Heavy Metal (Imogen)

[Aegis]

Ash 77, 122

It would be a normal morning for Imogen to awaken at a normal time for her, under entirely normal conditions. There would be nothing out of the ordinary, even if Imogen had the perceptive abilities to rival the Dragon King’s own supposed omniperception.

That is, until Imogen began to do normal, typical things that Imogen might do about her morning. Perhaps the first thing to be noticed as atypical was that some of her belongings, particularly her metallic weapons were noticeably heavier. But surely someone might attribute that to fatigue, weariness, or even just a simple loss of strength from an irregular diet that comes with living in an unexplored land.

But it wasn’t just the weapons that would seem heavier, both by hand and by Reaving ability, but all things metal that Imogen had in her possession. And it did not seem to matter what sort of metal it might be, from the most common tin to the rarest of Celestial Void Dragon Heartsteel. All metals were heavier.

And their weight was only increasing as time marched on.

Should Imogen decide to go see if this was happening to anyone else, none would’ve noticed anything strange going on with their metals, prior to Imogen’s arrival. However, as she entered their proximity, the metals there would also begin increasing in weight as well. And when Imogen left them, by a range of roughly fifty yards in a sphere around her, their metals would return to their normal gravity.

And Imogen could, if she chose, continue to ignore this and go about her time as normal. But every metal object in her vicinity would continue to increase in its weight, and even if she left its presence and then returned to it, it would pick right back up where it left off rather than resetting.

But otherwise, a completely normal morning for the Orkhan.

[Imogen]

In truth, the amount of metal which Imogen carried physically was scant; she wore no armor and kept her armory in the depths of her soul when weapons weren't warranted. Though slight for an Ork, Imogen was well-muscled and quite strong, and so even doubling and trebling the weight on the various clips and fasteners she had brought with her from Kalzasi could have passed her notice for days. Indeed, one could literally say that the Sunsinger always bore more steel within than without.

Except, of course, for her rings.

The Orkhan girl wore two; the heavy-set opal ring passed to her for keeping by the ancient Librarian in Drathera a year past, and the Ring of the Malignant Star which Carina had given to her, the intricate dweomer meant to ensure that they were not parted by chance or misfortune again. Though neither was much of a weight, even an Ork's fingers begin to notice when the gravity upon them doubles. Thus, it was only a few hours into the morning when Imogen noticed that her arms felt... just slightly off.

It was another hour still before that background feeling grew strong enough that Imogen stopped and removed the rings, examining them to see if something was wrong. They did seem to lie a bit heavier in her grasp, but it could have been her imagination. If it were just Carina's magic ring she might have blamed a malfunctioning rune, somehow sent haywire by the Great Eclipse, but as far as she knew the opal-set family heirloom had no such enchantment.

"What?" she asked aloud, but there was no reply.

She set about trying to ignore this for a few hours more. If Avamande were to hand, she would have pestered them immediately--doubtless the sorcerer would have been able to produce a diagnosis in a flash--but they were away on some business of their own. However, as the afternoon pressed on, she began to realize that the tentpoles she'd hammered into the ground weeks earlier were slowly sinking in her vicinity.

Intuiting at once that something was more awry than she'd known, Imogen materialized her spear... the weight of which dragged her arms at once down, to her side. The witch stared at the weapon in surprise. A Sunsinger's weapons were limned with nova-fire, and her spellbreaker was extremely strong. Even one of the other Coven masters would have struggled to cast a spell which her spear would not swiftly burn to ash. Unless...

"Unless the effect is coming from me, somehow."

She wasn't sure how that could be- neither of her Runes could produce this effect, and the weird skeleton-magic she'd somehow acquired from Nod seemed quite beholden to a boney theme. Could it have something to do with the strange geomancy of the Southern Ecith itself? The creatures here were all afflicted with elemental energy in one way or another, and of course an Ork was a creature. She'd just thought it would be... something more drawn out, a process taking generations?

No, it was no good speculating wildly. "You know," she complained, "first this eclipse gets me stuck as a bird, and now my spear doesn't work. Perhaps the Cardinal Runes ought to come with warranties."

Her joke fell flat. Humor relies on an audience to have some effect, and none of the gulls on the beach seemed interested in hearing her out. It seemed there was no japing through this one.

Really, she had only two options; wait for Avamande's return and hope that the strange effect did not grow so strong that she couldn't even lift her weapons, or do some witch stuff. Well, she was a witch. In theory.

To start with, Imogen drew a Scrivening circle. She drew it very poorly, to the point that it was unlikely to have any effect at all, but doing the motions got one into the right mindset for magic, she found. Once her incomprehensible squiggles were set into the sand, she summoned her shield, a six-foot beast of a rounded targe, polished to a mirror sheen which was beautiful to observe. It crashed immediately into the sand, being constructed of much metal, and dug several feet into the earth before it stopped.

Imogen walked around to the back of the shield, in which was inset a rainbow gem; a somnosyte of unusual size, taken from the Railrunners' vault after the fall of Zaichaer. Imogen had attached this to her shield to create a talisman against nightmares, to protect herself from the weird shadow beasts Mr. Maze had summoned her into his dreams to fight, but it was also handy for other purposes.

The metal in Imogen Ward's pact weapons was forged out of her own soul; so it followed that whatever was dragging her weapons down was acting on her spirit directly. And the easiest way to observe a malady of the spirit was in sleep. The witch reached down and placed her hand on the smooth dreamstone orb, opening a channel between her aether and the stone's.

"Show me," Imogen said, more for her benefit than the rock's, "What is wrong."

[Aegis]

And with that channel opened now, Imogen promptly fell to the sand, much like the stone that she’d connected with. She was promptly put to sleep. The stone? Hard to tell when a stone is asleep or awake.

Within Imogen’s Dreamscape…

Assuming that Imogen actually realized that she was in her dreamscape, seemingly accordingly to plan, she would see much as she normally would. Someone who barely knew Imogen would probably assume there’d be mops a plenty, swords abound, maybe a perfectly clean and well guarded theater, and a beautiful woman dancing in tune to some soothing music.

Maybe it would be something else entirely, after all, dreams were such things that predictability was a fairly useless tool to wield.

Regardless of the state of Imogen’s dreamscape, she’d find that quite obviously she was not alone within it. There, rooting around in whatever was available to be rooted around in, was a creature that looked to be made of a grey, matte material. It sniffed and snorted and shuffled about as it sought worms or roots or mushrooms as creatures of the rooting type were oft to do.

Upon being noticed by Imogen, an unlikely event that probably only happens when the correct planets across multiple universes align once per interdimensional big bang event, it would notice her back. And it would startle.



And it would run.

And as it ran, in a direction away from the Lucid Dreaming Imogen, her dream bubble would grow to allow it to have an infinite amount of space in which to flee from her within.

[Imogen]

► Show Spoiler

The old saying about assumptions and asses is classic for good reason, but anyone who predicted Imogen's dreamscape as a theater would be correct. Not just a theater; the theater. While the Pfenning stood moldering and shuttered in the ruins of Zaichaer, in the heart of one Orkhan janitor it was forever in service.



The entryway was stark, barren, and not entirely resolute. Argent flames burned in the sconces, echoing reflection of Imogen's unconscious view of the old Theater as a sanctuary of sorts. The dream was empty of people, but muffled music could be heard from the main hall, as though a performance were just underway. Above her, where once the ceiling had been decorated by a small rotunda window, a reflection of her shield-talisman winked, unintelligible scrivenings spreading like spiderwebs across its mirrored surface, radiating outward from the hidden somnosyte.

The Orkhan witch had begun many dreams like this, walking slowly through the reception hall and into the auditorium, to hear some cryptic message from her unconscious mind. She took a few steps forward into the dream before she remembered that she wasn't here for that, not today.

"Should be... something around here?"

When one entered a dream, it was usually hard to recall why, or even that one was in a dream. Imogen's talisman made it a bit easier; her aether was still connected to the dragonshard, so she could feel the world around her in a strange way. It was a bit like noticing that you had too many fingers. It didn't quite shock the mind back to lucidity, but it helped to keep a separation between the dreamer and dream which wasn't entirely usual.

And what she was looking for was- there!

Rooting about in a garbage can near the corner of the room was a small beast, looking for all the world like a tapir some mad noble had chosen to outfit in full platemail. Imogen turned, beginning her floaty dream walk towards it... only for it to notice that it had been noticed and begin running with a piggy squeal of alarm.

"Wait! Stop! Halt!"

The witch started to jog after it, but as the reception hall streaked away into infinity, she realized quickly that she was never going to be able to outrun the thing. Not as an Ork, at any rate.

In real life, it was inadvisable to invoke the cardinal rune of Animus while moving. As bones and limbs shifted, flesh liquefied and your center of mass moved around, even an experienced shapeshifter was liable to stumble and fall, and it was tricky to break a fall when your arms were retreating into the sides of your torso. In Nod, however, tripping was a function of intentionality, and therefore one could continue to run as quickly as they thought they could.

(There was a lesson in that about how necessary it was to shift shapes in the first place, but do not expect so much of poor Imogen all at once.)

Thus, Imogen's speed across the endless hall increased as she shifted into the form of a cat, accelerating rapidly thanks to the Ork's conception of feline speed. With that burst she began to close on the tapir, a white streak of fur still almost as large as the metal pig itself.

[Aegis]

The metallic tapir was panicking as the slightly more animalistic Imogen closed the distance. It seemed this creature was not some impossibly intelligent entity, drawing Imogen into a trap that could only be triggered if she followed one who ran without question, and it certainly was not some mischievous god of running that used any excuse to run with mortals for eternity.

No, it seemed to be a tapir of metal for all intents and purposes, and once Imogen had made it clear that fleeing would not be possible, from the moment she closed the distance to be within physical reach the tapir turned sharply, facing Imogen, sliding backwards on its cloven feet, eyes scared and determined.

If one couldn’t flee, one would have to fight.

And then a curious thing would happen.

A sword slashed down at Imogen, missing her by a frog’s hair. And the curious part would be that it was her sword, swinging and operating on its own, outside of her control. And a moment later, all of her other Reaving weapons spawned into existence, hovering around the tapir defensively. They did not aggress toward Imogen but any motion toward the creature would result in a swing to drive Imogen back. Any attempt to seize control of her own soul bound weapons would find them non-responsive.

The tapir was shuddering in fear, casting its gaze around itself, still trying to find a way to escape this mad woman. But being within Imogen’s dream space afforded her an unexpected insight. An emotion wormed its way into her own mind. Fear of loss, fear of imbalance, fear of void and shadow. And with that emotional arrival, the tapir was now revealed in its true form.

[Imogen]

Catmeowgen Ward skidded comically to a halt, paws working against the stone floor of the Dream-Pfenning as her own sword hurtled toward her. She yowled in surprise and confusion as the weapon slammed forcefully into the ground, embedding itself long enough for her kitty nose to just touch the stupid Ecithian prayer etched upon it. As usual, it was comically close to being actually relevant to the situation she found herself in.

The witch scooted backwards, eyes darting about the empty hall as her own Pact Weapons manifested in the scene, one by one. It was a strange scene; while she could see the fragments of her own soul arrayed in midair, flashing like an aegis over the weird tapir, she could not feel them. Whatever hold this entity had on her magic, it was supremely powerful- even active wards or industrial shards of abjurinium had never been so effective at muting her witchcraft. It was quite distressing, truth be told.

Still, just because she was disarmed didn't mean the witch was powerless.

Warily, the cat turned her attention away from the floating panoply of armaments--her own armaments!--and back to the critter facing her. The tapir's little piggish face was locked on hers, eyes filled with emotion. Its fears were palpable, and for a moment the witch thought they were going to manifest as nightmares in their own right; but if that were even a true concern, the crude warding she'd made by threading Dreamstone through her shield held it at bay.

What it did not hold at bay was the imagery flashing through Imogen's sleeping mind. Fear filled the halls of the Pfenning, as it had not done since the night she'd helped lay low the Theatergoers infesting the stage. But it was not the fear of a tapir, nor of any other animal. It was a primal fear, the fear of something ancient and simple; of a force, not a person.

At once, Imogen's eyes were cleared, and she saw the sphere of liquid metal swirling. And she was enlightened.

"Oh," Imogen said, though still in the language of cats, "You're a spirit, aren't you? And not just a spirit. An... elemetal?"

Not for the last time, the witch cursed herself for skipping time learning from the Kindred to go watch Carina dance. She wasn't wholly unfamiliar with the various kingdoms and ethereal hierarchies of the realms beyond and within, but she could claim no great expertise either. This, though, she was sure, was a spirit of the Plane of Metal, the hot and hidden realm of great monsters of iron and steel, where aluminum flowed in streams and the slightest rainstorm would butcher an army of mortals.

(She'd asked one of the elder Railrunners, a contemporary of Fianci, once, why the coven didn't simply create a gate to the Plane of Metal and thereby obtain an infinite quantity of any number of valuable resources. The elder witch, showing great wisdom and restraint, had simply ignored her dumbass query.)

Well, identification was a start, but only a start. A metal spirit certainly had the power to inflict the weird gravity curse she'd been struggling with all day, but there was no obvious reason for it to do that. It had to have something to do with the abstract terror she'd felt from it, the worry about darkness and imbalance.

That gave her an idea.

Well, she wouldn't get anywhere just staring at the thing, and cats were notoriously shitty diplomats. Carefully, Imogen backed off, then slid smoothly back into Orkish shape (again, easily and quickly accomplished in the freedom of her dreaming). She kept one detail, however- the cat's claws on the tips of her fingers. They elongated slowly, then began to glow as her Reaving took hold of the keratin, outlining it in silvery nova-fire as though each claw were a weapon unto itself.

The Sunsinger concentrated on the Spellbreaker magic, the pale white flame filling her palm as though she were holding a fireball. Still on her knees, Imogen reached out with the flame, letting the sphere of metal disguised as a tapir see the anentropic fire which was the pride of her order.

"Is something wrong?" Imogen asked, softly, "Look, see? I can help. The Sunsinger flame is a magic to make all things right again."

In the distant auditorium of the Pfenning, a song began playing, faint words reaching the elongated entrance hall.

[Aegis]

The metal spirit paused as Imogen presented her flame. The weapons that were defending it lowered to a readied but not as defensive of a posturing. The spirit swirled and undulated for a while, before it began spinning rapidly. As it did, several orbs of itself split off from its main body and gently floated toward the flame as the spirit slowed down its rotations to a full stop.

The metallic orbs approached the flame carefully and the first of them touched it. It did not shirk back in pain as some might, but rather continued into the flame. The orbs absorbed the fire, glowing moltenly. And then they began to twist and shape, utilizing this bridged connection with Imogen to better communicate.

The first two orbs transformed into the little metallic tapirs, it showed them walking about the flames which now looked to resemble trees and jungle made of the fiery magic. They rooted and snorted and lived. Soon babies were following after them.

Then the fire dimmed, as one of the molten orbs rose above the scene, darkening the side facing the molten tapirs. Another orb joined the scene, but it did not absorb flame, but rather stayed dark. It twisted and stretched and grew into a large feline type. It preened and mewed happily beneath the darkened orb in the sky. Then it set after the tapirs. It slaughtered them mercilessly, but did not eat them, leaving their bodies to disappear. And the shadow cat grew larger.

This scene kept repeating, leaving a one sided battlefield of metal tapir corpses and a large shadow cat strutting over them.

The orb recalled the parts of itself, bobbing up and down before Imogen, and soon the Ork would feel the connection to her weapons returned to her and they bobbed over to her side. A tendril extended from the orb, still glowing molten from the connection with Imogen’s flames and it formed a loose semblance of Imogen’s own hand, presenting itself as an offering of a handshake.

[Imogen]

As she'd expected, presenting a glob of fire to a whirling sphere of liquid metal worked like a charm. Instinct. That was really what being a witch was all about. Sometimes you just had to try shit, and usually it would work.

In this case, however, the spirit leaned right into it, detaching part of itself and producing a little magical diorama. The Ork watched with fascination as the beads of liquimetal spun themselves into tapirs and wolves, and a short drama played out in the space above her upturned palm.

"More metal piglets, huh?" Imogen murmured as she watched, "Cute little guys. And this shadow... that's what you're afraid of. But you're a spirit, so-"

Wait. Perhaps the fear was not for the sake of the spirit per se? The witch had spent many days in southern Ecith now, one of the few recruits of The Duck still doing much exploration, and had encountered myriad creatures. She'd long ago been convinced that something about this land was imbuing them with their strange elemental gifts, but she hadn't considered how this must be changing the balance of the spirits in this land, too.

Was that what she was seeing here? Some kind of guardian spirit to a whole clan of metal tapirs, maybe? And what it feared was...

"This eclipse is strengthening the beasts of shadow in this lands, is it? And if they hunt everyone else..." Imogen didn't think of herself as much of a shaman in the vein of Coid Ong Oping, but even to her mercenary's mind the problems such a drastic imbalance could create were obvious. If the tapirs could not rescue themselves from what hunted them, they would surely die and the elemental balance would shift--ever so slightly shift--towards the domain of darkness. With enough time and repetition, this process could leave all the land nothing more than an annex of that Elemental Plane.

But who could-

"Ah, right." Imogen remarked as the spirit offered a tendril to her. "Well... I'm not really supposed to do charity, but..."

In a way, wasn't this what she'd come here to investigate anyway? And she certainly owed The Duck something for reuniting her with Carina. More than that, she had pledged to defend and maintain the balance of nature in Ecith, though she thought that the Seer who had witnessed her oath in Drathera all those months back had probably only meant Northern Ecith, not the "desert full of assholes" nobody had wanted to talk about or this untamed land.

"Alright, what the hell." The Sunsinger took the metal tendril gingerly in one hand. "I'll fix that for you, no sweat. Seems only fair."

[Aegis]

With the vaguely detailed agreement solidified by a legally binding handshake, a tendril of metal snaked its way up Imogen’s arm, a warming feeling. The tip of the metallic appendage found Imogen’s citizenship markings and dove into the divine ink. The warmth spread as it inserted itself in her markings, adding a silvery tinge, a minor accent to the tattoos.

And then Imogen woke up.

Back upon the beach, surrounded by her gravity stricken armory, she’d be able to feel that they were of normal weight. And bobbing before her was the same metallic spirit from her dreams, spinning and shimmering in the color of every metal, known and unknown, before disappearing, presumably to the plane where elemental spirits resided.

And in the dimmed sunlight, it seemed Imogen’s armory shined just a little bit more than before, in the same way her tattoo did. Something stirred in the tree line, a cacaw being heard, as as a silvery-blue macaw burst out of the trees, flying overhead. Another metal aligned creature of south Ecith.

And Imogen would find that she could feel its presence within her, a feeling that diminished as it flew away and disappeared.

!	Message from: “Aegis”
	You can continue to post as you please, and I’ll review this when you’re done. Imogen can now feel the presence of metal element creatures of South Ecith while they are in the range of any of her biological senses and magical senses. This only works in South Ecith, for now. Any additional threads in this plot vein, submit to me to review.