[h1]🐋[/h1] Luis bathed in the freezing cold ocean waters separating the ice sheet around the north pole from north Kalgrun. It was a refreshing change after the seemingly endless trip though the sky pyres and the silent bleakness of the north pole. On the shore icy insects and white furred mammals frolicked in the snow in between the trunks of blue leaved trees. Down in the waters of the northern ocean teemed with life. It was a joyous feeling to be surrounded by the living again, rather than the soon to be doomed souls of the dead. While the seals, walruses and penguins where nice, who Luis was really here for where the whales. New species of them had appeared since the last time he had been at the north pole, along with the entire ecosystem they lived in, and Luis was more than happy to get to know them. Some had heard tales of him from other, older,species who still sung of the day when the great sky whale blessed the southern sea with his presence and so it has been easy to engage with them without his vast size scaring them all off. He’d got to hear about their lives down here in the ocean while he had spoken of his journeys with Azura and all the things that had happened to him with someone who wasn't, well, Azura. It was enjoyable, but soon enough he felt the urge to return to her side. He could never quite shake the feeling that if he stayed away for too long she’d run off somewhere while he wasn't looking. After biding his farewells Luis rose up and out of the sea, water cascading off his back, and then headed north, flying just above the frozen sea. Over the ice he flew till it grew so think that nothing could break through and surface from the ocean below. The life from Kalkun faded from view. He passed over the sculpture fields, where Winter-Spirits frolicked and competed in their yearly contest, erecting new statues in the images of distant places, people and things. Then even they were gone and only the craggy ice sheet remained. As he traveled further the world bellow dimmed and Heliopolis sank towards the southern horizon. Only once it was setting did the isle of Twilight came into view. A ring of mountains, that Azura had once called the broken crown, stabbed up out of the ice below. They, along with the spire like north peak they surrounded, where the only notable change in elevation for kms around. Luis had seen them before but there had been additions since he left. Atop the closest tall peak to his approach a faint light suddenly intensified, as if a distant spotlight had locked onto him. The echo of trumpets echoed from the peak, a low ominous almost alien tone, as the Titan of Winds raised the alarm. Down below on the slopes of the peak thousands of smaller lights lit up as Gusts and Armonia began to also awaken or emerge from hiding. Luis reached out with his mind and, using his god given power over soul crystal constructs, turned off this new alarm system. As quickly as they had awoken the forces of the titan slept once more, while the roaming eye of the massive construct itself turned back to watching the ice beyond. Then he flew across the mountain range and pass over the valley below. In the valley itself was his armor, still being unloaded, a process now guarded by a number of awake Armonia who patrolled the crevasse and entrance to the vault and no doubt also stood watch within the vault itself. The Whale then turned his nose skyward, soaring up alongside the heaven piercing mountain the vault was built under. As he climbed light slowly returned, his accent bringing both Heliopolis and the Luminous Garden into view. At the top of the mountain sat the sky bastion, a fortress made of two wheels, one inside the other, that rotated around the mountain peak. It was functionally still on Galbar, as the two celestial lights in the sky where both still visible from here. The world below till cured away from them at its distant horizon rather than being rendered as an infinitely repeating map, but travel any higher, or even move out horizontally from the north peak, and he would enter the Blue proper. Out there Luis spotted new creatures that had not been there when he left either. Here too Azura had been busy. Off in the distance a massive serpent like leviathan slithered through the sky, chasing after a herd of tusked manta rays, while nearby a long necked creature stabbed its head in and out of a shoal of sky slugs, snapping one or two up each time it struck. Luis took a few moments to watch this rather limited ecosystem at work before the familiar voice of Azura asked [color=lightblue]“So. What do you think?”[/color] The whale's gaze slowly rolled back to the sky bastion, where one of the doors had opened to reveal the avian goddess. She had been distracted from her experimentation on the red Armonia by Luis’s triggering of the alarm system and after checking the cause and seeing that it was him and not an army of death she had decided to take a break. [color=RoyalBlue]”They’re very different. What prompted this?”[/color] Luis asked. She’d never made an ecosystem before. [color=lightblue]“I felt inspiration calling me and with the tyrant's slaughter thwarted I felt like I could indulge it a little. Plus they’ll be useful if anyone tries to come in though the Blue.”[/color] she explained [color=RoyalBlue]”and you were inspired to make... flying fish?”[/color] Luis asked doubtfully [color=lightblue]“Muses work in mysterious ways Luis. Besides, you are basically a flying fish. Or fish shaped mammal anyway. Don’t judge.”[/color] Azura responded, her tone playful rather than offended. [color=RoyalBlue]“Is that one straight up just a tuna? Did you go down to the ocean and steal some while I was away?”[/color] he began upon spotting the quite literal flying fish, before realizing something [color=RoyalBlue]“Can you do that with other species?”[/color] [color=lightblue]“I didn’t, but I suppose I could? A healthy ecosystem needs variety after all and that would be a simple way to add it. Did you have something specific in mind with that question?”[/color] Azura asked [color=RoyalBlue]“Whales.”[/color] Luis responded with unprecedented speed. [color=lightblue]“Whales? Oh. ohhh. Yes I can do that, it’s the least I can do in fact!”[/color] Azura responded before taking wing [color=lightblue]“I’ll be right back!”[/color] she called before blasting off down to the world below before Luis could get another word in. [hr] Luis had some time to poke around while she was gone and he found her latest project, the red Armonia, with its back peeled open with various half finished magical contraptions built inside it that looks like the framework for holding soul crystals that Bruna and the Alma had. His best guess was that it was something like the Curators or Bruna, though why she was working on it when he had already seen them function down on the island below he could not say. When Azura returned it was at the head of a huge shoal of Tonnikala. There were whales of all kinds, from Blue whales to Orcas, Beluga whales and Narwhals. Along with them where numinous pray species: Dozens of kinds of fish, small and large, where herded through the sky, as was where a number of kinds of squids, octopuses, turtles, seals, shrimp and krill. Along with all these, and almost invisible to the naked eye, where clouds of algae and plankton, the basis for most aquatic food chains, that had been modified to absorb water and nutrients from clouds and the Blue’s ubiquitous light. The mass of Tonnikala soared up into the Blue and then burst out in every direction, flooding the sky with life far exceeding the limited specimens that Azura had originally introduced. [color=lightblue]“So. What do you think?”[/color] Azura asked once more after landing atop the bastion next to Luis. [color=RoyalBlue]“It’s wonderful.”[/color] Luis responded. The land below was still desolate and cold, but, at last for Luis, up here didn't seem so lonely anymore. [hider=mp] Start: 8 fp 5 mp 1 mp discounted by Tonnikala to make a minor ecosystem up in the Blue around the north pole. It will spread out as time goes on but will be mostly focused around mountain peaks where the Blue and Galbar meet. Several 0 mp expenditures to mutate a bunch of species for that ecosystem. End 8 fp 4 mp Portfolio progress: Birds (9/10) (+3 from Alma retroactively because I was not aware you could count enhanced things towards other ports until now) Bards (2/10) [/hider]