[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/7oQVf7m.png[/img][/center]

The ravages of the Phoenix had left the island desolate and ruined. What had once been a thriving ecosystem had been reduced to ash and soon the souls of the creatures and plants that had lived here would also be burnt to cinders in the sky pyres. Yet this ash would be the fertilizer for new growth, a growth stronger and more vibrant than what had come before. Helping this process along where Azura’s gemstone gardeners, the four species of parrots she had made to react to just this kind of disaster and they did their best to fulfill this purpose even though there were fewer of them now than there had once been. The colorful forms of the Parakeets, Keas and Macaws fluttered too and fro, working together to plant and fertilize the replacement seeds that would soon grow into a new jungle. As they worked the Parrots sang to one another in a beautiful yet crude conversation. This conversation was lead mostly by the Onyx Cockatoos as the stone breakers had been left with little to do in the already soil covered fields.

Mostly they sang of purpose, of their given task to bring nature to barren lands, but this song was punctured at intervals by sorrow, for among the charred remains of feathered and scaled beasts they occasionally found one of their own who had been caught up in the phoenix's rampage. They sang of hope and fear spurred at the sight of the two gods battling the burning monster, a contest of strength so great that compared to its combatants the parrots like but feathers in the face of a hurricane. The Kea’s particular bemoaned their inability to help, their failure to protect as they had been tasked to do. The Cockatoos meanwhile added anger and frustration to the verse, fueled by a minor emphatic link to the creator of the Orvium in their bodies and by their current idleness.

Individual songs from across the island slowly coalesced as the work continued, tunes and melodies stinging together until all sang with one voice with one aim. Simple minds with simple hopes and fears all called out for their goddess.

[i]
Azura, protect us

Azura, morn us

Azura, strengthen us
[/i]

Over and over they sang until the work was done and the first prayer slowly dwindled way. Their task complete, the gardeners turned north towards Kalmar’s new continent. The Gardeners left the Eye of desolation for the first time to continue their work on new shores and soon after the southern tip of the new land began to sprout its first growths thanks to their tending. 

[hr] 

Azura heard her creation’s prayer as she fell and it added to her misery.

High above them in the black void, beyond even the sun where she had spoken with Asceal and Aelius, she had seen the souls of their dead along with billions of others all slowly being burned to ashes in Katharsos’s pyres. She was first of the living to see the fate that awaited all souls with her own eyes and she deemed it an abomination. An attempt to break the death row inmates had been made, and it had failed. The lord of death’s power was simply too strong even in his absence. Azura did not even consider attempting to pluck individual souls from the masses even though that might have succeeded where a mass prison break had failed. Driven to exhaustion by the attempt and fearing that she would be discovered Azura had fled the sky pyres in disgrace. As she did so she saw a great beast, like a combination between a worm and an octopus, traveling in the opposite direction. She had a lot of time to ponder what Vakk was doing approaching the pyres, but lacking any knowledge on the Lord of Talk the only conclusions she could draw where based on his appearance. Needless to say the theories drawn from the monsters looks were as unfaltering as her opinion of his chosen aesthetics.

From there she had fallen back to the sun first and had spoken with Aelius briefly to confirm what Asceal had seen in the stars was true. Then she had headed back down to Galbar, using her air bubble both times to avoid incinerating herself. Now she found herself home once more in the Blue and bore witness how it had been ravaged by Ovius’s unseen passing and the fall of his moon fragments. Thousands of Sky slugs had been obliterated from existence while many of her temples had been reduced to rubble or completely knocked out of the sky. Unlike her parrots however the creatures of the Blue did not have the capacity for sadness or loss and so continued to cluelessly flutter too and fro around the morose bird. In her sullen state Azura found that frustrating and in her mind a division began to form between which souls need saving and which was not. It was a rationalization that made her task easier certainly, but it was also a cold one by her standards, one reflective of the slow hardening of her heart that witnessing the evils of other gods had caused.

Down below her she saw another one of these evils racing across the surface of Galbar. A vast storm that tore across the world at unimaginable speed, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake, both physical and spiritual, as countless souls drifted free of the ocean behind it. She noted that these souls all seemed to drift across Galbar’s surface rather than right up to the pyres as she expected them too. She also noted to her horror that the storm’s westward path took it dangerously close to the eye. Fear for her Parrots lives was enough to push her to act once more despite her emotional exhaustion. 

Azura descended back to Galbar to confront the desolate storm.

[hider=summary]
Azura’s parrots replant the burned islands of the Eye of desolation while singing to their goddess. Then they travel to the southern tip of Kalmarland to start planting there.

Azura hears the prayers of her creations while she descends from the sky pyres. She also sees Vakk on her way down but the two don't have time to speak as she hurtles on by him. In the pyres she witnesses everything Seihdhara did up there, tires and fails to free those waiting to be burned, and then runs before Katharsos can show up and ask her what she is doing poking around his sphere. 

Then she returns to The Blue, gets a bit cross with her sea slugs for not being sad about all their dead comrades and ruined temples and also spots the Gateway to Veradax wrecking its way across Galbar. She ceases moping and goes down to intervene.

No might spent
[/hider]