The sky was a pale white, the world shaded in black, and the goddess stood ready as her enemy made one more attack to defend its node. Twenty or more serpents of living crystal darted all around her, it may look like many beings but much like the hydra it was one beast, in fact, these were not even heads, but arms and claws, cutting at them felt useless as soon they would regrow, still, they made it impossible to approach the beast.

The serpents surrounded the goddess and started to strike at her, at first in a shy manner, one at a time, to learn her movements as she slashed and cut off each lunging arm, then, they prepared to strike at once, but the goddess launched herself up before they could, she cast fort a spear and released a rapid slashing cut all around her, severing the majority of 'heads' at once. Using her cape she cancelled the momentum of the jump, falling back to the ground and floating about, finishing off the last arms, then, she raced for the core of the beast. But as she approached, a new set of heads had been born, like a wave of claw and teeth they swarmed her, she ditched her spear for a knife and cut them off as she could, and while she succeeded it also pushed her back, finally, a serpent broke past her defences and delivered a cut to her neck with its crystalline fin.

The goddess fell back in pain, falling to the ground, a spray of red against the white and black, the snake swarmed her again and there was little she could do now. [color=7bcdc8]"Damn it. How careless."[/color] she complained in a calm tone, and then the world was enveloped by the sound of ringing bells and broke down like a fragmented mirror before reforming.

The sky was a pale white, the world shaded in black, and the goddess stood ready as her enemy made one more attack to defend its node. Twenty or more serpents of living crystal darted all around her, it may look like many beings but much like the hydra it was one beast, in fact, these were not even heads, but arms and claws, cutting at them felt useless as soon they would regrow, still, they made it impossible to approach the beast.

The serpents surrounded the goddess and started to strike at her, at first in a shy manner, one at a time, to learn her movements as she slashed and cut off each lunging arm, then, they prepared to strike at once, but the goddess launched herself up before they could, casting many knives in her hand which threw down to pin the serpents before using her full momentum to pounce forward, a whistle in the air as she dove down at a great speed straight at the core of the beast. She let the full force of her dive hit the beast with a dropkick then, with sharp and sudden movements, she was already upon it with a sword in hand, striking at it as the serpents rushed forth to save their core.

They were too late, the dark scarlet blood of the beast started to spray and the serpents fell limp just before reaching the goddess. The beast slain, the node was free for the taking. The goddess nodded in acknowledgement of that. [color=7bcdc8]"Now Mirori, bring forth a humanoid enemy, equal to my fellow gods."[/color] then the world was enveloped by the sound of ringing bells and broke down like a fragmented mirror before reforming.

...

Dzallitsunya sighed as she stood against a tall totem-like structure in the middle of a salt-flat of the mirror marches, standing up after multiple controlled dreams. Although she had not moved, her muscles felt tired and her mind was equally exhausted. Still, she smiled.

The truth was, this world was a dangerous one. To learn to fight for herself was key to her survival, and although Benea was an ally, the mere fact another god such as Anak'Thas had been taken down so easily proved to her that she was for more vulnerable than she felt. For that purpose, she had cast for the Mirori. This relic of divine might was a simple one, it was able to cast forth dreams on those who stood under its shadow, living dreams that transformed the peaceful salt flat around it into an illusory battle zone. It was able to simulate all sorts of dangers, from fellow gods to the chaos beasts and provided the goddess with realistic training against such threats. 

The next real fight she got into, against the chaos beast of the 5th Node, some sort of fish-like beast that could dive into the rock as if it was water, she found herself making exemplary quick work of it, using her new sword, the warped branch-like Kukabutzu, to pierce the creature's thick scales and strike at its core before it could truly muster up any harm to her.

Then she approached the node, one more to be taken by the shadows, away from the questionable influence of the sun.

[color=7bcdc8][h3][center]Dzallitsunya IV[/center][/h3][/color]

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/dZg9ycr.png[/img][/center]

Taking a node was never a casual matter to Tsunya, each time she wanted to test it further, see how much she could change, and now, with the knowledge of the wondrous aspects, other nodes were granted she too wanted to push it further than ever before, releasing fully the shackles of conventional physics and biology. The world around her shook and almost screamed as the land was raised further and further, Dzallitsunya reaching as high and as low as she could, bringing forth rare elements and imbuing some new ones with new elements.

The result was the land of the Starry Shores, the vertical archipelago. A massive mountain province, a rough land where only a few areas were fit for a comfortable human life.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/Wrg86ib.png[/img][/center]

Half the shores of this land were made of rough, rocky, gravel coasts, and very dry locations. Some pockets of green were made on the shores or sometimes as little islands in the flat gravel expanses, in here the ground was muddy and humidity almost average, allowing for plants to form, all adapted for the harsh cold winds from the North. The other half has no shore, instead, the tall cliffs and mountains from inland crash against the sea, being suddenly cut off, forming massive rock wall, though their creation was so rough that many had entire sea-side chambers that interconnected forming tunnels across much of the coast.

Inland, with the exception of a green valley or two forming around a river flowing to the sea, there is only a rocky dry land, where even snow struggles to form at the mountain tops thanks to the harsh high speeds of winds as the air flows between the spires of rock.

About half and a bit more of the land is covered by [u]tall mountains and rocky plateaus[/u] that from the perspective of other nodes may be seen as tall but in these lands, they form the lowest of the mountain biomes. The valleys with their dry sparse vegetation is mostly home to owls, rodents, goats, and great lizards. The plateaus see larger fauna, such as bears and dear, as well as ferrets and armoured mammals, such as the pangolin and giant armadillos.

This was a harsh land, unfit for human habitation without technologies and public works far beyond what mankind could perform upon this world, yet, it was also a rich land. Though lacking in certain metals like tin or iron it included materials that would be first found by the dusklanders here, green marble, lapis lazuli, as well as ores rich in Zync, Electrum and Rubidium, the latter becoming a fever among dusklanders for its ability to produce purple flames. The most famous one however would not be that common, instead, it would be a natural alloy similar to Auricupride, which is an ore of copper and gold, but richer and with a look that some would describe as "charged", to foreigners this would be known by the name a later scholar gave it, Auri-Chalcum, or the more vernacular Orichalk, to the dusklanders however, this would be known as Tzurkortze, sea copper.

The lands higher still, however, were far richer but far more inhospitable. The [u]Ultra Tall[/u] mountains were so far from the ground that pressure became weaker, oxygen was rarer yet the winds only became stronger. Fauna and flora meanwhile only became weirder, it was as if life became derived from the silica membranes of the Diatom algae instead of the carbon-based life found in most of the crucible. Sponge-like creatures grew from stone, creating coral-like structures in elements more similar to colourful glass and diodes, other twisted trees grew with blooms in blue or red, land-dwelling gastropods almost similar to nautilus squids, centipede-like beings in geometric crystalline carapaces that fought over gemstone trilobites. The skies had the gelatinous jelly-flies with their bags of helium and the quickly emigrating flying fishes, the Tonnikala, who just found the place pleasant and full of nutrients, the two other notable vertebrates of this land were the large thunderbird, a clever relative of the ferret, which had learned to hold its breath and sneak grab prey before diving back down to more proper lands and a large animal that could be best described as a mole with the size and temper of a pig, burrowing and feeding off scraps.

Among one of the mesas of this ultra tall region, a shallow but striking lake of pure flowing mercury is among the biggest examples of the weird and unusual geology of the area.

And yet, one mountain stills stood higher, one from which the clouds became much like a sea and the low oxygen and pressure and lack of protection was so severe that without divine help or cutting edge technology a mortal could never dream of exploring the land.

It was also a gentle land of breathtaking (if there was any air) beauty. Grasses with burgundy hues, tall trees with gentle white leaves, and flowers of ultraviolet and infrared colours and palm trees with blue leaves covered in hexagonal shapes. Insects, more like those found on the ground than the unusual ones of the mountain, except made slightly translucent. All life here fed off the radiation of the cosmos, so instead of building thick opaque skins to save themselves they instead had slimy and translucent skin to bask in on those glorious rays, the frogs on a lake were similar but the mammal-like animals not so much, there was a dog-ish creature with a smooth purple or blue fur-coat, the goddess called them Llikas, then there were the monkeys, short, thin and green, with big black eyes.

And, of course, in the middle of it all was Dzallitsunya and the node pillar. She was proud of her work, but also tired, that there were not-dogs and not-monkeys in her tallest garden was to her proof of that, after all these were among the least likely animals you would expect in the stratosphere... right?

The one thing that made her sad however was that for most of the day this land was dormant. With how much she had to focus on the land to imbue it with unusual characteristics, she found herself unable to manipulate sunlight. Even if she had the power, she usually messed with layers of cloud and elements in the air for that, layers which were beneath her mountain. So, from the sunrise to the sunset, this land morphed, unlike the gentle radiation of the stars, the sun was still too much, so the animals and insects hid, the flowers closed up and even the trees would twist and morph to protect their leaves. That left nothing but a barren rocky landscape where once stood the garden, only the palm trees did not hide, instead following the sun like sunflowers, but as soon as darkness returned, the whole land bloomed again.

There were not many mineral features up there, though some elements too unstable for the world below did find themselves allowed to exist up there. Chief among them was Astratine, a geode that when met with the oxygen and pressure of most of the crucible would ignite in tiny sparkles and turn to rusty dust. To the goddess this was little but a curiosity of her land, but to mortals, this would change the night sky.

These geodes were light, small and abundant, naturally growing from certain shells and salts, animals and plants, in their daily habit of hiding and returning, would get bits of it thrown into the air or stuck into them, some of the space monkeys even liked to throw it off the edge for no reason at all.

This mineral would then be carried far and wide by strong winds, starting to heat up and ignite, forming a trail of gold or silver in the sky before fully disintegrating. This little cosmological event would be given a far too ambitious name by the mortals, who called it a "Falling Star"

[hider=Summary]
Dzallitsunya trains and then beats the guardian of Node 3.
She makes it into a tall mountainous area, then she puts taller mountains on her mountain, this gains a silicate environment that has a bunch of sea creatures very far from the sea. There is floating jellyfishes, stained glass coral and Tonnikala.
Then she puts taller still lands on her double mountains, it's really bloody high, there is no oxygen and no clouds above.
In there, a shining cosmic radiation garden grows, where one can find a type of geode that is thrown down to earth by space monkeys to form what mortals call "Falling Stars", it does nothing, just pretty, and making the night pretty is an objective.
[/hider]

[hider=Might]
Starting Might: 5

-2 Creating the artefact Mirori, a totem in the mirror marches that permits one to train in illusion fights against a variety of imaginary enemies, from chaos beasts to even gods and heroes, helping Dzalli to gain combat experience without real danger.
-2 Advancing the Dusklands to the Bronze Age. The post about this isn't made yet, but Tzurkortze / Orichalcum will be the bronze equivalent metal of this society so I might as well pay now.

Remaining Might: 1
[/hider]