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In The Court of the Gods → 4 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay


and

The Messenger




With an exaggerated crack that resounded through the air, a set of six, shimmering feathered wings unfolded from empty space and then unfurled to reveal the lithe form of Hermes - Herald of the Gods adorned in his distinctive wide-brimmed helmet and bearing the twinned-serpent stave, Kerykeion. As the flowing traces of light rushing across his wings faded, they tucked into themselves, merging into a single flowing cloak of feathers about his shoulders.

The reverberations of the burst were soon lost in the sound of rustling leaves and birdsong. The god stood at the edge of a wide clearing between two stretches of forest, curving off to both sides like a great bending road. The grass underfoot was tall and unruly, with long coarse stalks that itched against the skin. Across the glade from him, the trees stood vast and thick, circling the opening in a great ring whose further edges he could not see from where he stood. Nearby, the living colonnade of wood and bark seemed no different, at least at first glance; but to his trained eye, it was clear that the spaces between the trees were more even, and that their branches were in many places lower and thicker, draped with some sort of lichen.

Suddenly, there was a rustling in the leaves overhead, and in the space of a blink something large and dark was hurtling down towards him. A broad, barrel-like chest, with mighty ribs visible through leathery skin and matted fur - two arms from every shoulder, ending in recurve yellow claws - a head like the skull of a toothy ape, grown over with mangy hide - those lichenous vines clinging to its every extremity, like the strings of a grotesque marionnette - Hermes, who had experienced similar displays of the four-armed creature’s ilk before, simply surveyed the terrain without moving or seeming to react to its descent.

Indeed, when its paws were mere inches away from his head, the beast abruptly stopped, as though the vines holding it aloft - which now visibly grew into its very skin - had run their length. With a raucous growl, it slid upwards along the trunk, pulled by its organic cords, and remained hanging midway up like an immense hairy spider, its sunken eyes never leaving the intruder.

It was only when its ascent stopped that a previously nigh-imperceptible figure detached itself from the shadows of the grove and advanced into the clearing. The Watcher of the Woods, Artemis, seemed a part of the forest come to life. There was ostensibly nothing too unusual about her; too tall, perhaps, and too sharp-featured for a Hellene woman, but not much different from them in her garb or the modesty of her ornaments. Even still, her movements had something less than human to them, a fluidity both animalistic and mechanical, and when she stood in place, it was as firmly and motionlessly as the trees.

“Hermes,” her voice was as inexpressive as her eyes, but not yet as hard, “You have a message.”

“Naturally, oh Artemis, most imperishable and unbesmirched of the Gods.” Hermes threw her an extremely lazy salute before flicking a wrist and producing ablack-and-gold filigreed letter seemingly from thin air. “I come bearing a message for Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, from Zeus, King of the Gods and the Heavens, the All-Father on high, with the utmost exigency.” He paused for a moment and turned his helmeted gaze upwards. “Though I must qualify that it is for your ears alone.”

"There are no others here." Nonetheless, the goddess made a slight gesture with her fingers, a motion whose stirring only further evidence the unnatural austerity of her posture, and the beast on the tree almost soundlessly withdrew out of sight among the higher branches.

Hermes haphazardly tossed the letter to Artemis from across the clearing, the blackened parchment seeming to drift across the grove on unseen wind until it came in reach of her darting hand.

BY DECREE OF THE LORD OF OLYMPUS

The Highest, King of the Gods, Father of All:
ZEUS

Let it be known that Zeus is dead. His rightful Heir – forever may he rule – has succeeded him to the divine name and mantle of Zeus.

Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, is formally invited to a gathering of the High Pantheon at Zeus’ palace in Mount Olympus, on the noon of the day following receipt of this note. Zeus will accept oaths of fealty, and make the first announcements of his reign.

Signed, Zelos
Majordomo of the Highest Palace, Servant of Zeus Almighty


“I have also been instructed to verbally inform you that you are hereby summoned to Mt. Olympus to attend Zeus at the stated place and time.” Hermes added after allowing Artemis a moment to view the letter.

The Maiden's already thin, predatory lips tightened as she read, one eyebrow arching upwards in either surprise or curiosity. She rolled up the missive again with a single hand and nonchalantly tossed it into the undergrowth behind her back.

"Then he did die as well," she mused, her eyes still fixed on Hermes, but her words drifting past him, "But he was not old, not that way. Was it bloody?"

“Oh, scarcely so, if only because his death was so macabre that his blood curdled into cruor before it could seep out from him. The state of what is left is so vile it would not even be fit for your beasts to gnaw on.” Hermes chattered with an almost conspiratorial air, waving his free hand out to the side, the very essence of a gossip.

If his flippancy had the intent to elicit a more vivid response, however, it was to be disappointed. Artemis' expression lost even that little shade of unsettlement, as though she had expected to hear nothing short of that. "A grim sight it must have been. Who was it that struck him down?"

“Alas and alack, the culprit evades justice. His Renewed Highness Zeus has, naturally, sworn that the perpetrator will be found…though his first official order was for me to deliver his summons to all of the High Pantheon, and as far as I am aware he has yet to contact any of the other gods.”

Hermes actually laughed aloud then, a lengthy, exaggerated titter that carried on a ways beyond the confines of the grove.

“Somehow I feel as though this matter may remain unresolved for some time.”

A measure of surprise returned to the goddess' face. "I rather thought he would have met his end in battle if it came to it," she shifted her weight from one leg to another, a deliberate motion that left her poised to sprint, "There are few things that can slay one of us silently. If it is something we do not yet know, I would gladly challenge it in the hunt. This riddle cannot last all so long."

“Careful, goddess. Sometimes in the chase, one is the master or the hound - and sometimes the prey is sacrificial. You should know full well how an owner might dote on their beasts.” Hermes wagged a finger sardonically. “Even Apate has nary an inkling of how it was done or who might be responsible. If a culprit is found at all, I fear for the convenience of such a discovery.”

"You make it too complex, Hermes," Artemis rolled her bow-shoulder, flat annoyance in her eyes under a smooth brow, "You, Apate, all of Olympus. If Zeus' murder cannot distract you from your shadow games, nothing will, and Typhon's next rising will find you caught in a trap you set yourselves."

“Well that’s just a patently unfair assessment!” Hermes exclaimed. “Typhon is already a trap of our own making, you can’t just keep pulling the Typhon card every time something - ah. I forget myself.” He performed a low, exaggerated bow to Artemis. “And that besides, I am merely a messenger, and you the Huntress. Perhaps I should think better of trying to argue the matter of traps and chases with as peerless an exemplar as you.”

He righted himself and then stared pointedly at Artemis for a long moment, almost expectantly. A heavy silence filled the air.

“Well, I had better get going then. I have the rest of the High Pantheon to deliver to. I will see you at Olympus, goddess.” He tipped his helmet to her as his cloak once more unfurled into a set of six shimmering, feathered wings once more. Then encompassed his frame, and with another resounding and exaggerated crack, they folded upon themselves in a flash of light until nothing was left.

Not a scant moment after his departure, there was an abrupt yelp, and a woman tumbled down from the canopy above to crash headlong to the ground where Hermes had just stood.

Artemis stared at the intruder. Hermes was often known to either steal from or else play pranks on those who did not offer him some form of token recompense for his services - but in her grove, there was naught of value that the Herald could have possibly taken, nor anybody else around for kilometers save for slavering beasts.

So Hermes had evidently made-do by teleporting some hapless mortal directly into the grove. Perhaps somebody who had prayed for his intervention just then - or who had slighted him.

With a groan, the newcomer began to lift herself off the ground, her forearms sinking into the grass as they heaved up her shoulders. By the standards of most cities, there was nothing remarkable about her: neither plump nor malnourished, clothes neither too fine nor shabby, calloused fingers. She rose to her knees, turning up at last her disoriented eyes, which immediately fell upon the goddess. Her disheveled face paled and dropped back in awestruck fear as a stifled yelp died in her throat.

Artemis let out a hissing breath, and a scowl finally fell across her brow. The coming days were going to be very long.
In The Court of the Gods → 4 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
In The Court of the Gods → 4 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Interest Checks
Posting something, may still edit a bit as necessary.


In The Court of the Gods → 4 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Interest Checks
There's certainly room for dissenting opinions among the gods, and a crew member pursuing the original directive is an interesting idea. The only concern might be that an openly hostile character could find themselves cut off from the focus of the action at first, but some intrigue should mitigate that.
In The Court of the Gods → 4 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Interest Checks
<Snipped quote by Cyclone>

>Good to know. Although another question I had was do we need to play strictly humans or could we be like an uploaded human/AI? And if that is the case how would we handle the whole old gods have retired type deal since a reasonable amount of consciousness backups could be made and used across specialized hardware through the centuries.


Hello! Taking over from Cyclone for a moment - characters don't have to be strictly of human origin; thus far we have a player working on an AI, though overall we'd rather have this be the exception rather than the rule within the cast proportions. Mental uploads and backups are also entirely feasible, although I imagine they would be limited in their diffusion as much of the original equipment has decayed along with the knowledge of its employ. You could, however, absolutely have a character who makes this kind of technology their domain, like a Daedalus creating automata in his image or something similar.
In Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI → 5 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
The Tale of Nîrn, son of Khîrn


Listen, good folk of Dukha! Come listen to the sorry tale of Nîrn the wanderer, who drags himself from mountain to mountain until his creaking legs will at last give way. Listen and I will tell you why I have come to you from far north, why I roam so wide though my back is more stooped than an old highland tree. Don’t be awed by my grey and heavy beard or by my wizened eyes: little more than forty winters have passed since I was born! Aye, just so, though you wouldn’t give me less than a hundred. Listen, then, how this came to pass.

It was some three years ago that we set out from Vonde for the last time, me, still young and hardy then, Ibar my brother, not much older, and Andró the stenzhik, who had carried the packs of Khîrn my father before me. For the last time, I say, because of us three who left, only I ever came back. Aye, this mourning-bead you see on my beard is for my brother, earth be light for him. What about the other one, you ask? Listen, and I will tell you about it.

We set out, then, to do as we had always done - to find rare and precious things to trade. We would go down into the valleys and up the steepest mountain-paths, Ibar and I, to find the glittering vein-stone, the caves where the drowsy ore hides like a coiled snake and the snowflake-flower that chases away fever. Sometimes we would find the cold carcass of a foolish orzmiy, and then it was a day of celebration for us, because you know how many want a piece of those! I see you shake your heads and snicker. ‘To go far and wide, ready to give up your skin for a gain?’ you say, ‘This must be the last of the Chtviertne!’ Well, that was how we lived, and how our father had lived before us. Some have their caves and tunnels, others have the winds and the valleys like sun-lakes. That’s how it is.

Before, we had oft gone west, where the orzmiy breach the most and where their scales sometimes lie on the earth like snow. But that time we went north, for we would hunt the crescent-horned mountain goats that were said to live there, and bring back their rare pelts and skulls. We crossed many a gulch and mountain, and for many a day we searched every slope, but though we were in the roaming-grounds there was not a single goat to be seen. Just when we had lost hope and were about to turn back, though, we did find something else.

As we hunted and tracked the goats, we had pushed further north than we or any of our kin had ever roamed before. On the last day we were to chance the land, we rounded the foot of the Five-Finger Mountain, and then, as true as I'm standing here, we saw two suns in the sky! Aye, so it was. No, we didn’t have cave-brew in our waterskins, and we weren’t just dazzled after coming out of the shade. There was the sun up in the sky, and beyond the mountain, over the next crest of ridges, there was a little light shining. Little, I say, but for us to see it from so far away, it must have been brighter than a wildfire. Yet most wondrous was that, when night came down, it did not fade as the sun did, but stayed burning with its own white flame like a star fallen from above.

What would you have done, had you been with us then? We broke camp, and the next day we began to climb the further ridges, to see what it was behind them that shone so. Ibar thought that it would be a vein of strange ore, open to the sky, richer and more potent than anything anyone had ever seen before. Me, you may laugh, but I was certain it was a gemstone. Why I thought it would’ve been bare open, I couldn’t tell you, but had you seen its light you, too, would’ve doubted than anything less clear than adamant could cast it.

The ridges were tall and steep, but our feet were light with impatience, and so in a few days we had crossed them. But what we saw then! By Orjarz, may the earth swallow me if I lie, because you won’t believe me otherwise!

We saw a mountain, taller than any around, indeed taller perhaps than any I’ve ever seen before or since. We would have spotted it from much further away had it not been for the light, which sat right on its summit. It could have been a glacier, you say, but nay, no glacier shines on its own at night.

There was something in that mountain that almost made us abandon our curiosity and turn away, had we been wise enough. It did not stand, as mountains do, shoulder to shoulder with its sisters, but alone in their circle, as if it had grown from seed rather than stone. And it was all black, glinting and glossy like the smoked rock that the orzmiy sometimes bring from under the earth. There was not a single tree on its slopes, not a spot of snow. Not even birds approached it, though we gave it no mind then. It chilled our hearts a little when we looked at it, but the light called to us, and it had to be thousands of the clearest gems, waiting at the top of that strange mountain! It could only be a gift from the gods to the bold, and we would turn to stone before we proved unworthy of it!

In three more days, we were at the foot of the black mountain. As true as I stand, half of it must have been smoked stone! It grew out of the live rock in a way I had never seen. Had there been more of it, we could not have tried the ascent, smooth and slippery as it was. But among it there was also much basalt and dark granite, lying in coarse slopes and ledges that struck out like wood-fungi from a tree, and strange though it was to see them close like that, we were glad to have a footing in them. So on the fourth day we gathered all the moss and herbs we could find, we filled our waterskins, for we were not certain we would find open streams, and set to climbing.

It was a strange thing, I will tell you, to climb that mountain. From below it looked tall and forbidding, so much that your legs would start to ache as they just imagined the pains of scrambling up its side. But once you started, it went so easily! From ledge to ledge, you could go climbing seven, eight hundred spans in a day, whistling all the while, as if you were walking downhill. Then, when the sun began to set, all the weariness would hit you in one punch, and you’d be left there, panting, your legs buckling under you. Every day that moment came a little earlier, and only later I found out why that was. And why? Listen, and I will tell you.

We had been climbing another three days, and were already quite a bit above two thousand spans, when I became annoyed with my beard. Now you see that it is long and flowing, white and grey like the winter, but then it was thick and brown, and I kept it cut to my chest, so it would not hamper me in our travels. But it was always very fine and smooth, as that of all goodly folk should be, and so it surprised me that it should be tugging and itching so. I looked down, and it was terribly tangled, as if I’d been wandering the woods for a week. I called to Ibar, who walked ahead, and asked him, ‘Hoi, what’s the trouble with my beard?’

He looked back, and since he was straight against the sun I could not see him well at first. He looked a bit, and I thought it was strange he took that long, because we weren’t very far apart, and then he said, full of surprise, ‘By all the gods, your beard is grey!’

I did not believe him, and came closer so he could see better; but when I did, I saw him too, and what a sight! His face and hands were wrinkly like dried goatskin, his beard was wild, almost to his legs, and streaked grey and white, and his eyes were squinting and watery. He saw the look on my face, and I saw the one on his, which told me that I must have looked little better. Then we both turned back to look at Andró, who trudged behind. He had been walking slower and slower as we climbed, and now that we looked at him attentively, his shell was all worn and full of tiny cracks.

We looked at each other then, and you must’ve already understood what we both thought. It was the mountain, that terrible Lone Mountain! Now we understood all too well why we had seen no living thing on its slopes. It was cursed, or maybe something dwelt on it that stole our strength in the night as we slept; we did not care to know.

We hurried down as fast as our legs would take us, but where the ascent had been light and easy, the way back was a maze of danger. We had lost threescore years in a few days, and rested and eaten little, hoping as we did to reach the beguiling light faster. Slopes that had been a joke to us before now threatened to break our necks if we did not watch our aching feet, and that damnable slippery smoke-stone was everywhere.

Worse still, while we had barely noticed as we grew feebler on the way up, we now felt our forces leave us with every step. We had to bind our beards, because they grew so long that they got tangled in our legs.

There was less than a day left to the ground, and I, who was still stronger and sprier, had gone ahead, when from behind me I head, ‘Nîrn, help me!’

I looked, and there was Ibar, clinging to the edge of a treacherous crack, where he had slipped and perhaps broken a leg. I hurried to him, but I was worn and weak, and before I was even close my brother lost his grip on the smooth rock and fell into the fissure.

Some of you will know what it is to lose a brother. You can imagine how it was then, when I ached all over, when the life had been stolen out of me. I sat there, and I don’t know if I would’ve moved before I was too weak not to starve and be ground down by the wind to a pile of bones.

But I felt stony hands lift me then, and carry me down the slope. Andró was pitiful to look at, all chipped and falling apart, and he had lost both legs below the knee, but I was all skin and bone by then, and even as he was he carried me easily, until the very foot. Then he stumbled on his half-legs, and broke into four pieces as he fell, but from there I was soon on even ground. You see the second mourning-bead, near the one for Ibar? This I wear for him. One does not usually wear a mourning-bead for a stenzhik, but Andró acted like a true brother then, and as a brother I will honour him.

So shun it, good folk, shun that lone black mountain! Don’t go looking for its tempting light! What does it matter what treasures are up there? You will be dead long before you see them. It has swallowed my brothers, and chewed me up and spat me out like this, as you see me now. I see some of you look to each other and whisper, as I have seen others do in every town. They were unlucky, you say, but if we try, maybe we will find a shortcut, a safe way up, and see what is at the top. Don’t gamble your heads on it! That place is unholy, and I, Nîrn, son of Khîrn, have come to warn you.

When you see two suns in the sky, when you see a light among the peaks at night, turn away, and do not look back!

In Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI → 5 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
The Second Trial


The peak was more exposed than it could have been expected from a spot nested so low among the surrounding mountains. The gales, not content with its already fractured shape, battered it ferociously, seizing every loosened crumb of stone with triumphant howls and carrying it away like a treasured prize. No snow could hold its footing on the rocky spire’s small flat head, and, besides some tufts of brown grass heroically clinging to a crack in its side, the even little dolomite plaza was perfectly bare.

Just as the sky above it was obstinately silent, save for the wordless whistling of the wind.

“Here I am!”

Ea Nebel raised her face towards Heaven, her feet planted in the center of the summit, hands a-fist at her sides. Her scarf whipped out behind her, a perfect straight line tracing the force of the wind, marking a tiny black figure exposed on all sides to the crown of peaks that encircled her. Her shout, like her scarf, was cast away and lost to the gale. The silence continued.

Until, at last, the wind brought something.

Black smoke tumbled and rolled through the air, twisting and flouncing like entrails tossed to the ground, but never unravelling. One cloud, then two, three.

Seven.

They began to circle her as they approached, winding a quickly tightening spiral. Red eyes. Flashes of grey flame.

“Breathe,” one of them said in the voice of a dying pyre.

“...Hello, sisters.” Ea Nebel flicked white hair off her face with her gloved knuckles and let her eyes relax from the ruinous spirits, closing them for only a moment. She filled her lungs.

A fiery chuckle answered.

“Sisters,” one spectre repeated, and five others laughed again. Only the one who hung further back, the one with the three melancholy pupils, did not join them.

“If we are so much to you,” a one-eyed Eschatli began again, “Give us your breath.”

“All of it.”

“All your body.”

“All your life. Then you will truly be one of us. Just breathe us in.”

The demigod, cold-hardened, gave the spirits the air she held in her body, and nothing more. Nothing but a quarter of a smile. “You are more than nothing to me,” she murmured, knowing they could hear her over the wind, just as she could hear them. “But not that much. Talk to me, Eschatli. I would listen to your voice.”

The Six hummed, and they gathered closer.

“Do you know,” one of them said, “What it is to live without breath?”

“Without it, we cannot feed our flame,” another rejoindered, “We burn, but we are forever cold.”

“We never had land to call our home, for we cannot tread it.”

“No rest for lidless eyes.”

“No warmth for the heartless.”

“Come, sing for our sister,” one turned to the Other, who had quietly approached, “Sing of the Seven.”

And she sang.

“What I am, I must not show,
What I am, you could not know.
Something between heaven and hell,
Something that neither stood nor fell.

Far less happy, for we have
Help nor hope beyond the grave.
And this is all that I can show,
And this is all that you may know.

Neither substance quite, nor shadow,
Haunting lonely moor and meadow,
Dancing by the haunted spring
And riding on the whirlwind's wing.

A year there is a lifetime
And a second but a day,
And an older world will meet you
Each morn you come away.

The thunder’s noise is our delight
And lightning makes us day by night,
And in the air we dance on high
To the loud music of the sky.”


The howl of wind and song swept over Ea Nebel. She squinted against it, bracing herself against a force in the Outsider’s words that not even the gale could match. She drove her quartered gaze up into the grey flame that was Seventh of the Seven, hunting for colour in that thrice-pupilled eye, daring the spirit to bare more, to sing on with the loud music of the sky.

But the Other had no more to say, and she looked silently back as tendrils of smoke crept closer to the demigoddess’ face.

“Such is our lot, but in your breath we will find a new one,” said the Six as they reached for her nose and mouth with searing fingers, “If you will not give it to us, we will take it.”

And not another word was spoken as they surged in a wave of light and pain.

White teeth flashed. Soot-black fingers pulled open Ea Nebel’s black lips and revealed the clenched snarl hiding behind them. She threw her head forward as the fire entered her mouth and bit, ripping away an Eschatli’s gaseous limb above the wrist, claiming fingers from her sisters, snuffing them between her jaws. When she lunged, it was with a wet, grinding animal growl, and her neck stretched on inhuman bones as she seized her sister’s fire in tooth and hand and tore her apart.

No sooner were the Seven restored to number than Ea Nebel drew her blades. Twin smallswords, thin as needles, their guards of fresh ivory; they leached light, spilling tattered flowing sheets of shining white mana onto the mountain altar. Glyphs sparked from her ring in a constant shower and scattered out from behind the guard of that hand.

And, trailed by plumes of smoke peacock-like in that bath of shimmers, the Seventh began to dance. It was at first the slow oscillation of the waves lapping the shore at dawn, but then it quickened, unfolded, and truly became the dance of the flame. She careened one way with a weight that was gone the next moment, and then leapt up to the sky in fifty tongues before falling again in a pool of blades and teeth.

Without looking, the Six followed her, at first in a few tremulous steps between one life and the next, then more and more confident, more and more joyous. She was their corypheus, and they her silent choir, and she guided them among woven wonders to which they were blind. Where the Nebel-blades struck, they were no more. Where the rune-sparks left an opening, they lashed and burned.

Every white nova that flared when their enemy pierced them only delivered Ea Nebel an instant of respite as the Eschatli divided and the gap in the dance was filled by fission. She worked those moments without mercy. No longer could the shape of the woman on the mountain be mistaken for the goddess beneath the skin. Her spine twisted without grace, her wrists snapped back and forth independently, faster than fleshen nerves could command or bone could withstand. She was sleek chaos, she ate rhythm. Silk became steel on her skin and the Eschatli’s perfect step was broken time and again on her solidity.

Always there was another space in the dance for the Seven to hide in. The song of joy had been Seen before it was composed, and it was composed for her.

“ENOUGH!”

The cry did not come from her throat, only somewhere behind the soulless mask she wore atop her segmented armour. The night air thickened like water, and the dark fires floating within it were caught in the light of the sphere around her.

“Stand Still!”

And still they stood. Ea Nebel sucked the mask back inwards, revealing her sweat-soaked face under her helm. “You don’t… Tire like I do.”

Yet, tireless as they were, the Seven flames grew lower and dimmer in that moment. A shadow cast by no solid body had fallen over them, and with it came a weight that was more than just fatigue.

“To know the virtue of authority is to know the standing of oneself and all things in creation,” came at long last the voice from the sky, “It is to know that the obedience of Galbar-born is the birthright of divinity, as the obedience of lessers is the birthright of the supreme. Where even the subaltern may be preeminent in might or wile, they must ever heed the command of the paramount. This is a virtue of the divine.”

Then the veil of shadow was lifted, and the Eschatli were carried away into the distance upon its trail, like driftwood on the current.

Ea Nebel breathed, heavily but unmolested, her mail melting away into silk and wool. Her hands still gripped the swords. Only the mountains looked at her now, and under their gaze, she was all alone.

“One day we will dance together!” she shouted, her voice small against the wind, into the back of the distant circle of spirits. Once again her eyes chased down the last one, the grey flame. “One day I will swallow you.”

"There will be dancing, there will be ringing,
There will be shadow-people singing ~"


The fading gales brought back tatters of song, before those too were swallowed by the horizon.

Far below the godling’s feet, a small cavity about halfway up the tomb-peak’s side, until then as dark as its neighbours, lit up with the subdued radiance of luminous silvery fog streaming from its mouth.

“The third trial awaits there.”

Ea Nebel inclined her gaze once more towards Heaven. The wind was not so strong now. It carried faint drops of sleet. She threw her swords out onto the steep slopes to the left and right of her, and let the magnesium light of magic claim them. Then it was her turn to leap from the peak.

A faint voice carried between the mountains.

Daylight, in bad dreams
Of a cool world, full of cruel things
Hang tight, all you
Nothing like a big, bad, bridge
To go, go
Burning through




Stone and crystal scraped sharply as Iqelis tore himself from the ledge once more. As he stepped away, the grooves left by his talons were bared to mark where, until briefly before, every one of his fingers had been clenched while the struggle raged. Again he cast his inquiring gaze to the two goddesses without a word spoken.

“I wish I could find any enjoyment in the irony of these trials, but I cannot. I digress, I am satisfied with the results once more.” Homura said.

“Then you draw as much enjoyment as there is kindling for it,” the god rattled drily back. He spoke even fainter now, in the clatter of ancient bones rolling in a deep crypt.

Ruina observed the test with some amount of interest, as the trials of sisterly conflict were something that she was quite intimate with. The brutal way that Ea Nebel chose to push back against their assault was something that she personally approved of. She resolved to tell her that later. To do anything now would go against the spirit of the tests. As Iqelis sought her critique Ruina gave a reply that was actually simple for once. ”I approve.”

And so it was.


In Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI → 5 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
Blessed Blood of the North


The rill flowed and sang, crystalline and melodious. Over its surface, the nisshinek twirled, dipping and rising in a dance that mirrored its ebb and flow. When the stream leapt up on a great slimy stone or a piece of driftwood lodged in the damp soil, the sprite swooped down in a powdery cascade and brushed its surface with a thin edge. When it sank in a groove in the riverbed or fell through a gap between stones, the child of frost soared among the fronds of young trees above, leaving a glittering veneer on the giant leaves and knocking down the odd cone or acorn. Its laughter echoed the splash of water on mossy banks in a tinkling of minute icicles.

It was that laughter, as it rolled among the venerable living pillars of the roofless temple that was the wood, that called the shadow. The music of the stream was broken when a branch crashed into it, and the nisshi recoiled in horror when the clear water was polluted by the stringy dust of decayed wood. There was little time for it to recoup, however. Something came fast on its heels, dark and enormous and choking like the edge of a wildfire. A wehniek, it thought. Then it glanced back and met the shadow’s pulsing red eye, and knew that it was something far worse.

The nisshi leapt away from the tainted rill and into the wood, searching for a hiding place behind the mossy trunks or in the tangle of serpentine roots. Everywhere it darted, the shadow hounded it. Ancient wood was of no protection; as soon as the thing inside the black cloud touched it, it fell apart into worm-ridden splinters and sludge. Birds fled with alarmed cries as trees toppled, gnawed by invisible teeth, and slammed into each other in a mutilation of leaves and boughs. The sprite slipped into the tall undergrowth, but grass and bushes withered away under the shadow’s breath. It jumped, twirled, cried out in wordless terror. There was nowhere to go.

Nooses of smoke curled around it, and despite its struggling – how weak it felt in that caliginous grip! - the nisshinek felt itself pulled to the cloud’s heart. It felt the writhing of a flame somewhere nearby, but no heat, only the bitterness of ash. Then the fire swallowed it, and its crystals cracked in a final scream, for it burned!

In the jaws of the cold blaze, the nisshi melted, and the contented thrum of the unhuman drowned out its cries.



”We meet again under the sixfold-cursed moon; what have you seen?”

“I have savoured this land’s carefree souls; they are worthless, but delectable.”

“I have sampled of its hungry shades; they are useful, but their taste is foul.”

“I have found those whom we seek. Quiet now! They are close, be ready.”



The forest by night was not something one ever fully became used to. Nights were made to be slept through, eyes and ears shut to their strange shadows, or at most whiled away by the fire, where the warm crackling light kept away the darkness and its illusions. Out in the woods, with nothing to relieve the sight besides the moon sometimes timidly peeking through the branches, there was simply too much for a fevered imagination to latch on to. That lichen-coated boulder by the dead tree might have been a bear spying anything that moved through squinted black eyes; that bush might have been hiding something that crouched, formless and terrible, waiting to pounce; that tangle of dry wood in the fallen leaves could have been a dead body that would now stand up, with a gaping mouth full of broken teeth and empty, hungry eyes…

Kinte shook her head and vigorously rubbed her eyes, chasing away the terrors born of a fanciful mind inflamed by a lack of sleep. There was nothing out here but trees and owls! She had walked through that thicket more times than she knew to count, and not once had she seen a bear or a hungry spirit. She did not even know what the latter really looked like. Like a dead thing that walked, said those her did; but then, thank the spirits, she had never seen a dead childan, and there was nothing frightening about an animal’s body. So, it followed that there was nothing to be afraid of here, either!

All these things made perfect sense in the light of day, but when everything around was black and she could not tell if that mound a few paces away was a stone or a plant, they sounded a mite less convincing even in her head. If a bear or a spirit had really been there, would it have cared for Kinte’s reasoning about how they should not? No, it would just have jumped on her and ripped her apart. It was impossible, it was unlikely, she could tell herself that all she wanted; it was not going to convince the world around her if things were otherwise.

Enough of these waking excuses for nightmares! She angrily smacked the nearest tree with the flat of her hand, and blinked in surprise when it answered with a mournful groan of wounded wood. Then she felt like laughing. She was a woman of the tribe! What did she have to fear? That strange strength, the gift of the Spirit Father, coursed in her limbs. It was the bears and ghosts* that should be afraid of her, and if she met one now, she would…

“Hey.”

Something warm touched her shoulder, and before she knew it she had spun around, by some miracle having held back her fist before it struck Hattek’s wide-eyed face.

“Seeing things again?” He smiled, and she let him lower her hand with a chortle.

“You know I can’t help it.” There was a sound of something heavy trudging through the bushes, and she was ready to jump again. But it was only Laach, looking bemusedly at her expression as he hauled half a great elk’s jaw over his shoulder, heavy and toothed. After all, a bear could have been there even if she did not see it. Kinte nodded at him. “Did you bring any more surprises?”

Hattek shook his head, smirking. “None. I hope you didn’t either.”

“Issi is watching today. The way she sits staring at the fire, she won’t even notice I’m gone if I get back before the moon starts to set.”

Something flashed between the trees in the corner of her eye. She did not hear any sound. It was nothing, just the darkness again. Nothing. Hattek had not seen it either.

Instead, he laid a hand on her belly, listening through the skin. “And how long until they all notice this?”

She covered his ahnd with hers. “Many moons still. Nobody’s even thinking about me now,” she chuckled, “There’s some others who are past hiding it already. Does your tribe know anything about that?”

“I can guess a few,” he grinned. Who it was, however, was to remain unsaid, for at that moment Laach shuffled closer to them, fidgeting uneasily with his elkbone maul.

“There’s something around here,” he muttered in his low grumbling voice, “Maybe nobody’s followed Kinte, but-”

A splash of something dark and heavy struck the side of his face from the treeline, and a cold, colourless light blinked through the air. Laach dropped the elk-jaw and clutched his mouth as more pale sparks erupted around him.

Kinte barely had time to jump before something searingly cold brushed against her ankles, and her legs gave way under her. She grasped at the air as she toppled on her back, and felt a dusty stirring like a waft of smoke run between her fingers, then that same icy burn. The moon was red as she stared up with clenched teeth. No, not the moon. A round, red eye was looking down at her, and in it she thought she saw detached curiosity together with a tired disgust, like someone examining a strange new insect.

Someone collapsed with a thud and a grunt beside her – Hattek? Laach? - but she could not turn her head to look. Her feet, her wrists, her shoulders, everywhere that cold breath had touched, refused to answer her.

Flies buzzed nearby, ahead of her. Flies at night. The red eye moved aside, and she could see the trees again, with the moon, still white, still without a pupil, up in the sky.

A piece of the forest stepped forward, and the moon glanced down. A light in the hollow eye of a skull. Branches and trunks were bones blackened by the flame, tatters of rotting skin and flesh hanging from them like the last leaves of a southern tree before the winter. A hundred arms. Sharpened fingers. The dead lived, as tall as the sky.

“This is a land of spirits,” the night spoke with the voice of a wood where every tree bent and fell with hoary age, “Only now will it know the touch of the One God. You will be the first to bear the Blessed Blood.”

The hundred arms stretched down to the earth, and waves of pain rolled through Kinte as something was torn from her hands and feet. The fifth finger, she understood before the urge to scream the pain away drowned out everything else. But now her mouth, too, was locked as if by frostbite, and only agonising moans forced their way out of her disobedient lips. The sounds around her head told her that she was not the only one.

Darkness gathered before her eyes. A half-flayed, half-fleshless blackened face as tall as her whole body bent over her. She could see huge corpse-worms wriggling in the ruins of its right eye, and the glazed, foggy, faintly glowing barren orb of its left one.

“Your child will be born under my sign.”

Then a lance of agony burrowed into her head, and she saw no more.



Kinte opened her eye and rolled it around, taking in the smells of the night as her glance ran and hopped about. Dark sky, sinking moon. Bodies among the trees, pale and – huge? No, they were just like her. Blood pulsing, healthy, powerful. Loose red hair tangled in the undergrowth, four-fingered hands splayed on the ground. Everyone was still asleep.

She rose to her feet, marvelling at how much less imposing the woods were than she had thought before. That bush, had she really ever thought it was a bear? She could have squashed it under one foot now. Her eye fell on a trunk that stood before her, where a faintly glowing sign, as starkly white as her skin had been carved into the bark. Despite the size of the hand that had scratched it, it was only about as large as something she could have made.



As memory stirred, she raised a hand to her belly. Her child. What would there have been for it before? Shame, resentment, envy? Those same things that made it so that it should be born a pariah among its people, just because she had done what every living thing did?

Now, it was blessed. Now, it had a destiny.

Grass and leaves rustled behind her, and she turned around without fear. Hattek and Laach were groggily standing up, running their tongues on their lips, winking and smirking as she greeted them with a grin. Behind them were all the others, every bit as tall and strong. Five women, ten men. Brothers and sisters of the Blessed Blood, their Blood. There were groans among them, and some scratched their empty stomachs.

“The moon is setting,” said Kinte, “Issi will come looking soon.”

She smiled wide, and a forest of sharp white teeth answered.

In Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI → 5 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay


Ruin fulfils her purpose




Tucked away in one of the many rooms of the divine palace sat Ruina. Hoping to catch up upon what she had missed during her time straying away from the grand stage of Galbar, she made extensive use of the artifact that she had been given. The events that she had missed would forever be lost to her, but now with an unflinching eye she could gaze across the surface of Galbar unimpeded. Though she could not hear words she could at least witness events as they transpired. Of particular interest right now was the events transpiring around Iqelis. She recalled their previous encounter with disdain and thus decided to focus her vision upon him and his companion in order to keep an eye on what they might be doing.

Witnessing their discussion with Homura, Ruina pondered the reason why Iqelis chose to shift into the form of a giant insect. More intimidation games? Some things never change. As the group began to depart westward Ruina rose to her feet. Departing the room, she spent a few moments walking and found herself before the great bridge descending to Galbar. But she did not descend yet. Focusing into her artifact once more, Ruina sought out the group once more to continue watching. If Iqelis was indeed attempting to intimidate other gods again, Ruina had plans to confront him. With the enhancements made to her suit she felt confident in her ability to take the upper hand in a confrontation.

Interestingly, she’d be going there for a very different reason…

Indeed, the looming black figure was nowhere to be found in the vicinity of the rest of the trio. There was a clink nearby, not of a blow upon the luminous bridge, which would not have made a sound under the heaviest of treads, but of crystalline talons striking together as they alighted. There, the divine she had observed not long ago stood upon his two feet, arms folding together after having carried him through the tide of moments.

“The Elder One has need of your aptitude again,” he crackled, somewhere between amusement and irritation, “This time, His will has spoken with His own mouth.”

Ruina could sense him the moment he began to materialize. Opening her eyes and turning her focus out of her artifact for a moment, Ruina turned to face Iqelis and affixed upon him a guarded gaze. When he finished, Ruina pondered. Why she had not heard of this from Him directly? Still, if the words spoken were true, Ruina did not wish to disobey.

Blinking to show some form of motion, Ruina nodded. It was clear that she remained guarded from their previous encounter, and even if Iqelis said that the charge came from Him directly, Ruina wasn’t sure if this was some complicated ploy to entrap her somehow. Speaking at last, Ruina addressed the charge she was given. ”Very well. What is the duty that He had charged me with?”

“Down there,” a dark hand pointed at the end of the bridge, where it disappeared into the many-coloured canvas of the Galbar’s surface, “Wait two deathless lives, one I have taken and one I have given. In exchange for the first, I am made to put the second to the test, that He may know it is worthy of His dominion. You, whose art is to forge crucibles, must ensure that mine is not too lax.”

As Iqelis explained, Ruina listened. As she listened, her guarded stance became more justified. Iqelis had taken the life of a god? Then she was right to avoid trusting him. Blinking one more as her gaze shifted from the spot where Iqelis pointed back to him, Ruina spoke once more. ”Very well. Go. I will follow.”

The outstretched arm was joined by another score, and a wave of oily haste pointed the way down the sun-bridge’s golden span.



The Bones were green, mostly, with tough little wisps of grass that peeked out between rocks and whipped in the gusty in-and-out breath of stone-channelled wind. Then they were white, laden with year-round blankets of clean fresh clouds and the snow they left behind, trickling meltwater that fed the valleys and tasted of youth and rock. In between, they were brown. The peaks of Aletheseus’ grave were fertile, but they were also very cold.

Ea Nebel sat on that gravel-studded slope now, between the drab alpine meadow and the lifeless, peaceful summit above. The flank of the dozy Iron Boar sheltered her from the wind, but her knees were still tucked to her chest and her arms around them, a hood thrown over her head. Nothing changed until she yelled. 

“Why me? Why am I forbidden?”

Her shout was answered with silence from the Goddess of Honor who listened from afar. The red deity had kept a distance, merely observing Ea Nebel, but never speaking to her. Homura did not hide her presence, as she stood atop a large ledge that protruded near the mountain’s peak. She still held Daybringer, the golden spear shining brightly like the light of the sun as it rose above the horizon.

Only the wind saw fit to speak, and didn’t have much to say.

Ea Nebel abruptly stood, tall and steady. She whirled her finger once, and a black sling tied itself around it, and a stone. She whipped it around and released with a crack of leather at the easy target.

The projectile shot through the cold air and struck Homura, the rock biting deep into the flesh of her stomach. The goddess stumbled back, before the stone fell from her bleeding wound, and she returned to her previous stance, ignoring her injury while she continued to watch Ea Nebel. Their gaze met again, Nebel covering her mouth with her fingertips, eyes wide. Her mouth formed some mumbled word that the wind blew away.

She sat down as quickly as she’d stood. Her arms tightened around her knees, and no more words were spoken.



A rain of loosened pebbles rolled down the slope as the parting outburst of the Flow, whose misty blackness mingled with the waning light of the already distant bridge, eroded the ground under them. In the retreating halo of gold and black, a new silhouette was left standing in the stirring stones.

“The second judge will be here soon,” Iqelis announced flatly, “We can-”

His words broke away into silence as his sweeping eye clambered up the mountain and stopped on the oozing blemish on Homura’s person. It shone in a blinding white flare, and the very next moment he was scrambling up to the edge of the cliff with unnatural vigour, many-limbed like some horrible spider. Dozens of hands gropingly reached up to the wound, and the raucous churning of a buried whirlpool rose from somewhere deep in the god’s frame. A blink, and already his claws were gripping the ledge, the hungry glow of his gaze not far behind.

Ruina did not immediately follow. Instead she turned her focus once more into the artifact she had. Sending her gaze doward to the spot that had been indicated, the first thing she saw was a lightly wounded Homura, and Iqelis racing towards her. To say that her suspicions felt reassured was an understatement. Ruina’s eyes snapped open, and she lunged down the bridge at top speed.

Were it not for the divine material that the palace was hewn from, Ruina would’ve left scrapes and footprints in her wake. Upon Galbar a streaking form rocketed down from the sky to land in front of Homura, and from the cloud of dust rose Ruina. Raising her left arm Ruina seemed to grip at nothing, but the moment before her hand would have closed to a fist, a large blade of bone erupted from her arm.

Unlike what one would imagine, Ruina didn’t flinch at this development. Instead she held it aloft seemingly effortlessly, pointing the tip of the long blade straight at Iqelis’ chest. Her tail joined in this weaponizing, with a large stinger growing from the tip as it raised above her head, much like a true scorpion’s tail. With a firm voice, Ruina issued a stout command. ”Cease your bloodlust!” The god let himself drop back to the lower slope with a discontented growl, his frenzied light fading.

With her command issued, Ruina’s attention turned slightly, to Homura. A soft whisper found its way to Homura’s ear. ”Are you well? What has happened? Is this a trap to slay us?”

Ruina’s gaze remained fixed upon Iqelis’ form, waiting to see what madness would come.

“That is distracting,” the One-Eye remonstrated from below, with an irritated jab of a finger in the red goddess' direction.

Homura had remained still the entire time, her crimson eyes colder than the frigid air around them, but she spoke calmly in a monotonous voice. “I am well, but our brother seems mentally ill. I doubt this is a trap, for it would be a poorly designed one, nor have I detected any attempt to deceive me from either of them. I am Homura, and you have my gratitude for your intervention, sister. Let us allow them to provide a proper explanation now that we are all gathered here.”

With the explanation given, Ruina nodded slightly. The whispered voice returned briefly to Homura’s ear. ”Very well. I will hear them out. I am Ruina, sister.” What would now be notable, with things having grown slightly calmer, is that the weapons that Ruina’s suit had grown were flush with destructive energy. It wouldn’t take much of an examination to realise that they were exceptionally capable of bringing harm to even divine forms. Why would Ruina have such a thing? A curious question to be sure, but interestingly the primary answer to that question had a blade levelled down at him for the moment.

A gentle grey hand alighted on Ruina’s wrist. She looked and saw Ea Nebel, standing with them at last, her eyes exploring every corner of her, down the edge of the blade and up the twisted surface of her armour, around the lethal loop of her tail and resting, finally, on her face. Fragments of thought broke off from the jade rune-ring on her hand and crawled up Ruina’s arm as glyphs. The only sign that she had been swept up in the wave of tension was the doom-claw, resting loosely in her hand, hanging from her index finger with its ring of ivory.

“You’re wearing a corpse.” She did not introduce herself further.

As she felt the hand of Ea Nebel touch her wrist, Ruina’s head and tail snapped instantly to glare at the surprise arrival, but instead of launching an attack Ruina merely blinked as she considered the statement provided. By all accounts the observation was correct, but there was more nuance to it than just being a corpse.

As the thought-glyphs began to crawl up her arm Ruina pulled it free from Ea Nebel’s grip. Releasing the handle of bone that protruded from the blade caused it to retract back into Ruina’s form nearly instantly. As it did, the raw destructive energy that was wafting from it vanished promptly. The stinger in Ruina’s tail followed shortly afterwards, and her tail would fall into being merely a balancing tool once more. Now, at last, she would address the observation. ”It is more than that.”

Folding her arms, Ruina would look back to Iqelis before speaking once more. ”Explain yourself. Why is it that Homura is wounded, with you so eager to finish what was started?”

“That’s-” Ea Nebel interrupted, caught herself, frowned, and continued anyway. “That’s not important right now. Divine Ruina,” she began instead, flicking her wrist to shake off the leaking glyphs, matching gaze briefly with Homura. “I am Ea Nebel, a god for the grave. The one to be put to test. You,” she repeated, slowly, impassively, “you are a grave. Her bones are your blades now. A monument to her hunger. There’s nothing like you in this world.” 

Four gunmetal eyes searched Ruina’s own pale jade gaze, tracing the crooked lines of her scars, her bleached white hair, flicking in the same breeze as Ea Nebel’s own. They settled again on Ruina’s narrow pupils, searching for nothing in particular.

Ruina’s eyes narrowed slightly. Not important? A wounded divine being about to be eaten alive by a divine that had previously gone and murdered another wasn’t important? Ruina disagreed quite severely. ”I am told that these trials are happening because a god has died at Iqelis’ hand, and I myself have some unfavourable history with Iqelis. A wounded god with Iqelis charging at them is something that I do consider quite important, given the context.”

“...”

Taking a moment to brush away the errant thoughts herself, Ruina’s eyes hardened to a glare as Ea Nebel began to compare her to a grave and call her unique. Blinking away the glare, Ruina would fold her arms firmly once more before speaking. ”My sister was a murderer from birth. It was by the whimsy of luck that she did not succeed. I took back what was rightfully mine… And it was not a pleasant happening. On this I will say no more.”

“I know,” whispered the gravekeeper. “You don’t need to. Ruina.”

Now Ruina affixed her gaze upon Iqelis, waiting for a proper answer. The whispers coming from Ea Nebel were noted, but for right now Ruina had higher priorities to tend to, so they would need to wait.

“Unlike some, who while away the cycle in keeps and palaces,” the acidic crack of ice shattering over a toxic waste-pit answered her stare from the head of the slope, “I feel the pull of my duty keenly through every drop of the Flow. The spilled blood of an immortal calls to me, compels me to sever the frayed thread, which brings me joy immeasurable. If the Lance-Flame cannot cross a mountain without gashing herself open, she should travel underhill.”

Ruina’s eyes narrowed once more as Iqelis explained himself. The explanation sounded more akin to an excuse, and the barb tossed alongside it made it seem as if Iqelis was doing his best to lessen the blow to himself. Ruina, naturally, wouldn’t tolerate that in the slightest. ”So your given excuse is that you admit you have no control over yourself? Forget not that I am destruction incarnate, and yet show an immense amount of restraint when it comes to my actions. Perhaps you would be wise to begin emulating my choices rather than disparaging them. Regardless, bickering with you is not why I was brought here. Return to the proper course of things, or I shall see to it that your efforts are marked as failures before they even begin.”

At this point Ruina began to tap her claws against her arm, producing three quick tapping sounds followed by a slightly delayed fourth sound as the sharp claws harmlessly impacted on the firm shell of Ruina’s suit. Ea Nebel continued to weigh her with impenetrable eyes.

“Restraint is a fine word for those who would make of sloth a virtue,” jibed the Fly as he moved to a high rocky pass nearby in long leaps from boulder to boulder, “Nor did your Lord call for an envenomed judge. Hark now! Four trials were demanded, and four there shall be. I will test my child for the essential virtues that are required of true divinity to fulfill its purpose. The first ordeal waits in the vale beyond this gulch. Make yourselves ready.”

The demigoddess looked down, exhaled, held it. When she looked up again, it was to stare down the path of the meadow and into the jagged dark of the valley beyond, leaving the bitter tension behind her like a bowstring strung between eyes. 

“May the Imperial Sun lead not my step astray,” she prayed. “I’ll see you soon, Father.”

She curtsied once each to her judges and leapt down from the ledge, coattails fluttering like windblown fire as she descended. Her silhouette soon grew small and lonely on the meadow. Ea Nebel summoned the Monarch’s talisman back around her neck under her hood. She knew not what lay before her: what terrors of the mind, what agonies of the flesh, what temptations and humiliations of the heart. So she was grateful, if nothing else, for its warmth.

The Iron Boar grunted a sad and knowing farewell, and she stopped, once, to force a smile in its direction. Then she turned around no more, and disappeared into the valley.


In Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk. VI → 5 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
Prelude to the Trials


The path by Time's riverside had passed in a blur of grimy iron embankments lapped by obsidian waters, and when it ended they were left on its idyllic autumnal antithesis. Rows of trees clothed in ruddy bark and fresh bright-red leaves pointed the way ahead in uneven rows, as if they had risen with the intent of guiding travellers through the maze of the wilderness. Sanguine grass rustled underfoot, and a few crumpled leaves fell as a splash from the receding Flow touched the closest branches. Above the forest's whispering heads loomed a ring of blind crimson walls.

“Your mother arbitrates in His name now,” Iqelis looked up at the citadel as he strode to the edge of the woods, “I have not seen her since that time.” Ea Nebel flicked away a stray wisp of hair and nodded in silence.

Standing atop the immense wall, the Goddess of Honor watched from afar as they approached, the golden spear she held in her hands shining like a bright beacon in the cold night. She leapt from where she stood, swiftly soaring through the air until she alighted in a clearing close enough to properly greet the two visitors.

Ea Nebel watched the silhouette of her original sculptor resolve itself from Daybringer’s blazing light. Her hands tightened in the pockets of her long coat, and she did not breathe. Some long-tightened heartstring of hope or fear had finally been struck. With the three beings now standing together, any mortal onlooker could have guessed why. Her stick-figure stature could not hide the resemblance, nor her deformity, nor the deeper drop of weird that coloured her flesh and fizzed in her voice.

Homura stared at them with neither contempt or pleasure, an unreadable expression as she spoke. “Iqelis, Ea Nebel. Why have the two of you come here?” She asked, bowing her head slightly as she addressed both of them.

Ea Nebel curtsied low in her boots. “...Divine Homura,” she said, not rising, “you have been named the Solar Monarch’s highest judge. We’ve come to ask you to witness our penance.”

A claw lightly came to rest on her shoulder, and several flies alighted in turn upon its fingers. “The Elder One demanded that I share His vengeance for a wayward shard's slaying with our daughter,” Iqelis impiteously snapped off every word like an icicle.

“You have brought this upon yourself, brother. This is neither vengeance, nor penitence, as you are now being judged for your irrefutable crimes against life and our Lord. How will you seek to atone?” Homura inquired, her tone remaining neutral.

Ea Nebel broke her curtsy without looking up and let her hand fly to grab the doom-god’s wrist, lest he clench his fist in anger.

“We shall do as He bids, for His accursed sun has yet to set,” the fingers on the One-Eye’s many other hands grew crooked, but his gaze remained even and unkindled, “Four trials of her virtues He has decreed, and four He shall have. I trust you are wise enough in such matters to uphold their worth.” A concession, dry and chilly as it was.

“Hmm… then I shall bear witness. Where and when shall these trials take place?” Homura asked.

“To the west, our brother of the earth has built a grave for the one who fell,” an arm rose to point far over the red horizon, “There it will be done, and his remains will be exhumed as the First of Lords wishes. Unless something keeps you, we shall begin today, when I have brought the second arbiter.”

“So be it.” The Goddess of Honor replied, before turning to Ea Nebel. “Are you prepared?” She asked. The demigoddess nodded.

“I have been given all I could ask for,” she said, looking down into Homura’s deep bright eyes, feeling much smaller than she was. “But… there is one thing I will ask you to give, all the same, for strength. A token. If I may,” she glanced away, up to Iqelis, then back, “Mother.”

“Why do you refer to me as such?” Homura tilted her head, a hint of confusion in her voice.

Ea Nebel broke an unwilling smile and looked away, trying to bite it down as she tugged on her coat. “You can’t…? Nevermind.” She adjusted her feet and her words quickened slightly. “You were the first to draw me out of the ground. My body, my skin, my earth and air and fire all start with you… As have many others. I thought you might want to… Give me a name.”

“I cannot. You may call me mother, but your birth was never my intention. You are not my child.” The curiosity of the red goddess vanished, and she stared at Ea Nebel with cold fire burning in her eyes. “You are a sword, sharp and double-edged. I will never wield you, though others will certainly try. I am the Goddess of Honor.” Homura said as she pointed at herself. “He is the God of Doom. We are enemies.” She continued, pointing at Iqelis, before letting her hand languidly drop to her side.

“Your Aspect… Your choice. I will not decide for you.”

The smile was gone now. Ea Nebel nodded, her hands in her coat pockets, and did not raise her head. “...It- doesn’t matter. Thank you.”

“Lastly, Ea Nebel, you are forbidden from entering Keltra.” Homura proclaimed as her impassive mask returned. Her words echoed with power, seeping into the land and sky, as the world all around was witness to her declaration. The demigoddess’s head jerked back as her teeth clamped down on the tongue she’d been biting, and she slapped the back of her hand to her mouth, eyes bulging.

“Then there will be no regrets when it is razed to the ground.”

The words, heavy and venomous, had not come from the godling's side, where Iqelis had stood, but from somewhere behind and above her. The silent echoes of Homura's bidding did not have time to fade before a vast shadow smothered them along with all light in the glade, save for Daybringer's lonely glow.

In the few moments where every eye had been turned away from him, hopeless as such a notion of reckoning was to capture the doings of Him Who Turns the Flow, a fearsome metamorphosis had come over the cyclopic god. At the edge of the glade there now stood an immense tree of black glass, so imposing that the forest around it seemed but a patch of brush. In its trunk was a cavity that burned with a baleful white flame, and every one of its myriad branches ended in a clawed hand.

They turned, and the currents parted.

Time tore and buckled as the two figures before the obsidian terror were swept over by a haze of sluggishness, and all about them trees collapsed into a putrid black mush acrawl with maggots. Every living thing within a great span crumbled in an instant under the blow of centuries, and the earth itself dissolved into rancid muck as thousands of carcasses choked it.

“For her sake, worm, I would have forborn from casting you into the same lot as the fallen and the condemned,” the One God raged in the voice of dying mountains, his eye vomiting storms of cadaverous light onto the crimson goddess, “But now I will have leave to pull you apart bone by bone! There will be no overlord to cry vengeance for you, for I will have torn his tongue out with your own fingernails!”

“You should leave, brother. You have let your anger overwhelm you, and it is unbefitting for any servant of our Lord to act with such disgrace.” Homura replied, and her visage remained calm and steadfast, despite the devastation all around her. Her gaze then turned to Ea Nebel once more. “Your trials await.”

Red eyes met grey, and locked there for a while. Ea Nebel’s pale figure was alone before the gods now, and cast two shadows in their unearthly light: one for Daybringer’s blade, another for the One Eye.

She lowered her hand gingerly from her mouth. A stain of black blood steamed over the back of her wrist and trickled down her chin. The wisp of vapour hung in the oppressive humidity of rot, trailing away with those at the corner of her eyes. “You should do your job,” she mumbled. “Let’s go.” Then she was gone. For once, a harsh snap of electricity announced her departure, and the sound of a porcine grunt a second later.

The trunk of the terrible tree bulged, raising the lidless Eye on a wave of molten crystal. As it stretched further, the bulk of the divine growth followed into it, and in a pull of elongating distortion it was transfigured into the looming segmented body of a gargantuan centipede cast in living nephrite. It turned its head, featureless save for the blazing fissure, to glance in the demigoddess' wake, before lowering it to face Homura with its now tauntingly bestial countenance.

“Remember, wretch, that I am no servant.” Iqelis' hiss was hollowed, animal. He pointed westward once more with the colossal spear of a leg. “Go, please your master. I will follow.”

The god-beast whipped around its barbed tail, flattening what still protruded from the rotten soil, and the ebb of the umbral Flow carried it away.

“How uncivilised.” Homura muttered to herself as she returned to the keep in preparation for her journey westward.


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