[center][h1]To a Man with Everything[/h1]
[color=goldenrod]Aihtiraq[/color] and [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]Toun[/b][/colour]
[/center]

[center][i]Over heath, hollow, and hill
'neath night's moonlight ill
he fled, nowhere to run, hide.

Such was his burden, sorrow,
tears like stars aglow
he broke: close, near, far and wide.

Blindly, he found his way to Toun.[/i][/center]

Like the sunrise's blushing garland that peeks over the sea, Aihtiraq's golden wind drifted slowly over the alabaster walls. When at last his formless eyes beheld the master of that place, he rushed forward as the first rains of spring, washing the pausing hain in their industrious dance. Aihtiraq spread his gold on the white at a speed that made the borders of each tile blur into flurry below him. The pattern within the pattern contracted as slow doors closing until the last gap stopped at the robed mannequin in the centre.

That smoothed over master. His one enfleshed left eyelid opened with a tiny, sinuous squelch. It revealed blue light. It shined judgement.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"You are trespassing, elemental."[/b][/colour] Toun's shivering intonations reverberated. He stared.

A void grew where Toun might have spoken more. Another pause passed. The porcelain god waited.

[color=goldenrod][i]"Forgive me then, just as the
rose sheds scent for he
who would pluck it from the ground.

A gift I come to offer:
a dark wind has come;
it swept away your brother.

I could speak of this, if asked."[/i][/color]

Toun's head turned a fraction. His eye narrowed as if taken with unwelcome surprise. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Which brother?"[/b][/colour] He asked cautiously.

[color=goldenrod]"His was a short path without
many forks or stops,
at his side always a sword.

Atop a mount, he was lord."[/color]

Aihtiraq's verse left few candidates. Toun lowered his head just enough to warn him. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Speak your piece, then. Speak wisely. Recount everything, and do not encroach vagueries or lies."[/b][/colour] Toun held his hands behind his back. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"I will know."[/b][/colour]

Other beings might have quivered or barked at Toun's abrasiveness, but such tone and wording went entirely unnoticed by the djinni lord of magic. Perhaps he did not sense irritation or anger as well as he did sorrow; or perhaps he was simply above such things as pride and pettiness. In any case, his answer came swiftly.

[color=goldenrod][i]"My words can elucidate
a mercury sheen
of truth too vivid to lie.

But I am just Aihtiraq
humble djinni lord
and confer only one wish.

It be my place and my will
to offer also
the choice of some other boon.

A stout companion, perhaps?"[/i][/color]

Toun's clay brow contracted. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"I must have misheard your verse for the sake of tumescing its syllables, Aihtiraq. I had asked you to speak wisely, yet you offer a god of creation a boon he makes for himself every day."[/b][/colour] Growing annoyance laced his mockery. He cast one hand out to the side. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Have you offered the god of shadow a parasol? Or the god of the cosmos a candle? My interest is what you witnessed."[/b][/colour]

[color=goldenrod][i]"I offer none any more
than one simple wish.
If seeing a brother's fate

be your wish, then so be it."[/i][/color]

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"You have proven yourself of no value to me but that."[/b][/colour] Toun confirmed. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Speak it."[/b][/colour]

If the djinni spoke, he did so without making a sound. His voice washed over the world like a lapping wave washes over a pebble on the seashore, and then in an instant there was a blinding golden light. Cornerstone's distant porcelain walls collapsed into powder as if suddenly turned to sand, and then the entire world similarly sieved away.

And then it built itself up again, and Aihtiraq's memory of Kyre's fall was relived in all its gory detail. There too were Aihtiraq's thoughts, saturating the air in a way that was invisible and yet overbearing all at once.

He thought in strange ways and with few linear concepts; past, future, and present had no distinction. Amongst that muddled heap of thoughts, dreams, and hopes were glimpses of Aihtiraq's nature: As he always professed, he truly wanted nothing more than to offer generosity to those in such need.

Yet there was also some recognition of Kyre's killer. Aihtiraq's eyes had pierced through the veil of that god's dark shroud and seen what was inside. Toun recognized a familiar face, too.

Though the memories were scattered into jumbled dimensions like so many tangles of yarn, Toun spread his hands and grabbed them. They froze. In the silence, one image stood. Again and again. The killer. The mote of unending power he wielded. Toun's voice whispered into it.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"He has returned."[/b][/colour]

The long white fingers that held the image together shivered.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"And as what?"[/b][/colour]

[color=00FF7F]"You will know me by three words: your [b]oblivion[/b], this world's [b]ruination[/b], and [b]retribution[/b]."[/color]

Toun's fingers curled.

[color=00FF7F]"Your [b]oblivion[/b].[/color]

His skin ground in his fists.

[color=00FF7F]"This world's [b]ruination[/b], and [b]retribution[/b]."[/color]

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Not you."[/b][/colour]

[color=00FF7F]"[b]Ruination[/b]"[/color]

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Murderer,"[/b][/colour] he growled.

[color=00FF7F]"[b]Retribution[/b]."[/color]

It did not make sense.

[color=00FF7F]"[b]Oblivion[/b]."[/color]

Kyre died again.

Toun's quaking fists sank to his sides. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Aihtiraq. What twist of nature abominated your sire so? What has Zephyrion turned into?"[/b][/colour]

Distortions appeared like desert mirages; they were the threads of other memories that came rushing in upon hearing Toun's words. But Aihtiraq did not speak these memories to life, instead he began to tug them back and tried to stow them away. Those threads were strange indeed, a different color, as if they were memories of another or otherwise distorted by some strange lenses. It was a tempting fruit. A deafening voice resonated through the entire plane of Aihtiraq's mind.

[color=goldenrod][b][i]"Here I can sense your heart's thoughts.
Do not grasp those threads
I warn and beg; they bring pain.

Zephyrion is dead."[/i][/b][/color]

Shaking his eyes aimlessly in the vision, Toun's smoothed face twisted and twitched. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Dead!? He was away from Galbar! Whose hand ended him!? Show me! Was he reborn into this murderous shadow!?!"[/b][/colour] Toun's rant shot out in any direction he could level it. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"If pain is the price of knowing, I have more than enough to pay it, elemental!"[/b][/colour]

Toun's grasping fingers met with those strands of memory that Aihtiraq had been trying so hard to banish from his mind and push away. There was some resistance; the djinni didn't immediately acquiesce, but neither was there an epic struggle. He only offered enough resistance to force Toun to struggle for a moment and think, and then the djinni lord's kindness got the best of him once again. He could only cringe in anticipation as he released the memory and allowed Toun to dive into them, knowing that the Porcelain Sire could never be prepared for what would come.

[center][h3]. . .[/h3][/center]

Everything was crumbling. There was nowhere to turn back, and every fork in the path only led to a wall of ravenous fire that rushed ever forward. There was no more road to walk, no place in Chronos to flee; the overwhelming power released by a titanic clash of gods was intermingled with the sense of oblivion that came with all of Chronos being destroyed.

But of course, there was one means of escape. It was desperate, but then again there were no alternatives. That made the decision easy.

He summoned a gargantuan mass of energy. It was writhing, fluctuating, raw chaotic power; very potent and more than capable of helping this world tear itself asunder. He flung it all at one point and blasted a hole wide enough to drag an entire world through. And then he did just that, stretching himself thin enough to encompass that planet that had been his pride and painstaking creation over the past eons. With the planet inside his bowel, he dove straight into that abyss of his own making.

And not even he could expect the pure agony and horror of what would come next. He fell into that plane called the Mechanism of Change and was at once assailed by tides of change and chaos that defied all reason and logic. Amongst the chaos were traces of patterns that could only barely be seen, and this was through the eyes of he--the lord of change, the one that created this place!--and even knowing of this place and its unlimited and unstoppable tides of power was not enough to prepare him for the experience of weathering its receiving end.

The realm of his own power, the primordial change that was his very essence, tore at and devoured him. It cloyed at his every facet in some attempt to dissolve and incorporate him into the soupy, unthinking, unfeeling mass of energy. It came close to succeeding, but through sheer force of will he perservered. 

It was drowning in his own blood. Whilst being grated and stretched. In that trying time he could only meditate. He tried to find strength from within. Pieces of him were torn loose, naturally. His joy and kindness and creative forces that were torn free, but reliving this was different from all the other sensations. Rather than feeling those things come loose as a man might witness his severed limb torn from its socket, he was trapped [i]inside[/i] of those pieces falling free. He was those pieces, small and inconsequential as they might have been. And as he drifted away, too weak to scream, he lost sight of Zephyrion as that god was swept along in the hellish plane. Time stretched, on and on...

Those memories of Aihtiraq's creation continued. In time, he coalesced into something greater than a few mere pieces of another being, and then he became a god in his own right rather than some flawed copy of Zephyrion. But eons of agony preceded that coming, and it was not for many more eons than Aihtiraq finally embraced the fires and became one with chaos. Then his existence in the Mechanism had been lonely, but bearable. And then there had finally been another one that appeared as if by destiny; the Vizier Ventus, who opened the doorway that allowed Aihtiraq to burst free...

But alas, Toun did not witness all of that. It would have taken far too long and been far too much for his mind to bear, so Aihtiraq reluctantly seized the thread and ended the visions. The visions and the pain and the foreign memories all slowly faded, and then there was black, and then there was half white below and half blue above. The white of porcelain tiles under the sky. They were back in Cornerstone.

[color=goldenrod][i]"You did not heed my warning,
and yet I hope that
those visions were still of use.

Do you understand him now?"[/i][/color]

Toun had his eye cast to the ground. Wide, panicked. What Aihtiraq shared suggested that no other words were reaching him.

But they did. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"That fool..."[/b][/colour] Toun scrunched his eye shut. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"That [i]FOOL![/i]"[/b][/colour] The word echoed off into the expansive fortress. They returned. [i]Fool...fool...fool...[/i]

Toun's chest rose and fell with the frantic effort to belie whatever debt of suffering he accrued with pure anger. His jaw opened and a mouth sucked into shape in his featureless face, lined with gleaming triangular teeth. His fingers grew and sharpened. They curled and uncurled, quivering.

Toun screamed. It started low and rose as his jaw opened wider and wider. His head bent back as it went. The djinn in the sky stilled at the sound.

Lung capacity was not a limitation for gods, yet Toun's shout tapered to an end by the tail of the minute. His mouth grew over again. His claws shrunk.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"I understand now, Aihtiraq,"[/b][/colour] he mumbled in a ragged, fuming voice. His head and arms slumped. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"And I understand you. Zephyrion was never a friend of mine, but he was a brother all the same. As was Kyre. Their fates are a failure of this family to protect itself. I shall see that this shard of him, this...dark murderer, is stopped before he can find another victim."[/b][/colour]

[color=goldenrod][i]"I bid you spread tale of this,
but also remember
the gift of mercy. Learn from

the dawn's beautiful flower
that blooms then is crushed
but sheds its sweet scent the same.

We should all imitate it."[/i][/color]

Toun's eye rose, exhausted, to meet Aihtiraq's shifting form. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"This is not the first time murder has met the family, Aihtiraq. Have you seen the ruin of Chronos yourself?"[/b][/colour]

[color=goldenrod][i]"Wherever sky brushes ground
and Change reigns strongly,
Aihtiraq goes and has been.

You've seen only one facet."[/i][/color]

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"I care not. You saw it. Thus, you have no grounds to doubt my intentions."[/b][/colour]

[hr]
The battering winds of high altitude sang a contrasting song to the soft clouds they hosted. Ears assaulted in such environments would strain to hear the mechanical buzz that struggled through it all. A tiny white bird, tireless yet ever stymied, oscillated its wings ever onward towards the looming stone in front of it. The splayed towers were akin to a great masoned aloe plant, growing from the floating cloud at its base.

The winds threw the bird around. Guardian zephyrs on patrol. The bird flipped and readjusted, righting its course. They did not care about the anomalous wildlife up so high. Finally, so close to a balcony, the winds stabilised and it swooped indoors.

The droningbird went by unnoticed, whether the halls were empty or occupied. It found a perch and hopped around, head tilting and twitching to observe all. The eyes brightened blue.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]Just what games do mice play when the cat is dead?[/b][/colour]

A skittering set of mechanical paws thundered around a corner and shot by. The blur was a clockwork canine. It lowered its haunches and slid to a stop by the balcony. It barked. It kept barking.

A dark shroud over the windows signalled a new predator approaching before such Toun's question could be answered.

[hider=Aihtiraq Reveals All]
After witnessing Kyre's demise at the hands of Xos, Aihtiraq makes his way to Toun. His reasoning isn't explained, but Toun isn't the hardest god to find.

Toun, not knowing Aihtiraq's nature, mistakes him for an elemental and stares him down, telling him that he probably should step off his lawn.

Aihtiraq immediately busts out a verse offering information on Kyre's death.

Toun says, "Spit it, hombre."

Aihtiraq, being the wishcrafter he is, says that Toun could get something else from him if he wants. So he could either accept the information as his wish, or something else, like a puppy.

Toun completely doesn't understand Aihtiraq's style, so he gets a bit miffed about the diversion. He can make as many puppies as he likes at the blink of an eye anyway.

Aihtiraq's like, "You sure? Shit's cute, mang."

Toun replies, "You're worthless to me except in giving me that info. I said spit it, pendejo."

Aihtiraq obliges by conveying the entire scene in some kind of psychic mindscape that played out Kyre's death.

Toun recognises Xos as a derivation of Zephyrion. He freaks and asks Aihtiraq what the hell happened to him.

[colour=goldenrod][i]"Eeeeeh, it's a bit freaky, you don't want to see that. He's basically dead."[/i][/colour]

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Show me, cabron."[/b][/colour]

[colour=goldenrod][i]"'Aight."[/i][/colour] *throws up hands*

Toun proceeds to witness the memory of Zephyrion jump headfirst into the Mechanism of Change and get Rasputin'd to shreds. The memories diverge when pieces of Zephyrion are torn off. They eventually form Aihtiraq, who was trapped floating around in the awful maelstrom of magic and energy until Ventus later released him by accident. As a side note, Aihtiraq growing up inside of a catacylsmic magical storm is probably why he's a little bit funny in the head.

Toun doesn't see the full extent of these memories as Aihtiraq pulls him free before the tortuous experience can inflict damage on Toun's sanity, but the implication of the memories was that Xos likely formed in a similar manner to how Aihtiraq came to be.

The memory ends. Toun has a mini-tantrum to take his mind off the fact that he literally saw his brother torn to shreds in a realm of relentless entropy. He tells Aihtiraq that he's going to find Xos and deal with him before he can kill anyone else (not specifying that he only meant killing any gods, but Toun's priorities can cause miscommunication every now and then).

Aihtiraq suggests mercy.

Toun's like [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Bitch, I invented mercy for gods. Didn't you see my god-mercy stone I grew outside of Chronos?"[/b][/colour]

End scene.

A little extra bit describes Toun deploying a droningbird in the Celestial Citadel. Seeing as Ventus pulled Aihtiraq out of the gem, there might be more interesting stuff happening up there. It reaches the castle just as Xos comes to fuck shit up.

Mutton reminds everyone of the existence of Clockdog from way back in the craftsmaidens posts. Someone please save the little guy.

[hider=Might Usage]
[b]BEFORE:[/b] Zephyrean Pantheon - L6 - 0 MP - 3 FP

-1 FP for Aihtiraq to show visions of his memories

[b]AFTER:[/b] Zephyrean Pantheon - L6 - 0 MP - 2 FP
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