[center][h1]Investigating the Scene of the Crime[/h1][/center]

Twilight’s Rest was wreathed in smoke, but the city was not ablaze with anything but the fires of prosperity. Umbrium harvesting had increased massively as the sweeping method was replaced with full scale quarrying facilitated by environmentally sealed suits with seismic senses that allowed mortals to survive the dangerous and pitch black terrain of the 11th realm.

From humble beginnings of a single prototype suit the operations had ballooned as wealth pulled out of the dark land was used to fund the creation of more and better suits and equipment. This patronage and recovering of fuel had in turn drawn much of the burgeoning magmatic magitech tinkerers and industry to the region, transforming the trading town into the industrial heart of the realm.

Xavior had stopped by very briefly and had been forced by decorum to take a quick look around, but this wasn't why he was here. No, he was here because of the blood red aura that still lingered in the sky around the pitch back realm. Sword at his side, the god and his ever faithful guardian Annie, first of demon kind, had left that city long behind as they marched up across the road of light that had grown strangely silent.

Oh, there was still trade traffic a plenty, but the frequent attacks on that traffic by the node’s insectile monsters that the paladins and demonic warriors who patrolled the roads had had to fend off had slowed first to a trickle and then stopped entirely. For the merchants this was good news, for the paladins it simply was, for the demons it was a threat to their livelihoods and for Xavior, it was a dread omen.

There was no hope to be found in the god’s heart that what had passed here was what he feared, only futile self enforced ignorance till the final truth was revealed. The location of the red glare and the nexus to node 33 having closed where the first parts of the evidence, then as the god approached the 12th node he saw it too was no longer shared with him, but the final twin nails where the split black blood, and a witness who had stood idly by as its creator had been slain.

The shepherd of shadows, the towering mass of darkness that could suppress all sound around it if it wanted to, had been in the process of fulfilling its duty, herding up all the insectile beasts, those that remained and had not been slain as a  consequence of their endless aggression into a central location. The result was an final orgy of violence, the penned in beasts slaughtering each other around the grave of their creator, a bloody sacrifice to her self destructive fate.

Rather than take her own life even when she fully lost the will for it, the goddess had sought her own death in a manner similar to her children, though rather than simply attacking anything in reach she had sought this via the declarations of enmity with all she met rather than Someone, it seemed, had finally taken her word at face value and treated her like what she said she was. 

Someone who had seen no reason not to see things to the bloody end: “Eleanna” Xavier said, his mouth rotten with bile as he spoke the name of his sister’s murderer “She’ll pay for this. I swear it”

“I’m not saying it was right, but she only did what Monica wanted in the end” Annie pointed out, as she extracted the blade of a massive greatsword from the neck of one of the bugs that had decided to fight something other than its kin.

“No, that doesn't make it right,” Xavior said quietly, “nor does ignorance excuse taking Monica’s declaration of enmity without analysis. I dont care if she is stupid or is simply murderous by nature, the consequences of this will be the same either way.”

He drew a longsword of his own and then with a wordless cry dashed to the side and decapitated another bug that was coming to attack them before Annie could go and handle it. Then the grief-stricken god entered the slaughter wholesale, intensive paladin training paying off as he moved with the swift steps and style of another fallen god, weaving among beasts and unleashing his fury.

Annie took one step to follow, and then paused. Even she could not follow him into the melee and guarantee she would live, the seismic sensors in the suit she had been given not being made to parse such numerous foes. So instead she looked up to where Xavior had said the Shepherd was and asked it “So, what about you, what are you going to do now?” 

There was a long pause and then it told her that it would go north, to the other land of Maelite, and fulfill it’s duty there as well. When asked if it ment south, it casually revealed the shape of the world that was quite obvious to it. Monica had gone south to reach it, but the shadow had sensed its distant change was closer if it went north, and so it had done so.

“And then?” Annie asked, once she’d had time to process this fundamental truth about the shape of the world that had been casually dropped in her lap “when all of Monica’s other creations are dead, will you follow her?”

A casual affirmation followed to which Annie had to think for a while before saying “Our gods may be great, but… they are still just people” Xavior had made little attempt to build an aura of infallibility as Benea did after all, only one of indispensability, “we don’t have to be what they want us to be”

When the shepherd pointed out that she was what he wanted her to be, the first demon, changed irreparably by that process, replied that “Being what they want is to be is always a choice”

They were stopped in their discussion when a spark suddenly flashed in the black realm, and then fire blossomed, a raging inferno that defied even Maelite’s hungering cold as it swirled and raged around the god, a firestorm that devoured all the remaining bugs, a vast chunk of the land, and those remains of Monica that hadn’t been scavenged by her slayer.

Annie backed up, and then was sheltered by a gentle hand of the shepherd from the fires as they raged and raged and then finally died. Between her vision returning from the blinding light and the darkness swallowing up the sputtering embers of the flames, Annie saw two things. 

The runes of a demonic ascension circle sacred into the ground, and her god, now adorned with white angelic wings whose feathers were ever smoldering, as if they had just been scorched by the flames of their creation and and might burst back into that same rage filled inferno at any moment.

Then the dark returned and she was back to relying on the seismic sensors she’d been provided with such that she could accompany her god. That god approached and then stepped past shadow and guardian, and placed a hand on the node, being the capture process. Only then did he turn to the others, speaking up to the titan “I am to be the master of this land. You will serve me, and together we will have vengeance upon Monica’s killer!”

The Shepherd thought for a long while, and then politely declined.

“No? No?! How can you… What am I saying, of course you won't, you let her die after all. Well then fine, go off and die as well seeing that is clearly her will”

The Shepherd also declined to do this. It informed him that it was going to fulfill its duty, just as it had told Annie it would, and that after that, once its purpose had been fulfilled, it would decide itself what it would do with its life. Then, with those words said, it simply left to do just that.

As it strode away Annie quietly approached the stunned god, grasped his wrist and took his hand off of the node, leaving it in the dead goddess’s hands from now “Come on, let's go back into the light drink to her memory instead and decide whether to do  this with a clear mind later, yes?”

The god finally got a hold of his breathing, and then sighed, “yeah, yeah i could really use a drink”

It was that way that travelers on the road got to see the curious sight of a god riding on the back of a merchant’s cart, one being drawn by a newfangled rolling stone while he, his towering guardian, and the caravan guards where in the process of getting shitfaced and singing a songs of warriors lament both in honor of the fallen goddess and to the end of the deaths caused by her creations.  

Monica’s legacy would be a complicated one, but as the smoke continued to rise above twilight rest, a dark titan strode through the oceans depths and a hungover god reaffirmed his oath of vengeance, it was clear it would not be one to be soon forgotten. 

[hider=summary]
Xavior and Annie travel to node 11 and find’s out from the shepherd of shadows and finds out from it that Eleanna killed Monica. He swears a vague vengeance, and then incinerated all of the remaining bugs in the realm (which the shepherd had gathered up in one place, a place they proceeded to slaughter each other in) as well as the bits of Monica Eleanna left behind and a fair chunk of umbrium to demonically ascend himself a pair of angel wings.

He moves to take the node and commands the shepherd to obey him and help him acquire vengeance for Monica, but it declines and informs them it will instead be going north to node 33 to clean up the bugs there too (casually revealing the roundness of the world in the process) and that it will then decided what it will do with the rest of its life. Xavier, having assumed it would just kill itself as well if not given a purpose, is taken aback enough this (and the world's roundness) for Annie to intervene and stop the node capture, leaving that decision for when he is not fueled by rage and grief.

So instead they go off, find a caravan heading south, buy all its booze stocks, and proceed to get drunk off their asses drinking to Monica’s memory.
[/hider]

[hider=mp summary]
1mp contentedly used to acquire a new form: Xavior looks much the same, but now sports a pair of angelic wings highly reminiscent of Monica’s, their white feathers scorched at the edges and capable of bursting into flames for dramatic purposes. 

4/5 remaining
[/hider]