[center][h2]Prelude to the Trials[/h2][/center]

The path by Time's riverside had passed in a blur of grimy iron embankments lapped by obsidian waters, and when it ended they were left on its idyllic autumnal antithesis. Rows of trees clothed in ruddy bark and fresh bright-red leaves pointed the way ahead in uneven rows, as if they had risen with the intent of guiding travellers through the maze of the wilderness. Sanguine grass rustled underfoot, and a few crumpled leaves fell as a splash from the receding Flow touched the closest branches. Above the forest's whispering heads loomed a ring of blind crimson walls.

[color=778899]“Your mother arbitrates in His name now,”[/color] Iqelis looked up at the citadel as he strode to the edge of the woods, [color=778899]“I have not seen her since that time.”[/color] Ea Nebel flicked away a stray wisp of hair and nodded in silence.

Standing atop the immense wall, the Goddess of Honor watched from afar as they approached, the golden spear she held in her hands shining like a bright beacon in the cold night. She leapt from where she stood, swiftly soaring through the air until she alighted in a clearing close enough to properly greet the two visitors. 

Ea Nebel watched the silhouette of her original sculptor resolve itself from Daybringer’s blazing light. Her hands tightened in the pockets of her long coat, and she did not breathe. Some long-tightened heartstring of hope or fear had finally been struck. With the three beings now standing together, any mortal onlooker could have guessed why. Her stick-figure stature could not hide the resemblance, nor her deformity, nor the deeper drop of weird that coloured her flesh and fizzed in her voice.

Homura stared at them with neither contempt or pleasure, an unreadable expression as she spoke. “Iqelis, Ea Nebel. Why have the two of you come here?” She asked, bowing her head slightly as she addressed both of them. 

Ea Nebel curtsied low in her boots. [colour=gainsboro]“...Divine Homura,”[/colour] she said, not rising, [colour=gainsboro]“you have been named the Solar Monarch’s highest judge. We’ve come to ask you to witness our penance.”[/colour]

A claw lightly came to rest on her shoulder, and several flies alighted in turn upon its fingers. [color=778899]“The Elder One demanded that I share His vengeance for a wayward shard's slaying with [i]our daughter[/i],”[/color] Iqelis impiteously snapped off every word like an icicle.

“You have brought this upon yourself, brother. This is neither vengeance, nor penitence, as you are now being judged for your irrefutable crimes against life and our Lord. How will you seek to atone?” Homura inquired, her tone remaining neutral.

Ea Nebel broke her curtsy without looking up and let her hand fly to grab the doom-god’s wrist, lest he clench his fist in anger.

[color=778899]“We shall do as He bids, for His accursed sun has yet to set,”[/color] the fingers on the One-Eye’s many other hands grew crooked, but his gaze remained even and unkindled, [color=778899]“Four trials of her virtues He has decreed, and four He shall have. I trust you are wise enough in such matters to uphold their worth.”[/color] A concession, dry and chilly as it was.

“Hmm… then I shall bear witness. Where and when shall these trials take place?” Homura asked.

[color=778899]“To the west, our brother of the earth has built a grave for the one who fell,”[/color] an arm rose to point far over the red horizon, [color=778899]“There it will be done, and his remains will be exhumed as the First of Lords wishes. Unless something keeps you, we shall begin today, when I have brought the second arbiter.”[/color]

“So be it.” The Goddess of Honor replied, before turning to Ea Nebel. “Are you prepared?” She asked. The demigoddess nodded.

[colour=gainsboro]“I have been given all I could ask for,”[/colour] she said, looking down into Homura’s deep bright eyes, feeling much smaller than she was. [colour=gainsboro]“But… there is one thing I will ask you to give, all the same, for strength. A token. If I may,”[/colour] she glanced away, up to Iqelis, then back, [colour=gainsboro]“Mother.”[/colour]

“Why do you refer to me as such?” Homura tilted her head, a hint of confusion in her voice.

Ea Nebel broke an unwilling smile and looked away, trying to bite it down as she tugged on her coat. [colour=gainsboro]“You can’t…? Nevermind.”[/colour] She adjusted her feet and her words quickened slightly. [colour=gainsboro]“You were the first to draw me out of the ground. My body, my skin, my earth and air and fire all start with you… As have many others. I thought you might want to… Give me a name.”[/colour]

“I cannot. You may call me mother, but your birth was never my intention. You are not my child.” The curiosity of the red goddess vanished, and she stared at Ea Nebel with cold fire burning in her eyes. “You are a sword, sharp and double-edged. I will never wield you, though others will certainly try. I am the Goddess of Honor.” Homura said as she pointed at herself. “He is the God of Doom. We are enemies.” She continued, pointing at Iqelis, before letting her hand languidly drop to her side.

“Your Aspect… Your choice. I will not decide for you.”

The smile was gone now. Ea Nebel nodded, her hands in her coat pockets, and did not raise her head. [colour=gainsboro]“...It- doesn’t matter. Thank you.”[/colour]

“Lastly, Ea Nebel, you are forbidden from entering Keltra.” Homura proclaimed as her impassive mask returned. Her words echoed with power, seeping into the land and sky, as the world all around was witness to her declaration. The demigoddess’s head jerked back as her teeth clamped down on the tongue she’d been biting, and she slapped the back of her hand to her mouth, eyes bulging.

[color=778899]“Then there will be no regrets when it is razed to the ground.”[/color]

The words, heavy and venomous, had not come from the godling's side, where Iqelis had stood, but from somewhere behind and [i]above[/i] her. The silent echoes of Homura's bidding did not have time to fade before a vast shadow smothered them along with all light in the glade, save for Daybringer's lonely glow.

In the few moments where every eye had been turned away from him, hopeless as such a notion of reckoning was to capture the doings of Him Who Turns the Flow, a fearsome metamorphosis had come over the cyclopic god. At the edge of the glade there now stood an immense tree of black glass, so imposing that the forest around it seemed but a patch of brush. In its trunk was a cavity that burned with a baleful white flame, and every one of its myriad branches ended in a clawed hand.

They turned, and the currents parted.

Time tore and buckled as the two figures before the obsidian terror were swept over by a haze of sluggishness, and all about them trees collapsed into a putrid black mush acrawl with maggots. Every living thing within a great span crumbled in an instant under the blow of centuries, and the earth itself dissolved into rancid muck as thousands of carcasses choked it.

[color=778899]“For her sake, worm, I would have forborn from casting you into the same lot as the fallen and the condemned,”[/color] the One God raged in the voice of dying mountains, his eye vomiting storms of cadaverous light onto the crimson goddess, [color=778899]“But now I will have leave to pull you apart bone by bone! There will be no overlord to cry vengeance for you, for I will have torn his tongue out with your own fingernails!”[/color]

“You should leave, brother. You have let your anger overwhelm you, and it is unbefitting for any servant of our Lord to act with such disgrace.” Homura replied, and her visage remained calm and steadfast, despite the devastation all around her. Her gaze then turned to Ea Nebel once more. “Your trials await.”

Red eyes met grey, and locked there for a while. Ea Nebel’s pale figure was alone before the gods now, and cast two shadows in their unearthly light: one for Daybringer’s blade, another for the One Eye. 

She lowered her hand gingerly from her mouth. A stain of black blood steamed over the back of her wrist and trickled down her chin. The wisp of vapour hung in the oppressive humidity of rot, trailing away with those at the corner of her eyes. [colour=gainsboro]“[i]You[/i] should do your job,”[/colour] she mumbled. [colour=gainsboro]“Let’s go.”[/colour] Then she was gone. For once, a harsh snap of electricity announced her departure, and the sound of a porcine grunt a second later.

The trunk of the terrible tree bulged, raising the lidless Eye on a wave of molten crystal. As it stretched further, the bulk of the divine growth followed into it, and in a pull of elongating distortion it was transfigured into the looming segmented body of a gargantuan centipede cast in living nephrite. It turned its head, featureless save for the blazing fissure, to glance in the demigoddess' wake, before lowering it to face Homura with its now tauntingly bestial countenance.

[color=778899]“Remember, wretch, that [i]I am no servant.[/i]”[/color] Iqelis' hiss was hollowed, animal. He pointed westward once more with the colossal spear of a leg. [color=778899]“Go, please your master. I will follow.”[/color]

The god-beast whipped around its barbed tail, flattening what still protruded from the rotten soil, and the ebb of the umbral Flow carried it away.

“How uncivilised.” Homura muttered to herself as she returned to the keep in preparation for her journey westward.

[hr]
[hider=wanted: family counselling]
Iqelis and Ea Nebel travel to the forest of Kel-Phenalah, meet Homura and ask her to bear witness to the trials. Given Iqelis’s feelings about the whole affair and Homura’s feelings about Iqelis, this goes about as well as can be expected.

Ea Nebel tentatively asks a favour from her mother, but it looks like literally no-one on this side of the pantheon is ready for that kind of responsibility, because Homura immediately rejects the role. She also rejects the favour: Ea Nebel has asked Homura to name her, as she’s named her champions (she probably encountered them in corpse memories from Astalon or the gulf at Keltra). 

Then, in a surprise announcement, Homura bans Ea Nebel from Keltra forever, effective immediately. As she recovers from shock, Iqelis loses his cool, making a mess of some trees and telling Homura exactly what he thinks of her before [i]turning into a fucking centipede[/i] and scuttling off. 

Homura takes their dramatics completely in stride and joins them despite her distaste.

No one spends any points.
[/hider]