[center][h3][b]Asvarad[/b][/h3][/center] [center][i]The Great Serpent[/i][/center] Asvarad, the serpent god, slithered across the world he knew and towards its dark boundary. Muscles wider than trees flexed, the god’s long body carving a deep trail into the ground below with every movement. Such was the serpent's pace that Asvarad neared the boundary by the time he even noticed he was being followed. Humans had seen a path and followed it thoughtlessly. If nothing else, that proved to Asvarad that they were as foolish as his own kin. Seeing the chaos beyond the serpent didn’t need to guess at how likely it was a mere trail would protect his pursuers. They would all die. Before Asvarad swam a sea of possibility, and yet? It was structured, at times, in places. Searing deserts flickered out of existence only to be replaced by stinking flooded swamps which hardly lasted before being supplanted by a strange land of red stone and bloody fog. Reality crumbled, reconstructed itself, and all the while pretended it was never broken. As a last unkindness the region beyond the influence of the elder god’s node was also being blasted by weather that belonged in none of the places Asvarad saw it. All this only told the serpent there were more possibilities in the chaos than could be imagined. Or perhaps, as many as there had once been. Asvarad had stopped moving and coiled up at the precipice, unconsciously positioned to strike in the face of a suspicion that frightened the serpent to his core. He’d suspected this world was a trap from what information he’d gleaned from Peninal, but this? It was only a suspicion, but Asvarad wondered if every possibility he saw in the chaos beyond was a reality that had once been only to be extinguished because [i]there was no will strong enough[/i]. Or perhaps, it had nothing to do with will at all. Asvarad beheld the certain death of his pursuers, and his own likely end if his worst fears were more than that alone, and decided that none should have to face it unprepared. He began to move again, still carving a serpentine trail into the world, but now it felt solid behind him in a way that the rest of this world did not. Where chaos encroached, the trail did not yield. So long as the humans kept to his path, they would arrive where he would. The serpent god would not be their caretaker, but if they sought to follow him regardless he would not deny a fellow prisoner his aid in escaping their box. Even if it was a hopeless struggle and this world was set to tarnish and wither until only a memory in chaos remained. He would do what he could to avert that. Whether or not the crucible had birthed and slaughtered not just one world, but worlds beyond counting as the serpent god feared. As Asvarad caught sight of the twenty first node, his target, he thought again of the humans that made their way towards him, following a road with no protector, risking everything because for one reason or another they knew they could not remain where they had been. Mysteries and threats beyond counting beset him, so perhaps some company would not be so bad. Just to… Ease his burden. With that in mind, Asvarad decided on a different plan for his node than the one he’d been considering. The others hadn’t left a positive impression on the great serpent, and so he’d meant to dissuade them by fashioning his node into an inhospitable and unwelcome land. That would not do now. Instead, Asvarad planned for something greater. The serpent reached the black node, and beholding it he wondered [i]why[/i] these pillars were the foundation, but there was no time to study this one now, not while the serpent god’s peers set about claiming the whole of this world. So he lunged for it. Asvarad coiled his body around a node that rose to prevent him from ever climbing it, though on instinct he tried. Such was the serpent’s enormity that within moments he towered above the swirling chaos below and felt the battery of weather unbound by the laws of reason, logic, and time. As Asvarad pivoted his head to bear witness to it all, it froze. Chaos halted, trapped as whatever it had been when he staked his claim to the black monolith he climbed and coiled around. It waited for him. He was awash in a river of power, able to command its bend, ebb, and flow, but from the very moment he felt its touch Asvarad knew he was not its source. The power was intoxicating, it was everything that was, but the serpent god felt nothing in it but for the unease one might feel hefting a weapon they did not truly control. The serpent sat in the flow of possibility, able to foresee anywhere it might go, but unable to turn around. Asvarad could not behold the font from which energy beyond imagining stemmed and it nearly frightened him to the point of abandoning the idea of claiming a node at all. But then what? Travel the world alone, unaided and weaker than his unstable fellows? Asvarad steeled his nerves and so poured his desire into the node, wary at all times that it would betray him. It did not. First a vast field of thick mosses, vines, grasses, and more besides shot out across the node to cover every inch of it. Then, when all the land had been rendered fertile, did Asvarad raise it. A terrible rumbling overtook the world and the lands of node twenty one began to rise as vast mountains that verged on the vertical pulled themselves from the dirt and flanked every edge of the node but for where the serpent’s road held them down and permitted a pass. The mountains encroached into the interior, but there they began to fade and turn into the rolling green hills of an enormous valley. Warm water exploded from a thousand thousand springs and caves in the border mountains and colorful sediment filled rivers, still steaming, cut their way through towards the lands lowest point: the mysterious node itself. There a great lake formed, and at its edges wide fields already seeded with what would be lurid tubers and ashen grains. Asvarad had not willed that, but accepted it. The node read his desires, and he would not lie to himself and pretend he alone could uncover every truth. Humans would be indispensable. To that end, he did not leave them a land of grass and steam alone. The vines in the soil, at the lightest prodding, swirled around each other and grew wooden and thick until they began to curl on themselves and rise from the ground in great bulbous trunks covered in little leaves. Species of vine both thin and thick rose and wove themselves into odd bulb trees great and small across the node. Some would bear succulent fruit, others strong woods to build with, and yet more varieties produced stranger things still. Healing herbs, both for the body and for the spirit. That and, poisons. Those would grow only in dark caves and dangerous places, but Asvarad would not pretend he or his… People would have no use for them. That done, Asvarad withdrew from the node as fast as he was able. That he would have to spend much time studying, even claiming, more of the things made the serpent god uneasy. The less introspective of his peers would not be able to resist that. Asvarad, terrified as he was, still yearned for the freedom and control he’d experienced as he twisted the world itself into an image he enjoyed. It had not been by accident that his node resembled a fortress, only with walls miles high and caked in snow. The conflict Asvarad had feared at the beginning would play out, but this time it would not be remotely comparable in scale or devastation caused. Xavier had been a fool to talk them all down. It would have been better to have it out then, for them and for everyone else. Especially for everyone else. Asvarad felt them enter his newly claimed territory, marveling at the land that awaited them on the other side of chaos, and began to slither towards the pass. He would keep to his word and never be their keeper, but they would need him to show them the fields, and warn them of other things besides. He needed them, in time, and so too did they need him. It was disconcertingly neat, as natural arrangements went. [hider=summary] Asvarad slithers towards the chaos, intent on claiming node 21. He carves a path into the ground being so fat and all and so humans follow the trail after Vatarr tells them the south is cool. Asvarad realizes they’ll all die in the chaos so he makes his road special. It keeps the people safe as they follow the snake, but it's not like he likes them or anything! He just needs uh, lab assistants! Anyway Asvarad gets to his node and claims it, making a big old bowl full of hot springs and with one entrance. Also, he freaks out. Snake was not expecting the experience, really. While he was making the node he made some ready fields for the people he TOTALLY DOESN'T LIKE. Also he runs off to greet them and teach them things, after feeling their approach via the warning thingy he bought with his paranoia in the node claiming. I didnt edit this at all I’ll do it later nerds[/hider] [hider=might] 2might +1 might quiz -1 might serpentine trail -1 might raise humans to [u][i][b]TECH DOS [/b][/i][/u] -1 might node warning 0might left [/hider]