[centre][img]http://i.imgur.com/Svvasvb.png[/img]
[i]Before Teknall reconstructed his citadel, terrestrial.[/i][/centre]

Teknall could keep his excitement. The Tomb Weaver's use would wait. Even past Logos' new armour, even past an inescapable trap, the dark creature could do something unforeseen.

Toun needed a plan.

With eyes closed and the arm-length needle in one fist, Toun ran a clay finger along its length. It rang out with a clear, haunting note.

Toun did not know the creature's name. Only what the golden elemental had shown him. It had most likely been rent from its original body as Aihtiraq had. In that vision where the only constant was change. It was a piece of Zephyrion, for it carried his essence.

He shifted his grip. Running a finger along the metal gave a different note. He tried another note. And another. He repeated the same four notes over and again.

For all the clarity of the vision he was given, Toun knew little else with any useful certainty. It was a divine being. It was, on appearance, weaker than him. Except when it brought forth that pearl of burning entropy. That weapon must be avoided.

The notes of the needle took on a music Toun had only heard once in a dream. A dream about a dancer in white. The comfort of it was no matter.

There was no telling whether the weapon would be trapped with the dark creature. Securing it from any other deity would prevent more blood being spread upon it. It was guesswork. Toun did not enjoy being restricted to so much speculation.

[i]The chase occurred once more with the same music. Danger rang in Toun's mind. The dancer in white would not be stained, yet his efforts were for nothing. She dodged, she jumped. He could not hold her. His focus drew him away from minding his own feet. They were caught in the reaching fleshy arms below and bitten painfully in a razor-toothed maw. His body cracked in maroon flaws strengthened by shifting lights.

Toun shouted up to the dancer in white.[/i] [b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"Who are you!?"[/colour][/b]

[i]The dancer's mouth opened. She mouthed silent words.

You knew.[/i]

The rhythmic industry of Cornerstone brought him back to the present. His fingers halted the needle's music.

Toun's blue eye snapped awake. He viewed the working hain around him.

Toun inspected the gem on the needle's end. He then looked ahead, and he stepped across Galbar. The hunt was underway.

[hr]
The first step was to find the site of Kyre's death. Toun knew the stench of dead gods all too well by now. Yet Kyre's essence was deliberately scattered. To where or for what purpose was not clear. Toun's anger suggested it was a deliberate attempt to hide, though the cunning of the dark creature could not be confirmed.

A few steps to triangulate found another clue entirely.

In the snowy northern reaches of the jungle tree, Toun's skin and robe made the snow look blemished. Around were black-barked trees sticking up like hairs on a colossal cotton spider. Toun strode in wide, deliberate steps, gliding through drifts that would have a human struggling at their knees.

The presence was here. He could smell the smoke.

A flicker of blue against the bark drew Toun's eye.

There.

Just as the flame hid away, Toun cast his arm forward. The Tomb Weaver flew in a blink with a bright thread behind it. It exploded through the tree trunk and swerved back. It turned and blasted through another tree. One more burst of wood splinters through another tree and the needle halted in Toun's extended fist.

[b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"You think you can elude your great uncle, elemental?"[/colour][/b]

The shining threads connecting the shattered trees flickered with blue, before bursting into bright yellow flame. Toun abruptly pulled Tomb Weaver back. The flaming threads contracted into a single flume of orange power that coalesced into a struggling humanoid form. The great flame's arms and legs were bound by the thread of the needle.

Toun extended his free hand and let the djinni's throat dock between his thumb and finger. It thrashed and burned, melting snow and painting the white and black in waves of yellow. It saw its own flames reflected in Toun's featureless porcelain skin, and yet an angered blue glowered from the god's eye socket. That eye burned brighter than he.

[b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"A fire does not smoulder in ice but for fear of a force greater than water, earth, and air combined!"[/colour][/b] Toun accused. [b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"You saw it, did you not!?"[/colour][/b] He shook the throttled flame in the air. [b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"SPEAK!"[/colour][/b]

The word boomed with a power that wracked the djinni's mind. Its struggles fell limp.

The flame giggled. The titter grew into uncontrolled gallows laughter.

[i]"You ask but alas! I am at a loss
You took me from ross with an almighty poss
But not snow and not wood and not stone and not moss
Could move [/i]him[i] if he had but a handle-like boss!"[/i]

[b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"Did the dark creature speak to you? Answer me clearly or I shall feed you to the flickers!"[/colour][/b]

The demand fell on maniacal deafness.

[i]"The sphere in his woss, he hides with his doss
and in fire and power, he makes gods into dross!"[/i]

Toun squeezed his fingers to silence the djinni. [b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"Enough nonsense! Where is it!? What is it?"[/colour][/b]

[i]"A slayer of swoss and viziers and tross
and bricks and clouds and winds and frost!
Chaos will cross the lands and the stoss
and this and the thoss and stars up abo'ss!"[/i]

[b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"Bricks and clouds and winds?"[/colour][/b] Toun murmured angrily. [b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"He is still at the Citadel..."[/colour][/b]

[i]"Flickers will call his great noss in the hoss
for the coss and the quoss he is Xôs, he is Xôs!
DIE ON YOUR SLOSS! HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-XÔS!
HE-IS-XÔS! FOR WOSS TO UNFLOSS ON THE JOSS!

HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-XÔS!
HE-IS-ÔS! HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-!...ock..."[/i] Its face bulged.

Toun's hand closed into a fist around the djinni's throat. A crackle and choke and it was extinguished in a flash and a rush of displaced air. Where his body was, small motes of light fell like luminescent snowflakes. They floated into the ground.

[b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"Annoying creature..."[/colour][/b]

Toun took a step. The jungle tree was quiet again.

[hr]
All the other hiding djinn Toun found were similarly maddened. Their verses were all tainted by meaningless sounds, bearing no further information than the wildfire in the snowy forest.

[i]"The matter, of course, makes the clay one go hoarse
to speak and live up to the name -- he is Xōs!"[/i]

And elsewhere...

[i]"Close is the most and the wildest of coasts!
His mind, his tide, makes you blind -- he is Xós!"[/i]

The fourth djinni neck Toun crushed was the last he would suffer in his investigation. It had borrowed the accent of the local humans who spoke their language with the full length of their mouths:

[i]"The end of the term begins with the worst
of your portents and verse -- that name! He is Xøs!"[/i]

Every single one repeated the last three words over and over until they were killed. The image imprinted on their mind, Toun found, was not one a djinni could fathom. It was defined more by its voids than its substance. And in those voids, there was an unease and horror that shattered their sanity.

It was a piece of their god. But a parent missing an arm and half its chest and head is no longer the comforting protector and guide. It is an abomination to the eyes.

[b][i][colour=PaleGoldenrod]He is Xos, he is Xos,[/colour][/i][/b] Toun repeated to himself. [b][i][colour=PaleGoldenrod]Murderer, your name is known to me now.[/colour][/i][/b] 

[hr]
With nothing else for it, Toun used his full capabilities to approach the ruined Celestial Citadel with caution. He understood this universe in its causes and effects to observe from a distance beyond mortal senses. And beyond Xos'.

Some spires floated on threads of clouds. Most had plummeted to the ground. A great cannibalistic feast of unseen flickers took what scraps they could, for many elementals were torn asunder. There were traces of trails left by gods. But no divine being was amongst the ruins.

Toun looked further. He scanned every meticulous detail he could from a distance. Only a most powerful being could hide from his eye.

Still nothing.

There were two trails most recently made. One was wrought with undoing. The other was chaotic in a more familiar manner.

Toun scrunched up the bridge of his porcelain face. [b][colour=PaleGoldenrod]"What is the meaning of this?"[/colour][/b]

Whether or not Xos was to return to the citadel ruins, he was not here now. Toun needed to investigate. He took a step into the still-settling dust and he was there in a blink.

Toun's suspicions were confirmed. The familiar trail belonged to Vestec. He followed their unseen marks through reality; both trails were twined in a melee. Toun's eye scanned up and around. He walked a gliding walk to follow them.

Vestec's trail stopped but for a tiny leap through space. The entropic trail scattered, determined not to be followed by many time-wasting false paths. Xos' next move was less of a concern to Toun than the glimmer on the ground beneath him.

He knelt down and waved away the dust. A puddle of deep, multihued ichor lay drying in the gravel. Toun extended a long finger, ending its taper in a tiny curl, and picked a sample of the ooze from the ground. He squinted his eye.

They had fought. Vestec was wounded.

Toun peered off in the direction of Vestec's escape. A sibling had beheld Xos and lived. His mind would gather more than a broken djinni.

Toun's turning feet crunched on the gravel as he stood. He flicked the divine blood off his finger.

[b][i][colour=PaleGoldenrod]Vestec,[/colour][/i][/b] Toun called out cordially with his mind. His words reached his brother over time and distance similar to how Vestec had done before to him. [b][i][colour=PaleGoldenrod]We must have words. Expect me.[/colour][/i][/b]

[hider=Mutton helps US readers to pronounce Norwegian words incorrectly]
[b][i]*DIACRITICS!*[/i][/b] Some accents may make them not work in their verses. I apologise.

Toun ruminates over Xos and how to engage him. He realises that he knows less than he would like and needs to investigate further.

Between his ruminations, he plays the Tomb Weaver needle like a [s]phallic symbol[/s] violin to the tune of the phantasmagoria trip-out song. This makes him flash back to the memories in a different way, leaving a cryptic clue as to what exactly was going on there. More on that in a future post.

Anyway, Toun stops and goes to sleuth out some more knowledge on Xos.

At first, Toun is frustrated by Xos' attempts to cover his tracks. He does not know whether this is deliberate or not, but he is biased towards yes because he's a vindictive arsehole.

Instead of Xos himself, Toun comes across a number of djinn actively trying to hide in environments anathema to their makeup. Toun interrogates them and finds that they have gone so bonkers that their verses have devolved into nonsense poems about a great and terrible creature with some manner of 'Xos'-like names. Now he doesn't have to refer to Xos with variations of [i]that dastardly murdering sumbitch[/i] anymore.

Toun reads the djinn's minds and discovers that Xos is not something they can fathom as elementals, so they're traumatised to hell and back at seeing his power. Toun kills them out of [s]mercy[/s] annoyance.

One of the few clues Toun did deduce from the minds of the mad djinn was that Xos was probably still hanging around the ruins of the Celestial Citadel. Toun had observed its downfall from one of his droningbirds, but the feed cut out pretty early and he assumed that Xos would have skipped town soon after his demolition party ended.

So Toun heads to the ruins. Or, more specifically, stakes out the ruins from a distant panel van with a box of doughnuts. With his level bonuses to perception, he checks it out from a distance first. He doesn't detect Xos, but he does detect two recent divine trails.

He hazards getting a closer look. One of them is Vestec's. Xos and Vestec must have had a scuffle. Toun goes and finds a pool of Vestec's blood.

With as much patience as he could muster, Toun calls out to Vestec that he'll be coming to have a chat with the gigglemeister about the disagreement he recently had.

[i]No might used.[/i]
[/hider]