God-Kings of Lotus: Heroes of the Unconquered Sun

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Invincible Maiden finds herself knee-deep in her own denial. Bodies strewn all around... the shapers, Watcher... No, they were just unconscious. They had to be! She rushes to the bodies of the men and women Jubal had slain pre-battle. The perfect gashes in their necks not unlike many she'd left in creatures of darkness, and her heart sank once she turned her gaze to Watcher. "No!" She rushes toward his body just on the edge of the Wyld-repelling aura and checks him over. He's hurt, but he's still breathing, he still has a pulse. Relief comes over her, sorrow still stuck to her for the lives already lost but knowing not all have perished was consolation.
She hefts him up and walks back to where the aura still stands along with her sister, no doubt in confusion. Yomiko smiles at her, "Stay here please, Konoko? I have to do something." Her anima then flares, golden fire rimmed with crimson and fiery wings bursting from her back as she flies onto the caption. Her swords are drawn and the look of concern that was upon her face is now that would strike fear into any who know her well enough. "Is it dead?"

[The Demented One]

"Yes! Yes! Yes! I'm definitely dead!" confirms Jubal. His body suddenly vanishes into the soil with a whumph, a tombstone appearing over the newly-dug plot. Here lies J bal the unter, The onquest Blade. reads the slate of granite, embellished with friezes of the raksha's greatest conquests, and also him getting his face eaten by Zephyr. "Wait, what? Why is my epitaph mispelled? Maaan, this is the worst death ever!" complains the definitely-not-alive-any-more-and-going-to-posthumously-acquiesce-to-your-demands-so-please-don't-dig-me-up-and-stab-me-with-daiklaves raksha.

[WhiteKnight777]

Zephyr

Zephyr looks down at the ground with the face of someone with a foul taste in their mouth. "If our friends cannot be helped, I'm going to dig you up and defile your corpse in ways you can't even imagine." the Full-Moon says in a low, menacing growl.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Yomiko's face remains stony for just a moment, but she can't escape her soft heart, and it isn't long before her demeanor is that of amused pity. It is an expression she gave Nhogg upon his death-bed. "It was all you deserved, J'bal the Unter." She points her daiklave at the gravestone and raises her voice, "We can come back at any point, and I'm quite good at cutting up those like you! You'll surely act with a bit more tact should more like us pass through here... RIGHT?" Her eyes widen slightly with the last word, though not as furious as the last time, she is still not so happy with the Raksha.

[The Demented One]

"Yes ma'am! That is the thing that I would do because I am dead and dead people are not impolite and totally agree with whatever your plan is and please don't stab me!" pleads the ex-Jubal. He certainly seems to have no trouble holding himself together now that several powerful women are waving around magical swords.

The Shaper's spheres cascade over to the "tomb" of Jubal. "He's dead, Jim!" he confirms, prodding the headstone with a tentacle. That is not how science works at all, but whatever. "So, it looks like we're all in agreement. Time to get the family together!" One tentacle whips out a comically oversized dinner-bell, and begins to ring up an awful clangor. Honeyed Words Speaker appears in a cloud of violet butterflies, silencing the bell's clapper with her hand. Next comes Nhogg's ever-talkative corpse, dropping with a thump into a new-sprung grave besides Jubal's.

The last to enter takes no form, no body. She is only the rustling of leaves, the swaying of branches, the voice that speaks from the boughs. You feel her as a presence, and she speaks to you in strange rhyme, deranged couplets and catalectic thoughts.

Semiramis
The Whisper in the Leaves

"Good mourning dove into the water, water, everywhere you look lovely to die my pretties! You want my heap of ants marching on and on a boat, my mother over the sea you've all agreed? If all of me is on my face and not crooked cracked crinkled then we can go to tea to die and heap hope have you!"

[GryffonDurime]

"Oh by Autocthon, I hate the Wyld," Ivory says with an exasperated huff. She looks up to Shaper, who stares down with a vague expression of sadness. "Not you. You, I have grown to tolerate." He beams again and Ivory turns back to Zephyr, offering him the lamp to touch with one of her Essence arms. "He grants wishes...in a way that I can not explain. Even the dead can be..."

Ivory aborts her sentence and looks about, eyes searching.

"Where...where are Gamine, Heron, and Meg?"

[WhiteKnight777]

Zephyr

Zephyr points to the fallen three, then kicked Jubal's grave "This little bastard did for them - we were talking, and he struck at the weakest among us like a coward."

[GryffonDurime]

Ivory stands there, stone-still with open and unblinking eyes. She plants her vajra in the ground to free her Hand of the Great Maker and approaches J bal's tombstone, gears grinding out sparks as white as white. Her anima blares, totemic raptor, but it too is limned with white--white jade white, Earth white, the white of good sand. Her bedecked hand clenches into a fist and strikes the ground at his grave's foot, a riot of Essence clambering forward to exhume his corpse. It piles up atop a small chalk crag, perfect whiteness and utterly, terrifyingly real. The dust of chalk is everwhere, settling on the ground of the Wyldland to speckle it with reality even as J bal's own corpse and crypt are shaken with violence by the transformation, bits of white stone lancing through the defiled faerie even as it all tears open to reveal him. Most offensive of all is what Ivory has laced within the pile of stone and chalk: at its heart, deep below, is iron.

Ivory's anima fades back to a golden aura, and the Hand slows to a clocktick-whir.

"Had I the energy and the time, I would grab you by the neck with gauntlets of burning white jade and cold iron. I would lead you across the border of my land and I would fly you up to the Pole of Earth itself and laugh at the nothing you became. Sea foam! Smoke! Scrapings of rime! Swear now, upon your Heart, that you will never again kill a creature of Creation-born, never again try their mortal fragility, or so help me--I will find both energy and time enough to do what I have said."

[The Demented One]

"Cripes!" swears Jubal's corpse, feeling the full brunt of Ivory Eyes' wrath. Whatever in him sought death before has been gouged out by its cruel proximity. "I swear! I promise, I promise, I promise!" Pathetic mewling, pathetic surrender. But Astra is not satisfied. She comes up besides Ivory Eyes, and stabs the moonsilver spikes of her war-fan deep into Jubal's grave. "That's not how you promise. Say it. Say it, and mean it." Despite corpses being well-known for not being able to clear their throats or talk at all, Jubal clears his throat nervously. And talks. "All right, all right! This do I swear, by the Cup and the Ring and the Staff and the Sword, to bind in my Heart 'till all things are unbound. No more killing, honest! Just stop with the stabbing!"

"Pity. He always was the runt of the litter." muses Shaper. He sidles up alongside Zephyr and Watcher, sidling as best as a congeries of infinite crystalline spheres can. It is not very well at all. "Now gentlemen–well, gentleman and other unconscious gentleman, it seems you've been a bit preoccupied with the putting sharp pieces of metal inside my brother business, but let me introduce myself. Wake up, you, lazybones!" Watcher feels a sudden wash of soothing pleasure, lulling him awake with a synesthetic kaleidoscope of prismatic colors, songbird calls, and floral scents. It's like living in the dreams of a six-year old girl. Pleasant, if mildly disturbing.

"Now, my name's the Shaper of the Ever-Changing, and I, well...oh, I'll just dig it up out of the archives." He plunges his tentacles deep into the fabric of the Wyld, pushing aside the chaos and the change until he can penetrate the shinmaic substrata of reality. After a few minutes of digging and scraping, he pulls out the post from before. You remember, the one with the song. He holds it up in his tentacles for Watcher and Zephyr to read.

"So don't sit there slack-jawed, buggy-eyed,
I'm here to answer all your exalted prayers!
You've got me bona fide, certified,
You've got an unshaped bound to your affairs!
I've sworn a powerful oath to help you out,
So what you wish, I really want to know.
You've got a wish that's Essence 5, no doubt!
So all you've got to do is rub like so, and oh!

Exalted Mistresses, have a wish or two or three
I'm in your service, Princes of Earth,
You ain't never had a friend, never had a friend
You ain't never had a friend, never had a friend,
You ain't
NEVER!
HAD A!
FRIEND!
LIKE!
ME!

"All right, so you got all that down. Now, let's hand out some free impossible wishes, shall we?"

[WhiteKnight777]

Zephyr

Zephyr scratches his chin. "I suppose the obvious 'wishing for infinite wishes is right out?" he inquires. He seems remarkably unperturbed by all of this - then again, given his daily life, that is perhaps unsurprising.

[The Demented One]

"Well my, aren't you Mister Savvy? Nope, no wishin' for more wishes. I mean, you could wish to be able to grant wishes, but I'm afraid being stuck inside a lamp is part of that, and I doubt you want that."

[WhiteKnight777]

Zephyr

Zephyr looked at his comrades, running his hands through his hair. "As much as I desire to use this... creature to enhance my own power, let us first see what we can do for our fallen comrades."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

After what felt like an eternity, but perhaps was mere moments of listlessness. Countless tropes and idioms coursing through her mind all at once, the feeling of one after the other in a terrible web of mind-shackling thrallhood. She snapped out of it before it had taken her completely and turned to Zephyr. "Perhaps with one wish you might bring them back about. Wish to undo any kill J bal the unter has committed against the children of Creation." She smiles and looks at her sister and then back at Zephyr, "It's worked once already." she whispered.

[WhiteKnight777]

Zephyr

Zephyr nodded in agreement. Without hesitation, he adressed the genie "I wish to undo the harm Jubal has caused my friends - the wyld-shapers and the Watcher, and any other Children of Creation he might have hurt or killed as well."

[The Demented One]

"Well all right folks, sit back and watch. One, two, three resurrections, coming up!" A calamity of sparks and flashing lights, a cannonade of prismatic energies, a kaleidoscopic whorl of scintillating essence, a very impressive noun of synonyms for light, and they are returned.

The Red Sand Gamine, Silver Heron, and Iron Megera sit up, very much alive and not dead. "We're alive? We couldn't have survived that. The raksha...I felt it. We should be dead." concludes Gamine, surveying her unmarred flesh. "Yeah. But we're...we're alive now. Thank the God-Kings!" surmises Meg, genuflecting before Ivory Eyes with embarrassing humility. Silver Heron says nothing, but only approaches the newly-healed Watcher, nervously attempting to give the Nightbringer a hug.

"We've wastreled away on wishy-washy, splish-splosh schools of higher and higher death rates!" mutters Semiramis, still inexplicable of word. Even Astra can offer up no translation, shrugging in confused defeat. "Can king conga lines parallel evolution solutions of final velocity let us be going going gone? Boding bodkins fore and aft punctuation, let light take squish and squash our shells stuffed pastabilities. In ferns and furnaces, green grain gone sun, absent son, absent father, deadbeat dad, dead dad beat dead son, sunshine singing. Drink, drank, drunk your fill and fly flee flay us to create creation?

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Yomiko listens to the strings of words that flit through the air and into her ears. She then smiles and replies politely, "I could not agree more, most gracious Semiramis. Let us all move as close to Creation as you are so able." The Wyld seems to have had an effect on her...

[The Demented One]

Astra boggles at Yomiko, not quite sure how the God-King pieced together the Unshaped's babbling. "Hey! I'm the guide here, I know the Wyld better than everyone! Except the raksha! Semiramis is saying...she's saying that thing Yomiko thinks she said." She pouts, but only to cover up her infatuation. It's a shame her totem wasn't a turtle–she's really awkward! She makes an awkward face–the awkwardest face!–and tries to find something to hide behind. She does not. Poor, awkward Astra.

"Diminished derivates down counts and dukes and margraves gravid with clutching cloying clinging exes and oh's, my good great godlings tic'd and tac'd and turn to gold. Hopskipjump and away we whistle thistles and rustle the bristling briars from the rose and donna noblest of men mansion merchants chanting cheating chasing stags and stegosauruses boring us with details. Five, four, three, one!"

Whumph
Whumph
Whumph
Whumph
Whumph

is what it sounds like, the whole of the Unshaped uprooting itself and flinging the protoplasmic chaos through the Wyld. Each abrupt jaunt warps past journeys and waypoints, cheating the story to skip to its end. By the time the wayfaring Unshaped finally comes to a stop, you can see the city of Petal off on the horizon, a familiar sight once again returned to. Within, Lytek can easily be summoned up, called to perform whatever experiments he must upon the cosmic demiurge you have bound and bested. The only task that remains is imprisoning it.

"Will walls wandered it hurt our hats, hated darlings?"

[WhiteKnight777]

Zephyr

The Full-Moon smiled. "I have a feeling this will end badly... but I suppose I might as well try..." he licked his lips and turned to the Shaper. "Very well - I wish to transcend my limitations. I wish to be able to fully understand and master the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation school of the Sidereal Martial Arts, as Lillith did in the First Age" He smirked, eyeing the creature. "And for my final wish... I wish for the Heart Grace of Semiramis!"

[The Demented One]

"Oooh, nice big wishes. Let's have us a training montage, boys!" The scene suddenly shifts through training that must take decades to complete, compressed into the span of mere minutes. Zephyr balancing upon a single leaf, floating across the face of the Western Ocean; Zephyr buried alive in a casket of orichalcum, breaking through it with his bare fists; Zephyr sparring with Ivory Eyes, dodging her most fearsome sorceries; Zephyr sitting in lotus position at the heart of the Omphalos.

And at the end, he feels enlightened, a new realization budding within him. All essence is one essence, a singular pattern. He knows now what he will need to begin mastering the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation. He just wishes he knew why that music about the eye of the tiger was still playing.

"And now, snatch the Heart Grace from my hand, grasshopper! Err, giant tyrant lizard." One outstretched tentacle proffers a shimmering acorn, a humble nut whose only tell is the oily sheen of rainbows that limn its surface. Zephyr whips it out from the tentacle's coil, catching it between his fingers. He feels within it the will of Semiramis, and he can bend it to his own.

[WhiteKnight777]

Zephyr

Zephyr shudders as he feels knowledge flow through him - and for some reason, feels the urge to put both fists over his head. Holding the heart grace of Semiramis in his hand, he looks at it with fascination.

"So small a thing, to hold the fate of us all." Looking around him, he addressed the Whisper in the Leaves Semiramis - wait here for a moment while we make the appropriate preparations. And by 'for a moment' I mean 'wait here, still, until I say otherwise.'

[GryffonDurime]

Ivory Eyes balks at her mate's audacity, offering Shaper's lamp to Red Sand Gamine. Her Essence-appendages fade and she looks back to Petal.

"I am going into the city to fetch Lytek. I will return as soon as I can."

With that, she is off, flying through the air. As soon as she enters the borders of Petal proper, she disappears like the shimmer of a mirage, reappearing at the stoop of one of her sorcery-palaces. Within, in a foyer adorned by jewels of every color, Ivory finds Ashrin pouring tea for the God of Exaltation.

"Your Unshaped is just beyond the city limits, Lytek," Ivory says with a practiced sort of familiarity, a smile curling on her lips. "And Zephyr holds its Heart's Grace."

[Ellas Aramond]

Watcher

Watcher stands to the side, deep in thought. Three wishes. Three chances to make his dreams come true instantly. But what dreams did he have, besides the obvious ones? Well, best start with the one that would make things easier.

"There's a vision that I have had for a little while now." He says to the Shaper, feeling the need to explain this idea to the rest fo the Circle as well. "A Corps of specially chosen mortals from all across the East, outfitted with abilities that would allow us to spread the law of Lotus to the rest of the East. A Corps that would inspire hope in the hearts of good men, and fear in those of criminals. I have thought over how with my companions, we can make this a reality. I always run into a problem though. I need a power source strong enough."

[The Demented One]

"You need power, boy? Well, stand back, 'cause I've got a surprise for you. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please give a warm welcome to her, straight from the depths of the Sea of Mind, only fifty-five millennia, introduuuuuuucing Astis!" A burst of cobalt fireworks in the depths of the Wyld, and a towering obelisk of basalt manifests, embellished with runes of flaring emerald green. Countless gateways of brass and obsidian adorn her base, each one a tablet on which is traced out the ancient history of Creation in the oldest tongue. "Now, Miss Astis, you've come a long way, so why don't we save the interview and get to the part where you get bound and broken and transmogrified into the power source of this young Lawgiver? What do you say we give you, I don't know, a lamp?" A hideous shrieking comes from within the monumental demon as it dwindles, bound and constrained into a simple lantern, glowing the green of a Malfean sun. "And there we go! One fetich soul of Cytherea, to go!"

[Ellas Aramond]

Watcher

Why did it always have to come down to Infernals? Watcher hoped that with Ivory's help, they could end up making the light a bit more golden, but that was a concern to be addressed later.

"Alright, second. There was recently a plot in Lotus that had cultists torture and kill the Mighty. I need to know the name and whereabouts of the being that put all that together. The mastermind behind it, so to speak.

"As for the third wish. I want to you to bring back my Dia-...no." Watcher stops himself mid-sentence. No, that wouldn't do, she was at peace. If anyone deserved it, she did. He had something that she'd definitely want though. "The members of my Exodus Syndicate, they have practically put their lives on hold to help me. I wish for them only the best. I wish for fortune to befall them. Where or when, it does not matter. As long as the form brings them the most happiness."

[The Demented One]

"Well, let's take a peek into the old crystal ball, shall we?" The Shaper rakshahandles one of his own spheres, buffing it with one tentacle until it shines like a mirror. His tentacles writhe in countless sundry esoteric sigils and obscene runes, and he forebodingly forebodes Watcher's answer (with foreboding!) "Oh, oh my. Looks like whatever you've got, it's somewhere underneath that city of yours. Nice place, but you could really stand to clean out the basement. Looks like we've got some sort of...huh. I don't quite know what this is. Definitely doesn't have a name. Tentacles, though. If names were tentacles, this would put the Deathlords to shame. Gross!" If the tentacle monster is getting creeped out by the other different tentacle monster, it must be bad! Foreboding.

"And now how about I grant that last wish? It's sweet, you don't see wishes like that much. All that selfless sacrifice for your loyal men, just like in the good old days. So, let's pluck out all those deaths by accident...push out all those personal tragedies...tweak their target numbers a bit...make sure they make it through the can't-tell-you that's coming up...and just for the fun of it, why don't we slap an extra century or two on those lifespans? Mortality's overrated, after all. Now, make it happen!" Watcher sees the faces of each and every one of his agents flash before him in the glistering reflections Shaper casts, only barely distracting Yomiko from the appearance of her daughter. "And that's your three wishes, handsome. So, let's just wait for Ivory Eyes to get back!" He pauses. "I said, let's just wait for Ivory Eyes to get back." Ivory Eyes does not get back.

"Oh, come on!" A bolt of blue thunder flies from one tentacle, causing Ivory Eyes and Lytek to appear–quite confused–where it strikes. "Okay, on with the wish-making! Laser eyes, gorilla armies, the Sword of Ice, whatever you want! Just make it snappy!"

Semiramis chimes in on the Shaper's rant with her own bemusing babble. "All is gated gutted gotten hold of holes in theories, dear me my mine own and sell salacious latest hit me in the face fink frock you princesses! We're wanting a rotten rutting wrinkle in the water water everywhere, nor any dark as day!"

[GryffonDurime]

Ivory Eyes looks about, nervously. She had hoped to discuss the matter of her last wish with Lytek on her way back, but now that seemed far too public. In her mind, she can hear the voices of the Sorcerers of the White Room raising in caucophony, each advising some strange course. They all scream, trying to be heard, vying for her attention like a game show audience--a what? A what? She's been in the Wyld too long, she's hearing things and thinking strange words and there's too much to pick from: Iulus, father, power, hope, the Flower, Petal, fulcrums, magic, Yozi, Gaia, Autocthon, the Clarion--



"Fine! The Sword of Ice! Brigid's Sword!" Ivory says at last when Shaper mentions it, and the world inside her head quiets at last. The Book of Three Circles is still tucked beneath her arm.

[The Demented One]

"Ooh, nice! You know, I've been trying to figure out what that one even does. Digging up old books, browsing the forums, all that. So, let's get you your sword!" A puff of mildly colorful smoke appears in Ivory Eyes's hands, as the Shaper of the Ever-Changing puts forth a lackluster display of special effects. The sword she pulls out of it is almost too large for her to sensibly wield, though it fits her hand lightly as a quill. The daiklave's blade is all of clear crystal, or else ice honed to the strength of adamant. She gives it an idle swing through the air, and listens to the hum of unrealized possibilities in its music. But of course, the time for a thorough study must come later. First, Lytek's experiment–or rather...

"AND! I'M! FREE!" shouts the Shaper, his lamp bursting in a cascade of chaotic essence. He coils a tentacle around Yomiko, playfully lifting her up off the ground. "Come on, ask me for something outrageous, something crazy! Ask me for the Blessed Isle, go on! Well, too bad sister, 'cause you can't have it! I'm a free raksha!" Fine. First the Shaper's theatrics, and then Lytek's experiment. The mild-mannered god has been rather placidly ignoring the displays of wyld spectacle, instead setting up a queer apparatus of adamant tubing and moonsilver discs, a wondrous engine of divine invention. He pushes a discrete black button, and the whole contraption starts up with a grand cacophony of gears and grinding metal.

"I thought I'd give you a brief explanation of how this will work, Lawgivers, solely for your edification. It always is encouraging when one of you takes up the study of exaltation, after all. Inscribed upon this engine's memory discs is a perfect replica of our Infernal friend's exaltation, a motonic echo of the shard. It couldn't exalt anyone, of course, but all the information I need is there, locked away behind whatever tricky cipher the Yozis have contrived. And so, I just project it through the pattern lens, into the conceptual core of the Unshaped, and just wait it to iterate through all possible combinations. Shouldn't take more than a few hours; the design is based on the pattern matrices you Solars were using at the end of the Era of Dreams. Well, let's begin!

Lytek throws a lever capped with orichalcum, and the whole engine flares to life. A pulse of pure gold light discharges from it, flickering with jets of emerald-green sparks. The cascade of light strikes the Unshaped, and Semiramis screams with pain. The whole of the Unshaped, waypoints and emanations and all, collapse into a single point of prismatic brilliance. Yomiko can hear the distant screaming of Honeyed Words Speaker as she is dragged into the singularity, caught up in the vortex of infinite possibilities. Lytek dispassionately observes the read-out displayed on an adamant screen, nodding as the pattern engine outputs its results. "Excellent, this should be even quicker than I'd expected! Well done, God-Kings."

[GryffonDurime]

Some small spark of tenderness ignites in Ivory as she watches the Shaper disappear.

"Is...are they?"

[WhiteKnight777]

Zephyr

Zephyr stands before Lytek, recalling the words of his mentor, Tails of Resplendent Shadow. "Lord Lytek... I would ask you something - with Semiramis in captivity, is there aught else you can do to help my kin - the Lunars? We have suffered sorely from our sojourn in the wyld, and we lost much that we once were. With such a source of chaos at your command, can you fix what went awry with us, too?"

[The Demented One]

"Oh my, yes! I hadn't even thought of that. If you'll just stand right there, I'll take out the motonic transcriptor, and we can just use your exaltation as a template. Come now, we've plenty of time. A simple transcription will take only minutes compared to a complete mapping." Lytek submits Zephyr to an endless array of poking and prodding with various tools, all the way encouraging him in a vaguely grandfatherly fashion. The procedure takes hours, and Zephyr is thankful to be done of it, as Lytek files away a copy of his exaltation on a disc of crystal no wider than a hand's span.

The whole experiment takes perhaps half a day, as Lytek sits clucking over his machine's read-outs. The screens display a cryptic string of sigils and glyphs–perfectly pellucid to Ivory Eyes, but mere magibabble to the rest of you. By sundown, Lytek has concluded his tests on both Doctor Brass and Zephyr's shards, compiling the results onto a pair of memory crystals. "I must be going now, God-Kings." he concedes once his work is done, packing up the machine into elsewhere. "I shall have these results analyzed in all due time, all sorts of magic science to be done. Farewell!" He vanishes back to his sanctum in a sad flash of light.

Semiramis remains collapsed in a singularity of wyld essence, still numb from Lytek's pattern-assault on her. The nexus of prismatic energies revolves dumbly in the air, showing not the least sign of sapience.