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The Reverberation found itself lost somewhere within the dreary land of the sulking and seething. There was a storm, and she was at the very epicenter of it. [i]Or maybe she was the storm?[/i] Not even she knew the answer to that -- all she was aware of was that she felt deeply upset. Logically there was little reason for it; already she had begun to cool towards the ugly rock from her last ideabstraction, the other Shard, the Feverfoot, the dancer, that [i]Rosalind[/i]. Rosalind [i]had[/i] apologized once she’d seen the ideabstraction, and the link between their minds was a two-way conduit: Yudaiel had felt the sincerity and regret, and to some extent she had accepted it…though less forgivable was how she now felt so strange. It had only been mere minutes since her birth, and yet she already felt like she was someone else, forever and inexorably altered. Some part of her now yearned to [i]dance[/i], and so she did, even in this miserable land of the sulking and seething.

All about her it rained, damp and cold, and yet underfoot the puddles broiled with the searing heat of her rage. She stomped in one such scalding pool as part of her dance, the fresh memory of what the Monarch had said and done flaring brightly in her memory. The boiling water burnt and stung in a sense, just like how it had hurt when the Monarch had forced Himself into her mind and thrust that [b]fear[/b] into it. Never again would she be quite so carefree or impulsive as in those first few seconds when she raced towards that beautiful palace without a thought or a care; caution and respect had been drilled into her, and though it had been meant to be just fear of [i]Him[/i], it had and would bleed over into other things.

The cold water of the rain soothed her burning flesh, and brought clarity and lucidity to her thoughts. She remembered also the condemnation in His tone, the accusation that He had laid upon her and Rosa. She had nearly destroyed the world, He’d said! What a worthless slate and pathetic world if it was truly so fragile as to be undone by an accident, a mere [i]bump[/i] and no more. Lightning struck somewhere behind. She turned back to look at the last bit of the flash, and in it she saw the Monarch’s eye as she had seen it minutes ago, and she once again saw that same look: ‘Never again,’ His eye had said. The thunderclap came a few moments after the lightning’s flash, the warning sound too late as thunder was wont to be by its very nature, ever slower than lightning. The thunder’s boom warned of the terrible thing she and Rosa had seen when together they’d looked back. She struggled to wipe the memory from her mind in that moment, to escape this miserable plane.

Of course, none of this sorrow of hers was outwardly visible, nor this ‘land of the sulking and the seething’. She really had no feet with which to stomp in puddles, nor any skin or flesh to be burnt and alternately chilled by water. That place and its sensations and experiences had all just been a construct within her ever lively imagination, a mirror reflecting her innermost thought and emotion, and so with little more than force of will she shattered the mirror. All of it was thus banished from her Sight, and once again she perceived reality as it was in that moment, the present. 

Adrift in the cold dark sea of space, she cast her gaze left and right. Down below she saw Galbar; it was shaping nicely, with beautiful-but-tumultuous seas being shaken and stirred as the gods fell down themselves and as they pulled land from the depths below. She felt no desire or will to join them, despite Voligan’s invitation for help. [b][i]’Let others play their roles there,’[/i][/b] she thought, [b][i]’for mine is elsewhere, wherever elsewhere is.[/i][/b] The newly-forged ice rings that encircled Galbar were quite beautiful, stunning as the light of the solar palace of Heaven reflected off of them -- [i]the palace.[/i] She turned her gaze back to it. Her awe and its image had been sullied, and now she hardly wanted to resume her flight to it, but there were other Shards like her milling about there, and she felt and heard what the one called Epsilon had said. This ‘book’ that he spoke of was intriguing. She squinted, peering across the tapestry of creation to look at the thing. There were no real horizons to hide behind so as to escape her Sight; the only hope was that the entangling mess of threads and needles were too distracted or chaotic for her to notice. But the Codex was far from hidden, and its thread was a bright one aglow with power, so she easily saw it. Even more intrigued now, she snapped out of the reverie of her prescience and found herself driven forward, compelled to examine it more closely…

The odd sight of the drunken Jiugui making his way (part sprinting, part rolling, part falling!) down the bridge was a bemusing spectacle even for one with tastes as peculiar as her own. Yudaiel briefly considered calling out and making this strange one’s acquaintance, but then a more foreboding presence neared her. She could feel it, somewhere not far behind.

It seemed she had not been the only one of that mind. At the edge of her vision, now anchored to the realities of the present, flitted a dark gleam, an incongruous ray of shadow and light, which speared from the skies of Galbar towards where the Codex beckoned from the palace’s gates. The umbral presence did not flow ahead evenly as she did, but hurled itself forward in bursts, now lagging behind, now almost emerging into sight again. At last it leapt forward in a mighty heave, and the glistening, shifting figure of Iqelis careened fully into her view. The cyclopic god bounded upon pieces of debris scattered about the heavens, be they ice, rock or the remains of spent shards, and launched himself ahead as they crumbled and decayed, riding the wave of their annihilation until he clutched on his next grip in the ascent. He turned his eye towards the core of her presence, shining equally with curiosity and wariness.

[color=778899]”Where does the flow take you, sister?”[/color] he queried in an echo of cracking glass, [color=778899]”Do you seek your doom by the hand that cast you out?”[/color]

Ah, words. Such crude instruments! Rather than answer him in kind, Yudaiel’s expansive form suddenly reached out explosively to grasp at him, to just touch him barely so that he might feel as she felt, and for a moment See…

For a moment the dark god swung about and aside, away from her, a dozen hands raised to intercept an invisible but nevertheless expected blow. Seeing him recoil, the Reverberation froze her own advance, a wispy tendril of her essence hanging just on the precipice of Iqelis’ comfort. So then his diamantine eye flared up with a prideful glow, flashing with a quick sequence of feelings imperceptible to any who could not detect the faintest fluctuations of its light - irritation at having been so easily rattled, a surging assurance of his own superiority, an injunction, or perhaps a challenge, hurled her way - and he approached again, angling from stone loosened by Voligan’s descent, arms deliberately left down his sides.

Taking that for his assent, the Reverberation bridged the remaining gap between them, and the ideabstractions began to resonate within Iqelis’ mind. [color=9966CC]The events surrounding her encounter with the Monarch flashed before him -- though he had curiously watched the spectacle from afar in person, this time he saw what transpired from her perspective, and her scorn at what the Creator had done was there. This disdain of hers was a fading one, or perhaps more accurately stifled, a smoldering coal rather than a blazing fire. Still, it was [i]dangerously[/i] present, bared and unmasked in the open, and from it wafted the smoke of her defiance in the face of the fear the He commanded. She was [i]not[/i] afraid to go into the palace, even if she admitted that His presence was a rattling one.

The landscape shifted. The ember faded, but its glow remained. The carmine red of hot coal made way for a different glow though, a more pure and awesome one like the luster of gold, or the radiance of the sun. And a new object appeared in the center of this glow, the Codex. A low humming emanated from this most divine of things, [i]beckoning[/i] forward. That was what she sought.[/color]

There was a moment of stillness, laden with contemplation, and then the vision began to change through no will of her own. 

[color=778899]Around the shining point of her goal, the shadows deepened, until the whole panorama of her mind's eye, from the span of the bridge heavy with rancorous memory to the vague promise of Galbar far below, was cast into gloom. A gloom that was palpable, solid, moving, a shadow and yet a rushing tide. For an instant, everything was swept away, and despite the dizzying speed of the vision she saw the disintegration of all things in minute detail, scrap by scrap tearing and peeling away hoarily. Immense, nebulous hands of black crystal slithered about, turning and twisting the umbral torrent that spelled the fate of creation. She glimpsed the wrath of the Monarch as she had felt it flaring up once again; but how small it seemed beside those hands, how [i]helpless[/i] and impotent! Even an ember of resentment could surely have snuffed out its feeble core.

Yet she had little time to dwell on that, for the hands converged on the beacon of the Codex. A sharp finger hovered above its page, poised to etch its mark into it, and thereby spell out the name of [b]Time[/b].[/color]

Confusion and bemusement permeated the vision. Nonetheless, the goddess willingly watched for a time -- this telepathy was a conduit that went both ways, after all. Quickly though she grew tired, or rather annoyed, at this flawed and imperfect image. Her will and telepathy were strong, and in a resounding gong and a bright flash, the vision became one of her choosing once more. 

[color=9966CC]There now was a mighty cataract -- one with a bottom of rocks, some still jagged but many more weathered and smooth. This precipice that the waterfall fell from was a cliffside that defied reality, so imposing that its top was hidden above a layer of clouds.

Yet instead of some thunderous din that deafened the world, there was silence. Instead of an entire river’s worth of water falling down to pound the earth with a force that shook its very foundations and made it into one great drum, there was stillness. There was not a drop of water to be seen; what should have been the most magnificent waterfall in creation was dry as a bone.

A great sense of wrongness was forced down Iqelis’ proverbial throat, and it was hard to swallow. With it came disappointment overwhelming, for before him was a worthless and ugly landscape, one that represented wasted potential. There was suddenly the mercy of clouds concealing the ugliness, but the clouds had not moved. Instead they, and their field of view, was soaring upward at a mind-boggling speed. Even still it took some time to reach the peak, for this was not just one waterfall but a series of many twisting and turning ones. How beautiful it must look if the water flowed, if the longing light could strike it so as to find purpose and beauty and make a thousand thousand divine rainbows! Eventually they arrived at the dried and cracked trough above, the riverbed of the dried river that should have soared over the cliff in ecstatic furor.

The metaphor became clear as Yudaiel guided his thoughts: time was a river, and in his flawed conception, there was no journey -- the important part -- just some bleak and desolate destination. Blackness then swallowed all, smothering any sensation of time or perception. ‘You are blind!’ the horrible void voicelessly japed. Or was that his own conscience? Without waiting for his introspection, it went on, ‘...and the water’s purpose is lost upon you, but there may be some potential yet. Open your one eye, and See: witness Truth and Beauty and Reality.’ Slowly, the cruel darkness began to recede.[/color].

A silence followed, the motes of Iqelis’ mind inscrutable but receding. Perhaps he had been taken aback by the vehemence of the rebuttal, or perhaps he seethed at the rejection of his world. However it may have been, he made no move to answer, until -

[color=778899]Light continued to gain ground, parting the shadowy curtain, until it revealed the barren course of the river that had been enveloped. Or, at least, a close simulacrum of it, evoked by someone who had seen it briefly: though its turn and course were unchanged, minute details marked it with irksome imperfection, loose rocks misplaced and skeletal dry shrubs along its banks drooping the wrong ways. The cauldron at its mouth was perhaps a little shallower, but altogether as dry and uncomely as it had ever been.

[b]Let it be so,[/b] a trenchant voice spoke from everywhere and nowhere, harsh and unforgiving like the landscape itself.

A muted rumble from far away in the distance answered it, and down the desiccated stream rolled an iridescent cloud, followed by a roaring wall of water. As it approached, the land around it seemed to stir to life in an instant as it passed, patches of green springing up from the cracked soil. The renewed flow burst over the edge of the caldera, bursting and splitting into a myriad rivulets as it struck upon the sloping outcroppings on the fissure’s walls. It kept flowing and falling, until the cauldron was steaming with resplendent clouds and its floor had been swallowed up by a tide made murky by the dust and dirt -

And still it flowed, rising high until it found a way out in a narrow gulch and spilled out, continuing on its impetuous course. The cauldron was left behind as the river rolled on ahead, through rocky canyons and arid plains. Now and again it was joined by more streams, which intertwined, grew and separated again, winding each along its own path. The vision’s focus rose up into the sky, as high as where the clouds would have been, and each river was bared to it. They were hundreds in their race through a shifting, dreamily inconstant landscape, each with its own struggles and triumphs. Some, like the first it had followed, forced their way through dry and dead wastes, returning colour to the bare earth. Others twisted through lush forests and glittering meadows, through fields of curiously shaped boulders and rank marshlands, over hills and through caverns of hidden darkness. From high above, they looked like a shining pattern, crossing through breathtaking beauty and cloying foulness alike, and at the end…

At the end there waited for them an inky sea, boundless and deathly still. No waves marred its surface, no reflections moved to light it. Each and every river, whether scattering into a delta or diving forth as a single mighty flow, plunged into that abyss, and was lost with nary a ripple.

[b]Wheresoever a journey may turn, its destination is always the same,[/b] the voice spoke again, dry and cutting, [b]Whatever an eye may see, it will always close in darkness. All threads, dull and bright, will come unravelled. Beauty and Reality are no more than fleeting dreams, and One Truth waits to wake all.[/b][/color]

The flicker of sorrow that he might have expected for a response never came; instead there was only bemusement, laced with an insufferable hint of smug superiority. His vision did not make way for some replacement, but rather became subsumed by the Prescient’s will. 

[color=9966CC]The deathly still black sea grew larger and nearer as their lofty perch in the sky seemed to suddenly be plummeting. Heaven united with sea, and now their perspective was that of the inky water itself. How vast and expansive the sea truly was! It basked beneath the sun, and was content. Ripples and reverberations nigh invisible upon its mirrorlike surface nonetheless stirred in the depths below; it was alive, and it had a heartbeat. In every moment it bled a lake’s worth of water through miniscule cuts and tears wrought on the surface by the sun’s brazen glare, and yet compared to the vastness of the sea such evaporation was barely even noticeable. Still, in time a great stormcloud did coalesce above, and suddenly their perspective was a heavenly panoramic view of the land once more. They rolled over the dark clouds together and at last became one with a single raindrop. Buffeted by winds, this-droplet-that-was-them clutched onto the sky as if for life, but in the end it was of course futile, and it fell alongside a thousand-thousand other drops. Still, they had ridden far upon the wind and clouds, and as they fell it became apparent that they were once again among the towering peaks and spires near the headwaters of that first mighty cataract. Indeed, they merged with that same river and followed its course again. In an instant they were once more at the sea, but in the next heartbeat they were the river. The sea, then the river. Time accelerated and began to lose meaning, but with each passing they rubbed upon the jagged rocks and made them smoother and smoother, they carried away sediment and built an expansive delta, they gouged and rent through mountains to carve a canyon: legacies to endure the test of time.

Ah, time, the great and endless river. In truth it was best represented not by one river, but rather by many, as Iqelis had shown in his jaded retort. The possible rivers were many and their paths could be changed, but there was always the constant that they returned to the sea, and perhaps there would finally come a day when the sea was drunk up by the earth below and all the water vanished and the world was a dried husk -- or was it? Thunderous laughter dismissed even that ocean. Once more the sea became the universe, their reality, but this time it was not content. It was not merely bleeding from the minute cuts and punctures of the sun’s jabbing rays, but rather it had been eviscerated and its very entrails were being dragged out in a thousand ropelike strands. They were swept up in one of these strands, and now the imagery made no sense at all: they were a part of the river, and they were flowing backward, inland, [i]uphill[/i]. Now the rivers drank the sea, the ravine floors rose from the ground to make proud and unbroken plateaus once more from the canyons, the smooth rocks became jagged, and all was frozen -- the river stopped, and with it time! Rest and comfort sat in; this moment was eternal. Somewhere far away there came an angry and ominous thundering. That distant storm was Doom, for the sea was angry and it recalled the water from the rivers, and yet the frozen-rivers seemed to laugh their defiance in this unending moment of tortuous, outrageous, [i]vile[/i] refutation of all that seemed right and natural. Doom and all its inevitability was rejected seemingly with impunity, at least in this moment and by this river. Mercifully, the rebellion ended eventually -- but only when the [i]river[/i] was tired and ready for its fate. Doom was but an attendant, left to wait and wait, for it had been put last behind all other timeless things and wants and worries and priorities.[/color]

Before they could be fully overtaken, the river and its world trembled and faded, and soon the two of them were no more a droplet in the gathering storm, but rushing and leaping towards the Monarch’s palace again. Iqelis had fallen behind her as he divided his attention between the exchange of thoughts and the motions of his body, but soon he caught up again, a vicious glow in his eye.

[color=778899]”You cannot hope to fight against the flow. Only I can withhold it when I please,”[/color] he hissed, but his voice had more spite than conviction.

The Great and All-Seeing Eye twitched to focus on him for a moment, and then turned its gaze back to the palace with disregard for his vitriol. How could [i]that one[/i] deign to rule and command when the flow of time when he could hardly perceive even a fraction of its totality? She could not possibly clam to control all of fate, but if anyone were to be such an omniscient and omnipotent force, surely it would be her, for already she sensed and she [i]knew[/i] that her place was closer to that brink than that of any of her peers. Some future version of herself that she had yet to realize, an Eye that had trained its reading and its perception and seen nigh all things, [i]that[/i] would be the master and controller of fate, the composer of all strands and threads. Was such a state of existence even possible? She relished and reveled in the enticing thought, but there was a shroud of doubt that weighed down any gleeful optimism.

The halls of the palace, resplendent in ornament and still ringing with the first steps of nascent divines, came at last into full view. There, behind the very first gate into its interior, was the object that had drawn both gods to it, far more unassuming in its leather-bound physical guise than it had been as an abstracted spark in the weave of the tapestry - the Codex, still touched by few hands besides those of its maker. Without delay, Iqelis bounded down and into the chamber, arms grasping and folding to smooth his way through the currents of time so as to be the first of the two to put his mark upon it. Maddeningly, Yudaiel seemed to sense the perturbations in time wrought by his power, and she too followed the smoothed path that he’d so kindly blazed. All of his exertion and alacrity bought him only a fraction of a moment, not even long enough to stop and breathe. And then her presence was all around, almost smothering as she wrapped her insubstantial presence all about him and the Codex alike, filling half of the vast palace with her presence even as she carefully made sure [i]not[/i] to brush against Iqelis (or any of the other gods still present) too directly -- she had learned from that fateful collision with Rosalind, and besides, his touch was was no doubt a cold and unwelcoming one. She stared at the Codex, and her Sight bore into its essence as she began to burn her indelible mark upon it with an ethereal glare.

The other god flared as her designs took shape upon the pages, and scores of dark hands descended on the Codex from all sides, hooked fingertips scratching lines as black as the void where they passed. Where the intricate notions of the Tapestry spread, a brutal linearity closed in to reduce all its ends to a single inescapable convergence. Yet the path of Doom was narrow in its restrictiveness, and around it the designs of the Eye found room to spread, prompting new lunges of retaliation, which still left new blanks to fill. It was a perverse cycle, but perhaps an inevitable and even natural one, as the different facets of Time formed, despite their very authors, into a precarious and inadvertent whole. Time and again potential was swallowed by demise, and time and again from it it was reborn, neither gaining the upper hand, until there was no more space for ends and beginnings. In the end, all in the Codex that pertained to Time and its structure and place within Reality was a vast and arcane mess, near indescribable much less decipherable.

Iqelis let his arms dwindle as he drew back from the pedestal, his eye fixed into Yudaiel’s arcane pupil. [color=778899]”All your dreams, all your designs I will lay to ruin,”[/color] he taunted like the whistle of a slender blade through the night air, [color=778899]”Until you will See as I do, and know that there is no truth but mine.”[/color]

Imagery answered back.

[color=9966CC]A tiny flame flared into being, rising mightily as it could and huffing and puffing. It inhaled all that it could of those winds that carried hope and beauty, and it breathed out the smoke and soot of bitter gloom, despair, ugliness. But in the end it was a small little flame, laughable for its pride and pretension, and easily overlooked. This flame in the grand scale of things was a mere flicker beneath the burning fury of the sun that loomed above all else, or even that enticing gleam of a second great and majestic light...for opposite the sun, there was the pallid glow of another strange light overhead, a strange and alien light that lit the would-be skies of Galbar’s future even if nothing like it existed now…[/color]

The ideabstraction ended, and the last part of it that Iqelis felt was the goddess’ attention and Sight turning rapidly to that queer light. That strange sense of hers -- prescience -- was engaged for a moment, and she was utterly still. [i]Vulnerable.[/i] But that state lasted only a moment or two, and then motion once again charged through the void of her empty presence; he sensed that she had already begun to withdraw her body from the Codex and depart the palace. She was plotting something. Stirring the currents to obfuscate his movements from her disembodied senses, he slunk after her, and sculptures cracked and gold dimmed under the ripples left in his wake.

[hider=Summary]
Yudaiel is pouting in the wake of her being chastised by the Monarch of All -- she’s upset with and somewhat resentful of the Monarch for His handling of the situation, though oddly enough she’s begun to cool down and forgive Rosalind a bit. She hasn’t been around for long but the experiences that she’s had thus far will have a large and lasting impact upon her persona.

She watches the goings on down below on Galbar, but doesn’t feel compelled to help Voligan or the others. Instead she is amused by the sight of Jiugui, but more importantly, entranced by Epsilon’s proclamation and the Codex.

Iqelis too was beckoned by the Codex, and he comes out from his hiding place in Galbar’s rings to make some snide remarks. The two proceed to have a half-argument, half philosophical debate, all told through imagery and ideabstractions. Their worldviews are somewhat anathema and they quickly become rivals; Yudaiel seems somewhat dismissive of Iqelis, whilst Iqelis despises her because of her prescience.

The two arrive at the palace and begin furiously fighting with one another to scribble conflicting ends and beginnings about Time, hogging up almost all of the space in the Codex with arcane nonsense that few others will ever be able to understand.

That finished, Yudaiel departs with some plan in mind, and Iqelis stealthily follows.[/hider][hider=Vigor Expenditures]
Yudaiel and Iqelis each contribute 1 vigor apiece towards writing of their conflicting ideals of Time within the Codex.

Both now have 9 vigor remaining.[/hider]