[center][h3][b]Aena[/b][/h3][/center]
[center][i]The Tinkerer[/i][/center]

For the first time in a week the sun’s light broke through the canopy above and washed over Aena.  She shut her eyes as she basked in the warmth and let her feet guide her along the Serpent’s Trail, a trick her traveling companion hadn’t been able to match and something that annoyed him to no end.  Already she expected his face was contorting in familiar frustration seeing it again, but Aena wasn’t about to explain that all it involved was [i]actually paying attention[/i].  Well, at least not until it’d be funny. 

As if on cue she heard Turev curse, and a quick look confirmed he’d tried copying her and sent himself tumbling.  Again.  Maybe it’d be kinder to just forget about that one.  For a man easygoing enough to not even think of bathing until Aena pushed him into a stream, Turev was almost comically bad at going with the flow.  She turned back and held out a hand, chatting as Turev pulled himself up with a curse, “If you break those shoes you’re not getting new ones, you know.  Two pairs are enough for someone who didn’t want any to begin with.”

“As if I’m to blame for that,” Turev scoffed as he dusted himself off, “Who cuts a trail without even thinking to build a bridge over the rivers they run into?  Even I could do better than that!  Some ‘god’.”

Aena rolled her eyes and continued the thought, “You’d also think that when the person who made you your shoes takes them off and tells you yours will get stuck in the mud [i]they’re not lying[/i]. Some ‘man’.”

“And maybe [i]you’d[/i] think that someone clever enough to make us clothes after seeing them once wouldn’t jump into my arms because a fish brushed against their leg,” Turev teased back.

Aena reached down to pull off her wooden sandal and hurl it at him but stopped halfway as she turned a bend and finally glimpsed the Serpent's Crown.  Turev almost walked into her, more focused on her throwing arm than his surroundings, but even he caught himself at the view of the mountains stretching out across the horizon.  Directly before them lay a misty pass, but elsewhere? 

Peaks so high that the clouds could only cling to their wise bases.  It was a mystery how the trees and hills of this hinterland could ever hide them even distant as they were, and from a glance Aena could tell they were at least a day's journey away.  She couldn’t help but to mutter, “Wow.”


Turev didn’t have much to add to that, and for the next day they watched the towering stones jutting from the earth near until they seemed like a wall holding back the world itself.  Steep slopes climbed into the sky from each edge of the pass and as Aena and Turev made their way through she began to question the suspicion she’d shown the group they’d met days past. 

If there was a place where the world would be saved…  Of course, she wasn’t really sure she believed it was in danger.  Humans were already robbing each other on the road, and what made gods so much different?  Anyone could lie.  Well, other than Turev, but only because he was terrible at it.  That in mind, Aena asked him a question as they trod into the mountain's long shadow, “What kind of work do you think they’ll want, for all they’re offering?  If they ask me for help gutting anything I’m turning around with or without you, Turev.”

The man scoffed and eyed the fur clothing on Aena’s back as he answered, “What, you leave that to underlings like me?  If you’d believe our friends then I’m sure they’ll have you barking orders in a day, and me gutting in an hour.”

Aena started to bark a retort before catching herself, “I- What?”

She looked at Truev with an expression of genuine confusion, and the man laughed and prodded her to keep moving while he spoke, “Didn’t one of those two say they’re gathering all the clever people and having their snake tutor 'em?  Wouldn’t say I’d prefer that to gutting from what I saw of this Asvarad back in the Birthland though.  Real freaky looking.”

Before Aena could respond to [i]that[/i] they both heard the telltale beginnings of an argument on the wind.  Frustrated words giving way to distant shouts had Aena and Turev go dead silent.  With a shared nod they slowly made their way off the trail and up the nearest hill until they spotted the source of the quarrel.  Just down the slope, ahead of them on the trail, a number of men and women carrying long sticks were fiercely arguing with a man in nicer clothing than even Aena could imagine fashioning. 

What she and Turev heard most clearly was the finely dressed man wailing indignantly, “You stu- I mean to say [i]your stupendous[/i] people, they deserve to know what's happening in the north!  There are generous go-.”

He didn’t get much farther before one of the men wielding what Aena could finally tell was a sharpened rock lashed to his stick handed off the weapon and took the richly dressed traveller in both hands before screaming in his face, “WE ARE NOT INTERESTED!  WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED!  GO AWAY.”

Even from her distance Aena had to wince at the violence with which the traveller was being shaken.  She backed up, but Turev’s arm caught her and swept her up into a jog towards the belligerents to whom he called out, “Afternoon!  Hey, is that one of those freaky zealots?  One of them preached to me while I was taking a piss, can you believe that?”

Aena nearly shrieked as Turev thrust them into center stage.  Her bearded companion reached out and slapped the rattled missionary on the back as he approached the befuddled others.  He went on as if they were old friends, “Say uh, you wouldn’t happen to know an eh, ehm, Aena what was his name?  The smart one?  Os… Something?”

“Ostan,” she all but whimpered before Turev plowed ahead. 

“Ostan that’s it!  Say, you wouldn’t happen to know Ostan?  We shared a meal with him and his little partner on the road.  Said you folks were offering food and shelter for work?”

The armed men and women, each one dressed in furs and woven fabrics like the pair Aena and Turev had met on the road, seemed to drop their hackles at the familiar name.  The one who’d given up his weapon gestured for it back and jabbed the still stunned missionary in the bottocks with its blunt end to get him moving while he answered Turev, “I know him.  And we have food and shelter enough for [i]everyone[/i] despite what these freaks like to say.  I take it you met them on the trail?  They’ve been showing up for the last few days and we’re already out of patience with them.”

“Hah! Freaks, you’ve got that right.” Turev agreed while Aena’s eyes bugged out.  If there was anything Aena was sure of, it was that Turev had never met a missionary in his short, ridiculous, life.  Nevertheless, he forged ahead with the locals, “We met them oh, a few days or so ago didn’t we Aena?”

He looked back at her, and at once she found herself choked for words.  Aena nodded and hoped they didn’t see her coiling a lock of blonde hair with her finger tightly enough that it hurt.  Turev just kept talking, “Just wouldn’t leave us alone.  I’m Turev, and this here is Aena, by the way.”

“Orwon,” The man named himself and turned to speak to his group, “And I’ve got these ones.  Keep scouting ahead on the road, ok?”

The armed group muttered a smattering of affirmations and set out while Orwon addressed Turev and Aena, “Well count me as glad they didn’t discourage you from coming south.  We’ll use all the help we can get.  I figure if you met Ostan he told you the word?”

“That the world is in danger?” Aena found herself blurting half-skeptically.

Orwon met her eyes and nodded seriously as he answered, “Catastrophe must be averted.  If you’ve heard and you’re here to help, then you’re friends of mine.  Come, I’ll bring you to the settlement and you’ll be assigned a task after you’ve had a chance to rest from your journey.”

He gestured for them to follow and set off down the trail.  Aena found herself glaring at Turev as they made their way towards the center of the Serpent’s Crown.  Orwon was too close to permit her more than a scowl and the occasional misstep into Turev’s heels, but she took the effort to let her companion know [i]exactly[/i] how she felt about his methods.  Turev just took it with all the smugness Aena imagined he had in his body.

Eventually, at Orwon’s prodding, they started to speak up again.  Enough had happened on the Serpent’s Trail to provide the pair, mostly Turev, with a few tall tales to burn the time, but invariably the subject drifted back to where they were going instead of where they were from.  For a while Orwon just told them to be patient and that they’d see.

Aena was about to Turev to gut their guide in annoyance at the non answer when they emerged from the craggy stone of the pass and into air suddenly thick with humidity.  Then she saw and understood their laconic guide as they tread over the rolling hills and eyed many-hued steaming streams of node twenty one.  It was art, and she could tell at once.  Node eighteen had been comfortable, but it was dull compared to this place.

Far below, in the distance, Aena saw wide fields along the bank of a vast freshwater lake.  Above it all towered the node, vastly higher than what any Human had seen of node eighteen's strange monolith.  Orwon watched them take it all in and led them down the trail with a grin.  He helped them through groves of wide gnarled trees and finally told them how things had been here since the first Humans had begun to reach the end of Asvarad’s trail.

Apparently, in the beginning, it had been touch and go.  The serpent was decidedly unfriendly and wasn’t, by virtue of what he was, easy to approach for most humans.  Thankfully enough had had the courage to communicate with the enormous creature and before long they’d been led to sown fields and forests rich in wild berries. 

Asvarad had offered all of it to them, but not freely.  He’d told them of the world's end, prophesied at its beginning, and asked for their help in preventing it.  That was all.  Not one of those first Humans had refused the serpent’s offer and before long Asvarad had even begun selecting ones among their number for schooling.

Aena asked Orwon more about that, but the man didn’t know much.  It seemed Asvarad didn’t do much [i]beyond[/i] teach.  Almost everything else had been organized by those first arrivals and those who’d migrated in the days since.  At that Turev had seemed to brighten and almost at once was boasting of things he’d supposedly done or accomplished to an increasingly skeptical Orwon. 

Aena didn’t feel like digging him out of that hole, even if it did end up with Turev spreading dung on fields.  So, she let him dig it for what ended up being the next day and a half.  When they finally arrived at the wide cleared ground that was the local’s settlement’s center, where the dark bulk of the serpent Asvarad sat coiled devouring the afternoon sun, Turev had spun at least fifteen stories Aena thought had to be almost entirely imaginary. 

Then again, seeing what she was seeing now, maybe not.  Just about every living creature in the Serpent’s Crown was rapt as Asvarad, this land’s namesake, rose and spoke in their presence for the first time seemingly unbidden, [color=785A6E][b]“Worthless cur!"[/b][/color]

[center][h3][b]Asvarad[/b][/h3][/center]
[center][i]The Great Serpent[/i][/center]

The ground around Asvarad trembled in an echo of his fury as he shouted, spade like teeth bared in a snarl at someone only he could see.  He glared at his servant with all six eyes as they nervously retorted with their own thoughts, [i]“Hey hey hey!  You didn’t tell me where to put the skull so maybe I chucked it in a stream when I got here, whoops, your bad.  You made me!”[/i]

Asvarad felt his muscled tense and his vision narrow.  Though he hated what he was, clumsy and limited, he was more than a match for a misbegotten wretch like [i]this[/i].  His servant seemed to realize it and their fine scales lost some colour as they raised their hands, backed up, and amended the statement, [i]“Ok maybe I uh, I didn’t follow the spirit of the request, but that thing is bad news ok?  You made me enjoy crushing awful nippy maggots with my bare hands, which is just- I mean so- It’s seriously messed up, but I still hated carrying that thing!"[/i]

The great serpent pushed against his own instincts as hard as he could, through the addling haze that had clouded his vision and driven him to the edge of incandescent rage, and thought back with a cold chill that left his Servant shivering, [color=785A6E][i]“Go and find it.  When you have it- Give it to me.”[/i][/color] 

Asvarad turned away from the source of his frustration and towards the increasingly agitated crowd of Humans.  The rage contracted in the great serpent’s chest as an idea blossomed in his mind and he pulled himself together to address the gathering, [color=785A6E][i]“There has been an… Incident.  I must ask for the aid of everyone here, those I have… Taught especially.  There is a skull that holds the key to the world before this one, and it has been lost.  I will reward whoever finds it.”[/i][/color] 

Odd as the request was, none questioned it.  Almost at once his people began to organize and fan out, the serpent not issuing a single command beyond his speech.  It was gratifying to not need a speech for every occasion, but as Asvarad watched even newcomers he’d never seen before joining the search he pondered the last time he’d needed to give one. 

When he’d first met the Humans and given them his offer.  Then hardly even a third of his audience had managed to come up with a question about this world’s true nature when prompted.  Most didn’t even know [i]how.[/i]  On one side the event had allowed a smaller group to assert itself and organize the others without his interference, but on the other it was beyond discouraging to see so many struggle with what Asvarad knew they could understand.  They just needed help.

And he knew he only needed the power of the nodes to help them.  The very thing he’d wanted to avoid as much as possible until he understood what it was, if the knowledge Peninal had imparted on him was to be trusted at all, could help Asvarad and the Human’s alike grasp concepts they had no understanding of. 

There was risk.  With the nodes, there was always risk.  They would surely only teach him and his Humans what they were supposed to know.  Worse than that?  He would have to claim more and more nodes just to access that information.  Asvarad recalled the experience and shuddered at the thought, as much in anticipation as terror.  It would be dangerous, and to more than his body.  

Yet, the reward.  He and his people needed more than knowledge and there was no resource like an unclaimed node.  It was a perfect incentive, and it made the great serpent leery.  He needed much, but what if he was playing too heavily into the game?  What if the end began when chaos was banished?  Asvarad crushed the thoughts as they came. 

He would leave a bastion for chaos until he was sure, but he needed what he needed now.  His people most of all. 

[center][b]- - -[/b][/center]

His departure had been greeted with some uncertainty, but none had doubted Asvarad’s claim that it was necessary.  Now though, it was he that doubted again.  The swirling, flicking, madness of chaos stretched out before Asvarad as he approached the twenty fifth node and hesitated.  He feared that he saw worlds ending beyond any counting in the infinite uncertainty.  He knew that he saw his own.  

Asvarad hated this world for the prison he feared it was, but after the hideous insubordination of his Servant he found that he was capable of yet greater anger.  And he [i]loathed[/i] the idea of all that was, him included, being washed away because he was unwilling to do what he had to.  With a growl he did as he had done once before and set course for a vacant node, slithering across the unmade world. 

But this time was different.  He did not see what had changed, but he tasted the bitterness of charred metal and felt unseen sickness claw at his insides.  Darkness that seemed to contract and flex around Asvarad obscured his sight as he searched for the danger that had left him coughing up bright blood from pained lungs.

[i]He was being killed and could not see his attacker[/i].  The realization struck the weakened serpent like fire, and without reservation he poured his power into a wish to buy him time.  The center of one wide tooth began to glow in Asvarad’s mouth as enamel turned to azure crystal that shined faintly at first but then more intensely with every passing moment. The taste of metal and blood vanished as Azvarad’s invisible wound healed, but the danger had not passed. 

The brightening glow from the great serpent’s tooth served as warning, something was getting closer.  It was that movement which gave the beast, the vast titan of chaos treading through unreality, away.  It was invisible but for the air around it glowing and cracking with sickly colour that Asvarad had mistaken for distant lightning and not the madness that it was.  Something had been born in chaos.  To look at it, to be near it, was to suffer.  If Asvarad had ever doubted his fears as to this world’s nature, then he did no longer.

The great serpent beheld not a guardian or defender, nor a soldier or warrior.  He saw malice given form by evil.  For the moment he was protected, his defenses proof against the monster’s unseen poison, but with every motion it made to approach him Asvarad felt the gem in his tooth vibrating as it burned with light, and he knew he was still in danger. 

Panic overtook him and he all but leapt at the distant node.  The serpent’s muscles burned as he raced towards the monolith as fast as his body would allow him, but his pursuer had not been taken unawares.  Where before it had been content to slowly poison Asvarad, now it screamed.

The great serpent listened and regretted having ears to hear at all.  Every living scream of terror or inanimate shriek rang out in a dissonant harmony, but only for Asvarad.  The gem in his tooth began to hurt and he knew he was not faster than his pursuer, but he could tell it made no difference.  Chaos manifest had not realized Asvarad was protected until it was too late to stop the serpent from getting what he wanted. 

He reached the node and threw his momentum into coiling around it, clinging to the obelisk desperately.  The power of the node rushed through him and as he turned to face his pursuer the flickering world froze and the beast was fleeing.  Asvarad felt an ocean of power buoying him that he willed to violence.  Nature twisted and the vastness of a mountain was flung at the apparition that’d nearly claimed the serpent’s life, but the great plume of dust and rubble that erupted from the impact obscured any certainty of victory. 

Somehow, he knew it wasn’t enough.  But with no sign of the beast Asvarad put the monster out of his mind and focused on the task before him.  He took hold of the power running through him and willed the dark ground around the node to sprout trees whose roots reached greedily into the world’s heart and pulled up every treasure that they found was there for the taking.  Dull bark spotted with dull metals or shimmering gems defined the trees at first, but they were feeble.  In the face of such horror as he’d witnessed Asvarad could not help but demand they be [i]more[/i].

They grew, and they grasped ever more tightly at the world's bounty.  The largest were a thousand men tall, and they stretched out above a canopy of ‘lesser’ cousins no less than half the giant's height.  Their bark abandoned pretense, growing thick and metallic.  Some few turned to great spikes of crystal as the jewels they'd gouged from the depths of the world grew alongside them.  The trees dominated the land but were not alone on it. 

Flowering vines wrapped around the living towers and all manner of birds and bees swarmed them.  On the ground odd yellow mosses and lichens thrived in the relative darkness under the vast canopy alongside the curious reptiles that trod on and ate the peculiar foliage.  Everywhere Asvarad looked to create what his people would need, resources, food, and stability. 

He pushed and pushed until once more the task lay finished.  The node lay claimed, the knowledge he sought secured, and the creature that had nearly taken his life banished.  Then, for the first time in his short life, Asvarad felt he could no longer hold any one of his six eyelids open and began to buckle under his own weight.  He was so tired.  His body, and his mind, finally crumbled under the strain as the serpent passed out. 

Asvarad dreamed he had someone else to take on the weight, wished for it, and thus empowered a sapling just born thought it would be so.  A little knight.  The odd moving tree, not so different from a man in shape, rose and watched as its creator slumber in a deserved sleep.

It, the Forest’s Sentinel, would do its best to live up to the promise it’d made. 


[hider=summary]
Aena is around.  She and Turev chat as they walk to the cool place Snek lives.  Aena made them some clothes, Turev lost a shoe in a river.  Eventually they get to the Serpents Crown and see some guards tell off a missionary.  Turev lies and pretends he totally hates those guys, gets a cool guard guide, and they go into the node.  Things are cool.

They meet Asvarad, who is mad at Servant, but they cant see that.  Asvarad asks everyone to please find the skull Servant threw in a stream and then thinks about how dumb everyone is and how he can take another node and maybe theyll be less dumb.  Asvarad does this.  He also nearly dies to a radiation monster and he makes a cool artifact as well as accidentally empowers a tree-knight.

Editing will happen at some point[/hider]
[hider=might]
Snek has 8
Snek spends 4 on GEM OF PROTECTION in his tooth.  This gem is a healing charm that restores the body and wards off attacks of all kinds.  Those who attack the bearer of the GEM OF PROTECTION will find their blows deflected and the wounds they inflict short lived. 
Snek spends 2 on THE BRONZE AGE.
Snek spends 2 on THE FORESTS SENTINEL.  A knight made from the living metal of the great trees the FORESTS SENTINEL is a protector of node 25. [/hider]