The Kyrshik Dunes. A land she had barely visited, yet one that pressed its reality upon her with the weight of a physical blow. The sun, a molten orb in the sky, kissed the sand with the smothering love of an overbearing parent. Heat radiated upwards in shimmering waves, nearly scorching to the touch to those not native to these blistering lands. Fortunately for the young panther witch, Ozma, she was used to things that blazed.
It wasn't like her to travel using such mundane means. Her anthem, the resonant hum of her unique magic, could carry her across leagues in a breath, or twist the very fabric of space to her will. But her quarry, the target of this arduous journey, was one especially sensitive to magical currents. Using her anthem, even for trivial teleportation, would only alert the Maji-Gari – voracious monsters with a particular taste for witch flesh – of her presence. So instead of streaking across the sky as a violet comet or dissolving into mystic mist, she was seen on the back of a beast of burden, a sturdy, if slow, desert crawler, its rhythmic plodding the only soundtrack to her impatience.
"This. Is taking....for fucking ever."
She sighed, the hot air catching in her throat. Though she typically didn't mind the scenic route most days, finding a strange peace in the world unfolding around her, the sheer urgency of what she must do, what she must face, had her on edge, more so than usual. Before she left the presence of the Witch Queen herself, she made sure to learn as much about her target as possible.
"Isis The Unyielding, Woe of Life, bunch of fancy titles..."
All she managed to learn was that Isis was a powerful necromancer and near peerless master of conjuration. Vague, ominous descriptors for a threat that had warranted containment by the First Coven.
Vas, her familiar, emerged from the hidden confines of her bosom, a sleek black shape unfurling into a languid stretch. He was looking much better than a few days ago, when Elara had pushed the very boundaries of his existence casting such reckless magic. Though it had saved their lives from a pursuing nightmare, it had nearly cost Vas his. He had only just forgiven Elara for her crude, effective tactics.
"Why can't evil ever have nicer titles?" Ozma mused aloud, scratching behind Vas's ears. "Like Isis the Welcoming? Or the Cuddling?"
She said this as she snuggled Vas, pressing her cheek into his soft fur. He purred, a low rumble vibrating against her. A black cat that carried the faint hue of violet magical energy, shimmering faintly in the harsh light. Though she was jesting, trying to quell her nerves with levity, the truth was a cold weight in her gut. What she was to face was ancient, potent – something so powerful even the First Coven were unable to defeat it, taking everything they had just to seal it away. Her studies of the rise and fall of civilizations were legion, yet she had never even caught so much as a phantom whisper of this Sepulcher of the Eastern Star in any reputable text. Years spent spelunking in evil-infested tombs had hardened her, yes, but none of it had truly prepared her for this... but after everything she had learned... everything more she stood to gain, the truth she sought, she refused to turn back now.
Soon after, as the twin suns began their slow descent, painting the sky in fiery oranges and pinks, she experienced a deathly chill. It wasn't the physical cool of dusk, but a deep, bone-penetrating coldness that seemed to emanate from the very air. Though nothing visibly had changed in the endless, rolling dunes, the blistering heat of the setting suns was betrayed by this nearly otherworldly coldness, a pocket of unnatural frigidity in a land defined by fire.
"It's here..." she whispered, her voice hushed despite the vast emptiness around them.
She bid the beast of burden to stop, its low grumble of confusion barely registering.
"There's magic here... hidden... very well, in fact."
She said as Vas hopped nimbly from her shoulder to perch on top of her head, his ears swiveling, sensing the shift. She dismounted, her boots sinking slightly into the hot sand. Her intuition, especially when it came to matters of the arcane, were scarcely wrong. She just needed to not rely on her eyes, which showed only sand and heat, and instead trust her keen sense of smell, a residual perk of being a panther witch – the ability to scent the faintest trace of magic, like a predator tracking prey.
"I'm certain..." she murmured, closing her eyes for a moment, letting the unnatural cold and the faint, hidden tang of power wash over her.
Her eyes flashed open, glowing violet for the briefest of moments, before a small plume of violet flames manifested in the palm of her hand, burning cool against her skin. From it, her grimoire, Morrow, manifested. It was more than just a book; it was the culmination of her numerous decades of magical study, the entirety of her magical focus and know-how inscribed within its heavy, leather-bound covers. A witch's grimoire was as intricate and essential to them as an arm or an eye. Her hand, guided by instinct and need, graced over the cover before it sprang open, responding to her intent, going directly to the spell she needed. Luverios, A fundamental working designed to disrupt, to reveal, to peel back layers.
"Luverios..." she uttered, the arcane words familiar on her tongue, a low chant against the wind.
Her magic responded, manifesting not as heat, but as an ebbing wave of violet energy that pulsed outwards. It shimmered in the air, a visible distortion, before it burned away the illusion before her, like mist before the sun.
And then, it was there. Towering above the horizon where only moments before there had been empty dune, a massive pyramid loomed into existence, casting a long, unnatural shadow across the sand. It was made of dark stone, alien and imposing, utterly out of place in the natural landscape. The Sepulcher of the Eastern Star. Her destination. The source of the chilling magic that hung heavy in the air. It was real. And it awaited.
A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis[End]
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Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis[End]
Last edited by Ozma Luvian on Wed Jan 14, 2026 12:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
The moment the pyramid’s outline bled into the physical plane, the light that had been spilling from the moon-lit clearing was swallowed whole by a dark, foreboding aura. It was as if a black tide had risen from the earth, dragging the very air into its depths. The edges of the stone shimmered, not with reflection but with a subtle, throbbing ripple that bent the laws of physics around it like a heat haze over desert sand.
Flux's eyes narrowed, the violet tattoo on her temple pulsing in sync with the distortion. She had seen this before—margins, the thin slivers where reality folded upon itself, a veil between what was and what could be. Margins were the First Coven’s legacy: pockets of twisted reality where air could bleed red, earth could breathe, water could burn—each as variable as the sorcerer who shaped it. A Margin was no innocent accident. It was born of colossal pressure, folded under our plane like a scar—and this one had held for centuries. It held Isis.
Flux knew this margin had held for an age because it was crafted with flawless precision. “A testament to the prowess of the First Coven,” she thought, feeling the weight of centuries pressing down on the violet sigil at her throat. The air tasted of rust and time, thick with the residue of ancient spells.
She drew a deep, stark breath, nerves thrumming beneath her skin like live wires. She could not turn back now; the queen’s trust was a rope tied around her heart, and she would not let it fray.
Queen Everfall—matriarch of the Seven Realms of Serpenterra—stood in silence across the astral divide, barefoot on the marble throne of the Hall of Mirrors, her milky eyes fixed on the event unfolding beyond space. Revered and feared, she spoke sparingly, but every utterance bent destiny. It was she who had foreseen the unraveling.
And it was she who had whispered one name before the ritual began: “Isis.”
Flux crouched before the Margin’s lip—a jagged tear suspended in mid-air, a wound in the world. Beyond it, layers of primeval darkness pulsed like a dying star’s last breath. Within that prison’s heart: Isis, the Fallen Mother, weeping nightmares into existence with every blink of her hollow eyes. An eater of witches. a Magi- Gari of immense power.
To breach the margin, Flux would have to dissolve the anchor—the knot of raw, unshaped magic that tethered the fold to reality. Destroy it, and the margin would collapse. But the cost was final: anyone who crossed would be trapped in the Astral Void, forever severed from return—unless one became the new hinge, the living anchor to seal the breach from within.
She opened her grimoire, Morrow. The pages flared with violet light. Motes of lavender fireflies erupted from the parchment, swirling around her like a halo of living embers. Magic surged through her veins, a pressure that made her heart drum like a war song.
Vas, her familiar, settled on the crest of her shoulder—his presence a warm hum against her skin, a counterweight to the cold dread rising in her gut.
“I will protect everyone’s smiles,” she whispered, the mantra rippling through the air like a prayer. The motes ignited into lavender flames, coalescing around Flux’s bare feet, forming a living carpet of fire that etched glowing runes into the soil. The symbols pulsed with power, ancient and forgotten, written in the tongue of the Serpenterra witches. A casting circle of unprecedented strength.
Flux raised her hands, blood thrumming in her temples.
“Panther.”
The runes ignited. They danced like molten magma beneath her skin. Her ancestral tattoo—tribal marking of amber and black—flared with violet fire, each line and symbol pulsing in time with the margin’s erratic heartbeat.
“Panterra.”
The air thickened. Reality buckled. She could see it now: the anchor, a luminous knot suspended at the apex of the pyramid’s shadow, pulsing with a rhythm like a sleeping god’s breath. It was pure potential—intent made flesh, the will of the First Coven crystallized into a single, fragile point.
Flux felt its pull, a gravity not of mass but of meaning.
She stepped forward.
“Pantopia.”
The final word cracked like thunder. The resonance between her and Vas surged into immolation, magic crackling at the tips of her fingers. The ancestral sigils on her arm blazed—ribbons of violet magma beneath her skin, mapping the unseen lines of cosmic pressure.
Time stuttered.
And with a breath, she reached into the veil—and plucked the anchor free.
Reality screamed.
A spiderweb of fractures exploded outward, splintering the air, shattering light into jagged shards. The margin convulsed, collapsing inward. A vortex tore open—a swirling tunnel of black and violet, screaming with the voices of forgotten spells. It seized her, Vas, and the remnants of her incantation, hurling them through the fold.
Then—silence.
Flux's eyes narrowed, the violet tattoo on her temple pulsing in sync with the distortion. She had seen this before—margins, the thin slivers where reality folded upon itself, a veil between what was and what could be. Margins were the First Coven’s legacy: pockets of twisted reality where air could bleed red, earth could breathe, water could burn—each as variable as the sorcerer who shaped it. A Margin was no innocent accident. It was born of colossal pressure, folded under our plane like a scar—and this one had held for centuries. It held Isis.
Flux knew this margin had held for an age because it was crafted with flawless precision. “A testament to the prowess of the First Coven,” she thought, feeling the weight of centuries pressing down on the violet sigil at her throat. The air tasted of rust and time, thick with the residue of ancient spells.
She drew a deep, stark breath, nerves thrumming beneath her skin like live wires. She could not turn back now; the queen’s trust was a rope tied around her heart, and she would not let it fray.
Queen Everfall—matriarch of the Seven Realms of Serpenterra—stood in silence across the astral divide, barefoot on the marble throne of the Hall of Mirrors, her milky eyes fixed on the event unfolding beyond space. Revered and feared, she spoke sparingly, but every utterance bent destiny. It was she who had foreseen the unraveling.
And it was she who had whispered one name before the ritual began: “Isis.”
Flux crouched before the Margin’s lip—a jagged tear suspended in mid-air, a wound in the world. Beyond it, layers of primeval darkness pulsed like a dying star’s last breath. Within that prison’s heart: Isis, the Fallen Mother, weeping nightmares into existence with every blink of her hollow eyes. An eater of witches. a Magi- Gari of immense power.
To breach the margin, Flux would have to dissolve the anchor—the knot of raw, unshaped magic that tethered the fold to reality. Destroy it, and the margin would collapse. But the cost was final: anyone who crossed would be trapped in the Astral Void, forever severed from return—unless one became the new hinge, the living anchor to seal the breach from within.
She opened her grimoire, Morrow. The pages flared with violet light. Motes of lavender fireflies erupted from the parchment, swirling around her like a halo of living embers. Magic surged through her veins, a pressure that made her heart drum like a war song.
Vas, her familiar, settled on the crest of her shoulder—his presence a warm hum against her skin, a counterweight to the cold dread rising in her gut.
“I will protect everyone’s smiles,” she whispered, the mantra rippling through the air like a prayer. The motes ignited into lavender flames, coalescing around Flux’s bare feet, forming a living carpet of fire that etched glowing runes into the soil. The symbols pulsed with power, ancient and forgotten, written in the tongue of the Serpenterra witches. A casting circle of unprecedented strength.
Flux raised her hands, blood thrumming in her temples.
“Panther.”
The runes ignited. They danced like molten magma beneath her skin. Her ancestral tattoo—tribal marking of amber and black—flared with violet fire, each line and symbol pulsing in time with the margin’s erratic heartbeat.
“Panterra.”
The air thickened. Reality buckled. She could see it now: the anchor, a luminous knot suspended at the apex of the pyramid’s shadow, pulsing with a rhythm like a sleeping god’s breath. It was pure potential—intent made flesh, the will of the First Coven crystallized into a single, fragile point.
Flux felt its pull, a gravity not of mass but of meaning.
She stepped forward.
“Pantopia.”
The final word cracked like thunder. The resonance between her and Vas surged into immolation, magic crackling at the tips of her fingers. The ancestral sigils on her arm blazed—ribbons of violet magma beneath her skin, mapping the unseen lines of cosmic pressure.
Time stuttered.
And with a breath, she reached into the veil—and plucked the anchor free.
Reality screamed.
A spiderweb of fractures exploded outward, splintering the air, shattering light into jagged shards. The margin convulsed, collapsing inward. A vortex tore open—a swirling tunnel of black and violet, screaming with the voices of forgotten spells. It seized her, Vas, and the remnants of her incantation, hurling them through the fold.
Then—silence.
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Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
Flux opened her eyes upon the Astral Realm.
It was not a place. Not in the literal sense, at least. It was a thought strong enough to create a reality unto itself. A plane woven from memory, will, and longing.
Hunger.
Stars here were not suns, but points of concentrated intent—each a humming node of consciousness, drifting in an ocean of concept. The air smelled of old incense, of myrrh and decayed parchment, of chants whispered into the dark.
And she was here.
Isis.
Not as a woman. Not as spirit. A presence—a shape of shifting darkness that writhed beyond form. A necromancer who once taught the dead to walk as gods, who whispered into graves and made them answer. Now, she was a prisoner of her own power, bound by the margin, her tears birthing nightmares that clawed at the edges of the world. Agents of her vast appetite, feasting not on brains nor the flesh of the living, but on magic.
"How long has it been?"
A haunting voice echoed in the encroaching black. It felt like a litany of tingling feelings over Flux’s body, like hundreds of prickly sensations and goosebumps over her skin.
"Yes… so much time," the voice whispered, now intimate, a lover's promise filled with doom. "My Lament has been silent for too long. It carves carrion into blights, it forges the dead into feasts. Why else would they send a child? A lone cub to face my brood?"
The darkness writhed, forming nebulous shapes that were both terrifying and alluring. Flux stood her ground, a single point of warmth and light in the encroaching cold. She felt the presence of an Abyssal, a being so powerful it could consume entire domains. This was Isis, the Maji-Gari who had driven her kind to near extinction.
"Oh…?" The voice shifted, taking on a new, predatory intensity. A deep, wet sniffing sound echoed through the sepulcher. "Could it be? A child carrying the stench of Elder Magic…"
Flux’s grip tightened on the grimoire tucked into her belt, its familiar weight a comfort.
"You reek of Maho… the sweet smoldering sulfuric smell of Salem itself," Isis purred, and now the hunger was undeniable, a raw, primal need that scraped against Flux’s soul. "A delicacy. A rare meal. Perhaps you are an offering from Everfall, after all. How long has it been since she sent one of her foolish little witches to die?"
The witches before, those who gave their lives to fortify the anchor that held the Margin in place. But unfortunately for Isis, Flux had decided on the way here that she was not going to honor her Queen's request.
"You mistake my presence here," Flux stated, her voice ringing with clarity. She had resolved, the moment she touched the boundary of this purid realm, that she was going to burn it away.
All of it.
"What are you talking about, little witch?" The voice was a silken threat.
"I am not here as your jailer," Flux said, her eyes beginning to glow." I have come as your end."
"So brave, so determined, but worry not, little cub," the voice soothed, as the shadows around Flux’s feet surged upward, coalescing into tangible, incorporeal hands. They gripped her legs, her arms, their chilling pressure real and suffocating. One solidified around her throat, squeezing. "All your worries, your troubles, and fears will now come to an end. Forfeit your light, relinquish your Maho, and join your family!"
The darkness collapsed inward, forming a maw of pure void, a mouth lined with fangs of ebony starlight. It snapped shut, devouring Flux whole.
The Astral Realm plunged into absolute silence.
Then, a flicker.
"Pantopia..."
A single spark of violet flame immolated in the void. It grew, blooming into a brilliant, spectral fire that plumed from Flux’s form. Unyielding passion burning, flaring, brazen. This was the Soul Flame, a power that could not be consumed, only shared or ignited.
The void shrieked. A wave of pain, psychic and profound, reverberated through the realm. The darkness fled from the cleansing fire, recoiling as if scalded.
The illusion shattered.
The oppressive emptiness dissolved, replaced by the horrifying truth of the realm. It was a Grand Necropolis. A domain of the living dead, an entire field of desiccated corpses stretched out beneath a sky of bruised purple. Spires of polished bone clawed at the heavens. And from the ground, they rose. A legion. Flesh-walkers, zombies, skeletal horrors—all stitched together from the remains of the witches Isis had devoured. Their hollow eyes fixed on Flux. Mounds of flesh coiled together into Behemoth as tall as the spire itself. Flailing incarnations of flesh and bone given breath by the dark divine of their creator. She who could bind the fallen a sealmessly as one would tie a show.
It was not a place. Not in the literal sense, at least. It was a thought strong enough to create a reality unto itself. A plane woven from memory, will, and longing.
Hunger.
Stars here were not suns, but points of concentrated intent—each a humming node of consciousness, drifting in an ocean of concept. The air smelled of old incense, of myrrh and decayed parchment, of chants whispered into the dark.
And she was here.
Isis.
Not as a woman. Not as spirit. A presence—a shape of shifting darkness that writhed beyond form. A necromancer who once taught the dead to walk as gods, who whispered into graves and made them answer. Now, she was a prisoner of her own power, bound by the margin, her tears birthing nightmares that clawed at the edges of the world. Agents of her vast appetite, feasting not on brains nor the flesh of the living, but on magic.
"How long has it been?"
A haunting voice echoed in the encroaching black. It felt like a litany of tingling feelings over Flux’s body, like hundreds of prickly sensations and goosebumps over her skin.
"Yes… so much time," the voice whispered, now intimate, a lover's promise filled with doom. "My Lament has been silent for too long. It carves carrion into blights, it forges the dead into feasts. Why else would they send a child? A lone cub to face my brood?"
The darkness writhed, forming nebulous shapes that were both terrifying and alluring. Flux stood her ground, a single point of warmth and light in the encroaching cold. She felt the presence of an Abyssal, a being so powerful it could consume entire domains. This was Isis, the Maji-Gari who had driven her kind to near extinction.
"Oh…?" The voice shifted, taking on a new, predatory intensity. A deep, wet sniffing sound echoed through the sepulcher. "Could it be? A child carrying the stench of Elder Magic…"
Flux’s grip tightened on the grimoire tucked into her belt, its familiar weight a comfort.
"You reek of Maho… the sweet smoldering sulfuric smell of Salem itself," Isis purred, and now the hunger was undeniable, a raw, primal need that scraped against Flux’s soul. "A delicacy. A rare meal. Perhaps you are an offering from Everfall, after all. How long has it been since she sent one of her foolish little witches to die?"
The witches before, those who gave their lives to fortify the anchor that held the Margin in place. But unfortunately for Isis, Flux had decided on the way here that she was not going to honor her Queen's request.
"You mistake my presence here," Flux stated, her voice ringing with clarity. She had resolved, the moment she touched the boundary of this purid realm, that she was going to burn it away.
All of it.
"What are you talking about, little witch?" The voice was a silken threat.
"I am not here as your jailer," Flux said, her eyes beginning to glow." I have come as your end."
"So brave, so determined, but worry not, little cub," the voice soothed, as the shadows around Flux’s feet surged upward, coalescing into tangible, incorporeal hands. They gripped her legs, her arms, their chilling pressure real and suffocating. One solidified around her throat, squeezing. "All your worries, your troubles, and fears will now come to an end. Forfeit your light, relinquish your Maho, and join your family!"
The darkness collapsed inward, forming a maw of pure void, a mouth lined with fangs of ebony starlight. It snapped shut, devouring Flux whole.
The Astral Realm plunged into absolute silence.
Then, a flicker.
"Pantopia..."
A single spark of violet flame immolated in the void. It grew, blooming into a brilliant, spectral fire that plumed from Flux’s form. Unyielding passion burning, flaring, brazen. This was the Soul Flame, a power that could not be consumed, only shared or ignited.
The void shrieked. A wave of pain, psychic and profound, reverberated through the realm. The darkness fled from the cleansing fire, recoiling as if scalded.
The illusion shattered.
The oppressive emptiness dissolved, replaced by the horrifying truth of the realm. It was a Grand Necropolis. A domain of the living dead, an entire field of desiccated corpses stretched out beneath a sky of bruised purple. Spires of polished bone clawed at the heavens. And from the ground, they rose. A legion. Flesh-walkers, zombies, skeletal horrors—all stitched together from the remains of the witches Isis had devoured. Their hollow eyes fixed on Flux. Mounds of flesh coiled together into Behemoth as tall as the spire itself. Flailing incarnations of flesh and bone given breath by the dark divine of their creator. She who could bind the fallen a sealmessly as one would tie a show.
-
Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
The air at the edge of the Grand Necropolis was not merely dead; it was a physical weight, pressing down with the suffocating grief of ten thousand years. Flux stood her ground against it, a singular point of defiance in a landscape of rot. The stench was an assault—acrid, heavy with the sweet rot of open graves and the copper tang of old blood. But worse than the smell was the sound: the shrill, ceaseless wail of lost souls, a choir of torment that scraped against the mind.
Before her, the Fallen Drachiot rose again. Thousands of shattered husks, sown back together by Isis’s malignant desire. Bones popped and realigned like cracked ivory in a smith’s anvil; sinew wove anew in undulating, gristly ribbons. Faces half-formed flickered into existence only to rip themselves apart again as Isis’s soul-sorcery stitched each broken vessel back into a nightmare army.
Flux felt her chest tighten with an agony that was not her own. She had seen them broken, their ethereal beauty twisted into grotesque parodies of life. But this time it was different. This time, she would plunge into that pulsing mass of stitched-together flesh and shatter it forever.
She raised her face to the gloom, her lavender eyes glowing like twin embers in the choking dusk.
“Fear not, my sisters,” she called, her voice a clarion in the storm of groans. “You will suffer not a day longer. Let's go, Vas.”
In the midst of the screaming wind, a soft, familiar purr rose from her sleeve. Vas, her sleek, midnight-furred companion, leapt onto her forearm, his eyes glowing like twin lilac lanterns. As his paws touched her skin, each print ignited a rune—a sigil of the Wandering, pulsating with violet light. Vas stretched his whiskers, his form shimmering then coalescing into a sphere of lavender fire. The light swirled around Flux’s hands, entering her own flesh, merging with the ember that lived deep within her heart. In that instant, the ancient art of Amplification took hold—her familiar’s essence braided with her own, granting her the feral essence of a panther and an unquenchable inferno.
Flames erupted along her arms and legs, their tongues curling into sleek, obsidian claws that flickered with violet embers. She crouched, lithe and fierce, her eyes twin daggers of lavender cutting through the blackened dusk.
From the heart of the horde came Isis’s mocking echo, vibrating through the very marrow of the reanimated corpses: “I MUST HAVE YOU!!!”
At her command, the shambled army lunged. Dozens of stitched limbs lashed out, craving blood. Flux met them with a dancer’s grace and a demon’s fury. She leaped forward, claws arcing in a ribbon of violet flame that sliced through bone and sinew. Flesh evaporated in blinding sparks as ragged forms fell away, each fragment smoldering to ash. But as the ash settled, the souls trapped within screamed louder, their energy fueling the regeneration of the very limbs Flux had just severed.
A second wave surged, a grotesque fusion of bodies pressing in on her flanks. A towering figure with blade-like forearms swung at her side. The edge of that fractured limb scored her thigh, carving a shallow gash that bloomed fire in her nerves. Flux hissed, the pain sharp and real, but it only fed the inferno within. She danced back on cat-like legs, coiling her body and launching into a brutal crescent kick. The impact buried the blow into the thing’s skull, shearing the bone and sending a geyser of ember-smoke skyward. The corpse’s head shattered, its empty sockets weeping gray ash.
Her heart pounded. She had felled hundreds already, but as she cut through the horde, she glimpsed faces she once loved. Sisters she had trained beside—now hollow shells fueled by agony and bound to Isis’s will. A face with gentle eyes, now vacant, looked at her for a split second before a ribcage exploded outward to form a jagged shield. Each death, each re-killing, tore at her soul like a blade. Yet that sorrow only sharpened her resolve into a diamond-hard point.
She sowed destruction in her wake. Every swing of her flaming claws cleaved multiple foes; every pivot left a crater of scorching earth. Soul Flame surged through her, devouring lesser flames and growing ever more incandescent. The Necropolis floor cracked beneath her furious ballet of death.
But still the horde pressed on. A wave of mutilated bodies collapsed upon her, burying her under a mountain of rotting meat and shattered bone. For a moment, there was only darkness and the press of dead flesh. Then, a violet nova detonated.
Flux erupted from the pile, wreathed in a corona of pure soul-fire. She was panting now, the raw energy she expended taking its toll, but the inferno in her veins burned hotter than fear.
A rumble shook the ground—an ominous herald. Flux skidded to a halt, violet eyes rising. Above her towered one of Isis’s colossal Maji-gari behemoths: a spire of rotting flesh and soul-scarred bone, its arm the size of a fortress gate. Strips of flesh dangled like draperies; all across its torso, faces of Drachiot grimaced and screamed, mouths moving in eternal pain. It was a walking cathedral of suffering.
Flux’s blood went cold, but she did not flee. Instead, the space before her seemed to ripple just before the earth shattered in a crater that dwarfed the one she created only moments before.
As the dust settled, Isis’s voice snaked through the ruin, bitter and hungry: “You cannot hide from me, Drachiot.”
Isis's voice rang from everywhere and nowhere. The Fleshwalker felt not the smoldering innards of its target but the weighted frustration of absence as the dust cleared. Flux was nowhere to be found. Until it spotted a spec trailing across its arms. A trail that scathed its flesh, craving mounds of flesh and searing bone, it was Flux scaling the beast's massive arm. She had used her portal magic to dodge the creature's assault and land herself on its arm.
The monster reeled, a thousand stitched flesh-cables unfurling from its other arm to impale her. Flux weaved between each bony spear, feline and fluid. Her arms came together, forming a set of burning paws that grew three times their normal size. Her legs swelled with flames, granting her an incredible burst of speed. Like a twisting, eviscerating comet, she scaled the creature's arms, dodging and incinerating her way forward until she climbed onto the behemoth’s head. The flesh thing wailed, a sound that shook the very air, and with a vehemence that burned white-hot, Flux sank her claws into the roof of its mouth and sprang inside the beast.
Before her, the Fallen Drachiot rose again. Thousands of shattered husks, sown back together by Isis’s malignant desire. Bones popped and realigned like cracked ivory in a smith’s anvil; sinew wove anew in undulating, gristly ribbons. Faces half-formed flickered into existence only to rip themselves apart again as Isis’s soul-sorcery stitched each broken vessel back into a nightmare army.
Flux felt her chest tighten with an agony that was not her own. She had seen them broken, their ethereal beauty twisted into grotesque parodies of life. But this time it was different. This time, she would plunge into that pulsing mass of stitched-together flesh and shatter it forever.
She raised her face to the gloom, her lavender eyes glowing like twin embers in the choking dusk.
“Fear not, my sisters,” she called, her voice a clarion in the storm of groans. “You will suffer not a day longer. Let's go, Vas.”
In the midst of the screaming wind, a soft, familiar purr rose from her sleeve. Vas, her sleek, midnight-furred companion, leapt onto her forearm, his eyes glowing like twin lilac lanterns. As his paws touched her skin, each print ignited a rune—a sigil of the Wandering, pulsating with violet light. Vas stretched his whiskers, his form shimmering then coalescing into a sphere of lavender fire. The light swirled around Flux’s hands, entering her own flesh, merging with the ember that lived deep within her heart. In that instant, the ancient art of Amplification took hold—her familiar’s essence braided with her own, granting her the feral essence of a panther and an unquenchable inferno.
Flames erupted along her arms and legs, their tongues curling into sleek, obsidian claws that flickered with violet embers. She crouched, lithe and fierce, her eyes twin daggers of lavender cutting through the blackened dusk.
From the heart of the horde came Isis’s mocking echo, vibrating through the very marrow of the reanimated corpses: “I MUST HAVE YOU!!!”
At her command, the shambled army lunged. Dozens of stitched limbs lashed out, craving blood. Flux met them with a dancer’s grace and a demon’s fury. She leaped forward, claws arcing in a ribbon of violet flame that sliced through bone and sinew. Flesh evaporated in blinding sparks as ragged forms fell away, each fragment smoldering to ash. But as the ash settled, the souls trapped within screamed louder, their energy fueling the regeneration of the very limbs Flux had just severed.
A second wave surged, a grotesque fusion of bodies pressing in on her flanks. A towering figure with blade-like forearms swung at her side. The edge of that fractured limb scored her thigh, carving a shallow gash that bloomed fire in her nerves. Flux hissed, the pain sharp and real, but it only fed the inferno within. She danced back on cat-like legs, coiling her body and launching into a brutal crescent kick. The impact buried the blow into the thing’s skull, shearing the bone and sending a geyser of ember-smoke skyward. The corpse’s head shattered, its empty sockets weeping gray ash.
Her heart pounded. She had felled hundreds already, but as she cut through the horde, she glimpsed faces she once loved. Sisters she had trained beside—now hollow shells fueled by agony and bound to Isis’s will. A face with gentle eyes, now vacant, looked at her for a split second before a ribcage exploded outward to form a jagged shield. Each death, each re-killing, tore at her soul like a blade. Yet that sorrow only sharpened her resolve into a diamond-hard point.
She sowed destruction in her wake. Every swing of her flaming claws cleaved multiple foes; every pivot left a crater of scorching earth. Soul Flame surged through her, devouring lesser flames and growing ever more incandescent. The Necropolis floor cracked beneath her furious ballet of death.
But still the horde pressed on. A wave of mutilated bodies collapsed upon her, burying her under a mountain of rotting meat and shattered bone. For a moment, there was only darkness and the press of dead flesh. Then, a violet nova detonated.
Flux erupted from the pile, wreathed in a corona of pure soul-fire. She was panting now, the raw energy she expended taking its toll, but the inferno in her veins burned hotter than fear.
A rumble shook the ground—an ominous herald. Flux skidded to a halt, violet eyes rising. Above her towered one of Isis’s colossal Maji-gari behemoths: a spire of rotting flesh and soul-scarred bone, its arm the size of a fortress gate. Strips of flesh dangled like draperies; all across its torso, faces of Drachiot grimaced and screamed, mouths moving in eternal pain. It was a walking cathedral of suffering.
Flux’s blood went cold, but she did not flee. Instead, the space before her seemed to ripple just before the earth shattered in a crater that dwarfed the one she created only moments before.
As the dust settled, Isis’s voice snaked through the ruin, bitter and hungry: “You cannot hide from me, Drachiot.”
Isis's voice rang from everywhere and nowhere. The Fleshwalker felt not the smoldering innards of its target but the weighted frustration of absence as the dust cleared. Flux was nowhere to be found. Until it spotted a spec trailing across its arms. A trail that scathed its flesh, craving mounds of flesh and searing bone, it was Flux scaling the beast's massive arm. She had used her portal magic to dodge the creature's assault and land herself on its arm.
The monster reeled, a thousand stitched flesh-cables unfurling from its other arm to impale her. Flux weaved between each bony spear, feline and fluid. Her arms came together, forming a set of burning paws that grew three times their normal size. Her legs swelled with flames, granting her an incredible burst of speed. Like a twisting, eviscerating comet, she scaled the creature's arms, dodging and incinerating her way forward until she climbed onto the behemoth’s head. The flesh thing wailed, a sound that shook the very air, and with a vehemence that burned white-hot, Flux sank her claws into the roof of its mouth and sprang inside the beast.
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Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
The interior was a nightmare of pulsating arteries and weeping sores. The walls were lined with faces, their eyes following her every move, whispering pleas for death, begging their kin for an end. Flux ignored them, despite how it pained her to do so, driving deeper, her claws tearing through the magical tendons that bound the creature together. She was a tempest of scalding motion and indignant fury. Yet despite the turbulence caused by her scathing movements and devastating strikes, she was not blind nor lost in grief. If anything, she was more focused and determined than she had ever been. This... evil made a mockery of her family, twisted their very forms, and perverted their natures to fuel her heinous hexes.
Her rage swathed like a roaring inferno, yes, but those flames served as a whetstone, sharpening her focus and magical prowess into a force of clear severing, finite incarnate.
She located the nexus—a pulsating puscule knot of Abyssal magic—lodged within a cage of bone. It was hardened, indomitably sewn together cartilage, layers upon layers of bone and marrow to protect the creature's heart. Flux placed her burning paw upon it, a stark shiver coiling up her spine as she was flooded with the feelings of the fallen. Their wail of woe saturated her soul with their lingering laments. But she remained herself, anchored firmly, her wits firmly intact. She could scorch her way through it, but it would cost her far more magic power than she could afford to consume right now.
She still had Isis herself to deal with.
But yet another idea dawned upon the young panther witch. It was a gamble, one she was less than sure could work, but she wouldn't be able to get to Isis with this giant impeding her. It was all or nothing.
Flux centered her breath. The sigils upon her body all began to ignite simultaneously; she looked like a burning pyre of lilac, the essence of her Elder Magic: Wandering. In its standard use, it allowed her to manipulate temporal elements to connect with the Ovalu. A nexus of different dimensional pathways and traversing them. Planes, Worlds, dimensions, down the street to the neighbors. As long as she could tap into the Ovalu, she could travel virtually anywhere with a clear enough idea of where she was going. But this was only the application of the drawn energy. She had never wielded its raw essence in her hands, let alone attempt to braid that essence into her flames, creating a blaze that could burn space itself.
But that is exactly what she did.
Her eyes were illuminated with violet luster that plumed brightly in the darkened cavern that was the giant's body. But her flames did not expand outwards. Instead, all clustered around her right hand. Tight like a rope constantly wrapped over and over the same limb until it nearly felt numb. The coral essence of her spatial magic, twisting in tandem with her coiled lilac flames, creating a local yet dazzling array of flames.
Reality seemed to buckle around her extended hand as she placed it upon the bone cage once more.
"This shit ends today!"
This time, however, the space it occupied began to distort, fracturing like glass under the intense pressure and heat generated by her hand. With a sizzle snap, the space between her and the core was no more, temporarily purged, leaving nothing to protect the creature's heart any longer. She then, with a passionate vehemence, gripped the bleating mass of foul magic and spoke her spell's name.
"Giga Fang!!
And then... she nuked it.
Releasing every ounce of coiled braided flame ever within her hand into a soaring sky-scraper of burning spatial inferno. It spiderwebbed across the fragile seams of reality, coursing through the entirety of the behemoth's skeleton, burning and collapsing everything, turning the massive creature into a gargantuan totem of coral ash.
The behemoth shuddered, its outer shell crumbling from the inside out as the magic sustaining it collapsed. Flux burst from its chest as the monster disintegrated into a rain of ash and freed souls behind her.
She landed lightly on the cracked earth, breathing heavily, the flames around her flickering but still burning. The horde, momentarily stunned by the destruction of their masterwork, fell back.
Her rage swathed like a roaring inferno, yes, but those flames served as a whetstone, sharpening her focus and magical prowess into a force of clear severing, finite incarnate.
She located the nexus—a pulsating puscule knot of Abyssal magic—lodged within a cage of bone. It was hardened, indomitably sewn together cartilage, layers upon layers of bone and marrow to protect the creature's heart. Flux placed her burning paw upon it, a stark shiver coiling up her spine as she was flooded with the feelings of the fallen. Their wail of woe saturated her soul with their lingering laments. But she remained herself, anchored firmly, her wits firmly intact. She could scorch her way through it, but it would cost her far more magic power than she could afford to consume right now.
She still had Isis herself to deal with.
But yet another idea dawned upon the young panther witch. It was a gamble, one she was less than sure could work, but she wouldn't be able to get to Isis with this giant impeding her. It was all or nothing.
Flux centered her breath. The sigils upon her body all began to ignite simultaneously; she looked like a burning pyre of lilac, the essence of her Elder Magic: Wandering. In its standard use, it allowed her to manipulate temporal elements to connect with the Ovalu. A nexus of different dimensional pathways and traversing them. Planes, Worlds, dimensions, down the street to the neighbors. As long as she could tap into the Ovalu, she could travel virtually anywhere with a clear enough idea of where she was going. But this was only the application of the drawn energy. She had never wielded its raw essence in her hands, let alone attempt to braid that essence into her flames, creating a blaze that could burn space itself.
But that is exactly what she did.
Her eyes were illuminated with violet luster that plumed brightly in the darkened cavern that was the giant's body. But her flames did not expand outwards. Instead, all clustered around her right hand. Tight like a rope constantly wrapped over and over the same limb until it nearly felt numb. The coral essence of her spatial magic, twisting in tandem with her coiled lilac flames, creating a local yet dazzling array of flames.
Reality seemed to buckle around her extended hand as she placed it upon the bone cage once more.
"This shit ends today!"
This time, however, the space it occupied began to distort, fracturing like glass under the intense pressure and heat generated by her hand. With a sizzle snap, the space between her and the core was no more, temporarily purged, leaving nothing to protect the creature's heart any longer. She then, with a passionate vehemence, gripped the bleating mass of foul magic and spoke her spell's name.
"Giga Fang!!
And then... she nuked it.
Releasing every ounce of coiled braided flame ever within her hand into a soaring sky-scraper of burning spatial inferno. It spiderwebbed across the fragile seams of reality, coursing through the entirety of the behemoth's skeleton, burning and collapsing everything, turning the massive creature into a gargantuan totem of coral ash.
The behemoth shuddered, its outer shell crumbling from the inside out as the magic sustaining it collapsed. Flux burst from its chest as the monster disintegrated into a rain of ash and freed souls behind her.
She landed lightly on the cracked earth, breathing heavily, the flames around her flickering but still burning. The horde, momentarily stunned by the destruction of their masterwork, fell back.
-
Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
Her breath was slightly labored, but she was still in rare form. Her blaze licked at the passing gales of stale death-stained wind. Her hair, the shade of coiled night, wafted like a flickering candle amid fleeting breezes. She had proven time and time again that these creatures were incapable of felling her, no matter their size or the ingenuity of their master. Upon exiting the smoldering carcass of the Behemoth, she landed leagues away from the main horde. She stood now before a massive black structure. It was here that Flux could feel the highest concentration of necrotic energy, death magic in its raw form. The Black Pyramid.... there was a term for it, she pawed at it, meaning in the back of her mind.
"A Ziggeraut, a throne of Necromancy"
The thought finally surfaced. Though she had never encountered one in the "flesh," she had experienced the remnants of their essence in ruins that once housed them. Places like cemeteries or cities built above burial grounds. The dreams she had there, the echoes of past occurrences, the wars fought on those grounds, were always her least favorite astral experiences. But she forced herself to endure them, and thankfully so, for it forged her understanding of the foe she faced today. A necromancer of the unpredicnated caliber.
Flux inhaled deeply, folding her arms.
"Isis!"
She roared the name of her quarry. She had enough of these games; it was time for the big bad herself to take to the front lines.
"How long are you going to cower behind the flesh of my sisters?"
Flux eyes mirrored stars burning, gleaming, pressuring.
"Face me, demon! Face me and burn!"
Her voice echoed through the expanse, louder than the murming of the Flesh Wlakers around her.
And then... silence
Stark, bold, and absolute.
A void of sound so dense that Flux could barely hear her own breath. The top of the obsidian pyramid unfurled, like a lotus blooming. From it, a pillar of blistering green energy burst forth.
The deep silence was broken, and with it came an aria of scorned screams that filled the realm. It hammered against Flux's mind like the barreling blows of a juggernaut thereaning to fracture her psyche. From within the center of the spiraling energy beam, a figure emerged. Abyssals were regarded as massive beasts capable of consuming entire kingdoms with a single breath, and yet the entity that appeared before Flux was not that of a towering beast, but that of a woman. A mummified corpse covered in wrappings etched with a language that even Flux, who had studied hundreds, nearing a thousand different tongues across vescrutia, could not decipher. Her wrist was covered in glowing gold and jade bracelets that coiled up her arms, stopping just short of her shoulders. Upon her head, a crown grafted from bone, polished to mirror steel, engraved with malachite jewels with a large balkened emerald at its center.
No, this was not the creature she expected
But that essence radiating off her was no less monstrous nor mountainous. Isis was enveloped in an aura that literally forced those around her to bow; it was no inviataion it was a mandate. The legions of Flesh Wlaker, bound to her dogma submittied with gale forced ot thier kneees; some even collapsed into bloddy mound of flesh mess as thier form were not strong enough to hold themselves together so close to her. Even Flux was nearly made to take the knee, but she insisted upon herself, fortifying her entire form thoroughly with her magic, allowing her to stand defiantly before this entity.
"Cowering? Me?"
Though the space where our mouth should be was crapped tightly in bandages, Isis' voice could still be heard, telepathically.
"Though I am inclined to say, it's been a while since I've seen a little witchling with so much...gall...so much...Maho..."
Her rise in intrigue came with a palpable deepening of her oppressive aura. It hugged her tightly like a second skin, yet ebbed from her for miles on end.
"Yes... yes from here I can sense it nearly as clearly as the accursed sun itself. You...are a Daughter of Salem. So this was Everfall's ploy all along. Sending these... riff raft to their death just long enough to hold the seal, just long enough till one with the blood of savant to be born... sharpened and turned against me. My...her magic power "Soon To Be" is more poignant than even I could have ever guessed."
Flux gaze widened for just a spell. So then none of this was by coincidence. If this... demon's words held any spark of truth, it would pull together the things both Elara and her Queen, Everfal,l disclosed to her. For Isis to know of the Savant, she truly was a being from the time of the First Coven.
"Astute deductions, Isis, thank you for affirming what I know I must do."
Flux stared the Abyssal down. If looks could burn, Isis would be a pillar of flame right now. The enemity flowing from Flux was like sipping the marrow from bone, a delicacy to Isis whose own gaze narrowed.
"What can you possibly hope to achieve? The amount of Maho flowing through me is borderline cosmic! You shall fall, you will lose, and feed my eternity just as all those simple little witches before you."
Isis sneered, flashing images of Flux's defeat in her mind. But she didn't buckle, nor crumble, only seethed, only burned brighter.
"They did not fail...no not in the slightest..."
Flux's mind became a war ground, for every indication of defeat that Isis tried to weave into her pysche Flux combated it with a solid truth, a sister's face who helped shape her into who she was now. A teacher, a friend, a neighbor, a community of women who longed for freedom, who loved magic, now bound by necromancy.
"Every Drachoit who gave their life to this Margin, to the fight against you, had one thought on their mind, I'm sure of it."
Flux's form became emboldened by aslowly growing light. Try as it might, despite the power and depth of Isis's aura, Flux's own will defied it to no end. Flux appeared like a single light in a stark and endless night, the last star in a consumed constellation.
"To leave behind a stone for the next ones to follow, flint carved from the heart of their souls for the next sister to find, immolate and lay to rest. Until one came along who would ignite it into a pyre that would see you reduced to ash."
It was then that Isis could feel it, the burning resilience of Flux's maho, the very essence of her magic, grow from a simmering heat to a roaring fury.
"Isis, make your peace now, I am that spark, the inferno that will set your funeral pyre ablaze!"
It forced her back, even if only a single step. But that single step revealed Isis's own fear...and that infuriated the Abyssal to no end.
This girl had to die...now
"A Ziggeraut, a throne of Necromancy"
The thought finally surfaced. Though she had never encountered one in the "flesh," she had experienced the remnants of their essence in ruins that once housed them. Places like cemeteries or cities built above burial grounds. The dreams she had there, the echoes of past occurrences, the wars fought on those grounds, were always her least favorite astral experiences. But she forced herself to endure them, and thankfully so, for it forged her understanding of the foe she faced today. A necromancer of the unpredicnated caliber.
Flux inhaled deeply, folding her arms.
"Isis!"
She roared the name of her quarry. She had enough of these games; it was time for the big bad herself to take to the front lines.
"How long are you going to cower behind the flesh of my sisters?"
Flux eyes mirrored stars burning, gleaming, pressuring.
"Face me, demon! Face me and burn!"
Her voice echoed through the expanse, louder than the murming of the Flesh Wlakers around her.
And then... silence
Stark, bold, and absolute.
A void of sound so dense that Flux could barely hear her own breath. The top of the obsidian pyramid unfurled, like a lotus blooming. From it, a pillar of blistering green energy burst forth.
The deep silence was broken, and with it came an aria of scorned screams that filled the realm. It hammered against Flux's mind like the barreling blows of a juggernaut thereaning to fracture her psyche. From within the center of the spiraling energy beam, a figure emerged. Abyssals were regarded as massive beasts capable of consuming entire kingdoms with a single breath, and yet the entity that appeared before Flux was not that of a towering beast, but that of a woman. A mummified corpse covered in wrappings etched with a language that even Flux, who had studied hundreds, nearing a thousand different tongues across vescrutia, could not decipher. Her wrist was covered in glowing gold and jade bracelets that coiled up her arms, stopping just short of her shoulders. Upon her head, a crown grafted from bone, polished to mirror steel, engraved with malachite jewels with a large balkened emerald at its center.
No, this was not the creature she expected
But that essence radiating off her was no less monstrous nor mountainous. Isis was enveloped in an aura that literally forced those around her to bow; it was no inviataion it was a mandate. The legions of Flesh Wlaker, bound to her dogma submittied with gale forced ot thier kneees; some even collapsed into bloddy mound of flesh mess as thier form were not strong enough to hold themselves together so close to her. Even Flux was nearly made to take the knee, but she insisted upon herself, fortifying her entire form thoroughly with her magic, allowing her to stand defiantly before this entity.
"Cowering? Me?"
Though the space where our mouth should be was crapped tightly in bandages, Isis' voice could still be heard, telepathically.
"Though I am inclined to say, it's been a while since I've seen a little witchling with so much...gall...so much...Maho..."
Her rise in intrigue came with a palpable deepening of her oppressive aura. It hugged her tightly like a second skin, yet ebbed from her for miles on end.
"Yes... yes from here I can sense it nearly as clearly as the accursed sun itself. You...are a Daughter of Salem. So this was Everfall's ploy all along. Sending these... riff raft to their death just long enough to hold the seal, just long enough till one with the blood of savant to be born... sharpened and turned against me. My...her magic power "Soon To Be" is more poignant than even I could have ever guessed."
Flux gaze widened for just a spell. So then none of this was by coincidence. If this... demon's words held any spark of truth, it would pull together the things both Elara and her Queen, Everfal,l disclosed to her. For Isis to know of the Savant, she truly was a being from the time of the First Coven.
"Astute deductions, Isis, thank you for affirming what I know I must do."
Flux stared the Abyssal down. If looks could burn, Isis would be a pillar of flame right now. The enemity flowing from Flux was like sipping the marrow from bone, a delicacy to Isis whose own gaze narrowed.
"What can you possibly hope to achieve? The amount of Maho flowing through me is borderline cosmic! You shall fall, you will lose, and feed my eternity just as all those simple little witches before you."
Isis sneered, flashing images of Flux's defeat in her mind. But she didn't buckle, nor crumble, only seethed, only burned brighter.
"They did not fail...no not in the slightest..."
Flux's mind became a war ground, for every indication of defeat that Isis tried to weave into her pysche Flux combated it with a solid truth, a sister's face who helped shape her into who she was now. A teacher, a friend, a neighbor, a community of women who longed for freedom, who loved magic, now bound by necromancy.
"Every Drachoit who gave their life to this Margin, to the fight against you, had one thought on their mind, I'm sure of it."
Flux's form became emboldened by aslowly growing light. Try as it might, despite the power and depth of Isis's aura, Flux's own will defied it to no end. Flux appeared like a single light in a stark and endless night, the last star in a consumed constellation.
"To leave behind a stone for the next ones to follow, flint carved from the heart of their souls for the next sister to find, immolate and lay to rest. Until one came along who would ignite it into a pyre that would see you reduced to ash."
It was then that Isis could feel it, the burning resilience of Flux's maho, the very essence of her magic, grow from a simmering heat to a roaring fury.
"Isis, make your peace now, I am that spark, the inferno that will set your funeral pyre ablaze!"
It forced her back, even if only a single step. But that single step revealed Isis's own fear...and that infuriated the Abyssal to no end.
This girl had to die...now
-
Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
Isis moved, not with the lumbering gait of a corpse, but with the terrifying, unnatural grace of a predator who had perfected the art of killing over millennia. A series of physical, blurring strikes replaced the telepathic sneer in Flux’s mind.
Flux’s coral fire met the writhing bandages in a hiss of steam and spectral energy. The linen coils, stiff as steel whips yet glowing with viridescent light, recoiled for a heartbeat before striking again—tendrils of tortured cloth snapping toward her like the claws of some ancient avian beast. Flux’s palm glowed hotter, the flame bright enough to melt stone, yet it merely danced across the linen, evaporating moisture but failing to consume the ancient weave.
She ground her teeth. “It’s not just cloth. It’s a conduit for her power,” she gasped, backpedaling as a whip carved a crack in the obsidian beneath her boot. The surface hissed, molten cracks spiderwebbing outward.
Above her, the silent legion stirred. A dozen Flesh Walkers—once shattered in flux’s earlier onslaught—reknit themselves with punishing speed. Now, however, their flesh bore a new purpose. Bone twisted into lethal blades: one’s arm had reshaped into a crystalline rapier of jagged ivory; another’s jaw unhinged into a horrid maw of serrated teeth. They advanced in unison, driven by the agony of their bound souls, their eyes empty with unending torment.
“You see?” Isis’s voice hissed through Flux’s mind, a venomous whisper that slithered over her nerves. It seemed to emanate from the linen itself. “Every wound, every scream... it fuels me. Soulless husks reformed through the agony of Drachiot—your sisters. Their pain, their despair, becomes the marrow of my creations. A masterpiece in suffering.”
Flux ducked under a sweeping blade-arm and lashed out with a line of fire, carving a glowing arc that incinerated one Walker’s arm-blade to ash, but its form barely recoiled. The spirit-twisted flesh reknit instantly, flesh knitting into bone once more. More emerged from the shattered bodies, more sprouting like thorns from a dying rose.
She had to end this. Turning from the minions, Flux gathered magic at her core, letting Vas’s essence—the loyal spirit entwined around her heart—pour into her blood. She exhaled, a jet of flame bursting from her feet, launching her upward in a rocket of coral embers. She soared toward the mummified figure perched atop the growing pyramid of corpses.
Isis watched, unmoved, as Flux ascended. Then, with a tilt of her head, she detached a dozen lengths of bandage. They elongated into spears midair, screaming with the tormented chorus of bound souls. Each spear hummed with a different strand of agony. Flux twisted in flight, her own magic blossoming into a dome of heat-shimmering light that deflected six spears in a spray of spectral sparks. The others cut close, and each impact jangled against her shield like a psychic gong—waves of sorrow and rage slamming at her mind.
She landed hard on the slick obsidian surface, rolling to one knee. The necromancer towered above her, arms outstretched. From the pyramid’s summit poured a sickly green column of aura, bathing Isis’s linen-wrapped form in unholy radiance that turned her once-mummified flesh a rotten emerald.
“That Light...oh how I cannot wait to see it poof...gone” Isis’s voice boomed, no longer a whisper but a chorus of the damned. A thousand voices layered into one malignant proclamation. “They came with fire in their eyes, so determined—so utterly meaningless.”
Flux’s blaze flickered. The roar of reunited Flesh Walkers rose behind her. She forced herself to breathe, to feel Vas’s heartbeat echo in her chest. She could not falter. She would not.
Another bandage darted forward, its tip knotted into a bloated orb of shrieking souls. It whipped around her shoulder, wrapping like a vise. Reality tilted as despair flooded her—visions of a Drachiot torn from its shell, hurled into the Abyss, its soul ravaged in eternal torment. Flux cried out, staggering, porcelain cracks spiderwebbing across her skin as life itself threatened to fracture from her bones.
“Embrace eternity,” Isis hissed, her bandaged face drifting inches from Flux’s, eyes hollow pits of infinite hunger. “Join us. Be mine forever. You will never be alone again.”
All around her, Flux felt the gentle promises of oblivion—mercy, an end to loneliness, an end to heartbreak. A lullaby sung by the damned. She trembled, her voice a ghost: “I-I” The magics in her veins quavered.
As the bone claws prepared to pierce her heart, a white-hot memory ignited behind her eyelids: Viviana’s final smile before fire and ash claimed her, months ago. The sister she had lost to the Lord of Searing Flames. The mentor who had poured her love and wisdom into Flux. Had Viviana felt this same lullaby? This false promise of peace? Flux’s throat constricted; she felt tears of light well in her eyes.
No. There would be no peace in Isis’s embrace. Only endless agony. She would not become another ghost chained. And she did not fight alone. Vas’s warmth pulsed in her chest—a spectral bond that sustained her still. They had made a promise.
They were leaving this place alive.
Together.
This is for Viv. For every Drachiot who had cried out in torment. For every sister subdued in the crucible of their souls. She tore the cord of despair, her mind snapping shut the flood of agony. Then, with a roar that cracked the night, she let Vas break free, pouring his spirit through her flesh in a torrent of incandescent fuchsia. Her body became a living star.
"Bitch..."
Flux’s eyes flared with that pink-white flame—so intense that even Isis recoiled. The necromancer snarled as the light seared her mummified cloth, burning away decades of accumulated ether. The bandage around Flux’s arm evaporated in a curl of ash and despair. Around them, the oppressive aura wavered for the first time in centuries, a flicker of genuine shock crossing Isis’s ancient face.
Flux stood tall, her skin bleeding motes of light, her breath ragged but triumphant. “Your eternity ends today,” she rasped, voice thick with the power of every coven witch and Drachiot soul she carried within.
Isis’s crown-embedded emerald pulsed like a malevolent heart. Slowly, deliberately, she raised her arms. The Ziggurat rumbled, the obsidian blocks humming with necrotic resonance. The pyramid behind her dissolved in segments, revealing a yawning maw in its base. From that gulf rose a dreadful, spherical mass of writhing souls bound in flesh.
Flux’s steps faltered.
The artifact hovered before Isis, an orb of living sorrow braided with veins of violet light and braided sinew. It throbbed with each captured scream—every Drachiot soul she had harvested. The Cull Kiln was crafted from Isis’s own blood and bone, a vessel that both sustained her and damned the imprisoned spirits. Now it threatened to swallow Flux’s soul next.
From the Kiln’s pulsating center tore a beam of necrotic energy—a black umbilical, alive with wailing torment. It shot toward Flux faster than any bandage, a spear of pure soul-devouring darkness, like that of a frogs toungue. The air around it crackled, fear curdling in Flux’s veins as she realized her fate.
She raised her hands, summoning embers of fuchsia flame, but the Umbilicus outran her magic. Its tip brushed her sleeve, and she felt a ripple of cold—of despair so profound her heart quaked. It wrapped around her, a fly caught. The world dimmed.
Isis’s voice echoed through her mind: “Your fire will feed me. Your soul will accompany me for all of time.”
Flux’s vision swam. Her light sputtered. She staggered backward, embers of flame choked by the black maw advancing on her spirit. The spectrum of her defiance winked out, and the Kiln’s umbilical cord tightened, pulling at her very essence.
And in that endless scream, as the darkness reached for her, Flux knew she was on the brink of oblivion—just as countless Drachiot before her had perished. And with a strength that defied all reason, she was yanked into the maw of thekiln
SLAM!!!
With a finite closing, the jaws of the Cull Kiln shut tight, consuming the last ember of hope of the witches...
Flux’s coral fire met the writhing bandages in a hiss of steam and spectral energy. The linen coils, stiff as steel whips yet glowing with viridescent light, recoiled for a heartbeat before striking again—tendrils of tortured cloth snapping toward her like the claws of some ancient avian beast. Flux’s palm glowed hotter, the flame bright enough to melt stone, yet it merely danced across the linen, evaporating moisture but failing to consume the ancient weave.
She ground her teeth. “It’s not just cloth. It’s a conduit for her power,” she gasped, backpedaling as a whip carved a crack in the obsidian beneath her boot. The surface hissed, molten cracks spiderwebbing outward.
Above her, the silent legion stirred. A dozen Flesh Walkers—once shattered in flux’s earlier onslaught—reknit themselves with punishing speed. Now, however, their flesh bore a new purpose. Bone twisted into lethal blades: one’s arm had reshaped into a crystalline rapier of jagged ivory; another’s jaw unhinged into a horrid maw of serrated teeth. They advanced in unison, driven by the agony of their bound souls, their eyes empty with unending torment.
“You see?” Isis’s voice hissed through Flux’s mind, a venomous whisper that slithered over her nerves. It seemed to emanate from the linen itself. “Every wound, every scream... it fuels me. Soulless husks reformed through the agony of Drachiot—your sisters. Their pain, their despair, becomes the marrow of my creations. A masterpiece in suffering.”
Flux ducked under a sweeping blade-arm and lashed out with a line of fire, carving a glowing arc that incinerated one Walker’s arm-blade to ash, but its form barely recoiled. The spirit-twisted flesh reknit instantly, flesh knitting into bone once more. More emerged from the shattered bodies, more sprouting like thorns from a dying rose.
She had to end this. Turning from the minions, Flux gathered magic at her core, letting Vas’s essence—the loyal spirit entwined around her heart—pour into her blood. She exhaled, a jet of flame bursting from her feet, launching her upward in a rocket of coral embers. She soared toward the mummified figure perched atop the growing pyramid of corpses.
Isis watched, unmoved, as Flux ascended. Then, with a tilt of her head, she detached a dozen lengths of bandage. They elongated into spears midair, screaming with the tormented chorus of bound souls. Each spear hummed with a different strand of agony. Flux twisted in flight, her own magic blossoming into a dome of heat-shimmering light that deflected six spears in a spray of spectral sparks. The others cut close, and each impact jangled against her shield like a psychic gong—waves of sorrow and rage slamming at her mind.
She landed hard on the slick obsidian surface, rolling to one knee. The necromancer towered above her, arms outstretched. From the pyramid’s summit poured a sickly green column of aura, bathing Isis’s linen-wrapped form in unholy radiance that turned her once-mummified flesh a rotten emerald.
“That Light...oh how I cannot wait to see it poof...gone” Isis’s voice boomed, no longer a whisper but a chorus of the damned. A thousand voices layered into one malignant proclamation. “They came with fire in their eyes, so determined—so utterly meaningless.”
Flux’s blaze flickered. The roar of reunited Flesh Walkers rose behind her. She forced herself to breathe, to feel Vas’s heartbeat echo in her chest. She could not falter. She would not.
Another bandage darted forward, its tip knotted into a bloated orb of shrieking souls. It whipped around her shoulder, wrapping like a vise. Reality tilted as despair flooded her—visions of a Drachiot torn from its shell, hurled into the Abyss, its soul ravaged in eternal torment. Flux cried out, staggering, porcelain cracks spiderwebbing across her skin as life itself threatened to fracture from her bones.
“Embrace eternity,” Isis hissed, her bandaged face drifting inches from Flux’s, eyes hollow pits of infinite hunger. “Join us. Be mine forever. You will never be alone again.”
All around her, Flux felt the gentle promises of oblivion—mercy, an end to loneliness, an end to heartbreak. A lullaby sung by the damned. She trembled, her voice a ghost: “I-I” The magics in her veins quavered.
As the bone claws prepared to pierce her heart, a white-hot memory ignited behind her eyelids: Viviana’s final smile before fire and ash claimed her, months ago. The sister she had lost to the Lord of Searing Flames. The mentor who had poured her love and wisdom into Flux. Had Viviana felt this same lullaby? This false promise of peace? Flux’s throat constricted; she felt tears of light well in her eyes.
No. There would be no peace in Isis’s embrace. Only endless agony. She would not become another ghost chained. And she did not fight alone. Vas’s warmth pulsed in her chest—a spectral bond that sustained her still. They had made a promise.
They were leaving this place alive.
Together.
This is for Viv. For every Drachiot who had cried out in torment. For every sister subdued in the crucible of their souls. She tore the cord of despair, her mind snapping shut the flood of agony. Then, with a roar that cracked the night, she let Vas break free, pouring his spirit through her flesh in a torrent of incandescent fuchsia. Her body became a living star.
"Bitch..."
Flux’s eyes flared with that pink-white flame—so intense that even Isis recoiled. The necromancer snarled as the light seared her mummified cloth, burning away decades of accumulated ether. The bandage around Flux’s arm evaporated in a curl of ash and despair. Around them, the oppressive aura wavered for the first time in centuries, a flicker of genuine shock crossing Isis’s ancient face.
Flux stood tall, her skin bleeding motes of light, her breath ragged but triumphant. “Your eternity ends today,” she rasped, voice thick with the power of every coven witch and Drachiot soul she carried within.
Isis’s crown-embedded emerald pulsed like a malevolent heart. Slowly, deliberately, she raised her arms. The Ziggurat rumbled, the obsidian blocks humming with necrotic resonance. The pyramid behind her dissolved in segments, revealing a yawning maw in its base. From that gulf rose a dreadful, spherical mass of writhing souls bound in flesh.
Flux’s steps faltered.
The artifact hovered before Isis, an orb of living sorrow braided with veins of violet light and braided sinew. It throbbed with each captured scream—every Drachiot soul she had harvested. The Cull Kiln was crafted from Isis’s own blood and bone, a vessel that both sustained her and damned the imprisoned spirits. Now it threatened to swallow Flux’s soul next.
From the Kiln’s pulsating center tore a beam of necrotic energy—a black umbilical, alive with wailing torment. It shot toward Flux faster than any bandage, a spear of pure soul-devouring darkness, like that of a frogs toungue. The air around it crackled, fear curdling in Flux’s veins as she realized her fate.
She raised her hands, summoning embers of fuchsia flame, but the Umbilicus outran her magic. Its tip brushed her sleeve, and she felt a ripple of cold—of despair so profound her heart quaked. It wrapped around her, a fly caught. The world dimmed.
Isis’s voice echoed through her mind: “Your fire will feed me. Your soul will accompany me for all of time.”
Flux’s vision swam. Her light sputtered. She staggered backward, embers of flame choked by the black maw advancing on her spirit. The spectrum of her defiance winked out, and the Kiln’s umbilical cord tightened, pulling at her very essence.
And in that endless scream, as the darkness reached for her, Flux knew she was on the brink of oblivion—just as countless Drachiot before her had perished. And with a strength that defied all reason, she was yanked into the maw of thekiln
SLAM!!!
With a finite closing, the jaws of the Cull Kiln shut tight, consuming the last ember of hope of the witches...
-
Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
The interior of the artifact was not a chamber of stone and bone, but a pocket dimension sculpted from the warped soul of Isis herself. It was a psychic prison, a mausoleum of stolen lives echoing with the ceaseless, dissonant wailing of the damned. The air, if it could be called that, was thick with the taste of stale despair. Ghostly ectoplasmic chains rattled in a rhythm of eternal torment, weaving a web that suspended thousands of souls in a state of perpetual suffering. The sight was an assault on the senses, a cacophony of agony that threatened to shatter the mind. Flux felt the will of Isis pressing in on her, a predatory intelligence that sought to flay her sense of self, to peel away her individuality and add her unique emotional signature to the choir of misery.
Amidst the psychic maelstrom, her gaze fell upon a familiar, heartbreaking sight. Slumped in the center of the web, his once proud and lithe form contorted with exhaustion, was Vas. The black cat, her familiar, her constant companion for two centuries, looked broken. His vibrant fur was dulled, his eyes dimmed.
"Vas... honey..." The name was a ragged whisper, a prayer against the encroaching madness.
With a will that felt like tearing her own soul apart, Flux fought the ensnaring influence of Isis and reached for him. Her fingers closed not around fur and flesh, but around a tangible presence, a bond of shared existence. She pulled him close, and he let out a soft, labored mewl that pierced her heart more deeply than any physical weapon could.
"Mommie is so sorry," she choked out, tears finally breaching the dam of her resolve. Sorrow, vast and crushing, threatened to drown her. She had failed. She had fought, bled, and sacrificed, yet she had been unable to stop this. Everyone she had tried to protect was now part of this nightmare. She had failed them all.
But Vas, her steadfast Vas, did not see a failure. He saw his master, his friend, his family. Weak as he was, he nudged his head under her chin, placing a soft paw on her tear-streaked face. He rested his forehead against hers, and in that simple, profound gesture, he began to pour everything he was into her.
Flux’s vision dissolved. She was no longer in the Kiln, but adrift in a montage of a life shared.
She saw the ancient rite, the flare of power as his essence manifested for the first time, a loyal spirit drawn to her light. She had named him Vessel of All Suns, but nicknamed him Vas, the mischievous spark in his eyes that she knew would lead to trouble. She relived the frantic chases across planes he’d accidentally torn open, the endless apologies to exasperated tavern owners and bewildered pet store clerks for his chaotic nature. She saw him lying patiently beside her as she pored over grimoires for nights on end, a silent sentinel in the flickering candlelight. She felt his quiet presence as she wept for her mother, his warmth a small anchor in the storm of her grief. Another loss, he did not let her experience alone.
For two centuries, he had been there. A constant. Through triumphs and failures, through joys that felt like flight and sorrows that felt like falling. Their bond wasn't just one of master and servant, but of mutual respect, of shared growth. And as his memories flooded her, what he relayed wasn't just faith in her abilities; it was an unyielding, unconditional love. It was a declaration that his life with her, in all its chaotic, painful, and beautiful glory, had been one with no regrets.
This torrent of pure, undiluted love began to drown out the howls of the damned. It started as a low hum, a deep, resonant vibration that seemed to emanate from the very marrow of her bones. It was the sound of an ancient door groaning open, of a dormant furnace roaring to life. The hum grew into a powerful, rhythmic drone, a pulse that throbbed with such intensity it began to push back against the oppressive despair.
It was a warmth she knew. A presence she had felt before in her darkest moments. Elara, from whom she inherited the Soul Flame. She smiled warmly at Flux. No words shared, only an innate understanding of what she must do...of what she could do as the Inheritor. The Soul Flame was the living essence of the First Aiku Queen, Zeraphi, her immortal soul tethered to the realm of Salem. It was her will lit ablaze, her loyalty and love immolated. It was this trait that allowed Flux's emotions such a powerful sway over her magic.
But it was Flux's lineage as a direct descendant of The Savant of Salem that gave her access to its nigh limitless might. Combined, the laws of reality itself could be persuaded to her whims. At least whilst she had access to this amount of Maho. Allowing her to turn emotion itself into fire.
The sorrow receded, replaced by a core of incandescent purpose. Flux stood, Vas held gently in her arms, a pillar of defiant light amidst a sea of undeath.
"You're right, Vas," she said, her voice clear and strong.
In response, her familiar’s form dissolved into a plume of brilliant pink light, weaving itself into her very being. A mantle of power settled upon her, and a palpable aura, a blaring rose sun, radiated from her skin, pushing the shadows back.
"You're always with me," she declared, her voice echoing with newfound power, " and so is everyone else."
That was the truth Vas had given her, the clarity she needed. She and Isis were two sides of the same coin, their magic fueled by the emotions of others. But Isis was a parasite, consuming souls through torment and fear. Flux was a conduit, her power born from connection, from empathy. She would not become a weapon of malice, but a Pyre of retribution.
Amidst the psychic maelstrom, her gaze fell upon a familiar, heartbreaking sight. Slumped in the center of the web, his once proud and lithe form contorted with exhaustion, was Vas. The black cat, her familiar, her constant companion for two centuries, looked broken. His vibrant fur was dulled, his eyes dimmed.
"Vas... honey..." The name was a ragged whisper, a prayer against the encroaching madness.
With a will that felt like tearing her own soul apart, Flux fought the ensnaring influence of Isis and reached for him. Her fingers closed not around fur and flesh, but around a tangible presence, a bond of shared existence. She pulled him close, and he let out a soft, labored mewl that pierced her heart more deeply than any physical weapon could.
"Mommie is so sorry," she choked out, tears finally breaching the dam of her resolve. Sorrow, vast and crushing, threatened to drown her. She had failed. She had fought, bled, and sacrificed, yet she had been unable to stop this. Everyone she had tried to protect was now part of this nightmare. She had failed them all.
But Vas, her steadfast Vas, did not see a failure. He saw his master, his friend, his family. Weak as he was, he nudged his head under her chin, placing a soft paw on her tear-streaked face. He rested his forehead against hers, and in that simple, profound gesture, he began to pour everything he was into her.
Flux’s vision dissolved. She was no longer in the Kiln, but adrift in a montage of a life shared.
She saw the ancient rite, the flare of power as his essence manifested for the first time, a loyal spirit drawn to her light. She had named him Vessel of All Suns, but nicknamed him Vas, the mischievous spark in his eyes that she knew would lead to trouble. She relived the frantic chases across planes he’d accidentally torn open, the endless apologies to exasperated tavern owners and bewildered pet store clerks for his chaotic nature. She saw him lying patiently beside her as she pored over grimoires for nights on end, a silent sentinel in the flickering candlelight. She felt his quiet presence as she wept for her mother, his warmth a small anchor in the storm of her grief. Another loss, he did not let her experience alone.
For two centuries, he had been there. A constant. Through triumphs and failures, through joys that felt like flight and sorrows that felt like falling. Their bond wasn't just one of master and servant, but of mutual respect, of shared growth. And as his memories flooded her, what he relayed wasn't just faith in her abilities; it was an unyielding, unconditional love. It was a declaration that his life with her, in all its chaotic, painful, and beautiful glory, had been one with no regrets.
This torrent of pure, undiluted love began to drown out the howls of the damned. It started as a low hum, a deep, resonant vibration that seemed to emanate from the very marrow of her bones. It was the sound of an ancient door groaning open, of a dormant furnace roaring to life. The hum grew into a powerful, rhythmic drone, a pulse that throbbed with such intensity it began to push back against the oppressive despair.
It was a warmth she knew. A presence she had felt before in her darkest moments. Elara, from whom she inherited the Soul Flame. She smiled warmly at Flux. No words shared, only an innate understanding of what she must do...of what she could do as the Inheritor. The Soul Flame was the living essence of the First Aiku Queen, Zeraphi, her immortal soul tethered to the realm of Salem. It was her will lit ablaze, her loyalty and love immolated. It was this trait that allowed Flux's emotions such a powerful sway over her magic.
But it was Flux's lineage as a direct descendant of The Savant of Salem that gave her access to its nigh limitless might. Combined, the laws of reality itself could be persuaded to her whims. At least whilst she had access to this amount of Maho. Allowing her to turn emotion itself into fire.
The sorrow receded, replaced by a core of incandescent purpose. Flux stood, Vas held gently in her arms, a pillar of defiant light amidst a sea of undeath.
"You're right, Vas," she said, her voice clear and strong.
In response, her familiar’s form dissolved into a plume of brilliant pink light, weaving itself into her very being. A mantle of power settled upon her, and a palpable aura, a blaring rose sun, radiated from her skin, pushing the shadows back.
"You're always with me," she declared, her voice echoing with newfound power, " and so is everyone else."
That was the truth Vas had given her, the clarity she needed. She and Isis were two sides of the same coin, their magic fueled by the emotions of others. But Isis was a parasite, consuming souls through torment and fear. Flux was a conduit, her power born from connection, from empathy. She would not become a weapon of malice, but a Pyre of retribution.
-
Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
The flame within her intensified, seeking the core of the Kiln's torment. She didn't just sense the souls; she felt them. She resonated with the faint, flickering memories that still, stubbornly, existed within them. Clawing for release. Yearning for peace.
She inhaled, and the Soul Flame within her coalesced into her palms, forming a small, shimmering orb. In her mind's eye, she pictured the souls of her Drachiot sisters, not as they were now, but as they should have been. She envisioned them as thousands of candles, their wicks wanting.
"Sisters," she called out, her voice a beacon of Maho, the ancestral magic that flowed through their people. "Entrust to me your anguish. But even further, I beckon you. Give unto me your hopes, your dreams"
One by one, across the vast, agonized web, an unseen wick caught fire. A single, rose-gold flame sparked to life within each soul. A flame for every stolen dream, every unspoken farewell, every fading wish for a better world. It was also what revealed the true depth of Isis's legacy as an Abyssal, for beyond the wails of her Drachoit sisters were the pained, scorned faces of the Aiku as well. Hundreds of Feline faces intermingled with those of the drachoit. It made sense to her now. Elara's words, why Flux needed to understand the root of her connection...that which made her a center of this nexus.
Drachiot were the far spiritual siblings of the Aiku. Though their union to Maho, to Salem, was far more finite than their distant relatives. However, the battle between the Maji-Gari and their voracious hunger for Maho was a war started on and for Salem. It was this realm that the Aiku guarded. When the Aiku and Carna eventually fell, the Soul Flame was carried to Vescrutia and brought the Maji-Gari with it. She was not just calling on the echoes of the Drachiot, but of her AIku lineage as well. These fireless candles were now lit, and their light flowed into the orb in Flux's hands. The marble-sized sphere swelled, fed by the collective will of a thousand witches, growing to the size of a small, furious moon of coral-hued light.
She could feel them...each a indivual cord, a strummable tether, a grounding anchor in it all.
"What- what are you doing?!" The voice of Isis shrieked through the plane, laced with genuine panic. Her control was unraveling. This was impossible. Her claim on these souls was absolute, their terror her shield and her sustenance. Yet this girl was not fighting the darkness; she was transmuting it. She was reaching beyond the pain and finding the light buried beneath it, and turning that light into an inferno.
"You think the only power of the heart lies in its weakness," Flux declared, her voice resonating with the power of a thousand sisters. "In the fear of loss, in the pain of absence. My mother told me that love often starts as fear. That people hide themselves, showing only the parts they think are perfect, because the world has taught them their true selves are too vulnerable."
The entire Cull Kiln began to change. The stark, malachite maelstrom of Isis's soul-space was painted over, consumed by the hot, molten pink flare of Flux's culminating magic. The web of souls began to smolder.
"I know that feeling," Flux confessed, her own grief a wellspring of power, not weakness. "After my mother died, I wanted to hide too. I didn't want anyone to see the ruin of my heart. But that was running away. Grief is just love with nowhere else to go."
She placed a single, star-lit hand upon the colossal Coral Moon of Maho she had summoned. "Hope is not the absence of fear," she stated, her eyes burning with an inner fire. "It is the other side of it."
She drew the colossal moon of their collective essence into herself.
Her body erupted, becoming the center of swaying tidal waves of rose colored flame. "Daughters of Salem," she besought them, her soul resonating with each of their trapped essences, using the Soul Flame to set their very spirits ablaze. "Become my flame... and in return..."
The power was staggering, an ocean of Maho flooding her being. She felt every one of them, their lives, their loves, their losses, all at once.
"I will become your freedom!"
And then, she let go.
She released the full, uncontrolled, unrestrained torrent of the Soul Flame, now supercharged with the hopes of a thousand souls. It wasn't an explosion; it was an annihilation of despair. Like the birth of a galaxy. A grand exhale of Maho so vast, so filling the Kiln itself could not hold the sheer breadth of her magic bleeding from her, incinerating the web of souls not in agony, but in a final, cathartic release. The Cull Kiln hovering before Isis began to crack, magenta light seeping from it like blood.
"I-Impossib-AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The Kiln exploded, releasing the cosmic sigh of a burning immortal. Isis's desire to imprison Flux within her artifact and use her body to return to the material plane shattered like her Kiln. The backlash from the sudden dismantling of her power, her other sense of self was agonizingly replaced with the ever-increasing agony of her wicked flesh, which became a pyre of coral cinders.
The pocket dimension fractured, its reality starting to crumble under the sheer force of her Maho in rare form.
In the heart of that inferno of liberating oblivion, the only thing that remained was Flux.
The burning incarnate of a promise fulfilled. And the smoldering, nearly lifeless carcass of her people's mortal foe.
She inhaled, and the Soul Flame within her coalesced into her palms, forming a small, shimmering orb. In her mind's eye, she pictured the souls of her Drachiot sisters, not as they were now, but as they should have been. She envisioned them as thousands of candles, their wicks wanting.
"Sisters," she called out, her voice a beacon of Maho, the ancestral magic that flowed through their people. "Entrust to me your anguish. But even further, I beckon you. Give unto me your hopes, your dreams"
One by one, across the vast, agonized web, an unseen wick caught fire. A single, rose-gold flame sparked to life within each soul. A flame for every stolen dream, every unspoken farewell, every fading wish for a better world. It was also what revealed the true depth of Isis's legacy as an Abyssal, for beyond the wails of her Drachoit sisters were the pained, scorned faces of the Aiku as well. Hundreds of Feline faces intermingled with those of the drachoit. It made sense to her now. Elara's words, why Flux needed to understand the root of her connection...that which made her a center of this nexus.
Drachiot were the far spiritual siblings of the Aiku. Though their union to Maho, to Salem, was far more finite than their distant relatives. However, the battle between the Maji-Gari and their voracious hunger for Maho was a war started on and for Salem. It was this realm that the Aiku guarded. When the Aiku and Carna eventually fell, the Soul Flame was carried to Vescrutia and brought the Maji-Gari with it. She was not just calling on the echoes of the Drachiot, but of her AIku lineage as well. These fireless candles were now lit, and their light flowed into the orb in Flux's hands. The marble-sized sphere swelled, fed by the collective will of a thousand witches, growing to the size of a small, furious moon of coral-hued light.
She could feel them...each a indivual cord, a strummable tether, a grounding anchor in it all.
"What- what are you doing?!" The voice of Isis shrieked through the plane, laced with genuine panic. Her control was unraveling. This was impossible. Her claim on these souls was absolute, their terror her shield and her sustenance. Yet this girl was not fighting the darkness; she was transmuting it. She was reaching beyond the pain and finding the light buried beneath it, and turning that light into an inferno.
"You think the only power of the heart lies in its weakness," Flux declared, her voice resonating with the power of a thousand sisters. "In the fear of loss, in the pain of absence. My mother told me that love often starts as fear. That people hide themselves, showing only the parts they think are perfect, because the world has taught them their true selves are too vulnerable."
The entire Cull Kiln began to change. The stark, malachite maelstrom of Isis's soul-space was painted over, consumed by the hot, molten pink flare of Flux's culminating magic. The web of souls began to smolder.
"I know that feeling," Flux confessed, her own grief a wellspring of power, not weakness. "After my mother died, I wanted to hide too. I didn't want anyone to see the ruin of my heart. But that was running away. Grief is just love with nowhere else to go."
She placed a single, star-lit hand upon the colossal Coral Moon of Maho she had summoned. "Hope is not the absence of fear," she stated, her eyes burning with an inner fire. "It is the other side of it."
She drew the colossal moon of their collective essence into herself.
Her body erupted, becoming the center of swaying tidal waves of rose colored flame. "Daughters of Salem," she besought them, her soul resonating with each of their trapped essences, using the Soul Flame to set their very spirits ablaze. "Become my flame... and in return..."
The power was staggering, an ocean of Maho flooding her being. She felt every one of them, their lives, their loves, their losses, all at once.
"I will become your freedom!"
And then, she let go.
She released the full, uncontrolled, unrestrained torrent of the Soul Flame, now supercharged with the hopes of a thousand souls. It wasn't an explosion; it was an annihilation of despair. Like the birth of a galaxy. A grand exhale of Maho so vast, so filling the Kiln itself could not hold the sheer breadth of her magic bleeding from her, incinerating the web of souls not in agony, but in a final, cathartic release. The Cull Kiln hovering before Isis began to crack, magenta light seeping from it like blood.
"I-Impossib-AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The Kiln exploded, releasing the cosmic sigh of a burning immortal. Isis's desire to imprison Flux within her artifact and use her body to return to the material plane shattered like her Kiln. The backlash from the sudden dismantling of her power, her other sense of self was agonizingly replaced with the ever-increasing agony of her wicked flesh, which became a pyre of coral cinders.
The pocket dimension fractured, its reality starting to crumble under the sheer force of her Maho in rare form.
In the heart of that inferno of liberating oblivion, the only thing that remained was Flux.
The burning incarnate of a promise fulfilled. And the smoldering, nearly lifeless carcass of her people's mortal foe.
-
Ozma Luvian
- Drifter
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 9:12 am
Re: A Keeper's Duty; Woe Of Isis
The maelstrom of her thrumming mystical indignation began to subside, the cataclysmic fury fading like the coming end of a giant’s cathartic tantrum. The air, still thick with the scent of ozone and burnt reality, slowly cleared. When the tidal waves of majestic flame finally did recede, they left a landscape of scorched glass and shimmering heat-haze. There wasn’t a single ounce of corporeal flesh, nor any lingering essence other than Flux and the broken thing at her feet.
The great Abyssal, she who had been revered as the seamstress of souls, a stitcher of spirits, and sower of pain, was now nothing more than carrion awaiting its final end. The singed bands that once hugged her muffled form were now smoldering pieces of fading cloth, revealing the black-stained ebony of her bones. This was all she truly was: a starving parasite robbed of her host, clinging desperately to the last fleeting moments of unlife she had left.
Whereas Flux towered above, her form was a macrocosm unto itself. She was a beacon of passion with a radiance that dwarfed the very spires that once were like mountains to her. Her hair, an endless river of liquid magenta, flowed through the skies, a nebula that stretched beyond eternity. From her body, ebbs of the Soul Flame penetrated the clingiest of shadows, leaving nowhere for Isis to flee, nowhere for any darkness to skulk or hide. She was a revelation given form, retribution incarnate. Within her essence swam the culminating force of both Drachiot and Aiku, kin in manifest, a living grimoire of connection, a manifesto of maho itself.
“This… this power…” Isis’s mind could barely form the thought, barely process the litany of questions swimming through the ruin of her consciousness. Her red, glowing eyes slithered into slits as she stared up, defiant even now, even in utter defeat. To witness maho used on this scale, a power that could alter reality itself. To birth flame where none existed, to turn passion into ember and then… consume it to empower herself. The girl had copied Isis’s methods, stripped them of their cruel artifice, and reverse-engineered them into a weapon of absolute victory. This girl… she was more than a simple witch. She was a reflection of magic itself, a student of mysticism unparalleled.
The towering amalgam of Maho that was Flux pressed her palms together, bringing them to her heart in a gesture of solemn reverence. Her voice, now a chorus of overlapping echoes, resonated with the calm at the center of a star.
“Be free, my sisters, of both flesh and soul. Thank you for your sacrifice. Now… return to Salem, to the great well from which we all stem, to the blaze sleeping in its depths.”
With that, she opened her palms. From them burst a litany of small embers, a swarm of innumerable fireflies that drifted into the seams between worlds. Each spark was a soul, released from its prison of agony. They carried with them a chance now to be reborn into a life where the Abyssal could torment them no longer. Upon the release of her borrowed strength, one firefly lingered behind.
In Flux’s mind’s eye, she saw a proud Aiku warrior, her form glistening with golden jewelry, her dark skin marked with shimmering glyphs. She was grace refined, her lithe form radiating something akin to royalty. Nobility with no crown, yet her authority could not be ignored. No words were exchanged, but in that single instance, Flux felt something akin to pride awaken within her, deeper even than joy. It was confirmation. That she was exactly who she needed to be, and it left no more room for doubt. She was surrounded by love, and though the darkness pressed in, she needed only to reflect on not the love lost but the legacy left behind.
As the last soul left her, Flux’s massive form began to shrink. As the pink flare of the liquid light that clung to her flesh receded, it revealed not the usual brown of her melanated skin. Instead, she was covered in a dark, velvet pelt of fur. Her hands and feet reshaped themselves, becoming like those of a panther, similar to the Aiku who had bid her their final farewell.
When Isis laid her eyes upon this new form, a dread colder than the void seeped into what remained of her.
“No… not you…”
That power… the shade of this flame… she recalled it once before, in an age so long past the memory felt like a distant tug at a time that no longer existed. But this ushering of coral oblivion brought it all rushing back.
“Zeraphi…” she wheezed, the name a blasphemy on her tongue. “Even now you defy me, defy us. Why… why won’t you just die…”
Woe, deep and black as liquid charcoal, seeped from Isis’s eyes. The name Zeraphi struck Flux like a physical blow, and in an instant, her entire mind was absorbed by the infinite ember of the Soul Flame. The words next spoken were with her voice; it indeed belonged to her, but the ancient vengeance burning behind them did not.
“Because filth like you still exist in the universe...” the voice boomed, layered with the ghost of a thousand fallen warriors. "For so long as the one who destroyed my world lives, my flames of vengeance will never die, never rest, so long as your wretched kind threaten Salem!”
“Hehehe. You think you have won?” Isis rasped, a final, futile act of defiance. “My kin, the other Abyssals, will see this plan dominated. You will be fodder festering in our gullets. Your flame will never claim—”
It was in that moment that Flux’s eyes grew a dense, terrifying pink. A single twinkle of light sparked in front of Isis, and immediately after, the Abyssal combusted into a pyre of coral fire. This time, not a single ounce of life remained within it. Only the eternal, scalding wrath of a matriarch’s law burned her futile monologue to nothingness, the fire consuming her until not even ash was left to stain the glass.
Flux snapped back into her right mind, watching the last of the pink embers consume her foe. Her eyes widened… it was like waking from a dream where she was a passenger in her own body. She didn’t recall making the fire that had finally erased Isis. A cold knot of unease tightened in her stomach. Her new form was concerning as well, a permanent-seeming brand of the power she now wielded. But the time to ponder was not now. Space began to fracture around her, reality fumbling on itself.
With Isis, who had been serving as the other anchor holding this realm together, now gone, it could no longer sustain itself.
“Mew.”
She turned to her right to find Vas, the small feline-like creature, out of breath but alive. He pawed weakly at a small, shimmering portal he’d managed to open. Flux smirked, a gesture that felt strange on her new feline features, and turned her back to the crumbling realm. Whatever these changes might be, she would reserve their exploration for another day.
For at this moment, on this day, her people knew release. They knew victory.
And that, she thought as she stepped through the portal with Vas curled in her arms, was enough for now.
The great Abyssal, she who had been revered as the seamstress of souls, a stitcher of spirits, and sower of pain, was now nothing more than carrion awaiting its final end. The singed bands that once hugged her muffled form were now smoldering pieces of fading cloth, revealing the black-stained ebony of her bones. This was all she truly was: a starving parasite robbed of her host, clinging desperately to the last fleeting moments of unlife she had left.
Whereas Flux towered above, her form was a macrocosm unto itself. She was a beacon of passion with a radiance that dwarfed the very spires that once were like mountains to her. Her hair, an endless river of liquid magenta, flowed through the skies, a nebula that stretched beyond eternity. From her body, ebbs of the Soul Flame penetrated the clingiest of shadows, leaving nowhere for Isis to flee, nowhere for any darkness to skulk or hide. She was a revelation given form, retribution incarnate. Within her essence swam the culminating force of both Drachiot and Aiku, kin in manifest, a living grimoire of connection, a manifesto of maho itself.
“This… this power…” Isis’s mind could barely form the thought, barely process the litany of questions swimming through the ruin of her consciousness. Her red, glowing eyes slithered into slits as she stared up, defiant even now, even in utter defeat. To witness maho used on this scale, a power that could alter reality itself. To birth flame where none existed, to turn passion into ember and then… consume it to empower herself. The girl had copied Isis’s methods, stripped them of their cruel artifice, and reverse-engineered them into a weapon of absolute victory. This girl… she was more than a simple witch. She was a reflection of magic itself, a student of mysticism unparalleled.
The towering amalgam of Maho that was Flux pressed her palms together, bringing them to her heart in a gesture of solemn reverence. Her voice, now a chorus of overlapping echoes, resonated with the calm at the center of a star.
“Be free, my sisters, of both flesh and soul. Thank you for your sacrifice. Now… return to Salem, to the great well from which we all stem, to the blaze sleeping in its depths.”
With that, she opened her palms. From them burst a litany of small embers, a swarm of innumerable fireflies that drifted into the seams between worlds. Each spark was a soul, released from its prison of agony. They carried with them a chance now to be reborn into a life where the Abyssal could torment them no longer. Upon the release of her borrowed strength, one firefly lingered behind.
In Flux’s mind’s eye, she saw a proud Aiku warrior, her form glistening with golden jewelry, her dark skin marked with shimmering glyphs. She was grace refined, her lithe form radiating something akin to royalty. Nobility with no crown, yet her authority could not be ignored. No words were exchanged, but in that single instance, Flux felt something akin to pride awaken within her, deeper even than joy. It was confirmation. That she was exactly who she needed to be, and it left no more room for doubt. She was surrounded by love, and though the darkness pressed in, she needed only to reflect on not the love lost but the legacy left behind.
As the last soul left her, Flux’s massive form began to shrink. As the pink flare of the liquid light that clung to her flesh receded, it revealed not the usual brown of her melanated skin. Instead, she was covered in a dark, velvet pelt of fur. Her hands and feet reshaped themselves, becoming like those of a panther, similar to the Aiku who had bid her their final farewell.
When Isis laid her eyes upon this new form, a dread colder than the void seeped into what remained of her.
“No… not you…”
That power… the shade of this flame… she recalled it once before, in an age so long past the memory felt like a distant tug at a time that no longer existed. But this ushering of coral oblivion brought it all rushing back.
“Zeraphi…” she wheezed, the name a blasphemy on her tongue. “Even now you defy me, defy us. Why… why won’t you just die…”
Woe, deep and black as liquid charcoal, seeped from Isis’s eyes. The name Zeraphi struck Flux like a physical blow, and in an instant, her entire mind was absorbed by the infinite ember of the Soul Flame. The words next spoken were with her voice; it indeed belonged to her, but the ancient vengeance burning behind them did not.
“Because filth like you still exist in the universe...” the voice boomed, layered with the ghost of a thousand fallen warriors. "For so long as the one who destroyed my world lives, my flames of vengeance will never die, never rest, so long as your wretched kind threaten Salem!”
“Hehehe. You think you have won?” Isis rasped, a final, futile act of defiance. “My kin, the other Abyssals, will see this plan dominated. You will be fodder festering in our gullets. Your flame will never claim—”
It was in that moment that Flux’s eyes grew a dense, terrifying pink. A single twinkle of light sparked in front of Isis, and immediately after, the Abyssal combusted into a pyre of coral fire. This time, not a single ounce of life remained within it. Only the eternal, scalding wrath of a matriarch’s law burned her futile monologue to nothingness, the fire consuming her until not even ash was left to stain the glass.
Flux snapped back into her right mind, watching the last of the pink embers consume her foe. Her eyes widened… it was like waking from a dream where she was a passenger in her own body. She didn’t recall making the fire that had finally erased Isis. A cold knot of unease tightened in her stomach. Her new form was concerning as well, a permanent-seeming brand of the power she now wielded. But the time to ponder was not now. Space began to fracture around her, reality fumbling on itself.
With Isis, who had been serving as the other anchor holding this realm together, now gone, it could no longer sustain itself.
“Mew.”
She turned to her right to find Vas, the small feline-like creature, out of breath but alive. He pawed weakly at a small, shimmering portal he’d managed to open. Flux smirked, a gesture that felt strange on her new feline features, and turned her back to the crumbling realm. Whatever these changes might be, she would reserve their exploration for another day.
For at this moment, on this day, her people knew release. They knew victory.
And that, she thought as she stepped through the portal with Vas curled in her arms, was enough for now.
The team