[center][h2][colour=gainsboro]Ea Nebel[/colour][/h2][/center]

In a circle of ash lay huddled bones. Their incisors yawned wide, still locked in their final scream. What remained of their arms held one another even into death. In the center, black boots. In the boots a woman. In the woman’s hand a hat.

She clutched it to her chest. Her hair fell back behind her. She lifted her face to the moonlight.

Four eyes she had. An error. Nothing more. No Sight had ever graced her. No crystal Eye leant itself to her face, not One, not Three. Four eyes she had, and they but the tarnished ruin of what should have been two. Yet even though she could not See, she could [i]listen.[/i]

So she heard. And, though the eddies of the Flow had yet to be revealed to her, those dark blank eyes saw [i]far.[/i]

All around her, lines of broken moonlight burned silently across the sky. Ea Nebel’s knuckles grew whiter and whiter on her hat.

[hr]

The grave of Medes was to lay under a single stone. There was none like it for miles, resting all alone, neither natural nor set with purpose, only fated to be where it was. It was large, covering the whole of the circular pit in which he had been laid, wrapped in a warm shroud as was fitting for an old man who had passed in the chill of the night. His blindfold had been blown away from his bones with the dust of his flesh, as though he had lain still for ten thousand years on this firm bed of desert grit, his face still inclined to the moon. Ea Nebel had laid over the sockets of his skull a band of clean black silk to replace it.

[colour=gainsboro]“Go home,”[/colour] she said, when the men emerged from their homes among the far and harsh streams of Nalusa to see what had become of their Prophet. [colour=gainsboro]“Your guide rests quietly now. His Sight has been passed to another, and he is at peace in the land that he chose. Hold his voice in your heart when you remember this place, always,”[/colour] she said, and it was only the wide quiet of the desert night that carried her own to their ears. [colour=gainsboro]“Take this. You already know what it is.”[/colour]

Dawn broke. The leader of the men, clothed in a lion’s pelt, accepted the orb. Ea Nebel dismissed him. [colour=gainsboro]“That I might rest, as you did in the days of your journey,”[/colour] she lied. [colour=gainsboro]“Lifting this slab was not easy.”[/colour]

Then she sat alone again in its shadow, staring at the moonless sky.

Flies buzzed over the parched riverbank. There was a sound of something sharp softly digging into the soil, and a longer, deeper stretch of darkness slithered over the coarse monument and onto her, stretching and folding its many limbs. Boots skidded before it as the goddess awoke in a flutter of black.

[colour=gainsboro]“Father!”[/colour]

She stopped abruptly before the figure of Iqelis and stood there, gripping her thumbs in her fists. Her flurrying thoughts had evaporated. She stared at what had been done. Her gaze fell away for a moment, until at last she wet her lips and found right words. [colour=gainsboro]“...I heard such sounds.”[/colour]

[color=778899]“Some voices ought never be heard,”[/color] the god crackled wearily. He seemed spent, both in the dimness of his eye and the frame of his body, ever so subtly slighter than it had been before. [color=778899]“As some sights ought never be seen.”[/color]

He crossed the space between them in a stride, and a dozen arms locked around Ea Nebel in a cage-like embrace. There was perhaps more caution than tenderness in his motions, as sharp fingers hovered where they could not risk gouging into cloth and skin, and faceted limbs slid and shifted in an uneasy bid not to wear her sore. Her breath quickened, then slowed.

[color=778899]“You are well,”[/color] came a whispering rasp of snapping rusted blades, not so much a question or even a statement as an intimation.

[colour=gainsboro]“I am now.”[/colour] She opened her eyes and saw them reflected in dark glass, staring into herself. [colour=gainsboro]“The… other one, moon-bound. Her prophet is ash. Has she…”[/colour]

[color=778899]“She lives still, regrettably,”[/color] Iqelis was looking over her shoulder at the grave-stone, [color=778899]“Would I that you could have built a mausoleum for her under the black sky, but her time is not yet spent. Until then, you will have to bear the weight of her enmity, as all things mine.”[/color] A cold hand haltingly caressed her back with its shardlike knuckles. The coat liquefied slightly, remembering its old shape. [color=778899]“It will not be long.”[/color]

[colour=gainsboro]“I fear her not. Please… be patient, Father. No matter how the river winds, the sea is always ahead. I will wait on the ship with you.”[/colour] Reflected in glass, the white slab behind her. [colour=gainsboro]“Wait with me. As I have waited.”[/colour]

The hands stilled, and pressed closer for a moment before finally releasing their grip and sliding away.

[color=778899]“There must ever be one who turns the Flow,”[/color] the god stepped back, lowering his gaze to meet that of his daughter, [color=778899]“But patience is imposed on us now. Higher eyes still than hers seek to trace your doom.”[/color]

Ea Nebel nodded, and slung out her arm lightly to one side, flicking into the breeze the five-cubit banner of Heaven she now wore as a scarf. It danced across a field of colours only woven into one other garment in the universe. [colour=gainsboro]“I have been prepared, if only with this talisman. I can bear this humiliating penance with you.”[/colour] Her eyes met his now, and were calm. [colour=gainsboro]“No matter what it is.”[/colour]

The claws that had been about to snap up at the sight of an echo from the One Above relaxed and dwindled. [color=778899]“Then He would mock you with His scraps,”[/color] Iqelis rattled, and as if opening wider his light shone bright again, fed by the familiar fuel of malice, [color=778899]“Flies will feast on His empty eyes and the ruins of His throne will be toppled by hogs when the day comes.”[/color]

[colour=gainsboro]“All in time…”[/colour]

He turned his faceless head to the east, but did not look up to the rising sun. One hand motioned to the horizon, and another beckoned for the demigoddess to follow as he slowly began to step away from the riverbank.

[color=778899]“It is the vainglorious fool’s will that I prove your worth as His subject. Come, there are others we must summon to witness that it is done.”[/color]

[colour=gainsboro]“Very well. Let it begin.”[/colour] Ea Nebel adjusted her coat and followed the elder god away from that valley, into the dry lands further on, where a very real hog flicked its knowing ears. 

[hr]
[hider=The saga begins]
Ea Nebel encounters the bodies of the Maramoda destroyed by the Outsider, but whatever she plans to do is interrupted by the events of Chronomachia. Most of the action is obscured to her by distance and the far side of the moon, but she gets some hint of the nature and magnitude of what is happening. Distressing!

Later, she buries Medes with dignity under a stone slab, as his followers have still dispersed. A brave, important-looking Nalusan arrives to check on him. She shares some gentle words about his passage and passes on Apostate's smoky quartz orb before making an excuse to be left alone. After what she's seen, she's in no state to do much else.

Dad's alive though! He pops in and they reunite about as sweetly as these weirdos can be expected to. 

Iqelis still wants to see the end of Yudaiel. Ea Nebel advises him to calm down just a little bit before his attention turns to the Monarch, whom Iqelis [i]also[/i] wants to see the end of, possibly even more so! He's pretty worked up about this punishment they have to sit through together.

Then they set off for the business of the trial.
[/hider]