[center][h2]The Second Trial[/h2][/center] The peak was more exposed than it could have been expected from a spot nested so low among the surrounding mountains. The gales, not content with its already fractured shape, battered it ferociously, seizing every loosened crumb of stone with triumphant howls and carrying it away like a treasured prize. No snow could hold its footing on the rocky spire’s small flat head, and, besides some tufts of brown grass heroically clinging to a crack in its side, the even little dolomite plaza was perfectly bare. Just as the sky above it was obstinately silent, save for the wordless whistling of the wind. [colour=gainsboro][i]“Here I am!”[/i][/colour] Ea Nebel raised her face towards Heaven, her feet planted in the center of the summit, hands a-fist at her sides. Her scarf whipped out behind her, a perfect straight line tracing the force of the wind, marking a tiny black figure exposed on all sides to the crown of peaks that encircled her. Her shout, like her scarf, was cast away and lost to the gale. The silence continued. Until, at last, the wind brought something. Black smoke tumbled and rolled through the air, twisting and flouncing like entrails tossed to the ground, but never unravelling. One cloud, then two, three. Seven. They began to circle her as they approached, winding a quickly tightening spiral. Red eyes. Flashes of grey flame. “Breathe,” one of them said in the voice of a dying pyre. [colour=gainsboro]“...Hello, sisters.”[/colour] Ea Nebel flicked white hair off her face with her gloved knuckles and let her eyes relax from the ruinous spirits, closing them for only a moment. She filled her lungs. A fiery chuckle answered. “Sisters,” one spectre repeated, and five others laughed again. Only the one who hung further back, the one with the three melancholy pupils, did not join them. “If we are so much to you,” a one-eyed Eschatli began again, “Give us your breath.” “All of it.” “All your body.” “All your life. Then you will truly be one of us. Just breathe us in.” The demigod, cold-hardened, gave the spirits the air she held in her body, and nothing more. Nothing but a quarter of a smile. [colour=gainsboro]“You are more than nothing to me,”[/colour] she murmured, knowing they could hear her over the wind, just as she could hear them. [colour=gainsboro]“But not that much. Talk to me, Eschatli. I would listen to your voice.”[/colour] The Six hummed, and they gathered closer. “Do you know,” one of them said, “What it is to live without breath?” “Without it, we cannot feed our flame,” another rejoindered, “We burn, but we are forever cold.” “We never had land to call our home, for we cannot tread it.” “No rest for lidless eyes.” “No warmth for the heartless.” “Come, sing for our sister,” one turned to the Other, who had quietly approached, “Sing of the Seven.” [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuaMYJzs0nA]And she sang.[/url] [center][i]“What I am, I must not show, What I am, you could not know. Something between heaven and hell, Something that neither stood nor fell. Far less happy, for we have Help nor hope beyond the grave. And this is all that I can show, And this is all that you may know. Neither substance quite, nor shadow, Haunting lonely moor and meadow, Dancing by the haunted spring And riding on the whirlwind's wing. A year there is a lifetime And a second but a day, And an older world will meet you Each morn you come away. The thunder’s noise is our delight And lightning makes us day by night, And in the air we dance on high To the loud music of the sky.”[/i][/center] The howl of wind and song swept over Ea Nebel. She squinted against it, bracing herself against a force in the Outsider’s words that not even the gale could match. She drove her quartered gaze up into the grey flame that was Seventh of the Seven, hunting for colour in that thrice-pupilled eye, daring the spirit to bare more, to sing on with the loud music of the sky. But the Other had no more to say, and she looked silently back as tendrils of smoke crept closer to the demigoddess’ face. “Such is our lot, but in your breath we will find a new one,” said the Six as they reached for her nose and mouth with searing fingers, “If you will not give it to us, we will take it.” And not another word was spoken as they surged in a wave of light and pain. White teeth flashed. Soot-black fingers pulled open Ea Nebel’s black lips and revealed the clenched snarl hiding behind them. She threw her head forward as the fire entered her mouth and [i]bit,[/i] ripping away an Eschatli’s gaseous limb above the wrist, claiming fingers from her sisters, snuffing them between her jaws. When she lunged, it was with a wet, grinding animal growl, and her neck stretched on inhuman bones as she seized her sister’s fire in tooth and hand and tore her apart. No sooner were the Seven restored to number than Ea Nebel drew her blades. Twin smallswords, thin as needles, their guards of fresh ivory; they leached light, spilling tattered flowing sheets of shining white mana onto the mountain altar. Glyphs sparked from her ring in a constant shower and scattered out from behind the guard of that hand. And, trailed by plumes of smoke peacock-like in that bath of shimmers, the Seventh began to dance. It was at first the slow oscillation of the waves lapping the shore at dawn, but then it quickened, unfolded, and truly became the dance of the flame. She careened one way with a weight that was gone the next moment, and then leapt up to the sky in fifty tongues before falling again in a pool of blades and teeth. Without looking, the Six followed her, at first in a few tremulous steps between one life and the next, then more and more confident, more and more joyous. She was their corypheus, and they her silent choir, and she guided them among woven wonders to which they were blind. Where the Nebel-blades struck, they were no more. Where the rune-sparks left an opening, they lashed and burned. Every white nova that flared when their enemy pierced them only delivered Ea Nebel an instant of respite as the Eschatli divided and the gap in the dance was filled by fission. She worked those moments without mercy. No longer could the shape of the woman on the mountain be mistaken for the goddess beneath the skin. Her spine twisted without grace, her wrists snapped back and forth independently, faster than fleshen nerves could command or bone could withstand. She was sleek chaos, she ate rhythm. Silk became steel on her skin and the Eschatli’s perfect step was broken time and again on her solidity. Always there was another space in the dance for the Seven to hide in. The song of joy had been Seen before it was composed, and it was composed for her. [colour=gainsboro][b]“ENOUGH!”[/b][/colour] The cry did not come from her throat, only somewhere behind the soulless mask she wore atop her segmented armour. The night air thickened like water, and the dark fires floating within it were caught in the light of the sphere around her. [colour=gainsboro][b]“Stand Still!”[/b][/colour] And still they stood. Ea Nebel sucked the mask back inwards, revealing her sweat-soaked face under her helm. [colour=gainsboro]“You don’t… Tire like I do.”[/colour] Yet, tireless as they were, the Seven flames grew lower and dimmer in that moment. A shadow cast by no solid body had fallen over them, and with it came a weight that was more than just fatigue. [color=778899]“To know the virtue of [i]authority[/i] is to know the standing of oneself and all things in creation,”[/color] came at long last the voice from the sky, [color=778899]“It is to know that the obedience of Galbar-born is the birthright of divinity, as the obedience of lessers is the birthright of the supreme. Where even the subaltern may be preeminent in might or wile, they must ever heed the command of the paramount. This is a virtue of the divine.”[/color] Then the veil of shadow was lifted, and the Eschatli were carried away into the distance upon its trail, like driftwood on the current. Ea Nebel breathed, heavily but unmolested, her mail melting away into silk and wool. Her hands still gripped the swords. Only the mountains looked at her now, and under their gaze, she was all alone. [colour=gainsboro]“One day we will dance together!”[/colour] she shouted, her voice small against the wind, into the back of the distant circle of spirits. Once again her eyes chased down the last one, the grey flame. [colour=gainsboro]“One day I will swallow you.”[/colour] [center][i]"There will be dancing, there will be ringing, There will be shadow-people singing ~"[/i][/center] The fading gales brought back tatters of song, before those too were swallowed by the horizon. Far below the godling’s feet, a small cavity about halfway up the tomb-peak’s side, until then as dark as its neighbours, lit up with the subdued radiance of luminous silvery fog streaming from its mouth. [color=778899]“The third trial awaits there.”[/color] Ea Nebel inclined her gaze once more towards Heaven. The wind was not so strong now. It carried faint drops of sleet. She threw her swords out onto the steep slopes to the left and right of her, and let the magnesium light of magic claim them. Then it was her turn to leap from the peak. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evgoa2uVcuE]A faint voice carried between the mountains.[/url] [colour=gainsboro][i][center]Daylight, in bad dreams Of a cool world, full of cruel things Hang tight, all you Nothing like a big, bad, bridge To go, go Burning through[/center][/i][/colour] [hr] Stone and crystal scraped sharply as Iqelis tore himself from the ledge once more. As he stepped away, the grooves left by his talons were bared to mark where, until briefly before, every one of his fingers had been clenched while the struggle raged. Again he cast his inquiring gaze to the two goddesses without a word spoken. [b]“I wish I could find any enjoyment in the irony of these trials, but I cannot. I digress, I am satisfied with the results once more.”[/b] Homura said. [color=778899]“Then you draw as much enjoyment as there is kindling for it,”[/color] the god rattled drily back. He spoke even fainter now, in the clatter of ancient bones rolling in a deep crypt. Ruina observed the test with some amount of interest, as the trials of sisterly conflict were something that she was quite intimate with. The brutal way that Ea Nebel chose to push back against their assault was something that she personally approved of. She resolved to tell her that later. To do anything now would go against the spirit of the tests. As Iqelis sought her critique Ruina gave a reply that was actually simple for once. [color=#a6cb99]”I approve.”[/color] And so it was. [hr] [hider=Onii-chan!] Ea Nebel shows up to stand dramatically on the mountaintop designated as the second trial site. The trial is not announced, but she is soon joined by a group of spirits: the seven Eschatli, including the reticent Outsider. Ea Nebel and the Eschatli immediately establish a very weird relationship. The Eschatli are, of course, extremely hostile. They focus their spite and jealousy intensely on their demigod sister-cousin, who is blessed with mortality and sensation. Ea Nebel seems to like them, or at least finds them funny, but is completely unsympathetic to their eternal torment. The Outsider, who is otherwise quiet during this collab despite intense staring between it and Ea, is invited to sing, and sings for her a song about the Eschatli’s condition that is both lament and boast [s]and dungeon synth[/s]. Then they try to seize Ea Nebel’s life for themselves by force and fire. She responds with maximum violence. They fight. Ea Nebel is pretty evenly matched with the septuplets, who are tireless, unkillable, and guided into an elusive combat dance by the Outsider’s clairvoyant song. She works her Homuran body well past its natural limit without taking major damage, but is eventually forced to end the fight with a divine spell of command. Iqelis suddenly butts in to announce that by imposing her will on the Eschatli, she has demonstrated the virtue of Authority, and passed the second trial. The spirits immediately leave, and again, some pretty weird farewells are exchanged before Ea moves on with a little song of her own. Homura and Ruina agree that this was a pass. Ruina approves of sister-on-sister self defence brutality, for obvious reasons, while Iqelis seems rather tense about the danger she was in. [i]Ea Nebel opens the ledger with 9 vigour plus 3 from events, making 12 (though not in the way we originally counted lmao). She cast a 1 vigour demigod spell (would be a free action for a full god). 11 vigs remain. The Eschatli begin with 3 prestige. They gain 1 from being the trial’s main fixture, and end with 4. The Outsider starts with 4 spirit and gains 2 (1 from her appearance, 1 from being in a collab). This brings her to 6.[/i] [/hider]