[center][img]http://67.media.tumblr.com/d85404396cd920ea481c9dd2a3d8d632/tumblr_o8rjgeiPvk1u5gf80o1_400.png[/img][/center] Rainclouds often hung too low to pass over the Nice Mountains, and drenched instead the surrounding foothills. Flux felt the last of the drizzle bounce and steam from his surface as the clouds finally broke, revealing that familiar, cold sunlight that heralds the long drying-out. [color=00a99d]"Enough skulking. Come, hairknots. Our duties are not over."[/color] The triplet fiberlings heeded his call, picking their way over the new grasses with most of their mass held gingerly high above the sodden mud, tangling and bristling irritably. It was a strange thing, to see a fiberling bristle with its whole body, but though he was patient enough, Flux had little time for their antics. He hoped dearly that they would not break back to their grotto as soon as he gave them any slack. It was a thin hope. This was the last rain of a clammy day and night, and it seemed to have finished the job of filling the great dykes of Grot's footprints with water. A few were only puddles. Most, marking the line of his run, were metres deep. And the two that lay where the Demon King's feet had dug into the ground as he finally fell were, indeed, nearly lakes. Mud would soon fill the shallow pools, Flux knew. Thousands of heavy battle feet had stripped the plain of grass. Both sides of Urtelem, especially, had gouged apart the flora as they moved. The oil-spirit had much to do if this place were to be restored to splendour. This was just the start. For all their complaints, the fiberlings did go about their assigned business. It was a rare task, this, that Flux would not rather assign to the Mockdjinn. Especially not now. They had earned his highest respect in the dark day they had dubbed 'the breaking of the peoples', an ugly, subtle set of signs with connotations of earthquake fissures and heartbreak, and 'peoples', the sign being plural for two, referring, of course, to their own divided kind. It was what some had already started calling Angelblood Ridge. A hollow name, for such grief. No, Flux held the Urtelem close to his heart, and he would not interrupt their time of mourning for petty responsibilities or trivial harm. A matriarch was gone, struck down in her prime. Every single survivor now bore scars, wounds which were no less debilitating for being cracked into rock. More than twenty others lay broken, now sleeping deep in the earth. Many had been parents. There were children who had started refusing to eat. Besides, fiberlings, those mute sadists, were good at this. There was nothing about a rotting corpse that reviled them. Their senses were keen and they worked fast. If anything, they thoroughly enjoyed the process of tickling a dead warrior to see if it would move, and if it did, lurking around like three huge sharks until Flux allowed them to tear it apart. Carrion crows had come, gorged, and bloated until they could no longer move. Maggots were too slow. The dead lay unburied and undisturbed, and without Flux, those fated to rise again could simply get up and kill like the war had never ended. The softly luminescent liquid spirit was hundreds of years old, if not a thousand, and had buried many drowned bodies in time. Yet never had he seen such a proportion of undead. Grot's sorcery had seeped out of him and into the very dirt where his army collapsed. Most, true, were altogether harmless, even some from the horde. To these, death had been a harsh lesson, one taken to heart. Flux made them pledge a solemn oath of peace and reparation, repeated until he was satisfied it was genuine. Those who woke up and still thought violence could help them cling to an overdue soul, well. That was one thing fiberlings could do reliably enough. Flux cupped some water from a puddle and poured it over the face of the latest to rise. She was a goblin, or had been. Her neck sat at an odd angle, and most of her bulky chest and shoulder had been crushed. More importantly, her limbs worked, even if she clearly didn't have enough lung left to talk in more than a rasp. Spluttering, not yet aware that the need to breathe was over, the goblin began scraping her arms on the dirt, slowly gaining strength. A fibreling touched the tips of her fingers and Flux flicked it away as she tried to speak. [color=c4df9b]"'uk're eeeyou?"[/color] [color=00a99d]"My name is Flux, of the Fractal Sea. Tell, quickly- How much memory do you still retain?"[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Mem'ry o' wot, ya jibb'rn freak?"[/color] Patience, now. Either dignity would return, or it would not. For all the muck and slander involved, waking up the dead was never boring. Flux no longer heeded insults, and his ascendant curiousity always picked out something different about each awakening. [color=00a99d]"There was a battle."[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Pfyeh, an' I died in it. Doncha hav'ny fresh news?"[/color] This one was remarkably quick on the uptake. If the goblin turned out to be a keeper, Flux would let her talk to some of the other repentant horde warriors. Some of them believed everything he told them, other than that they were dead. [color=00a99d]"I see you would prefer it if I made haste. Very well, goblin, answer this: Should I spirit you away into the village of the one who killed you, at night, and put in your right hand a burning torch, and in the left a knife, what should you make of yourself?"[/color] [color=c4df9b]"I'd drop 'em both and drag 'er outta bed just to punch 'er in the face, ya goddam smart-tits sponkus, an' then drown [i]yer[/i] ass in 'er pisspot. My name's Yulosi, not 'goblin,' ya daft soggy blob."[/color] The test, of course, was not so much whether the undead would choose to take revenge so much as they would extend it to innocents. By either measure Yulosi passed with superb credentials, even if courteous society would clearly remain forever beyond her, and she still spoke as if she was a conscientious objector to the letter 'h'. Flux decided that this one could stay without further screening. All he needed was the oath. [color=00a99d]"Acknowledged. However, in order t-"[/color] One of the fiberlings was gone. Almost instantly it was followed by another, the third on its heels. Flux whirled, abandoned Yulosi, and swept after them in a gliding motion, leaving a streak of light. Not as fast as the hair monsters, the wing-like shape nonetheless held onto their trail close enough to see what they were sprinting over the damp earth for. Ashling. And yet, though they drew closer in measured instants, Flux alone saw that it was more than that, or less. [i][color=00a99d]"Halt!"[/color][/i] It was too slow to be a true Ashling. Too calm. Too bright. It had the form of what had been a mountain goat, at least up to the neck. [color=00a99d]"HALT!"[/color] The disembodied predators slowed, momentarily, at the force of Flux's command. It was enough. At an ungodly sprint the Sculptor veered to the fore of the lead fibreling and snapped himself at it like a whip, the sound ricocheting into the distant ridge, and the whole world blurred with their speed as they tumbled over one another in a cloud of drifting hair detached by the shock of impact. Flux recovered before the fiberling and watched it scatter to reclaim its missing filaments. The others circled him, distrustful, edging slowly towards the not-quite-ashling on either side. He backed up to match them. There were no organs in him to choke, no solids to tear. He feared not. [color=00a99d]"This is not an ashling."[/color] In the distance, Yulosi was running after them. The fiberlings silently judged. They knew what they saw. [color=00a99d]"This is not an ashling!"[/color] With that Flux smacked the glassy flank of the entity, sharply, and it staggered, its lower body lilting, top-heavy. It wobbled and backed away, making no move against him, failing to reform the thin crack that had been split in its side. [color=00a99d]"Look! Gaze upon it with what semblance of a brain you hide in all that filthy shag! It is feeble and dim of mind!"[/color] They were slowing, at last, realising that whatever its appearances, this shambling, brittle piece of work was no real threat to the biosphere, and certainly far less of a threat to [i]them[/i] than the oily black faery-charmer. Their sibling had taken its hair and fled to find dry ground, and they reluctantly turned and followed it. Yulosi was catching up, tireless with zombie vigour. Flux composed himself, his vivid sunset glow dulling somewhat. This one was unusual. [color=00a99d]"You have returned."[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Well, shit."[/color] She seemed to be questioning the wisdom of her decision. [color=00a99d]"Good. Remain where you are."[/color] Yulosi promptly ignored the command and sidled in front of him, towards the curious organism. In a strange move, Flux's halo of fae also made their way to its body, their downwards-balanced blades resting on it with small tinking sounds. [colour=c4df9b]"'ell is this?"[/colour] From the neck down, the goat's body had suffered the same brittle blight as any other ashling, at least in shape. Glassy plates scratched over one another along fracture lines that had been joints, and there were pockmarks and cavities where the material had reforged itself under strain. Its colour was clearer than other ashlings, revealing the delicate organosiliceous structures [url=https://quantifiedvapor.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/tomita07.jpg?w=604]beneath[/url]. Where there should have been a head, the neck only branched and cracked, spreading, like a flat-topped tree upon which the fae were perched, into a wide, heavy crystal matrix, in a translucent scarlet that could only be called [url=http://www.marinmineral.com/db_pics/pics/af572a.jpg]blood[/url]. The closer he looked, the more Flux could see the semblance of [url=http://cubeme.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Heart_of_Glass_Sculptures_Gary_Farlow_CubeMe1.jpg]veins[/url] and [url=http://66.media.tumblr.com/6e45398b10eea61cf694c79ad7185b5e/tumblr_nobj9k1QyW1r20fq5o1_1280.jpg]nodes[/url] in the construct, shades of red and black no less beautiful for their grisly origin. Yulosi rested her palm on the once-goat. It shuffled at her touch, turning slightly, as if to direct its faceless gaze towards hers. [color=c4df9b]"'sdead,"[/color] she announced. [color=c4df9b]"Died 'fore it got turned. 's n' arrow shaft in it."[/color] It was rare enough that a mortal noticed something accurately before Flux, much less a dead woman. As soon as he looked, he saw that it was indeed so. Black flint and a line of wood was visible beneath the smoky glass, sealed seamlessly by transformation. [color=00a99d]"A commendable observation, Yulosi,"[/color] he conceded graciously, [color=00a99d]"but I require from you an oath of peace before I allow you to continue. Some hearts, once lost to the horde, do not turn; Even in death."[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Don' do oaths."[/color] Yulosi didn't even look at him. Her hands stroked the head-branches of the mysterious creature, tapping aside the fae that settled there, casting strange shadows. [color=00a99d]"Would that I could offer exemption! No, Yulosi, my precautions must be given fairly. All who rise again shall promise amends for the tragedy. I demand no more than this: Only that the wounded earth shall be healed."[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Or what? Y'll kill me?"[/color] Yulosi glanced up and smirked with the side of her mouth. Her left tusk had been chipped in the battle, and that only made it sharper. [color=00a99d]"If you wish. I respect your values, and I have no qualms with holding you to them. It is the only alternative."[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Really? How 'boutcha 'splain t'me what this is then?"[/color] With her free hand, Yulosi abruptly pinched one of the fae by the base of its blade, ink running down her fingers, and impaled it into her other wrist, already comfortable with the death of her body. When the goblin withdrew the hand with which she had been examining the not-quite-ashling, its fingertips were coated in [url=http://65.media.tumblr.com/ad5a5e1dab85323a03632b010b9ecdc7/tumblr_n9glyw3VLX1rjxhlko2_r1_540.jpg]glassy green[/url], the shade of her skin, no doubt, when she had lived. [color=c4df9b]"Didj[i]oo[/i] come up with that? Nah. Didn't think so. Grows on undead meat, [i]zombie[/i] meat. 'ts a pox, a barnacle. All it wants is... [i]Vigour.[/i] What faeries suck up."[/color] Yulosi cackled. [color=c4df9b]"Lis'n up, [i]Flux[/i]. I'm make a deal wit'choo. Yulosi don't wanna kill no more. She just wants to live 'er life, keh keh. So how 'bout you just take me to the nearest Rockman nest n' jus' let 'em take me out if they see black on my dear zombie 'eart? Y'want peace wit' me? That's how you get it."[/color] There was a silence. Then Flux looped a sleek fluid limb around the neck of the goat-like creature and began to lead the placid thing back to the ridge. [color=00a99d]"Very well, Yulosi. Do not leave my sight. Do not betray my trust."[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Keh keh keh! Wontcha look't that?"[/color] Yulosi yanked the faery from her wrist and tossed it back into Flux's halo. [color=c4df9b]"Smart-tits blob knows what's best for 'im."[/color] Flux maintained a dignified cool. Yulosi's cackling piped down after a while. Soon the two were solemn. She looked at the Sculptor, mouth a flat line, and cocked her chin. [color=c4df9b]"Ask it, Flux."[/color] [color=00a99d]"You are observant."[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Don' need a big brain to guess when it's the same damn question ev'ry time."[/color] [color=00a99d]"You are observant,"[/color] repeated Flux, [color=00a99d]"and fear nought, and I do not believe it's stupidity that makes you so. Though you drawl out of habit, to blend in, you speak as one who recognises wisdom, and sees it in herself, and judges truely. You are different."[/color] Yulosi sighed. Without thinking, she snapped her fingers by her side. For a dying moment there flickered the smallest imaginable spark, an ephemeral ember lost in the night. [color=c4df9b]"Don't you underestimate us Gobbos, blob. But you aren't wrong. I'm part 'zibo. When the Defiling Demon came to the Rovaick in the distant days, when we were weak and hid in caverns, it fucked us, and it fucked our bloodlines. Some have those blighted souls among their ancestors, and most of those are still sick. I was born lucky."[/color] Yulosi spat, though her mouth was dry. Flux looked at her, and began to see that the horrible bend in her neck was not a battle wound. [color=00a99d]"Does the Demon have a name?"[/color] [color=c4df9b]"Does. We don't say it 'cept when the rites n' Council call us to curse a traitor. 'ts a harsh curse, so we don' say it much. His name is Yah Vuh."[/color] [color=00a99d]"...I see."[/color] Flux bowed himself in memory for the victims, and the two walked in silence. Some time passed. [color=c4df9b]"Flux?"[/color] Yulosi was looking back and forth between her crystallised fingers and the mineralised mountain goat. [color=c4df9b]"I think this is food."[/color] She splintered off a brittle vein from the entity, crunching it between her teeth, clearly regretting that death had robbed her of her Rovaick taste for stones. [color=c4df9b]"I think what this 'ere zombie glass tree-goat is growin' is some sorta... Rockman fruit."[/color] And she was right. [center][img]http://67.media.tumblr.com/d85404396cd920ea481c9dd2a3d8d632/tumblr_o8rjgeiPvk1u5gf80o1_400.png[/img][/center] Tira woke up for the seventh time. This awakening, it seemed, was finally enough to shake off the thick coat of exhaustion. She rubbed her eyelids with the back of her wrists. The room was familiar, though its colours were finally growing clear: Azurite, marble, and gleaming river stone veined with minerals. There was a blanket, woven soft and warm, now stinging with drying sweat. Tira pulled it aside and let it slide down to the floor. Looked for the sky, and was blocked again by the mosaic roof. There were windows. Open doorways- A balcony. Her head drooped. Reaching up again to the rough plainsman cashmere of her undertunic, finding nothing. No leather. No stone. No knife. Again. Someone had washed her face and arm, only to have the slash in her cheek open up again in the night. That must have been some time ago. The skin was sealed now, though the slit remained, and old blood had rubbed into the feather pillow. She stretched her fingers to the wound and felt her teeth through the hole. No flinching. The nerves had rearranged with unusual speed. Her ankle wasn't so lucky, so Tira had to put her weight on her off foot and hop towards the basin she knew was nearby. Leaned against it, scrubbed water into her face with her nails, drank some through her cheek and cupped her hands to drink more through her mouth. Began to be aware. What had Dancer taught her? [i]"Yiil ba,"[/i] she mouthed, not making any real sound. [i]"Panasi elk ma toh-dne."[/i] See everything. Accept things as they are. There was a tall stick leaning on the foot of the bed. It was fresh and firm, with a y-bend curve at the top. Tira took the crutch and gripped it in both hands like a paddle, pushing herself along as she moved. On the wall hung a soft-looking set of grey clothes which she ignored. She didn't want to lose sight of her muscles, aching though they were. Hopping back to the balcony. Leaning her head through the doorway, not quite ready to go out into the sun. There was... Quite a view. She was on top of a mountain, surely, with so much green, so many waterfalls. Okay. Time to move on. There was another room, smaller than the first, sachets of sweet herbs set at indents in the wall. The largest held a pile of dry moss. The other wall featured a ledge with a gap in it. Tira could hear river-water rushing in the darkness below. Well, that was useful enough, after so long in bed. She scrubbed her hands and left. The smooth walls were so neatly aligned and solid that they felt almost cramped. The third doorway had been blocked by a painted wooden panel. Tira leaned against it and realised with a jolt that it swung aside easily, admitting entrance to another space. Still no more sky. All these rooms were so smooth and vivid; They made it hard for her to judge distance. This one had a recess with a wood pile, smooth shiny timber shaped like a very large flat-backed animal and its young, a jug that seemed to be full of more water, and plenty of round fabric things, like the pillow in the first room, only bigger. Spread upon the table was her leather armour. It was clean. On it lay the stolen stone knife. That, too, was clean. Tira tried its edge and left a thin smudge of blood there. She remembered clearly. She remembered everything. God, she remembered everything. Never in her life had Tira felt so lonely. She clutched the knife tightly to her chest and sank to crossed legs, bruised back to the wall. There were rites, for mourning, most of which she had forgotten and none of which felt right. Tira bit her tongue to hold in the moan and just cried, rocking back and forth, until tears carried the grief away and left behind anger. Tira grabbed the crutch and swung it blindly against the floor, swung it again so hard it cracked, yelled, and tossed it into the far wall. Immediately the next door opened, revealing one of the austere grey soldiers for whom the room's dimensions were clearly intended. Seeing the knife Tira was holding and the teeth she was baring, they retreated just as quickly, tapping sharply against the carved panels with what Tira assumed was their fist. [i]"Kint!"[/i] The angry shout seemed to dissuade them. Tira rapidly stretched into her padded armour, knotting it roughly even as she hopped back to grab the crutch. She stood before the door with the stick in one hand and the knife gripped in the other, with which she knocked on it. A short pause. The knocking was returned. She kept knocking, insistently, and soon enough the door began to push open again to admit the huge Lifprasilian. Tira backed up all the way to the far wall, but did not yell. The guard, carrying on its hands a flat wooden tray piled with some kind of grain-bread beside a bowl of nuts and berries, stepped in cautiously. They said some words Tira didn't know and didn't respond to, though the tone was soft, and waited for a response. She raised her eyebrows carefully. They said some more words, then motioned to their mouth. She returned the gesture, then tapped her belly several times. They put the tray on the table. They pointed to themself, then to the door. They put their hands at their sides and nodded once with their whole upper torso. They left. Tira breathed and wiped her face again, then hid the knife in her tunic and lifted herself onto the table with both arms. Crossing her legs next to the food, she ate rapidly, and prepared to explore. [center]* * * * *[/center] Tauga sprinted across Xerxes, shunting out of mind the shouts of four parents as they faded into the night behind her. It wasn't difficult. Even the grim knowledge of how unsafe the moonlit City was to a young hain armed with only a pair of trousers was easy to forget. Five weeks. She turned corners, clambering over places where the City was not yet finished raising and plastering mud bricks over wooden beams. The City was not large, geographically, but for the older folk who remembered a time when it had been a simple set of villages, who had lived their entire lives looking out over the green where now the Eye towered, it always felt too busy, too loud, too complex. Not so for Tauga. First of all the generations to call themselves City-dwellers was hers, and she knew the space well. Could traverse it even while her head spun. A month, and quarter-again a month. Tauga tumbled over an unused sack of firewood and hardly even noticed the headfirst pitch into the dirt. When she realised that her movement had stopped, she pressed her hands over her eyes and tucked her beak into her chest, panting for lost breath. Thirty nine days, and not one of them had even told her. In the blackness of palm against eye, something began to move and spiral. Something spread, marking out its place on her hand, her body. [url=http://66.media.tumblr.com/376ec120c6571c3abc31846739bd2fe5/tumblr_o5fi8rFayu1shpedgo5_1280.png]Something.[/url] Tauga shrieked and clambered up, legs burning, to start running again. Memories of voices babbled in her skull as the images came and went. Her father, quiet, worn down by labour. Mother Koonap, no less hardened by work, and still laughing. Mother Yen, the oldest, who had always assured her it would be over in an hour and Tauga would soon forget. And then her laying-mother, Sileg, who had looked away more and more as Tauga enjoyed wearing the last shell of her childhood. Her laying-mother, whose blood ran through her veins. Whose own mother and her mother before her had always been the last to finish the second hatching. Who, in a village where most were finished in a fortnight, had taken five weeks to emerge. As she would. Tauga knew it to be true. She had always been the one to cry when the minstrels came and sang the grim Parable of the Painter. She had grown up tallest of her siblings, strong, fast, brave, but it had always been her who looked away first when dealing with a hair-faced fiberhead. Because they reminded her of the stories. Five weeks it had taken her blood mother. The longest of anyhain in the City. In the moonlight stood unfamiliar walls. That alone was unusual- Tauga could find her way anywhere. But she didn't stop running, not for anything, not to think where she was going. Not to realise that there was only one place in the City where she had never been. Only one House. Tauga hid from a night breeze behind one of the building's high walls. An ink moth drifted past her, its movement completely opposite to that of the wind that should have blown it. Unthinking, unblinking, she felt her hand snatch out at it with all her usual strength, crushed it in her fist and brought the thin spike to her waist. The cold air was interrupted by the sound of scratching metal on porcelain, then a yell. Tauga disappeared behind high walls. Inside the House, it was very dark. In the splay of moonlight following her through the door she could see only a few shapes. None of the ubiquitous foreman's tools that littered the rest of the city. Tauga could see the outline of stretched fabric on a frame, and little else. The only thing she could determine with any certainty was the glint of another faery, eerily close to where she had found the last one. Tauga leapt after it. The faery ducked lazily, as if expecting her to do better, and she found herself on her face for the second time. Chattering teeth followed her as she crawled after the ink moth, deeper into the blindness. There was a soft [i]'tink'[/i] very close to her hand. Tauga snatched out and immediately returned the faery to her side, her eyes full of awful whorls. Within a minute she moaned, and tossed the insect into the dark. Footsteps, heavy and slow, sounded from the void. Tauga clamped her jaw, forcing her teeth to stop chattering, and felt her head dart around like the scared bird she was. Nowhere had enough light to see who she was alone with. The steps came intimately close. They found her in the darkness. An enormous hand wrapped around her shoulder and lifted up her arm. Tauga froze, every muscle seizing in fear. Her very heart held its breath. A faint pricking at her waist, and the sound of fae on hainbone. No motion. No other sound, only Tauga's lungs, her now-pounding heart, and a far deeper rhythm of breathing nearby. She didn't understand, and she was cold, but the smooth, rapid scratching continued, working its way to the murky shapes she could see on her back before arching around to her other hip. It was wrong- This stranger- Being held- Empty temple- Huge hands in the dark- And yet the shapes were finally being filled, the fever breaking. Tauga's eyes closed, and she was still. For the first time in days, her breathing slowed. When the etching finally wound around her belly and linked up where it began, it found her in an exhausted doze. The huge palm released her shoulder and Tauga drooped forwards, jolting awake. Before she had a chance to think, she reached out wildly for the needlepoint, and after a few seconds it drifted into her hand. Immediately she brought it to her elbow. Slow panic began to surge. "I need light." Footsteps, then a pause. Tauga heard the single, telltale snap of pyrite against flint, and a small blaze that sent cinders into the ceiling. As the glow spread from its bowl of tinder, the obscure shapes of objects discerned themselves one by one. There were pebbles, mineral chunks, bones, all manner of solid detritus balanced into single-file towers higher than Tauga's eye level. Blocks of unbaked clay from the river in several shades of ochre and grey. Some of it was folded into the shapes of hands and lips, perfectly lined, holding trinkets too twisted to guess the origin of. Indents in a plank held dye powders, colours which were splayed onto framed fabric or sometimes directly over the wall, murals depicting... [url=http://www.enchgallery.com/fractals/fractal%20images/return-to-the-land-of-is.jpg]Things difficult to describe.[/url] The light swelled on, and the brighter its glow, the more objects Tauga could make out, piled atop each other, stashed into bags and bowls, hanging from fishing lines attached to the roof, resting in hammocks that almost webbed the room. There were fae hiding everywhere, balanced on all kinds of things, an infestation. There was even one of the grotesque glass trees that Urtelem loved to eat, that they planted with simple prayer-signs to Spiral Palms. It grew from a crack in the wall. The House of Life was a mess- A disaster, a wreck of things that filled Tauga's empty stomach with unease, that seemed balanced on all the wrong angles. And as the fire rose to a crackle, Tauga realised that this was just the beginning of the temple's long, long life. At last the flickering glare reached the table in the centre of the room. Upon it lay a fresh human corpse in maybe twenty pieces. Over the dismembered woman towered a being the size and shape of a Tedar, its hands delicately knapping a very small blackglass blade. [url=http://darkcloud013.deviantart.com/art/Ogre-419370956]But its hide was covered by a jagged shell far darker than her own, and it had no visible eyes.[/url] Tauga's legs spasmed and kicked the floor so violently she nearly chipped her own heels as she screamed. In a single flowing movement, the monster picked up a plank and set it on the brazier, calling back the night. More whorls. Even as she gasped for breath, Tauga was pressing the ink moth back onto her arm. For a long while the silence returned. The calm had come back. Unable to see what must surely have stood before her, put its hands on her, Tauga's voice cracked into a hoarse whisper of City pidgin: [i]Who are you?[/i] The voice that responded was high and gentle, like a young child's, and its tongue was clear. [b]"My name is- Help."[/b] The impossible voice did not seem satisfied with its own answer. There was a pause. [b]"Yes. Help. That is who I am."[/b] Tauga's knees were knocking. She had to grip the ink moth to stop herself throwing it away again. "Are you- Am I- Going to die?" [b]"Not tonight."[/b] "But [i]she's[/i] dead." [b]"This one was killed by falling masonry."[/b] Help spoke evenly, soothingly. [b]"No one knew why. Yah Vuh told me to look, so I became curious. I think she bled out on the inside. Her rib splintered into sharp points, though her skin was only bruised."[/b] With great precision, Help lifted the plank from the fire-bowl, allowing a slit of light that fell on a piece of split bone while keeping themself in the darkness. Haunted by spiralling visions, Tauga found herself unaffected by the sight of the sectioned human on its own. Blood didn't frighten her. She began to etch again in the half-light, staring at the shape of the corpse, talking to Help, talking to anyone just to distract herself from seeing the patterns of hatching. Even the monster with a child's voice. "I thought... Yah Vuh was hated." [b]"What God gives by the right hand, it takes away by the left. Yah Vuh cannot think as we do. I judge him no more harshly than I would judge an animal."[/b] "What about the Énas?" [b]"He has taken this woman's life with his ambition, and provided me with an excellent body. He has worked goblins to their death in the mines, and given me blackglass with which to take her apart. God kills and it nurtures. I mourn the killing. I am grateful for the nurturing."[/b] "But that was an accident! He didn't mean to kill her!" [b]"Of course not."[/b] Help closed the bowl. Footsteps, and the clack of pottery. A sudden wetness around her beak and Tauga yelped. [b]"Drink."[/b] Arms still locked in an awkward position, the hain sputtered, then quenched the thirst she had been ignoring since her sprint. The water was taken away. The fire bowl replaced it, open just a little. Tauga tried to resume her scratching. The feel of cool water had broken her concentration, and now her heart was beating again, her fingers shuddering around the faery. Just enough light fell on her shell to show her the belt of curves around her waist and hip, and her head drooped again, eyes shut. Five weeks. Thirty-nine days to etch those bizarre shapes and pictograms. "Help?" [b]"Of course,"[/b] they answered, folding a blanket over Tauga's shoulders and gently guiding her hand. Help stayed at Tauga's side until the dawn came and illuminated the two shells, line by line, side by side, hand in hand. [hider=In which Flux gets sassed, a hain goes through puberty, and Tira discovers what doors are] Three separate stories distantly tangentially related to Jvan. On the ruined terrain of Angelblood Ridge, Flux uses a clowder of fiberlings to track down the undead as they rise from the battlefield, forcing those from the Horde to take a vow of peace and reparation. Possibly due to the use of chaos magic in the area, the rate of resurrection is abnormally high. Flux finds one particular muscular goblin lady named Yulosi, and the two of them discover a curious new kind of ashling created by Jvan for 1 Free Point. Notes before I get their creation sheet up: Lenslings are relatively harmless, and cannot transmit their nature to living organisms. However, they can grow on the undead. They are characterised by tree-like glass growths. Over time, a zombie infected to become a lensling will slowly grow more and more restful until they sleep forever as a living tree of glass with a dreaming soul in Raka- A dignified and wholesome ending to their sensation-deprived waking existence. Lensling trees are nutritious to Urtelem, and orchards of them will soon enough become the first form of Urtelem agriculture. Lenslings grow best around fae, siphoning off some of the energy they dissipate, further benefiting Urtelem communities with Sculptors around them. Yulosi gives a little detail to Rovaick feelings about Jvan. In the Capital, near Lakshmi's quarters, Tira wakes up. She explores her environment, and is forced to deal with the fact that none of her former friends are with her anymore. In Xerxes, a hain named Tauga, whose maternal line bears a rare genetic disorder that makes the second hatching especially traumatic, hides away in the House of Life. A Tedar Sculptor who chooses to be named Help lives up to her choice. Help is revealed to have been prompted by Jvan to take up dissecting corpses late at night. In a free action as the goddess of flesh, this effectively kicks off the tradition of evidence-based medical science in Xerxes, at least among Sculptors. [b]Jvan 9 Might Ambient 5 Might in Ovaedis 2 Free Points Level Four[/b] [/hider]