[center]
[h3]A Murmur upon the Wind[/h3]
[color=dimgray][b]Gneiss[/b]
Shard of the Mountain[/color]

[i][color=Khaki][b]Murmur[/b]
Bringer of Thunder, Herald of the Storm, Djinni Lord of Sound[/color][/i]

[color=9e0b0f][b]Jvan[/b]
the All-Beauty[/color]
[/center]
 
Every grassland is a sea of its own right, and this one was beautiful: its surface gleamed golden beneath the endless skies, the tops of the grass lurching in the wind like the waves of any true ocean. That same, overwhelming sense of endless expanse and one's own smallness reigned here as well, for the land was flat and broken only by the occasional stubby acacia. Nothing stood out upon the distant horizons save one lonely, gargantuan figure.

After one huge stride there came a soft rustling as the giant's foot returned to the earth, flattening a tiny patch of grass. Despite his hulking size, the ground did not so much as tremble at his passing; Gneiss was at one with that earth, and so his footsteps fell down as lightly as the softest mist of rain. After a long time, the Stonelord strode forward again, his every movement cumbersome and slow. In spite of all that, by merit of his colossal figure Gneiss still managed to make good time in his travels.

He trudged on for days without rest, thinking nothing of it. In traversing these vast seas of grass he passed a herd of brush beasts, the humongous things comparable to his own size yet hardly skittish. When one was a mountain and knew no predator, one also knew no fear; so it was that not even the mightiest of djinn made a brush beast bat its eye with anything more than curiosity. Far from home, he eventually came to the edge of the grasslands for all things had an end. Nothing stood a better testament to this than one somber monument: the humble remains of a once-mighty giant, perhaps an elemental that had been even older and greater than Gneiss himself.

[center][i]Here, a giant rested.[/i]
[img]http://pre10.deviantart.net/53e9/th/pre/f/2012/107/3/e/fallen_giant_by_batatalion-d4whm9b.jpg[/img][/center]

The enduring Stonelord had pressed on for many days now, but this was enough to halt his journey for a short time. He knelt before the fallen giant and closed his eyes, brushing a fingertip across the weathered face as he tried to imagine what sort of cataclysmic battle might have felled such a leviathan. Gneiss meditated for a short time, perhaps a week, before his eyes opened once more. He gazed once again upon the giant, its body a grass-covered hillock with only the weary head and one arm left unburied. The Stonelord stood once more, then looked down and smiled. Natural beauty was never found in permanence or anything eternal; beauty was a precious, fleeting thing, and that was what made it beautiful.

His long ruminations over, Gneiss continued onward. While that giant eventually faded into the horizon behind him, his thoughts remained with it. One day, that giant's features would be worn away and buried and nothing would remain. But Gneiss knew too that one day, he would return to Galbar's earth, and perhaps he would not look so different then. Tomorrow was only ever a hope and a dream, never a promise.

Thinking upon such things, the wise giant found his long journey at an end before he even knew it. Truly, the weeks and months passed as mere blinks of the eye to him now. Was this sense of timelessness what preceded death? He would find out soon, for he knew not what to expect. He had weighed the possibilities of imminent death or even worse fates, and yet something had still drawn him to this place. To Jvan. Perhaps through talk of a truer sort than had taken place at that moot of the four elements, peace could be obtained. 

In Gneiss' youth he had been as tumultuous and violent as any other, but with age and great size had come more than simple strength or power--great slowness and great wisdom had transformed him. He had reluctantly consigned himself to accept the inevitability of war between the elements; that was their nature and the way of Nature itself. But war against mortals and innocent, precious life? Such tragedy was worthy of his efforts to stop. That was why he would tell Jvan that her children were in danger, so that perhaps she might take better care to protect them.

The giant's lumbering steps brought him to the shore, and then to the water's edge. Still he walked onward, wading deeper and deeper until he was submerged. This was normally the domain of the waterlords and now he felt peculiar outside of his own element, yet in Jvan's presence he doubted that any overly zealous djinn of the water would come to quarrel with him. So it was that he walked on and on beneath the sea's surface, until the stir of verdance once more became an ephemeral, living swirl of colour and pattern, and the glow of a cathedral mountain rose from the depths before him. Until he found Jvan.

No time was wasted as the reef set about unfurling itself over a plateau of shoulders. Echinoderms.crept and clambered attritively upon Gneiss, firm, [url=http://www.animals-zone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Starfish.jpg]spiny[/url] [url=https://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m52f4aP5nd1qm9r09o1_540.jpg]things[/url] seeking a perch upon which to sift the current and sponge for edible dust. An eelish [url=http://www.moonpooltrilogy.co.uk/images/news/tomopteris.jpg]polychaete[/url] fluttered its way between his dim shadows, swaying for the ribfish that swallowed their gills and fled on stilted fins when it drew near. Such was the passage of time, measured in little lives and big stones.

And yet here that mouthless river did not pass Gneiss by, as it was wont to do in the places which no god claimed. Crinoids swam like feathered flowers towards him, towards only him, posing themselves, a [url=http://www.oceanwideimages.com/images/7582/large/feather-star-24M1220-12.jpg]vivid garland[/url] on his brow. Like angels, the pale worms of the night plains danced and spun around him, a halo, and pauldrons of glass-sponge scintillated into being on his body.

Delicate as a summer mist, the gaze of Jvan turned its blessing upon him, and its word was life.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Child, son of my brother, you are come to a lonely place, and you are welcomed to it."[/colour] Thus spoke the carmine glow of the body, its voice whirring from far within, where the grey flesh churned. 

[colour=9e0b0f]Oh, Zephyrion... You have your little trademarks.[/colour] The Elementals were beings of action, and energy, and a pride that imbued them with an oddly regal manner. [colour=9e0b0f]It's endearing, at its best.[/colour] Jvan knew what she knew, and that was little, for though change Flickered on her back as it did all over the world, the evolution of her own habitat was under artful control. She dissuaded those Djinni that styled themselves princes, for a prince may yet inherit a rebellious sultanate. To dismiss her suitors so did not accustom her to seeing the face of an elemental lord.

To receive one now out of blue skies- Something new. Curious. Why now? Why at all?

[colour=9e0b0f]"My eyes rest on you, Stonelord, and they rest easy. I see age in your palms, and the work of ages has been in your hands. A long life, with many sons, and many stories. But say, then: Do you come to tell, or to listen? To stay, or to go? To sing, or to dance? Perhaps I am visited by an elder, upon the end of his time? Perhaps a noble, growing stronger with every passing moon? Talk, great spirit, converse, for I know little, and offer much."

"An audience,"[/colour] concluded Jvan, [colour=9e0b0f]"Has been requested."[/colour] From one side or another.

When the innumerable creatures sought to find purchase upon him, at first Gneiss struggled and made some effort to keep him back. Eventually he succumbed to indifference, the effort being futile. They rendered little harm anyways; indeed, the more slothful of his kind oft bore beards of moss and sometimes even trees atop their backs.

The goddess' disconcerting voice resonated from the watery depths, so Gneiss clambered atop the nearest atoll he could find in this reef. Ah, the dry earth beneath his feet felt good. Now he could speak back. [color=dimgray][b]"I...have...come..."[/b][/color] he began with words that rolled out slower than the waves lapping upon the shore.

[i]Why had he come?[/i]

[color=dimgray][b]"...because...I...must...save...the...little...ones."[/b][/color]

As the hours passed into days, he slowly regaled Jvan with tales of the Great Moot and what had happened since. Finally, the story began to draw to a close, and he finished, [color=dimgray][b]"You...defied...nature...once. They...defied...you...in...turn. Now...bury...your...quarrel...and...use...your...power...for...a...noble...purpose. Return...peace...to...the...earth."[/b][/color]

Gneiss's stolidly neutral retelling thrummed over deep and thoughtful cords in the body of the god, but his sage compassion was not soothing. The flight of sun over the horizon only saw Jvan's red fog of light roil and scrunch itself away into her flesh. Those remnants of a desire to speak to the stonelord with a familiar pride shed themselves away when his final appeal rumbled over the water. A still waver possessed her voice. [colour=9e0b0f]"No, stonelord... No. I can't do this. My students must- [i]I[/i] must- I have my own nature to follow that I can not relinquish."[/colour]

A quarrel? Jvan shrank, in anticipation that superceded fear of all but her own course of action. [colour=9e0b0f][i]This has already progressed far beyond a little quarrel.[/i][/colour] The natural order is illusory. Mortal will falls to the necessities of God. Art alone is worth pursuing, and the complement of beauty is vast. For the Djinn to restrict its paragons so- [colour=9e0b0f][i]I must at least confirm, before I act on the word of one.[/i][/colour]

Tension came over the great body. Jvan seemed to inhale, and her luminescence returned in a shout.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Delta! Naranbaatar! Mistral!"[/colour]

There was quiet. Not the quiet of success, for the call soon recurred.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Yerasyl! Purgatorio! Ochre Dauber! Lylein! Caracal's Eye! Scrimshaw!"[/colour]

A silence.

[colour=9e0b0f]"They do not respond,"[/colour] breathed the goddess from within. [colour=9e0b0f]"Neither to their first names nor their taken nomers. These students are truly gone, Gneiss. My children are dead. There can be no peace. Only, perhaps, an armistice."[/colour] There was a keen, wet crackle. From the back of the giant, the living things were receding, though many had braved dehydration to come so far. The lacy sponges cracked and rotted away from their skeletons. Resilient starfish were falling to the atoll. Lives were ending.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Tell me, Gneiss,"[/colour] resounded the voice again, and now it rose. [colour=9e0b0f]"Does a djinn know anything but his own pride? Does sycophantic tribute satisfy, or the objection of an equal give him pause to think? Will threats vindicate his arrogance, or does he just deny? Are the spirits so fickle as to taunt Horror and then turn their backs?"[/colour] There was no pause to breath, no end to the swell. [colour=9e0b0f]"Must a deity beg peace from a pebble, an ember, a raindrop, a breeze? Is there a cause so noble that I will empty my hands and gouge my eyes for it? Am I not God, from whom nature takes its fleeting law? Tell me, Gneiss! [i]Who will save the little ones?"[i][/colour] And this last word was a roar, a challenge, a mockery that swept forth into a livid calm.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Is it not I, stonelord? Is there any other?"[/colour]

She was on the right track and would soon see reason, the giant knew, for after the fire comes rain. After pain there came calm. Jvan would just need his continued help to arrive at the right mindset. [color=dimgray][b]"Yes...[i]you[/i]...will...end....this, when....you...heed...my...counsel,"[/b][/color] he declared, [color=dimgray][b]"and...yes, we...take...after...our...All-father...I...am...told. Be...warned, great...goddess, that...my...kind...is...legion...and...will...match...fury....with...fury. Only...rain...will...make...the...flowers...of...peace...bloom...again. Never...fire...nor...brimstone."[/b][/color]

As he continued, the giant did something most unusual--he bent his knees, and just before it looked as if he were about to kneel, he gently fell backwards into a sitting position with a grace that left hardly an imprint upon the ground beneath. From that position, he continued on as if nothing was amiss, talking like a venerated grandfather might to a small child. He was sure that Jvan would see the path given enough time, and to him time was nothing. He hoped that she was not like those petty, dogmatic rivals of his: Tempus, Hydraxis, and Cinder. Each of them had a fatal flaw, and each of them would be undone by it. But could deities have flaws or be undone? He was not so sure, but he leaned towards [i]no.[/i]

The weight of the giant impressed quietly onto the body below. It was the heft of stubbornness, maybe, age, certainly, and perhaps not a small dose of stupidity, for Jvan rejected those words that branded themselves into her memory, cast them aside to watch them echo again like weeds. She swelled and spurned with red fog, beating, for a moment, like an angry heart. And she recoiled.

Anger spurted and curled from the porous monument in the form of spongy trees and fruit-bodies, short-lived splashes of paint flung on a canvas in temper. [colour=9e0b0f]"I don't know what part of the First Gale you take after, but it is not one with which I am well pleased, you insufferable boulder. You [i]rock.[/i]"[/colour] And yet, what had she been expecting?

To rage against something that raged back? No, such luck was rare, even for gods. There were only boundaries with this one. And it would only hurt to tire herself against him. [colour=9e0b0f][i]Smug work he is. But he has a nature to fit, as do I.[/i]

"Fine! I hear your counsel, [i]stonelord[/i], and keep it until it makes good use of itself."[/colour] Something deflated. Popped like the crack of knuckles. To admit this much, perhaps, was sound judgement.

Jvan's prior insults were met with only mild amusement; he did not allow the spittle of any to wear him down. It took a stronger wind than words to wear down a mountain. [color=dimgray][b]"I...know...that...you...hear. This...is...not...enough. You...must...[i]listen.[/i] For...every...djinn...you...may...smite...down, a...hundred...Sculptors...will...die. The...war...will...never...end...until...peace...is...sought...by...you."[/b][/color]

[colour=9e0b0f]"Oh, there are too many already, Gneiss."[/colour] It stung like the salt of tears. A wise instructor let her students go. Were there more, who were dead, in their silence? [colour=9e0b0f]"I may seek peace when I am satisfied,"[/colour] or, hellish thought, exhausted. [colour=9e0b0f]"But my heart burns. An artisan of the likes of a Sculptor is not easily replaced, yet I cannot cradle them... They must roam free. They must find a place to seek shelter while I rage."

"Perhaps, Gneiss, Child God though I am, I am not a fool. Maybe it is better if this skirmish is waged out between its true belligerents, the Djinni Lords and I, Cancer, heart of their ire. My students are scattered and their guardians are peaceable. If you ever want my tantrum to end, I must first lash out. More death of mine will only prolong what happens. But you, you dumb, slow thing, you irritate me, because you are different... And that is beautiful. You have offered sanctuary for the innocent. Will you prolong that, stonelord? Will you give the Sculptors a place to craft in your halls, while I put fury to fury and knife to the wind? You want me to end this, but, maybe, you can help me in that."[/colour]

Something impossible began to happen. He had been deceptively kind and  patient thus long, and as such shows had a tendency to do, this perhaps  brought out Jvan's contempt. It had seemed as if she, like his rival  djinni lords, and lost all respect for him and refused to acknowledge the good that he had brought. And so after showing a few signs of stress and cracking, his wall of patience suddenly and violently broke apart as stone was wont to do.

With each passing word, Gneiss now had a chip of his seemingly boundless patience eroded away. Beyond simply being disappointed with his results, Jvan's response actually had the effect of infuriating him. She was a mother that would hurl her dead children by hurling the hapless bodies of her living at them, sowing only more strife and inflicting more suffering upon hers than she might have through utter inaction. Disaster was him; Gneiss' visit here had been beyond a waste, it would actually make things worse!

At first the change in the gentle giant's temperament was subtle: his utter stillness gave way to a slowly increasing vibration, and the faintest of rumbles echoed out from his bowels. When Jvan was done and had asked her question, there was only silence. Silence save for the sound of pebbles and sand sliding down the Stonelord's body and onto the ground as they broke off. There he sat, quite literally disintegrating, for a long and ominous pause, now quite visibly trembling in anger. Suddenly he exploded with the violence of an erupting volcano, and as the mortals told tales of this legend it would give way to a new Galbarian homage: beware the fury of a patient giant, for slow but sure his ire may grow.

Boulders and pebbles alike soared through the air and rained down, then shot back upwards into the sky, circling in a wild path around the djinni's raging heart. At last they assembled themselves back into a roughly humanoid shape, the disjointed body parts of stone left suspended in the air without even touching one another. Throughout this whole ordeal Gneiss had let loose a bloodcurdling roar of rage, or perhaps what might be construed as one of pain if Jvan did not realize that his physical change had come about as a result of his changing attitude.

Finally, from the terrible djinni lord that hovered amidst the storm of flying stones, there resounded out a grating voice most unlike that calm and slow one that the giant had previously used, [color=dimgray][b]"I NAME YOU A BLIGHT UPON THIS WORLD AND A BLEMISH OF CANCER BEYOND REASON. WE ARE DONE HERE; I REVOKE ALL SYMPATHY FOR YOUR WRETCHED CAUSE AND RUE MY ILL-GUIDED THOUGHT THAT YOU MIGHT TREAD THE SOLEMN PATH.

REST CONTENT THAT YOU HAVE DOOMED A THOUSAND MORE SCULPTORS WITH THIS DECREE! MY WORD IS A BOND OF STONE AND THUS I AM FORCED TO UPHOLD MY PROMISE OF REFUGE TO THOSE DAMNED TO CALL YOU 'MOTHER', YET AS IN FOR YOUR PLAN, I SHALL HAVE NO PART IN IT! AS YOU CONTINUE TO DEFILE NATURE, BUILD YOUR OWN SANCTUM FOR THE SCULPTORS; THOSE NOT ALREADY UNDER MY PROTECTION WILL BE LEFT TO DIE! YOU HAVE KILLED THEM THROUGH YOUR OWN DOING!"[/b][/color]

Following that, he let lose yet another horrific cry that resembled the sheer sound of metal ground against stone. Low to his breath he mumbled something about the other elements being wiser than he, and with that, Gneiss turned to flee.

Where others might have been filled with despair or regret, angry at their own naivety, Gneiss placed the full weight of the mantle of responsibility upon Jvan. He had done all that he could, yet she had only insulted him before making perhaps the worst decision that she could have.

And the Stonelord himself was soon to lament the fruit of that decision personally.

[colour=9e0b0f]"If they are dead through my doing,"[/colour] whispered the fog that rose insidiously, even as he spoke, from the water, the atoll, that seeped from the pores of that monumental body. [colour=9e0b0f]"Then let them die, but they will not be alone."[/colour] While the echoes of his groaning rupestrine shriek still skittered violently from stone to stone in that maelstrom of aroused earth, rebounding out between sea and sky, the sands of the atoll was pulled up and away with them.

Their absence revealed the grey of bare flesh, a mangle of tendonous buttresses supporting the walls of that great tilted cathedral, an arch of which was no longer plugged by the earth of the islet. And the twisting meat within those halls contracted grossly, pulling in air, life, space, the impossibly voluminous lungs of a god in motion.

Furious though was the energy animating the rocks of the whirling figure, that first step became a standstill. The tremendous force of a Djinni Lord in motion pitted itself against the vacuous sucking, slowed and stopped as the ceaseless inhalation grew. Equilibrium lasted a delicate moment. Even in the resolute vitality, the epicentre of the Stonelord began to bend backwards again.

[colour=9e0b0f]"You were [i]not[/i] different. No, Gneiss, beneath a lying skin of rock, you are the same as all the others. Elegant, animated, so noble as to be reduced to stupidity. My brother gave your ilk more power than you deserve, but you are no lords. You are slaves! Mindless slaves to the futile ideal of natural order! Would that raw change had been preserved from the before-time, that it might not have been stifled by you!"[/colour]

Fragments slipped from the stonelord's once-eternal hold, a minority first shuddering until they jerked out like roots of a tree, then falling smoothly, easily, from Gneiss's extremities. Clattering upon each other, sinking into the sea, collapsing into the mouth of Jvan.

[colour=9e0b0f]"[i]I[/i] will grind this squabble to its knees! Think you in your arrogance that [i]your[/i] genocide begs [i]my[/i] apology? See, then! Let me show you the place where nature falls away and yields to creativity, as it should! As it M U S T!"[/colour]

And the stones rolled down into the fog of the goddess, and the Flicker of a naked giant was dragged with them.

Embedded in bounds of grey muscle like a city with no understanding of 'up' or 'down' lay the flexing, beating, twanging organs of Jvan, obscured under the sanguine mist. That colourless meat rearranged to avoid impact with Gneiss's essence as it fell deeper, crunching the delicate symmetry of shrines and viscera back into that from whence it came. Some glimpses were taken before the shapes could recede.

There was a spiral of sound, the harmonics of the air taking physical shape and wrapped over a span of bone. A gallery of darkness, of absent void in its myriad latent forms. Ten thousand gourds and glands of spitting, churning meat wrested from the errors in space where Toun and Teknall had failed in the pre-world. Upon a grey dais the abstract concept of conscious thought screamed as it bled onto the gristle frame it was crucified to. And there was a heartbeat of time, bottled, pickled, a specimen to behold for the ages.

Deeper still were the remains of the spirit inhaled, into a place where there was colour.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Watch."[/colour]

From the fluid air, the cloudy sensory medium that filled this jaggedly spherical pod, there issued a heavy spill of radiance as the fog of the goddess condensed and pooled. As silt in the Mahd is dragged forth, Jvan carried into the egg the ichor of that place, the far nightmare, where Nature had never been conceived, and the womb of creation had borne another flesh.

The streams of blood and bile thickened and raced, carrying in chunks of the not-life that had eaten itself since the dawn of time in its hollows, until the ever-thickening coagulation at the core began to writhe.

Jvan ceased her hand and the vacuole became almost pristine. Clouded-clear, as a stagnant droplet in a briny cave. That thing in the center was but a wisp now, a concentrate. The essence of everything she could drag into being from her bubbles of Other life. It [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/1ddbfe5526c387b2639a2b3eab0b3266/tumblr_ncl6a7c7Hc1tvs3v3o5_540.jpg]curled up[/url] into loops and reached, groped blindly for the little speck of animation that had once been named Gneiss. She held him back.

[colour=9e0b0f][b][s]"From Breath, Vengeance, Take Forth the Drowning Shape, and Choke that Pain of Light in Which Thou Roil, for in My Eyes Shall You be Ever Resplendent, and Fury can Only Bleach Resentment."[/s][/b][/colour]

Stilled, the ink listened, and obeyed perfectly the command it was given.

A vivid glow seized it, and it bubbled into chambers and branches that flexed around one another, reaching out and waving over one another spasmodically. It became a shape that had no symmetry, that was translucent to its own glow and thus broke up any solid outline. Stumps and tendrils in colours too vibrant to be alive waved in hope of catching some scent in the darkness and organs bulged with oozing cells and bubbles. The stain obeyed, and painted itself into a living [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/17036157@N03/albums/72157628556594809]thing[/url].

[colour=9e0b0f]"Go forth and be as you are, Diaphane. You are beautiful, and that is all I ask."[/colour]

Silence, and the voice of the goddess dissipated back into her body, replaced by the rising sound of a newborn hum, a voice with no breath, a flux that was not borne by vibrations but by a smooth pulse of distortion. The rhythm of growth rippled the elegant fabric of the written universe in time.

From the mass, two lines of needle-thin stalks emerged, and from them, more, spreading in a gill-like tangle. Diaphane lifted her shining wings and surged forth.

The taste of high order was irresistable, and the fragile Flicker buzzed with it.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Enjoy your new life, Gneiss."[/colour]

Diaphane collapsed over the bubble of primordial potential. Within her form it unwound, the ink on its share of the Divine Manuscript slipping away as her dye replaced it. The encapsulated Stonelord bloated vividly under her skin, denied death, to fuel the Change-Eater for eternity.

[center]* * * * *[/center]

Sky. Free air. Clouds. Earth.

Magic.

This world had ripened for a thousand million years. Galbar had been formless and empty and that formlessness had matured into a dynamic mosaic of life. So much energy had been sponged into this monumental project, raising its towers of complexity to dizzying heights. So much juice to be squeezed.

Diaphane had never known food before her birth. Expulsion from her mother's body had been her first memory, and all she recalled was the flavour of the air. How good it was, to eat, to partake of the elixir of life for the first time! She looked back, and knew that her first mouthful had in fact been a poor and tasteless one indeed; But to her virgin essence it was as divinity is to dust.

And she had laughed, oh, Diaphane had laughed and whirled and fluttered like a dancing maiden, for this world was good and ripe.

Soon she had learned that there was better nourishment than air and water, and she had dissolved her bright, vivid form into a [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/edcdd8f05a2fec483d721a8176db62fa/tumblr_ncl6a7c7Hc1tvs3v3o3_500.jpg]spill of fluid[/url] once more in order to reach it. It swam beneath the waters in shoals, and crusted into reefs, and drifted in microscopic fragments on the surface of the water. It was a taste of life. Diaphane was thrilled. So many varieties! So much structure and motion!

Fish, trees, birds, and every living thing that creeps upon the earth, all came to know the mouth of Diaphane in their turn. She swallowed them whole or sometimes played with them, feasting on their collapse back into entropy, seeping their raw constituents back into the Gap where even such basic nourishment would sustain life for millenia. Where she ate, narrow swathes of empty dust were left, highways where even the peat in the soil had been dissolved.

It was sad, yes. A little dreary, even, to see an emptied plate. Such is the nature of a meal: There is only one moment of beauty, only one burst of colour on the tongue to savour in the moment.

But this world was so [i]vast[/i]. Not in a myriad myriad years could Diaphane consume it all. So why lament? This banquet will never end!

Then, not so long ago, she had learned why this world was so full. Why, exactly, there were always clouds to drink, always new grasses to nibble, always a new animal to chase. Galbar had change. It had motion and renewal. Such things were still strange to Diaphane, but she had learned their source. Under its soft, sweet flesh lay a nut, a morsel that resisted her teeth and filled her like no other. This rare meal, this perfect candy, came in many forms. Sometimes as a spark of flame on the savannah. Sometimes an angry spring of water that sought her out and pelted her spicily before she could reach out and gnash it in her [url=http://gallery.photo.net/photo/17878138-md.jpg]teeth[/url].

These confections, these Flickers, they thrilled her heart and fueled her like nothing before. To chew on life was to live. To feast upon Change was to thrive. Each spark warmed her belly until it became part of her, and that warmth became hers. Her heat, her vigour, her power. 

Diaphane grew. She grew until she was so large that something else was growing inside her. There was no one to teach her of these things, but she knew it, as all mothers know: She was pregnant.

And her time had grown soon. All she had to do was eat.

In those days Diaphane grew ravenous, greedy for the only thing that truly sated her. She desired a Djinn of sufficient size, to graft into herself a Flicker that would generate enough energy to go into labour.

She found him.

They tussled long. He blazed the grasses with his fire and tried to choke her with his smoke, but Diaphane fought with a rage that only comes from motherhood, from protecting a child, a fury that had been built into her at the moment of her birth and which she now remembered. She slashed at his essence with  [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/035277f3ba20d42217f15a68ad4dc2f2/tumblr_ngqiodYv2m1qbg26yo1_1280.png]tendrils[/url], lacerated at his coalesced inferno with [url=http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=17600310]spurs[/url] that dissolved as soon as they came, back into her fluid. Fluid that lay spilled upon the air and in the dust from her wounds when it was over, steaming back into the not-universe from which it came.

Now, with his Flicker settling into her [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/17036157@N03/16472486761]asymmetrical body[/url], his energy healing over her form, she was ready. Diaphane dug herself into the earth and waited, smiling, for her eggs to come forth.

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Across the pelagic expanse of the Sparkling Sea's southermost reaches there walked a good many Stormlords; in attendance were the great Notus, Cyclonis, and a hundred lesser lords whose names were not so noteworthy. These great spirits convened to create a divine storm of great proportions and drive this hurricane onto the land as they were wont to do during this monsoon season. The typhoons were necessary for many reasons: through their erosion and flooding came splendid change, thorugh their sheer might the awe and terror of the mortals was inspired, and through this regularity the elementals of the storm found their meaning. This was their calling, and while many might say that this made them slaves to Nature, in a sense they [i]were[/i] Nature. Without their fury and their generosity, the world might be a duller and lesser place.

[center][i]A Djinni Lord walks the path, bringing with him the Storm[/i]
[img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ea/28/4b/ea284bdaf0e4aa4cb3ed5f0dce12c6e1.jpg[/img][/center]

In attendance was also Murmur, Herald of the Storm, Bringer of Thunder, [i]God of Sound[/i] as some preached. Though he was of a unique and rare nature not quite like that of the Stormlords, he had earned his place through countless millennium of service. He was not a minion of any particular Stormlord, and indeed he was probably more powerful than most. Still, he served the supreme element of Wind by assisting any and all Stormlords that might require it, and that meant that he was always present at each and every grand typhoon such as this.

Yet even if he was present in corporeal form, his mind was elsewhere. They were everywhere, the lesser elementals: for every stormlord present there were a thousand common spiryts and the lesser spirys tenfold beyond that in their number. Whereas the lords were colossal, terrible figures in all their might, these were not quite so grand: the common spirits were perhaps the size of men, whilst the lesser were most often hardly strong enough to even stay corporeal or visible for long.

It was a common spirit, for those were the ones that became capable of true speech and intelligence, that had approached the lord Murmur and whispered a dire tale into his ear, [i]"Lord Murmur, splendid be your grace, there is an insidious beast--a spawn of Jvan, no less--that has nested inland...I tell you that this was like no other, for when I brought rain to the barrens under the service of my good lord, this foul creature did manage to sense, overpower, and devour him as it has no doubt done a thousand others..."[/i]

Rage had boiled within Murmur, mixed with an odd passion that he did not recognize: the thing that most mortals would call bloodlust. For most djinn, this was an entirely alien emotion.

Therein lest his conundrum: he was torn between one duty and the other. Serve the Wind by leading the Storm and bringing thunder, or serve Nature by obliterating this nemesis. The Thunderlord's Call, his obligation and joy at the honor of leading the Storm, felt gray and dull: it was then that he realized that he had lost all passion for what had once been his very Nature, his calling, that purpose ingrained into the very fabric of his being. He had been consumed and transformed in his quest to purge all of Jvan's abominations, and indeed he had spent more and more time upon that sacred task with each passing moon...

It was time to acknowledge this new phase in his life, this new, splendid purpose: he had ascended to something greater than he had been before. What use was leading the storm, anyways?

After much deliberation, when the Storm had already made landfall and all had proceeded as normal for many days, Murmur left his post. He went to the great Stormlords and told them of his holy task that could be delayed no longer.

Cyclonis had reluctantly agreed, for he was an energetic djinn of action and intervention; he, like Tempus, was amongst those that had supported the hunt of Jvankind. While Murmur's passion for the unsavory task was perhaps disconcerting, his zeal would serve him well. Cyclonis gave Murmur leave to embark upon his mission, with due haste. The Storm would need him to return as soon as the winds could carry him back, after all!

Notus, a gentler and more traditionalist spiryt, was not so easily swayed. Still, she was powerless to stop Murmur, and so he left as words of her scorn, dismay, disappointment, and condemnation of his desertion followed after. He ignored them all; Notus simply did not understand.

He sought out that elemental that had first brought word of this beast--though many others had confirmed his tale since then--and eventually found that one amidst a sea of a million other spiryts inside one great stormcloud. [color=Khaki][b][i]"Lead me to this beast, wanderer,"[/i][/b][/color] Murmur bid that one in an alien and melodic voice.

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A low, distant rumble signalled Murmur's presence long before he drew close. The rolling sound was something akin to that of a beach's rolling waves, or perhaps the din of a faroff volcano as it churned out ash and the burning blood of the earth.

Tirelessly, he searched. Endlessly, he probed the landscape for the presence of Jvan's taint. At last, he eventually picked up the slightest of traces upon the wind. Melancholy and monotony were banished; with joy he raced through the air, finding the source, finding the [i]kill.[/i] Hurtling through the air as a living, roaring fulmination, the one and only Djinni Lord of Sound raced towards the place where he sensed Diaphane's presence. Earth, wind, tree, flesh; these were no obstacles for him. Sound could bludgeon its way through all things, and when Murmur's melody reached its magnificent crescendo, it became so loud that it was silent. When he reached his prey, he was no longer sound; he became a glorious explosion that sundered all things.

He practically slavered. The screams were always so vivid, so beautiful: agony, terror, surprise, horror--each being seemed to sing a different sort of song when they met the Orchestrator of Thunder, yet none of their music was ever so pristine as his. Only he was a virtuoso.

The earth beneath the cataclysmic symphony ruptured even before it neared, and impact shattered the soil such that it instantly became a cloud of fine silty particles carried on shuddering waves of Murmur's exuberance. There was no warning for Diaphane. A herald is always first to arrive.

No shelter had the thick dust of the savannah offered- It shook and bounced in the quavering vibrations, becoming, for a long moment, a liquid swill of weighty air. A hundred bubbles and capsules studding the Change-Eater's body ruptured under the force of the voice, leaving a seething gelatinous residue. Colour spilled outwards from the point of impact in a great wave, thinned, and swirled back into itself on her own current as the cloud of disruption grew ever higher.

Diaphane did not have time to be livid, only to dance.

Such an attack could never have been natural. Or, perhaps, could [i]only[/i] have been natural. There was a savage thrill of reflexive energy through her form. Never before had anything challenged her so grandly, and never before had any deathly lyric rung so true. So, then, it was her life and her daughters against an unseen orchastrator.

Unseen he was, so to leap further into the open from whence he came was unthinkable. Diaphane could only listen. So the swirl of ink spread its [url=http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=15990573]wings[/url] and dived back into the heavy plume in the instant the first shock had passed. The debris had not even begun to settle before she lashed out mightily into the singing air, beating blindly into the dust, shredding the airborne ripples of clamouring music around her with the vanes of her wings in a blind, racing twirl.

The plume lifted even higher as her fragile feathers dissolved and mingled into the cloud, claiming whatever toneful vibration they found on dust and air and loosening it back into formless noise. An offering of harmony into the mouth of entropy. And as pain began to manifest back into the parts of her body where something was shockingly absent, Diaphane could not spare her bitter resources to think or reel, only laugh, laugh a high and fragile note into the overwhelming clamour she created.

...and so the struggle began! Lashing with tendril, fang, claw, the abomination's strikes found no purchase in the air. For all it seemed, Murmur was nowhere and everywhere at once. He was in every dying gasp, every rustle in the wind, every might roar--yet for all that omnipresence, he was so hard to find in the thick of battle.

[color=Khaki][b][i]"This..."[/i][/b][/color] an otherwordly voice spoke from everywhere at once, even echoing within the very body of the eldritch creature itself, [color=Khaki][b][i]"will be a masterpiece!"[/i][/b][/color]

The tumultuous clamor, her sharp notes of laughter, the pounding of the earth as it quaked and broke beneath his power; in all of these things, Murmur found inspiration. What delightful death would he sing?

His taunt resounded within the chaos, filling the air around Diaphane, compressing her and shaking. More than a singer, Murmur was a speaker, she saw, and he spoke with brutal confidence. And it was painfully easy for the creature. What was left for her to threaten, when her wings only beat on empty air that beat back even harder?

Empty air.

Diaphane gave up the helpless flailing that only diffused her inky blood further into the mess, staining the dimness of the dustbowl in blue and pink and yellow. But her cessation was not a surrender, nor resignment to death. A keen note entered her laughter as she condensed back onto the earth, a vast protector of the bubbling eggs within her.

"[colour=honeydew]Work[/colour] [colour=Ghostwhite]For[/colour] [colour=azure]It,[/colour]" sighed a voice of deathly foreignness in a mockery of Murmur's own, as the plume imploded thunderously.

She consumed the air from all around her, swallowed it in great momentary gulps, leaving a cavernous vacuum that imploded back into her as the pressure struggled to equalise. The air and dust collapsed in this way several times in a single second, swallowing great bulges of sky and sucking the song into the Gap with them, leaving only the rattle of her own hunger.

The djinni lord reeled backward from where he had hovered invisibly above, struggling against the sudden and violent suction. With a roar of frustration, he repelled himself backward at supersonic speeds as a mighty explosion. The great boom might have shook Diaphane to her core had she not the protection of that void of space she had created by sucking the sky itself into her maw.

[color=Khaki][b][i]"This one struggles, and it can fight!"[/i][/b][/color] a low, almost reptillian hiss echoed. Like a needle through cloth Murmur's voice pierced right into one's soul through all noise and distraction, regardless of any air to carry his breath. He simply generated the small sound of speech directly inside of them; his mastery over the element allowed him that much ability, even from afar.

[color=Khaki][b][i]"But what is its name? The fall of nameless beasts makes for a poor legend!"[/i][/b][/color] laughed the soothing, sweet voice of a placated child.

Casually, the djinn manifested himself perhaps a mile away from his quarry and then maybe that high from the ground. He clapped his hands and so created thunder, and from this unmistakable sound was roused the attention of a nearby windlord and his host. With the haste of their Creator-God's heavenly zephyrs, those djinn raced to answer Murmur's summons.

Reluctantly did the Change-Eater slow her consumption. Perhaps if it was less exhausting to overindulge so, to feel the atmosphere beat back on her repeatedly, she may have continued- Anything, any gluttony for the survival of her and hers. But the Voice was no longer close. His song had fell apart into echoes, and she had tasted the calamitous blast of his exit. Now he was playing tricks with her. Mocking. Speaking, always speaking, as Flickers so do.

Wary of the tricks played by the waves of the ear, something soft and threateningly confident resounded from the final vacuum. Amplified by what lurked beneath a void.

"[colour=LavenderBlush]I[/colour] [colour=Honeydew]Am[/colour] [colour=Ghostwhite]DIAPHANE[/colour], [colour=Ivory]Vocalist[/colour], [colour=MistyRose]The[/colour] [colour=AliceBlue]Lady[/colour] [colour=MintCream]Engorgement[/colour]."

But the air that spilled back carried an answer that was far from conversational. The rumble of the empty sky came long before the clouds, but they did not laze, nor were they unfaithful. Nature had its laws, and it was Flickers like this, those powerful djinn, that twisted them.

She did not presume on having much time. The assaillant moved faster than she could, and the elder winds would not settle for tardiness.

"[colour=Ivory]Catch[/colour] [colour=AliceBlue]Me[/colour] [colour=LavenderBlush]If[/colour] [colour=Mintcream]You[/colour] [colour=Ghostwhite]Can[/colour]," whispered she in a flirtatious taunt, and dissolved into a streak of smoky dye, a stain that raced for dear life into the high heavens. If she could flee into the greater abyss outside Galbar, then, perhaps, she was safe. Diaphane could handle much, but such a banquet as the heavenly host of the coming storm was beyond her tastes.

[color=Khaki][b][i]"The hideous beast Diaphane, smitten down by a Murmur upon the wind,"[/i][/b][/color] jibed back a callous voice that was juxtaposed by a dozen disconcerting sets of laughter all at once.

Just what did this foul terror gorge itself on? The Djinni Lord let out a soft whistle and an imperceptibly high yet loud sound shot through the air towards Diaphane, where it would pass through her, and in doing so, tell him everything that he might want to know about her innards and how many delightful ways she might die. Words could not describe his fury when the sonar met with nothing but empty air, Diaphane already trying to effect an escape.

She was clever, for Murmur was indeed weakened higher up into the sky where the thin air carried sound poorly, and near powerless in the void of space beyond even that. Like lightning he surged through the air to intercept her pathway into the heavens, and from there he beat his own chest and clapped his hands, shaking the entire sky with a tremendous sound. Even now he could feel the rapidly approaching windlord and his elementals; Murmur needed only terrify Diaphane long enough for that good djinn to come, and then she would know no escape above. Though she mightn't even realize it, the chances of escape from the violent winds and her horrific assailant grew slimmer with each passing moment.

Dogged by its own booming trail, the djinn's voyage flickered through the air, and it was beyond Diaphane's abilities to see him moving. Only on the apex of his bounding ascension, above even where she flung herself in growing speed, did he make himself known with his voice.

Grimly melodic was the death-drum rhythm that bayed for blood in the far skies, and from that first pulse on was the sight of a shrinking ground forgotten in the sea of quaked air. But for Diaphane, the elemental display came too soon. And for Murmur, it may have come too late.

The reverberating burst was everywhere, filling her unseen, shaking where once there had been a lull. Its origin was not. For a hasteful moment at the peak of his ambush, the Herald beat shimmering hands that, deep in the mirage, were almost human. This sound had a source.

No time given to slow, no time left to return, only one moment, one being, and one star, twinkling down from the night above the atmosphere. And twelve eggs, that may never taste that first breath of stale air to which all life under Nature and above it has a right.

Diaphane careened herself into Murmur's manifestation and exploded.

Vibrant liquid debris catapulted up far past where the final step in the Change-Eater's dance had terminated. The heave of the sound had shaken her apart at the seams where she passed through that core of noise. Only momentum continued, dying quickly for the remains of her body, slower for the copious polychromatic blood spat into the stratosphere by her rupture. Diaphane's body squirmed to re-coagulate even as it trailed a long, widening smear of dye. It wasn't worth the pain of having her interior purged out like a burst bladder.

Helplessly she languished into the top of her arc. There the star shone still, behind a curtain of life-blood. Somewhere a Djinni Lord named Murmur stood. Had she consumed him, or was she simply above him? Would she die alone? It didn't matter. High above the sky, reaching up to the gods, twelve thin streaks of colour scattered.

She had held them closest to her heart, and now it was time to let go.

Somewhere nearby there was a spark, a Flicker, an ember burning its way out of her remains and into the fabric of the air where it belonged. As if encouraged by its vigour, others began to crackle and sear a path of escape from Diaphane's carcass and the luminous fluids she trailed as she fell. She was dissolving, she knew, back into thoughtless puddles of Other-slime, but she felt nothing, not any more.

A final sound reverberated out across the skies; it was not the booming thunder of triumph, but rather a frustrated wail. His song had hardly even begun and his adversary had fled! Murmur felt cheated out of a true victory, but in time he would find some measure of calm to requite his rage. He would continue his Art, striving ever closer and closer to perfection with each act. In time, his masterpiece would come to fruition.


[hider=Summary]
Gneiss, the only Elemental Lord of the recent gathering to protest against the annihilation of the Jvanic Order (Sculptors), sets out on a journey to meet with Jvan and relay the results of the chaotic debate to her, with the intention of asking her to restore peace.

Jvan is pleased and curious about him, being somewhat unused to such powerful spiryts, but does not take the news well. She denies his request on the grounds that the djinni have taken up violence first and she must protect her students. Gneiss doesn't give up, and the exchange between reasoning and anger continues until Jvan suggests that perhaps Gneiss, being the only one who shows some amount of sympathy, can help protect innocent mortals by sheltering them while she herself retaliates against the elementals.

Gneiss is not particularly happy about this. His seemingly endless patience and kindness shatters in an instant.

Filled with regret and anger over the futility of the conversation, he denies Jvan any further help and refuses refuge to any more Sculptors than those that have already come under his protection. Jvan throws a hissy fit and swallows him, angry that chaotic change on Galbar has been replaced by such unreasonable and powerful beings as elementals. She vows to end the war on her own terms, without having to comply with any natural order.

Jvan creates Diaphane, the first Change-Eater, for 1 Might and feeds Gneiss's Flicker to her. Change-Eaters (cooler names pending) are unhybridised Other creatures designed with the express purpose of fighting and goading Elementals by consuming complex, dynamic systems and reducing them to entropy. They grow by eating Elementals and fusing with their potential for change, feeding on them eternally.

Diaphane lives for a while, eating some small elementals and eventually becoming gravid asexually.

Murmur, the lone Djinni Lord of Sound, is assisting some Stormlords as they set up a yearly typhoon as is his duty as the Bringer of Thunder. Having become as the foremost of those djinn that have begun exterminating Sculptors, a smaller elemental brings news of Diaphane directly to him. Murmur yearns to continue his sacred hunt with this new target, and finds himself debating his desires against the needs of the united storm and his fellow lords. He remains with the monsoon for a while as is his responsibility, but eventually succumbs to the temptation to continuehis personal, obsessive crusade.

Murmur finds Diaphane and a fight ensues, Murmur taunting and torturing his mostly helpless foe. Murmur survives relatively unharmed, but Diaphane is taken aback by the power of the new threat and mortally wounded as she attempts to ferry her eggs to the safety of near space.




[b]Jvan
1 Might spent to make Diaphane
12 Might Remaining
0 Free Points Remaining
Level Four[/b]
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