[center][h2]The First Trial[/h2][/center] The vale was long and deep, a concavity that could have been carved into the side of the mountain by a drifting glacier, or perhaps by a judicious finger of divine magnitude. And, as something etched by such an even sweep ought to have been, it was perfectly smooth, a flawless inverted arch plunged into the live rock. Not a single stray boulder nor patch of snow marred its floor, not a stalk of grass or mountain-blossom grew from the dry stone, not even a small crack nor pebble ruined the harmony of its levigated surface. Little of that could be seen for certain, however, because of a heavy black cloud that covered the sky directly above it. Though no larger than most of the ragged grey nimbi that drifted among the nearby peaks, this dark clot was much heavier, and it appeared to be brewing a small storm directly overhead, for something growled and grumbled ominously in its depths. Then, before Ea Nebel had the time to step either further ahead or back over the ridge, it suddenly burst, and fell to the ground in uncountable fragments. It became visible then that it was no cloud at all, but a behemoth swarm of carrion-flies, larger than any the Galbar had seen since the pestiferous insects had first set out upon its surface. There were as many of them as drops of water in the ocean and grains of sand in the desert, and as they set down on the ground they carpeted the vale entirely, so that there was not enough soil left uncovered for the slightest of raindrops to have fallen. All as one, they faced the demigoddess, silently challenging her with a sea of rust-red eyes. Iqelis' voice rang out from the now clear sky. [color=778899]“All flies know you, all flies look to you. All but one of them, who turns the other way. Find it among the multitude, for until you do, you may not depart this vale. This is your first trial.”[/color] A gust of chilly wind struck her in the back, flinging her hat out ahead, and the steep pass behind her was enveloped by a swirling tide of thick black fog. Another such smoky wall swallowed the opposite end of the ravine. The world beyond might as well have faded from existence; there was only her and the flies. [colour=gainsboro][i]...Well.[/i][/colour] Ea Nebel faced the grey sky and nodded to her unseen judges, then took a step. A few hundred flies scattered, reforming their ranks around her boots and clustering over her exposed footprints until they obscured. The insects between where she had been and where she stood now had dutifully turned their heads, and watched her still. She waved her hand loosely in front of her, rune-ring sparking with glyphs of Gnosis, throwing out a stiff gust. Thousands of flies flew up before her, tossed in a dense wave that became a zephyr, black like smoke as it spiralled away its momentum ahead of her. The flies swerved, circled, tumbled this way and that, crawled over each other in piles as they landed, arranged themselves once more in a thick blanket- and faced her. Ea Nebel caught a straggler between thumb and forefinger. She lifted it to her face. Many ways to solve this puzzle, if one were only a god. Ea Nebel stared at the fly and contemplated, turning it around. She could [i]force[/i] this fly to turn its back. Then she could incinerate the rest of the valley wholesale, and leave only this one remaining. A trite answer. She made a note of it. Stepping out into the endless blanket of vermin, she recovered her hat. Any mortal would spend lifetimes searching the flies without finding the One. [i]She[/i] was not mortal, and could search these flies by hand- if she had to. Ea Nebel bent her knees lightly and leapt to the other side of the vale, coat flung open behind her like a cape, watching a subtle wave in the sheen of the flies below her as they turned in their millions, skidding down over the smooth stone in another great black cloud until the heel of her boot disappeared into the fog of the barrier. She stepped promptly out, glancing at the sky once more. A stupid approach. She might need that energy later. What then? Ea Nebel trailed two fingers idly down her neck, cleared her throat, and sang a slow, wordless, operatic note into the valley. From her half-open mouth emanated a light as harsh as death, whiter than the very Moon, blinding, obscuring the shape of the insects. It echoed far between the walls of the valley, a verse in no language, recorded in glyphs of no script. She let it trail off. A faint, foul smell of burnt chitin hung in the air, and she stepped through the usual whirring clouds into the path the beam had traced. There, the flies beneath her feet rolled, wriggled, and crunched. Her light had burned through their eyes into their brains. She was impressed by her own work. With a single song, Ea Nebel could purge the whole vale in a matter of minutes. Only the turned fly would remain. She sighed. Another fine way to waste her precious strength. Ea Nebel paced, watching insects scatter underfoot. Patience and power were good virtues. She had an opportunity to prove either. She [i]wanted[/i] to. All of her little toy solutions seemed more pleasant than the true answer she already knew. She doffed her hat and looked into it. [color=778899][i]“All flies know you.”[/i][/color] Ea Nebel threw her hat far into the air, down the valley, and watched it dissolve into blowflies. She shed her coat and let it fall around her, letting it sag and melt into a seething mound of the insects, revealing her arms, her shoulders, the brilliant shawl of Heaven around her neck. She felt her hackles rise. The endless sea of eyes upon her was hungrier now. [colour=gainsboro]“Well?”[/colour] She whispered, loud as a thundercrack. [colour=gainsboro]“Don’t you know me?”[/colour] The flies rose, slowly at first, then all at once. Their wings were loud as stone and timber grinding in an earthquake. A storm of darkness fell upon her, a gale, a swirling, droning whirlwind of innumerable insects rising around her in a towering pillar. Fat, writhing flies crawled over every inch of the goddess, hanging from her skin, layers and layers of them, heavier and heavier. Ea Nebel screwed her eyes shut, covered herself with her arms, and was lost in a seething mountain of vermin. Minutes passed. The great mound billowed, heaved, and sagged. The noise grew softer as the last flies landed on their kin. The motion was subtle at first. It grew steadily, sweeping around and around, the repulsive skin of pawing scavengers carried by the currents whirling beneath their feet. Then they, too, were absorbed. The mound flickered, from sweeping black silk to glistening ferrofluid to glass and back to blowflies, blowflies, obsidian, silk. It collapsed in on itself until it was a pillar, and in that pillar was the figure of a woman, still standing, arms still crossed over herself, and finally resolved itself into a heavy black coat, tightly buttoned. Not an inch of skin showed under her sleeves and gloves, not a single line of her cringing face beneath her hat and veil. Without releasing her arms, Ea Nebel snapped her fingers, conjuring into being a tiny animal; the runes from her jade ring traced the spell and tangled together as it resolved into a little tombwasp, perching on the clear and empty rock before her, cleaning its little white antennae as if afraid to get a speck on its garments. She pointed, and it flew off. By the time it returned, she had finally opened her eyes, relaxing her stance very slightly. She lifted a palm and let the predator deposit its quarry: a single, paralysed fly. Ea Nebel raised her veiled face to the clear sky above. [colour=gainsboro]“...Here it is.”[/colour] The fog at the throats of the vale dissolved, and the voice from above spoke again. [color=778899]“It is the virtue of [i]wisdom[/i] to know the nature of things,”[/color] it said, [color=778899]“Wherein they are constant, wherein they are mutable, whereby they are driven to their acts. Likewise it is to know how those attributes may be coaxed and guided to form a nature embodied in a guise that we desire. This is a virtue of the divine.”[/color] A black cloud briefly swirled around the thinner end of a low nearby mountain's bifurcated summit, about large enough for one to stand. [color=778899]“The second trial awaits there.”[/color] [colour=gainsboro]“...Let me catch my breath.”[/colour] Ea Nebel had yet to move a single step from where she stood. She inhaled, held it deeply, released. [colour=gainsboro]“Blowing away my hat. Was that a clue?”[/colour] Only the bitter howl of the wind among jagged rocks answered. Ea Nebel looked down at the envenomated fly in her hand. It was twitching weakly, on its back, as if drunk into stupor. In its current state it could neither look towards her nor away from her. She let it fall between her fingers to the valley floor. She stared out into the long trough of empty stone, no longer bound on either side. Had she solved this riddle? Had she even tried? Why had the one fly turned its back to her? All else looked to her, while it looked away, away from the Nebel spirit, looking out from the grave, looking [i]towards-[/i] what? Life? The cradle? Birth? Ea Nebel watched the little wasp she had conjured take to the air in front of her, innocent and young. [i]It[/i] had found the fly, not her. She pinched the tight fabric of her sleeve, the skin beneath. In the end, she might as well have just counted them. It didn’t matter how many millions of insects were woven into her own inescapable cocoon. The test had been to call up the one that [i]wasn’t.[/i] Footsteps echoed down the god-carved gulch, and then all that was left was the fly, and the wasp. [hr] From the high ledge of Fortitude's tomb, the inaccessible spires and hidden depressions of the range were bared in a vast circle, and by far moreso to a divine eye. Even the secluded gulch had been keenly visible to the watchers above, though they themselves were concealed by a snaking bank of pale mountain mist. Iqelis moved a step back from the ledge and silently turned an expectant eye to the others. [b]“How wonderfully contrite; a murderer pontificating the virtues of wisdom and divinity. However, I can at least appreciate the simple nature of your test.”[/b] Homura commented, content with the outcome of Ea Nebel’s first trial. The One-Eye gave no reply, perhaps disdainful, perhaps absorbed in some arcane effort of marshalling the invisible forces that guided the ordeals, save a meaningful glance at the spear in the goddess' hand. Ruina blinked as Ea Nebel began to depart for the second phase of her tests. Turning to face Homura as she spoke, Ruina noted the lack of a reply from Iqelis and spoke her own observation shortly afterwards, turning to face him as she did. [color=#a6cb99]”I will agree with Homura that the simplicity of the test is appreciable, but I will raise observation that the lack of any form of limitation on time was rather generous. If she wanted, she could’ve counted each individual fly until she found the one you indicated. Some form of limitation or urgency in that sense would make for more thorough testing, I believe.”[/color] [color=778899]“Be assured,”[/color] the god's voice sounded distant, like an avalanche somewhere far among the Bones, [color=778899]“That the flies would not have sat idle if she ever neared her goal by that path. She could have worn out her eyes counting without approaching it.”[/color] Ruina could only let out a hum in response as she turned her attention back to Ea Nebel and awaited the next of the trials. [hr] [hider=buzz buzz] Ea Nebel faces her first trial in a valley, announced by Iqelis with a slightly poetic or cryptic bent. Billions of blowflies cover the valley floor, facing towards her and watching her. Her task is to find the one fly that's turned its back on her. She stomps up and down the valley a little bit, brainstorming. She considers brute-forcing the problem with Vigour, but decides to save her energy. She's already come up with a solution anyway: Ea Nebel casts off items of clothing and allows her outfit to re-form in its original state, as a shapeshifting cocoon of macabre materials and iconography, including a pillar of flies. She successfully absorbs 999,999,999,999 blowflies into her new clothes. It's traumatic, but she successfully recovers the one fly that didn't 'know' her. Iqelis declares that she has been tested for the Wisdom to discern between the nature of things and their transformations. Ea Nebel isn't confident she actually solved the riddle*, but Homura seems satisfied (after her usual banter with Iqelis), and Ruina has only minor concerns. *At least not on purpose. No points spent, probably. [/hider]