[center][h3]Burning Winds[/h3]


Shadow boi
J-gurl

[/center]

On a well-placed pedestal of the Celestial Citadel, revolving smoothly in its bowl of water, an ancient lens reclined and focused on the chaos.

Winds had whirled, and they had whirled long before. What business had this, this pretty but blasphemous trinket, standing in so esteemed a position on the towers commissioned by the Father? Motions had been made to remove it long ago, but Zephyrion's will, forgotten as it had been, was yet respected.

Now... There were other pains on the horizon.

The stream of Change blew through the foundations of the Citadel, and was recorded as a fantastic sound, a terrible noise and light that sparked across its field of view. Altitude shifted, and the old winds died. The planet's first and finest monument began to fall.

Jvan watched bricks cascade like rain, and a shadow flicking away in the last moment before the eye was crushed by stone.

[colour=9e0b0f][i]I see you.[/i][/colour]

And It had seen her, too.

[hr]

[color=khaki]"What depraved mockery is this? You would summon me to the ruin of the place that I was sworn to protect and where you annihilated my peers, and for the mere purpose of talking?"[/color]
 
[color=00FF7F]"Do you doubt my intentions? Were it my desire to destroy you rather than to speak, you would already be nothing but a dying echo on the wind. But I think that you know that, and that is why you came. In answering my summons, you've already proven yourself wiser than your so-called peers."[/color]

The oscillations froze, and for a moment there was silence. Then they resumed and the djinni lord sharply intoned, [color=khaki]"Why did you kill them?"[/color]

The shade seemed to shrug. [color=00FF7F]"I came for the Vizier. They posed as obstacles in my way, and were dealt with accordingly. I do not tolerate defiance."[/color]

[color=khaki]"And why did you kill [i]him[/i]?"[/color]

[color=00FF7F]"The insufferable fool was far too much like my brother: ever passive, tolerant, compromising, [b]weak[/b]. Look at the calamity that has befallen this House under his watch. Vestec was permitted to taint hundreds of spiryts, and remnants of the so-called 'storm djinn' survive yet in that blasted plain below us. Meanwhile, Jvan works similar corruption but on a far grander scale. Those abominable beasts that devour flickers are a direct insult to your life and to my rule, and they shall be eradicated.

What truly sealed Ventus' grave was his own arrogance and avarice. For all his failings I would have him deposed; but as he sought to steal divine power and channel it in this very sanctum, he deserved to die."[/color]

The djinni lord contemplated those words carefully. The god seemed to grow more impatient with every passing moment and question, so the djinni finally spoke again. [color=khaki]"All sensible, then. The Vizier was indeed far too passive. So...you called yourself my father's brother? You are my uncle?"[/color]

Xos looked closer at the elemental and regarded it in a new, strange way. [color=00FF7F]"Indeed. And as I am here in my brother's stead, I stand as Lord of this House. So swear your fealty, [i]Murmur[/i]. And then bring the others; they too must submit to my authority. Only then may our work begin."[/color]

[color=khaki]"I offer fealty before thee and unto thee, my Lord,"[/color] Murmur swore without a second thought. Xos was the ruler that Murmur had longed for; at last, there was one who understood and would support his sacred calling rather than grimace at it. [color=khaki]"And as it be your wish, so it is my command. I shall summon the Conclave of Winds and send word to the other Scions, too."[/color]

[color=00FF7F]"Good. A Vizier knows himself, and knows what he must do. You shall be my hand."[/color]

Xos turned back to the reflective glass. It had been damaged in their battle, but it still functioned to some extent. As Murmur left, the shade gazed into the depths of the True Mirror and observed the machinations of his scattered enemies.

[hr]

There was a faint rustling as the shaman pushed through the opening of a felt tent.

He stepped inside, then leaned on his walking stick and cocked a head to look at his son. "So your moulting seems nearly done."

The bored youth at once became alive, animated like a leaf swept up by the wind. "Yes," he answered instantly, the eagerness filling his body and almost making him shout. "And I have studied the rituals, prepared my offering, and memorized the incantations, too. I am ready."

The shaman grasped the small wood carving that his son had made, examining its every feature. It bore the likeness of a giant, every detail whittled near immaculately. Satisfied, he handed the offering back.

Then he looked at his son's shell with an even more scutinizing eye as he searched for any marks that remained of the Second Hatching. "Are you sure? To appear before the djinn with so much as a single marking upon you would be doubtless be taken as an affront; it would bode poorly for the entire village. Perhaps we should wait longer, just to be sure. Remember Barak, you will be the youngest one that we have ever allowed to become a shaman."

"I've waited long enough! Do your eyes fail you? My shell has no marks. They will not mistake me for a monster."

There was a long, silent pause as the two regarded one another. At last, Barak's father relented. "Then we shall leave this morning. Gather your things, for we shall be gone for several days."

Barak immediately grabbed a pack that he had prepared months prior. Without another minute's pause, they left the tent together, waited for the other village shamans to gather and join their party, and then set out for the mountains.

[hr]

[i]"You have sworn fealty to the monster that slayed Ventus? He was our Vizier! He was our eldest brother! It was he who raised you so high!"[/i]

There was a sharp crack analogous to a derisive snort. [color=khaki]"His hand was ever too slow and cautious; he would have led us to ruin, so it is best that another rule now. And I do not stand alone at the new master's side; know that Lord Anshal has already pledged the winds of the West to our cause, and Boreas the Northerly. Only the two of you remain. Would you turn upon your own brethren and divide the Conclave?"[/color]

Komnestos did not take kindly to such insinuations. [b]"You dare speak of betrayal? You conspire with an enemy of our great Father, the murderer of his first son!"[/b] 

[color=khaki]"He is our Father's own brother, and a true brother at that--not one of the other mongrels that deign to think themselves of equal divinity to Zephyrion. And he understands our purpose better than Ventus ever could. Under his direction, we will eradicate the abominations that Jvan created to hunt our kind. And then we will do together what I could not do alone, and finish purging the lesser Jvanic filth. Then we will perhaps cull the wretched mortals, to restore their humility and leave less hosts for Jvan's corruptive taint. For too long have we sat idly whilst our power declined."[/color]

[i]"Cull the mortals? How can you speak such evil? Murmur, that crusade of yours...it was one thing, but you have allowed it to consume you. How long has it been since you have accompanied my monsoons? Do you not remember why you create thunder--to warn these 'wretched' mortals that they may take shelter? Why would you strike the ones who give you purpose, who you prote-"[/i]

Notus' words fell upon deaf ears and she was cut short.

[color=khaki]"My thunder does not come as a greeting, or some benevolent suggestion that they may take shelter. It comes as a terrible declaration: witness our great power, and worship us or die. But in the end it was only hubris; I see now that there are far more important things to occupy my time, like the continued hunting of abhorrent sculptors. Your southern winds will blow without my presence, and your monsoons will rain without my thunder. May they wash away entire villages of unprepared, irreverent mortals!"[/color]

[i]"You are blinded. Such hatred is the wind that carries blights rather than warmth or rain."[/i]

[color=khaki]"It is you who is [i]blighted[/i] in thought; truth bends as easily as any other instrument. Know thyself: we are the sacred instruments of chaos--Change incarnate. Your desire to protect these mortals reeks of order and the corruptive influence of the lesser gods."[/color]

[i]"You are lost; but not I! I shall never submit to the likes of your dark master."[/i]

Another sharp crack of thunder punctuated Murmur's dismissal. [color=khaki]"Then we are done treating; when next we meet, I suspect it shall be as enemies on the field. Komnestos, I bid you think carefully on your next move. She drags you into a proposition in which there shall be no winning."[/color]

[i]"You dare turn away now? You disrespect your betters; do you think we will allow you to simply leave?"[/i]

[color=khaki]"Together, the two of you could not stop me. An empty threat and a shell of lies to protect your delusion--both ring hollow, Notus."[/color]

And then the emissary of Xos departed at the speed of sound.

There was a long silence upon the lonely summit as the two djinn brooded.

[b]"Though poorly spoken, he is not without a point. To divide the Conclave is folly. We stand with everything to lose; if his master truly defeated the entire Zephyrean Skywatch singlehandedly, what is our defiance but the biting of insects?"[/b]

[i]"Our defiance is everything! If the djinni lords of the Southerly and Easterly winds do not rise up, then who shall? If Murmur's master was truly so powerful we would already have been slain.

He lied about Boreas, for (as you know!) our brother has pledged to avenge Ventus and that stubborn brute has never been one to kneel. Perhaps he lies about Anshal, too."[/i]

[b]"I  think that he speaks the truth of Anshal. He is West, and I am East; we know one another well, and you know that our every step is done in lockstep dance around the other. But as of these past days, Anshal and his hosts have been moving most strangely. I have suspected something amiss."[/b]

[i]"You must speak with him, then; I beg of you! As in for I, Duke Salis is no stranger. I shall go to plead with the sealords, and perhaps water will stand with us."[/i]

Even in dark times, Notus had a way of making Komnestos bloom. Radiating something akin to a smile, he agreed.

[hr]

At the river's source in the mountains there was an idyllic, albeit unimpressive sight. From a great wall of stone ran a thousand tiny trickles, landing on in puddles below and slowly snaking together into the makings of a stream. There was no grand palace, and indeed there were no djinn in sight.

At least not in the sight of eyes; in reality they were everywhere. From his training, Barak knew the signs. The telltale signs of invisible hands were everywhere here; the air practically pulsated with the heartbeat of Flickers. The djinn had simply not yet chosen to appear.

Those that had come to seek counsel or blessing from the riverlord stepped forth and laid their offerings by the weeping wall, then sat upon the damp ground in patient meditation. With the music of a thousand birdsongs and the sound of the waters, time seemed to freeze.

After some time, damp spots began to appear on the ground. Watery forms slowly clambered out from the dirt, and in other places the puddles seemed to stand. All the djinn turned to face their lord and the shamans.

Old Fountainhead seemed to manifest as if from nothing; the very damp upon the rocks and the moisture in the misty air coalesced into a bubbling geyster of a figure five hain tall.

Fountainhead  extended a long arm and waved a spindly finger over their heads. Small  droplets of purifying, pristine, and refreshing water fell down upon their beaks.

The seated assembly of shamans rose before him, and then he [i]spoke.[/i]

Barak could not discern the meaning behind the waterlord's words, though he concentrated hard upon every flowing syllable. Spoken by an actual spiryt, it all sounded so different from how the shamans had taught him. There were some things that study simply could not teach, and this was his first time ever seeing a djinni lord, let alone trying to listen to one.

But then Fountainhead's lengthy reception was over.

The waterlord began to examine their offerings one by one, speaking with the individual elder shamans. Though Fountainhead's dialect was impossible for Barak to understand, he understood small parts of what the shamans said in response; from their words and their mannerism it was almost as if that this ritual was like a meeting between old friends, or perhaps more like a meeting between child and grandfather.

In any case, the proceeding stretched on for hours. Years trickled by for djinn like the water dripped down the mountain, so meetings were bound to be lethargic. But eventually all things must end.

Fountainhead nodded to the assembly, and then his watery form came undone and seeped back into the damp ground. The shamans turned and began to leave, still under the watchful eye of Fountainhead's servants. But one by one, they too retreated back into the earth or reverted to innocuous puddles.

"What did you think?"

Barak tilted his head to level that side's eye with that of his father. He entertained notions of lying for fear of shielding himself from disappointment, but the truth poured out. "It was as though all my study was for nothing. I could barely understand a word."

To Barak's surprise, his father simply nodded. "That language was not made made for Hain. The lords of water, storm, stone, and cinder all carry a timbre of their own. We can only ever speak with a crude approximation of the true sounds, and there are some words with meanings that mortal minds cannot conceptualize. It was a long time before I could understand Fountainhead, for his words run as swift as the rivers and yet carry unspoken meaning as deep as wells. He tries to speak to us in a way that we may understand, but our minds can only glean so much of his wisdom."

For a response, Barak could only look to the ground in thought.

"You will have an easier time with the stonelords. By the standards of the other elements, their speech is neither quick nor poetic."

After that experience there was a sense of humility and awe about their group; they walked on in contemplative silence. Barak had recollections of all the stories of Fountainhead told to him as a hatchling. Fountainhead was old, some said older than the hills; the river god was certainly older than their village. On one days long past he had appeared from the riverside by their village and spoken to the curious people there. There were other stories of occasional visits that came after that, but for the most part the Hain now sought out Fountainhead rather than the other way around. Fountainhead rarely frequented his domain downstream, leaving it under the watchful eye of his quarrelsome servants. It seemed as if there was a master of each bend of the river and that such stations changed with the moons.

In light of all that, Barak had expected Fountainhead to be...different. The chieftains of Hain and Rovaick alike could be petty and consumed by hubris, and so he had come to expect the same of a djinni lord. He had imagined the river god to favor solitude because of pride, or disdain for mere mortals and their humble lands, yet Fountainhead had been neither overly prideful nor cruel nor living in luxury. It seemed more as though Fountainhead was reclusive because he had grown, and become wiser and more meditative in venerable age.

But memory and rumination eventually gave way to thought of the present. Erelong they were nearing the entrance of a great cave and another djinni lord's abode. Now Barak began to grow anxious, for it was this lord that he would present his offering to. His father and the others would be there to help him speak and all had assured him that there was no djinni kinder than Gorsik, but still, he was going to be speaking with a true giant! The thought was terrifying.

The 'cave' was no mere hole in a wall as Barak had expected; rather, it was like a small canyon. The cavity was gigantic, but then again Barak supposed that it would have to be if a giant stonelord was to fit through.

Even so great as the opening was, the sunlight that poured into the cavernous depths could only illuminate the first bend. They descended that far, and then along the wall was a collection of pine-pitch torches left by past groups of visiting shamans. One of the elders grabbed one of the torches and ignited it with the help of a small flamedjinn familiar, and then with him to lead the way they entered the black tunnels.

The torchlight reflected upon the faces of giant crystal clusters growing from the walls and veins of precious metals, just like it was reflected in their eyes. Eyes were watching from within the walls, of course. The stonedjinn were everywhere, though most were dormant.

And then they found themselves in a darkened chamber where the air was not so stifled. Barak could sense that they were upon some precipice before a great open expanse, but of this dark void there was nothing to be seen except for two soft glows in the distance.

There was a boom like thunder, and then another. [i]Footsteps.[/i]

The caverns shook as the glows came closer. They were two gargantuan ruby crystals, and each one gleamed without the reflection of the elder shaman's torch. A six-fingered granite boulder the size of a house came crashing down upon the ledge mere feet away as the stonelord began to hoist himself up and cast his form into the torchlight. Another hand appeared, this one a misshapen mass with three bent digits. A third arm gripped a stalactite above them, and still another limb was left to hang by Gorsik's side.

Shadows consumed the details of his hulking form and they saw but only his torso and head, but even so, his body was as alien as it was huge.

[center][img]https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-58COMgkRL1E/WZTZFs5pnsI/AAAAAAAATvM/RuzJDiM4JDYMojVLJy10tl38TP03jz29wCEwYBhgL/s1600/rock-giants.jpg[/img]

[i]Barak could only imagine what Gorsik might have looked like in his entirety.[/i][/center]

Shadows consumed the details of his hulking form and they saw but only his torso and head, but even so, his body was as alien as it was huge. His manner of speech proved to be something more familiar to the hain.

The colossal stonelord leaned in closer to the torchlight. [b][color=RosyBrown]"Welcome to my realm, little soft ones,"[/color][/b] the reverbations meant, so far as Barak could understand. He tapped a finger against the adamant stone of the ground, suddenly aware of just how thin and brittle his own exoskeleton was. They were all like fleas.

This time the youth found confidence and inspiration to join with the others in worship and praise of the lord, but before he could present his carved offering, there was a disruption.

Intrigue was plain for a moment upon Gorsik's chiseled face for a moment, and some irritation also at the poor timing of it, but he was plainly distracted by something. More tremors shook the cave as giants moved unseen in the dark.

[b][color=RosyBrown]"But it seems you are not the only visitors right now. I sense a Wind outside billowing for my tunnels with urgency."[/color][/b]

There was a whistle as an ethereal spiryt raced through the black tunnels. They could sense the being's Flicker and see its breath buffet the torch's flame, but beyond that there was no sign of the windjinn. It wasn't there to see them, so it took no effort to make itself visible.

Gorsik saw it though, and as he silently fixated on the empty space there was a glow of realization in his eyes. The windjinn was saying something to the stonelord, but the shamans were not privy to the elementals' telepathy with one another.

Barak though he could sense the vaporous body steal a glance at him, but then it was gone as soon as it had come.

[b][color=RosyBrown]"Much has changed. Go. You should return to your village."[/color][/b]

Gorsik himself clambered fully onto the ledge and began to make his way through the tunnels. The stone itself contorted to make way for its lord.

As in for the shamans, they dared not protest, fleeing through the tunnels while the earth heaved behind them and ahead. Gorsik's giant sons were following their father and the shamans through the tunnels. The cavern was suddenly like a gigantic ant mound, and it had awakened. All around djinn woke from long slumber and erupted from the walls.

In the chaos a rain of gravel and clumped earth fell onto Barak from overhead, and then there was a darkness blacker than the dim cave.

[i]It was all illuminated by the flash of lightning. Terrified screams rode along winds that howled even louder. The air itself choked on dust and gargantuan tunnels stretched from the ground to the highest peaks of heaven above, drinking the earth below and scattering trees, animals, villages, and Hain. Barak saw from above, as if he were a bird. A roaring djinni raced by right beside where he was suspended, but it did not buffet his wings.

Spectral birds only surrendered to ghostly winds.

Instead the djinni led a procession that dragged one of the great vortexes through the sky. Where that vortex met with the ground, Barak saw a small felt tent wrenched free from the stakes that held it into the soil.

The home of his childhood was scattered like chaff and lost forever.[/i]

[hr]

Carmine threads of hyphae wrapped their way around a slope of metal, torn a thousand times into shapes too jagged to be described. They clambered, grew, like vines, and stretched their tendrils up into the stars.

A swarm of moths ([i]like moths like fish like petals made of teeth[/i]) alighted from a Heartland sitting in the great pit. They caught the moonlit wind and burned away to nothing. Jvan reclined on her fleshen throne and watched the lives recycle.

Reality fizzed in patches, and she listened to her own breath. The breath flowed away and a thousand eyes blinked in glass. She picked up every voice that rang across Galbar. Again.

[colour=9e0b0f][i]Sounds the same: another storm is coming today.[/i][/colour]

She waited.

The storm rained down not from black clouds, but from a porcelain ruin that had seemingly appeared from nowhere. Like one of the Firewind's onyx phantoms, the shattered upper spire of the Celestial Citadel gleamed softly beneath the moonlight. It began to lurch closer, descending from its perch in the sky.

Jvan unfurled a long vine, a growth of deep red nerve. It thickened as it stretched, grew more roots and more branches, and wound around itself as it reached up to the spire.

Flailing tendrils caught the base of that structure, and anchored there. The two were bridged.

A darkened silhouette watched from a balcony atop the ruined heights. It stepped off the precipice and found purchase on nought but darkness. Perhaps it [i]was[/i] darkness.

But slowly it approached the ground, where seawater met a scarred pleateau of flesh. It came to land before the infestation in Galbar's surface that was Jvan.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Welcome to my world,"[/colour] said the old voice of the deep. [colour=9e0b0f]"Foreigner."[/colour]

[color=00FF7F]"Has ruination ever been foreign?"[/color]

The shade twisted to examine the creeping mass that grasped at the Celestial Citadel.  [color=00FF7F]"Release my fortress,"[/color] it demanded.

[colour=9e0b0f]"[i]Your[/i] fortress,"[/colour] Jvan echoed. [colour=9e0b0f]"As I recall, that palace belongs to Zephyrion, and also Teknall. And now, maybe, it will belong to me."[/colour] The creepers gave a tug, gentle only in that it was slow for its strength. The tower began to tilt towards her.

Xos breathed in her insolence and exhaled death and decay. A dark surge erupted from every edifice in his armor and swept towards the creepers. They withered and died.  [color=00FF7F]"I am the lord of that spire, and Teknall dares not grasp for it. Perhaps your clasp will find death."[/color]

Jvan laughed her ancient laugh. She was not disturbed. The deep fog flowed from her, and the shadow was joined with a sourceless light. [colour=9e0b0f]"Many have tried this, and many have failed. You will not succeed. I don't fear you, Foreigner."[/colour] 

The light in the fog grew blood-coloured, and formed shapes. [colour=9e0b0f]"Perhaps,"[/colour] she said, [colour=9e0b0f]"It is you who should fear me."[/colour]

Tortured echoes escaped from metal. Xos advanced. [color=00FF7F]"Empty bravery is but foolishness. Mine is a storm that has swept away gods before; you are but a hindrance. The blight that you have strewn about this world will be cleansed, and the djinn will serve me unimpeded. Whether you live or die depends on how well you beg."[/color]

[colour=9e0b0f]"Beg!"[/colour] more laughter, and this time it was mocking. The fog receded and left him a shadow upon a shadow. [colour=9e0b0f]"Beg! What am I, a dog? My [i]existence[/i] cages forces you would flee from! I've been cut in half by blades older than this universe! Time's claws found no purchase on me, and neither did Creation's! I fear not Hell, because I've become it. Enough of this!"[/colour]

The iron blazed, and Jvan opened a thousand eyes of scalding light. She illuminated the sea as a forge. [colour=9e0b0f][i]"Who are you?"[/i][/colour]

The shade's robes fluttered and fell back, exposing the armor beneath. His helmet melted and sloughed away like candlewax. Beneath it was a horrific apparition--Zephyrion's shadow. The mere sight of it burnt the eyes from mortals and drove them mad, but Jvan was not so easily blinded. Still, the aura of ruination about Xos grew tenfold with his helm no longer there to shield the world from his eternal wrath.

[color=00FF7F]"I am the one that will succeed where they failed, for all those others were but flies. Pathetic sparks before the roaring inferno to come; anemic, corrupted powers subservient to Chaos and Change.

But words are only wind!"[/color]

Deep within the god's black chest, the Primordial Spark erupted with power. It bled out and smothered the world in Xos' entropic aura, and for all that light the shadow grew only larger.

The eyes shrank away and melted before his glow. The iron before him shrieked and tore away, and in that tunnel there was only fog.

[colour=9e0b0f]"So you are Zephyrion, or the husk of him,"[/colour] said the voice within the cavern. They faced each other upon the water. [colour=9e0b0f]"Wise, wise, foolish brother of mine. I should have known his mistakes were leading somewhere dark."[/colour]

The shadow's maw gaped wide, exposing endless rows of jagged teeth.

Jvan turned, though she could not turn, and the plateau exhaled power. [colour=9e0b0f]"Tell me. Was it me, who brought his fall? I sensed him in Old Chronos, and thought he would escape. Was it the Other I brought down, that ruined him? Was I wrong, Foreigner?"[/colour]

In the smile and the silence, Jvan was left unanswered.

[color=00FF7F]"You dare speak that name?"[/color]

The air snapped as twin walls of force collided upon the shade. A line of spray shot up where they met.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Was I wrong, Foreigner? [i]Was I?[/i]"[/colour]

The shade was gone, alighted on a different wave in its calignous veil. Jvan's mind snapped at it as if a whip. He disappeared before its lash.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Did I kill Zephyrion? Are you still my brother?"[/colour]

Xos appeared in armour once more and Jvan's gaze swept the water away from him, seared away the air, left him in a speartip ball of sharpened gravity. All around were hooks and knives.

[colour=9e0b0f][i]"WHO ARE YOU?"[/i][/colour]

Barbs fell upon armor and broke, and longer spines sank in. A black ichor of sorts seeped out and dissolved all, and with every puncture the shade's aura grew more potent and his laughter more deafening.

[color=00FF7F]"You've already said it,"[/color] he finally hissed.

With an explosive force he wrenched free of Jvan's grasp. Digging a hand into his own shadowy flesh, he dug free a light so bright that it illuminated every corner of the black expanse in blinding white. Then writhing snakes of cackling power cascaded from the endless fountain.

Pale colour shone into the tunnel, washing away the carmine mist that swirled within. Things withered upon the mountain of grey, and left only iron bone behind them.

And iron bone was enough.

Plates of metal bloomed liquid over the caverns of All-Beauty, one upon another upon another stacking together in a fluid instant, and closed into a ring. The face of a living god fell upon Xos from all sides; a circular maw enclosed him.

Before it slammed shut, a choking ray of dark and destructive energy surged into the jaws. Xos cupped his hands about the Spark even as it gushed pure magic of creation. He tainted and poisoned it with his touch, and through that dark power he obliterated everything that he saw.

Solid iron splashed away like liquid in the shock of Xos's blow. The shell was torn away.

Xos's stream of dusk penetrated the tunnel and tore through it unimpeded. The power of the Primordial Spark blazed on, into the heart of Jvan, into a shining fog-

[h3][center]~?~[/center][/h3]

[i]A small creature sat perched and glow-blue, upside down on the tangle-earth. Below it the sky was clear and crimson; the eel-filled Globes had passed and their rains were dispersing to chase off droughts elsewhere.

The critter curled its head into two loops, gazing down into the heavens, where the tangle-sky hummed and wavered beyond the Amphioxus Globes. It closed its fans and in doing so propelled itself to the next curl of the tangle-earth, feeling mossy stuff crunch in the grip of its tail. It looked again, from a new angle, until a passing petal flicked its wings and blocked its gaze, causing it to swallow its eye and blink.

It wished the shade of the moss-trees would grow a little longer, their tangle-roots a little denser. Down in the tangle-sky zipped the things on rails that controlled the Globes. It wished it could flap its fans just hard enough, and fly like the petals, until it could see the tilt where tangle-earth met tangle-sky, and pass over the horizon to perch again upon the shiny red heaven below.[/i]

[h3][center]~?~[/center][/h3]

-where ten million flocks of petal-moths were roused and incinerated in an instant.

They burned in huge clouds of black fire as the shattered stems of moss-trees were blasted away by its shock. Its spherical oceans evaporated between the red and blue skies, blown apart into white steam. Thousands of ceramic rails crumbled in the wind of the Shade's wrath.

The world was ripped into noise and chaos. All was shrapnel and entropy. The dark beam faded.

Then, retaliation.

Four great Amphioxi speared out of that Heartland, whistling like dropped bombs. Straight like javelins and without feature, the Long Lances shot through the air and [i]through[/i] the air, seething maws tearing portals through which they warped headlong. They were Lances and they were used as such, ignoring distance to cleave their quarry with hypergeometric aim.

More and more Amphioxi fired from the dying realm, translucent bolts that fell on Xos from every angle and none.

The corona of searing energy that raged about Xos managed to offer the intruder a great deal of protection. Lost in the labyrinthian depths and nonsensical spacetime, the  shade soared and blasted apart cell-world after cell-world; in that way, he fought his way through Jvan as a cancer within cancer. His vehemence and tenacity seemed endless, but however great his capacity for destruction he gradually became frustrated with the deadlock and lack of any true progress. Jvan had shield after shield and to dismember the whole system would take a surge of power so great that there would be no controling it. Galbar would surely be ruined in th wake of such energy, and Xos was not yet willing to go to such lengths.

But Xos suspected a happy medium, something that would be catastrophic to Jvan without so much brute force. 

One of the harpoons came from an unseen direction, pierced his veil of death, and managed to strike before the god's perception gave the forewarning to move. This one lacked the momentum to breach his damaged armor, but it would serve another purpose.

A hand of Xos, though incorporeal, managed to grasp the eel and wrench it off. It writhed until it was stilled by a ripping motion.

Then he bathed the bleeding stump of matter with energy from the Primordial Spark. It pulsated and burned and vaporized under it was a saturated cloud of radiant gas, but Xos did not yield. The former lance became so gorged that it fell inward and collapsed upon its own weight. It bent space and became an all-devouring void, much like Xos himself.

The god harnessed the raging storm and hurled it into the expanse ahead.

What distortion it wrenched behind it soared into violent motion, splitting teeth, sundering the walls that compartmentalised mechanisms untold. Jvan watched it travel from all angles and had nothing with which to block its inertia. Catching it would not kill it.

But it would buy her time.

The singularity penetrated a grand wall, behind which-

[h3][center]~?~[/center][/h3]

[i]The rings revolved on their axial pylons. Water flushed through his gills as he breathed, the distant steams fogging pale near the Upper Limit. He pulsed and thus winched himself down the line anchoring him to dim Infinity below.

"Where will it be?" he asked, and the figure on the other depth-chain revolved away from him. He winched down further to catch a glimpse of her face, but beyond this, he could not move. The nearest ring released another bubbling cloud. "Why? Answer me." The answer was not given, and so they both fell once more into silence.[/i]

[h3][center]~?~[/center][/h3]

-a deep ocean fused into sunlight as its pylons were torn apart, the rings spinning off into orbit as bodies fell from their depth-chains into the searing nuclear halo.

Nanoseconds raced. Jvan had forced together such things before, but never taken one apart.

The atmosphere of the inner fractal blazed with static as she focused her attention from Xos onto the vision-twisting orb, and charged its surrounding air with fizzing motion. The singularity's gravity tore a haze of false particles into very real components, absorbing the negatives and withering as free energy escaped from it in waves.

Jvan force-fed the projectile with her miasma of virtual energy, and the singularity started to weaken. She caught it on a twist of space as it approached its inverse critical mass and the blackness began to glow.

[colour=9e0b0f]"WHO ARE YOU?"[/colour]

The white hole looped straightwards through an enormous tunnel of encrusted iron bone and lost its grip on itself as it shot towards Xos. It evaporated in a meteoric explosion of harsh light that slammed into the shade. The last scraps of his armor were shredded away and cast into oblivion, but as in for the god's own incorporeal mass of shadows, the energy may as well had been the faintest of breezes. Most was absorbed with little to no effect, but so energetic was the blast that some lonely rays survived and emerged on the other side. By some corruptive lensing effect they had been transformed into that same black quintessence of entropy that Xos had been drawing from the Primordial Spark all this time.

As the dark magic raced back to singe the one that made futile attempts at battle, Xos could not help but laugh. Without his helm, there was no reverberation to mask the sound into that tortured choke from before.

[color=00FF7F]"I could weather burning winds a thousand times greater, and it would still be as a breeze upon a mountain. You cannot fight me. I am invincible!"

[i]I am [b]death.[/b][/i][/color]

The falling pillars of the god-temple reconstituted themselves, and Jvan worked the gears of All-Beauty. Long had she piloted this body, and long had her hands learned the way.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Talk on, Foreigner,"[/colour] she said, and steam hissed. [colour=9e0b0f]"You are nought but shade."[/colour]

That retort conjured a rage the likes of which the world had never seen. Space and time seemed to distort as reality itself stretched and cortred into the shadow's twisted, hate-induced haze.

The ghosts of axial rings manifested around Xos, spun on new pylons that Jvan shot through the air. The pylons broke, but their rings only collapsed- snapped in on themselves in crushing spheres of inwards force.

Xos rested curiously still as a ring imploded the space he occupied, then burst with the pressure. He allowed himself to weather the crush. A forest of fragile pylons shot out around him, axial rings snapping shut predictively wherever he seemed likely to teleport, but this time he did not dodge. 

The rings caught him, caged and tossed his darkness deep into a shapeless Heartland. It was then that he made his move.

He swelled and expanded at the speed of shadows. The corona of entropy that he wore like a cloak turned into a shockwave propelled outwards by his explosive growth. Jvan's constrictive rings tried to hinder this, but they were shattered by his fury.

In that strange world within Jvan, the shade filled every nook and cranny with devouring essence, and-

[center]~?~[/center]

[i]the stripes were like colours or like tongues of flame or like veins, pumping pulsing growing fading, transmitting a thousand hues to their limit far away

and the flashes of colour were like thoughts in the chains, momentary, fleeing the past to blaze in the present and be dust in the future[/i]

[center]~?~[/center]

-reality shattered. Xos' burgeoning obfuscation dissolved the realm beneath it, stretching past its horizons and into the voids beyond. At its edges, the barrier around the world heaved and began to burst.

[colour=9e0b0f][i]Oh-[/i][/colour]

Xos spilled from the broken world and into Jvan, occupying, now, not only a part of her but also the vacuous skeleton that pervaded her, and was without distance. From the caverns that had once opened into the world of pulsed flames and many others, Xos emerged, clawing out from a place both infinitely small and infinitely vast towards every window of Jvan's light.

He saw the surface, the ripples of moonspecked water just beyond All-Beauty's shell. He saw a vast white cathedral despoiled by the graffiti of its architect. Xos saw the door through which Heartworm's maw had once opened, at which a hundred weapons pointed, and he saw even the golden light of Vowzra's dreams, where he was caught and blinked through an endless recursive second of his own memory until that, too, broke under the strain.

All-Beauty began to react reflexively, and Jvan knew that was a sign of the end. The teeth broke out of the skin she had crafted and bit down upon the splayed faces of Chaos, wherever they were found. Julian fangs emerged on their fractal jaws and Jvan saw all of it happen at once, felt her mind fray with the strain of collapse.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Out of it,"[/colour] she murmured, somewhere. [colour=9e0b0f]"Get out of me."[/colour]

The borders of the void, that were of void and were void, and were also All, began to tense. Xos sat in the broken space once occupied by a Heartland. Jvan took its borders and spun the universe around them. The windows began to close.

[colour=9e0b0f]"Stay there,"[/colour] she whispered, only to herself. [colour=9e0b0f]"You have your darkness. Keep it."[/colour]

The shade writhed and wrathed, indistinguishable from the empty space which was now falling, falling up and down and out and away, in every direction as Jvan locked him in the dark.

The fractal jaws curled shut and Xos was very small, a thought in the silence as Jvan looked at him and blacked out.

[hr]

It was peaceful here. Where was 'here'? He didn't know, but it must have been a long ways away else tales of such beauty would have been passed down in his tribe. The dusk's last raws of golden sunlight shone brightly and cast the mirage of a thousand jewels beneath the sea's turqoise waves. A small breeze rustled the palm fronds and perfectly juxtaposed the warmth of the sand beneath him. 

It was gradually growing darker and colder but for the crackling flames of a campfire beside him. When driftwood burned it was known to sometimes take on a greenish hue, but this fire's glow was something stranger-- a mesmerizing gold.

[i]'Open your eyes.'[/i]

He didn't hear that voice. He didn't want to.

But it spoke again. [i]'Open your eyes, shaman.'[/i]

The pristine surroundings began to wobble and melt as his vision blurred. Everything was falling apart. He would have stayed in this paradise forever, but it was only a fever dream.

As the world crumbled, he saw a holocaust; a firestorm of unimaginable size and fury, with rivers of liquid fire and ash, swept down the hills. It was incinerating entire forests as it razed a path to the seashore. Noxious fumes and waves of searing heat rippled through the heat-distorted air. It was not only the heat that bent and twisted at the air, though; there was something else in the sky, [i]bludgeoning[/i] its way through, making some thunderous, incessant roar akin to that of an erupting volcano. The ash above also billowed in strange ways as if roiling in the midst of a thousand different gusts and eddies.

But on the ground, at the head of the advanced wall of fire there were a thousand thousand writhing beings, and towering over the legions of living flame there was a terrible blaze that dwarfed the tallest trees. It was a great vortex of pure, writhing flame that moved with resolute fury and utter disdain for the beings that were reduced to ash beneath its advance. But it was not alone in rising so tall. Behind it, through the veil of smoke and ash, there were the silhouettes of hulking, magmatic giants, and dozens of them. The ground shuddered beneath their footfall.

[i]'You have seen what comes. Open your eyes.'[/i]

He didn't know where the voice came from, but it bid him open his eyes a final time. Barak choked back into consciousness and opened his eyes again. Gone was that paradise, and the warm sands and blasting heat of the incoming flames. It was all replaced by only a throbbing headache, aching pain in his legs, and the damp darkness of a cave.

He heard voices speaking. His father, and some of the other shamans.

"Jadli and Sre have yet to return. With the storms raging so, it's unlikely that they ever shall find their way back to us; we can only pray that they've survived."

"They have nowhere to go. We have nowhere to go, nothing to do but die. It's all gone. Knestus has ruined all that our tribe has ever built, and we were not there to defend our village."

There was a somber silence.

"You know that we would have been powerless against a djinni lord so strong. At least some of our kindred took to the hills and fled. So long as they might be alive, we must stay strong. Perhaps they will meet us once more, and perhaps then they will need us."

Barak spoke in a course voice, "I saw it all in my dream. I told you. And Knestus tried to tell them too; he warned them that his storms would come, and bid them leave. He scattered us away, because he knows that something worse is coming."

Even in the dark, they all startled. Barak could hear their gasps as he suddenly spoke.

"I saw it, too. In my dream there was fire, a horrific fire. It is coming for us; it will not stop until it meets the sea. Knestus cannot stop them."

They murmured something about fever-dreams, and didn't listen. Barak collapsed into sleep once more.

He wished that he hadn't, for he found himself trapped in a hellish world of torment and made to helplessly witness the cataclysm that befell his country.

Infernos, horrific gales, thunderstorms, deluges, landslides, and even blizzards all came without warning. There was no mercy and there was no reprieve, only unyielding fury and rage the likes of which he had never seen. Entire villages were destroyed in moments, along with their inhabitants--screaming women and children, even. He saw every horrid detail of it, until by sheer force of will and terror he broke free from the stupor of his dream.

He was back in the cave. His father and the other few shamans had somehow found sleep, cowering further back. But how could he be like them?

There was no running from death. The Hain in his dreams had tried to run, but one could not escape divine retribution. It would find them, and soon, no matter where they hid. What was a cave before the might of an apocalypse?

The only choice was whether he died cowering in a hole with his father and those blind, clueless shamans that thought they had been wise, or if he made his way back to his village and the rest of his family and died with them. The choice was clear.

Water fell from one eye as Barak looked back to where his father rested. He looked weak, tired, and all too frail; but weren't they all? That final time that he saw his father was seared into his mind forevermore.

Barak stepped out of the cave and into the storm outside. The pelting rain drenched him in a moment, and it was as if the tears never came.

Illuminated by the flashes of lightning, he trudged on with a suicidal strength that he had never before known possible.

[hr]

[i]So this is what it must feel to be mortal: every moment a crushing weight and probable death looming ahead as surely as the sun upon the horizon.[/i]

Komnestos envied the mortals not. The ashes upon the wind were growing thicker, and it would not be long now before Murmur's rabble arrived. As in for his own allies, some were already there; beneath the waves far below where the skylord hovered, there was the combined might of all Galbar's oceans. There was not only a host from the Sparking Sea led by Duke Salis, but also three great armies led by his vassals; one by a great sealord named Tsunami that ruled the Fractal Sea, another by Halcyon who ruled the warm tides and calm waters of the Metatic, and the third by Halcyon's sister Bryn who ruled the abyssal reaches and stirred the frigid depths to brew storms.

He doubted they would be enough. For one reason or another Slag did not lead his own massive cortege, but had rather sent one of the cruelest and most violent of all the firelords--the monstrous spiryt Thermaron. Though Thermaron was a powerful adversary, Komnestos could not help but imagine some sort of trickery or trap as it was not like Slag to suffer any possibility of defeat. Perhaps he simply had overwhelming faith in the victory of his side.

Fortunately, it seemed as though the odds were not so certain. Though Thermaron led a truly massive host of chthonian elementals that had been undiminished by the recent infighting and incursions by Change-Eaters, he had only the relatively small force of Anshal- [i]that traitor![/i] - to back him, though there was also Murmur, and it would be a grievous mistake to underestimate the lord of sound.

But Notus and Komnestos stood with their combined might as well as that of all the sealords, and both Boreas and the nearby stonelords were quickly moving to reinforce their position. Now they were outnumbered by the sheer hordes of burning djinn, but when their other allies arrived the tides would be turned.

They only had to weather the enemy until then.

[h3][center]~~~0~~~[/center][/h3]

Though rain and wind battered his carapace with the might of pelting stones, there was the silhouette of a lone Hain upon a faroff hillock. His presence was small, fleeting, insignificant; as easily overlooked as that of a fly. But unlike the flies, he could sense what was to come.

Nature screamed in tortured pain; it was not in balance. The presence of a million djinn saturated the very land with a shearing, twisting force as their concentrated auras extruded outwards and pushed at one another until the magic-laden air nearly burst.

To a mortal shaman that could just barely perceive such forces, to be in the presence of such nauseating power was overwhelming. But to the djinn, it must have been...invigorating. They were cannibals, and to them such concentrated essence and magic was ambrosia. He imagined that the most fearless of nature's gods were gazing down upon the field and seeing only a feast, not the pristine and virgin wilderness that were about to raze.

From amidst the black stormclouds above, there coalesced a gargantuan whirling mass of vapor, wind, and crackling lightning-- [i]Knestus,[/i] Skylord of the East.

Barak steeled his jaw. Even knowing that the Sunrise God had been justified in every terrible action that he ordered his servants commit against the mortals, the young 'shaman' (he no longer thought of himself as such) could not help but hate the one that had preemptively destroyed his home and reduced his entire tribe to the likes of wild, fleeing animals.

There were many, many lords both great and petty that manifested before their commander, but he recognized none of them. They had not been seared into his memory by every haunting dream as Knestus had been, and he had not seen them in person as he had Fountainhead and Gorsik. Ah, how great those two lords had seemed to his foolish and young mind only days ago; he saw now that those 'high lords' were but the shortest of giants.

Piercing through the sounds of pounding rain and the howling winds and the distant rolling thunder, the words of Knestus cut through the air.

[center][b][i]"O'er stark branches
the vengeful winds howl and rage
without leaves to blow.

Mortal foes will weep
Sunset and Rain in hand, and
their masters face down."[/i][/b][/center]

Every word was a darting breeze with syllables like both the crack of whips and the whisper of soft secrets, juxtaposed with alien words all but impossible to discern and that strange syntax denying Barak any true understanding of whatever figurative meaning such words could hold. He was spared the effort of pondering the meaning of whatever the djinni lord had said to his kind, for they all rallied and answered his address with raucous and eager cheer.

And then there was the sound of echoing flames, a mocking laughter that was punctuated by only one terrible decree:

[center][color=Crimson][h3]"BURN!"[/h3][/color][/center]

The darkened sky suffocating beneath stormclouds was suddenly illuminated by the dawn of a new sun, and then another, and then another. When the fireballs arced through the sky, their rosen glow blinded the hain's eyes. When they fell upon Galbar, even miles away he felt the wave of torrid heat upon his face. Where they landed upon the ground there were explosive pyroclasms that could have consumed villages in seconds, and where they fell upon the nearby sea there were eruptions of steam and raw force that shook the broiling waves and made rivers of molten glass where before there had been only sandy shoreline.

With a hellish roar, the orange glow a league away took shape and a massive, infernal vortex that stretched from the top of an ashen hillock to the bottom of the sky took  form. Glowering balefully in the distance was that monstrous behemoth of flame that had plagued his dreams, even larger in life. And beneath Thermaron's towering hulk was the proscenium of fire, surging forwards as a living mass like so many ravenous locusts eager to devour and desecrate and be the living scourge of gods.

Retaliation was swift; volley upon volley of lightning rained down upon the ground with such fury and incessance that the sky was like a writhing snake pit of bending, blinding bolts. A thousand tornados descended from above and rampaged across the battlefield to meet the fires, whilst the rainclouds let loose a deluge that threatened to drown the world.

Barak fell to the ground, no, was flung down, and his eyes could see no more. He witnessed the cataclysm and the end of times not through sight, but through the deafening sounds and the feel of oh so much magic ripped free from dying flickers and strewn across the world.

[i]To think that we could control such fury. In death my people will forgive our arrogance, I hope.[/i]

Even miles away from the tumultuous crucible of destruction, he was flung to and fro like a child's toy and battered nearly to the point of unconsciousness (if not death) before becoming nestled in the boughs of a tree; however, even that tree threatened to uprooted by the strength of the raging winds. The sky was at war with itself; to the west lord An'zel, to the south Knoeus, to the east Knestus, below fire and in the middle death.

Amidst the discord there rang out a new chord of chaos; the Stonelords had arrived, and with them the pounding of footsteps bearing the weight of mountains, the shaking and cracking of the earth as lords of earth grafted great fissures into the midst of their enemies and lords of fire summoned great volcanic eruptions from the infernal depths below. Among the giants Barak thought he sensed Gorsik and his sons, charging at the heart of the flame alongside a hundred other giants. They were met with a row of other giants of near equal stature, but these were titans of magma and fury whose breaths with like the fiery bellows of a forge.

The molten giants locked into battle with the onslaught of stonelords in a brawl of unimaginable size, but four stonelords broke through the line and rampaged towards the pillar of flame that was incinerating the world and laughing in sadistic glee all the while.

Two stopped short of his towering form, one to crouch and hurl massive boulders and the other to bend the earth and shatter the foundations of the hillock beneath Thermaron. Both were swept away by burning winds, knocked down by gargantuan fireballs and then devoured by the legions of lesser flamedjinn that they had waded through.

The first of the remaining two giants skirted around its great adversary with a surprising dexterity like that of a mountain goat, dodging left and right and looked for any gaps or weaknesses. But it danced too close to the sun, for the light of Thermaron's glow blinded it to the swooping charge of Anshal, whose might shattered stone with only one supersonic blow. There were none that could outrun the wind, even less though if they could not see it coming.

The final giant, brave perhaps to the point of foolishness, did what none other had even considered possible. From the ground ahead it summoned two great spines of stone that erupted up like raised spears leveled towards Thermaron. They both fell laughably short of piercing the enemy's fiery mass, and Slag's lieutenant laughed as he prepared to deal a lethal strike, but the giant had not been intending to drive those spikes into the firelord's feet; their mark was his heart.

Without breaking his charge, the giant tore the smaller of the great spikes of stone free from the earth that it had protruded from, and then it became a literal spear in his massive hands. The larger of the spikes was only a few paces ahead, and once Thermaron saw what the giant intended and a brief look of horrified shock flashed across his infernal visage, it was too late. The giant charged up the spike with all its weight behind it, using the end of the great point as a springboard with which to leap. He drove his earthen spear straight into Thermaron's fiery breast, and there was a howl of agony like metal twisting as it was ground upon stone.

Even as the rocky spear melted away and fell free of the wound, flames and essence gushed out of the terrible wound. Though maimed, Thermaron's rage burned still. The giant tumbled to the ground, a look of triumph upon its face even as its mortally wounded foe lifted it into the air with an infernal grip and squeezed until there was nothing left of the giant save for slag and molten rock that dripped free of Thermaron's hand like sweat.

And so the battle raged, and where earth met with flame there were cinders and grains, where water met with fire there was searing sewater and frigid flame, where air met air there was the howling of a thousand-thousand gales.

It was the stuff of epics, if only there were any poets that were to witness such calvary and have words to write and serendipity enough to survive and sing them.

And on, and on this went-the battle did rage! - for days, at least, though the passage of the sun through the sky was hidden behind all so many clouds of air and thunderstorm.

When the burning winds gave way to an icy chill, Barak thought himself mad, but then he saw it: another force had finally arrived to the fray. It was Boreas, Lord of the North, and his long breath that brought winter. Quickly a mighty blizzard swept into the crucible, and within it there were giants of ice and snow that carried glaciers upon their backs and the weight of avalanches behind their fists. Both sides did cheer, for both thought that their ally had at last arrived to route the other's flanks.

But Boreas had made his choice, and with grim determination his host fell upon the legions of flame and crushed their exhausted foes with the fresh vigor of those that just entered battle. When Boreas waded through the ranks of routing firedjinn at the head of his glacial army, he was the first to climb the searing hillock where Thermaron ranked, barking commands to his legions and managing to throw the occasional flare despite the horrific wound that sapped at his strength.

It was hardly a fight. Crippled by the stonelord's spear-wound, Thermaron was overpowered by the algid might of Boreas.

[center][color=Crimson]"Traitorous mongrel! Wretched liar! I will be reborn by my master's hand, and you shall suffer-"[/color][/center]

There was no emotion in Boreas' grey eyes.

[color=Lavender][b]"Such worthless final words; how you waste your breath."[/b][/color]

With one long breath upon Thermaron's baleful visage, Boreas froze the fire that flowed through the lord's form and drank in the essence that poured forth, leaving nothing behind.

Anshal looked down in dismay and desperately attempted to keep his wavering forces from breaking and fleeing like so many of the firedjinn below, and Notus took a brief moment to step away from her post within the stormclouds and greet her newly arrived ally.

Boreas returned her salutations with a glacial fist that battered her to the ground, and then an icy lance to the breast. Upon seeing their master fall, her force began to route just as Thermaron's and they fled back towards the safety of the sea, some of them regrouping under Salis and others making for the horizons. But Komnestos led a furious and vengeful assault. Boreas only laughed and met with his rival's charge, and the three winds faced one another: glacial north, dry and relentless west, and the warm east falling upon one another like wild beasts as they squabbled over who would claim the fallen Vizier's title.

Yet Murmur, perhaps the true Vizier, did not bother with such squabbles. Instead the unyielding might of thunder met with the onslaught of the seas. A harmonious song was one of futility and idiocy; it was here in the midst of such tumultuous discord that Murmur was most at home, and it showed. Sonic blasts echoed with deafening force as he launched concussive waves at the sea and through the waters. Through the entire battle he disrupted the bulk of Salis' forces and singlehandedly held off half of the great sealords, seemingly impervious to their blows whilst entirely capable of retaliating with his own.

Barak could see not what manner of battle went on amidst the waves and raging maelstroms, for he had long since turned his back upon the apocalyptic destruction and ran. But though his back could absorb the horrific sights, now that his spiritual Sight had been opened, he was helpless to not sense the surge of magic that swept through the land as yet another great lord was slain. Reeling at the loss of one of his vassals and at how the battle had been turned so quickly by Boreas' treachery, Duke Salis at last ordered a retreat. The sea itself seemed to lower and recede as so many watery elementals retreated back into its depths, but it was not the motion of their comparatively small bodies that moved an ocean so vast.

It was Salis himself, who pulled back the sea and then threw it forwards once more. With a gargantuan tsunami loomed upon the distance, his decree was absolute. Ally and enemy alike fled, and the battle was over long before he finally brought down the might of the sea and buried the entire crucible beneath fathoms upon fathoms of water. When the sea fianlly drank up the last of the flooded waters, there was little of the land that still remained.

[hr]

[i]Progress. One earth-shattering blow at a time.[/i]

An infernal fist of titanic proportions slammed into Galbar's crust. A million smaller molten hands pushed at stone. Then Slag finally broke through. He found the revolting mountain of flesh at its very roots.

[color=DarkRed][b]"Flames consume you!"[/b][/color]

Half taunt and half condemnation, his words were prophecy. Once the thin crust was breached, magma from Galbar's infernal mantle began to surge upward. It blasted into Jvan's underbelly with all the rage and hatred of untold hordes of flamedjinn.

Fearing retribution, Slag retreated deeper into his fiery domain and left the rest to his minions. They were legion and endlessly rose from the fiery depths.

[i][color=DarkRed]The Shadow has its diversion. May it strike true and purge The Cancer That Breathes...

...and see to it that I am rewarded for this.[/color][/i]

He cared little for the hand that was soon closing down from the magmatic wound he had tore and crushed Slag's raging masses in its oh so glacial fist.

Jvan saw. She said nothing, for she was not able to do so at that time. But she saw.

[hr]

Light snapped into view as Jvan felt the impact of volatile magma rock her. A moment had passed. A brief fragile moment, but it had been long enough. Her guard had slipped.

[colour=9e0b0f][i]Light![/i][/colour]

Jvan seized control of her outer flesh, solidified her slag and snatched at the elemental presence as it fled. Her hand was slow, her muscles weak. She caught naught but fry. The iron shell reformed, the mantle-heat forced into her vented through her pores in a pyroclastic haze, as if flowing from a great sponge. The crust had cracked around her, and once more the ocean fumed.

She opened the catching hand and spread others into the mantle, anchoring herself against the sway of rebounding plates. The rest would have to wait. Her battle was not yet over.

Jvan's awareness swept gale-winged through the halls of her abyss, passing the gnashed locks she had set upon the windows to the void. Somewhere behind them, Xos remained, a furious storm that she could feel battering upon the walls that she had raised in haste. It would not weather him for long.

He sensed the perturbation and felt his quarry's attention shift to something else. [color=00FF7F][i]Too late, Slag. You have struck too late![/i][/color]

He was in no position to deliver a fatal blow even given the diversion wrought by his ally, but he could escape this accursed tomb with which Jvan tried to bury inter him. Given enough raw power, anything could be obliterated.

The Primordial Spark's vibrant extrusion welled up in the shade's formless hands and began to fester with the corrupting rot of chaos. When there was enough, he focused the magic into a ray, and then--

[colour=9e0b0f][i]No,[/i][/colour] thought Jvan, [colour=9e0b0f][i]Enough.[/i][/colour]

Distant rock splashed up in an icy spray as Ovaedis swivelled in its river. It took aim into deep space, set mark between the film of galaxies that tangled over the void. Too soon since Jvan had wrecked the home of Osveril. She knew what was coming to her void.

The coordinates flooded her mind, and in his last moment Xos felt the heat of the Disunity on his face, the old heat that permeated the universe outside and now the universe within. Jvan made them one.

Xos had forged oblivion. A wave of annihilating energy swept through space, but that space was no longer what it had been a mere moment ago. It was alien, foreign, and far from Jvan. A nebula fled from him, a blurred haze that had once been the star he had crushed. It galed off into space, blazing a long amber streak of plasma.

In this small way, Jvan had spited him: from the Shade's destruction, beauty had been wrought.

It could have all been for nothing if he took the briefest moment to regain his bearings and then make his way back to the blight upon Galbar, but resuming that fight seemed futile. To weather down the entire mountain with only a whetstone was folly, and even in all his vehemence and unrelenting fury, Xos knew when his time was wasted.

There was a better way: striking at the Cancer's heart and arteries, leaving it to bleed to death rather than trying to hack it into pieces.

He had seen one such artery in Ovaedis, hanging over the planet like a black shroud, and another in the form of a city. They would both be cleansed.

Distantly, the manufactory was listening. Xos's silhouette was lost on the darkness, and the glow of his nebula would not be seen on Galbar for a million years. It could not hear him.

[colour=9e0b0f][i]But he'll be back.[/i][/colour]

This was not a conclusion. This was just a second taken to reload.

The Shade would return. It had lost nothing. Jvan knew its grudge remained, and she would have to stand ready. Until then...

[colour=9e0b0f][i]I'm alive.[/i][/colour] She had faced a foe as great as Logos, or greater, and survived. Jvan was awake. For the first time in a long series of fights, she had the chance to aim for a victory that wasn't Pyrrhic.

Jvan wished that was something she could be proud of.

[colour=9e0b0f][i]...DAMN it![/i][/colour]

All around her, inside her, between the vacuole she had filled with Xos, were the testaments to her failure. Wrecked worlds, crushed cities, creatures that had never had a soul and would never get the chance to live again. A thousand years of work had burned, and for what? To be snatched out of the palm of her hand in exchange for a [i]stalemate?[/i]

[colour=9e0b0f][i]Light scourge him,[/i][/colour] she thought. The night sky shone upon her, filled with smoke. Her shell tensed like muscle, raising spikes. She would inform her brothers, as she had promised.

And then she would handle this. With her fists.

The Emaciator knew a trick that Jvan was privy to, and she slid a long screw of teeth up into the sky from her surface, wildly shaped. The twisted jaw tore into the sky, chewing both inwards and outwards, and left a horrible rent into darkness. Into this she spilled her worlds, the wreckage of Heartlands, a heavy stream of tinted greys too damaged to be distinguishable from one another. They emerged in a nearby system, and Jvan's eyes could make out the other side of the portal orbiting a faint red flicker in the sky. Isonymph hovered there, her only loyal avatar, kicking the ruins into planets around the binary.

Jvan watched the dim planets forming, stagnant wastelands orbited by the last idle Amphioxi, circled by axial rings. A pulsar and a dying dwarf shone dim light on their surface.

She recorded the events of the battle on a dream, and sent it, one by one, to the houses of the gods. Her neuroarchivist gliders bore her memories everywhere: Cornerstone. Terrestrial Citadel. Valley of Peace. Pictaraika. Oath of Stilldeath, where Astarte roamed. Even Vestec, who would be watching his horde, or at least their mutual student of the mallet. She sent them to the minor deities, Lazarus and Tauga and Lifprasil and Phi. Jvan watched their swollen brains be carried away on filmy planarian bodies.

And then she seeded a new generation of Heartlands, cracked her knuckles, and set to work.

Senator for mechanised warfare. It was all coming back to her.

[hr]

[color=DarkRed][b]"I should be commanding my legions and smiting the lesser elements alongside Thermaron, not cowering in the molten core of the world to plot with you!"[/b][/color]

[color=00FF7F]"You are afraid that if he wins that battle, he will be powerful enough to usurp you."[/color]

It struck a nerve, because it was true. The furious Baron of Flame looked upon its new master's frayed simulacrum in disgust. [color=DarkRed][b]"I sense that the Cancer still breathes, and you look worse for wear,"[/b][/color] he spat. He regretted his words a moment later as the shade drew closer. Its mere proximity...distressed the djinni lord. It would have disintegrated many others.

There was a long, tortuous silence. His supremacy asserted, Xos finally suppressed his aura of decay (lest he wither this insolent servant into something even more useless!) and spoke. [color=00FF7F]"So long as you are in my [b]loyal service,[/b] none shall overthrow you. I shall make sure of it. Now quiet your foolish words before you truly draw out my ire, and reforge my armor. I shall tell you how."[/color]

[i]'What manner of wretched, degenerate god lacks the capacity to even create, much less reshape mere metal?'[/i]

The Baron dared not speak it, much less push such a thought even close to the forefront of his mind for fear of the erratic shade utterly destroying him in an instant of foul-tempered fury. So he followed Xos' careful instructions, though he was none too pleased. The smithing of such vanity was best left to mortals and that one foolish craft-god that liked to walk amongst them.

Yet firelords were still among the most talented of all smiths, and Slag's careful hand repalced the enigmatic armor and that had clad Xos before it had been ruined in his confrontation against Jvan. With only a thought, waves of entropic recursion rippled through the molen rock around them and shaped some of it into those eldritch robes tht Xos liked to drape over his armor.

[i]'No,'[/i] Slag realized, [i]'he shaped nothing. He cannot shape anything. His touch annihilates everything; those robes are merely his own concentrated essence, as paltry and intangible as any intelligence that he displays!'[/i]

Xos looked at Slag and his vacant eyes bored holes into the scion. Before Slag could act on his mounting dread, Xos spoke again, [color=00FF7F]"And now, a reward for good service. Forge a weapon of your choosing, and I shall bestow unto it all of my ruinous power, and beneath it any that challenge you will be reduced to less than nothing."[/color]

The indignation at being ordered to craft his own reward aside, Slag was furious at the mere prospect of using a weapon, but this time he watched his wording carefully.

[color=DarkRed][b]"Djinn do not craft and bear weapons. It is not our way; no firelord before me has done it, and no firelord would obey my command if I am so weak as to require some petty instrument to act upon my will."[/b][/color]

Xos scoffed. [color=00FF7F]"Then is it a wonder that no great firelord before you has survived? I care not for how you claimed your title and came to dominate all the others, but I suspect that it was not done without violence."[/color]

He spoke the truth, Slag realized.

[color=00FF7F]"It is with this weapon that I shall insure none may ever overthrow you, and with that weapon that you might finally crush my enemies and subjugate these 'lesser elements'."[/color]

In silence, Slag set about quickly shaping a colossal hammer from the very molten sea that was his domain. The product of his toil was a cruel, black hammer of frozen obsidian and iron.

Xos laid a hand upon it, but rather than crack and crumble and fade into oblivion as most things did, this weapon drank his horrific essence and then radiated that hateful aura just as much as it glowered red with Slag's infernal touch. And yet to grip it was bearable enough if not comfortable, at least in the hands of Xos' servant; the destructive fury of the weapon was to be directed upon whoever fell beneath the hammer's weight, not whoever wielded it.

[color=00FF7F]"I name it Armageddon. It shall serve you well on my next task for you."[/color]

[hider=Summary]
Big post with many sections! Is the Cyclone/Termite way.

[hider=Summary of the Summary]
Xos is back and he comes to beat up Jvan.

Murmur is alive and serves as a champion of Xos.

There's chaos all across Galbar thanks to the elementals. The djinn have been pretty inactive as of late, but now they're suddenly embroiled in a civil war due to Vizier Ventus' death and Xos' attempt to seize power, as well as in a war against the beings called Change-Eaters that Jvan created.

Introduction of a new character named Barak, who is a young hain shaman.
[/hider]

The zeroth section, courtesy of me, Termite, being great at numbered lists, is the fall of the Citadel viewed from the perspective of the glass Eye Jvan had resting there. She doesn't catch the whole story, but there's clearly a god at play, and a dangerous one.

The [b]first section[/b] is one with Xos shortly after he blew up the Celestial Citadel. He's standing up there in the ruin talking to Murmur, who presumably survived when the rest of the Zephyrean Skywatch died because he was away on one of his usual trips to kill Sculptors. Murmur questions Xos about why he killed Ventus and the Skywatch, and after being given what he thinks are some pretty solid reasons, he agrees to serve Xos. Xos proclaims Murmur to be the new Vizier. Another big reveal is that Xos is spying on people using the True Mirror that Ilunabar had built for Ventus.

The [b]second section[/b] involves a young Hain named Barak, who is in training under his father to become [s]the 44th President of the United States[/s] one of the village shamans. Once he moults off the marks from his Second Hatching (important, because djinn still hate anything Jvanic) he goes with the other shamans to the mountains where he's going to meet with some djinni and present an offering.

The [b]third section[/b] has Notus and Komnestos, the lords of the South and East winds respectively, get approached by Murmur as he tries to recruit them into Xos' squad. Notus thinks her old pal Murmur has gone nuts and the talk breaks down. Komnestos was a bit more receptive, but he likes Notus and listens to her because they're about as close to being in love as djinn get. Notably, Mumur claims that Anshal and Boreas (the lords of the North and West winds) already swore fealty to Xos. They think it out of character for Boreas to serve Xos, so they suspect Murmur to be lying. Notus goes to Duke Salis to try to convince the waterdjinn to oppose Xos, whilst Komnestos says he'll talk to Anshal.

In the [b]fourth section[/b] we return to Barak. He watches the proceeding as the shamans treat with the waterlord in charge of the mountain springs that create a river that the village depends on. Then they go into a cave and talk to the stonelord of the local mountains, but then a vortex comes into the cave, and then Gorsik tells the shamans that they should get back to their village.

Barak has inexplicable visions of a tornado sweeping through his village and destroying almost everything.

In the [b]fifth section[/b], Xos makes another appearance. He goes off to confront Jvan personally. Pulls up in his beat-up flying tower and steps out, and Jvan tries to grab it. He slaps her [s]hands[/s] tentacle shit away and does the usual thing where he taunts his prey. She ain't having none and a fight breaks out. Some Might gets spent wildly as Jvan slaps everything in sight with who even knows what at this point. Eventually, Xos allows himself to be caught and tossed into a Heartland. He begins to destroy the entire pocket dimension, and she attempts to imprison him by closing off the void it was floating in.

[b]1 Might spent on creating the Amphioxi, a divine weapon.
1 Might spent on creating the Axial Rings, a divine weapon.[/b]

[b]Sixth section[/b] is back to Barak. Upon returning, they found out that his vision was true and that djinn under the normally benevolent Knestus (Komnestos) have destroyed several villages and scattered all the local hain, telling them to flee from their lands. Barak has more visions. He's hiding in a cave, being tormented by nightmares of advancing firestorms, thunderstorms, and blizzards killing hain by the hundreds and wiping away entire tribes and villages. Driven half insane, he leaves the safety of the cave and starts to go back towards the hain lands, thinking that he needs to die alongside his kin.

[b]Seventh section[/b] switches perspective to Komnestos during said battle. Having by now heard that Slag had cast his lot in with Xos, he remarks that it's odd that Slag sent one of his lieutenants instead of showing up in person. He suspects a trick and wonders what Slag could be up to.

Flipping back to Barak, he arrives in time to witness a catacylsmic battle of djinn from a safe vantage point.

It's a battle of insane proportions because there's like six of the eight or so most powerful djinn on the planet and many other djinni lords, none of them are holding back, and they all brought their retinues of  thousands of lesser elementals. Huge djinn fight and die everywhere in a blur until the arrival of Boreas, who turns out to have been playing both sides and ends up attacking everyone in an attempt at becoming the new Vizier. Team Xos claims victory, though  it's almost a wash because most of the Xos-haters retreated and live to fight another day.

[b]Eighth section[/b] returns to the Xos/Jvan confrontation and answers the previously posed question about what Slag was doing: turns out that he came to help Xos, and is deep down in Galbar's fiery mantle. At Xos' command, Slag and co. had been working to create a volcanic eruption beneath Jvan. It comes too late into the battle to have much effect on the outcome; but when it finally hits, it really hits.

Jvan is startled and distracted by the attack, and as Xos prepares a truly crushing blow, she manages to eject him into intergalactic space using her distance-cancelling Voids portfolio. Rather than just wiping off the dust and getting right back into that stalemate, Xos begins to plot a more surgical attack on Ovaedis. Jvan sends records of the conflict to various other gods. Being, y'know, Jvan, she sends them in the form of memories locked in the brains of flying flatworms.

[b]1 Point spent to synchronise Jvan's internal void with the external void of space, switching the two.[/b]
[b]1 Might spent to open a massive portal to a nearby stellar system, creating the Graveyard Worlds.[/b] They orbit a pulsar! or at least, they orbit a helium-burning red (blue) dwarf and are warmed by high-energy radiation from its binary partner, which is a pulsar. Isn't that nifty?

[b]Ninth section[/b] involves Xos regrouping with Slag. His armor is reforged by the firelord, and for good service Slag is instructed to create a hammer. Xos blesses the weapon, names it Armageddon, and tells Slag to wield it as his reward. Djinn don't traditionally use weapons so Slag is irritated by this, but Xos tells him to get over it and accept the thing that will allow flame to finally reign supreme. Then Xos leaves Slag with some orders that are to become apparent later.

[i]Zephyrean Pantheon[/i]
Start: L6 - 48MP - 4FP

-30 MP going from level 6 to 9
-2 MP for Xos consuming and otherwise destroying Jvan's protective Heartlands
-3 MP for Xos' corruptive touch upon Armageddon, the Firelord's Hammer

End: L9 - 13MP - 4FP

[b]Jvan
12 Might Ambient
0 Might in Ovaedis
1 Free Points
2C / 0D
Level Six[/b]
[/hider]

[hr]