She had spent long enough in the golden barrens.

Whisper was not yet ready to leave the nitrogen sea. There was still one more place for her to go, and that was south- Far south. So she departed. She meant to make haste, having already gathered much data from this region and spent much time away from her family.

The route she now chose took her through a region that was new to her, though in time she recognised it by what she had seen from space- In this case, less by colour, and more by motion. Despite herself, Whisper felt her journey slow as fascination with the landscape infected her.

Man and god alike had forgotten the Changing Plains. The Gilt, the Barrens, the Firewind- All these places had been generously populated, and yet the fields of chaos tossed and turned as if still aching from the pain of the Devil falling down from heaven.

Yet why was this so? Whisper searched her heart for a memory of Jvan's teachings, and found nothing. And this bewildered her, for the shattersteppe, burned and broken and humming with destructive magic, was full of life. Whisper could hear it sing.

Constant tectonic motion and volcanism had rendered the rock barren of soil, yet porous and immensely fertile. Rain turned the plain into a maze of shallow pools overnight that dried just as quickly, their water lost to aquifers, only to be forced back up into hot springs- Shallow lakes and streams layered with microbial mats as colourful as Whisper's sisterhood in the sky. At night the landscap was lit up by orange magma hissing from cracks that had opened hours before, by the blue of liquid sulphur rivulets burning as they trickled between the dark stone, and even the off-white of lightning, lightning in bolts, sheets and balls that leapt between clouds of ash and water and the peaks of stone spires charged by the restless friction below.

No grasses blanketed the rock as they did in the savannahs, nor did trees form a canopy. Yet still there were plants. Strange things they were. Some grew in hours, spiky tufts of bright green nothing that speckled the crevices, so as not to be lost to the chaos before they flowered. Others bore multiple stems and roots that clambered over the stone, all wildly bent and twisted from a lifetime of turmoil. Still others had no roots at all, lying dormant until rain fell on their leaves. Things grew that were not plants- Lichens that etched the rock itself, crystals grew until they were crushed. Tubeworms from Jvan's ocean had somehow risen from the depths and established themselves as they would in the abyss, and land crabs scuttled thereon.

Even the bare stone plain that dominated the landscape was exceptional. Much of it was black, but the madness had accelerated geological time and added layers of dark primary colours that were then twisted into mad patterns by the cracking earth. Landmarks that would be rare anywhere else were everywhere here. Stacked rocks, pinnacles, vast canyons, stone mazes and waterfalls abounded.

Aihtiraq had shown her a way to see all of these factors colliding and colluding, and for the first time Whisper began to appreciate her new sense as something more than a lulling distraction. 

As days passed and her sense of environmental nuance was heightened, a fresh realisation eventually struck- There were no elementals here.

Well, a few. She had heard them far away, thunderous things. Whisper supposed they were the remains of the storm djinni, or a new crop of such. But where were the spirits that usually guarded every stream, laughed in every breeze? Eaten by their ravenous brothers and sisters?

Or had they simply never spawned, in a land where nature was in the hands of true chaos, as it had always been, since the dawn of the world when the Citadel was uncut marble locked in an untouched planet?

[colour=Ivory][i]Is this what the Diaphanes are tasked with creating?[/i][/colour]

A world of wild Chaos. Where djinni control was fought for in battles that stood to be [i]lost,[/i] not simply exchanged. Where things grew, not by the favour of their environment, but in spite of it.

[colour=MintCream][i]Vestec did this,[/i][/colour] thought Whisper. [colour=AliceBlue][i]The Sword With No Hilt. She scorns him, and yet this is what I'm modelled on. This is who we are.[/i][/colour]

The last thought came from nowhere, and yet Whisper knew it to be true. The change-eaters were a Jvanic interpretation of a Vestecian phenomenon. Storm Djinni, reinterpreted, revised, softened and sharpened.

[colour=MistyRose][i]Maybe we'll die just like they did.[/i][/colour]

That wasn't true. No. Jvan was too good at what she did.

Of [i]course[/i] she was.

A change-eater traversed the Changing Plains, and found herself at peace.

[center][colour=Honeydew][i]A stranger tide we carry on
Holding flames and hungry smoke
Shouldering the Devil's yoke
On a world that wishes we were gone[/i][/colour]

[colour=LavenderBlush][i]Breathing of the cancer's curse
We sing for warmth for love for hope
We gnaw out our own hanging rope
To satiate a killing thirst[/i][/colour]

[colour=GhostWhite][i]Yet I wonder, yet I see
The victory of All-Beauty
A law born of the dark decree
And wonder why that comforts me.[/i][/colour][/center]

[center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center]