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[h3]Frozen Fire[/h3]
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[hider=Crash Course Summary]
[hider=Pearls of Wisdom]( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)/

dude i never even START editing. everything you get from my posts is raw and unfiltered. that's why it tastes so shit, but I promise it's good for you
-Cyclone, 2018[/hider]

In this post, a bunch of Termite's side characters die. Also, Slag pops up to attack the Metera civilization because Xos sent him there to kill Phi.

Slag pretty effortlessly climbs up Sky City and crushed all resistance. Phlegethon promises to deliver Phi from her hiding spot so that slag doesn't have to destroy the entire city in a rampage, but the arrival of Jvan's avatar Isonymph means that a big fight is inevitable. The city is ruined as collateral damage, and Slag puts up a really tough fight even for an avatar. Jvan blows some MP and eventually destroys Slag, but he just reforms. She beats him again, warps his weapon, and leaves him in a weakened state. Then he calls Phi a liability and slaps 'er really hard.
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Though Xos had absconded Galbar and returned for the time being to his fortress on Caelum, his servants upon Galbar were still numerous, and through them, his machinations continued. 

Beneath snow and mountain there was Ba'Sard and his seizure of the dwarven stronghold at Dundee, and above that the newly appointed Vizier Murmur suppressed ruthlessly those djinn that still defied their new master. But below all of that, deeper within Galbar than even the gods ever sought to go, there was one horrible lord whose ambitions burned with a heat as great as his infernal domain. Xos had intentionally slighted Baron Slag in passing over him to proclaim Murmur as his Vizier and foremost servant, yet his loyalty was secured nonetheless by that weapon he had gifted unto Slag: the hammer, Armageddon. It was hard for any djinni to see a weapon itself as more than a mere trinket, but this one represented a chance to rise in favor and station.

To rise, perhaps, high enough to usurp the abomination called Murmur.

The last directive that Xos had left to Slag was that he strike at Jvan once more, but even compared to him, the mightiest of all djinn, a direct strike was suicidal. Slag's blow to Jvan had caught her by surprise when she had been preoccupied with Xos, but now he enjoyed no such advantage. He would be faced with the full might of a god if he attempted another such strike and hard pressed to escape at all, much less to do so unscathed. But well secluded within Galbar's core he could sense much and strike nigh anywhere, and so his attention soon turned to another site--Metera, a mortal civilization that nonetheless had been perverted by Jvan's influence. Xos had told him that there was such a city. It had not taken long to find once he knew what to search for; he could sense that She was there, somewhere. Or at least a piece of her was.

Such a small shard would be like kindling to him; gods were mighty indeed, but their avatars were not so great that they could not be destroyed when the earth sundered and lava washed over the land as an apocalyptic flood. 

And the pressure was building, once more, even now...

[colour=cornflowerblue][i]Tick, tick.[/i][/colour]

Stone was melting, earth was quaking. Subtle, subtle. Gentle, gentle.

[colour=cornflowerblue][i]Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...[/i][/colour]

Where did the echoes go? They scatter so wildly. Back and forth and back and forth, a shadow of a sound growing darker around each corner. But, if one was clever, always visible.

[colour=cornflowerblue][i]...Tock.[/i][/colour]

There we are.

A seismograph trail wipped and quivered its way down the earth, synchronising itself to the solid mass. Better not to lose oneself to the crush and the dark, no matter how long it took to navigate the maze of earth by sound alone. Second chances, it seemed, were not to be squandered, and Phi knew her time grew short. Though never so short, of course, as to abandon her style.

A certain [i]blueness[/i] entered the sound, as though the waveform was written in ink across the ore.

[colour=cornflowerblue]"O Djinni,"[/colour] spake the voice through a hundred miles' stone, [colour=cornflowerblue]"I hear your feet approaching. Why do you turn thy face against me?"[/colour]

There was silence. Then, a long groan.

All pretense of subtlety was abandoned when Phi revealed to Slag that his presence was known, and the firelord surged through the crust with a force that heaved aside tons of rock in mere moments. The blue dissolved, then reformed, a presence pulsed forward in quavers as Sky City grew closer. 

[colour=cornflowerblue]"It's not Mysa, is it? No, you neither fear her nor loathe her. Could it be Phlegethon and his line? No, you are brothers in isolation. Are you snatching, o djinni? Are you reaching for things that your Vizier once kept from you? I do not think so. Then wherefore crawl thee under my soul, Rumbler? Could you have been [i]bade[/i] here?"[/colour] Nothing in those words but pity.

Chiral Phi spoke when she should have quivered, prattled when she should have fled. She received nothing in response from Slag; perhaps he hadn't even heard her words for anything more than mewling.The earth shook with such a violence that trees fell and massive crevices began to spread like cobwebs across the ground, and then there was one mighty crash that let loose a volcanic eruption. For the briefest of moments the head of a colossal hammer was visible as it broke through the ground's surface, but then the clouds of dust and ash hid its sight when the subsequent strikes came. But every strike could be felt even in the air, for they reverberated for miles with enough power to shake buildings to their foundations. It was a testament to Phi's forethought that Sky City had none to shake.

The base of the great bowl glowed amber in his light, the great scaled legs holding, despite everything, their place. A white flood was spilled as the City rebalanced on wrecked earth, and then no more. Divine architecture stared down the rising magma from above.

Chiral Phi manifested as a blaze of indigo blacking the weaker blue of the sky. [colour=cornflowerblue]"Welcome, Slag."[/colour]

He let his weapon speak. The hammer, enduring such searing heat that it looked a part of Slag's own molten form, warped into something akin to a long spike. He plunged it into the earth and ruptured one of the ground's fissures so wide that a pillar of ash and fire erupted upwards.

[center][img]https://img00.deviantart.net/b5b8/i/2014/333/b/2/fire_elemental_creature_boss_type_by_shirohtakashiya-d883yb8.jpg[/img]
[i]As it did so, [b]Baron[/b] Slag began to clamber up from the deeps and reveal the full extent of his form.[/i][/center]

Blue light met amber, and disappeared, forced to hide behind incandescence of its own. A blast of light heralded Mysa and her daughters, and was followed swiftly by a godless flare, a great conflagration that spilled from Sky City and roiled over the molten stone, searing away at its basalt armour. The fire retracted and Mysa stood. She was but a mite before Slag, yet she remained a hulking beast of a djinni, huge and insatiable. So it was all the more infuriating that he hardly seemed to even notice her, so intent was he upon finding the source of the obnoxious voice.

[colour=cornflowerblue]"Do you seek me still, o djinni? What will you do when you find me? I bear no power for thee to steal. I offer no challenge for thee to pit thyself against. Only frustration lines thy way, volcanic lord."[/colour] The voice had no source, now. The blue light was all gone. Mysa did not cease to roar against Slag's stone, melting away little by little to reach the fluids within.

Armageddon suddenly came down to scratch at the itch upon his chest. Mysa was blown apart, like so much hot smoke upon the wind. His own body was hardly immune to the decay that the unholy weapon brought forth, and even as the hammer's head brushed against the basalt and obsidian shell of his body the stone began to crack. But where those cracks ran deep, magmatic blood oozed out to reform his armor.

[color=DarkRed][b]"When I find you, Shadow of Jvan, you will burn and die."[/b][/color]

[colour=cornflowerblue]"You know me poorly, Slag,"[/colour] said Phi. In the distance, a hissing: Phlegethon was coming. [colour=cornflowerblue]"I am the Light, daughter of Logos. Gaze upon me, and see no flesh. Listen to my voice and feel no horror. Intuit my fate, o djinni, and you will find no death."[/colour]

[color=DarkRed][b]"Light does not hide in the shadows of the flies that worship it."[/b][/color] The firelord punctuated his disgust by spitting a glob of fire that melted through the white stone that it fell upon. His eye turned down to the tiny djinn that swarmed before him, those just-orphaned daughters of Mysa that howled in rage and the bastard-lord Phlegethon that advanced toward him.

[color=DarkRed][b]"What do you even fight for? Your master throws you at me knowing your deaths shall not even slow my advance. Your miserable existence is as caltrops too soft to pierce the feet that crush you!"[/b][/color]

[b]"I am [i]not[/i] fighting, you oaf,"[/b] said the Lord of the Springs, as a great fog covered the land, obscuring to vagrant glows the daughters cast as they turned on one another.

A wild swing of Armageddon went towards the insect that had dared offer insult to his better. But fog was fog, and only fog, and little more than fog; and Phlegethon had long learned to soar with the God. [b]"[i]Gah![/i] Very well! You have made your point."[/b]

Phlegethon condensed in the cumulus fashion; better for him to rise before this heat dispersed him further. [b]"Baron! You are beating at the throne the chiral goddess warms for me. If you intend upon Sky City, be clear! If not, let me flush her out of my halls for you, and otherwise part ways. I tire of her shine."[/b]

He had raised a hand to strike at the cloud that harried his advance, but then its words caught his attention for long enough to give pause. [color=DarkRed][b]"This mound of stone means nothing to me. Find her, then, and I shall spare it along with you."[/b][/color]

[b][i]Uncultured barbarian,[/i][/b] thought Phlegethon, and turned the cloud upon his city.

But Slag did not entirely trust this stranger. The obnoxious voice of Chiral Phi had been silent for the last few moments, and though such silence was a respite it was also cause for suspicion. Perhaps this one was only a diversion, buying time to cover her escape.

There was a cloud of volcanic ash that had been rising as one great plume from the searing hole that Slag had bashed through the ground when he first emerged. Out of the clouds spewing from that newly formed volcano there came a thousand little ashdjinn that made their way over the city and began to search the skies. But in the place of the goddess they sought, they found only one little frostdjinn, sitting arms over knees on an orb of steel, hovering in the stratosphere.

[colour=lightblue]"Hush,"[/colour] she whispered to the ash, trailing along in jagged streamers around her. [colour=lightblue]"Watch. [i]She[/i] is coming."[/colour]

But they could not simply be silent, for they were so weak that their wills were not so entirely their own. Their eyes were his, so like lightning Slag's head turned to looked straight towards the snowflake in the sky. His grip on Armageddon tightened. From far away, Lumikki's head turned, just slightly, and met his own, across the horizon. [colour=lightblue]"Flee,"[/colour] she whispered, and dissolved.

[i]In the canals and spires of Sky City, Phlegethon released his shaken son. Where is she? Damn that owl-faced prophet, WHERE IS SHE?[/i]

He raised his hammer and an arc of black energy left Armageddon and surged through the place where Lumikki had been. It was well that she had already vanished of her own accord, for there would have been nothing left of her if the dark power imbued by Xos into that weapon had been given so allowed as a glancing blow.

She could hide her body, but the mind of a djinni lord reached far, and this Baron was a lord of lords. His thoughts echoed like thunder and pounded within Lumikki's mind even as she hid, [color=DarkRed][b]"Retreat? You dare tell the lord of all fires to flee? Pathetic worm! Just as you scatter before me, so too will Her ashes be flung into the air and carried away by scorching wind!"[/b][/color]

[i]Phlegethon swept into the blood tunnel, a rogue daughter of Mysa buying his passage. Here, the labyrinth, was the only place that She could hide. Indeed, there she was: a simple glow, a jewel in the arms of Old Walker. He leaped, condensed, became a choking force. 

The Prophet only stared. As Phlegethon rose in fury, his power turned to anger, fear, then pain. In the dark, Old Walker heard him djinni sink into the bloodsplatter, heavy as no spirit should ever be.

A hand arose from the steam god's shoulder. [colour=crimson]"Not for you,"[/colour] it said to the enfleshed Phlegethon, and folded itself from existence.[/i]

Slag's blast collided with the sphere of iron, shot it far across the sky- yet it did not burn. [colour=lightblue]"The Horror watches its bastard,"[/colour] whispered the voice of Lumikki, blown about as a snowflake should be in the wake of the recoiling Bludgeon. Joined by two others, the great iron weight wailed its terrible song as it descended to smite that which threatened its new god. In the once-domain of Mysa, smoke was rising. [colour=lightblue]"These stones were only laid to contain her."[/colour]

The Bludgeons fell on Slag, air splitting on the razor winds between them. Sound could not offer forewarning of a strike so unimaginably swift and deadly, but Slag had already reared his head up. He sensed their imminent approach, even before his eyes could discern their descent.

With perfect timing, he brought down Armageddon and then swung it upwards to collide with the foremost of the Spheres. That entire Bludgeon was obliterated in a single explosive strike that enveloped the ophanim colony, but mercury and smoke could not deter the other two bodies of his assailant. What the wind-wire could not cleave was broken by its weight, and Slag felt his encrusted shell crack before the Cord.

The collision was only an instant, and the ophanim were soon trapped, dragging laboriously on either side of Slag as the Cord heaved to penetrate the molten core that had sealed up around it. Slag felt the monumental tug of the creatures pulling him, for all his mountainous stature, by the loathsome wire stuck in his belly. Galbar sounded of volcanic fury when the Baron let loose a long rumble and grunted in pain. An infernal hand with fingertips the size of houses clasped at one of the ends of cord that protruded from his sides, but pull as he might, it would not snap. His liquid innards had near instantly flowed around this wire and the outer shell of his abdomen was already hardening once more, so removing this wire would take nothing short of eviscerating his own body. So for the time being: he simply ignored the hindrance.

After that sour turn of events, the firelord's patience was rapidly thinning. His enraged roaring rocked the heavens with even greater violence than his previous expression of pain, [color=DarkRed][b]"Little lord of steam! You have mere minutes left to offer me Jvan's puppet, lest I grow tired of waiting and raze this insipid pile of rubble!"[/b][/color]

But the only steam now cast from the city was smoke. Mysa's daughters had offered no safety, and where Phlegethon was, he could not halt them. The lives and possessions of Metera were alight, and though they cried, no god or djinn would aid them.

[colour=lightblue]"Your path is open, Slag,"[/colour] said Lumikki to the smoke. [colour=lightblue]"My ophan cannot save you much longer."[/colour]

The billowing clouds of smoke and volcanic ash roiled as the countless djinn within searched for the source of the mysterious voice. Slag listened not so much out of caution as for desire to find that prattling gnat that deigned whisper in his ear. He would swat it from the sky were it not so adept at concealing itself. Even so, Lumikki's time was limited; there was only so long that she could hide from the eyes of those djinn in her vicinity, and Slag himself no doubt had a perception powerful enough to sense lone presences if he focused upon it. It seemed, his ashen horde reported, that she had finally elected to flee.

As he watched, a figure so like Phlegethon leapt from the edge of Sky City and departed into the dying light, pursued by more flames. Even the steamlord's progeny had fled the flame, now. Phlegethon's quest and control were lost. So exasperation at last took hold. With a mighty heft, he hurled Armaggedon into the air such that it came to fall upon the metropolis above and level a block. Even held back by the burden of the wires entombed within him, he advanced towards one of the walking city's legs and began to grasp at it. For all its strength, the stone blackened at his touch- and then the world turned itself inside out, and its folding blackened the moons. For a small moment, Slag's deep red shine was but an ember on the blaze of hollow light that bloodied the air.

[colour=crimson][s][b]"SLAG!"[/b][/s][/colour]

The word was not spoken, but emanated from the blossom of sinew and petals that now grew as a bud overhead, planted in crippled air and requiring no size to dwarf its city. The billowing ashes fled.

[color=DarkRed][i]Har! Har![/i][/color]

A deep cackling echoed back. Slag raised one hand and called forth an eruption from the ground. Galbar's burning blood surged upward and a river of liquid fire fell upon the city's periphery, washing Armaggedon back over the precipice. Down below, it fell upon Slag's colossal fist and the amorphous lava flowed around the grip to hold the weapon. He sneered and brandished it high.

The sinew watched. And, as it watched, it replied in turn: with the edge of a too-long finger, it reached out before it, and dragged a perfect horizontal line into the universe, thin and flickering, flickering- in scarlet red. The bloom took hold of this with no flourish. In one gristly motion, it uncoupled its remaining eight legs from its stem, and stood on air.

[colour=crimson][s][b]"Like Char before you,"[/b][/s][/colour] it intoned, [colour=crimson][s][b]"Worthless."[/b][/s][/colour]

A quick and disdainful few swings of Armaggedon helped the firelord to adjust his grip and find the hammer's balance. [color=DarkRed][b]"Char was the faintest of sparks before my incandescence. I survived his fury and emerged stronger. The world melts and burns at my whim; bow down and grovel, and then perhaps in me you will find a more generous master than Him."[/b][/color]

At that, a tensing that Jvan did not care to suppress. Such stagnation. Such simplicity. She said nothing through the Isonymph, but her aura made it known.

[colour=crimson][b][s]"I tire of wordplay,"[/s][/b][/colour] she announced. [colour=crimson][b][s]"You are burning that which I little care to replace. Your birth is wasted on you, and your line is as lacking as the rest of your kind. You wield a grotesquery of the Shade. And you struck me, Slag."[/s][/b][/colour] The lily bloomed a little brighter. [colour=crimson][b][s]"You tried to [i]fight[/i] me."[/s][/b][/colour]

There was nothing left to be said, for both had grown tired of idle speech. His answer was to erupt skyward as a geyser of brimstone and pumice and fire. The violence of the explosive surge consumed and utterly blew apart the closest of Sky City's legs, such was the force needed to launch Slag's great mass into the air. But when he collided with the Isonymph in the air above just above Sky City and brought the both of them down upon it, the entire structure shuddered and began to tip. Entire city blocks had been leveled in a single moment. Stone was shattered, and joints broken, and Slag felt the tiny fizz of the possessed Avatar beneath his weight as he landed. And yet she was not crushed.

For a brief moment, as the waters of the City boiled, Jvan stood beneath their surface, and held Slag above her head.

[colour=crimson][b][s][i]"Be careful what you wish for."[/i][/s][/b][/colour]

She threw him, and with a mighty heft, freed herself of his crushing weight. 

Slag landed close to the precipice, but she had not been powerful enough to cast him off the edge and back to the lands below. [color=DarkRed][i]I am not to be trifled with![/i][/color]

He barreled forward on a lava flow and swung his hammer in a great overhead arc at Jvan's avatar. The flower bloomed, inverted, and rematerialised on one leg, balancing on the top of its staff of distortion; when Slag struck it, it carried a shock through his arm like a fleshling striking stone, and stalled his hammer in its tracks.

Jvan dragged a new staff to replace the shattered as she ran up the Djinni's arm. In a blink she had launched herself into his face, twisting the universe like a six-sided mirror, from which she struck him at all angles and was gone. When reality unfolded she was behind him.

All the while, Armaggedon's swings missed as they collided with the water or towers or nothingness, but never Isonymph. She was dexterous in this rage-induced flurry, not unlike that fool Anshal. But mere punches could hardly inflict more than pain upon him; on the other hand, it would take only [i]one[/i] blow from his hammer to seize victory. So when he sensed her presence behind him, he nigh instantly twisted about in an inhuman and grotesque form that broke his obsidian plating. As he spun, so too did he bring around his hammer in a lateral swing.

The blow was inescapable- Jvan didn't try. Contracting time within herself, she whipped her stave against Armageddon, once more allowing it to shatter; and flourished a new one in the broken instant. As Armageddon stalled, she let it fall on the cane between her hands, breaking that, too, and throwing her out, out and away like a bolt across the sky. Time uncoiled from her muscles and the world became a blur.

Slag saw this only in real time. Scarlet light snapped over his hammer in two flashes as he broke the Isonymph's parry and sent her flying. He swiftly recovered his arm and his aim. Even out of reach, it would only take one blast of Armageddon's power to destroy the Avatar, and with time now dilating within her to recover the lag, she was helpless to evade the next strike.

Yet so was he. Too lightly had Slag given up his armour.

The Bludgeons still strung through Slag hurled themselves along their cord, one directly away from him, the other striking his back with both their strength. With his rigidity shredded by Jvan's blows and his own hubris, Slag splattered across the waters as the sphere dredged its way through his body and crawled red-hot into the sky to meet a recovering Jvan. [colour=crimson][b][s][i]Much better,[/i][/s][/b][/colour] she thought, admiring the deformation of his liquid flesh.

Molten stone may have solidified on contact with the waters of Sky City, but Slag was an elemental lord. The water about his form was instantly vaporized and the bubble erupted upwards, sending tidal waves of boiling water through the streets. Jvan had seen less beautiful carnage, but not in some years. Even the birds could hear the screams.

In the center of it all, an enraged Slag rose once more. His palpable rage had ionized the air about him into an infernal corona, and brought forth a heat that burned his reddish glow into a white incandescence. The Sphere that had passed through his body melted away in Jvan's hands, and she let it fall. The Plumes gave one last turn, and fled into the rising cloud as the Cord finally snapped.

The one vulnerable point that remained visible was the red-hot hand that clutched Armageddon; that weapon seemed to drink in his surge fiery rage and heat and nullify them just as easily as anything that fell beneath its crushing blows. [colour=crimson][b][s][i]Opportunity.[/i][/s][/b][/colour]

Still carrying the unmelted, unfeathered and dying Sphere in her psychic grip, Jvan stretched the Isonymph's roots until they multiplied, enwrapping the iron ball. New life seeped into it, soft meat penetrating the metal, sprawling within its innards and colouring crimson. [colour=crimson][b][s][i]He shall not cool.[/i][/s][/b][/colour]

Jvan gripped raw air and flung herself across the fulcrum of hard space, hurling the orb and all the arms with which she held it, dividing with a gruesome tear. The ball rocked the bowl as it collided, striking Slag's shoulder and liquefying instantly, burning with foul airs as it boiled into him. The spectra of Slag's aura shifted, his atoms intermingling with the metal flesh, growing lustrous, growing soft. No stone would form on him. No metal would escape.

[color=DarkRed][i]Pitiful tricks.[/i][/color] Even as her corrupted metal vaporized and seeped into his form, he rejected its weakness just as he did pleas for mercy. Great heaps of infernal flesh sloughed off and rained down as molten cascades, and shockwaves of heat and fire and volcanic gases erupted outwards. For what it was worth, the brighter glow of metal clung tightly to his stone, but in his attempts to shed he had become a living volcano whose fury engulfed yet more of the city.

Jvan drew her fourth staff and leapt for the Djinni's exposed wrist, right into the flames. She struck true and the volcano's thunderous din amplified tenfold, but there was no resounding thud as Armageddon slipped from his grasp and clattered upon the ground. Amidst the smoke and blinding haze of sulfur, Slag had instantly seized up the weapon in his other hand and was already swinging it at the Isonymph once more. She let her quavering barrier once again shatter in its wake, yet fled easily thereafter. Slag's weapon was become far deadlier than the magma lord himself. And now-

[colour=crimson][b][s]"Be struck,"[/s][/b][/colour] spake the God of Sinew.

If she had fought the rest of the battle with nine limbs, now there were surely more, for when the cracking ricochet of the first blow had echoed across the coast from Metera to the Ironhearts and blown away the haze with its shock, the others did not cease. With knuckles of newforged steel Jvan belted Slag, her dance of speed not slowing for his hammer, the collision of her fists more than sufficient to shatter what remained of his elemental shell into droplets that cooled on the wind, and tear apart the fiery heart at its core. The firelord's form unraveled into a pyroclastic explosion that swept outward, bathing Sky City in hellfire. With flows of lava dripping off the sides, the legged city sagged one last time, and stiffened forevermore. 

When it was done, and her nine fists glowed red with the fire, the Isonymph hovered over the basalt-covered basin, long since dry; and wondered what hubris it took for such creatures of liquid and vapour to presume their brawn greater than that of the Flesh God.

[colour=crimson][b][s]"Reform,"[/s][/b][/colour] she commanded. [colour=crimson][b][s]"Flee my heel, Flicker, with whatever body you can find. I'll wait."[/s][/b][/colour]

[color=DarkRed][i]Ha![/i][/color]

He didn't make her wait for long. An burst of endothermic activity stirred the sulfur-laden air and created a great wind that carried heat into a new vessel. From amidst the ashes and rubble, Slag's incandescent Flicker constituted a new shell and he was reborn.

[center][img]https://www.awn.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline/public/image/attached/50615-teb560.jpg?itok=VmOYDX0M[/img]
[i]With a mighty heave, he pushed himself up from the surface of the dying city.[/i][/center]

[color=DarkRed][b]"You cannot kill me, O God of Pitiful Flesh and Mortal Filth,"[/b][/color] he spat. [color=DarkRed][b]"But take solace in your small victory of surviving my fires. You have won the chance to quiver a little longer, until He returns to earn your terror again, and forever."[/b][/color]

[colour=crimson][b][s]"Cry more,"[/s][/b][/colour] said Jvan. [colour=crimson][b][s]"Think of me when your vassals eat you alive."[/s][/b][/colour] She flexed her psychic muscle over the hilt of Armageddon, lifted it, felt its aura scald her mind. Horrible, horrible little thing. Vile implement. [colour=crimson][b][s][i]Let it bear my curse.[/i][/s][/b][/colour] A cocoon enfolded the hammer. When it had burned itself clean again, the scent of Other flesh filled the scorched air.

Jvan had wrought beauty out of entropy once before. In much the same way was the weapon transfigured. Shedding a light that was powder, finer than the mist that falls from moth wings, the change-eating aura of Armageddon was no longer a pupil but an iris, ringed and striated with folds of brilliant fibre. Its haft was now as gnarled as the galls of an ancient tree. The familiar hues of Diaphane flesh flickered on its head. Jvan watched the Isonymph's face from the many-pupilled Eye in its hilt.

[colour=crimson][b][s]"Kill as many of Zephyrion's spawn as you can before you die,"[/s][/b][/colour] she said, throwing it at him. [colour=crimson][b][s]"You'll need this."[/s][/b][/colour]

Carried by its weight, the once-mighty Lord of Magma tumbled dripping from the edge of Sky City, and was gone. Jvan hovered alone.

[colour=cornflowerblue]"...Well played."[/colour]

Jvan was silent, as Heartworm before her.

[colour=cornflowerblue]"I suppose I owe you a debt, for what remains to be recovered,"[/colour] said the Painter, seeping from the boiling, ash-laden waters. [colour=cornflowerblue]"Not that you could ever trust me to repay it, nor ever should. Hahahaha. Alas, it's true- we have little choice but to continue as befo-"[/colour]

The light snapped with a brutal twist of intervening space. When it unwound, it was not the ghost of Chiral Phi that hovered in Isonymph's palm, but the Kernel of God herself.

[colour=crimson][b][s]"I've realised something,"[/s][/b][/colour] said Jvan. [colour=crimson][b][s]"You are a liability."[/s][/b][/colour] A second arm drew a thin and flickering scarlet stave that landed in the palm of a third. [colour=crimson][b][s]"And I dislike you."[/s][/b][/colour]

The arm reared back, and hurled its lethal cargo into the City true. For an instant, a rigid line of scarlet light connected the god and her daughter's city. Struck to its core, the great bowl of Sky City groaned, buckled, and settled at last upon its weight, paralysed to move. A beautiful ruin.

[colour=crimson][b][s]"Debt paid,"[/s][/b][/colour] said the Engineer. [colour=crimson][b][s]"Bait me no longer to your aid. I will not play your game."[/s][/b][/colour] The Kernel disappeared. 

After a second, so did the Isonymph.

[hr]

[colour=cornflowerblue]"Whenceforth now, my brother dear?"[/colour]

[i]Mrrrrrr.[/i]

[colour=cornflowerblue]"Don't be that way. You know I was planning to leave anyway, with developments being as they are. Ha! My fraudulence, punished at last. By Fate herself, wouldn't you say? And to think- despite what that Victor godlet did- it was all going so well..."[/colour]

[i]Mrr.[/i]

[colour=cornflowerblue]"Better a fragile plan that offers victory at all possible conclusions than a sound one whose interruption begets failure, Old Walker. The collapse is beautiful. I am an aesthete of blood, Old Walker. We are not so different, Jvan and I. That is why you cannot resist me."[/colour]

[i]...[/i]

[colour=cornflowerblue]"There there, enough banter. Come. Let us abscond into the mountains, and begone from this place. It is up to Oriana and Lumikki now. Our next game lies elsewhere- whatever it may be."[/colour]

[i]Mrmph.[/i]

[hr]

[b]"Begone."[/b]

[b]"I should smite you for your impudence. Once I have rested, I will put an end to you and your whole line, and laugh about it to your old master, Boreas. I imagine it will be most satisfying!"[/b]

[b]"Ah. I forget. You are a traitor who spurns loyalty."[/b]

[b]"I am as strong as I have ever been, Lumikki. Do not test me! My quarrels with Slag and the Abomination have only tired my arms. Soon my energy will return, and-"[/b]

[b]"NO! QUENCH THAT LIGHT, DAMN YOU! BEGONE! BEGONE, MONSTER! DO NOT LOOK AT ME!"[/b]

[b]"..."[/b]

[b]"...You are cruel."[/b]

[b]"I will make no such concessions. I would sooner die."[/b]

[b]"Ah. I see how it is."[/b]

[b]"Strike, then. Let the eldest of my sons take on the name of Phlegethon, and purge me of this curse."[/b]

There is a snap of cold that crystallises all moisture. The remaining fog sags on the ground amidst the blood and wyrm-filth, like fat or slime. In the dim light of her Sertz, Lumikki sees veins.

[colour=lightblue]"Rest well, brother,"[/colour] says Lumikki, impaling the abomination on an icicle. [colour=lightblue]"I cannot preserve your kingdom- [i]but I will do what I can.[/i]"[/colour]

[hider=Mussary]



The staves of energy used by Jvan to parry Armageddon cost 1 free point each, for a total of 5 points. She also spends 1 Might on her final beat-down of Slag, 1 Might on transfiguring Armageddon, and 1 free point on dilating time, probably.

Some things happen chronologically prior to this post, the most major of which is: Jvan has claimed Beauty (Martial Art) for 3 Might, counting Sculptors, the Lexite Melee, and probably her body-slam of the Solitary Mountain as practice.

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