[center][h1][color=DC143C]Homura[/color][/h1]


[i]&[/i]

[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/893273948526108742/894758899872317440/YUDAIEL.png[/img][/center]

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It was dark between the Galbar and the pale moon that had been scarred and assailed by the hands of the cruel divine, but the sole satellite and its heavenly radiance called to Homura, as the goddess of honor ascended upwards by the endless reach of Daybringer.

The golden spear had extended from the surface of Galbar to the massive crater that marked the center of the moon, and allowed the red goddess to reach her destination without encountering any trouble.

Then she heard a voice in her mind, piercing and tumultuous, yet filled with cosmic lucidity.

[color=9966CC][center]”I s̪͌ha̰͐ll͢͡ ̱̎div͈̋ô̠rc̆ͅe my͍͠ ͈̎touch f͉͋rom̧̒ ͖̓ṱ̀ḫ̌e ̡̋G̘̕al̛̞b̍͟ar̢̓'s surfȧ̦ce͇͝,͙́ an̼̄d r͖̀ȇ͙m̹̍aiņ̑ hè͓r͚̍e. Yoủ͚ ͇̘̱͑̃̇ḧ̨̡̲̪́͊̀͘ả̘͕̜͆̀vê̪̹̄ ̄͟m͖̠͙̊̌̈́y ̟̀w͔͑͐͜ò͎͎͈͕͌́͞rd̬̼͂̊.̠̼̘̈͑͒”[/center][/color]

A promise. An oath. Homura felt compelled to seek out the source, and further understand what had happened. She feared what she may find, but continued her ascent. The song of the stars was the only solace from the harrowing silence surrounding her.

Daybringer had not struck the moon, for Homura could not ascertain whether it was awake or sleeping, so she had aimed for right above the crater. She could see the celestial light of her weapon’s tip illuminating the desolate realm. She could see deep within the crater, at its center, the presence of one of her siblings, and all around that crater, a cobweb of fractures, ravines, and craters that reeked of Iqelis’ ruinous power and marred the pale jewel.

This massive, deep crater that hollowed so much of the moon was like one great socket, and sitting within it was an unimaginably vast eye. There was nothing about Yudaiel’s ephemeral form to see, but Homura still [i]felt[/i] it when the Prescient’s gaze suddenly was fixated upon her.

A sea of consciousness began to reach out toward Homura from that crater, but it came slowly, like the rising tides on the Galbar’s shores below, rather than aggressively surging at her like some oncoming storm. Daybringer, leveled right at Yudaiel’s pupil, offered some cause for trepidation and caution.

In response, the weapon was withdrawn as Homura came closer and closer to the vast eye, she allowed herself to let go and be drawn in by the waves of thought towards her sister. The red goddess closed her eyes, and spoke softly. “[b]Show me.[/b]”

[color=9966CC]
One piercing note of sound erupted from nothingness and swept away the moon, the stars, the black voids between: all of the cosmos that had been arrayed before Homura’s sight were gone. Only sound remained. The note faded, but its echos resounded off of something, and in a majestic humming an alcazar was constructed.

Every bit as magnificent as the Monarch’s own jade halls, this palace was nonetheless [i]different[/i]. All the grand columns and walls and vaulted ceiling were white, but they did not gleam like marble; it was as though hewn from the pallid stone of the moon, and upon every surface were engravings that were as beautiful as they were abstract and incomprehensible.

Space and reality moved in strange ways. All the palace was visible, and yet the walls were real and solid. In one moment Homura observed all from outside its grounds, the next from within a grand foyer, and the next from within a great hall that she knew to be its largest and finest, the very heart of this grand place. There were a dozen-dozen rooms large enough to have fit all of Keltra, the fountains and ponds outside were almost so grand as seas, and yet the scale and grandeur of this chamber seemed vaster still.

A pillar of flame erupted from a dais at the far end of the hall, and it projected a glowing warmth that filled the whole palace and made it feel somehow… homely. The crackling of the fire bid Homura welcome.[/color]

“[b]I have spoken with our vile brother, Iqelis. He was stained by godblood after committing the most grievous of sins. I ask now, would kin-slayers such as he be welcomed in this palace?[/b]” The red goddess asked after she bowed before the pillar of flames.

[color=9966CC]The very mention of that other god’s name elicited the flames to flare brighter, and for a long moment, the heat that they exuded was [i]not[/i] comfortable. The bone-white stone all about Homura was not brightened by the growing pillar of fire, but rather it became grayer and darker. Her own shadow grew, too, larger and larger until it swallowed the room.

From the all-encompassing darkness there came the perception motion, and then the black was revealed to be a writhing swarm of flies, incomprehensibly vast, and at its center, one insect ever so slightly larger than the rest: Iqelis, Lord of the Flies.

The glowing white floor returned somewhere below, and was visible for all of a moment or two before clouds of dead and dying flies fell down to cover it. Time accelerated, and under the Flow’s withering march, the flies became dust. Iqelis, revealed now as the obsidian and many-armed fiend that he was, had his knees likewise give out as he was seized by some force of entropic recursion. The Lord of Doom had his knees and arms and teeth  into smaller pieces that in turn became smaller and smaller until they were dust, and then nothingness, and Iqelis was left there before the returned pillar of flame, naked and crippled and feeble and broken. Hardly welcomed!

A barrage of other hypnagogic scenes flashed by: the mocking words and eye of Iqelis as he had first offered his foolishness and presumptions to Yudaiel, when they had met outside the palace. Then came their struggle as the two had raced up the palace and each filled the Codex with their dueling ideals and goals and conceptions of Time, and then came a glimpse wave of doom that had been hurled at the moon to crack and shatter it, and then the piece of that same wave that had been deflected down to wreak havoc upon Iqelis’ own machinations on the Galbar, days later!

Faster and faster the fevered images had been presented, too quick to truly understand all of it, but the emotion and intent was conveyed easily enough through the medium of ideabstraction. The pillar of flame emitted no smoke, but it breathed out a hatred and frightening malevolence towards Iqelis. At some point the room had grown so torrid that Iqelis’ broken form had been reduced to little more than a heap of slag, but then the blaze’s heat grew greater still, and the whole hall became one great crucible that tested [i]Homura’s[/i] mettle, and that demanded her to yield her own thoughts.[/color]

“[b]I am acutely against the nihilistic nonsense he profusely pontificates, and he will suffer punishment for his grievous crimes.[/b]” Homura replied, only sparing a brief glance towards the melted manifestation of the god of doom.

The red goddess gracefully wove her hand through the illusion of reality, delicately touching each abstract atom and guiding them towards her. She resisted the temptation to recreate her champions and allow herself to enjoy their comforting company.

Her concern for them had continued to creep upon her further and further as she saw more and more of the world that the divine had built; sacred sanctuary seemed in short supply for many mortals across Galbar.

“[b]Forgive me, for I cannot atone on behalf of our brother, but I hope you will accept my gifts.[/b]” Homura said, as she called forth fabricated elements and shaped them into three primordial humans. They lacked any facial features aside from slits that suggested where such features should be found, and their scalps were without hair, as bald as the barren surface of Galbar once was. Their smooth skin was ashen and unblemished, akin to the pure white moon before the deprivations of Iqelis had been afflicted upon it.

“[b]Beings forged from earth, water, wind, and fire, to act as our shepherds for our creations. They will be the mortal expression of our will and desire, serving us, worshipping us. However, they are quite fragile, and their inner fires must continually feed lest they consume themselves.[/b]” The goddess of honor continued, as she caressed and cradled each of her conjured creatures in her arms. The three humans slept; softly breathing and restful as their maker held them, though they did not dream.

“[b]They seek sculpting from the divine, you may shape and paint them however you wish. I only ask that you guide them.[/b]” Homura arose and offered Yudaiel a small smile, as she stood before the altar of fire once more.

The column of flames danced to an exuberant and rapid beat, and its flickering light made the hall glow brighter. The wisps of dreams that Homura had fashioned into the likeness of humans vanished in a blink -- ideas were ephemeral, after all -- and the hall itself dissolved away. The ruined heap that had been Iqelis was long done, the blemish vanished as soon as he had been out of mind, and the flames [i]breathed[/i] in. Homura found herself flung forward, pulled inexorably in, but the fire did not hurt even as it burned away her body.

[color=9966CC]She was formless now, resting upon a white rock. Above her was a sky of glass with a mirrored sheen. Upon the magical mirror, the Galbar presented its face before her, and her Sight was so potent that she saw more than just the verdant landmasses and the azure seas, the cerulean ribbon of an atmosphere and the drifting clouds within: she Saw the surface itself, and could discern even individual grains of sand if she squinted at a given spot. There were more meaningful things to examine than sand, though. Great, lumbering colossi wandered across the land and through the seas. They numbered eleven now, for one of them had been broken, and they each obeyed their programming and harvested the world’s bounty so that it could be refined and bent to the Creator’s will.

All except for three, that was, for three had been captured and had their cause subverted. Those champions whose presence Homura had longed for mere moments ago were now there; she could See them clearly, and yet they could not see her. Within the innards of one colossi, the vermillion hair of Courage and Fear flew wildly as they gave chase to some metallic fiend as it fled, another strange automaton upon its shoulder. It was a curious sight, but even more ponderous was how they all suddenly began running backwards.

With the Flow of time reversed, the sun rose in the west and set in the east, the rain erupted out of the land and the seas and hurled itself up into the heavens, and Iqelis arrived to offer a gift of seven lifeless humans. Even stranger than seeing this reversal, this [i]perversion[/i] of reality, was Homura watching herself from some omniscient and higher angle.

The Flow quickened, and they looked further back to witness her encounter with Voligan. Ten-hundred-hundred husks were arrayed before Voligan, and Homura’s triplet champions eagerly claimed them all and carried them back into the colossi. And so it was for all those other deities that had already met with the lady of honor.

Cracks appeared in the magical mirror that had revealed all these sights, and when it shattered, a new scene was apparent: the colossi were moored upon an open plain and totally voided, with all the humans that yet remained having been laid out in the dancing moonlight. A hundred thousand and then more than half that number again were there, and the moon was pleased with the gift. In the dusk, yet under the protection and guidance of Yudaiel’s ever watchful Eye, the first of them roused from their long slumber and were stirred to begin a long journey.[/color]

“[b]So be it. You shall have your humans, but I am wondering why you would keep them on Galbar, and not here with you?[/b]” Homura spoke with a silent voice; lacking shape and sound. She considered the location she had been shown, and contemplated the meaning of Yudaiel’s choice, while awaiting an answer.

[color=9966CC]The open plains gave way to the sight of a dark and misty jungle that had come to flourish along the edge of the dead Tlacan Sea. The moon was bright, somewhere above, but this was a rainy day. Droplets fell from the clouds above down into the oily glass of the sea’s surface, and then they shuddered and became mist and rose back into the air again, refusing to join with that dreaded mire. So a great haze came to hang over the land, so thick that it all but blocked the bright lunar light.

But the humans were no longer walking, breathing creatures; their inner fire had spilled forth, and now they were candles. Through their light, the black night was illuminated, even here in such lands where the moon’s brilliance could not reach.[/color]

“[b]Hmm… I shall lay your gifts down where calamity once struck, and you may awaken them then. The land will be reborn, and I promise I will protect your people from the depredations of doom and despair.[/b]” Without an actual body, the attempted and nonviable act of bowing became a source of bemusement for the red goddess. She simply refrained from shifting.

Though she did not suffer the strange susceptibility to illness and decay as mortals would, Homura had been able to enjoy the many pleasures offered by the ability to perceive through the senses; the yearning for touch and the feeling of being physically embraced by the many wonders of the world, the taste of thought and the music of memories cultivated through the tangible self and its interactions with all of creation. She enjoyed having a body to express herself.

Despite this, Yudaiel’s wordless articulation clearly conveyed her intentions as well as meaning, and Homura could appreciate the wonderful mingling of the abstract and the allegorical in the visions Yudaiel conjured. She wondered whether the great seer would be opposed to manifesting a physical body in the future, but ascertained that mentioning such silly concepts now would be brash.

“[b]It will take time to return and deliver them, but I see no other obstacles. I shall make haste, but before I depart, I must ask you; what is your name, and what is the name of your creation? I am Homura, and it is a pleasure to speak with you now.[/b]” The temptation to gesture towards the pale radiance of the moon, and to herself while she spoke was prevalent, but Homura wanted to explore formlessness for a moment more.

[color=9966CC]Perhaps it was good that Homura was formless in that moment, for otherwise she might have felt a crazed whiplash as the land below spun beneath the horizon. The stratospheric winds had a powerful voice, and through their screams and bellows, a name was formed. The ground grew closer; sand stirred and billowed here in the dune-sea that had been wrought when the goddess’ mind had blasted away mountains and made dust of whole hills. The sandstorms echoed the same name as they blew and blew, over oases and through the ruined heap of the fallen metal colossus. They reached land’s end. The waves whispered the same name also, from their foaming mouths that glowed orange in the sunset, and the palm trees and their rustling fronds joined the great chorus:

[center][i]...Yu̳̦̎̔d͖̦̔͂a̼͗ï̩͚̓e̺̽l̺̮̆͆...[/i][/center]

The endless sea’s horizon swallowed the sun, but a pale opal took its place in the heavens, beautiful even with its great crater and cracks. It was the grandest and brightest of all the jewels in the night sky, the socket of the sharpest eye, the Galbar’s moon and twin sister. It was what it was.

A shooting star descended from above, a fiery trail marking its glory. It did not crash into land or water and die in a great blaze as meteorites were wont to do, but rather fell halfway through the celestial sphere and then came to rest hanging in the air just before Homura’s view.

[hider=The Gift]
[center]
[img]https://www.madagascandirect.com/uploads/products/rainbow-moonstone-sphere-563.jpeg[/img]
[i]Before her was a pearly stone, a simulacrum of the moon as it had been before it had been tarnished. She found herself with hands once more, and so she grasped it… it felt cool the touch, and smooth, and realer than any dream.[/i]
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The star had no voice, but voiceless things could speak in dreams, and so the stone offered itself as a token of favor. It made a solemn vow too, to show her something wondrous or beautiful or alien… whatever thing she desired to see, it would show.[/color]

And when the dreamscape sublimated away and Homura was adrift once more before the [i]real[/i] moon, Daybringer in one hand, the moonstone rested in her other.

And then a resounding voice echoed through the void, the Monarch of All proclaiming His will and bestowing upon Homura the highest place in His court of law, all as the Prescient had foreseen.

The moon’s stoic face was reticent to surrender any indication as to what it thought of the announcement; it offered no congratulations to Homura or either of the other ‘fortuitous’ two, but likewise Yudaiel said nothing to sully whatever pride or joy they might have felt. Flames of envy and hatred could burn, but they seared best when they did it slowly, gingerly… like the sun’s rays.

“[b]Thank you, Yudaiel, for your hospitality and your kind gift. Hmm… whenever you have need of me, should any of those among the divine decide to bring you grief, call upon me and I shall come. Forgive me now, for I must make haste and return to my mortals and my duty. Until we meet again then.[/b]” Homura said, and found the silence of space as hollow as her words, her empty promises and attempts at offering solace were worthless if she could not adhere to them.

There seemed nothing else she could say, so the red goddess turned back to the Galbar and aimed her golden spear. Daybringer stretched forth until it had struck earth, and then carried Homura back to the planet. Her departure was as swift as her arrival, across the void and through the sky, until she descended upon land. For the entirety of her journey, she refused to look back to the moon, and the all-seeing eye that dwelt there.

[hider=Summary]Homura travels to the moon to investigate the cause of its craters and scarring, when she hears Yudaiel’s oath on the way. As she approached the largest crater, she sensed the presence of the other goddess and allowed herself to sink into the sea of conscious communion.

Yudaiel created visions of grandeur; an opulent palace filled with beauty and grace that ushered the goddess of honor into a vast hall. Yudaiel manifested as a pillar of pale flame and welcomed Homura whom spoke of Iqelis, murder, her ideals and her intentions; offering her sister the gift of humanity.

Through visions of the present and the past, Yudaiel shows Homura where she wants to create civilization and how many humans she required: all 169,000 or so left on the colossi. Homura obliges, and promises to protect the humans dedicated to the goddess of the moon.

Homura asks for the name of Yudaiel and her moon, and is shown more visions, as well as given a moonstone that was a promise. Then Homura awakens adrift above the crater when the voice of the Monarch of All reaches them from afar.

Yudaiel remains silent, and Homura bids farewell before she turns and travels back to the Galbar. The goddess of honor feeling conflicted about the future while all goes according to plan as the goddess of prescience has foreseen.[/hider]
[hider=Vigor]Cycle 2 
Homura’s Vigor total: 6.
Vigor spent: 0.
Remaining Vigor: 6.

Yudaiel begins with 4 vigor.
She doesn’t spend anything on the moonstone that is given to Homura, not even 1 vigor discounted to 0. It’s just a pretty rock, a token. The vision that it ‘buys’ will come from Yudaiel when Homura calls, not from some power imbued into the rock.
Yudaiel ends with 4 vigor.[/hider]