--- FORA - CLONE ---
My clone exited the building through the collapsed wall, immediately feeling her ability to cast dimensionalism return to her. The only thing that prevented her from teleporting away immediately was what she saw once she was outside.
Her fellow prisoner, Taasen, stood toe to toe with Wela, the Mis-born Dragon herself. The two of them circled one another, examining each other for any weaknesses as a crowd of excited looking guards watched on from behind.
No one… no one seemed to realize that my clone had gotten out, some people looked her way, but it was only to remark upon the collapsed wall.
She had a strong survival instinct, but that all went out the second story window and into a pile of particularly fragrant dung as they landed their first strikes on one another. Actually landed. I’d tried fighting Wela once before, and all I’d gotten for my trouble was beaten to a pulp.
Taasen danced through moves like a leaf in the wind, dodging strikes before Wela could even throw them, honestly Fora was having trouble seeing most of their attacks. Occasionally one of them would just casually break the sound barrier, and as she watched, Taasen seemed to just be getting… faster. The cuts on his arms healed even as she stared at them, and Wela’s hits seemed to be doing less to him as time went on.
Somehow.
Fora frowned at him, tapping her chin in thought as Wela began to speak between heavy breaths and strikes.
“You—huff—You’re so weak, it’s almost pitiful. You’re a disgrace—huff—to all that the gods went through to bring you here.” She struck again, “You’re slow, you’re mortal.” She struck again, “There’s no way that you can win this!”
Taasen seemed to shrink at the insults, his strikes drawing less blood. He glared at her, “I can’t actually hear you, now that I think about it, the wind is too strong.”
The wind picked up slightly, and Fora frowned at it. Was that a coincidence? It had to be…
Wela dodged under an attack, glaring as well, “That’s— that’s not how ears work.”
“Frostbite.” Taasen said, punching at a slightly exposed section of his opponent’s back. He seemed annoyed about something, but he started muttering under his breath as the fight went on. Out of curiosity, the clone that was Fora cast a light hearing spell and was surprised at what she heard. “You are faster than this, you are stronger than this, you are lighter than this, you are more powerful than this…”
As he went, over and over, with the same motto, it seemed as if he was becoming those very things he was saying to himself.
But like a harsh critic to a budding painter, Wela continued to push down those spurts of growth. He was still growing anyway, even as she started to say more things, criticizing his technique, his speed, his footwork. Her words only slowed him down.
What mattered though was the fact that he was slowed down.
Fora watched in horror as she realized what Wela was doing. Dragons could do all sorts of magically illegal things, which was why she hadn’t realized it earlier, it shouldn’t be possible to keep hasting one’s self while building up a dimensional effect. But even as she watched, the time runes of the double triangle that represented her hasting effect slowly faded away into the flipped version of spatial magics.
The force spell came out of nowhere, slamming into Taasen with bone-crunching power. He grunted at the orange-red wall of power as it pushed him to the ground.
Taasen frowned at it as it refused to dissipate, Wela standing over him triumphantly. Fora felt her hopes crash down like a badly constructed tower. Oh well, she’d simply have to leave, that had been interesting but ultimately—
Almost like he’d been waiting for something like this, Taasen grinned. The emotion was strange on his face, strained almost, as if he wasn’t used to it. But it was a wide, sincere, smile. Wela paused at this, hastily strengthening the force spell, but it wasn’t enough.
The grinning madman simply… phased through the magical barrier.
Fora had a very hard time understanding how that was even possible. He attacked Wela again, even as the clone’s mind tried to wrap itself around what she’d just seen, but now that Wela’s hasting ability was deactivated she didn’t have any chance at keeping up with him.
It took Fora several minutes as she tried to process what Taasen had just done, before her brain decided to just think about it later. By that point the fight was completely over, Taasen Standing over a wounded Wela who held her arms up in surrender.
He’d won.
Sparks above, we needed this guy on our side.
-
The various guards and minions of the Mis-born Dragon scattered once their leader was defeated. Taasen let them leave, simply standing over Wela and frowning at her. “Where might I find Selneth?”
She slowly moved into a sitting position, watching the madman warily. The clone that was Fora folded her arms, still thinking. Was this Selneth guy so important that Taasen would refrain from killing her just to know the answer? Wela wasn’t someone I would trust as a prisoner, she had too much power at her disposal. “Not here right now, he’s on Wreyn, preparing the way.”
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Taasen frowned, clearly having no idea what that meant. Fora knew though and she felt her heart skip a beat at the mention of a different world. Wreyn was known as the realm of Decay, and all the stories she knew from there were… not encouraging. “Where might I find this… Wreyn place? My quest is to kill Selneth, and then to kill his master.”
Wela laughed, a long hard laugh. It was broken by a bloody cough, apparently Taasen had broken some ribs. “Good—cough—good luck with that.”
“Do you wish to perish?” Taasen asked, clearly annoyed.
My clone frowned as a guard ran past, looking worried. Right, they’d likely be sending in reinforcements, Wela surrendering didn’t mean the rest of the base had. “Taasen, she’s stalling while reinforcements get here.”
He blinked, glancing in Fora’s direction, but he seemed to recognize her, “I see, she is a deceiver then after all.” He seemed disappointed.
Fora glanced at Wela as she saw another dimensional effect building up. She wasn’t even moving her hands to shape it! To say I was jealous was an understatement. “Sparks, she’s—” The teleport activated and suddenly Wela was gone. “teleporting…” My clone added belatedly.
Taasen blinked at the now empty space he’d been glaring at. “No. People can’t teleport, that’s impossible.”
The word ‘impossible’ echoed through my clone’s ears. It echoed through her bones. It echoed through the world itself. She stared in bafflement as Wela rematerialized, just in time for Taasen to stab her through the heart.
What.
The.
Sparks.
Fora stared at the corpse as it fell over, lifeless, she stared at Taasen, she stared at the knife that he’d definitely not been carrying before. “What in Aeinar are you?!” She found herself shouting as she erected a golden force shield, remembering with panic that he could walk through those.
At the exclamation, Taasen glanced at my clone, “I am simply an artist.”
--
Fora felt vitalized as the teleport ran through her, glancing anxiously at Taasen. If he had the ability to undo teleportation, it was unlikely that she’d be able to truly escape if things went bad like she’d initially assumed when she’d decided she needed him on her side.
At this point Fora knew better. Taasen, on the other hand, seemed to have taken a liking to her for some reason. My clone counted her lucky stars that she hadn’t lied to him about anything when they first met, because he seemed to take any kind of deception personally. As in, he personally decided to vanquish any and all deceptions from the world in what was practically a life goal.
The scenery around them stabilized and my clone teleported again, wondering where I would have set up the new base. She had some guesses, but in the end she knew that she would have to either dismiss herself or wait until I came after her tracker.
Fora glanced down the side of the cliff, stilling at the sight of Reiaran below. The Silverside cliffs were an oddity, both because of their enormous height and because of their almost smooth nature. From below, it was like a wall of stone that stretched up into eternity. Most historians suspected they’d been crafted by an ancient archmage who far eclipsed all more modern mages in power and might.
Naturally, I’d taken it upon myself to get to the top a long time ago.
Taasen glanced down, not seeming impressed with the view. “It would be more beautiful with snow.”
Fora frowned at him, “It’s spring, I don’t think anyone down there wants the snow to come back.”
“It’s unnatural for the snow to melt in the first place.”
“Where are you from exactly?”
“Divaria, though barely anyone here can recall anything substantial about it.”
Fora frowned, remembering the various things she’d heard about that place over the years. My clone belatedly realized that she didn’t have any stories about it, that was… Sparks, how had she let herself simply ignore that fact all this time? Divaria wasn’t on another world but she had plenty of stories about Aulous or the Mistlands, this shouldn’t be any different! “We’ll be waiting here for quite a while until my real self decides to come looking for my tracker, why don’t you tell me about Divaria?”
He blinked, apparently not having expected that. “Of course! I shall speak of the great wonders of my homeland! What do you want to hear first?!”
Fora tapped her chin, “You said there’s always snow there, could you tell me why?”
Taasen nodded curtly. Brushing off a rock before sitting down, the faint snowflake-like patterns that covered his skin twinkled in the sunlight. “It all began with Kalteii, the world mother, the master of ice and snow.”
--- RUNESIGHT ---
And so there was the creation of Divaria.
At the beginning of the world, there was snow. It was the first and most beautiful snow ever to grace the planet’s surface. Each individual flake was meant to be different and that first snow was not held back by the designs that had already been done. The flakes settled, the clouds moved onward, for the first time the world was finally whole.
Kalteii, the mother of winter, the mother of JUSTICE, was born of the first snow. She saw her world and knew that something was missing. Her winters were harsh and unyielding, but there needed to be others if there was to be balance.
And so Kalteii shaped her snow and created Naltest, guardian of fire, of the forge. A master of improvement, master of destroying and making anew, the father of ARTISTRY. The art of Naltest brought warmth to the world and the snow of creation began to melt.
During the melting, the ground was uncovered and the seas formed, the ice of Kalteii was driven back to the north and the south, giving almost everything she had to Naltest. She fell into a deep sleep and did not wake again.
Using the harshness of her dreams, Kalteii shaped from her snow creatures to populate her world, at the core of every one of them, there was a piece of Naltest’s warmth and a flake of the first snow. Creatures of every shape and size dominated the land sky and sea, Kalteii had made them all and they were each individually beautiful.
The creations of her dreams were powerful, and divine. The children of Kalteii created just as she had, some of them rose and made art, music, stories, and oh so much more. They took their creations and infused them with magic, becoming creatures of art and power.
Some say that the children of Kalteii created everything else, and indeed they must have, for where else would the great cities that seemed to have been grown from the ground itself have come from? Why else was the sky so clear and the mountains so grand? Even the snow of creation that came again and again would inspire her children.
At last, the children of Kalteii packed up their tools for art and left to search the cosmos for inspiration, becoming the stars in the sky and leaving behind their only creation that could create in their stead. Humanity was closer to Naltest than Kaltei, they destroyed and made anew, they spread throughout the world and endured, they wielded the magic of Naltest and the Justice of Kalteii and changed the world.
Some say that if the children of Kalteii ever return, they will not recognize the world that they left behind.