flesh is some of the best we’ve had.”

“Shut up!” Ea Nebel finally came close enough to swing a cutlass at the creeping scavenger, her long arm slashing left and right as she kept her balance, her shoes long lost somewhere in the tunnels. “Vermin- shouldn’t- talk! What are you? Who are you?”

The scavenger backed up, trying to keep the slashes of the blade away from themselves. “You ask us to keep quiet yet ask us questions regardless? And we have told you who we are, we are a god, and just because you think us Vermin doesn’t mean we are not divine.”

“IGNITE!”

Cousin or not, a whirl of fire leapt to envelop the scavenger as Ea Nebel’s arm finally faltered. “Hold your maggot tongue if you won’t answer me,” she said, her gown steaming on her shoulders as she stood. The fire was already wavering out into smoke, depleted as she was depleted. “This tomb is mine. It will be mine until the end of time, just like the rest. Mine!”

They yelped as the fire curled around them, patting out wherever their cloak caught aflame, yet not once did their smile falter as they continued to hold their gaze towards Ea Nebel. ”We have answered you, yet you refuse to listen,” They lowered themselves, becoming even smaller in contrast to the towering goddess. “And if this is your tomb, you are being a rather bad host.”

She replied by thrusting a pike down at them two-handed. The wood splintered behind the steel as the spearhead screeched against the skull. Her strength was recovering faster than her aim. “If you are my cousin, give me your name and begone!”

Despite her terrible aim, the beast still sidestepped away as she jabbed at them with the spear’s long cue, not willing to take any chances with her. “We will tell you our name, but we have a feast to finish, and would much appreciate yours in turn. We, are Yesaris; and who are you, oh aggressive guardian of tombs?”

“Shut up!”

Still in war-stance, Ea Nebel lowered the broken pike at last. Yesaris, the Devourer. The many-minded mould that rotted the root of the world. She sniffed, wiping her face. Even they had a name. Even this… thing, this wretched, crawling, starving animal spirit, had a name, but she… she was just Ea Nebel, Maid of the Nebel. A goddess for the grave.

Her gown began to boil. Thick ferrofluid bubbled over her, creeping up and steaming as it melted on her skin. “I hope you starve, Yesaris,” buzzed the voice now covered entirely under the boiling plastic tar. “I hope it’s painful. I hope I get to drown you in hot sulphur. La da daa, di da… I’ve already tried to die once in this hole, did you see that? Instead it just brought me grief. I don’t think you’ll die here. Shame. But this pit will bring you grief,” she said, the iron tar around her congealing into new armour, black armour, rough iron rings and studs and spikes in irregular heaps around her limbs. Dense layers of metal, reddened by heat, with no face. “That’s me. I’m grief.”

Then Ea Nebel screamed like a demon and leapt like an animal and seized Yesaris by the throat, cracking whatever chitinous windpipe lay under their grisly unflinching grin between her iron hands, shaking them, choking, crushing, slamming their little cloaked body onto the skull again and again and again and again…

Taloned steps stirred the water and scraped against the floor of the impossible tomb. A white light, colder than flame, drew their amalgamating shadows out anew.

“It is done.” A recurved obsidian blade arced across the vault at a pace easy enough to be caught offhandedly. “Finish that thing and let us away.”

One armoured iron claw sprung out from the parasite-monster’s hood, reached for her knife, and- fumbled. In the blink of an eye, Ea Nebel released Yesaris to snatch the doom-claw in two hands like a cat.

The parasite clung at their throat, their haggard breathing even more broken and scattered. They scrambled with their remaining three arms away from her, putting distance between the two of them, yet still remained on the mask, their feast still in sight. Slowly, they stood back up, their own chitin covered claws readying themselves. “Well, Kin Grief, you have a ferocity in you, but we have a feast we must attend to, and would appreciate no further distractions.”

She shot it with a pistol-bow. “It can speak,” Iqelis remarked with idle disdain.

“Hold the Flow while I gut it.” Ea Nebel advanced on Yesaris swiftly, with deliberate steps across the dead god’s face. As she hounded Yesaris closer and closer to the horns at the end of the mask, Ea Nebel finally reached that point at the center of the mask, a rhombic hole like the niche for a jewel in a crown, where the now-lightless blue flame had shone the most brightly. She came to a sharp stop and sank her arm deep into the still-flickering mass. A strange, moaning boom resonated from deep in Aletheseus’s skull. His spectral body billowed a heavy cloud of smoke, and when it finally cleared, there was not a shred of it left. Only the mask, and the pulsing cyan Shard levitating over Ea Nebel’s palm.

Yesaris screeched an unearthly cry both as their feast vanished away in smoke, and as a small bolt from the pistol-bow stuck into their shoulder. Yet they could only continue to scramble themselves further and further away from Ea Nebel, beginning to climb up the horns of the mask to keep the distance. “Now why did you have to go do that!” They ripped the bolt free, now covered in the thick white blood that came from the wound, tossing it away into the depths around them. “Yet you do not seriously intend to kill us? The crime of killing kin is a serious thing, you know.”

“Your only kin are worms,” came the dry crackle from the One God below. An odd sound rattled in the eyeless steel armour. For the first time in far too long, Grief, too, was laughing. She sheathed her blade in her armour and called her musket once more to her hand, dropping a black pearl down its muzzle.

“Watch me,” she said, slipping the ramrod from its notch one-handed and forcing a steel ball down the barrel onto the mana charge.

Any shadows of the tomb that remained were suddenly banished all at once, as Daybringer shone brightly with its celestial radiance from where Homura stood at the edge of the skirmish, watching while the scene unfolded. “Ea Nebel, that is enough.”

The red goddess slowly approached, as her voice continued to echo all around. She spoke with clarity, and did not shout, yet with otherworldly power she made herself heard. Homura refrained from stepping onto the skull, keeping her distance, but her fierce gaze and the blinding light of her golden spear washed over Ea Nebel with a merciless heat - a heat akin to that of stepping too close to the imperious sun.

“...You wouldn’t do it.” Ea Nebel turned her head away from the blinding light, shouldered the jezail and steadied the wandering barrel on Yesaris’s grin as best she could.

“You stand upon a precarious precipice, the culmination of these trials, and now a choice. I will not decide for you, but I will inform you of the consequences. Should you strike now, I will defend Yesaris, and you will be punished. If you desist with this, I will defend you, and Yesaris will be punished. Now, the decision is in your hands. Choose.” Homura said, and awaited an answer.

Ea Nebel looked towards her again. The plates covering her head screeched and ground open, revealing four small, dark eyeholes. She looked back at her quarry, saying nothing.

“What is this wretched creature worth to you?” Iqelis’ eye turned to the goddess. “Let us quash it and be done with it.”

“Yesaris is a god. One of the lords in our Lord’s celestial court. He is also our brother, and so one of us. I will not allow him to die.” She replied, still staring at Ea Nebel and the weapon she held.

“That is a god?” the One-Eye repeated incredulously, “This is either the worst folly I have heard out of you yet, or damning testament that the Elder One has no notion of the honours He so largely and ignorantly bestows. Slaying it would at least silence His mortifying error.”

“Eager to add another slay to your list, Kin? Last we checked our existence was no crime, though we suppose that is no matter to you.”

“You displease my child. That is reason enough.”

Now it was Yesaris’ turn to chuckle “This is your child? We can clearly see the resemblance, she has your insolence. Kin-slaying must run in that portion of the family.”

“We are the only ones who do not let inane scruples interfere with our duty, much as I doubt you know that word,” Iqelis assented in a crackle that might have been either nonchalant or disgusted, before sharply waving a claw, “Enough. End it.”

Ea Nebel did not respond. Slowly she lowered the muzzle of the weapon, just a little, keeping it shouldered. Her eye remained at the sights. She turned, pointing it first at Homura, and then at Iqelis, and then at the glowing Shard that hovered beside her; the relic of the killing that had brought them all here, through so much suffering. If she angled her musket just right, she could deflect the ball against it, back up into her own eye, into her brain. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

The light shifted subtly and Ea Nebel glanced back up at Yesaris’s glinting teeth. “I don’t think you’ll die here.” She locked eyes with Homura- eyes, indeed, that must have laid somewhere in that mess of steel- and let her left hand fall from the musket’s barrel, then raised it one-handed at Yesaris, and fired blind.

KRAK

...splip.

The ball zipped somewhere past their head and bounced from the stone wall far behind, into the lake. Ea Nebel turned lazily towards them, hoping to see Yesaris drop dead, but unsurprised at the result of the wild shot. After all, Luck, too, was dead. “Get out of here. If you trespass again, I will make sure my mother gets no chance to save you.”

“Mother?” Yesaris turned to the goddess of Honor, their grin somehow wider than ever before. Yet all they offered was a small chuckle, and they slowly descended from the horns of the mask. Their new gaze towards Ea Nebel unwavering. “Have no fear, Kin Grief, We are sure you and us will meet again.” Suddenly, they jumped from the mask, allowing their form to fall towards the lake below. As soon as their body hit the surface of the water, it erupted into a writhing swarm of Leeches. They descended back towards the tunnel beneath, leaving the family once more alone with each other.

“Is this the Path you have chosen?” Homura asked Ea Nebel.

“There is no choice in these matters,” Iqelis spoke from behind her as he lowered his twoscore arms from a battle-dam stance, “The Flow guides our hand.”

Homura allowed herself a small-sorrowful-sweet smile. “There is always a choice.”

“The only Path I choose is the one that leads home.” Ea Nebel’s armour disintegrated into fluttering flakes of steel and rust, assembling into a dense coat she clutched tightly around herself. It was almost impossible to tell that her eyes were unfocused, but her eyelids sagged with exhaustion. She took the Shard of Fortitude and dropped it into an inner pocket. “I’ll travel up the rays of the Sun and claim my birthright. The penance has been served. This farce is over.”

“An adequate answer. Go then.” Homura said, before she turned to face Iqelis with another neutral expression. She nodded absently in his direction, then proceeded on her way out of the tomb, only pausing once to speak with the one-eyed god. “For now… farewell, brother.”

Iqelis' gaze leapt away from the colossal hollow mask, over which it had been climbing and sliding, to follow her steps. He held up four hands, framing the vestige's empty eyes to her sight.

“Do you want to live forever?” Though he faced away from the skull, his voice seemed to bounce off it with a metallic murmur.

“Indeed. That is the Path I walk upon. You said that… even gods have their fated ends. Hmm… know that I will continue to persevere even when I am defeated, and I will continue to spread hope through this world, for I know that even the worst of calamities are merely temporary and that death is only a prelude to rebirth.” Homura answered, her eyes and the skin around them appearing a familiar blue for an ephemeral moment, before they returned to their original color, and she stared at Iqelis.

“Perseverance lies broken at our feet,” the One God raised two more claws, turned to point at the husk that the others encircled, “A flame extinguished while it blazes strong burns brightest until the end. One that obstinately clings to every last scrap of kindling will choke ignominiously on its own ashes.” He let his arms fall into a wheel at his sides. “Farewell, sister.”

Ea Nebel stood at the edge of the water behind both of them, facing away into the still lake, examining the back of her bare, pale, spidery hands, mumbling something. “May we not meet again… Homura. Not like this.”

“It is the darkest Path you walk upon.” Homura said, stepping under the opening in the ceiling, and without any further words she leapt up and out of the tomb, leaving Ea Nebel and Iqelis alone.

The One-Eye glanced briefly after her before striding over to the godling in two scraping steps.

“Take these.” A talon rested on her shoulder, as another slid around near her own hand. Precariously balanced on its narrow, ridged palm were two jewelled bands, gold with jade and grey with blood-red. “It is not yet time for the earth to reclaim them.”

She looked up, around, and into the bleaching white light of her father’s face, reflected once more in the dark of her eyes. The corners of her mouth twitched, and they rested there for a moment. They were all very human, really, if only in shape.

“I must away.” She pulled her rings onto her fingers, her coat already tightening around her upper body, her skirt below crawling and thickening into fins, scales, and muscle. “If Ruina is wise, she won’t have wasted any time bearing her judgement to the Monarch, but I might still be able to intercept her.”

“Do not fret about that.” A third claw hesitantly ran over her forearm, the soothing gesture made inadvertently menacing by its stiletto-like tips. “This is your triumph, now. You are worthy, not of the First Source's pretensions, but of the world itself. Let none say otherwise.”

“...” Ea Nebel looked down at her reflection in the water. Still standing. Despite everything, she was still standing. A mote of pride blew into her heart like an ember on a breeze. She ran her hand over the polished surface of his arm, fearing no edge on the glass. “...Until we meet again, Father.”

Her feet disappeared from under her, and all that was left of her was a splash and the wake of a great mer-tail churning the still, dark waters, and the One-Eye was alone in the dark. He watched the ripples play with his glow on the surface, until they were stilled. A crooked black finger reached down, and met its counterpart from under the flow of the umbral waves.

“Who are you?”

Silence. The stirring raised by the fingertip subsided, and god and god looked each other in the eye for a creeping moment. Then both were gone, and death alone rested in the hoary vault.

---

Grief dug herself out of the snow near the font of a mountain spring, a stain of black on the fluffy white. She gazed upwards, measuring the distance to the Sun with sore eyes. Try as she might, she couldn’t make out even the faintest outline of its hallowed rooftops through the blaze. Homura’s god-spear flickered in her vision, and she looked away, rubbing her hands to warm them.

GROI-GROIIIII!

“PIG!”

She swung her head and dashed through the snow, throwing up a rain of white as the giant rust-brown warthog barreled towards her, slipping and stumbling on the ice-slick rock below, leaping about. She grabbed its tusks and pushed and pulled against its strength as it sniffed her up and down, laughing all the way to Heaven, laughing without end. She wrapped her long, tired arms around its neck. They didn’t even meet on the other side. “I missed you, piggy.”

---

PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW

Ea Nebel wakes up in the snow near a cluster of mountains that form a deep stone cauldron or chasm between them. It’s filled with pure, refined, obliviating void-juice. She hears the voices of her various judges announce that she has failed, which she seems to already be completely on board with, given her meltdown in the last trial.

She meditates on the nature of the trials, and comes to the conclusion that none of this has anything to do with her specifically- the MoA is just using her as a tool to punish Iqelis for going against his will, without having to actually threaten him with destruction, and that the MoA tried his best to ensure her survival but cares more about the punishment than her existence.

Rather than wait for someone else to pop up and destroy her, she builds herself a simple little grave, has one last cry, and jumps down the hole, fully expecting to die. This isn’t an effort to save Iqelis or serve the Monarch or pass a hidden trial or anything, it’s just a plain old suicide attempt.

Psyche! Dad catches her and she respawns at the top of the hill. This was, of course, the Trial of the twin virtues of Faith and Courage. She passes on the grounds of fulfilling her oath and not flinching at death, but by then she’s already passed out and no longer gives a shit.

All the judges are there! Homura declares the trial over and delivers her judgement to a stressed-out Iqelis: Ea’s basically okay and can live.

Ruina, of course, doesn’t actually care about Ea and is there to keep Iqelis honest. She declares that the big fly has failed to deliver. According to her, the trials weren’t stringent enough, and the virtues were tacky. They immediately have a strongly worded argument about this. Iqelis says that he knows best and that she’s a philistine, Ruina accuses him of coddling Ea and spoonfeeding his own worldview. Things get pretty tense!

The Homura gently informs them that Ea has given them all the slip. Again.

Her parents hurry to catch her while Ruina departs to tell the MoA, but says she’ll put in a good word for her niece.

Meanwhile, Ea disappears back into the Pit of Doom (really just a deep lake thing) and discovers that Aletheseus’s final resting place is in a flooded cave. Chewing on his delicious corpse-meat is no less than our buddy, Uncle Yesaris! Ea shoots him.

…but she’s a complete wreck and no real threat in her current state. A sort-of fight ensues in which Ea tries many ways of exterminating the grave robbing bug rat and fails. Yesaris, who literally just wants a square meal for once, thinks she’s rude, but between them they do figure out a name for her that isn’t just whatever ‘ea nebel’ actually is. The name is exactly the kind of thing you would expect from a goth with mommy issues.

Iqelis shows up, passes Ea her knife and tells her to get on with it. She messes it up again but does retrieve the Shard of Fortitude, ending the feast. Yesaris cry every time.

Homura shows up while she’s trying to shoot Yesaris again, for real this time. She threatens to punish Ea if she pulls the trigger. The three gods banter while Ea makes up her mind and wastes the shot, not before contemplating blowing her own brains out (with, i shit u not, a powder musket). She threatens the bug as it leaves, despite Homura’s disapproval.

Some final words are exchanged as they all say their goodbyes, some sweet, some less so. Ea Nebel plans to follow Ruina to the Sun. Homura hints at something unusual. Iqelis has a moment of solemn contemplation by himself. Ea Nebel reunites with her pig. Yesaris turns into fish food.

No points were spent that day. Probably.

AND THEN EA NEBEL FELL ASLEEP. SHE WOEK UP AND IT WAS ALL A BAD DREAM. NOTHING AWFUL HAD HAPPENED AND HER FAMILU LIFE WAS peACHY

sent at 3am

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI

The Third Trial

As Ea Nebel entered the mouth of the cave

ť̷̼ḥ̸͗e̸͓͌ ̶̹͆m̷̭͝o̷͔͘ṷ̶̉t̴̼́ḧ̸͎́ ̴̙̍o̷͑ͅf̷̻͒ ̴̛͙t̴͕̚h̸͚̊e̶͓͋ ̸̨̍c̵͇͐a̵̜̾v̸͔̕ê̸̘

Ḁ̶͐s̴̛͍̠͖̿͘ ̶̧̔̈Ȩ̷͙̩͗̅a̸̩̼͆͗͠ ̸̩̻͒̓̊N̵̹̲͒͒e̶͉̎̚b̷̩̖̹̅̎͋e̶̦̘̐͆̈́l̴̪̭̹̑̿̉ ̸̧̩͉̀̓̿è̵̦̅͠n̷͐ͅt̸͎̂͋͝ȅ̸͚̭̪r̷̮͍̋͜͝ȩ̷̠̈̿͜d̸͇̊ ţ̴͙̩̳̫̬̱̺̱̭̮̆͊͂͗̈͌͠ḩ̶̢̨̹̹̲̭̬̟͔̻̼̦̱͉̋̈̓͂̀̕͠ͅé̶̛͓̉̈́̄͊̿̇̚͜ ̴̻̺̥̜̪͌̄́͛̉́̈́̉͗̕͘͘͝m̸͓̲̦̑̅̐̎͋̐͒̃̕͝o̴̢̧̭̰̬̮̤͉͓͕̓͊̅͐̒̅̄͂̐ͅu̶̩̤̙͙͕̥̫̠͓̫̎͐͜t̸̟̬̯̼̼͖̑̍͆̀ͅͅͅḧ̷̼̥́̌̀ ̴̥͙̦̦͒̆̈́̿̔̾̈́͐̓͐͒̿̕͜͝͝ō̸̧͍̮̤f̵̡̧̨̡͈̝̹̰̯͖̣̱̬͕͔̰̈́̈̀͛̓̔̓̀̌͋̀ ̴͔̤͖̬̞̜̗͕̳̺̦̑̎͆̒̆́̃͌̀̈́̔̃̕͜t̸̹͕̀̆̈́̓̿̀̌͌͘̚̕h̵̹̣͙̹̮̮̩̣͍̭͍̹̱͓̄̓͜ę̶̛̫͓͈̤͖̲͚̊́͗̎̽̓̽̋͒̅̆̇͝ ̵͖͎̫̻̪͎́̾̓̉̔̂̅̏͒͠c̴̫̱̊̔̓͗̾̒̕ȁ̷̧̛̙͓̜͈̦̝̐̈́̆̄̅̽͘͝v̶̡͖̘̺͈̄̑̇͒͗͒͘͝ȩ̷̢̹̳̺͍͖͒̃̒̉̔̊̋̇̓͐ͅͅ

...

As Ea Nebel entered the graveyard gate, the dense silver cloud that had enveloped her finally thinned, giving way to a light spectral mist that seemed to soften things rather than veiling them. The glow that permeated it, which in the bank under the plain iron archway had for a moment been almost blinding, dispersed along with it, as if to blunt a brightness unbecoming in a sombre place. Now it cast a pale leaden light like a cloudy sky in the fall, as it may well have been, for nothing could be seen in the heavens but a drowsy cap of grey.

Silence. The reverent fog let no sound louder than the crunch of the gravelly path underfoot trouble the repose of the dead.

The cemetery welcomed her with a cool, archaic neatness, as if it were itself the interior of some fantastic sepulchre. Irregular yet harmonious plots surrounded the winding paths like islets rising from the branches of a thin stream, faultless save for the odd tuft of weeds that had sprung up in the otherwise trimmed grass. Headstones filled them like the eaves of a peculiar harvest, lined in orderly rows regardless of disparity and punctuated by some ornamental cypress. Some were great, imposing things, angled and arched, covered with traceries and reliefs eroded by time. Others were humble granite slabs, sober and subdued in their inscriptions. What those were, she could not say for sure, for they were etched in some unknown alphabet of curves and circles, but it was easy enough to guess. Names, dates, the last farewells of those left behind.

The memories of those buried below were just as soothingly ordinary. They had been people like so many others. They had grieved, they had rejoiced, they had been mourned. Now, they rested.

Ahead, the paths turned and crossed in what would have been a maze if it had higher walls. Towards the heart of the graveyard, taller shapes rose between the quiescent rows, the columns and statues of crypts together with the domes of small chapels. And far beyond them, at what must have been the opposite end of this respectable little necropolis, a beam of white light shone through the mist, as if streaming from behind a great invisible door cracked open. Even from this distance, it stung her eyes with an unpleasant glare, and its presence in the gentle grey quiet grated like a crass intrusion.

A low creak sounded from behind her, and the iron gate closed with a click.

“...”

There was no-one there.

When Ea Nebel stood still, the silence was total. There was not a breeze to tousle the grass, nor so much as a cricket. She could hear herself blinking. A more paranoid environment could scarcely be envisioned, and yet she was at ease. The isolation wasn’t lonely. The stones and slabs were as familiar as old toys, and she stroked them with her ungloved hand, back and forth, soothed by the texture. It was almost like an untroubled dream.

She picked a stray cornflower and laid it on the grave of a young child. She didn’t think even a single word as she did so. Were this place any other than what it was, she might have wondered where she had learned that habit. Were this place any other than what it was, its abandonment could be uncanny. But it wasn’t. When had these people lived? Had they been laid here by those who even now walked Galbar? Had they ever walked it themselves? It didn’t matter. She had found a place as far away as a forgotten memory. Here, under the grey sky, there was neither light nor shade. Here there was nothing more to be said or done. Here the Nebel was satisfied.

The godling swung her head to the tower of light. Easy to lose herself in the empty reverie, were that beam not ever trying to shine under the brim of her hat and make her squint. She was still under trial.

The light made her anxious, more than it annoyed her. Both her trials so far had strained Ea Nebel in their own way. This next would be no different. She had seen the grave of Luck, and doubted that hers would be sufficient to bypass a second riddle. The unknown necropolis was so restful that the only way she could see herself being set to the grindstone was by disturbing its peace, as the beacon did now. She sighed faintly and set off towards it with an unhurried step, missing her faithful boar’s unflinching step at her side.

Polished stone monuments grew taller and broader around her until she had to look up at them, not down. Their memories were wealthier, more storied. She didn’t stay long at any of them. Only long enough to notice that a marble bird-bath was not completely still, the way everything else was still. Ea Nebel frowned and looked down. There was a hagfish in there, wriggling away merrily at the bottom of the fountain pool, completely unaware of its misplacement.

How strange.

She kept walking.

The closer she came to the glaring beam, the wider it grew, until it was a veritable gap in the grey scenery. It parted both the fog and the iron fence of the cemetery, which in that spot alone offered the outer world entry into the sacrarium of the dead. For that was what it was; not merely an interloper, but a glimpse of what lay outside the tranquil little sea of grey.

And outside, there was death.

Not the placid, contented death of the graveyard, but the torturous doom of the forsaken. Over an arid plain of sun-cracked yellow earth, uncountable bones lay scattered to the winds. A great battle had evidently been fought there, sometime long ago. The files of immense armies were strewn as they had fought, desiccated fingers collapsed around the rusted stumps of sword and lance, eyes that had once locked in hatred staring emptily into the sky above. Horse and rider had been joined for the last time, centaurs of the battlefield now truly become as fanciful chimeras as their remains mingled. Like the crests of macabre hills, the remains of giants of legendary stature cast their frayed shadows over the blanched sea, their skulls alone as large as the crypts and chapels. Little had their puissance availed them, for they too had been brought low, as impotent as the humblest footman against that foe which none can surpass.

The heavens themselves seemed to be moved to bitterness by that desolate sight, for above the waste reigned the harsh white light, now outright painful to the eye when met directly. Torrid heat wafted from it, hard to bear even so far away, and a distant drone, faint but insistent, hung in the air, without apparent source nor purpose but to strain the ear and rankle the skull.

Around and behind her, the mists coiled invitingly, as if to call her away from that hellish vision and back into the recesses of the grave-paths.

The maiden’s fist clenched and unclenched. She pressed hard against her tragus and smeared her ear shut, deforming the flesh into a half-melted nothing on her face. Now she could feel the drone in her inner skull. She doffed her hat and pulled a dense veil over her face. It dimmed the light only a little, and made it almost impossible to see the bones in front of her. Her lips parted slightly from her clenched teeth. She grabbed the shovel leaning on the iron fence and swung its head against the bars, breaking the quiet of the necropolis with a loud clang. Only then, scowling, did she step through the door.

She measured that old abattoir before she broke ground. It was not infinite. There was a real battle written on the earth in the pattern of the chaos: here they had first clashed, perished, and been trampled; here they had fallen back to the next palisade, collapsing here and there under raining arrows as they formed new ranks. Evenly matched and armed, one side had finally broken. Their bodies were strewn far back behind the battlefield where the lancers had rode them down. Like a fistful of sand thrown to the wind.

Ea Nebel looked up. The beam was still there. The necropolis was still there. The light from the door was soft and silver. The further she travelled from the cool air of the portal, the hotter and louder this world became.

The war elephants were too large to grind down and set in an urn. They were livestock, anyway. The giants were much worse. Their bones could be left to posterity, to be mistaken for strange boulders and make a marker of the place, if anyone ever came here again, ever, until the end of time. Their skulls would need to be set into mounds, and each would be the work of months. They reflected the blinding light like snow, and Ea Nebel had to squint through her veil. She raised her hand to the blank, hot white of the sky. This was not Astalon. There was no sun. It would never be night. And at least Astalon had been quiet.

Quiet, like the graveyard.

Cities had been emptied for this unremembered war. There were more than a million skeletons, not counting horses, dogs, theropods, and other war-animals. Women had fought. Boys also. There were sixty-eight titans of the large kind, and hundreds of their lesser cousins. Many bodies had been crushed, others obliterated entirely. Ea Nebel turned around. The necropolis was still there.

“La da daa, di da, da da daa…”

A little humming tune kept her focused, and she forced herself to sing it louder than the drone in her head. The giant graves could be erected with a multilayered sigil potentiated with the hypertones of a song, turning the work of many decades into… years. Then she could begin to inter the ordinary skulls in the mounds, according to their division. The titanic crania would provide space for men of rank. The skeletons...

“...”

Ea Nebel sank down and sat crosslegged on the hot clay grit, rubbing her eyes with her palms and letting her head sink into her hands, gently chewing her tongue. She still hadn’t done anything. There was no riddle this time, none that she could see. This time she really would have to count the flies. She pulled a timepiece from her coat and set it. She closed her eyes and inhaled, determined to rest in deep meditation, letting her thoughts drift away on the Flow. When she finally opened her eyes, almost twenty seconds had passed.

And the necropolis was still-

“GET OUT!”

The beam didn’t waver. It shone in the middle of the fields of forgetting, the arch of a rain-worn chapel still visible inside, the only soothing thing in the Hell that surrounded her. The conditions of failure were abundantly clear now. There was no riddle here.

“Get out of here! Which one of you did this? Did you think you were being clever? Did you think I would break for something so trite? Was it you? Father? Do you think so little of me? Mother? Oh, no- Homura, isn’t it? I wonder if you treat the others like this. Pity for them! Maybe you, Grandfather, if only you had the spine to do anything yourself.” She whipped the many-hued scarf from her neck and threw it away in a bundle. “Ooh, I feel cooler already. So much for you, you wet-eyed coward. Get out, all of you. Die and rot!”

The last shout, like all that preceded it, was an incoherent mumble under the constant drone of the Hell-sky. The beam didn’t waver. She spat.

Time blurred along, the currents of the Flow making no perceivable ripples on its surface, cursing this world with a damnable smoothness that slid on and on with only the sensation of Ea Nebel’s fingernails digging into her palms to tick one moment over into the next. She lifted her head and stared once more into the beam, trying to make out a shape in the silver wash of mist. There was one. It was different.

Ea Nebel stood up at once. There, through the crack, a second doorway- a real door, a door she knew, her door. Behind it she could make out the domed belfry of her little house, her house on the shore of the Tlaca. On the steps, a movement, a life: the arched back of the Iron Boar, rising and falling, sleeping, dreaming, waiting for its master.

Waiting for her.

She had already choked on a sob before she knew it. Ea Nebel clenched her teeth and tightened her mouth as hard as she could, holding herself. Her hand pressed against her face and covered her eyes.

The sweat of her palms mingled with the tears welling up in her eyes, gently burning. The fluid glowed gently enough to pierce the thin of her eyelids, but not enough to seep out through the gaps in her fingers such that any others would notice the new presence; this was a sight meant only for her four eyes, blurred and shut as they might have been.


With reckless abandon, her flesh lost form. It was as though her eyelids were of transparent glass, while her hands became puffs of fog with fingers made of smoky, wispy dreamstuff. No matter how tightly she tried to cover her eyes or squeeze them closed, she Saw.

The beam’s intensity remained, but it seemed a more distant and less troublesome thing at that moment. The incessant droning sound that had been there faded also, as if muffled by great distance. All of those woes were replaced by a more immediate, pressing one: darkened silhouettes of monstrous beings – Iqelins of all shapes and sizes – lurked waiting all around the outskirts of this great battlefield, silently leering at her and hoping against hope that she would abandon her charge. They were good at hiding from her sight, had been so good that until this moment she hadn’t even sensed their presence, but now she Saw them clearly through all the tricks and glamours. Most were waiting out there in the distance, but others were also hiding anywhere she might have looked for respite: in the shade, in the tunnels back behind from whence she’d entered this place, and yes, inside this little replica of her house. Especially inside of there, they waited.

”Ẏ̡oų̘͎̔̏͠r͙̥̦͗̅̏ f̳̪̂̕l͖̮̚̕y̭̚ ǫ̾͂͟f̝̪͎̏̾̚ ḁ͓̊̆ fȁ̩̯͠th̯̩́̊é͈̺̬̇̃r̡̼̱̔̌̈́ s̙̞̔́ē̯e̩͈͌͛k̺̋ṣ̦̓͆ ţ͠ó̻ t̂͜e͉̭͚̓͐̎s̢̛̱͍͑̓t͖͐ ỵ̹͊̀ó̼ur re͚̣̞͑͆̐s̤̬̓͛ol͈̪͈̂͘͡v͖͎̆̊͝ͅe̟̋,̭̎ y̯͛o̟̗̐͂ự͎̤͗̓ŕ̺͙̗̏̾ d̨͋ȇ̦̫̏d͑͟ḭ̈́c̪̺̏͗at͒ͅio̺͌n̥̫̠̎̈́͝ t̜̫̉̋o d̛̝͙̒ű̡̝͛t̡͓͇́͌́ỹ̜,̨̀” a lonely toadstool whispered to her from below, where it had sprouted out between two ribs of an ancient skeleton.

”Ṫ͉ō͟ le͈̿ä͕͚̋v̩͗ẽ̝ i͕̇s̲̊ ṫ̹o f̺͋aì̛̻̝l͎͙̑͞. So̳̔ e̫͝í̞t̙͒h̜͞e̛̗r͈̼̾̒ l͚̘̆͊eav̧̓e̟̕ a͎͗n̜̓ḏ͔̌͠ p͓͚͈̦̓͌͡͠ĕ̡̛̪͔̯͇͋̈̀̾ͅṟ͖̩͚̅͆̎̀̓͟i̡̛͖͇̹̩͇͒̈͂͘͝s̡̝͇̦̉̆̚͝h̭͖̖͔̱͂̃̆̔̕͟͞ á̳n̘͍͒̿d sp̠̼̎̽i͍̭̿̀t̰̤͑̍e ḩ̩̱̞͓͇̰̓͂̀͊̎́͠i̲̳̻̾̽̑͋ͅm̲̪̩̟̣̣͖͂̐̏͋̈͑͘,̨̡̊͝ or̓͢ TOIL to p̺̹̀͊a̦͊s̞̓ṡ͔̠̈́,̯̇ a̝̞͛́nd͔̈ r͕͡e̫͑m̒͢e̦̒ṁ̢̟̃b̢̗͞͠ẻ̜ṛ͂ t̡̕hȉ̤s͎̆ fa̡̫̒̈́vö̦r wh͇͘ẽ̝n̯͡ ń̥̱͠ḛ̇x̜̋t w̱̌ë̛̜͓́ ś̠p͂͢e͓͊a̿̉͢ͅk.”

Then toadstool’s conspiratorial whispering stopped, and through her tears she saw naught but darkness once again. She raised her hand from her eyes and the bones were bare and empty before her. Only a single heartbeat had passed in that span of time, but now, unnoticed by her judges, she’d been given the answer.

But there was no riddle here. Ea Nebel already knew the answer. She hated the answer. “Shut up,” she whispered, to no one and everyone. “I will not leave. I will not leave. Choke on it. I hope it sticks you through the throat.”

The necropolis beckoned again through the portal, its air cool, its light smooth. No matter how much she stared, she couldn’t See the hulking, crawling shapes of Iqelins seething over every stone like bloated spiders. Spiders creeping everywhere. Creeping through her home. Crawling on her skin. Ea Nebel looked out over the horizon where the heat was burning in. Everything shimmered, blurred with tears and heat. There, too, would be demons, writhing and creeping up her spine, along the endless horizon. Of course there were demons here. This was Hell.

Ea Nebel shuddered and snapped her hand to the back of her neck, felt something soft in her fingers pushing back on her skin with its wriggling little legs, threw it down in front of her, her guts squirming. It didn’t have a head, didn’t have symmetry, just legs and proboscises and bloated abdomen. She splattered it under her heel, already feeling another creeping up her ankle. She swatted it down and broke into a sprint, leaping at once up to the high top of a titan’s skull, where the ground was smooth and white and fire-hot and nothing crawled except the horizon around her in every direction. She crouched and rocked back and forth, holding her head and mouth, trying not to vomit.

“How about… you leave.”

Ea Nebel threw back her veil and squinted into the blinding light, seeing nothing and Seeing nothing. Tiny bugs and maggots crept up and down the horizon just like they crept up and down the lines of her fingers in front of her eyes. She stared and stared until her eyes adjusted and they did not go away- this time she saw them, with her eyes, far far in the distance. She pulled a stiletto from her coat with trembling hands, flipped it back-hand, and popped out the blade.

Her boots hit the ground with a crunch of grit that was lost in the roaring drone and then she was sprinting, crushing bugs and bones alike, faster than a hawk, her blood hotter than Hell. The battlefield flashed away behind her in seconds as the Iqelins on the horizon grew closer and closer. They were huge, colourless, liquid, dripping, like tar-sand, a misshapen nightmare of a being she had never, ever seen. Their bodies were like mites, so swollen and bulbous as to be almost spherical, their legs like gnarled fingers with far too many knuckles, breaching and and out of its surface like capsized ships in storm. The greatest one was closest, towering over the titan-skulls she’d left behind her; Ea Nebel leapt onto its flank, sinking her hands into gritty choking slime, and heaved herself up on top of it, all the way to the height of its back, and slammed her knife into its skin with her fist.

She stuck that demon over and over and over again on hands and knees and every time she made a hole it splattered her with blood; human blood, bright like candy, sugary in her mouth like the oily crust of bile on its body was honey to her; and it felt like stabbing a thick mushroom, and when she looked she saw that it was a mushroom, with moist rubbery gills and stipe-meat; and it struggled and heaved like a mountain might buck off a horsefly but she had a lance now, a long lance like a needle six men tall and on that lance was the scarf the Banner of the Monarch and she stuck him with it; and no wind fluttered that old rag but grey waves rolled over it as its kaleidoscopic colours dimmed and brightened, and the Iqelins the demons were still calmed because it wasn’t hatred oh no this was something much better and crueller and delicious and it hurt so much more; and-

“La da daa- di daa-”

and there was wasn’t was a pattern in those tiny pinpricks of violence she gouged in it and only she could see it and it was plague spots was not a pretty one at all; and as she stabbed at it its mouthparts sprouted and grew and curved and twisted in and out of its four dark pearl eyes its eyeless face like a babirusa; and its head was immobilised and its brain was pierced and it snapped its neck back reared itself up with a sickening crack on too many legs and its belly gaped open because there was a whole new mouth there; except it wasn’t a mouth it was just a hell a hole and the hole was a drooling orifice hag-eel’s breathing hole and it stretched and strained like a dark toothless tube with its six tongues six stubby tentacles; and-

“DA DA DAA-”

and every single person demon was like this now and they were everywhere and a hundred Ea Nebels loved them stabbed them but only one had the ovipositor had the Banner; and they shoved their gaping wounds holes onto the grit and clay and ants and bone and gobbled it up anyway, contracting, stretching, gulping, kissing, shuddering; and everything Ea Nebel could see was doubled quadrupled and blurry and in the after-images she could see them crawling up the beam of light like newborn babes mutilated ticks and sucking her the necropolis out of it like milk pus and she screamed that was good; and the more they slurped and crumbled the less she could see of anything, anything at all…

And then there was nothing, no demons, no heat, no drone, no portal; and Ea Nebel floated there in the silver mist all alone, her face a sea of tears, wheezing laughter to herself and no one else.

---

“It is the virtue of duty to know one’s own purpose and whereby it may be accomplished. It is to serve one’s end with abnegation, without forsaking its most grievous incumbencies for one’s own indulgent fulfilment when those should prove discordant. Thereby, in service of a higher Law one is made master over oneself and all things.”

The voice hesitated, reflecting on something it had until that point not prepared for.

“And it is to champion that Law and its universal ordainment in the face of unclean forces that would overturn it. It is to find one’s way among their deceptions and never stray from the destined path. This is a virtue of the divine.”

---

The space, if indeed it was a space, where the arbiters found themselves was cool and dark, the only source of definite sensation being the smooth glassy floor underfoot. After the sights of the ancient battlefield, over which they had been afforded eyes and ears that were everywhere and nowhere at once, free to pry at the minutest grain of dust or observe the breadth of ruination from a far vantage, the impenetrable shadow and silence did not seem altogether unpleasant.

Iqelis was not with them, not visibly. His presence could be felt around them, however. The darkness writhed, breathed, coiled indistinctly; he was inside it, and he was it. Its stirrings were his thoughts, and as the focus of his unseen eye was drawn to the course of the ordeal, a perceptive spirit could have read their course easily enough. There had at first been expectation, impatient yet confident; a pang of bitterness at the demigoddess’ rebuke, and a flash of anger which even here curled into an edge of rancorous mockery oddly laced with concern - Is this how you repay me? On with it! or you will break, are breaking! - that steadily turned to bemusement as he strained to catch something he thought he had seen. It grew to bafflement as distortion blossomed, for it was plain that it was not something he had woven into the fabric of this hell-crucible. Even now, after the hurriedly improvised conclusion to his homily, he seemed to have forgotten the two judges, and fluid ether flowed and shifted places as he weighed memory against design, puzzling over whether the one had contaminated the other. Recollections of a be-nightmared battle against impossible enemies under a sunless black sky danced on the skein of his mind, and measured themselves against the events that he laboured to force into the mould of what had been his intention.

The Goddess of Honor had shut her eyes closed, and sighed once with sorrow before she spoke. “I have now found the profuse irony here to be more than enough. Despite what others may claim, failure in this test is something we have all experienced as the Divine. There will be times when we are defeated, but then we will rise again. She has passed this trial through such failure, so let us move onto the next.” Homura proclaimed, as her scarlet eyes slowly opened, and afterwards shifted her attention to the second judge.

Ruina let out another hum as Homura spoke. She did have a point in that suffering failures without being crippled was a quality needed of a divine, but something tickled at her mind a bit. What, exactly, had been the goal of the test? To bury the bodies? To be rid of the light? This test seemed to be lacking in an overall goal, unlike the prior tests which had fairly clearly defined ones. Thus Ruina would raise an issue. ”Something I feel like I must observe is that this test possessed of it no purpose that is clear to me. What was the goal of Ea Nebel in this area? To bury the bodies? To rid herself of the beam of light? It feels to me that this was a test that had no solution, thus making failing the only solution possible. Lest an explanation comes, I would think of this trial as unworthy.”

Around them, Iqelis' mind bristled with impatience as it was torn away from its pondering, but the voice that sounded from the darkness was even.

“The light and the bodies are one and the same,” it crackled, now loud and pervasive, “They are the path of adversity, which duty must tread and overcome. Had she fulfilled her calling in spite of their asperity and of the lure of complacency, there would have been no doubts as to her success.”

Homura slightly shrugged. “It is what it is. These trials should not be so black and white, and an unworthy trial is still a trial nonetheless. Would you say the actions of Ea Nebel have given you cause to annihilate her?” The red goddess asked, offering Ruina a shadow of a smile.

Ruina blinked as the explanation was given from Iqelis before she nodded. As Homura gave her own thoughts, Ruina would blink once more as she thought about the question presented. Looking to Homura, Ruina gave her answer bluntly. ”No. Not yet. When the trials are finished I will have made up my mind on matters.”

Ruina thought it best to not include the fact that she was not here to judge Ea Nebel, but to instead judge her father, Iqelis. With things explained, Ruina folded her arms before speaking again. ”I am satisfied by the explanations given, and you have my thanks for them. Let us continue to the next trial.”

And so they did.

---

One must imagine Ea Nebel happy

When Ea Nebel steps into the third trial, she's "subtly" shunted into an ideabstracted dreamworld, where she's confronted with a pleasant little graveyard and a horrible wasteland full of unburied corpses. She catches on quickly enough to what she must do*, but the illusion's challenges and temptations are just as quick in taking a toll on her mood.

*Bury everything. She gets as far as counting them. There are lots.

As she rails against this banal allegory, a very suspicious mushroom somehow pops up to offer her a favour*, but this only incenses her more. She breaks down**, and tears the vision down with her in a whirl of chaos that unfolds inside someone's head (but whose?) before collapsing into a haze.

*trying to turn her off from the temptation of cozyness by making it look like the cozy place is full of demon bugs.
**when she starts hallucinating demon bugs of her very own.

Iqelis is baffled at his totally immersive simulation glitching out like this and can't make out why it happened. He tries to pass it off as a success anyway. Homura doesn't buy it, but thinks that failing the word of the trial is fitting to pass it in spirit. Ruina remains noncommittal, but declares herself satisfied for the moment.

Vigour

Iqelis starts with 6 vigour.
-He spends 1 on crafting an ideabstracted vision that is wholly lifelike and supremely subtle in beguiling the senses.
He ends with 5 vigour.

Nebby's point count
Start 11
-1 building her house by the sea last time.
--1 demigod penalty.
-2 new extraordinary species, identity unclear.
--2 demigod penalty.
---COULD IT BE DEMON BUGS????
-2 new region, small, in an unspecified location (demi-aspect)
--We'll see this when all the trials are done.
End 3

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI

Ea Nebel

Some earlier time.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built it on the beach, at the north shore of the Tlacan sea where the water is smooth and shallow and without colour. She built it herself, without any help at all. And she was happy when she built it, because she had nowhere to be, and nothing on her mind. It's important to build a house this way. You must always come home to happy memories.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built it from smooth ashlar, and it was both tall and wide. She built for it arches and buttresses and colonnades, and she made sure that every part of it was both beautiful and useful, so that it would be just the right size: not too small and not too big. It had one face for the land and also one face for the sea, looming into the banks of mist. They were not the same face, so if the fog of dying rivers that hovered over the dead water were ever to part, a hidden facade may be revealed on Galbar’s final day. She pulled down a low-hanging fragment of obsidian from the sky, which was curved into strange orbits, such that it could be turned one way to look like the sleek skull of the fox, and another an eel, and another a flame. From it she chipped and ground twelve high pillars of pure black glass to hold up its highest domes and halls. When she was done she ground the remains of it smooth again, and set atop it a flat, circular stone dais. This she sent back to float nearby, for when she wished to meditate.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she gave it a wide courtyard, and filled it with trees planted in soil from the Eternal Wildlands, because the mud around the Sea was just no good for growing. This way it would always be a little different, but not very different, but different enough that it had moods, and the birds were often slightly different birds, and the song they sang would always be the right mood for her. Ea Nebel appointed the Iron Boar as watcher over this shrine-forest, which would be its home, and it delighted in the roots and the trees and the streams with their frogs. Outside she laid gravel and chalk in the draining mud, and so built a long road leading to that house, with milestones and resting-places.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built inside it a museum and a library, and made sure that they would always be full of beautiful flotsam washed up by the Flow from every corner of Galbar. There was Nalusan pottery and Bjork woodcuts and Shennic paintings on rice-paper, and many remains of living things, from the lava-crab to the god-orca, and every kind of exotic creature from the jungles of Orsus: ceratopsian skulls and araucaria cones and cabinets full of many insects that had once glowed with their own power in the Moonlit Gardens, and now glowed on, with hers. And in her house she dug an aquarium, which was a little piece of reef from nowhere in particular, and filled it with all the fish and coral she liked the most, and set windows into it and under it, so she could see everything that went on with her fish by day and by night without ever needing to wet her feet. And when she felt like a closer look, she became a mermaid, and didn’t have to wet her feet that way either.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built it with a guest wing and an office and a lounge with a roaring fire and chairs so comfortable one could easily die in them. She built a kitchen where the food was always hot, and a porcelain golem would come out to serve it anywhere in the house, and she made sure the golem was dressed well, in white and black. Between domes she built the glass roof of her conservatory and within one she set the glass lens of her observatory, which she would have liked to use more, had the dark between stars not sent shivers over her skin, and the lunar eye not ever been trying to peer down the brass scope. Under the widest dome she erected a throne of swirling onyx, and behind it rings of gold, such that she could sit in the center of an enormous halo. There she would brood, or nap, or lounge around eating fruit as it suited her.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she consecrated a chapel with twelve hundred candles and fractal mosaics in many colours, into which the sun would spill from tall windows and alight on the dancing smoke of censers. She engraved no image of man or beast in that chapel, and gave its altar over to any god to which a mortal guest might wish to pray. For herself, Ea Nebel consecrated a second chapel, a private chapel of black and white ablaq, which is layered stone. There she hung the black silks marked with white, which were the symbol of the babiruš, and the death’s head, and the Three Eyes and One. On its altar were many boars and moths and flowers laid in amber and jet, lit by a crystal set inside a shell, and it was for the receiving of prayers. For when the children of dust pray, they hope that God will listen; and when the God of Nebel prayed, she hoped to hear them speak.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built for herself a bedchamber, which was a small outgrowth of the much larger room that was her wardrobe. This she filled with black hats, black coats, black jackets, black gowns, black trousers, black skirts (modest), black gloves, black boots, black socks, black glasses, black scarves, and a variety of other accessories, which were black. The secondary section of her wardrobe was reserved for more ostentatious costumes, which had highlights of red, silver, white, and gold, and were otherwise black. In the back corner of this section she stored eight additional dresses, one for every colour that wasn’t black. She had no intention to wear any of them but she felt that it was important to have a little variety.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she displayed all her weapons in a large armory, which were in every way alike to those she conjured. On its racks there were many pole-arms, such things as quarterstaves and glaives and pole-hammers, and her swords she displayed on stands, half-sheathed. There were lined cases, which contained many knives, and the hacking weapons hung from the wall, a selection of machetes among them. Of the missile weapons, the most room was dedicated to her crossbows, slurbows, arbalests and pistol-bows, and room also was left for the javelin, dart, bolas, and the stockless bow, of both the simple and compound kind. The smallest section was reserved for the incendiary weapons: the long, sleek musket with its filigree underbarrel, the fire lance and arrow, and the chòng, or pole-cannon. The only weapon not displayed was the doom-claw, which had no equal, and never left her side.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she dug beneath it an extensive basement. Most of it was unfilled catacombs, where the remains of the faithful, exotic, and worthy could be interred in sarcophagi as Ea Nebel deemed fit. Hidden among these empty and ghostless halls were the secret rooms. One of them was a vault where she might hide her secret treasures, were she ever trusted with any. For now she heaped it with a pile of shining gold, just so that it wouldn’t feel too empty. The other secret room was her dungeon, where sealed cells were arranged around a central workroom built around an oubliette. There she assembled the rack, the wheel, the chair, the horse, and all the other apparatus of torturing.

When Ea Nebel built her house, her own room stood in the sunniest corner. There she had a big bed, and a fire, and a cello, and a shelf for all her treasures: her gold rune-ring of jade and her iron ring with its blood diamond, a stand for the doom-claw and a hook for her grandfather’s scarf, a little haematite warthog, a spindle and whorl, and the turquoise amulet of Yolyamanitzin, who was architect to the Granite Emperor. She had a plush boar and a plush skull and a plush whale and a plush wasp also, and an entire hot spring for her bath. And in this corner she spent most of her time.

All this came to be, when Ea Nebel built her house.

---

Yes, there's a ball pit.

Remember that house Ea Nebel wanted to build? Well, now she's built it! Of course, it's a house fit for a teenage goddess, so it's more like a cathedral-mansion-palace. It's on the shore of the Tlacan Sea and it cost 1x2=2 Vigour. There's no particular magical effect on it, but it's very big and cool and has a lot of stuff in it, including a personal hot spring, which is magical enough, I think.

It's very big for just one person though. Maybe she's lonely...