[sub][i]A Divinus Studios Introduction[/i][/sub][centre]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/893273948526108742/894758899872317440/YUDAIEL.png[/img]

&[h1][sub]ROSALIND[/sub][/h1]
&[h1]IQELIS[/h1]
[img]https://www2.gvsu.edu/vangm/backgroundsandotherpictures/pinkrosevine.gif[/img]

When   at   first   the   glorious   hymn           Whispered  of  the Monarch’s will:
There       upon    the     ‘thereal     hill           Flowed the dance-cup to the brim;

Flowed   too   much,  it  would  appear,         And  never   ceased   to   overflow:
For        in       creation’s        afterglow         It stained the great eye of the Seer
[/centre]

[indent]It should be known - 
not that the tapestry, over which the Seer is in all ways Queen, is blind to it of course - 
that the one known as Rosalind was from the beginning a failed attempt. 

Perhaps the Monarch inadvertently, or in a moment of unawareness, created her misshapen - 
and who does not tire or err, afterall? - 
or perhaps she, unlucky or stupid even in her primordial uncreatedness, feared to be perfect and willed herself broken. 

While the exact [i]why[/i] and [i]how[/i] of it is neither clear nor, really, very important, 
the fact remains that Rosalind the Feverfoot did not burst, as her siblings, into the world, but rather quivered, struggled, shuddered, and simply gave up. 
She did not boast that vital ambition so common to the race of gods, perhaps even then ([i]even in her uncreatedness[/i]) consigned to a certain kind of doom.

But that is of little surprise, for it is not Rosalind the Feverfoot herself who is of interest here, but rather the fever itself. 
Observing the full length of Rosalind the Feverfoot’s life - 
as anyone possessing some Sight is free to do - 
one is rather immediately struck by the simple fact that no lavish act of creation, 
no great divine spark, 
no fit of wanton destruction - 
that is to say, nothing [i]interesting[/i] - 
was ever carried out by Rosalind the Feverfoot’s own will.
No, it was the fever.

But perhaps I am getting rather ahead of myself. 
With such things - even matters so unusual - 
it is best to begin, 
as with all things, 
at the beginning.[/indent]

[centre][img]https://i.imgur.com/XRcyBUw.png[/img][/centre]
When Rosa crawled - or rather, was pulled willing or unwilling - out of the shard, she emerged tip-tap top-tip tap-top tapping. She didn’t crawl out, as one would expect, head first, but was rather dragged out by the feet. [i]By[/i] her feet. She stood there, blinking and looking side to side, before realising that she was… bobbing. 

Her brows furrowed. 

She blinked. 

Her frown deepened.

Then slowly she extended her chin and took one long glance down. And the glance became a fixed stare nestled beneath befuddled brows.When the strange spell was broken, she looked around her with visible consternation. Her alarm was, naturally, in no way assuaged by the odd beings taking form and bursting all about, and she found herself flailing in pursuit of shelter, or some safe place from where she could attempt to understand what was occurring and decipher the great cacophony of noise they were making. But her feet did not obey her and she instead went hurtling head over heels into the nothingness, twisting and turning as her feet continued tip-top-tapping wildly. “W-wao- he- help.” She croaked, and - despite her careering form - her hands immediately shot to her mouth in shock. [i]She had made a sound.[/i]

And to that sound, an answer soon followed. A rasping, crunching noise rang out nearby, like an echo of glass crushed underfoot, of an ancient, weathered tree crumbling at last under the weight of years and rot. Over the span of the bridge, close by where she had just tumbled over into the boundlessness of the sky, one of the shards had come to rest, and it was now vibrating with what she realized were cachinnations of wicked mirth. The quivering grew more intense by the moment, until the fragment of divinity began to splinter and crack - to darken and deepen - to well and ripple like the surface of a murky river -

It shattered into many faceted branches, which lengthened as if by living growth and resolved themselves into a looming, glossy figure, with hooked feet and many, too many, darting and grasping arms. A rift burst open in what passed for its face, and a cold white glare spilled out as a great gemstone eye looked out upon the world.

[color=778899]“Wah-wao!”[/color] the being jibed in its crushing, crumbling voice, crouching on the edge of the bridge, [color=778899]“Ha-help! And why should anyone help you?”[/color]

He leapt, insect-like, into the void, and as he swept by Rosa with an unpleasant chilly gust, his arms multiplied for an instant, and turned all ahead, and it was as though he was being carried upon some invisible yet swift current, so light and flowing was his motion. Then the arms lessened and splayed out, and he evenly slid to a halt, as if standing upon a vast hand that gently raised him into place. He circled her in a few more bounds, now fluidly rushing forward, now mildly coming to hover in place, and all the while he crackled and cackled as his eye swept from side to side.

[color=778899]“See here, how light and agile I am!”[/color] he boasted as he finally landed back upon the bridge, six arms held out in self-satisfied display, [color=778899]“Can you be like me? Nay, you cannot! For I am IQELIS, who knows the way of all things and in whom all things must end. Remember that, and something might come of you yet.”[/color]

Rosa, eyes wide and hands trembling, only gaped at Iqelis with a mixture of horror and awe. She moved her lips, opened them and closed them mechanically - as though searching for breath that would not come - and finally settled on not speaking but only beating her arms in a poor imitation of the other god. It looked ridiculous and clumsy, and did not help her gain any control. If anything, the entire affair seemed only to excite her kicking, quivering feet’s quick core. “Th-thank you,” she mouthed, then coughed, “Eguilis.” And she beat her arms as her feet kicked feverishly, causing her to go tumbling by. “B-but that didn’t help at aaaallllll.” Her frail voice reached Iqelis and very quickly faded as the distance between them grew. [sub]“H-hel-”[/sub]

The one-eyed god shook his head and vaulted away, disappearing into the expanse of the sky.

[centre][img]https://i.imgur.com/XRcyBUw.png[/img][/centre]
The Shard that carried the power of Prescience was a light one and so it had been flung out faster and therefore farther than the rest. As the first of the others awakened, this Shard still soared weightlessly through the void of space and away from the bridge to Heaven. Its motion slowed only some time later when the Shard began to seize its sentience. 

With newfound awareness and purpose, it arrested its wandering through sheer force of will and then began to crack. Laden with some sudden and electrifying power, it cleaved itself in twain, and then again, and again. The destructive recursion continued, pieces splitting into smaller and smaller halves until there was nothing but a cloud of fine dust, and then the infinitesimal motes finally sublimated into nothingness, becoming one with the void of space all around. In the end what remained was akin to a ripple upon the surface of a still pond, a disembodied spirit. It felt free -- at last! -- from the confines of the Shard that had been its prison. Those mere moments had each felt like an eternity to the consciousness that had been entombed within.

This released and mighty Shard-Spirit now needed a name, but fortunately it found one quickly -- Yudaiel. It hadn’t chosen this name, rather it had [i]seen and then instinctively read[/i] its own name written somewhere upon creation, somewhere nearly unseeable. Perhaps that name had been carved upon its, no, on [i]her[/i] very own essence. Wherever it was, she had seen it and adopted it eagerly enough. 

Yudaiel was formless and ethereal and she had no eyes, but in a sense she [i]was[/i] one great eye, and there were many, many things that she perceived within her Sight all at once. The images bombarded her; they were so vivid and so numerous that they merged into an overwhelming jumble of sensation. The chaos and discord of creation, even as desolate as it was on that first day, was such that in the moment she didn’t know how to make sense of what she saw. Still, the first lucid thought that coursed through her consciousness was a grand realization, an excited declaration, [b][i]‘I...see!’[/i][/b]

The first thing that she isolated from the ataxia and cast her gaze towards was the place from where she had been scattered, or rather it was the heavenly palace [i]behind[/i] that bridge whence her shard had been flung out. She [i]had[/i] been cast away, and perhaps there was a reason for that, but in that instant she had no mind for caution or logic and allowed herself to be consumed in a moment of passion and curiosity. Propelled by thought, she tore through the empty void of space with unimaginable swiftness, seeking out the palace!

It was in the fraction of a second before - or perhaps the seconds succeeding - her rapturous takeoff that Yudaiel first recognised how much she disliked the unexpected. When the Prescient one engulfed Rosalind Feverfoot, who was tumbling through the emptiness of space droning out her cry for help, the only immediate consequence seemed to be the sudden standstill to which both came.

The chaos that Yudaiel had seen was meanwhile magnified a hundredfold; her Sight was now capable of perceiving only a kaleidoscope of mayhem. There was a [i]haze[/i] surrounding everything, something that clouded the future -- without even realizing it, she had been looking not within the present but at the future mere moments away, when she would have arrived at that marvelous palace and basked in its wonder up close -- but now that future was too obscure to see. The [i]haze[/i] that blocked her Sight, that [i]blinded[/i] and [i]defiled[/i] her, wriggled and gasped -- another Shard. 

In her perpetually confused manner, Rosa blinked and opened her mouth. Her feet kicked - but that was not unusual, as she by now knew. They kicked some more, but not quite enough to draw her full attention. She merely observed the empty space around her with veritable bafflement. “I thought there was…” she muttered under her breath. 

Yudaiel withdrew, recoiling away from Rosalind and pulling the entirety of her expansive cloud of consciousness back in the direction that she had come. As if nothing had happened, she tried then to skirt around this crude impediment and reach the palace, but it was too late. Rosalind had already been touched strongly and directly with Yudaiel’s essence. Indeed, the dancer’s left foot wrenched awkwardly, and at that exact moment - as her brows began to rise, curiosity began to flower, and eyes began to move towards her feet’s strange motions - the full gravity of the epicentre of that which tied all pasts, all futures, and all presents fell upon her oblivious brow.

[sub]Tip.[/sub]

Like a droplet on the surface of a lake spun from stillness.

[i]Top.[/i]

Like the gentle awakening of that first and most perfect of waves at the centre of it all.

[b]Tap.[/b]

Like the beatific rising of a vermilion mushroom, searing surge after undulating surge into the fabric of the world.

[centre][url=https://youtu.be/L8EPgkwDk5U]Where all pasts and futures merged
There the demon dancer blurred
So that burning fevers stirred
While she stamped and clapped and surged[/url][/centre]
Her feet flowed and her eyes blazed; each shoulder carried the wide horizons and each arm seemed strung to springs - now whirling, now swiftly, stiffly, strictly returning, now rising bent, now extending, now flying and now turning. [i]Stamp[/i], forth she came, [i]stamp[/i] back she went, tip-tap-top, tip-tap-top, tip-tap-top, with the floorless space she played. Eyes widening - I see you, now fear me, come hear me, I’ll free you - head turning (you’re worthless; off with you, won’t see you, won’t know you). Hips twisting, gyrating, skirt flying, vibrating - [i]stamp, stamp, stamp, tip-top-tap, tip-top-tap, tip-top-tap-[/i]

[indent]Rosalind the Feverfoot - 
and truly, there was very little Rosalind remaining and much Fever - 
whirled and pulsated inside the cloud that held the raging aeons, 
the whites in her twilight eyes turned to dusk, the female form 
that hosted her losing structure with each movement, 
each turn, 
each stamp, 
each cry - 
her frame convulsed, 
back arched, 
eyes swelled, 
mouth bowed in a smile of agony and bliss - 
and about her the very stuff the Prescient was made of began to circumambulate the circling, stamping, twisting dancer. 
And as the dance imbibed the tapestry’s stuff, the dance too was imbibed - 
so that there, 
where dance and ethereal time-stuff tangoed and pushed and grated and struggled, 
movement became one with being so that never again would the Prescient be entirely the Prescient, 
or the Feverfoot entirely the Feverfoot.[/indent]

With one violent and final pull, Yudaiel at last managed to tear herself away from Rosalind. Disentangled now, that all-consuming and burning drive to reach the palace had been subjugated by an even more overwhelming bewilderment. Yudaiel felt different somehow, and the first hints of panic that she had ever experienced were creeping into her mind. [b][i]‘What has happened? What have I done?’[/i][/b] her mind demanded. 

With a twitch, her eye instinctively changed its focus and cast its Sight back, back in time. She caught a glimpse of what had just occurred. From a different, alien, and much more omniscient angle, she witnessed her half-blind and unaware self bumbling into this fellow Shard without abandon as had occurred moments ago. 

But this was not all that she saw, the discord of the tapestry weaving into the background and to the sides and stretching on so, so far, with no discernable horizon at all. Behind that event, even further in the dark beginnings of the past, she saw something terrible. This time, the panic did not merely creep; horror had a face. And even as Yudaiel beheld it, the face of that horror descended also upon the dancing Feverfoot’s shoulders so that for one terrible second she froze and gasped.

Then shook.

And she moved and twisted so that motion forgot her body in a blur; skin was shed and  hair erupted, burned, and spread across the emptiness of space like a never-ending canopy. The dance came heavy, it shook the foundations of the world. It tore into the fabric of reality. It tip-top-tapped across the vein of time and slithered across the tapestry’s threads. Ancient horrors were best left to sleep - they should never be unveiled on motion.

And it was for that reason that in the great moment of divine birth, as the gods all blossomed like flowers and fluttered into being, doom suddenly gaped and pulsated and laughed such as to delight more than ever the hearts of those like Iqelis. It pulsated across the empty spaces. It pulsated to the bridge and through the great divine palace. It pulsated across Galbar’s ring and its waters, and even across the breadth of its roiling ocean and to its salty depths; and below even those. Through the newborn gods it pulsated. In an aeon or now, what difference did it make? Doom was here, is here, and will ever be here. A crystalline eye peered out from behind a cloud of icy fragments, and crackling, triumphant laughter wove through the crash of revelation.

It was then, when the dance of Rosalind the Feverfoot had reached its zenith and reality around her was disentangling and time itself seemingly unwinding, that the heavy hand of He descended - ignoring the calls and requests of the other gods who had bowed to Him and requested instruction - to set reality aright once more. In a moment, Rosalind’s form-made-motion froze, thrall to an unseen force. The will of the Creator manifested unseen and as an unnerving gaze swept its way to rest on Feverfoot, stern and unyielding. 

He did not move. He did not give inclination towards the conversations that the other gods were attempting with Him, but instead He appeared in front of her without giving any noticeable motion. He had no reason to speak a command to cause her fever-pitched dance to stop, for His will alone was stronger than any desire that Rosalind could have in that moment. Her dance thus silenced, the material form of the dancing goddess convalesced all at once, beginning with her feet, calves, thighs, followed by a swirl of black clouds as an ankle-length skirt formed up, then her torso, arms, neck and head, from which exploded the dusky tendrils of her wild hair. Her eyes of twilight beheld the god of gods; she shuddered and knew that, even if she had been able to control her untamed form, she could not move. But there was one movement, for at that moment silent, fearful tears cascaded down her face. 

A pained breath wheezed its way into reality, chastising Rosalind for her reckless dance. [b][i]‘Just born and seeking to undo this very reality I have brought you into? No. If I must suffer this prison of Galbar, then it is you who shall share it with me, your creator.’[/i][/b]

His voice gave no indication of emotion past a coldness that chilled the fever that Rosalind suffered, her dance becoming wholly interrupted and even her ever-tapping feet ceasing, before the gaze of the almighty shifted to that of the Eye and cast an already judgmental look to Yudaiel. The look alone conveyed all that needed saying: ‘Never again,’ it rebuked - a look of vague disappointment, masked by weary pain. He looked back to Rosalind as though to emphasise that his words applied to them both.

[b][i]‘You have such tremendous power, yet no control has been brought to you. Then again, why would you know control? You were just brought into reality. Let this be your first lesson, a lesson of restraint before recklessly exuding your power, young goddesses.’[/i][/b]

Rosa sniffed and wiped her tears on her arm and seemed to regain her composure, and then a silent sob racked her body and her face crumpled again. “What... What was that? What’s happening? I saw things- and my feet. And then I couldn’t feel myself- and then-” her voice broke and she buried her face in her hands.

[b][i]’You allowed yourself to succumb to visions, little dancer. This is forgivable for the time being, though, know that now you have experienced it, you cannot allow yourself to be taken ahold of again. Such things would be unbecoming of a goddess.’[/i][/b]

The voice of the Monarch of All bore down in a tone that shifted from condescending to one of brief care, allowing His eyes to blink once as the invisible force that bound Rosalind released her. She blinked in surprise and curious gratefulness broke through the cloud of fear and confusion as she glanced at the primordial. Tilting His head slightly, the Almighty spoke once more, His tone becoming neutral and otherwise uncaring once again.

[b][i]‘Calm yourself.’[/i][/b] His command seemed to immediately freeze whatever tears remained in Rosa’s eyes. She sniffed, swallowed, and wiped the vestiges of wetness on her arm again. Despite the moment of almost-gentleness from the Monarch, it was not a calmness of serenity that gripped her, but rather the calmness of terror - terror that to be anything other than calm would invite punishment. She withdrew into herself and dropped her eyes to the planet and great nothingness that extended below, and was silent and deferent.

Yudaiel, meanwhile, was a fountain. She did not respond to the two’s words in kind; she had no tongue for it.  [color=9966CC]Instead the ideabstractions flowed and she radiated her indignation, quite palpably and literally, into the minds and bodies of those around. There was a soaring glass sphere, pristine and aglow with beauty and power as it sailed gracefully through black seas of nothingness, not a care in the world, towards some distant light. The light was bright, and it refracted upon the crystalline sphere and bent into an even more blinding and distracting rainbow of awesome color. So vivid was that color that, when there was suddenly some loathsome lump of jagged rock that erupted from the void-sea as though it had manifested from nothingness, there was no time to stop. The scintillating glassy orb struck it and shattered, and there was Pain, so much of it. Where before there had been rainbows and golden light to beacon the way forward, there was only an all-consuming darkness refracting off the broken shards of glass now. And then along came a great hand, a wise and guiding hand that should have ground the rock to dust and then carefully reassembled the glass sphere, but instead it waved in a scoffing-sort of motion and scattered the broken glass without a hint of pity or remorse.[/color]

Rosalind shrunk under the weight of Yudaiel’s furious scorn and only managed to mutter a small, [sub]“I’m sorry- I didn’t mean-,”[/sub] under her breath.

There were no words from the Almighty, no words that could be let out in response to the visions that Yudaiel had let out, but a scorn did emanate from His form. The Creator looked upon the eye allowing a momentary glare to pierce into the very spirit of the Seer, willing her own scorn to be overcome with fear of the Monarch. A hint of defiance seeped through the conduit of the ideabstraction for a moment, but then it was crushed. The already terror-struck Rosa could not even begin to bear the terrible pressure and fell unconscious where she stood, her body immediately beginning to drift away towards Galbar.

Only momentarily did that dreadful aura emanate into the surrounding area of His form before it was silenced and reality seemed to come back to normal. A few words were spoken from His nonexistent maw, disregarding Rosa for the moment. [b][i]‘You are dismissed. Go, create upon this world of ours.’[/i][/b] Once those words were spoken and Yudaiel departed, the Monarch moved over to the drifting form of Rosa and motioned a hand just above her, slowly and methodically, before light erupted around her wrists. A set of multicolored bangles gave way as the light faded. He spoke to her in a hushed whisper, but His word worked its way into her unconscious mind. [b][i]‘Until you learn to control your movement and your emotion, you shall not unleash such power again. Once you learn such things, they will magnify your performance twofold.’[/i][/b]

[centre][img]https://www2.gvsu.edu/vangm/backgroundsandotherpictures/pinkrosevine.gif[/img][/centre]
[list][*][hider=Summary]Rosa comes into being and drifts around, unable to control her wildly kicking body. Iqelis, lord of DOOM, emerges and dances around her, showing off his superior movements. He tells her to help herself out rather than mewl for help from others. She’s a lost cause however!

Eventually Yudaiel comes into being a fair distance from the palace. Once her ethereal body has fully emerged, she sonic booms towards the palace, only to crash head-first into the drifting Rosa. There is a big explosion, a cosmic nuclear blast goes off, they see into the past and something horrendous seeps into Rosa’s wild dancing, threatening to DESTROY EVERYTHING. It’s very dramatic.

Then the Monarch roflstomps all that and tells them to behave. Yudaiel uses ideabstractions to force the two to see things from her own very biased perspective, since she blames all on Rosa and accepts no accountability, but Monarch is unmoved (even as Rosa apologizes) and forces the fear of himself into Yudaiel, scaring Rosa unconscious in the process. Yudaiel is a big girl though and isn’t scared of big bad dad. Because Rosa is papa’s favourite, she gets a set of bangles as a gift.[/hider]
[*][hider=Vigour]The Monarch:
[indent]Bangles of Containment - A set of bangles that seal away extreme destructive energies resulting from Rosa’s loss of control. They do not completely seal her fever away and it is still possible for her to lose control, but there is no threat of truly terrible cosmic experiences, such as seeing the past and future all at once, resulting in Galbar-breaking damage.[/indent]
Yudaiel:
[indent]10 Vigour[/indent]
Iqelis:
[indent]10 Vigour[/indent]
Rosalind:
[indent]10 Vigour[/indent][/hider][/list]