I swear there's a post where she plans to kill Vestec eventually, only because he had made Ashlings.
It's on page 6. She got angry (as always, forever, about everything) but her main motive was still to find Vestec and 'cleanse' him, or at least, that's what I wrote.
My writing is a hot mess of character inconsistency, overhyped tantrums, and elaborate descriptions of meat.
Jvan's only solution is to kill things. VESTEC DOES SOMETHING? BETTER KILL HIM EVENTUALLY. VOWZRA STEALS SLOUGH? BETTER KILL HIM EVENTUALLY TOO. TEKNALL HAS MADE SOMETHING. HE MUST DIE.
This is actually a first for her! She's never before wanted to actually kill someone, only repair or alter them by force (other than the Elementals, but there are tonnes of those anyway and they don't need to breed to replenish their numbers). Vowzra's made personal attacks on her or what she cares about three or four times now, though, and locked up Slough, so he's probably beyond hope.
Heartworm's vehicle drooped a little and then stiffened again, a tired little full-body nod. "Wise enough call, dear muse. We each have our style." Of course Illunabar had been the first to come, and of course her own view mimicked Jvan's reluctance to intervene. Were they not sisters? Yes, and the Rottenbone was its own artist. Let there be collaboration; Let there also be diversity.
But there are those, ever, who wish to stifle diversity and crush it underfoot.
At least this time, the Timeless Abomination did not hide his true face with mockery and jest.
It was horror such as Jvan had never imagined and was forced to watch unfold as surely as if she had been tied back with chains, for Vowzra had always committed crimes in his own time, and all other events are viscous and slow in the face of him. Watch she did.
The Riddler indulged himself in lavish irony, imprisoning the Deer God in a box that lived, that fetishised one of her moods and ignored the plurality of what she was. And a horrific dungeon it was, for in it was poured unspeakable power, creative energy not only wasted on destruction but on the suppression of life and beauty. Blasphemy against the Rottenbone. Heresy as the Universe had never seen before.
The birth of Vulamera and the corruption of Vestec paled before this, the zenith of all chaos, the pinnacle of divine abuse.
And Jvan was forced to watch...
* * * * *
The coma broke. Some time (TIME) had passed.
Jvan had some memories in the period between now and... What had transpired. She remembered Illunabar (TRAITOR SISTER WHY), leaving, quietly, and as she had promised, without intervention (NO THIS IS DIFFERENT). Then Vestec (JUST A JOKER WHO CARES) had made his way back and said some words. She thought she could recall screaming at him. Maybe through a speaking-angel, maybe directly through the ether, who knew? Something along the lines of (I'LL SHOW YOU HARM LITTLE BOY I WILL REPEAT MYSELF A THOUSAND TIMES TO DEFEND HER BUT NOW SHE'S GONE HAHAHAHA LET ME DIE), but the memory was rather foggy, and she couldn't say for sure what words she'd used. A saviour had come in the form of Niciel, who had blipped in (HELP) and back out to chase the egg (BLASPHEMY HERESY CRIME ABOMINATION DESPICABLE WHY) and, most likely, pursue her duty to rescue Slough from its cruelty- But what could she do, really? Their sister was sealed away so tightly she might as well never have been born. Jvan knew exactly where, as if it mattered. She had thrown eyes at it, straight out of the sockets she had borrowed from Heartworm.
At some point Astarte had come, spoken (THIS WORLD IS RUINED WHY SHOULDN'T I REEK), and left, and Jvan thought she had envied the innocent purity with which she ran through life.
And then she was alone.
"...Why is it all so damn cruel?" And then, taking her borrowed body as if in a great hand, she had thrown it at the bottom of the Deadwood where it cracked and splat. "Why?" The body rose, high, and she tossed it down again, shattering wood and cartilage. "Why?" Jvan wailed like a child.
Again and again she smashed her loyal undermind's body against the earth below, and each time screamed that syllable, 'why'. She tossed the increasingly broken toy left and right, faster and faster, tossed it down into the valleys and up against the cliffs, leaving smears of pink and grease and bits of gristle, only to feel it come apart in her grip- Good! -and ditch it at the ground with all her strength until the stringy veins and tendons that still held bits of it together started to come apart and she did not stop until there was gore everywhere and the last piece was too small for her to pilot and she was just a worm, just a toothy little worm with blank eyes, just curling up on a misty rock against the cold and the loneliness and the failure and
And far away her true, grey cathedral body cringed along with her mind, ground itself into the ground and tried to chew itself up and shake itself apart and bite and vomit and twist and
And there was a point where the effort wasn't really going anywhere anymore and there was nothing left of the vehicle to break anymore and Jvan wasn't even looking anymore and somewhere in the Deadwood an unwatched worm's grey eyes began to inflate with blood like they had been waiting to do as soon as the leash was cut and it could slip away again and be free and experiment and
And in the ocean that sheltered the greyness the Child God grew sick of herself sick of the world and sick of watching time pass and just wanted to sleep and hide and go somewhere else, anywhere else, and so she took up her body like it was a great blanket and hid her mind deep down in it, and burrowed, burned, chased the shapes that had once been so pretty, fell down into the scintillating fractals that led down and down and down into forever. And she followed them.
Drowning out the world, shutting everything off to hide, Jvan looked into herself and took up the colours and patterns that she had come from in the pre-world. This was the basic unit, the simplest, most abstract form of all there was. Down here in the hedonist mathematics, nothing mattered. No emotions, no desires, no memories and no restrictions, only shades of paint in a place without the burden of watching time pass. So Jvan painted.
And painted.
And painted.
* * * * *
Jvan woke up and she was tired. I'm a mess. And, yes, she was, internally. Inside her there was a slew of patterns and weavings, shapes and angles of absurd complexity. They'd been made without the assistance of time, and would likely take an eternity to unravel, but she did not mean to go over them. Those patterns were already well known to her. For a while, they had been all she'd known, and, deep inside, Jvan knew that some weighty chunk of her had been irreparably rewired. Would always think in the abstract. Was too wounded to ever fully return to concentrating on the superficial things like life and love.
Oh yes, she was a mess, in body and mind, though to Jvan those two things are synonymous. For now she was recovering, piece by piece, but it would still take time.
Time. Damn him.
How much time had passed in the real world? Not very much. In the end phase of her sickness, she had blotted it out and discarded the concept. Its passage reminded her too much of the blasphemous thing (HELP) that had happened.
Clink.
Vowzra needs to die. While the tyrant lived and still reigned supreme over the fundamental measure of universal progress, this world could never be whole. No wonder he listened only to the void, and proclaimed himself its viceregent! Vowzra was no god, but some horrible, powerful thing that had crawled out of the Hells of Time to bring chaos to Galbar. Jvan doubted he could ever be repaired. Vestec? Infuriating. Also passing. Such meddling was mild compared to the imprisonment of Slough Rottenbone.
But... Not now.
Her wounds were still tender, the broken memory still fresh. No, not now. Not even soon. She didn't want to think about it. For now, she just wanted to sleep a while. Run away from the world a little longer.
Astarte has the right idea.
Vowzra's imprisonment of Slough is so horrifying to Jvan that she goes a little unhinged for a while, waking up a while later with vague memories, which may or may not have been vocalised at the gods that had come to visit.
Once she realises that what Vowzra did really happened, she throws a miserable tantrum, breaking apart Heartworm's laboratory and accidentally setting its mind free.
Trying to find some form of escapism, Jvan ignores everything and just plays around with pretty colours for a while, avoiding her feelings and wasting time and energy on nothing that really matters. In losing herself to abstraction in her stress, she claims the unlocked portfolio of Beauty (Geometry), using three Might points.
She finally realises that Vowzra is never going to listen to sense, and decides that, eventually, he has to be killed if Slough is to be free and Galbar is to be at peace.
As the moons take their hours in which to cycle across the sky, I raise the tide, as is my way. And Yivvin speaks.
The movements I am bid to make are not so far from what I have always done. No, indeed, they are the same. I fear deception, for no greater comfort comes from my duties than on every night before. And yet, a noble being of my word, I do not protest, and Yivvin holds his idiot tongue from snide banter. The hours roll. The waves swell. This is the rhythm of my very being, as it always has been.
I surge forth.
And I draw back...
...
...Flux?
Silence! I am performing my sacred task!
You are finished, Flux.
My eyes are as open as always, but my concentration has been so pure, so clear-minded and fixed that I have neglected to actually observe the beach before me. It is clean, by my handiwork, as every night before. Swept free and turned over and renewed and changed. And changed, indeed.
They are formations, loops and halos and canyons and striated ridges in the sand. Each layered as the shore deposits matter and removes it in its way. Carved by the passage of water over many hours as the waves recede. They draw my gaze and channel it down whirls and hollows, a puzzling thing, a dynamic, elemental wonder...
I have never done such as this before, and, yet, am I not great? Was this not easy? I flex my chest, roll my shoulders. They are intact. Soon the shapelessness will set in again, but while I am at work, they retain form. Always the same duties, and I regret them not. But all the land and the sea and the air of this lagoon is under my domain. I cannot work harder, but I can work- More. The natural way of change and renewal is far more than my duty. It is for me to innovate. The sea has many faces, and forms many shapes.
That's one way to see it.
"Quiet, worm," I growl, and bunch my hand into a fist, quelling the waver that has sprung up in it once again. As the fingers curl the crests of foam curl with it, and I bring them to swirl around me. There is work to be done. There is change to be made.
Ok ok so! BBeast's number-working is really cool, and there is the Might-for-Might combat rule, but it looks like you might still like a word from me.
Personally, I don't mind how Rtron chooses to have Vestec respond to the relativistic hyper-punch itself. If Might gets spent to shield him, that's fine, and if not, that's fine too. From a narrative perspective, what matters is that Jvan panicked and booted Vestec as far away from Slough as she could do in a moment's notice. We know that Jvan doesn't fuck around too much with sympathy for the pain of others (see Hefin, Basheer, the Rovaick, and even her interactions with Slough herself) and considers Vestec an unpredictable traitor to his own identity. She wouldn't hold back, and she wouldn't want him coming back immediately either, as we well know he's capable of doing for free at any time. So, while he'll survive whether or not he's Might-ing for that shield, the question of whether the Might is appropriate or not depends more on how successful she was in setting him up so that he doesn't come back within a few minutes.
If he doesn't pop back up immediately, then that means that Jvan was successful in her Might use, and suggests that Vestec didn't use his own to counter it at whatever stage. If he does, though, then Jvan was unsuccessful, so that implies a counter (in this case the shield).
Reading Vestec's response:
BOOM!
Vestec exploded on the other side of the planet, evaporating hundreds of gallons of water in an instant. Of course, the waters all around him began to flood in to fill where the water had gone, but the Metatic ocean wouldn't be the same level for many years. Without missing a beat, Vestec drove himself through the planet, tearing a small hole through it and appearing back where he had been. "That was rude."
Vestec didn't feel pain (fair enough) and wasn't slow to return (also fair), but he didn't have to use Might to heal himself or teleport back in. That suggests that the shield successfully blocked at least some of Jvan's effort, so in this case, the Might point is better off spent.
We don't need more Chaos, lest it becomes the new Order of the universe.
The irony of perspective: Jvan currently considers Vowzra to be the worst and least predictable of the Chaos gods, and is fighting the Zephyrion's elementals for adhering to the Natural Order.
If you curb the height of the swell in the center point and have it break at both ends instead, you can turn that bismarck-palm into an island at high tide.
I pull back my hand and thrust it straight at the little palmlet with such force that the sand it stands on streams upwards in a great spray of foamy mud and its young trunk sags on exposed roots, a victim to the gentle war between generations of seedlings and the hissing waves that ever deny the encroach of land beyond its allocated borders. Already the crippled bismarck is starting to lose its grip on the waterlogged earth.
That was unnecessary.
Tensing the might of my arms, forcing them into their age-old curves of muscle, I slam the shore-ledge with a surge as it hasn't seen in decades. The sapling comes free and rolls, tumbles, floats out into the white-water, where its driftwood cadaver shall provide sanctuary to fry for years to come.
Oh. Good thinking.
Shut your whore mouth and begone!
There is a perilous silence in which my shoulders sag and I must will them to hold their proper shape. My eyes are closed, and little does it help. It is impossible to say if I am alone.
I, Flux, am dejected- A wretch. My might is useless to me. Such magnificence, and what good does that do which cannot cure my illness? No! Thinking like will destroy me, and I will not be destroyed. Never. Never. But the thoughts come relentless.
My lagoon beckons me. To lay in it like a bed and ignore the mental clamour... How much I would sacrifice to return to those days and come back healed! Lifting another step to wipe and churn the shore is an aching move. It takes focus. So I continue my self-appointed flagellation and walk on, hoping for time to pass, that flow that cures all ills.
Its promise is empty, anyway. Each time I give in to the peace and lose shape in the blue sea I quake with regret and cannot rest.
Once, in a great fit of work that swept the entire shore under clean white sand, I caught myself pulling the waves with two arms- On my left side alone. Would that I could tear off that tumour and have it be done. Would that I could have completed my task without its aid.
And yet to lay idle is so much worse, for at least that abominable third arm was my own.
I shuffle the beach with my eyes closed as I pace. A simple routine. No, I will not abandon my role, no matter how fiercely the disease should ravage, or how many times that Yivvin comes to blight my mind with his whispers. I will survive. This I have determined, for now and forever. My power might not cure me, but it has not diminished.
Opening my eyes I see a long trail of thorough-swept shore behind me, patterned by the delicately woven tide-lines that have become my trademark. It is good, it is harmonious, it is as nature decrees, and mine is eye that interprets that word and the hand that enacts it.
Funny.
"Leave! Away from me!"
You've been blocking me too long. Doesn't it occur to you that our discourse wouldn't be so bitter if you would only listen, even for a few minutes?
"Your words mean nothing and I shall not humour them." My heel strikes the beach, creating a little pool. I shut my mouth and widen my eyes, and pace onwards, calling the waves to do as they are bid, and with every bit of their natural ardour.
For one who ignores every word, you have a great deal of confidence in what they do or do not mean.
Upturn a shell there, wash up a sponge here, arrange them evenly and move on.
You don't even know who I am.
It's a shame to cover up such a delicate trail of crab-prints. I wipe them clean and tumble a cowrie over the place where they had lain, leaving a new etching over the old.
You haven't even considered it.
I know exactly what you are, snarls my inner voice before I can hold it, and through my regret, I hope Yivvin can taste the hatred.
Oh?
You, I open, and there is no halting me now. Are a soulless symptom of the cancer that has tormented me day and night for four years counting. A wart on my mind, whining, snivelling, that mocks me for no other reason than that I am everything it will never be. A spiteful parasite that hinders my concentration to fulfill its lust for grief at my expense and that of my realm. You, Yivvin, are a bitch.
Eloquent. Guess again.
"If you are anything more than what I say then prove yourself and fight me! Or otherwise shut up!"
Oh I'm tempted. You have no idea.
"Then-"
Something breaks, and Yivvin's voice is so loud that I can hear it even above my howls.
DO YOU WANT TO BE FREE OF YOUR PAIN OR NOT?
"NO-"
THEN SHRIVEL UP AND ROT ENJOYING THE SILENCE I WILL LEAVE YOU IN! WATCH ME! THIS PATH IS OLD AND I HAVE TREAD IT A THOUSAND TIMES AND WILL DO SO A THOUSAND MORE WITHOUT YOUR COOPERATION!
I am cut off crudely before I can begin speaking again.
Do you want me to leave, Flux? Just say the word. Ask. Ask and you'll have the high privilege of suffering alone, for then there will be nothing you can do to weather the illness. Some choose this path and I let them and they run mad beyond measure. If you want to fight, then fight the disease. See how long you can take it without me. Try. I dare you. Say it. Say 'go'.
I can not remember when I lost the energy to roar. It is very quiet now.
Yivvin is waiting for an answer. He is... Tired. Or lying. Lying about everything. Maybe his departure would cure me. Maybe he won't even leave if I bid him. Or cannot. If I take him up on his offer, would I at least guarantee myself freedom from one of the two symptoms that are causing me to degenerate from what I am? Would it be worth it to sell mind for body? Or will I look back at myself from the grave, and curse myself for a fool?
I am no fool, and I do not want to die. So I mouth what I am too exhausted to speak.
If you can heal my body and restore it to perfection, Yivvin, then do so, or else let me... Take my own way.
There is a deep sigh. Far away, I am sure, a creature must be running its wiry hands through its hair. Stand up, Flux.
Comply.
Walk. Just a few steps. Over there.
Comply again.
Take the waves in your hands and on your back and through your sons, and, on my mark, pull them. You will need to stretch and twist, and quickly, but do so. Do exactly as I say, when I say it. Are you ready?
Having to tense just to avoid falling apart drop by drop, I take the waters upon me willingly. "Do not try my patience, Yivvin."
Vec,
Timemaster
