Badraxz, the Shattering A hammer wrought out of Prima, wrapped in tendrils of Secunda. Infused with the determination of the Golden Goddess, it is made to crush any resistance.
Mmh…
Dreggaxz, the Piercing A chisel wrought out of Prima, with an ever-burning point forged from Secunda. Infused with the stubbornness of the Golden Goddess, it is made to pierce any resistance.
Maybe…
Z’aabhurxz, the Weakener
A whip wrought out of tightly bundled tendrils of Secunda. Infused with the trickery of the Golden Goddess, it is made to mollify and weaken any defense.
I look at the assortment of tools laid out before me with a critical eye. They all glow, surfaces etched with converging arrays of D’uli still gleaming with the forge’s fire as bathed in molten gold. They are master-crafted, as good as my level of artisanship allows for. Still, I wonder if they will perform to standard. There’s an eager waiting inside me to see that planetoid shattered at once.
With an effort, I tear my attention away. I have waited enough. They will have to do. If not, I’ll manage with my own efforts.
Thankfully, my Other Self has stopped pestering me. Omniscient as she is, even she must see that any more waiting is intolerable. And anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? I am supreme in this space. The Six plus one… I just can’t help but wonder…
Giddy, I gather my tools, engulfing them in my body for safekeeping. I feel them as they settle, vague as the shapes of stones made blurry by the water’s surface, but always only a hand’s reach away. Au’Makh is curious about the new companions and takes some time off his angry waiting to investigate them. I chuckle.
One last inspection of my island reveals that everything is in order. The Unblinking is performing as well as it could be expected, the Hands are reinforced and ready, and the Bane sniffs hungrily for strayers. And I can’t fathom anything mighty enough to overcome the walls of the Vault, the Garden, or even my Workshop. The only lingering possibility would be for the Sky to give form to another part of itself, but I don’t believe it will happen. Apart from Azakar being the incarnation already of all its destructive tendencies, my growth assures me.
Level up! You reached level 17!
Radiance Eternal – Focuses on the influence your existence has over the sorrounding world, allowing higher control both over yourself and that which falls under your purview.
- The Mind of my Father: your lingering connection with your Greater Self strenghtens. You can now see the swirling energies of the Unformed Sky to a more accurate degree. This allows you to gauge the general conditions of the Sky and its inhabitants.
Eheh… I see you… My fingers and ribbons twitch with excitement as I scan the whole of the Sky. It is my Greater Self after all, and it is with a sense of fulfillment and vindication that I claim part of my birthright over it. Soon, I’ll have it all.
The Sky, once an endless expanse of golden clouds bathed in the light of dawn, now appears to me as covered by a dizzying crisscrossing of bars and ribbons and tendrils and lines. It’s a pulsing, breathing array, of which I still manage to get a sense. It’s a machine, I see, one brought toward creation unending, an engine pushed by mechanisms so incredibly complex that even for me is hard to understand them, and that awes me. And, for the first time, I also see its limits. Metaphysically only, of course, since as a physical plane, the Sky is effectively endless, folding on itself on multi-layered expanses. Still, I see barriers to its expanse, limits that the Sky, pushed by its own expansive principle would gladly overtake. I wonder what they hide, but I have no interest in the answer. If anything, the walls are comforting in their own way. My place is here, with my children and my work, and I’d very much like not to have intruders in this domain. Thankfully, it’s an entirely unfounded fear to have, since as strong as my walls are, these ones are thousands of times more so, so I banish the thought entirely.
Satisfied, I took to the Sky, plunging among the weave, my mind already running to the matter ahead.
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The Beyonder watched as her Minor Self took to the Sky. Or rather, she watched the moment when such thing happened. To her, an Aspect untethered from linear time, all such moments appeared before all at once, a vast collection to appraise and regard.
If she hadn’t grown beyond concern, even the term of it, a sigh would have escaped her breast. As it was, she just chased the decision her Minor Self had taken, following it along the many-folded paths of the future. And many-folded they were indeed. Only her incarnation into an Aspect untethered by physical reality allowed her four-dimensional mind to trace and map all the ramifications, the branches and divergences. A mighty tree, stretching from the beginning of time to its endlessly far end.
Sure enough, she knew. She always did. The cause. The possibilities. The consequences. All of them, perfectly arrayed before her inner eye.
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She would have nodded, if such a gesture wasn’t among the many things left in the world of linear time. Ever so slowly, she increased her grip upon that specific moment, careful not to damage the timeline with her presence. Time. It was so brittle when intruded upon from beyond, so very easy to bend and break.
She had taken a little gambit at communicating with her Minor Self so directly, one for which even her omniscience offered not all the possible results. But her Other Self was too arrogant to listen, too childish and untested, and her single death had done nothing to ameliorate her. Still, the Six had to be protected.
The Beyonder didn’t sigh or shake her head, limiting herself only to regard. Differently from her Minor Self, who delighted in creation, control and motherhood, she had grown truly beyond all such matters. Now, just quietly spectating was more than enough for her. And she had quite a bit to spectate, all of time and all the ages in fact.
Retracting her immediate attention from the First Age, she moved part of her many-folded mind forward, to other times and other concerns. The Beyonder didn’t trust or hope. She knew what her Minor Self’s choices implied, and what the consequences would be. And though even in her ascended heart there was still warmth for the Six, and what their seeds were supposed to bring, she knew no threat would come to pass over them.
The matter, as foolish as it had been begat, would find its swift comeuppance. With the rare, little nudge from herself.
A small part of her attention remained over the moment, watching silently as she ever did.
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The passage was a lot more traumatic than expected. Kiarak struggled to keep her stomach, her sight swimming with multi-colored dots. It took more than a little effort not to fall on her face, and another to keep the content of her bowels, but she stubbornly clung on. Never show weakness.
The moment her hands and knees didn’t threaten to give way, she stood up on trembling legs, blinking. Little by little, her sight returned, the blurriness resolving in an unknown place.
Rock and sand. Not so different from home, if that was just the case, but these ones were golden. Sparklyng so. Kiarak peered at a craggy floor that looked barely touched by tools. Small grains, each sparkling like a gold nugget, formed a tight reticulate, filled where it was empty by smaller grains, and so on, until even her demigoddess' vision couldn’t follow. If that crazy construction didn’t confirm that they had actually made it, the energy thrumming the construction, clear and loathsome to her senses, would have done so.
Gladly tearing her eyes away, she looked for her comrades.
Zubar slumped in the sand, rubbing his head with a taloned hand. Judging from the way his four eyes rolled in their sockets, he was still struggling with the aftereffects of the sending.
Ulvanach looked far readier, having prowled some distance away to sniff suspiciously at a strange, tall building. The fact that the thing thrummed with that same horrible energy put a grimace on his brutish, skull-like face but did nothing to deter him.
Idiots… Comrades. The word felt like a jet of sulfur in the eye. Never surrender who you are. Survive, thrive, devour. Those were the tenets. All the rest was a joke.
There was no trace of Zongatis, and Kiarak almost hoped the sending had ridden her of a contender when the demoness emerged from the floor. She turned corporeal the moment the last of her body finished emerging, and her talons dug deep as she slowly looked around, taking the place with stony indifference.
Kiarak felt a stab of envy for Zongatis’ jeweled horns, before the situation reasserted itself.
“Get over here!” She barked. “Put down the barriers!”
The three demigods turned her way, and frowned, clearly annoyed at being ordered around. Kiarak felt a flash of panic as she feared they’d start arguing, and started her own ritual. Power, dark and oily and familiar, rose from her core, staining and clinging to her soul as it infused it with abyssal black. It emerged a moment later, encasing her in translucent, shiny onyx.
As it enclosed her entirely, she had to keep herself from showing weakness with a sigh of relief. A weight she didn’t realize to bear disappeared like she had taken off a bandage stifling her mouth.
Her example shook her kin from their rebellious thoughts, and they did the same.
In a moment, four demon-shaped statues stood among the golden sand.
“Did it work?” Zubar asked, the unmistakable pang of panic putting a smirk on Kiarak’s face, even as she hid her own.
“Of course it did,” Zongatis reproached coldly, and Zubar shrunk under her gaze. An elegant gesture of her taloned hand set the jewels in her braids tinkling against each other. “Father’s rituals are infallible.”
Ulvanach grunted in acknowledgment but still watched his now black hands with suspicion. Kiarak had her own but knew better than to question the Father of Darkness’ power, even a plane of distance away. Without thinking, she made the Sacred Sign beneath her cloak, just in case the Tyrant was watching. And if that was the case, better get moving.
Zongatis must have been thinking the same, because she quickly took the leadership position.
“I stand above,” she said, her voice a hissing whisper that nonetheless carried to Kiarak’s ear like her elder sister was speaking right into it. “You stand below. Understood?”
It took just a minimal time of frowning this time before the decision was accepted, complicit the totally unknown place they found themselves in.
“What is this place?” Zubar asked, four eyes wide as he looked around.
Kiarak would have loved to know. Wherever she looked, there was that crazy rocky sand, stretching away in a wasteland that would have looked untouched since the beginning of time for those without the senses to say otherwise. In the distance, she could see more of the strange constructions, each surrounded by a halo of light and dust. Right opposite, beyond a golden plain larger than many back home, walls stood, their shape slightly distorted by the glare. Kiarak narrowed her eyes, trying and failing to calculate the distance.
Despite her kin schooling their expressions more or less well, she knew they were thinking the same thing: that place was alien, as different from home as it could possibly be. If thin trails of smoke rising from their covers wasn’t enough, the slight push against her inner energies from the place where her feet met the floor would have attested to that.
Also, it was too quiet.
Zongatis raised a hand, shushing Zubar as he was about to start whining in discomfort. “Father told us the place would be inhospitable,” she said. “But remember he said there would also be riches to be had, and rewards for those who bring them back.”
The image was tantalizing enough to wet Kiarak’s mouth, and Zubar closed his own, eyes growing unfocused as he thought about it.
“And anyhow,” Zongatis shook her head once, her tresses tinkling, ““is there anybody here who dares return empty-handed?””
That closed the discussion. Satisfied, Zongatis gestured for Ulvanach to take point. The demigod did so with relish, sniffing the air for a few moments before loping into the direction of the distant walls.
They followed, and Kiarak did the same, after sneaking a glance toward the glowy building. She had made her decision when she offered to join the raid, she knew. Catching any traitorous doubt, she made mincemeat of them, and stalked after her kin.