Green
Fluffy's hand grips the fang on his back, exposing its edge from the sheath and holding it high. Let's see what you can do, Titan Crusher. A flash of light, of super-heated air following the traversal of a blade's tip, moving faster than its own wielder could even perceive. Force bursts outward, an uncontrolled shock-wave focused by Aether into a line yet still pushing the group back away from its origin. A path of magma is drawn in a crevasse carved into the ground, travelling a straight path to the opposing divine beast and rapidly expanding before seeming to grind to a halt. The wave of air slows and flattens, still ploughing through and noisily roaring across the cavern, yet appearing paused as if stuck in a viscous block of space. That was faster than I had intended. Was it the blade, or have I gotten stronger since I last swung?
Skittering back from having been blown away, Lil' Blue returns to her unmoving perch and stares dumbfounded at the near static burst of wind. "What's happening? Is his ability to slow things down?" "No, he's further away than he looks. I give it thirty seconds for that blast to reach him." Teacher clarifies, stretching her claws in preparation. "You've fought him before, right? What did you do last time?" "Ah... I didn't even realise it was distance. I just kept attacking, assuming he was slowing things down." "..."
Kixhah raises a pedipalp, waving it in front of his mouth in an imitation yawn. "Are you going to attack? Or should I go first?" He asks calmly, torrent of wind crashing into his leg mid-sentence and dissipating harmlessly. "Just a test swing. I can start the real thing now."
Violet
Fluffy can attack from afar, but the rest of us need to close the distance. I don't like being so far I have to use my eyes to see either. "Fluffy. Cover us from here with as many of the strongest attacks you can manage. Everyone else, hop on and I'll carry us closer to him." "Understood, Teach." The group comply, Lyly wrapping reigns to hold onto while Goldy and Didi cling to her back. A torrent of wind whirls from the elf, the blinding flash of his every swing sending crashing waves of pure force faster than the wind can keep up. "Hold on tight." Aleph surges forth in a blur of violet, swiftly piercing the sound barrier as she travels behind the searing waves of wind, space warping as she approaches, making both Fluffy and Kixhah appear larger and larger. "Interesting strategy. But can it adapt?"
The world twist and bends, ceiling weaving into the floor, foreshortening exaggerating to an extreme as left become right, becomes up, becomes everywhere. A loud bang follows, black and red carapace readjusting under the fractal kaleidoscope of impossible perspective, crashes of Fluffy's attacks failing to sound when they should have hit their mark. "Where am I now? Can your eyes tell you?" He's not actually bending space, just our perception of it. At this distance I can't reach him with standard ae'othas, but it doesn't need to be a sphere. Without stopping, Aether bursts from the dragon, flaring and pressing into a thin disk before spiralling out in prongs to cover a tremendous range. One prong licks at the arachnid's leg, wrapping around and being joined by others to grasp his location.
"Fluffy! To your left!" She redirects her charge, and the elf adjusts his target, both heading straight for Kixhah's true position. "Ae'othas? Or rather, an advanced derivation. Now your identity only perplexes me further, strange dragon."
Gold
The charge resumes, all direction beyond their immediate surroundings shifting and undulating in a nauseating visual cacophony, not helped by the roar of surging winds passing by them. He will simply move again, we must go faster. Essence pools from Gol Dhee's fingertips, wrapping around his body and pushing out to form a rippling, unstable bubble. His fists clench, an iron grip grasping at the air to stabilise their surroundings and form a cone ahead of them to push aside the wall of air obstructing their rush. With the reduced friction their pace picks up, a journey of many moments becoming a handful, yet... Crack! Just as the space around them begins to show recognisable form it bends again, the behemoth shifting place once more. The emissary leaps, a sharp burst of force barrelling in below them, originating from behind as she turns to their new destination.
"Close, but you will have to be faster than- Oh! I felt that one. A wide sweep was clever, did you predict when I would move?" What? A loud echo of a crash shortly follows from the side, his new location compromised. I see... The warrior of green. "Goldy. Remove all of the air, there must be no friction whatsoever." His eyes widen for a moment, but time disallows complaints. He breathes in deep, the bright one doing the same, and his palms reach out. Fur grows in length, glowing a bright white as his mind grips the air around them and pushes it to a vacuum.
Silence, save for the lively thrum of his own heart echoing in his chest and the rushing blood it propels. The scrambled blur of a world gracing his view grows more chaotic, a persistent inertia pulling him backward and to the side until the blur becomes noise, becomes uniform grey. How fast is this? The emissary's voice vibrates directly within his ears, an unsettling, invasive sensation almost making him lose focus on his grip. "Brace."
Red
This reminds me of my trips with Dad. He would always move like this, though he wasn't ever polite enough to remove the air resistance. Pretty sure this speed would actually weather me with wind friction alone. Wait! Isn't this way too fast?! A dreadful instinct tears at Diala's thoughts, time seeming to freeze as her perspective rapidly accelerates. The blurred world becomes clear to her hyper-focused senses, a flat wall of black chitin directly ahead of them rapidly approaching. Diala grips tight, her every slight motion feeling like a sluggish eternity before time resumes its natural pace. A tremendous force crushes her to Aleph's back as the dragon slams herself into the wall, legs sinking a few millimetres into the surface and forming innumerable micro-fractures. Her body threatens to crack under the strain, yet holds strong, the brunt of the force from the crash seemingly having been pulled elsewhere by the violet hue surrounding them.
With the fading of the force, gravity returns from its unnoticed absence, the wall above them having sustained what can only be considered barely a scratch from the tremendous impact. "I was worried for a second there. I didn't realise you could redirect force like that with Aether. But still, your attacks lack magnitude." The wall vanishes from view, the horizon coated in a dark silhouette with a speed almost akin to teleportation, a mountainous leg the only thing left within clear view yet still large enough to consume their vision. I think we underestimated just how big this guy is... The leg moves, the motion not even a twitch in comparison to his true size, yet enough to slam the group with unmatched force, not leaving any chance to retaliate, block, or even dodge. Each of them scatter in random directions, the vertigo-inducing horizon returning in all of its glory as the silhouette falls away. There is nothing I can do...
Green
Lack magnitude? I've been striking with all my might! And if that sound from earlier is anything to go by, they struck even heavier... No, I can do more. I'm too used to holding back is all. I need to let loose, everything in one strike. I don't know where he is this time... So I'll just do another sweep. Fluffy empties his mind, nothing left behind. Not the world, not his sword, not him. Only a single concept remaining. Cut. A curve is drawn around him, nothingness comparable to his state of mind left behind the path drawn by his blade. Except... one thing remains, responding to his overwhelming intent. Aether fills the void left behind by the edge, and obeys.
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A small portion of his stock, yet one infused with enough energy to rend the world. The disk bursts outward, cleaving through everything from the air to the Mana infused to it, and the Mana fights back. Aether battles with Mana, battles with Aether, battles with Mana... and Aether wins.
Green light pulses out beyond the speed of perception, all terrain above its source detached from its base, and in its wake a growing storm of rampaging Mana trying to cut apart the very fabric of reality, and partially succeeding. The illusory warping of space crumbles, the Mana fuelling it refusing to obey anything but the overwhelming will to cleave apart. Fluffy stares outward, scarcely able to believe the fallout of his own attack, terrain crumbling and scattering as far as he can see. I... I'm not tired at all... I could do that again, as many times as I want. I should... His hands raise, fang held tight and trembling with anticipation as he locks his focus to the point ahead of him his foe stood moments prior. What?
"It is time we bring this to a close." Fluffy is thrown by an unseen strike, landing him far from his original position as he scrambles back to his feet. "Fluffy... I acknowledge the strength which cut into my carapace. I did not hold back my defence. But you must not waste precious Aether so readily, and your strike endangered your allies. Learn to think through the consequences of each action you take." A thunderous crash resounds to the side. "Aleph Null. Your skill is commendable, but your recklessness is confounding. You should have kept your distance the moment you grasped my scale, yet you charged on ever faster instead, achieving nothing for the risk." A heavy object follows the crash, throwing Fluffy off his feet and smothering him in black scales. "Gol Dhee. Your versatility shows promise, and your ability to handle fights above your weight class is impressive. But you simply lack magnitude. Gimmicks will only take you so far when your companions outpace your strength." Just as they try to stand another weight is added, followed by yet another crash. "Diavo... Demon. Take the opportunity that will arise on the following layer to gain strength where you can. If you don't, you will be left behind by that of your contractors." Fluffy pries himself from beneath the dragon, a crystal body immediately smacking him in the face as he tries to breathe.
Cyan
Lyla lays splayed across rugged terrain, ignoring the tempest of Mana trying to cut at her invincible carapace. Stupid dragon... Stupid elf... Stupid giant spider... "And Lyla..." Oh, that's me! "I can only apologise for the treatment of your elder siblings. I agree Kavlaxhar went too far, but as with the rest of us I am bound by treaty with the angels and cannot assist." "Huh?! Did I ask?! You think I-" Her surroundings blur, her body moving faster than her ability to see what hit her as her ears ring from an intense crash of volume. "Aside from that, you overestimate the durability of this body of yours. From Mikika's observations I know how careless you have been in getting here." Most of that is from the dragon, asshole! "Even before meeting Aleph." "..."
Drag slows her traversal enough to see the pile of companions she careens towards. With a flamboyant twirl, Lyla manages to adjust her trajectory to land directly atop her perch, winning in terms of grace. "Ha! Nailed it!" "Now for your final test." All light from above vanishes in an instant, the cores occluded by the tip of a flat wall of pure black. Every strand of fuzz on Lyla's body shivers, a tremendous force of Mana drowning her senses and placing her every fibre on edge. "Endure." The ability to think proves too slow, instinct taking the reigns to direct all available Mana to defend, forming a dense and complex shield above the group, which immediately shatters.
The world goes dark, an unyielding pressure bearing down on the group, boring them through the dense stone. Violet coats the group, shielding them from the brunt of the force while the earth below is gripped and softened. Strong arms bind the group together, preventing them from separating as they tunnel through the layer boundary, their speed refusing to waver. Light returns for a split moment, force of earth replaced by the roar of wind before returning to the crushing of stone. The cycle repeats, again, and again, and once more, all the while the group is crushed by an unstoppable push. Even Lyla's indestructible shell begins to question its limits under the relentless crushing until finally, they crash.
Shattered crystal stitches back together, broken wings snapping back into place as joints pop and muscles creak in the aftermath. Lyla stands, her body shaken but unscathed, and she looks around to see nothing. Even the light which should emit from her body seems to fall and fizzle away, barely enough to see the dark scales beside her. "How far did we just fall?" Lyla asks, her voice soft as if muffled by the dark. The dragon stands, body snapping and crackling as joints unsettlingly pop back into place. "I was too focused to keep track." "I counted five... but there were a few things we crashed into that weren't layer boundaries which may have thrown of my count..." The demon offers, entire chunks of crystal growing back from having been shattered. "Muscles, how are you holding up after that." The monkey lifts his aching body, a wince as his arms flex. "An injured arm, but little more. Hinya protected me well."
"Good, we need to stand. This is the deepest I've ever been, and this layer is not safe." A darkness surrounds them, deeper than any layer prior, yet filled with an unshakeable feeling of something being there. Nothing surrounds them, yet something surrounds them.
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Date: 2nd day, 1st rising quart, 361st cycle since the calamity. So much has happened in such a short span, it has become difficult to keep track of in my head. Some of my notes have even been lost, causing no end to my strife. The children of Alulen have been waging constant wars with the divine beasts since the calamity, each more foolish than the last. The planet itself has been reshaped to something new, a scale I thought impossible for a terrestrial globe and the likely cause of the everstorm. Avilar has now taken permanent residence around us, forming a shield of intense durability and longevity the likes I had never even considered. And now nilasuun, home to the only hope many of us held, has been tugged even deeper below, as if it wasn't already incomprehensible to descend to begin with. Yet I suspect this is not the finale to the fallout of the calamity.
Angels have been summoned at a far greater frequency than ever before. It isn't that more people want to summon them either, it has simply become easier, cheaper to contract them. Demons have equally become frustrated by this, their animosity an unusual change to the norm. I have held friends amongst both collectives, yet precious few of those seem willing to return here. In the many thousands of cycles I have lived, nothing like this has occurred. How can the death of one god be so catastrophic?
Those other beings which call themselves gods frustrate me to no end. I hear some have been seen in the everstorm constructing something big, truly big. I will have to pilgrimage to the far north and see for myself. While I'm there, perhaps I can speak to Avilar. I was sceptical at first, but there is no denying his barrier is what saved us. I owe it to him to show gratitude.
I already find myself wanting to go back to each paragraph of this note to elaborate. There is so much to say, yet this format belies any attempt to expand. After speaking with Avilar, it is due time I put myself to real work. Someone must keep track of history where others are too finite, or tight-lipped, to maintain. Perhaps that young divine beast, the moth of ice, would be willing to host me. I hear she is starting a city and has her own plan to counter the growing desertification from the south. Her lack of affiliation with the others at least means I can at least expect her honesty.
- Personal notes of the eldest being on Ao