Node 9, and its faux sea of petrified immobile waves, had become the last bastion of chaos in the north. It housed raw chaos that made even the bestial men of Daman yearn for stability. The domination of all other lands and the constant prodding of other gods, be it Dzallitsunya's battles where the guardian was kept alive for her personal amusement or the ongoing Festival of the Red Leaves, already a natural bringer of ruckus on tamed lands, was now further stirring the unconquered wilds, the very energy emanating from the machines only further wakening the latent chaos. The once lone boar-tusked dragon now mobilized strength in numbers, piranha-mouthed flying serpents swarmed around the rims while spawnlings of the dragon scouted further away, hiding among the half-melted rocks, waiting to pounce and chase at anything they saw moving, be it a chariot or god. At this core of chaos, even the light seemed to have lost its sense, it was dark yet shadows were being cast in bright noisy colors, too distorted to be a silhouette, more solid to be a blur, like smeared oil paint. A dark fog and strong winds circled around the node itself, the dragon lying in wait, its dark pearl eyes closed as it felt two intruders approaching, one new and the other an old enemy. [hr] Chaos tore and gave way to streaks of order. Eleanna’s five claws, each shining as bright as a moon, led the way. The tears in the chaos were temporary, but they were large enough to coalesce into a great, protective dome behind her, which the following two dozen chariots struggled to stay inside of. A rumble echoed from the back of the group as one of the Chariots’ Soul-burners went up in flames. Eleanna laughed, throwing her head back to look at the way the Chariot skid and veered off course, out of the dome and ultimately was devoured by the shadows of chaos. “The contrast, Yenna! Grass and dirt paths here, crazy oil painting land crawling with beasts outside! Don’t you just love it? Reminds you of our adventures don’t it?” Eleanna shouted in the general direction of the Chariot’s cockpit, which was directly behind her given she was sitting up front with her hand in the air. “I don’t remember having to pilot a hunk of wood that literally burns my soul, Anna!” Came Yenna’s sassy response, to which Eleanna waved a dismissive hand. “Details, details! Truth is we both love this! A long struggle, a true test of endurance, testing the pilots’ ability to stay behind us while wrestling for first place, and to keep powering their Chariots for over a day… I just love how stressed everyone is!” The bronzed goddess gushed. “I don’t remember signing up for this. I’ll be taking every last Xa you own for my medical bills if my nose burns off, I don’t think you know how expensive prosthetics have gotten as of late!” Eleanna rolled her eyes. A beast of chaos lunged into the protective dome, only to be blasted away by at least 7 different manned ballistas on the back of the Chariots. “Keep going this way, the Node’s just up ahead! We can give everyone a small break after we’ve stabilized Nine!” Eleanna shouted, pointing towards the massive cloud of swirling black fog in the distance. [hr] Eight dark steel blades formed in-between the goddess fingers, they were launched down with unmatched precision, clearing out a school of flying serpents as they fell to the ground. Shocked, the dragon spawnling they were helping looked upward, seeing what looked like a falling star diving straight at him. “It seems like this is our final battle Node 9, I cannot risk having you seized by the mad god.” she declared as she dove blade first against the forehead of the beast, even the godly crafted edge of the Eclipse could not so easily break the bronze scales of the dragon, but it did not matter, where the piercing blade had failed, the crushing momentum of the goddess attack would succeed, smashing the insides without ever breaking the skin. Dzallitsunya stood over the fallen beast with a smirk, from atop it she had a good view of her surroundings, and was quite surprised to notice something she had not seen in her previous scouting of the area. To the east, a pack of beasts approached in a shining trail of light and smoke. They announced this with loud metallic roars unlike anything the goddess had ever faced. She was left mesmerized until she heard a howl from the other side, a familiar one. “What is it?” she asked the chaos wolf she had tamed, the only acquaintance she trusted to have in these lands, the canine tried to growl and point at a swelling blob onto the ground, but it was too late for the distracted goddess to react. A chaos beast, one that looked like a copy of the one that once guarded Node 2, pounced and both goddess and beast fell down a slope while trading blows. By the end of the struggle, Dzallitsunya had the beast on its back, sword piercing its exposed underside where there were less crystals protecting the skin. The beast was dead, but the goddess noticed movement in the crystals, the light they reflected started to intensify and looking to the side she saw why. She had fallen straight into the route of those roaring ‘things’, what looked like a dome of light quickly advancing towards her and in the blink of an eye, she was hit by a rush of warm air as she crossed the threshold of the dome (or perhaps the dome had crossed her?). Grass sprouted below her boots, and most important of all, a beast of wood, metal and light roared and rumbled as it shot past her, a familiar bronzed deity sitting on its muzzle. The bronzed goddess grinned, winked and made a strange hand gesture at Dzallitsunya before waving at every other roaring beast behind her. Their singular glassy eyes twinkled with the reflection of her clawed hand. “ROADKILL TIME, BOYS N GIRLS! HUNDRED XAS TO THE FIRST ONE TO RUN HER OVER!” She shouted at the top of her lungs, and immediately most of the following beasts locked onto Dzallitsunya. “The teeth stealer!?” the dusk goddess gasped seeing the bronze deity but in moments her focus had to be entirely upon the other beasts as the first approached her. She jumped to the left and immediately had to use the Shadow Petal to force her back to the right as a second car came right after. After she tried to run, the incoming chariots were quick to adapt to that, starting to aim where she would be. A few more dodges and her, now tired from overusing her relic, could not dodge the seventh car to aim at her. But she was not run over either, with a short skip upward, her sharp metal heel met the chassis of the chariot, skiing against the wood as sparks flew. The chariot’s cockpit hissed open and from the foggy interior peeked out an angry, short, rotund, hyperventilating man with his face split into half seal and half human. His disgustingly mutated features contorted as he snarled and screamed. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING LADY! GET OFF MY BELOVED WATERLANCE AND GO BACK TO THE STREETS!“ He gasped and threw everything he could find at her. A handheld broom, a bottle of Jermarvelous, a half-eaten space-goatdog burrito, and a moldy cushion were only the first of a veritable endless stream of random inane objects to bombard the Goddess of the Moon. “Burn in the sun you bastard!” the goddess barked back, her sheer divine rage cursing the man to never find a proper parking spot for his ‘beloved’, though, it also blinded her, or rather, looking back to scream made it so she was hit face first by the bottle of Jermarvelous. The number 1 choice in man’s cologne, with the spark of thunder and freshness to entrance even the most demanding vulpine ladies of the Daman, while a lovely affordable choice of quality perfume, was not meant to be spilled upon one’s eyes, and Dzallitsunya found herself crouching on the ground, rubbing her eyes as she tried to regain her vision. She could barely see when another car approached, this time she couldn’t jump either, so the only solution was to go directly against it, sliding beneath the chariot. Standing up after the fifth close call, still half blinded with her eyes burning from the perfume, sweating and with bits of her outfit torn and blood dripping from her forehead, she observed the last car to arrive. Too low to slide under, too blocky to jump over, too late to jump to the side. The half-human half-clover pilot smirked. “Ahhh! Today. Today izzz me lucky day! Getzz ready to be a zmear in my vizzor, little bug” Dzallitsunya sighed, took a stance, and without words readied her sword. The plant-woman’s eyes widened. “Oh weeedzzz” and now she was the one who couldn’t dodge and a slash of the Eclipse, the last carriage was cut in the middle, both missing Tsunya before dramatically exploding on both sides of the fading light road. Safe from being run over, Dzallitsunya took a deep breath and then let out an equally long sigh. She stared at the path in front of her, Eleanna’s light fading accompanied by an echoing crackling laugh. Dzalli closed her eyes, knelt and placed both hands against the floor, starting to lean forward as her cape, the Shadow Petal, started to wave as if hit by a strong wind, wind-cutting noises echoing around her. When the goddess’ eye opened, she launched forward with a bang, stepping against the wind itself, breaking past it and running towards the race. In complete silence, with only eyes towards Eleanna’s chariot, she rushed past the cars, outrunning them on foot and outsmarting their delayed reaction times. It didn’t take long for Eleanna to recoil as she noticed the fellow Goddess running next to Yenna’s Chariot, with Dzallitsunya looking at the now-sheepish bronzed Goddess with a ‘hint’ of annoyance. “H-How are you this fast?! Do you just practice running day in day out?! What the crap! Yenna, go faster!” “Can’t, I don’t wanna get my brain juiced by the burner!” Came a muffled response from inside the chariot’s glassy dome. “Damn!” Eleanna cursed, then turned towards Dzallitsunya, “Listen woman, that was fun wasn’t it? A good bit of exercise is good for the soul, just ask the pilots!” “The first time I met you, you showed up with a dead squirrel then desecrated the body of our creator. The second time we met, you tried to run me over with your… things… that go fast and roar loud. Pardon me if I do not have a good impression.” she side-glanced at the node then back at the bronzed goddess. “What are you even doing? What is all this? Why does it smell like burned wood and burned… fish brain?” “Name’s Eleanna! That smell is the smell of nearly two dozen soul-burner engines in high-drain mode with most limiters turned off! You’re literally smelling the souls of the most ambitious, most daring sportsbeasts in the entire Daman Lands! Exciting, isn’t it? I bet you’d love to meet the Beauty Pair. Oh, and this is a yearly thing. The Red Leaf Race, I mean. I’m just tagging along to make sure they don’t all suffer horrible deaths going through the most dangerous areas. Someone’s got to reach the end after all, or I would be out of a job!” “The scent of your people’s ambitions has the smell of the boots of a courier after a day of work.” “What, like Silvan cheese?” “Of course you people like milk. I bet you like eggs too. Eugh.” “WAIT!” Eleanna perked up with a half-gasp half-chuckle. “So it’s true you lot up north don’t eat egg mayo sandwiches?” “We are to your west, not north!” Tsunya barked, her wolf also barked, but the goddess waved her hand, this was IMPORTANT. “And no, I do not eat eggs, or mayors, or sand, or witches. Two of those are people so it's kinda messed up to eat them. But we all know what they say about the beastfolk.” Eleanna rolled her eyes “Yeah yeah, we eat people and children, whatever! Everyone’s got their demons, Pale. Keep up all that barking and I might just consider you one of the wolfkin. I know a bunch of them would be happy to ‘hear’ you out.” There was now a soft orange glow bathing the two goddesses along with the chariots. “Demons!? So Xavior and the council are already over there? Damn. Those people act fast, and sure aren’t picky with the clientele.” barked Dzalli. “And you dummy, it's not me who is barking, it's my pet chaos wolf, whom I trained to…” Dzalli’s gave a quick peek towards the node and the dragon, it was fully awake now, fire building up in its gullet, an army of ‘oil paint’ lesser clones of chaos beasts of the nearby nodes rising from the twisted ground. She looked back at Eleanna, a bit paler “You know what? I was being rude. You were here first, so go ahead, I will wait a bit.” Eleanna grinned and pumped her fist up into the air, “Finally, someone treats me well! You stand back and watch. You too, Yenna!” “Wait, Ann-” It was too late for Yenna to voice her concerns however, as Eleanna wasted no time in blasting herself forward towards the approaching dragon and its army. Her trajectory mid air saw her go past dozens of flying spawnlings and right up against the dragon’s face. A low roar built up in its throat, living flame spilling from its jagged teeth. In a split second, Eleanna took aim at one of the Dragon’s glowing ice blue eyes and shot her arm-ballista at it. The crystal-laced bolt broke through the massive beast’s armored cornea and exploded, sending the dragon reeling off to the side and making it lose control of its own gullet, spilling fire all over his spawnlings and minions. “YES! See that, Pale? Cool, ri-” Before she could finish her sentence, one of the Dragon’s massive talons smacked her right out of the air and sent her barreling straight into a distant mountain, the echoes of her impact reaching Dzallitsunya several seconds later. “That was rough… I hope she is alright.” the goddess whispered to herself as she saw raised dust in the distance. The wolf made a questioning growl at the goddess. “Hey. Calm down. She is annoying but I don’t want her to perish… Wow. What the hell is that in your mouth? Silly wolf, you can’t just use plant people as a stick.” rolling its eyes the wolf nudged the goddess so she looked back at the massive chaos beast. “Right. Seems like most of its army is gone. The belly is pierced so no more fire bombs. Wolf, try to keep the beast people safe, I will finish this.” she readied the Shadow Petal and the Eclipse and leaped forward, once again advancing upon the dragon. It clawed at her, but the goddess managed to parry and dodge, especially now that the pain made the beast slower, yet it had also become more vicious, Tsunya had to not only dodge the claws, but waves of flying rocks and debris thrown by the beasts’ talons and tail. The malformed blurry beast clones start to appear again, Dzalli found herself trading blows with that same multi-headed serpent of Node 8 she once defeated, of a lesser quality however, she soon found herself slaying it once more, only to barely escape a crashing strike of the dragon. “Using your spawnlings to distract, huh?” The goddess acknowledge, a rush of worry flowed through her as she was reminded the beastfolk was nearby, she looked at them to see if her wolf had done a good job and… he was calmly laying on the ground with some wolfkin and that still shocked clover plant-girl, most other beastmen were merely watching her, eating sandwiches and snacks, unbothered. A single frog dude, with a makeshift crescent moon painted on his chariot (it was previously a calla lily and previously still some other symbol) was using his mounted ballista to pester the dragon. With a deep breath, Dzalli took the chance to take a position again, she wouldn’t be able to go past the wind again, no time or energy for it, but she still launched herself with a boom, gliding across the dirt and sliding past the open wound in its belly, she used the stomach wall and ribs of the dragon itself as footing, aiming up, rerouting her momentum, and pouncing blade first at direction of the heart of the beast. The chaos expanses finally stood still, winds calming, beasts dispersing, and Dzallitsunya emerging victorious, and covered in more blood and filth than she had ever seen in her life. She had a ‘hint’ of annoyance in her face. With calm steps she moved towards the now freed node, only to see a pitiful shape very slowly crawling towards the node. The shape heaved with every movement and vomited more blood than anyone should have inside their bodies. “C-Can’t beat me…in a race… to the node…” Eleanna rasped out, a whistle in her voice and pain evident on her face through her grimace, even with half her teeth missing. Seeing the missing teeth, Dzalli couldn’t help but notice the irony. Perhaps it was also the sign she should forgive her sister, she had no fault for being the way she was. It was probably the effects of too much sunlight… But first she rushed right past her and hit the node with her blood stained hands almost ten times. A flash enveloped the world as the node was reshaped. A cold desert of gray sand dunes emerged across most of the node, broken by fields of white flowers and ponds and streams of freezing liquid nitrogen. The sky was starry, the sun in a permanent eclipse. Dzallitsunya was once again clean and fresh, sighing as she approached Eleanna, right by the node. She picked her up, despite being smaller, and walked away as the freezing liquid flooded much of the area immediately near the node. She took her back to the racers and placed her against a rock in a white lily field. “Hey… Today was horrible, wasn’t it?” she whispered. Eleanna coughed up a molar and smiled weakly. “Y’You’re kidding… Right? It was… The most… Fun I’ve had… In years…” Tsunya tilted her head and then shrugged. “Hmm… I guess making that dragon explode was very cool of you.” she smiled, sitting as well, picking up a jar of flavored acacia gum candy, some lemon, some strawberry. As Tsunya focused on the candy, she saw Eleanna wiping at her face out of the corner of her eye. “C-Can you… Teach me how… To fight? Like the wind.” Tsunya was taken aback. “O…oh? Fight. Well. I train a lot, that is true… I have a, hmm… You could say it's a magical training arena. It lets me set up fights against armies, chaos beasts, even other gods, they feel real despite being a dream. Do you want some candy?” Eleanna reached inside her mouth and pulled a few broken teeth out, then tested the mobility of her jaw and nodded. “I heal somewhat… Faster now than before… Yeah, pass one.” Eleanna said, grabbing one of the candy and sticking it in her mouth without a second thought. Tsunya looked down at the jar, seeing Eleanna hadn’t really washed her blood soaked hands before digging in. “You know, have the whole jar, as a gift.” she smiled. “And yeah. I forgot to say my name. It's Dzallitsunya. If you visit me, I can show you my dream arena, perhaps we can even spar.” “Ah, thanks The Sally!” Eleanna said as she sat up a bit straighter, poking her ribs with a mere flinch before grabbing the whole jar of candies. “They’re sweet, what do you call them? And yeah, I’d love to spar with you! All the other gods I’ve met have been against fighting you know. Lamp guy was too straight laced for it and Benea was surrounded by her boyfriends.” Eleanna sighed. “Hey, you know, I think I’ve heard about you before. Some fishkin visited the New Daman Temple once talking about a new group of Followers of The Sally popping up near Lake Saragosa.” “I guess you could call it, Jujube.” Dzalli nodded. She had no idea what any of those words meant, or where anything was, but it didn’t sound like bad news. “Oh, is that so? I hadn’t heard about that. Could you tell me more later?” “Sure. Thanks for the Jujube, Sally.” Eleanna smiled, but stiffened as soon as she heard a set of heavy, tired footsteps approaching. She turned, hesitant, to see a sweaty, jumpsuit-clad Yenna with a full on nosebleed and bloodshot eyes approaching her. “Having fun with your new girlfriend, Anna? How did you even survive this time?” “I only broke half my ribs and teeth. It wasn’t too bad.” “Ah. I see. As [i]you[/i] can see, I’m at my limit. You’re piloting that damn death trap the rest of the way.” Yenna said and stormed off into one of the makeshift tents that had just been put up. Tsunya smiled awkwardly as the two had their little moment, sideglancing at the other beastfolk. “Well, I should go check on my wolf, before it chews up that poor clover lady.” said the goddess who made the plant girl lose all but four of her leaves. “See you two later, good luck on the festival.” Eleanna grinned and waved at Dzalli as she walked off. “Thanks Sally, I’ll visit your temple in Three in a few days, after the race is over. I’ll bring you some of the best Daman snacks, so wait for me!” [hider=Summary] Node 9 is in a state of turmoil, with hordes of chaos monsters spawning due to the increased activity around it in the stable lands. It is this dangerous node that both Dzallitsunya and Eleanna brave. One with the intent to conquer the node once and for all and the other just seeking to continue the Red Leaf Race. On her way to the Node, Dzalli is ambushed by a chaos monster and is pushed right into the path of the Chariots. Barely avoiding being run over by a dozen of the machines, she then chases them and catched up to Eleanna. They hold a small conversation and then Eleanna rushes ahead and disables the Node Guardian’s fire breathing organ, but gets slapped into a mountain. Dzalli takes the opportunity to attack the dragon and with some minimal help from a frog dude, is able to take it down and claim the node. She turns Node 9 into a cold desert with gray silvery dunes and rivers and lakes of liquid nitrogen. Fields of flowers grow throughout the desert, and the land is in an eternal eclipse with a starry sky. After shaping the land to her will, Dzalli carries Eleanna’s broken body to the small camp set up by the racers and chats to her while she heals. They share candy and names, and promise to meet again in the future. [/hider] [hider= Might Summary] [b]Eleanna[/b] Starting 5 Might None used Ending 5 Might [b]Dzallitsunya[/b] Starting 5 Might None used Ending 5 Might [/hider]