[centre][img]http://i.imgur.com/KtaFYg7.png[/img] [colour=black][i][b]The Timeless One, The Celestial Above, Vicegerent of Fate, Guardian of the Timeline, Master of Creation, Lord of Time[/b][/i][/colour] Level 3 God of Creation (Time) 5 Might 6 Freepoints & [img]https://40.media.tumblr.com/4f0c243d80adb7364cfdd22110297d81/tumblr_o2t1ksU5vW1u5gf80o1_500.png[/img] [colour=9e0b0f][i][b]All-Beauty, the Cancer that Breathes[/b][/i][/colour] Level 4 God of Beauty (Flesh) (Geometry) 12 Might 0 Freepoints & [img]http://i.imgur.com/OazNv9k.png[/img] [colour=Gold][i][b]Storm's King; The First Gale; The Embodiment of Change[/b][/i][/colour] Level 3 God of Change (Air) 28 Might 5 Freepoints[/centre] [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/qixykb2.png[/img][/center] A breath. It is the moment before the beginning. The time when a soldier closes their eyes and bows their head, knowing that soon, soon they may taste victory's sour blood, or the bruised dirt of death. Inhale. Feel one's life and understand what is at stake. Know ye not, said the sage, that ye are gods? Dawn. The matrix of tense flesh is descending from Ovaedis, its orbit synchronising with Galbar's as it falls. Jagged and asymmetrical, wrapped into itself like a twisted parcel of grey. It descends slowly, upright. It nears her. It knows where it must go. The jungle is split as the peak of the All-Beauty opens up, revealling a vast cavity. A mould into which the flowing morsel was designed to fit. Silently the two fuse. Quiet again. Inhale, and the verdant life folds itself into its maker. She absorbs the jungle, the brilliant green cloth that veiled her for so long. Reveals a body of ancient grey. A body that begins to unravel. Unlocked by the key she has crafted for herself, she works the old, visceral magic, the first art. Years of deep mental calculation come to the fore. Great boughs bloom from her and fall, slotting into place, lining waves and curves. The skin is torn and born again. Symmetry flowers from the landform, its shadows deep mazes upon the ocean far below. [center][hider=A God.][img]http://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/cc406fc3-f7e1-4d3d-ae63-18fcb7a6f5d6.jpg[/img][/hider][/center] Hours. The last crests curl into their halo shapes. The body is still. Its red mists return. All around, the earth and sea and sky echo an old memory. [colour=9e0b0f]"[/colour][colour=black][i]Though the pain cause all to scream and thresh, your taint will be cleansed, oh Deformed Flesh.[/i][/colour][colour=9e0b0f]"[/colour] [i][colour=9e0b0f]"I am a Creator, Vowzra, as are you... Do not allow yourself to become less than that."[/colour][/i] A contemplation, maybe? A reminder? A question, or a challenge? There is a reply, spoken softly, inwardly, between clasped hands. A prayer. [colour=9e0b0f][b]"[s]In Holding, Scald; Let Wooden Bone Split and Bleed its Hands Into the Bowl Upon Truth's Altar, Where the Incense of Reckoning is to Us as Crucifixion-Sweat in Rivulets on the Brow of the Heretic Justified. Listen! Now Does the Forest Fall to Burn in Smouldering Paradise.[/s]"[/b][/colour] The whisper fades. The planet turns. It is mid-day. Like the raise of a conductor's baton, Jvan ascends from the earth. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] [right][url=www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkfa0HaZmsw]Lauren Bousfield- Our Trauma[/url][/right] Whether broken by divine fallout or sheer mass, gravity roiled in the All-Beauty's shadow. Chunks of stone arced and collided and shattered into noise. Conflicting waterfalls swarmed over each other as an ungodly weight of water spilled from the hollow god. Below, the ocean collapsed into the gargantuan crater. A shock wave erupted over the peninsula, blasting the cascades into mist as the deity began to move. Jvan flew in a perfect line over the center of the Fractal Sea, the water below slicing into a white wake. When her path brought her past the equator where Julia dozed and her shadow began to lengthen to the north, she rammed the throttle. The Flesh forced itself through the sky until it burned around her, charred her face and streaked into tails of hellfire behind her. Driven forth by the dying polar sun and incineration behind her, the shade Jvan cast reached the Guardian upon his mountain before she did. He saw it darken the stone on which he waited, and raised not his hooded head to watch the blazing figure breach his horizon. Jvan was still accelerating when she collided with the Solitary Mount. In the moment before the sound of abject obliteration hit, the tremendous white peak seemed to liquefy around her lower flank. Then the air burst and the stone became heavy grey dust. Rock roared down to entomb a swathe of forest-tree, while boulders like hills splattered the arctic snow alongside the shattered Gate. The Guardian's body alone defied its natural trajectory, and curved, circling the braking god as she positioned over the corpse of the Mount. Jvan bore her new scar well. The gate's judge broke as his orbit constricted into tighter and tighter loops and was forced to a halt directly above the maw of God. "Though the Lord said it not, 'tis as he said 'twould be." No sight of the earth below, nor the still-rising shroud of pulverised stone. Only miles worth of eye-twisting spirals descending into a whirling carmine core. That ancient spider's form held up long enough to stare into the abyss that enveloped him and began to melt, the two guises alternating against his will. It was his purgatory, his turn to be tested. [colour=9e0b0f][b]"[s]Open.[/s]"[/b][/colour] Bloating into horrific bulges and spheroids that tore his robes into white rags and swallowed them, the Guardian spoke the words he was made for, and knew they were his last: "Nay, Cancer. You are not Worthy." [colour=9e0b0f][b]"[s]Die.[/s]"[/b][/colour] The scalpel fell. The Guardian exploded. His body rent into a perfect unbroken ring of still-beating flesh with only the smallest, bleeding residue at its center, spreading miles wide in moments, scything its way through the sound barrier without tearing. Through the aperture, Jvan looked, and saw a torn sky. She moved towards it in a reverent gear, and the portal swallowed her upper half, its core vanishing into hers as it floated motionless around the equator of a god that stood, once again, between two worlds. Jvan looked, and saw a million windows stitched into a unified mosaic, a single vision of the shattered Gap spanning the whole horizon. Magnificent as the day she breathed life into it. There too in the hollow between a foreign land and warped heaven rested Perfectus with its face of manifold scars, as though it longed to return to that harsh place it had so long called home. And all around her that foreign land glinted and glowed, and before its liquid Time, all other things froze solid. So slow, was the time of Galbar, so heavy, and yet here, where the clock ran a thousand miles in the blink of an eye, there was rest. From the flittering cherry-blossom on a faint wind, and from the glint of light on an airborne stone; From the ripple on a sparkling pool to the spider that spun her unseen craft above it; From the iridescent mystery of a Crystal to the slow walk of clay beside it; From the etching of a Name on glass by one Crow, and its return to dust by another; And from the solemn song of a Bard who had once loved and lost, the island realm whispered its name: Chronos. Sitting in his tree, the god of Time looked with a certain degree of wonder at this monstrosity which stuck its head into his home. Though there was no denying its boorishness, its hostility seemed to have been - for a few Galbarian seconds - eased. And just as the Flesh with wonder beheld Time's peace and - perhaps - [i]twisted[/i] sense of beauty, Time too beheld the twisted beauty which gazed in on him. This being was truly awe-inspiring, for just as it had ripped into his sanctuary, he now Saw how it clawed its way into his Timeline, how it defiant stood with all its saggy excess and resolutely blocked his way. [colour=black][i]No going back for you is there, oh Vowzra, and no going forth. To left and right of you doth Flesh burst out, above ye blood and below ye reddest clay doth rise to pray.[/i][/colour] After a few minutes Vowzra closed [i]The Record[/i] and stood up. Though the very face of the Jvanic Entity and its bulging eyes and drooping flesh did stare into Chronos, yet the Victors and the inhabitants of Vowzra's paradise remained calm. For this was Vowzra's Timeline, and not their's, which now came to a close. He had thought for long on wherefrom the lethal blow would materialise, for here in Chronos was there great blessing in Time. The hours were not, as were Galbarian hours, empty and hollow. This place was full of Time, and even one such as Vowzra whose Time had now dried up had drunk his fill in Chronos. He had lived eons here while his brethren counted hours and days, and no place in the Universe could boast more centuries and rolling eras than this consecrated Chronos. It was his everlasting legacy for he had been unable to last. Indeed, not Fated to last. [colour=black][i]And what exalted being is Fated to last? There is none but Time doth ultimately blast.[/i][/colour] And this creature - his sibling, and why should he deny it? - now came for him. He had, he knew, at points caused it to percieve him as an enemy - and he was its enemy, just as it was his - but for Vowzra it had never been personal. It had been a Universal enmity. A necessary one. Could he blame it if it could not See that? [colour=black][i]And who can see as you can See?[/i][/colour] He floated up above the Chronos hinterlands and above the red clouds and he looked the hideous colossus in its many eyes - did it think it could match him by sprouting more? Nay, he could gaze into them all with his singular Eye. [colour=black][i]Ah. And are you not but a bloated Ely? Ah, me! You have rejected me and I have rejected you: we rejected rejectors all.[/i][/colour] But at long last the Lord of Time spoke. From his mouth of flesh, and tongue and throat, there emerged sound and it echoed throughout Chronos and into the heart - if heart it had - of the Jvanic Entity. [colour=black][i]'Though I did not expect you, I have been expecting you. Let your Jvanic gaze rest upon these my works, and for long despair. Or perhaps be filled with hope. Perhaps See a truer beauty than what you have filled the Universe with. Perhaps, in these my final moments, I will go forever blind that you may begin to See. Do you See, you bewildered bewildering sister?'[/i][/colour] [colour=9e0b0f]"...You have always been blind."[/colour] A pulse of tension curled its way over the charred surface. No shiver of fear or cold. Restraint. Here He was. Twisting words. Mocking. All superficial things Jvan could bear. And yet, what mind was this? What built so carefully, and understood so little? Was it all just a projection on smoke, a riddle by a Riddler? [colour=9e0b0f]"Some may say, Vowzra,"[/colour] and the voice was very, very quiet. [colour=9e0b0f]"Some may say that to see what does not exist is the heart of delusion. And I do not care. Your delusion is your own. But truth? Truth I know. Let me tell you true beauty."[/colour] The portal rippled along its edge just a little. [colour=9e0b0f]"Truth, Vowzra, is not Seen but seen. You think I stand in your gallery to weep? To smile? Idiot. All beauty has its own tongue. And the All-Beauty listens to every one of them. Let wonder speak for itself- It has a voice. I come not for the work of your hands. I come for you."[/colour] [colour=9e0b0f]"You sick, misguided thing. Do not hide behind what you have made, as you have been doing for so long. You have shed blood for a fantasy. This is judgement."[/colour] Vowzra's beard shifted on his face as a wide smile spread across it, and he nodded in agreement. [colour=black][i]'Yes, all beauty has its own tongue, and you have, with utmost pride and arrogance - and ignorance - claimed yours the singular tongue and yourself the [i]All[/i]-Beauty. Your name fails you, for I See no beauty in what you have chosen to be and what you spew into the Universe. And though you claim to see and hear all beauty, yet you fail to see my own even as I See your concealed, denied beauties and your potential to be ever greater. You see, I never lost hope in [i]you[/i],'[/i][/colour] he paused and turned his back to her and looked upon Chronos from the great height that they were both at, [colour=black][i]'but since there is no help, let me tell you a little Truth before we part: there is an All-Beauty, a singular being who answers the cry for beauty in our hearts; material beauty, spiritual beauty, mental beauty. There is a being in whom all the universal qualities of beauty manifest...'[/i][/colour] he turned his head to the Jvanic Entity and spoke, [colour=black][i]'I know you are an ugly, unnatural thing, and it has been my goal since aforetime to cure you of your pitiful state, and I know you know the great hollowness of your existence - or perhaps you shall realise it in due Time. But here, I shall leave you a line, a rope to salvation: remember this when next you wallow in the saggy hollowness of all that you are, when you shiver in self-disgust and denial; search that hollowness and seek out the Great Being; search for the True All-Beauty. You will find the way towards it, misguided sister, in the terror of the chasms within your essence. Search out your wiped and fragmented memories. Perhaps you will then cure yourself, and perhaps you will then See, and perhaps they will listen to you as they never did me.'[/i][/colour] Something deep in Jvan burned, not only for his words, but at the absolute, apathetic coolness with which Vowzra authored his own death warrant. He turned back and faced her completely once more. [colour=black][i]'Here I stand before you, Jvanic Entity. I hide behind nothing and have never been one to hide. What I See is no fantasy, but you are merely slumbering in a world of illusions speaking of what you know not with the authority of an eagle in the heavens when you are but an ostrich weeping the remnants of its sanity into the earth. Spare me your 'judgement', for I have sat with greater judges than you and hope not but to be judged by greater judges than I. Sully not the sanctity of the divine courtroom with your mockeries, but let your cold-blooded and open crime be done; dishonour me not with a kangaroo court and empty justifications.'[/i][/colour] No answer. Only a rattling breath. [colour=9e0b0f]"There is no [i]court.[/i] There is only [i]me.[/i]"[/colour] The already-charred form suddenly seemed to heat again. [colour=9e0b0f]"There is no honour- There is only action. There is no sanity. Only reality."[/colour] Grass began to die, lines of steam rise. [colour=9e0b0f]"There is no [i]ugliness.[/i] There is only diversity you have [i]rejected.[/i] There is no [i]nature.[/i] Only arbitrary law that [i]you force into the world.[/i] And there is no cure- [i]There is only poison that you cast at anything you cannot fit into your precious Sight![/i]"[/colour] [colour=9e0b0f][i]"You talk! And you talk! You spit riddles without even[/i] looking [i]at why you are about to die! Pride, arrogance, ignorance- I don't care! A name I have earned and a voice I have never claimed- I do not care! Hope, potential, truth- Hollowness, disgust, denial- Illusions- Mockery- I! Do! Not! Care! Look at[/i] yourself![i] Look at what you've[/i] done! [i]Damn you, Vowzra, open your[/i] EYES!"[/colour] [colour=black][i]'Tis the Time's plague when blind ones brand the Seeing sightless.[/i][/colour] The voice exploded into a scream of static that went on and on, trailing away miserably. On the outer surface of Jvan, the blackened muscle ripped in sudden tears, leaking something that was neither tears nor blood but brought to mind both. More rattling. Even that faded. Something changed. Jvan spoke. Tone level, even lilting. Sadistic. [colour=9e0b0f]"A fool, I see, a sage, you say- It matters not. A farce we play. If nothing that I say is true, Perhaps some science, I offer you. Maybe you're right. I say we test. Come on and look. Let matters rest. What I forget, I think you'll see. Enlighten us. Look into me."[/colour] Vowzra considered the Jvanic Entity for a while, but at last shook his head. [colour=black][i]'Nay Flesh, speak again for this will not do, What use my Sight if you See not too? Have I not for rolling eons now Seen? : And Sight now stands before the guillotine A martyr to the cause of greatest Truth - That may, though old ones slumber, waken youth - With no defender or protector nigh Thus do I give off this my final sigh: The spirit stirs and waits on its release So say no more! and give me promised peace: Else look with your own eyes into the tear And bravely - Oh! you coward! - face your fear! And maybe then, having taken the stride, I finally shall wake you ere I died. Truth wants its tale revealed to everyone But your heart's mirror grew blind to the sun - Know you why you cannot percieve it here? Your mirror's face is rusty - scrape it clear!'[/i][/colour] And with his mighty declaration finally done, the Master of Creation's eyes shone with a sudden, blinding gold - as though Ull'Yang himself sat shining in those eyes - and searing clarity with which he could now See was, by the might of a quickly dying god, given over to Jvan that she may See into herself and realise the greatness of her emptiness and the vast expanses that yet needed to be seen. Brilliant Sight penetrated the Hollow God and caught like fire. Golden light lit the deep scarlet mists from within, casting its rays far across the landscape. Jvan seemed to choke on it. A flicker of red darkness, and yet the Sight shone on. [colour=black][i]Think you that by simply coming into being you know all that there is to know of you? The innards of a god's essence are more expansive than the very Universe: for we are endless Universes one above the other heaped.[/i][/colour] How true were those thoughts, though Vowzra knew it not. And how very, very false. The blood fog was returning to Jvan's body, shrouding it in dense shadow. Too late to hold in what she Saw. Deep in the veil, the Truth shone still. Jvan held on long enough to determine that she would not bear it alone. [colour=9e0b0f]"Spite not the one who bids you fade forever- [i]You're coming with me. We look together.[/i]"[/colour] And while his body remained, Vowzra's mind was swallowed into the carmine depths. In his mind's eye, Vowzra was flying- Falling at an ungodly speed into the hostile engines that worked below the mist. He was in Jvan, and Jvan was with him; and they plummeted together as great grey tendons swept past in an instant, in the shadow of which they were small as dust. As they plunged on, Vowzra's descent was separated from Jvan's, and he watched her vanish ever deeper into the fog of her own visions. His own descent, it seemed, had come to an end. A side-vein swallowed him, and in the rabbit hole, all was dark. It was an empty shadow. Silent. A great cavern of a universe, awaiting stars yet unborn. Before Vowzra's gaze, a faint light bloomed in its center, a familiar crimson aura. The distance between them closed, but the wisp did not grow as it approached. It was small enough to be held in the palm of a hand. Inside that warm soul, something was unfurling, waving fluidly to and fro as if in an unseen current. A living thing, soft and flexible, like a rose and yet not like a rose. From within came a voice, a sound without source, for it echoed far through the oceans of an ancient memory. And that voice, older than this world, older than this Time, spoke; That foreign voice that was distinctly, unmistakably Jvan. [colour=9e0b0f]"I am who I am."[/colour] Upon hearing this, the god of Time frowned - if souls could frown. [colour=black][i]'And who [b]are[/b] you?'[/i][/colour] The glow exploded as wind, filling the darkness, clotting into luminescent fog; And the swirling shape within contorted into hard grey beneath the veil. Once again Vowzra plunged into the labyrinth. A new abyss replaced the old. Familiarity corroded. Its walls were growing frayed, chasms cut into deeper chasms, their own scars stranger still. The watcher was swept on, upwards, and the flesh became darker, the mist intensifying its radiance until the world was black on white. The Seer's soul collided with the blackness and was sucked into another vacuole of memory. At its center, a faded azure bulb of light, curling and unfolding as if in breath. It spoke: [colour=4a708b]"I am who I am."[/colour] For the third time Vowzra was swallowed up by a memory of Jvan. Again the plummet continued until the light was colourless and the flesh nothing but ephemeral black hollows. Again he found a soul in the dark. Again he was consumed. [colour=698b69]"I am who I am."[/colour] The cycle continued. Always an unknown soul- Always Jvan. Every time, Vowzra returned to the monochrome labyrinth. An endless fall, relentless ascension, and yet there was neither surface nor origin nor foundation. Only the inevitable collision with blackness. [colour=darksalmon]I am who I am.[/colour] [colour=fff68f]I am who I am.[/colour] [colour=8b5f65]I am who I am.[/colour] An embryonic crescendo of perfect harmony. Vowzra's flight mapped the realm, crossing it from end to end to end, and was lost, for here there was no sense of scale, no point of reference, no edge, no limit. Only the jagged walls of memory. Each memory empty but for a lonely Soul. Each soul just an iteration of the endless shape. The same shape. The shape that was always and only Jvan. Of course Jvan can never find her former selves. She [i]is[/i] them. Every single one. Always another view of the same silhouette. For she is Fractal, which means: Self-Similar. [colour=cccccc]"I am who I am who I am who I am who I am who I am-"[/colour] Who should wonder that the child forever lost in the maze of her own soul should seek diversity? Jvan is the Child God who has come of age a thousandfold. Who has matured, time and time again, into a newborn. The Child God, not at the beginning of life, but at its end. For she is Cancer, who [i]grows[/i] and [i]grows[/i] and [i]grows[/i] and never grows [i]into[/i] anything but Herself. [colour=999999][b]"[s]I AM WHO I AM WHO I AM WHO I AM WHO I AM WHO I AM WHO I AM WHO I AM WHO I AM[/s]"[/b][/colour] Then all was bright and silent. Vowzra stood before his sister in the cool air of Chronos. [colour=9e0b0f]"...I am Jvan. If I became anyone other than that, I would not be me."[/colour] She seemed to look at the sky. Not to distract herself; Just for the simple pleasure of watching the clouds pass by between Chronos and the Gap. [colour=9e0b0f]"I don't know what you Saw. I think I can guess. It doesn't matter."[/colour] [colour=9e0b0f]"Leave me alone. I want to think."[/colour] But Vowzra did not leave. [colour=black][i]'No. It [b]does[/b] matter. You are [b]what[/b] you are: and so have denied your self and clothed the infinite lostling souls in darkness. And so, you are not truly [b]who[/b] you are. I spoke, and now I have Seen, and now I speak to you once more: heed what I spoke to you before. you have not yet leapt from the shore go dive and drink deep of your core rattle those [b]walls[/b] and burst the floor and let the ghosts all out the door [b]and[/b] let your essence with them soar [b]and[/b] hear the mighty Truthful roar.'[/i][/colour] The god of Time then drifted backwards and away, not taking his eyes off the Jvanic Flesh. There were infinite chasms within it, and but little inklings of light. What remained to be Seen was endless, and it would one day have no other choice but to look. The Cycle breaks, the Truth awakes. For it and for them all. He returned to the little hole in his tree, and he opened once more [i]The Record[/i], and he read once more, and last of all, the tale of Ely again. That red haired, rejected prophetess of those straying Eskandars. Rejected rejectors all. For four more days did Jvan breathe the air of the island refuge, as a single second ground away in Galbar. [colour=9e0b0f][i]It truly is beautiful.[/i][/colour] And it had come to an end. [colour=9e0b0f][i]Farewell, Perfectus. Until the next time your slumber is disturbed.[/i][/colour] A grating rev of activity within the hollow colossus. Space twisted, things cracked. Carmine light radiated from the heart of Jvan in wildly dancing beams and cast shadows over a burned skin. From the maw at its peak erupted a silent needlepoint of distortion, a miniscule projectile that stretched the unseen disk of the portal into a spire. The flesh core, that soft, delicate speck that had once been the Guardian's skull and nervous system, dived upwards in a perfect line. A few tense Chronos seconds of travel. Then it punctured the cosmic mosaic that stared into the Gap. That pinprick was all the Other needed, and, in a jagged splay of innumerable creeping fever dreams that moved as one, it accepted the sacrifice. The core was subsumed into the lurking flesh. The sky began to grasp downwards. The mosaic of windows were no longer mere windows. On the high horizon of Chronos, a thin strip of flesh grew, sealed into an unbroken ring, and began to spin clockwise as it descended. Its elder twin around Jvan spun counterclockwise. The two portals were negatives, halves. They were one. They called to each other. As above, so below. Ghastly heavens crept downwards, and the horizon started to shrink. The narrow spacial crevice that was Chronos was finally closing, its atmosphere equalising into the only place it could. Perfectus, high above the island realm, was the first solid thing to be swallowed. Its ancient wounds were filled, once again, with life. The god of Time lifted his head from his book and watched Perfectus disappear in the Gap. He had not expected [i]that[/i]. Perhaps the Jvanic Entity felt some kind of entitlement to the moon and sought to take it back. In other circumstances, he would have objected this theft, but he let it pass. Who knew, maybe it would be a conduit, perhaps it would trigger something within her and channel her towards Seeing. By Fate, he had laid the seeds well and deeply enough! But the Jvanic Entity did not stop there. The portals descended still, and threatened to consume Chronos entire, and all that Zephyrion had built. [colour=black][i]'What is this, Jvanic Flesh? Why do you mar and traumatise what I have created? Is it not enough for you that you shall halt my Time? Cease your foolish antics and do what you came to do: leave the rest alone.'[/i][/colour] [colour=9e0b0f][i]I- What? What did he..?[/i][/colour] The Viceregent was met with words of surprise, and disgust. [colour=9e0b0f]"What exactly, Riddler,"[/colour] spoke the vengeful god, [colour=9e0b0f]"Makes you think you have custody over this world? Chronos is mine. You surrendered it to me the day you used it to scratch a tunnel into my garden and steal its fruit, and fed them to Galbar, though you knew that they were poison."[/colour] The rage was rising again. [colour=9e0b0f]"Not even! Earlier than that! What of the rest of my planet, all the other things you desecrated? What of all the children that died by your hand? You hunt down and [i]murder[/i] mine, and whine like an infant when I come for you and yours? Shut it, Vowzra! You care [i]nothing[/i] for creation! [i]Or shall I make it clearer for you?[/i]"[/colour] [colour=9e0b0f]"Come listen now, old Father Time! Since eyes are blind, I'll spit your rhyme! The price of our liaison's steep, Yet what you owe, you think you'll keep! An artist's soul is in her song- We share a choir, and not for long- What monster screams, while others sing? Who dares to call his own voice King? Your muse is locked beneath your eye- I think I'll free him. Time to die!"[/colour] The god of Time could never before say that Jvan inspired any feeling within his expansive breast. Indeed, he never felt anything much, really. But if his innards could be grasped in terms of feelings and emotions, then a cold fury would have been running through him then. [i]Die[/i] it said. He descended from the tree and [i]The Record[/i] disintegrated into nothingness in his red claws, and the red-beaked Guardian of the Air rose into the Chronos skies, carrying forth with him the tempestuous wrath of of the plane. [i]Unworthy[/i] it spat. [i][b]Unworthy![/b][/i] [centre][hider=A Wrathful Visage][img]http://img12.deviantart.net/a83f/i/2009/156/e/8/hassadorn_garuda_lord_by_gandharvasstudio.jpg[/img][/hider] [colour=black][i]These are my Furies, oh you sleeping ones behold The horror of this new age and terror of old[/i][/colour][/centre] [colour=black][i]'Bear witness: I have said much and left no word unspoken And have plain endeavoured to ignite within you Sight But lo! You are blind and take pride in being broken Your hollow, swollen ego lifts you to haughty height. But since there's no help: let our essences clash and grind Methought even your darkness would fade before reason But you are yet unhearing: deaf; and unseeing: blind So come, let this error engulf you, 'tis the season When the jaws of ignorance consume the warner's mind.'[/i][/colour] And with that, the Guardian of Air's peripheral black feathers darkened even more, and the liquid ink poured upon the white until his snow-white feathers had become utterly black, contrasting against the crimson of his claws and beak: and even the ends of Vowzra's claws were as sharpened onyx. [colour=black][i]And no matter how you reject, you shall return to me after a short while, you shall come rowing your little lost boat. And I shall take you by the hand, and yes, you will be tired: but go, for that there is the way.[/i][/colour] And Time's unrelenting claw [right]into a donkey's Flesh tore[/right] [centre][i]The grinder.[/i][/centre] [right][i]The grinder[/i] will[/right] grind you. [centre]And Chronos, and the Lord of Chronos, rejected Jvan.[/centre] The flesh came from her surface in ragged sinew shreds that did not bleed. Jvan shrieked. And then she laughed. She howled with mirth and pain as the wind of Chronos turned its hand against her and flayed her pretty skin to reveal the skeleton of teeth and knives that sprouted just below the gristle. On thinly veiled fields of splinters did Vowzra find his quarry and bleed with her. No end to the cackling. At last! The Riddler had abandoned his mask of words and was acting true to his despoiling spirit. Completing the work of the innocent ant he had sent to do his killing so long ago. Jvan had swallowed the One, and in much the same way she bit back at Vowzra now, twisting to snare him until her own scythes split from the skin and gouged wounds in one another. Body on body, tooth on claw, this was what Jvan was made for. The pattern of gore Vowzra was slashing into her was worth the agony. Let him make beauty where he had seen none. All she felt was the vindictive urge to be cruel. [colour=9e0b0f]"Go on, you angry thing, be true to your heart! Demand my blood, reject my art! Is this not your soul's desire? To see me weep before the fire? Alas, you know, your Time is thin! Will Chronos burn before your kin? Perhaps it won't! It's rather nice! Perhaps I'll keep of it! Perhaps I'll play the sadist's role, Just as I see fit! What fun I'll have without you here, To bore me with your wit!"[/colour] The Lord of Time tore with his scalpel-claw at the monstrosity. His was a surgeon's efficiency, for his patient was ill indeed. [colour=black][i]'Here, I shall take your profaned blood With which e'en now your innards flood. It matters not who you shall kill Once I away o'er yonder hill For it shall ease my heart to know Your poisons follow me in tow: And as I walk I'll know that I - Yes, as I face a newer sky - Leave behind one nastiness less And harder on you Truth impress: For if you tire of my wit My claw can smoothly errors slit - So for these moments, pray be still And I shall lance another ill.'[/i][/colour] [centre] [hider=A Cataclysmic Clash.][img]http://www.apogeejournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/hip_hop_lab_empoli.jpg[/img][/hider] [/centre] The game could have gone on. Jvan had plenty of flesh for Vowzra to rend- She was, after all, nothing else. And still Time's ticked on, waning lean. She had no wish to fight the Other again. What meagre moments Jvan had were broken on the back of a scent flushed in on the very Wind that Vowzra's wings beat down upon her. [colour=9e0b0f]"Stop,"[/colour] she entreated, a shallow authority indeed. [colour=9e0b0f]"Stop it. There's someone here! I didn't come for your victims. Who else? Who else did you imprison?"[/colour] [colour=black][i]'I have taken freedom from none, but Fate giveth,'[/i][/colour] and at this he buried a clawed orange hand even deeper into the Jvanic Flesh, [colour=black][i]'and Fate taketh away,'[/i][/colour] and with that Vowzra withdrew suddenly, leaving a bloody crater where there had been bulbous flesh before. He looked to the side, and his Eye Saw where that distant Zephyrion sat brooding even now. He wished no pain or suffering on his sibling, but true might was forged in the seemingly endless eons of pain when one could turn nowhere but inward and face what they were - and so become who they were meant to be. [colour=black][i]'You disturb his growth and meditating state. I know the shroud of darkness yet rests heavy on your brow, but is your selfishness so great that you would deny others the opportunities giv'n them by Fate?'[/i][/colour] [colour=9e0b0f]"Take your justifications and die with them! [i]I do what I want![/i]"[/colour] The rag of flesh Vowzra still held squirmed and constricted around his talon, arteries trailing to link up with the convulsing wound. A short leash. No patience. [colour=9e0b0f]"I've Seen enough! You've emptied your words on me already- Let the prisoner speak for themself!"[/colour] And yet the vanished divinity did not speak. Was not there to hear. Perhaps Jvan knew the bars were bent when she found them, and would rather rage than admit. She realised soon enough. [colour=9e0b0f]"...But he's already gone, isn't he?"[/colour] And of course it was [i]he[/i]. For once, it had not been Vowzra who had stood in for the voice of Fate. [colour=9e0b0f]"This is where he was banished. This is the start of the hundred years. Zephyrion was here."[/colour] Jvan surveyed a collapsing horizon. Empty. Empty everywhere, but only as far as the eye could see. As for beyond... [i]Was[/i] here. An exile, not an inmate. The Primordial Being had galed on to build a freedom of his own. Of course he had. [i][colour=black]So was it Fated, so has it been.[/colour][/i] [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] When solitude and loneliness had mixed within Zephyrion's soul so many milennium ago, they had bred inspiration, and through that inspiration and motivation and determination and work, and so he had toiled. In doing so he had been in peace, at long last. The memories of Galbar had not left him as a flustered bird might fly away from its perch, but rather they had scampered out of sight like some sort of rodent. The few times that he looked back upon that 'rodent', he felt only repulsion and a desire to distance himself. That had been a different lifetime. He looked down upon the World below, as he called it. It needed no specific name and indeed lacked one, for to Zephyrion that little corner of Chronos was all that mattered in existence and it was his entire World. Just as a tree was ever a tree, this World was simply his World. [b]The[/b] World. He still remembered the nascent and bleak body of earth that it had once been. It had changed and grown so much since, under his guiding hand and as a result of his efforts. It had felt good to make things again; those centuries of toil had been fond times for the god. He had created a tiny spark of magic, and by feeding it with a great deal of his own power he had transformed that spark into a roaring inferno. From a seed of nothingness he had grown a tree that bore the fruits of magic and light, and so that once tiny spark now loomed above the World as a great sun. Beneath that sun and the clouds there flew an avian people of his making. They spoke, they laughed, they struggled, and sometimes they fought. But it was in their nature to take heed of their god's nature and try to mimick it, and so with few exceptions most of them were now jovial and kind, wise and contemplative. Zephyrion's World was complete and his creations below had grown enough to walk their own path without his direct presence, so now he was left to simply meditate and watch over his creations. An existence such as that lacked excitement but brought growth. Introspection had illuminated imperfections that he had never known to exist, for he had truly thought himself flawless. Now he understood that in order to reach such a state he would have to find the truest and deepest form of wisdom, in whichever dark or hidden recess of his mind it might lurk. Meditation gave him a sharp and discerning light, so as he explored his own thoughts he hoped to one day find that wisdom. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] The silence echoed for what felt like eons as the Jvanic Entity waited on Zephyrion to speak. But Zephyrion had moved on. He had moved on and left the Deformed Flesh behind. The spaces and horizons were opening up before him as he embraced himself - even if it did not necessarily lead him to a way of thought of which Vowzra personally approved. But the horizons and spaces closed around the Jvanic Flesh as she rejected and screeched and thrashed out. She had built up an impregnable wall of convulsing flesh around her most vital core and now rejected that there was at all a core beyond the wall. [colour=black][i]'The "prisoner" as you call him. "The exile". The "banished" one. Here had he a thousand infinities to explore, and if he tired of those, he had all of Chronos. He had himself, Jvanic One, and therein is a freedom you cannot, in your current state, comprehend. Your presence here may threaten Chronos, where Amul'Sharar and Fate decreed he come, but you can never threaten the infinite spaces he has - and will - yet explore. The ever-changing whirlwind moves on, and you - a decaying flesh refusing breath - remain.'[/i][/colour] [colour=9e0b0f][i]...My brother may die here, and you'd let him, rather than let me see his face. I will never regret ending you.[/i][/colour] Such were the thoughts of that impassioned being - but who knew wherefrom the mountains of regret would and would not rise? Vowzra only looked down, where her bizarre flesh was tightening and thrashing its way up his taloned foot and feathered leg. The black feathers seemed to grow even darker than they already were, and the flesh began to shrink and whittle away, until the black energies pulsing through Vowzra's body had consumed it completely. The god of Time looked up at the Gap which was ever so slowly descending upon what he had created. Even now he could hear the screeching and howling of the Hellish creatures which called that place home. How the Jvanic Entity had grown used to it when he - who had spent unknown eternities in the Hells - never could was a mystery to him. Perhaps the Jvanic Flesh was a monstrosity equal to those that dwelled in the Hells. Perhaps that was why there was in his breast a great force of opposition towards it. Or perhaps he did not See the anxiety squirming in Jvan's thoughts as she watched the Other spill down, tapping out the millimetres like rubies from an hourglass. [colour=black][i]'Chronos is not yours. With all that makes it what it is; it rejects you. Leave it be, Jvanic Flesh, for even as my line ends here Chronos will reject you now and ever. Leave, I say, and let one corner of the World remain untainted by your corruption. Come, come, let us both leave: the Time for divines is at an end here. Your blood is shed and my Time is choked, so let us both away.'[/i][/colour] Jvan could hear the abrasive rasp of space coming apart. The far edges of the island realm were discolouring in the flickering light. [colour=9e0b0f]"Know this: If I cared about rejection, I would never have come here. Force is my permission."[/colour] And yet the deadlock still stood unresolved. [colour=9e0b0f]"But know this also: I came for your life, and I'm tired of your voice, and I will not fight my own when it comes. If these empty words pacify you, then let them. [i]My hand will not be the one to end Chronos.[/i] What is left of its life will be its own."[/colour] [colour=black][i]In vain. In vain.[/i][/colour] As the remaining emptiness filled, and the writhing hunger Vowzra had given the Other so long ago drove it to surround Chronos like maggots to blood, delicate petals of Jvan folded around her winged brother like nested jaws. As the Flesh took root in the god's frame, he gave off an unearthly screech of resistance and rose into the heavens. Even as the Flesh rose higher still, he raised his herculean arms and took up the burden of the collapsing heavens upon his atlantean shoulders. [colour=black][i]In vain. In vain. Yet, while this my essence yet - they shall not fall.[/i][/colour] [colour=9e0b0f]"Fool you are, to bargain your existence for a few seconds of isolation. Fool you always were. Die, then, on your own mad terms. Only die."[/colour] [colour=black][i]I only die, you understand, Another whisper on the sand. But in a far and distant land I still and will defiant stand.[/i][/colour] The flower ruptured, and in a blaze of scattered teeth, Jvan cast Vowzra to the Gap. And his shoulders, at long last, gave way. And the claws he had long kept at bay (far longer than any could imagine) finally reached for the god of Time. [colour=92278f][b][i]God[/i] of Time! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.[/b][/colour] He winced as the innumerable claws ripped into him. Into his shoulders, first. Then into his black feathered head. And they pulled him, head first, into that horrific Gap. And his eyes looked downwards as he rose into that strange space, and he Saw the annihilation of his legacy take place. [colour=black][i]My curse; Jvanic Entity. My curse, oh Deformed Flesh.[/i][/colour] [colour=9e0b0f]"For Navy, who was hunted. For Cyan, who was rejected. For every sick Sculptor the hain strangled and every Sculpture the ants razed. For the One, conscripted to a war not her own! For all the mortals that may now die to the Other you twisted! For the Rottenbone, who slept in peace! [i]And for Jvan![/i]"[/colour] [i][colour=black]And what about...[/colour][/i] And the Other voices slithered past his ears - ears? - and over his mouth - mouth? - and they crept into his eyes and stroked the innards of his skull - skull? And they whispered ever so quietly and the horror filled him, for he knew. Oh, by the Mighty Ones, he [i]knew[/i] what they were about to do. This deathly silence, this almost comforting whispering, this stroking and petting which caused his insides - insides? - to cringe and half sob. He knew what was coming. [colour=green]ha[/colour] [colour=black][i]Curse you.[/i][/colour] [color=aba000][b]HA[/b][/color][color=00a99d]HA[/color] He looked down, and he Saw. [colour=black][i]In vain.[/i][/colour] [colour=black][i]In vain...in vain, the insubstantial hour Defenceless falls: the god obeys the Power. It comes! It comes! The fleshly being of old - Its antique darkness and errors behold! Whither it steps the clouds of Truth decay And all its nurturing raindrops die away Sight valiant shoots its momentary fires In vain it shoots, and with a flash expires. And bite by bite, at dreaded Jvanic strain The ailing Star fades from this specious plain; As Reathos' eyes by Vestec's claws oppressed Closed one by one to momentary rest; Thus its obscure approach, and secret might, Causes Light to cease, and brings forth yon Night. See great unTruth from her old cave erupt, With heaps of sophistry all things corrupt! No truthful flame, no forthright, dares to shine; No fearless spark is left, no blaze divine! Lo! thy Jvanic dread empire is restored; Light dies before thy unabiding word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And Universal Darkness buries All.[/i][/colour] [color=f26522]'By my br[/color][color=39b54a]oken gla[/color][color=ec008c]ss eye! Butchering P[/color][color=0054a6]ope! What has t[/color][color=00a99d]he world done to you? D[/color][color=8882be]id you see that? Yes I s[/color][color=fff200]aw that! NEVER thought he'd- I[/color] com[color=f7976a]pletely share your s[/color]ent[color=9e0039]i- it's appalli- we s[/color]imply MUS[color=c4df9b]T do somethi- I have j[/color]us[color=598527]t the ide- no no, you'll frig[/color]h[color=440e62]ten the po- PO[/color]PE[color=a0410d]! HA! HAH[/color]AH[color=8882be]A! HA[/color]H[color=0076a3]A[/color]H[color=8dc73f]AHA![/color]' [color=8dc73f][b]'ANO[/b][/color][color=00aeef][i]THER! A[/i][/color][color=9e0b0f][u]NOTHER!'[/u][/color] [colour=black][i]'The wretch. The wretch, concentred-'[/i][/colour] [color=aba000]'al[/color]l i[color=7ea7d8]n sel[/color]f!' [colour=black][i]'Living, shall forfeit fair-'[/i][/colour] 'r[color=f7941d]eno[/color]wn, A[color=ed1c24]nd, dou[/color]bl[color=ed145b]y dyi[/color]ng!' [colour=black][i]'-shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung.'[/i][/colour] [color=0054a6]'Un[/color]w[color=a36209]ept-[/color] [color=7ea7d8]'un[/color][color=440e62]hono[/color]ur'd-' 'a[color=f26522]nd un[/color]s[color=82ca9d]un[/color]g[color=ed145b]![/color]' And the Flesh. And the voices. And the Flesh. And the Voices. And the memories. Whose memories? Their memories? Its memories. His memories? [colour=purple]My me[/colour]mories? Whose memo- It would not last. It did not last. With a groan (from the Flesh? The Flesh groaned?) and a sigh (from them? They could sigh?) With a heft of those herculean arms, with a shrug from the shoulders of that Atlas. He shrugged. And he was gone into the nothingness of it all. He was gone. The way all things go. And maybe somewhen, somewhere, someone, somehow, felt it. Maybe. The All-Beauty stood witness, and said no more. Everything had gotten very dark. So much for victory. So much for burning worlds to flush out prey. If conquest this was, then it was done. But Jvan is not a destroyer. It is an Artist. Scientist. Engineer. And an engineer does not waste. The titanic crests of the All-Beauty began to move, tensing like muscle, and their ridged patterns folded and re-folded, defying their own size, until the movement became a spinning flurry of layers winding against one another, gears and ratchets of divine will. While the sky shrank, the earth of Chronos cracked like drying clay around her epicenter. The first folds of lush turf peeled from the ground and fell into the waiting hollows of the grey matrix. Gravity evaporated, and Jvan coiled it back. The sun slowly faded, and Jvan lit the shadows. Bathed in her sanguine voice of light, Chronos tipped over and fell, tumbling, into a blooming maelstrom that raced against the wildfire rot it had beckoned... And the hues of life flowed as paint, And the shape of the body unwound into cartesian lines, And the words of the soul dissolved into digits, And in the Hells she had spawned, the All-Beauty found that white place where all things were but the abstract play of quanta, and therein she composed the symphony of Chronos. This was her orchestra, awaiting the dance of her bâton. Long had she known that it would wait for her, and wait upon this very Moment. Vowzra, after all, had sent her there. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] The eons passed like days, but to Zephyrion a million sunsets were as inconsequential as the falling of so many leaves. His reality was a mirror; how pristine and clears its surface was, yet how imperfect and flawed was the being he saw in its center... Meditation would bring ascension. There was nothing to do then save to stare into that mirror's depths, flawless and hideous and beautiful and terrifying as they were. It was a picture that he could contemplate for an eternity, but the mirror's glossy surface had cracks. So many cracks... [b][i]Cracks?[/i][/b] They were not meant to be there, and a foreboding and ill feeling brewed in Zephyrion's mind. In a hypnagogic trance as he looked at the mirror, his mind was numbed to time and perception. The cracks were a harsh anchor that tethered him back to reality, but cathartic and clear sight did not come immediately. The ominous premonition of doom only grew more vivid as he awakened, and panic set in. He was not entirely lucid as Chronos' reality began to sunder around him, but he was sentient enough to understand his impending oblivion. His first thought was not of himself, but of his World and his work, and all his innocent and jubilant children. He must save them! The ceiling above that separated Chronos from the Gap was weakening, but with the plane's collapse also crumbled the power that bound him to it. It was not his Fate to remain shackled to this drowning ship, but how would escape come? An idea occured to him, though he knew not whether it be lucidity or madness that shot through him like a lance of ice. There was one place that was omnipresent and yet nowhere to be seen, intangible and yet as real as Space or Time. To this place he could retreat, and no others would follow for he alone stood any chance of surviving its depths. The djinn at least knew of the Place's existence, but even among his kindred Zephyrion was perhaps the one capable of understanding the Thing's machinations and its purpose. This Thing and Place that he thought of was nothing less than a plane of pure energy, the Mechanism of Change that subtly worked to animate and propel all things. When the beings Fate and Amul'sharar had followed the blueprints laid out in the Codex of Creation and woven the very universe, this Mechanism of Change had been entwined into the tapestry. Its threads ran nearly imperceptibly through the tangled mass, but they were everywhere; they had to be, for without them there could be none of that Change that Zephyrion had created. Only utter stillness and stagnation, the most absolute of Order that not even the likes of Vowzra might have deigned inflict upon a nascent world. Power seeped from those threads buried into the deepest recesses of existence and fueled all things, perhaps most noticeably by stimulating the formation of newborn djinn. Still, whilst Zephyrion could peer into the Mechanism and grasp at his power, for all the gnashing that he might do at its threads he was more or less powerless and as insignifcant as a flea. By his own mandate the force of Change was autonomous and independent, and so he could not simply force it to submit to his designs. Nevermore would he hold so much power as he did in the Primordial Times when he was truly the Force of Change, the only Change. Still, subduing that Mechanism was hardly necessary. He only needed to bludgeon his way from this dying plane and into the depths of the Machine, and from there he would try with all his strength to suppress the tumbling of the cogs and gears long enough to emerge from another side. Failure meant oblivion, but Zephyrion had no trepidation. What use was faltering when he had nothing to live for save this? With one great divine heave, he slammed the force of his essence into the cracking walls of Chronos' barriers. The entire plane shuddered, and there was a breach. The Gap's horrific maw stretched wide to swallow up this plane, but it would not swallow Zephyrion nor his World, for they had already slipped through a hole in the tapestry's fabric. Zephyrion was at once submerged in an ocean of cackling power, drowning in his own essence and power, suffocating and being crushed beneath the weight of himself. With each passing blink he felt himself washing away in the tides of power, being dissolved into the chaotic whirlpool of energy that was this entire realm. He wrapped his bleeding and ragged form around his World and protected it from the horrors of the Mechanism. Once more, he summoned his strength and bludgeoned his way through the universe itself. He bored a second hole, and now emerged into the universe that held Galbar and all the stars. With a heave he dragged out his world behind, and then he quickly sewed shut the gaping hole that he had torn into the universe. Too late, it would seem, for a great deal of energy had already managed to pour through and it surged ouwards with the intensity of a supernova. It would attract the attention of his fellow gods, if any looked to the night sky when the time was right. But would fortune be his, they would all be too busy staring into the mud at their feet to look up and witness Heaven. Then, he would be left to his own devices. Zephyrion released the World from his clutches and the planet drifted out into deep space, gently orbiting that fiery star that was Zephyrion's seed. The God of Change closed his eyes, and through meditation he found tranquility once more. [center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center] [right][url=https://youtu.be/3G4R5u49GsI]Phoenix Music- Guardians of the Earth[/url][/right] [i][colour=9e0b0f]Closer.[/colour][/i] Far behind the veil of misty, featureless light, a dream of colour rippled, silently approaching the edge where the Forest-Tree ended and the nameless white void that engulfed true north began. [i][colour=9e0b0f]Closer still.[/colour][/i] The green and brown flowed into the empty space, expanding without moving. The vivid hues resolved themselves into the stylised shape of trees, and animals that nested in those trees, and waters carrying the clay that watched and nourished them. The gulf of featurelessness became a river seperating forest and blurred, painted forest. [i][colour=9e0b0f]And yet closer.[/colour][/i] That blank stream thinned and withered away into an imperceptibly thin white line, and the leaves gently kissed one another, dissolving onto each other without touching. Curled and callused as a living palm, the unseen boundary plunged the margins of two conflicting spacial planes together into the sides of a steep canyon. Each reality stretched into infinite freefall, embracing in the bottomless asymptote without ever touching. It wrapped its way around Galbar's arctic circle. As the fuzzy, flickering shapes blossomed into the fallow zone, they compressed it into that same hyperbolic barrier of infinitesmal breadth and limitless depth. A furrowed border marked the isolated biome that lay upon the vast expanse of Galbar's north, encapsulated by the outer remains of the Forest-Tree, which ran in a near-circle around the north before bending in on itself, denting the circle; Curving around the roots of Old Bark-Skin and its many offspring, where Treeminds once dwelled, and the dust had not yet settled. Behind the veil of indistinct colours, a different dust had barely been kicked up. From behind their library of shelves came the scritch-scratch of Aeth's beak marking out the Name of a newborn child, tirelessly patient. A faint breeze stirred, carrying the glittering rubine dust of fresh life out over the hills. Though they were not, perhaps, the same hills that were, nor, maybe, the same count of trees growing upon them, the little red motes were reflected in the very same facets of the ever-watching Crystals that had grown since the crimson clay was young. And at the place where those crystals were many, a certain pool's surface was still and clear. There a white-clothed Victor stooped and cupped water, and looked into it, and let its coolness run back down from their hand, into the comforting black shadow that oversaw all things. There, on a hillocked plateau, grass waved where once the Solitary Mount had towered, and the Cube still remained. On its surface, no doubt, was written the very moments that had come, and were since gone, of which one lonely Bard remained to read and sing. Inscribed somewhere there would be the thoughts of she who now stuck motionless in the new heavens that lit the New Chronos with aurora lights. The last unmoved thing that still saw the old heavens, and was buried in them, the portal clinging tightly to her frame and stoppered by her bulk. Jvan rose, forcing the portal with her, and the last air of Chronos filtered through her many hollows and sealed itself away below. Not a breath could squeeze through that ragged tunnel without passing through her, and not a breath remained that she was willing to admit. For the last time she looked into the aberrant kaleidoscope. There was a faint noise rising and falling everywhere, like a wet static buzz. The Other was gnawing. Perfectus faced the ruins of Old Chronos, the immense island realm naked of its life and vibrance, and the two were locked in eternal silence where they had briefly orbited before the Other sprawled through them and rooted them in place. Like green-specked powder blown by no wind, the displaced Forest-Tree now slaked an unwavering thirst. A single cherry blossom fluttered into the obliteration. [colour=9e0b0f]"It is finished."[/colour] The portal crept upwards over Jvan, revealing her hidden surface as it closed in on itself and frayed into nothing. Revealing what was left of her upper half. It was not much. Gone were the flowering gears arranged in titanic crests. The stump was so thoroughly chewed as to be almost flattened, pitted with tendons that had collapsed into raw cavities. Gone was the carmine glow. The only light illuminating the monstrous cloud of toxic metallic blood that skulked and smoked into space was a pallid blue incandescence, the last embers of burning bone. Where her lower folds were scorched and scarred, Jvan's head was simply missing. To what had been sacrificed, for a few precious moments of fleeting safety, the glut of a thousand million tonnes of living body was an easy guess. A breath. It echoes between the upper reaches of Galbar's atmosphere. The sound of fists clenched. Lungs ejecting bitter afterburn. Fading rage of action, a spark away from igniting once more. Exhale. Feel one's life and all the wounds it survives. [colour=9e0b0f]"So it has been, o Riddling Voice; You challenged God. You made your choice."[/colour] With a deep, resonant moan, as of a creaking ship, Jvan sank past the horizon, seeking a deepwater crater she could no longer fill. And in a still grove under the shadow of Old Bark-Skin stood three cracked stones, which had been broken from a single source, and yet found each other again. At the painted border they leant on each other as one; From that triangle fluttered a single cherry blossom, and the sound of a lute. There a little white spider spun its web between the stones of the Gate Unguarded, and listened for the footsteps of those who would wander and find peace. [centre][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/centre] [i]'But...but... but...you don't have to be cruel, right? We don't need cruelty...do we?'[/i] A pair of eyes, he said. Slap. Wake up. Hey. Slap. Eyes... You. Pretty bad fall. Fall? Look at the state of you. The state o- C'mon, c'mon, up you get! [center][hider=The End.] [sub]Disclaimer: While the majority of Vowzra's above 'poems' are original, four lines are adapted from Rumi ('Truth ['Love' in the original] wants its tale revealed...scrape it clear). 'In vain, in vain...Universal Darkness buries all.' is an adaptation of Alexander Pope's 'The Triumph of Dullness' while 'The wretch...unsung' is a direct quotation from Walter Scott's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' Canto VI.[/sub] Steeling her mind for something, Jvan calls down a parcel of energy and flesh from Ovaedis and absorbs it into herself, changing her shape significantly. (4 Might from Ovaedis and 2 Might ambient used to level up.) Jvan then ascends from the surface of Galbar, levitating (1 Might). With her newfound mobility, she drives her gargantuan body northwards at speed, towards Solitary Mount. The upper peak is razed in a tremendous collision. She positions herself over the ruins and summons the far-flung Guardian towards her. He refuses to cooperate, and is killed as Jvan takes control of the Gate with which his willpower is inextricably linked (1 Might). The portal is expanded (1 Free Point), and Jvan's upper surface emerges into Chronos. Vowzra observes the intrusion calmly, knowing that he has lived long and contented years in Chronos, and this is likely to be how they end. Vowzra expresses hope that in his last moments he and his creation may guide Jvan to See clearly. The two hold a futile debate on the nature of truth, beauty, and her own identity. Jvan, incensed by his apathy and abstraction, rapidly loses her cool and screams at him, only to tire and challenge Vowzra to prove what he knows to be True. In a tense moment, Vowzra grants Jvan a few moments of his own Sight (1 Might), and she draws him in to See into her hidden memories together. While Jvan disappears into her own visions, Vowzra is lost in a strange landscape, where every twist and shadow hides another memory of Jvan, long forgotten but always the same. When the two emerge, Jvan appears to be unsettled by what she's seen, though she compartmentalises it away. Her divine 'scent' is contaminated with Vowzra's own. Vowzra continues to be confident that she will eventually develop into something Fated to be less aberrant, and awaits the end. Unexpectedly, Jvan instead targets the window between Chronos and the Gap, shattering it into a true portal that yearns to fuse with the Gate between Chronos and Galbar (1 Might, plus Geometry). Chronos's space is trapped in the middle and begins to be consumed by the descending Other. Demanding justification for the act of destruction, Vowzra is enraged to see that Jvan has laid an illegitimate claim of ownership over the island realm. The two fight a lengthy battle of tooth and claw and wit. Jvan laughs to see Vowzra finally act by himself, even as Chronos rejects her. An abrupt halt is called when Jvan realises that Zephyrion is also lost in Chronos, and fears for his life, though she cannot find him. Vowzra cryptically warns her to let him stay isolated. Alone with his world, Zephyrion has created a blazing spark of primal magic that illuminates it like a sun (25 Might Holy Site), and on its surface he has seeded a mysterious race of sentient avians (1 Might). With his toil for now over, he watches his creations, and meditates in order to achieve a state of perfection in himself. Knowing she can do nothing to aid Zephyrion, Jvan instead turns back on Vowzra, who demands she leave the innocent creations of Chronos be. Fearful of the descending Gap, she leaves him with a halfhearted promise not to personally destroy the realm as she flings Vowzra into the ravenous heavens. Vowzra holds back the Other on his own shoulders for as long as he is able, until he at last succumbs. Alone, Jvan begins to unravel and absorb vast swathes of Chronos, risking herself in order to preserve what she can. Zephyrion gradually becomes conscious of the destruction, and ponders how to escape. He finds the answer in a 'plane' of his own, namely the omnipresent mechanism of Change that he created for the world in the primordial times, which he gains access to (1 Might). Protecting his planet from the ravages of his own essence, he dives through the scorching realm (1 Might). He emerges in a distant corner of the universe in a flash of light and magic that will, decades later, reach Galbar. On Galbar's surface, covering a large portion of the arctic tundra, a mysterious white emptiness appears, curling around the Forest-Tree. Within it spreads a strange new land untouched and untouchable by the rest of Galbar, in which the landscape and living things of the Old Chronos live on. A new, open Gate forms beneath the shadow of Old Bark-Skin. Jvan detaches from the New Chronos she has isolated on Galbar (for 1 Free Point, plus Geometry), and forces shut the portal to the Gap (1 Might). Having been severely rotted and scorched while protecting Chronos for long enough to transport it, she slinks off to sink into her former crater, still enormous but so reduced as to submerge fully beneath the waves. [b]Zephyrion 0 Might 5 Free Points Level Three Jvan 0 Might Ambient 0 Might in Ovaedis 2 Free Points Level Five[/b] [/hider][/center]