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Sobering up after a bout of drinking, however monumental, had never been much trouble. Narzhak’s immense girth alone made getting noticeably drunken a gargantuan task in its own right; adding to this the fact that no sort of impurity, no matter whether it had been anywhere else before, seemed able to remain inside his body for long without seeping out in some way or another, one could have sworn that his constitution had been designed especially for that sort of pastime. Thus, it was after no more than a brief walk to the nameless river of murk and blood that ran through the Steppes that his head was back to being as impervious to loud noises, apelike or otherwise, as it had ever been, hundreds (if not more) of drained wine barrels notwithstanding.

The god shook off the last of the needling fumes from his iron skull and tore his gaze away from the soothing if macabre patterns of the ichor-tainted flow. Flaming eyes swept over the plains, between the cliffs walling them off at either side and over wide flatlands, empty beyond the occasional rooting beast. Shengshi did have a point - even setting aside a space like dozens of mountain ridges, there would be room for more than one good harvest here. Worth keeping in mind. Amusing as it was when inferior beings ate each other, leaving them nothing else to subsist on was not going to help anyone given a couple of centuries.

A more pressing thought for now, however, was seeing whether he remembered the distilling part right, despite the wine and unexpected birth that had followed the explanation. The journey from the river to the Scar was spent trying to reconstruct the steps into something at least distantly resembling their proper sequence. Boil, seal, ferment... no, that could not be right; it went seal, ferment, then boil? He was sure he was missing something again, a suspicion which did not leave him even as he climbed into the fissure and let go of its edge, stepping onto the warm rock below. What he saw there, however, made him immediately forget the succession he had just so carefully assembled.

The kostral were not at work as he had left them. This alone was enough for his four eyes to dart each in a different direction, prying into every visible opening for signs of disorder. The situation was really not as dire as it looked at first glance, with only a comparatively small part lobbing stones out of their cavern mouths, but it was bad enough that something had disrupted the order of things at all. Even worse was that this something was brazen enough not to stop when he had walked in. Why were there birds in the Pit? They usually knew well enough to avoid the Scar altogether. Yet here they were, offensively glimmering, somehow weaving between the fiery clouds and grasping tentacles of the sky-dwellers and eluding the improvised projectiles that rained on them from the walls. And- speaking?

Narzhak rumbled and clapped his hands together with the force of thousands of enormous gongs struck all at once. In a blink, stones stopped flying as the kostral scrambled back to their usual haunts. The birds, wise enough not to follow them into narrow, cramped spaces, remained hovering about the openings. Some converged around the god, and their speech, now evidently repeated time and again, keenly reminded him of what it was like to have a still-hazy head. Did Azura really sound like that? For the little he knew of her, he had never considered her much of an annoyance, but she seemed determined to make him rethink that view.

The irate squint of his eyes only grew thinner as the opening words of the address played out. Souls, death, what did any of this have to do with him? What happened to things once they had served their purpose in the world had never been any of his business, and why she would say these things to mortals was simply beyond him.

The further the speech went, however, the wider he stared, until at the end he could no longer hold back a thunderous, ground-shaking laugh. [color=#CD2626][b]”Consent? Autonomy? She’s begging?! Damn to the void, she’s serious about this!”[/b][/color] He slapped himself over his ironclad stomach, the rock under him buckling and cracking under the quakes of his mirth. The cackles did not stop even when a colossal hand shot out and closed around a few alma, reducing them to a smear of invisible dust, nor when great metallic spikes shot out like darts to crush and splinter the rest. His finger still quivered as he brought the last, most elusive one before the barren waste that was his visage, locked in place with hooked and pincered chains.

[color=#CD2626][b]”Listen up,”[/b][/color] he growled, suppressing the last traces of laughter. His eyes blazed up for a moment, and the creature’s crystalline parts were enkindled with a lurid glow to mirror them, [color=#CD2626][b]”I don’t know what score you’ve got with Katharsos, and I don’t care how you settle it -”[/b][/color] his speech had by then firmly become a menacing snarl, [color=#CD2626][b]”- as long as you don’t stick your beak into my work. Come into my home uncalled to distract my servants, and crying over some burning soul’s going to be the least of your worries. Keep your squabbles over death out of here. You won’t find any will to freedom, only-”[/b][/color]

The metal of his visor became a hungry mire, and the minuscule construct was dragged beneath it as the dark pearl had been before. Faint praise though it might have been, the taste was nowhere near as atrocious this time. [color=#CD2626][b]”I hope I’ve made myself clear.”[/b][/color] It was uncertain that what remained of the alma could still relay his words, but Narzhak hated leaving something unfinished.

Clawed fingers pensively rubbed together with a strident creak. There could be no assurance that Azura would listen, or even, now that he thought of it, that she would be the only one to try and bring some useless inanity to his domain. If she had made an attempt of that sort at all, it meant she was expecting to find at least some sympathetic ears, and if they all flew like her and these odd glowing birds, the air over the Pit as it was now, perilous as it might have been to any other intruder, would not do. Nor would the kostral simply throwing whatever was at hand. Even without this, they would have to deal with foes outside their reach sooner or later, and weapons that would supply for that were still a long way beyond their grasp. At best, he could provide to both at once…

A loud rattle from his gauntlet drew thousands of quartets of eyes, with the occasional blind stain of metal, staring out of their tunnels. They died quickly, but more of them sprang up quicker yet, just as designed. Never a moment without a safe surplus for cases like these.

The Iron God snatched a nearby wandering ash-storm into his hand, tightened it into a bundle and spat some of the unrecognisable remains of the swallowed alma into it. As the roiling cloud in his palm began to pulsate and shimmer, he breathed rapacity into it, then snapped his fingers closed with a crack, sending uncountable specks flying in all directions. Each was certain to find its mark.

The watching thousands began to shudder and swell as the ash reached them, piercing their hide and warping their forms. Bones lengthened into serpentine spines and wide, sturdy ribcages, limbs stretching beyond their natural shape and snapping into angles they could never have supported. Skin was torn and rewoven into smooth membranes, even as it was dislodged by the sudden burst of sickly bulbous growths along the entire body. Arms were pushed close together like the legs of insects, and heads grew new sharp, smooth predatory countenances.

[color=#CD2626][b]”Skestral,”[/b][/color] the god spoke, and as one a legion of raucous hissing breaths sounded around him. One after another, the things that had been kostral spread their leathery wings and took flight, borne on tumorous protrusions filled with foul-smelling air. They sped from corner to corner, unhindered by their apparent bulk, as their grounded kin began to peer out in awe. Many did little but pass between cavern and cavern, stretching their new-formed muscles. Some vanished in the perpetual smoke overhead, probing the way for patrols and hunts. A few more yet dove towards the stretch of high ground where lay the path to the world above, and just so they were gone.

Narzhak had an eye for every path, following the flight of each for a few moments with an appreciative look, all while the fourth stayed over his open hand. Some ashen dregs were still restlessly crawling around the palm, the light, but not the motion entirely squeezed from them. This was not enough for another batch, but throwing it away would have been senseless. There must have been [i]something[/i] it would be good for. It moved, stirred… What did that speech say about sleep?

It was strange, it occurred to him, that Azura, whose very creatures were so restless even when pulverised, would want to put things to sleep for who knew how long. A somewhat less amusing thought following in that one’s trail was that, if she did have her way, half the world would have been slumbering sooner or later. Absurd, but if it really happened? Things would get much harder for everyone for no good reason. The least he could do now was ensure that, if Galbar became too quiet, he would not be caught unprepared.

A sliver of molten rock from a nearby floating sphere, and the ash began to churn and harden into something solid. He breathed wrath into it, then more, and more still. The quivering mass of orange-veined grey bloated into something that was neither quite worm, nor quite boar, nor quite squid. Its many limbs thrashed and grasped along its elongated body, unable to release the fury that filled them in any meaningful way other than to tear into themselves. It gouged uneven gaps into itself, and teeth grew to make them mouths. As soon as it could, it howled, and Narzhak was barely fast enough to cut it off after its first tones; it was still enough for some kostral to leap upon each other in a murderous frenzy, and a few skestral to tangle with the drifters among the clouds. And still it grew in size and anger, until even the hand underneath it began to feel its weight. The chains around its limbs and edges became thicker, the muzzles around its mouths wider, until both maker and creation were out of breath.

The two contemplated each other as they recouped. The Iron God found himself forced to admit he had gone a little beyond the pale this once. Left unchecked, the thing would not only wake up a world of sleepers, but wreak havoc on anything it came across, the Pit included. At the same time, he doubted that keeping it bound would have been much of a solution. Chains would stop its excesses until needed, but without motion to stoke it, the anger that made it so useful would eventually die out, maybe before even there was a chance to see it at work even once. Besides, with how it still struggled, those chains might not hold long enough, either. Not on the body, at least.

He tapped his fingers together. If not chains on the body, whatever the thing had for a mind could not be much harder to tie together. Chains of the mind, clouds of the mind…

His eye fell on the cauldron still fastened to the edge of a thumb. Of course. If the head took the worst of the drinking, something that did not have one at all would get the blow all over. And a strong one as long as the liquor kept flowing, without need for a single link.

How did it go again? Ferment, boil, seal?

[hider=Canto VII]

After going for a walk to sober up, Narzhak climbs back into the Pit. There, some alma are riling up the kostral, who, lacking any sort of initiative, react to them as they would to any other intruder, with predictably little success. He restores order with a quick and heavy hand and yells through the bird network to what he thinks is Azura to keep off his lawn. The alma with the dubious honour of serving as transmitter for that message is then chewed up, and its remains are used in turning some kostral into a flight-capable subspecies, the skestral (or gargoyles for simplicity) to prevent more incidents of the sort. Some skestral start spilling over to Galbar’s surface.

Narzhak then suspects that preserving souls might end up plunging much of the world into stasis, and doesn’t like the idea. He thus decides to create a monster he can send out to shake things up if they get too quiet for his liking, but overdoes it and ends up with a huge, nasty, uncontrollable beastie whose voice drives all who hear it into a bloodthirsty rage. At a loss as to how to keep it from indiscriminately wrecking everything while it’s not in the field, he remembers that he was going to try and distill alcohol again after going over it with Shengshi, and concludes that the best course of action is to make the monster his drinking pal.

[/hider]

[hider=Might Summary]

[u]Starting:[/u] 3 MP, 4 FP

[list]
[*] 2 FP spent on transforming some kostral into skestral, granting them flight.
[*] 2 FP, enhanced with War portfolio, spent on the Howling Scourge, a creature of tremendous power.
[/list]

[u]End:[/u] 3 MP, 0 FP

[/hider]