Vec
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Just as humans grow and change with time, interests change as well. I wish I had the urge to roleplay like I used to...
Most Recent Posts
Of Slings and Spears I
Although simple in concept, the hunt is as vital of a craft as the rest - if not the most vital. Just because the blessings of Avros have allowed us to cultivate the land and herd animals, it does not mean that we must grow complacent. Hunting is ingrained within an Eidolon's life-force.– Emyr, First Hunter of the Lyra clade
"Get down, boy, down!" His eyes were locked onto the fleeing xo when a gruff, baritone voice snapped behind him, and a hand abruptly pushed his head down, shoving his face into the mud below. As he tasted the bitter and unpleasant soil, the youngster's mind reeled as dangerous thoughts fueled by anger and frustration slowly started to take form, but the man atop him had other plans.
"Haah..." sighing quietly, his hand tightened around the boy's nape, the mark on it slowly turning a dull red. He put a little more force behind his push, pinning and keeping the boy on the ground. What with the rain that had graced the area relatively recently, the air had yet to completely lose its moisture and, as the man behind him shuffled closer, the boy felt the clammy skin of the man's chin slightly touch his pointed ear.
"Get. Your. Act. Together." The man's voice, more akin to a growl at this point, made the hair all over the boy's body stand on end. "This is not a game, but a hunt, and you..." the man grabbed a tuft of hair from the back of the boy's head, forcefully making the trapped youngster face him before continuing. "Are. Here. To. Learn." Every word had been accompanied by a tap on the forehead, right between the two small, jutting horns that hid under the bangs of dark brown hair covering his son's head. Although his face had been muddied, the scrunched-up expression that hid under all that – as well as the emotions that he felt flowing into him through his hold on the boy's neck – told him everything that he needed to know about what his offspring thought of his words.
"Understood?" For several seconds, the two simply stared at each other in the eyes, but right before that itchy, tense feeling of conflict became palpable, the boy retreated his gaze. Seeing this, his father held him down for a split second longer before unhanding him and, as if nothing had happened, gave a couple of pats on his son's back before standing up and walking out of sight.
Although free now, the boy's pride had been injured. Slowly, he crawled back up to his knees and then to his feet whilst dusting off debris and grass that had tangled up in his clothes, all the while mumbling silent curses. As his hand made a pass over his side, he felt a bump on the animal hide – his coat had, somehow, slightly torn at that place. At the realization of what would happen once they returned home; the young man simply hung his head in defeat. "Time to bust out the sewing kit, mother's not going to be pleased…"
After some time had passed, the sound of hooves entered the boy's ears, and he rose his head to look at his father walking back with two horses trotting behind him. He watched as the trio circled around the small boulder he'd made his sitting place before coming to a stop behind him.
"Did you retrieve the stones?" His father asked, one hand extended towards him. The boy glanced at the corded loop, the reins of one of the horses, then looked back at his father for a moment before gazing back down. The man stood a good one and half heads taller than him and had quite the muscular physique. At first glance, not many would think that such a man was good with tasks that required finesse and precision, but his father had time and again shattered that notion by being the best slinger their clan had raised.
"Yes," the boy replied absentmindedly and made to grab the reins, only to be slapped in the head with them, eliciting a pained grunt. He swiveled his head back up and was simply met with a cold gaze, again reminding him his place in the hierarchy. "Yes father," he corrected his speech whilst gritting his teeth.
The ride back to the clan had been uneventful, something that the boy thanked the gods for inwardly. They had risen early in the morning in order to catch the long-furred xo herd before they began moving, and had wasted a good half a day on the hunt before his father called it quits. Upon their arrival, the sun had long set over the horizon; a multitude of colors washed over the plains as the afterglow of twilight preluded the arrival of darkness over the land.
Their clan could not really be identified as one; four families worked together to survive in the rough environment their ancestors had called home. The boy thought back to the teachings of the elder storyteller – a grandmother of one of his friends – of how some decades earlier, four hunters and their spouses had split off from a larger clade due to some infighting. Even though the northern bands have, and still do, shared some friendly interactions, it was known that foreign Eidolons did not really integrate well into a different clade. As such, the four couples had decided to start their own little band.
Fast forward to the present and the band has grown in population, but the four families remained a constant, albeit in name only. This was mainly because they had split the different responsibilities between the four, with each family overseeing specific things within the clan's chain of operations. The first two had been in charge of the traditional hunting and herding of xo as well as protection, while the other two families mainly dabbled in the spiritual, medicinal and manufacturing fields. As a result, society had grown to be quite regimented, with everyone assigned a role and a job from a young age.
A whistle from his father brought the boy back to reality, and he turned his attention to the front where two more riders on horses approached the returning duo. The boy saw his father pull further up front as one of the two riders mirrored him, with the two coming to a stop a couple xo's length distance ahead. Leaving the adults to their business, the boy rode the horse around and approached the other rider, another one of his close friends.
"Dylan, you son of a bitch!" The boy called out as the two locked forearms in their usual greeting.
"Hey now, you're sure you want to be talking about your aunt like that?" Dylan said as his eyes twinkled with mirth, his mouth twisting into a sarcastic smile. "Anyway, you look like you took a tumble in the xo pens, Cedric. What happened?"
His cousin's questioning stare only served to immediately sour Cedric's mood once again. After glancing back to his father, he snapped on the reins, making the horse trot further inward and towards the encampment, all the while motioning for his cousin to follow.
"Better get off these horses, it's getting late. I'll tell you on the way to the tents." Cedric said with a stony expression on his face.
&
Tension dissipated like steam. The moon and Yudaiel, or perhaps Yudaiel the moon (for now more than ever they were truly one), trembled softly in relief.
He was gone. They were off the moon -- not just the so-called Monarch of All, but also the wretched Fly.
Peace could be had again, but All-Seeing lunar goddess possessed all the time in the world and yet no time for such trifles as rest; there remained much work to be done. So she composed herself and then peered upon the Tapestry once again, searching across the endless plane of threads to track the movements of her many plots, only to find the search harder than ever before. A new haze blurred her Sight, no matter where she looked! Confusion and rage rippled through her vastness, and the moon seemed to glower at the rest of the cosmos.
Her Prescience hadn't been this clouded in a long time, for she'd done many things to attain clarity. With the passage of time she had gradually honed and progressed her mastery of her own aspect, she had eliminated the Shard that had been the foremost anathema to certainty and Sight, and more. Yudaiel had done more, acts that others would never have even contemplated, all in the pursuit of mastery. She had dreamt of a great and terrible being -- Ã̶̡͝m̶̰̬̍̈́p̸̱̀h̸͚̚͜i̷̧̓b̴̲͛o̷̠͑ļ̷̧̊e̴͕̳̎̓s̶͎̈̅ -- and merely by observing the flicking of its singular eye had she garnered a better understanding of Reality, a more expansive view of what was even possible for divinities to attain. She had looked upon the infinite iterations of the Codex back in time and discovered the unknowable secrets that Tuku had hidden, and she had gazed into the maws and innards of indescribable and alien Horror. Within its depths, she remembered visions and words sent through space and time from another being, one perhaps even more terrible than the cyclops, that thousand-thousand limbed and million-million ribbed giant that was infinitely tall, the same darkened silhouette that she'd seem looming over both the past and future. She had attained a better understanding of Iqelis and also of that black Flow over which the Fly presided, and through contact with Rosalind, likewise come to understand motion and rhythm. All of that and more!
Yet so much was undone the moment she had absorbed a second shard. The limitless potential and power was intoxicating, and never had she felt so powerful as now, but through the juxtaposition of two shards within her it was as though her mind and very essence had been bifurcated... she felt like someone different, someone impure, someone conflicted. She hadn't expected this, but she should have. It only made sense; how else would the Monarch of All be kept in check than through the countless contradictions and separate pulls of the nigh-infinite aspects of Reality that he retained for himself still?
Her toil and struggle was not so great as it would have been should she have adopted two more opposing shards, she instinctively realized, but neither was this inner turmoil lessened by any similarities between the quintessence of the lunar and prescient shards. She was a fish that floundered in an ungainly body, suddenly unable to remember how to swim. She knew it would take time to master this new state and come to terms with herself, and yet she knew also that this power was worth the pain.
In the meantime, perhaps she could improve herself. She had Seen her brother Astus, and how he had taken mere rocks from the earth and refined them into pure metal, then fashioned them into false life -- crafts so complicated and intelligent that they perhaps were truly alive in some sense. The Yudaiel of the past had been mere ore. Now she was to become metal. She Saw that to realize her inevitable triumph, she had to shape herself into the force, the machine, that she had always been destined to become.
First, that meant turning stone to steel, freeing the gleaming metal that hid within the ore, and adding strength and resolve to temper it. Candidly and honestly, she looked through her own woven threads and her own past, self-reflecting with utter humility for the first time in her entire existence. From a new lens, she Saw the errors in her ways.
I am erratic!
Emotion is good; it gives force behind every motion, the strength and desire to act.
Emotion is irrational; a slave to unreason is weak.
Is my righteous anger not rational? Is my pride not warranted?
The tumult grew and grew. Her mind bickered with itself more vehemently with each passing moment until it threatened to fracture and perhaps come undone entirely, and that looming threat was what finally pushed her to decision. Mere meditation or contemplation would not be enough; the making of steel required the burning away of impurities. She needed to surgically excise her weakness -- the parts of her mind that held her back.
But what parts were those?
The past was haunting at times but it always had lessons to offer. Memories flashed by: the snide words of the Monarch and barely restrained anger when he'd decreed her imprisonment, the rasped jibes and insults and threats of Iqelis, Homura's confrontation, and even those whispers of Ashevelen that she'd heard from afar.
Her confrontational nature, that proclivity to anger and to impulsively pick fights, had not served well. What had she to show for it besides enemies, lost battles, and His order to remain on the moon?
Is a storm still formidable if it doesn't rage, if it's not fickle, if it's not prone to hurl lightning at whatever dares challenge its heights?
Of course.
The storm is only deadlier when it lets its victims grow complacent...
when none expect its lightning or know where it might strike.
The storm is only deadlier when it lets its victims grow complacent...
when none expect its lightning or know where it might strike.
One last great act of spontaneity remained in her future. She focused and turned her gaze inward, her pupil wrapped around itself, and then she channeled her force of will. Telekinetic and psionic power coursed through every fiber of her being in one great feedback loop. She screamed. She barely remained conscious. The power remained under tenuous control though, and eventually she succeeded.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A cacophony of voices, screaming, arguing with one another.
The formerly transparent, crystalline mirror now opaque and listless.
They are the many that make up the one, but now find themselves fractured, broken like no other.
Tumultuous clouds rapidly emerging beyond the mind’s reaches.
A black, oppressive barrier, hell bent on making them suffer.
Heralding an age of ruination and destruction; the world left in pieces.
A faint ripple in the Tapestry, detectable only to those most sensitive to its myriads of intricacies, spread out, covering a vast amount of space. In its center, a wisp suddenly ignited, seemingly out of nothingness. But it was not 'nothing' at all.
This tiny flame was unlike any other fire in existence, for this was the flame of life - and what life? Divine. It needed neither air nor heat to proliferate, but should a mortal come in contact with it, they would very quickly be consumed by its hunger. Seemingly defying the most basic laws that this corner of the universe adhered to, it simultaneously boiled and burned. That, coupled with the myriad - one could even dare say "kaleidoscopic" - array of colors it emitted, and the contrast between it and the dark backdrop of the scarred and bare moon surface, painted a truly mystifying picture.
Iridescent waves of divine power slowly swirled around the small blaze, a thin, gangly tendril of which extended towards it. Oh, so tenderly, it poked and prodded at the fire - akin to a mother poking her newborn child's nose. Then, as if catching on something, the tendril stopped at one specific point before merging with the flame. As it merged, divine power started being fed into it, kindling for the blaze to feed on and grow into a mighty pyre.
Yudaiel hadn't expected this. She should have Seen this outcome, but in that moment, her Sight was obscured by the glow and shadow of all the luminous moons that she had yet to bejewel the heavens with, by the throb and ache of pains that she had suffered from others and inflicted upon herself, and by the many great and terrible beings -- primordials -- that loomed behind and ahead. Her prescience was almost worthless then; it hadn't even shown her that in in casting out Turmoil, she would be birthing another conscious entity.
Far below, upon the Galbar's surface, snakes slithered and shed their skins. Stags lost their horns, and nearly all things shed hair and flakes of dead skin in a great rain of food for the tiny beings that feasted upon such detritus. Yet this was different; if a divine spirit shed a part of itself, that part was not wont to rot. It struggled, persisted, and fought to survive -- just like this thing before her, the only other soul on her entire moon.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The others were gone.
The disparate voices that had so vehemently argued with one another and fought with venomous fang, who'd vied endlessly for power (unseen, deep below the surface of her psyche) and whose impulses had manifested so often to destructive effect, were gone. Not merely silenced; this time, they were truly gone for good. Yudaiel was whole again... more whole than she'd been, even before the trauma of being devoured by the Horrors, their innards deepening the cracks and unleashing all the voices even as their strange bile had tried to dissolve her very soul into nothingness.
Blessed peace was hers again.
Now only darkness remained, and even then, it was not the usual, comforting type of darkness that lulls one to sleep; as if diving into a cold, dead sea, a mix of arrogance, cruelty and aloofness was subsumed into the murk. Yet, the darkness ached – a debilitating injury had been dealt to the world, and a faint throbbing could be felt, ever present in the backdrop.
Silence..? No, there was a noise, something else.
Suddenly, a bright point of light shined within the previously pitch darkness, akin to a beacon signaling the way for the lost traveler. With the point at their center, ripples fanned out in all directions, searching, searching, searching… finding.
It'd been seeking her!
The ripples emitted by the point of light had bounced off something within the darkness. Akin to soldiers relaying information back to their general, upon returning they indicated the location of the target, and at that moment everything stopped. Serenity had returned to the dark, but not for long.
Abruptly, a beam of light shot off from the bright point, heading straight for the target – that ‘something’ that had been deemed as significant within the emptiness. Right before reaching its destination, however, the beam slowed down, coming to a screeching halt. At its end, a bulbous, lidless eye formed, taking in its surroundings for a moment before homing in on a small, floating, luminescent crystal.
Even with cracks riddling its surface, it nevertheless stood proudly as a whole. As if composed by many different, smaller crystals, each segment faintly shone in a different spectrum of light, giving off a sense of imperfection and fragility. And then, just as the eye laid its gaze upon the crystal, it visibly shuddered for a split second before projecting a single lucid thought out towards the eye:
“Are you my echo, or am I yours?”
Silence answered her -- contemplative silence that seemed to last eons.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Yudaiel's mind considered extinguishing this fire of life that she'd accidentally sparked. Ending this... this accident would be easy, and indeed, if she were at all like she'd been before, then she'd have likely done it without hesitation. Yet she was different now, the worst of her impulse and violence removed when she'd cast out Turmoil.
And this thing was intelligent. It ideabstracted at her, in its own crude and unrefined manner. It had inherited some manner of her own divinity, she surmised, for how else would it have sustained itself for long enough to form thought or take shape? How else could it See and Speak?
It had potential, and could be cultivated. She quickly and easily wrested control of the ideabstraction.
The eyeball that had floated before the crystal was gone, replaced by the spiraling expanse of an entire galaxy -- one of many. The stars were everywhere, and they were beautiful, like little pearls embroidered onto a vast velvet.
The fabric of Reality seemed to ripple, and in the sound of its rustling there finally came a whispered answer, "I̧͎̘̤̅̇̿̚ a̛̟͔͇͌̄m̖͍͂̇ t̟̤̂͌͜͡h̖͕̬̺͆͒̅̀ĕ̡̥̺̼̂́͞ ş̘̽̈́o̻͈͛͒u̝̮̒̎͊͢r̤͖̘͔̟̆͆̆̈́̀c̼̬̑̓̄͜ȩ̞̦̘̿̃̚͠.̟͛͋͢”
As Reality bent, the cosmos seemed to spin. In truth it was the crystal that dizzily spun, though; the eye at the center of that closest galaxy, the nascent spirit's origin and progenitor, examined every facet and angle of that crystalline form. Gemstones were beautiful, and this one was prismatic and almost perfect... almost. It clearly had the potential to be something magnificent, but it needed a strong hand to guide the chisel that would shape it further and chip away the imperfections... it needed to be cultivated.
So it was. In one moment it had been a crystal drifting through the cosmos; in the next it was a dewdrop rolling off the leaf of some strange tree in the desert, cascading down to water and nourish the smallest of gardens, a tiny patch of grass springing out from sandy soil.
Yes, this one could live. Should live. Would live. Yudaiel had never truly understood the nature of parenthood; she'd thought that she had, having witnessed bears defending their cubs, a manbjork swearing vengeance for the dead kits, little creatures suckling milk, and a thousand other sights a thousand times over. Seeing and observing the phenomenon was one thing; experiencing it personally felt altogether like another.
Possibilities pulsed electrically through her sea of consciousness: memories of her own banishment to the moon, before she'd ever truly descended down to the Galbar. She could view it from afar, but repressed deep down had always been a regret, and loathing for the Monarch, from depriving her of so many experiences. It had been enough to influence that field from afar, to merely witness all its events of import and live them through the eyes of other... but it would be even better to vicariously experience it through a child.
His decree that she remain on her moon -- or moons, as it was destined to soon be, would not apply to this child. It couldn't. Just as that thought made its way through her sea of consciousness, the goddess felt an oh so slight tug at her mind. Turning her attention once again towards the flame and the primitive soul within, she noticed something quite peculiar.
On the outside, the flame had begun to change – from the iridescent hue it started out as, it had slowly turned to a darker orange, akin to a setting sun disappearing over the horizon. It had also grown in size, now taking up as much space as one of those many large boulders that had – during the battle of the ages between Yudaiel and Iqelis – broken off from the moon’s surface and spiraled down toward the Galbar.
The blazing flame of life evoked memory of Homura. Others saw just the red goddess' diminutive little form, or the gleam of that spear she bore so brazenly, yet from the first moment of Homura's existence Yudaiel had Seen the truth: she was a raging inferno entombed within some cold statue of a simulacrum -- shackled, as it were. This conflagration wrapped around the crystal rather than simmering as a hot coal somewhere deep within. That was good. It meant strength and potency, rapid growth. Let her child wear its flame like a cloak.
That crystal in the heart of the blaze, as well, had gone through some changes during this time. Hidden deep within the core of the pyre now, it started to vibrate; its color, slowly at first but quickly picking up speed, shifted through all the hues known – and possibly unknown – to mortals. The outlandish flames of life that had been summoned along with its accidental inception at the hands of Yudaiel, that had been protecting it from the barren and inhospitable environment of outer space, had turned their metaphorical back at it, now threatening its feeble existence. They were burning it.
The crystal, as if sensing the change within its guardian, hurriedly tried to wrest away the ideabstraction that Yudaiel had stolen from it, its power too weak to create a second one. Even as it flailed in its desperation with a clumsy and unsuccessful attempt to reshape their shared dreamscape, within the ideabstraction their thoughts were linked close enough that Yudaiel could sense its panic -- something was amiss. So the Prescient relinquished her control and let the nascent spark weave whatever image it would.
A small piece of debris that had broken off from gods know where, was floating through the emptiness of space. Without will, without knowledge of its being or even instinct, it seemingly existed. Its creation ordained by fate or by luck, no one really knew. Within the vacuum, its only constant companion had been, for an undiscernible amount of time, the warming rays of the sun.
But without a way to steer itself away from danger, a mind to know of what was out there, it could not protect itself from its eventual doom. Alas, it had neared too close to its previous ally and companion, and so its friend had opened its arms to embrace it. Just as it plummeted into certain annihilation, a small, imperceptible voice echoed out.
“…help…”
The celestial planes contorted and bent. That one galaxy that had formerly been an eyeball was in the very center of a new face, superimposed over a thousand-thousand dim nebulae and blinding constellations, clusters, and galaxies as it claimed a place at the very center of the universe. But then the cosmos blinked, and the galaxy was a bloodshot eyeball once more. A hazy corona of star-stuff partially shrouded the three pupils of that Great and All-Seeing Eye, sparing the crystal from the worst of its overpowering glare.
The Eye did as eyes did: it watched, in silent thought, for what seemed like far too long. Near the last moment, vast bleeding tentacles -- like optical nerves and severed blood vessels -- erupted from the oculus and whipped around to seize the drifting entity. The strength of those stringy cords proved sufficient to arrest all motion; the tiny crystal was saved from the doom of time, even if it dangled in a net precariously close to that sun which had been dragging it away.
The blood that oozed out of the grotesque limbs extinguished the crystal's wreathe of fire, at least in part, and cooled it from the sun's incandescence. But all was not cold: a tinge of anger pulsed through the bleeding arteries. There was disappointment there too, the sort that despised weakness and spat in its presence.
One particular artery that had been spewing out droplets of hot blood suddenly ceased its heaving and coiled itself. Its end morphed into the head of a snake, and it hissed, "I̤̭͌͊ w̺̖̃͋ị̧̈̚l̙̈l̟̖̭̍̅͘ n̗͇̝̒̏͝ỏ̦͇̙̑̚t̩̺̤̔́̋ r̥̘͗̀̀ͅe͎̯͆͒̚ͅĺ̰̖̊̂͟e̟͌a͎͇̾̀s̼̤͍͐̎̚ḙ̮̫̃͛͘ y̡͇͔̑̚͡ò̺u̺̭͋̿̀͟.̞͔̭͆̌̆”
Freedom was only to come if the splintered fragment proved itself capable enough of self-sufficiency, and so the crystal had to learn to steer its own flight.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Doom had been averted, but how much longer?
The fire around the crystal had simmered down somewhat but had neither died nor surrendered. A higher power was restraining it and so, like a caged animal, it bade its time. Its prey would not escape it – could not escape it.
The whole ordeal had stirred up something within the crystal; the tiny, fragmented soul residing within had finally awoken fully. After having tasted betrayal, it had become aware of its predicament; through its primitive senses, the crystal could feel the mighty being's presence, enveloped as it had them in its power.
The being had responded to its plea, stopping the flames from devouring the crystal, and for that the soul within was grateful. The crystal could feel the overpowering authority the essence it was subsumed within carried – the being could squash it into dust without the soul even realizing it. Yet it also felt a kind of longing towards the being, a faint link that was shared between them that seemed… important.
However, it also sensed that something had changed. The flow of energy around the crystal gave off an... odd feeling. Previously it had been surprised, intrigued and, one could even say, hopeful. All that changed after the crystal had reached out to be saved. The energy imprinted within the fabric of space had become more reserved, withdrawn and aloof. As if a parent had been disheartened by their children's actions... as if they had expected something better...
The tiny soul gave out a low, droning sound as new feelings slowly emerged within it – remorse and guilt. Just like how the flame had betrayed the crystal, so had the soul within betrayed the mighty being that had deigned to save it from annihilation. It could feel an insurmountable burden weighing it down, as if it was nothing but a pebble atop the ocean floor, an immense amount of water pressuring it down, threatening to grind it into dust. Expectations.
Upon this realization, additional feelings swiftly arose from deep within the crystal soul, the droning reaching a crescendo. Flaring up like an uncontrollable wildfire, anger and indignation overcame it in an instant. Anger and indignation towards itself, with how little it could do; towards the flame that had betrayed it; towards the being that now looked down upon it with contempt; towards the harsh, barren world that it had come into being.
The crystal suddenly let out a violent pulse of iridescent light, shooting out in all directions around it. The flame that surrounded it – that same beast that had earlier tried to prey on it – bore the vast brunt of the impact resulting in it dying down quite a bit. Silence once again reigned.
Having expelled most of the negative energy that had welled up within it, the soul within the crystal felt sluggish and weak once again, however an unprecedented level of clarity took the place of the ousted emotions. It was up to the soul to prove its worth to its savior – nay, its creator – as well as itself.
The tiny comet stilled as the bloody tentacles wrapped around it, saving it from certain annihilation. Time and space were meaningless within the boundaries of the dream, yet what seemed to be ages passed before something stirred again within the tentacles’ grasp.
There, under the bloodshot eyeball’s gaze, vines slowly rose from the comet's surface. Covered with patterns of unknown origin, they slowly slithered around the root-like tentacles that had covered it, piercing through their fleshy exterior and latching on to them tightly.
Then, as if a snake injecting its venom into its prey, the thorns unleashed a thick, shimmering, black-and-white liquid within the tentacles – raw emotions: anger, betrayal, indignation, remorse. At that moment, the tiny comet burned with a passion, a will to pass on its feelings onto its mighty savior.
“I was wrong. The only way to help, is to release me…”
...
In the dream, Yudaiel released her hold over that crystallized fragment of herself. Its newfound bravery pleased her; however, like a newly hatched bird leaving its nest, it now would either learn to to fly, or else fall down and die in the attempt. The Prescient goddess has already grown more attached to this little clone than she had realized -- reflexively and anxiously she'd peered into the future to assure herself of the outcome, and only after that did she allow the hatchling to throw itself from the nest.
It would fly.
But young and impulsive things were easily swayed and influenced by something so subtle as the slightest breeze. The child's inchoate motivation and purpose facilitated, nay -- necessitated -- that its progenitor guide it to where it was needed, for its own good. For both of their good. So that posed the question: where should the winds nudge it?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The moment the goddess undid her metaphysical hold over the fire, like a rabid wolf, it launched at the crystal with ferocity. Made of instinct and pure action as it was, its momentary weakness after being hit by the pulse of power released by the crystal did not deter it from taking another chance at its prey.
Feeling the fire encroaching on its periphery once again, the soul within steeled itself to fight. Its own internal fire and drive to survive had been kindled by the intense residual turmoil carried over from its creator, giving it the perfect mindset to combat its first enemy in a new world - itself. Just as the fire licked the surface of the crystal with its scalding fangs, the soul within released a keening cry; another pulse of iridescent light rippled out, this time with the intention of subjugating its opponent, not just weakening it.
For a split second, on that small corner of the moon, something akin to a second sun emerged. A white flash of light gave color to the previously dull darkness of space; unlike a supernova, however, the aftermath of the ordeal was something out of the ordinary. Where previously a crystal wreathed in fire floated, now a medium sized, egg-like shaped cocoon existed. Its surface swirled with color, and a faint feeling of power and of the life budding slowly within emanated from it. It carried an echo of a thought within, possibly meant for its helper but also towards itself, the one who realized its own self-worth.
"Thank you..."
Silently, Yudaiel's power pulsed out through the regolith and into the newly-formed egg, filling it with a thrumming energy. It resonated and vibrated in its place for a few moments, and then was suddenly spurred into explosive motion as it rocketed away from the moon at well past escape velocity. Minor telekinetic adjustments perfected the course: the Prescient ensured that her daughter would land in the vicinity of the Eidolon Plains. She had yet to install an agent there, and the region's proximity to Nalusa could prove pertinent.
Time would tell. The future was still too murky and nebulous for Yudaiel's liking, but this was an improvement.
@Vec It was the best of times. it was the worst of times.
a time of ninja posting and rushing to reserve second OOC post for your CS
Ahhh good times, my writing was shit back then but good times. God I miss the days before Discord.
yes, the days when you could get 16k OOC posts :)
indefinite hiatus works
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