Trial By Fire (Imogen, Talisman)

[Norani]

Glade 3, 122 following https://www.legendofransera.com/viewtopic.php?t=4596

Norani and Imogen were racing along the roots of Agst'rasera, those that connected the Primal Planes to every other plane of existence. Norani had no reference for how far they were traveling in comparison to the Mortal Plane, but if she did, she'd know that they were crossing the continent far faster than she could manage in her wind or lightning forms, faster than Albagen could fly. They'd arrive at Drathera before the mortal day ended.

All around them, the worlds blended and swirled and raged in their many various Elements and Primal Forces. Blood melted into metal which shifted into hurricanes and back into Order and so on and so forth. A beautiful world that one could spend a thousand lifetimes studying and barely be closer to understanding. Beneath their feet, the wood of Agst'rasera was charged with the lightning that guided their way toward Drathera, a path so easy to follow that even if Norani were to be slain, the way was laid out for Imogen. Many a branch dashed off in other directions, but they carried not the electricity with which Norani and Imogen followed.

That is until Norani felt something shift in the air.

She paused, hovering above the root in her Wind Prescience form, reaching out with her elemental touch. There was a foreign heat here, a burning, a crying out of fire. She looked back at Imogen, then cast her gaze at a nearby branch that left the road they were on. That branch was not charged with her lightning, but there was a flame running through it instead. Her eyes narrowed, and now she could feel a tugging on her rune, recognizing it for what it was.

Her magic felt a major elemental imbalance, a great disturbance somewhere.

She looked back and forth between the paths, then back at her companion. She had made up her mind before even casting her eyes upon the witch that may one day take her on as a mentee. Decisive or impulsive, two things that would always be used to describe Norani in equal parts. "We must make a detour, Imogen Ward."

Then Norani started down the path of fire, leaving the path of lightning behind. She knew it was a distraction, she knew it would slow the journey toward this great mission of hers, but she also could feel that it was necessary, that it was right. And so she raced and raced and pushed herself forward, until an opening presented itself, a ring of flame and fire and inferno, and she punched right through.

And there she hung suspended in the blue sky. She looked all around her, seeing golden sand in all directions as far as her eyes allowed. Huh. Her best guess was Atraxia, for it was the only desert she'd ever heard about, as the only neighbor to Ecith, but she'd never been. She cast out her elemental aether, calling upon the spirits of the land, to help guide her, and Imogen should the great witch join her, to the disturbance, in the hopes that she could bring it into balance.

[Imogen]

Thankfully, the albatross' form was pretty much perfect for this trip.

The roots of the World Tree were, it seemed, had plenty of clearance for a bird to fly in. Norani's wind moved with great alacrity--easily as fast as any falcon's dive, and much faster than any bird's sustained airspeed--but Imogen's large, grey-feathered wings easily caught and rode the current. Better yet, the albatross' unusual locked-wing flight permitted Imogen's racing mind plenty of time to reflect undisturbed on all the sudden revelations dumped on her since Norani had woken her up this morning.

What bothered her now was a singular thought: how many layers of world were there, anyway?

She'd always known that there was more to the universe than what met the eye, of course. Her long work with the Railrunners had left her very familiar with Slipspace, the infinite in-between nothing full of ruins, garbage and monsters. She was also familiar with some of the basic theories of the Kindred summoners, of the land of Nod, so on and so forth. The idea that there were worlds layered on top of each other was not new.

But now she was wondering... was there any end to it? The roots of Agst'rasera lay between the mortal world and the planes of the primal elements- fair enough, made sense. But what would happen if she opened a portal to Slipspace here? And did the roots reach there, to sustain the energy of the elements which were thoughtlessly discarded or tragically lost? What about other worlds? Was the weird reflected plane of the shadow eagles here somewhere? Was she separated from an unending myriad of other universes only by the same indescribably fragile meniscus which Traversion acted upon?

And what about her cat? He was in her shadow, but where actually was her shadow right now?

Thankfully, the witch's increasingly troubled and confused thoughts were broken as Norani spoke for the first time since they'd begun their trip. They had to make a diversion.

"Huh?" asked the large seabird, the very picture of wisdom, "Why? And where? There's nothing between the beach and Drathera-"

The winds surrounding Albagen surged forward, carrying the hapless bird along with them through a river of fire. Imogen dodged and weaved to avoid sudden sparks and flares, almost wheeling about as they approached a wall of fire ahead. When Norani burst through, however, and Imogen spotted blue skies and clouds beyond, she made a run for the new rift instead, practically swooping through like some raptor bird of prey.

Now outside of the elemental saturation of the Roots, Imogen turned to her map of Slipspace to get an idea of which direction they'd gone. It took only that and a single glance downward at the sandy expanse below to confirm her worst fears.

"Norani!" the bird squawked in protest, "This is the Expanse! Why are we stopping here?!"

To the best of Imogen's memory, the Atraxian Expanse was said to be little but miles of empty sand and a few tribes and settlements which the Dratherans had seldom addressed and which Avamande had repeatedly condemned as "heretics" and "blasphemers". That didn't bother her--she seldom bothered to learn any of the historical minutae which seemed to obsess the elven races--but she was pretty certain she'd heard that the only places in this desert which weren't desolate were hostile.

[Talisman]

The Atraxian Expanse. The vast wilds that were brutal, desolate, and deadly. Furthermore... this was hostile territory. Solunarium did not take kindly to Orkhan, no matter what reason they came for. But there was a problem here in these lands, and it was calling to Norani along the Plane of Fire.

As far as they could sense and see, there was nothing but themselves out there, and empty sands that shone under an oppressive light that was as powerful as the sun. Even for a desert, this stretch seemed to be barren - what life had been here had fled, or had been scorched to naught. They would be able to sense that their Crafts would work here, uninterrupted as they had been in the shadows of the great darkness that had spread across the world. All across it, it seemed, except for the Kingdom in which they were now in the middle of. Runes worked, but at what cost? To themselves and the very land that they were now in the middle of?

The younger Orcana, the Elementalist of the pair, would sense that the radiant light overhead was not without its drawbacks. The omnipresent light meant that the moons were unseen, and since the moons controlled the tides... what sources of water there was in this sun-baked place was suffering. Elementalists across the Kingdom had worked and were working to ensure that these sources of water were protected and replenished. But still, the elements were not in alignment. Much was, but something jarring stood out, and its discordance felt wrong. This wasn’t something that was merely angry.

If the elements together harmonized when they were in flow, each adding its own rhythms and melodies to the symphony, this dissonance interrupted the flows around where they were. And out here in the hostile sands, where not so much life passed by areas for seasons at a time, its pain had only grown. And with the growing pain, so was the influence. The problem was finding it. It seemed to be moving, but without a pattern. The more southerly direction seemed to produce the most ‘off’ feeling, but what path they took would be up to them. With Imogen’s drifting overhead, she wouldn’t be able to see anything but wind-swept dunes that had darker sands in some spaces than others.

[Norani]

"The elements called to me."

It was said as a whisper, but the winds happily carried her words easily to Imogen's ears. At first her eyes cast around, seeking out life and finding none. But an itch was forming in her aether, something was strange. She cast her eyes toward the sun, following the itch. Her eyes, as the were, could stare confidently into the sun without burning out, for, like the rest of her, they were currently made of wind, yet still worked as eyes.

She put words to the feelings that came trickling through her aether. "That sun is... wrong." She casually conjured a small cloud between the two Orkhan and the sun, and looked around for the moons. They were gone too. And she could feel the drain of the heat on the cloud, the water evaporating further, faster than it should. Too hot. Too much heat. She dismissed the cloud and summoned the parched winds, sending them out to find water. They raced to do her bidding, and came back quickly, having found none as far as a quick search would tell.

Her brow furrowed, a frown around her tusks. She knew all places had a balance of the elements, regardless of the biome. Differing amounts, but not an absolute absence. One of the winds she'd cast out came back slower than the others, she could sense that something strange had happened to it, something the wind itself couldn't explain. She cast her eyes to the south, the direction it had returned from.

"This place is in pain." She looked over at Albagen, "We go south."

A curt headnod, and the Orkhan shaped windy lass, and her troupe of confused winds, started south. Norani flew down low, using the natural flow of the winds themselves to be her guide, saving a couple of them for Albagen to ride upon if desired. She glided two meters above the sand, heading southerly, extending her aura down into the sands themselves, searching for anything, asking the elements what was wrong, what was needed, what was happening, what did they know.

And she intended to keep in this direction until she found something or the strange feeling from the south changed.

[Imogen]

Between getting her bearings and her alarm at the entire diversion, Imogen hadn't really stopped to consider the fact that there was apparently a sun here. Perhaps one could have expected a Sunsinger to be more cognizant of the fact, but the witch's famous inattentiveness was at least as powerful as a lifetime of membership in a secretive sun cult.

"Bwuh." the bird said, insightfully. The light high above them was notably harsh, but quite passable at a glance. Imogen shuddered to imagine the kind of work which would go into a construct of such magnitude; certainly the design of a genius. To condemn it as merely imperfect seemed needlessly harsh.

Besides which, what imbalance could Norani possibly mean? The desert lay beneath them, spreading in every direction. She'd seen its outskirts from the south during her three-day flight last year, but she'd seen no reason to enter. The black sands east of Zaichaer had been bad enough, and those were not nearly so... vast. It hardly seemed like there was anything you could really do to the fathomless sands to make them worse.

She might have continued looking at the false sun for some inadvisable length of time, but she tore her gaze away when the clouds interrupted it. That remained baffling. Had Norani always been so adroit an elementalist? It wasn't a discipline into which Imogen claimed much insight, but she was sure the girl was throwing around entirely too much aether.

"Now hold on a moment, Norani-" the girl was already off, blowing towards the south, but a few well-placed blinks put Imogen back in speaking distance, "You're not planning to try anything with that false sun, are you? A dwimmer of that size must have a dozen mages watching it. You start meddling and they'll be on you--on us--like flies!"

It didn't really seem like the Ecithian ork knew what she was doing, actually; just following the elements. Well, in Imogen's experience, the elementals were exceptionally bad at communicating what exactly it was they wanted. Also? Exceptionally bad at understanding the kinds of positions their requests put people in.

It seemed it would fall to her to be wary. She let herself ride the wind passively again as she scanned the horizons; she could not fathom what problems lay ahead, but given Norani's path they seemed inevitable.

[Talisman]

Pain. Hurt. Pain. Rage. Pain.

Grief?

Pain!

As they went south, further and further from where they had appeared within the barren desert, Norani was getting a stronger sense of that wrongness. It felt maddening. Twisted. And trying to focus on it with her strong connection to the elements brought upon a dizziness that upset her sense of balance. Imogen, while not an elementalist, had the advantage of the eyesight of her form that by far exceeded that of her companion... and miles and miles away was a raging, burning fire. It was huge, and as they got closer, the wind and the heat became that much more oppressive.

Norani might not have been able to see it, but she could certainly sense it. It was twisted, in pain, and it felt like no other source of fire that she had ever come across. The sheer heat of it burned, even with her own friendly flames and her mastery of the elements to help protect her - she would feel it in her skin, on her skin, against scales... This fire was leaving burning, scalding trails within the sands. Earth was crying out from where it seared it, even here in Atraxia. The dark marks in the sands, that looked like blackened, powdered glass, started to seep in and mix with the earth below, causing that element to hurt and rage. Had they been on the ground, they would have been able to feel the ripples emanating outwards from it. The elemental was not just red and white and yellow and gold and orange, but there was hues of purple and black burning within it, spreading through a form that was at the moment relatively shapeless. It was large, perhaps the size of Ruvaf... though surely if it condensed itself, it could be smaller and tighter. And yet, despite how unbearable and painful that heat was, it was, it spoke to her. It called to her. The sensations it projected to her were different from what she had felt before, in conflict and contrast... there was less of the pain, less of the hurt... more of something else. It encouraged her to come closer, and closer... She wanted to grow? She could. She could possess power beyond what she might find here. She just needed to have the hunger and the drive to do it.

No guts, no glory.

Harsh gusts collided with those of Norani’s winds, pushing sharply as the air, already hot, was being subjected to something far more sinister and otherworldly. The suddenness threatened to upend the large-winged bird, applying a painful strain to her wing muscles that were meant to glide and soar along on the thermals. The shoulder-locking mechanism of the muscles bore the brunt of it, and she would find herself forced to adjust to regain altitude, lest she hit the arid sands at a rapid pace. Staying aloft here was going to require teamwork from the young Orkhan that had come to her to ask her aid. The unnatural levels of heat were beginning to penetrate her thick, protective plumage, and while the light overhead that seemed to follow them from the massive orb in the sky was already uncomfortable, this was deteriorating towards distressing.

[Norani]

Norani could feel she was heading in the write direction, knowing that the elements were guiding her. It reminded her of the touch of Agst'rasera, guiding her with an unseen hand. But unlike that hand, this one was... sick. It was calling for helping, it was hurting, it was angry. Norani remembered the angry black waves when she had first discovered Agst'rasera. This was very, very similar.

As she flew though, her body began to drift back and forth, the horizon ahead shifting. She continued to feed the connection, and as she did, her body, despite being of wind, felt off-balanced. Just as the elements were. She wanted to sever the connection, to stop this strange feeling, but she knew she couldn't. She was here for the elements, and they needed to know it. She could endure some dizziness, nausea, some maddening emotions, she was no stranger to any of them.

Still, they would take their toll.

She dropped out of her Prescient form, staying locked in on this connection, her face grimacing, her aura heavily in flux, but she refused to sever the connection. It was burning everything, it was out of control. This was no wildfire, no errant mistake by careless mortals, this was a deep, elemental wrongness. Norani gasped, a wave of dizziness and heat overwhelming her, and she began to fall, her eyes rolling back in her head.

But the Elements always respond to an Elementalist in tune with them. The winds slowed her fall, the sand softened itself, and she landed with a dull thud, half burying herself in the sand, bruised but alive. She spread her connection through the sands, finding them screaming in pain, and she herself screamed out as well, feeling every burn, feeling the crystallization, the pain and the rage and the confusion.

Norani pulled herself from the sand, looking deep into the conflagration. There. An elemental was in there, she could see it, she could feel it, and she could see that it was constantly in change. And it was calling to her. Something was wrong with it, it was large, loosened, shifting. And it offered her power, great power. Norani felt winds, surges of heat, power through those around her, and those with Imogen.

Norani's eyes narrowed, not fooled for one second by this offer of power from this elemental. The elementals she knew did not offer power, did not offer to give or to teach. That was something mortals did. Elementals were pure and innocent unless twisted and corrupted, they existed in their own manner. This one was surely injured, somehow, confused, scared, and lying. She pulled back her connection, keeping it out of reach of the elemental itself, but staying with the winds and sands around her.

Norani needed to get close.

She whispered a name into the winds, summoning Ooshi to her side. She knew that the little elemental would be in Agst'rasera with Destyn. And she felt it answer the call, and with a subtle plop, the spirit arrived, and Norani felt her aether drop immensely. Her eyes widened, recognizing Ooshi's elemental signature, but her form was bigger, more powerful, a raging cyclone of winds the size of the Orkhan herself. The wind elemental sent a word to her in their shared language.

'Palarae'

Norani nodded, and began pouring her aether into the super heated winds that were threatening to ground Imogen, to burn them both, and Ooshi joined her. And as they did, Norani could feel a connection she had not ever noticed before. There was something else here, something that flowed through her, through Ooshi, and through the winds of the entire area. It felt like a song, something that danced and changed and shifted, but she could feel it now, and it was beautiful, it thrummed powerfully.

Norani seized that connection, attuning with it.

She gasped, feeling herself open up to the powers entirely of the winds of the desert. She could feel an unparalleled amount of aether available to her. It was not hers, and she could feel that it was the aether of this realm, of the winds here. Norani floated up off the sands, her Symbiosis with the winds here becoming absolute. She resumed her Prescient state, and she eased the winds that were threatening Imogen with little more than a thought. Ooshi merged into her Prescient form, a tornado forming there, one that was controlled. The excess heat, she began funneling upwards into the sky, while leaving every single grain of sand exactly where it lay.

She sent a whispering wind to Imogen, "If I can get you close to the Elemental, can you use your Truth Fire to reveal it for what it is? It is pained, confused, I fear it is corrupted and injured. But we mustn't destroy it if at all possible. We can save it." A wind waited to carry Imogen's response back. Norani began whipping winds all around the conflagration, forming a barrier, so that it could not grow further outward, could not further scare the winds and sands in such a way.

[Imogen]

Albagen stayed hot on Norani's heels until the heat itself began to rise precipitously. The desert had been unpleasant anyway, of course, but the sharp spike in temperature exceeded all reasonable expectations, and Imogen quickly realized that this must be a result of the elemental imbalance Norani kept mumbling about.

Once the enormous fire came into focus, it did not take a genius witch to understand what was happening; probably for the best, given Imogen's track record with analyzing foreign magics.

"Ah, damn." Imogen muttered through her beak, mostly for her own benefit, "Well that can't be right."

It was something to do with the false sun, and no mistake. Something about the light.

Was that it, perhaps? Kalzasi's protective aura had been the work of a demigod of light, and Gel'Grandal's network of warding was powered by an array of Dawnstone, expropriated from the populace and passers-by howsoever needed. But this false sun felt false. Perhaps it was merely elemental fire?

She doubted it. Likely there was much more to an enchantment of such obvious magnitude- and she wasn't going to figure it out by gawping.

Just then, the winds grew suddenly harsh. Albagen banked as the thermals from the inferno tore into Norani's cloak of breezes, scattering them and tossing the seabird around like a child dragging a kite across the sky. Imogen felt her wings strain as she fought to remain upright, to keep herself from spiraling across the sky and into the blazing sands below. More than the strange gale, though, she could feel a strange sense of malice in this air, haunting the skies alongside her.

The witch nearly panicked, drawing the aether she would need to escape into slipspace and emerge beyond the fire's reach, but she remained steady long enough to feel her companion seize control of the air around them once more. The bird righted herself in the sky; she would have winced at the pain from her strained wings, but birds are notoriously bad at the expressions so common to humanoid persons.

"If I can get you close to the Elemental, can you use your Truth Fire to reveal it for what it is?" Norani's voice came suddenly to Imogen's avian ear. "It is pained, confused, I fear it is corrupted and injured. But we mustn't destroy it if at all possible. We can save it."


So used to being asked if she could purify things was the Sunsinger that she began to frame a negative answer for several seconds. When she realized what Norani had actually asked, a wave of relief washed over the little bird.

"It is obscured?" she asked, her little bird voice oddly cheery, "Yes, I can reveal it. Get me close."

Rather than explain herself further, the witch chose to trust in her companion's discretion and materialized her Pact staff below her feet. The albatross totem had no claws with which to grip the staff, nor could the seabird hope to have stayed aloft while bearing a seven-foot length of wood and bronze and crystal; thankfully, her Pact Weapons' positions in space were more a function of Imogen's whim than her muscles, and the weapon floated obediently beneath her in precisely the way she'd envisioned.

Calling on the Sunsingers' spell was second nature to Imogen, but she took her time for this invocation. The skies around the bird darkened momentarily as the weapon drank it, the ruddy false-sun's hues moderating into argent tones which rippled across the weapon's surface as they grew brighter and more dense- until, at last, it erupted into silvery flame.

When Alios had fallen to the Imperium, the Dawnmartyrs had been hunted almost to extinction by their triumphant foes. Some wayward groups had, naturally, survived, but without Arcas' guidance they could not bestow the Emblem which had been the Order's lodestar. Without Dawnfire, the Order was neutered.

But the Sunsingers had been left with something unexpected; a sword, forged long ago by the God of Swords, which had captured Arcas' sunfire. Perhaps only an immortal smith like Raxen could devise such a treasure, but even a master's painting can be copied by far inferior artists. The Sunsingers had studied Novuril's enchantment and devised an imitation borne within their souls, kept contained by the Cardinal Rune of Reaving.

Imogen drew the novaflame out of her Pact staff, converting the aether of her own spirit into a replica of Raxen's ancient working. It erupted like a bonfire, a third light between the fire below and the angry sun above, and she redirected it into the Dawnstone worked into the weapon's head. It converted heat into light, and a sphere of sunshine blossomed below the albatross, an intense pinprick of silver radiance above the desert. But it was not pure sunlight- the diffuse novafire carried a will within it, an inhuman desire that all things be revealed for what they were, that all ills in the world be burned away to nothing.

Yes, that ought to do it.

"Get me close!" Imogen repeated, though she wasn't honestly sure if Norani could still hear her, "And... try not to let me catch fire, either, please?"

[Norani]

As the winds carried Imogen's words of readiness back to Norani, she immediately moved into action. Norani remembered how she'd managed to punch through a tidal wave of darkness and malice, back when she was much weaker of a mage. It had resulted in a broken wing for Ruvaf, but she felt confident she could do something of the same now.

Weaving the winds together, the tornado-shaped-Orkhan-spirit tagteam, formed a tight, swirling ball of wind around Imogen, a protective sphere, designed to send any errant winds and heat away. She made it just large enough to encapsulate her and the floating flaming weapon, needing to keep it tight for this to work best. Inside, it provided a soft amount of lift to keep Imogen afloat as needed, and would keep her moving as the sphere moved.

As that sphere was formed, she called more winds now, sending them spiraling in the opposite spin off the sphere, forming a funnel, not unlike the tail end of her own tornado shape. Norani could feel just how much aether she was funneling through this, knowing it was not hers, it belonged to the world around her, so she needed to be careful, to be precise. She shot the funnel forward, elongating it, the tip of the spear spiraling through the flames towards the strange elemental being.

The winds screamed in pain at the heat, but their spin offered some protection, redirecting it up and away, a natural escape for such an element. As the tip of the funnel reached the elemental being, clearing the way, Norani shot the Imogen filled spear down the corridor. Into the eye of the windy, fiery storm, the ancient witch was sent. A moment before the sphere and the elemental would collide, Norani would dissipate the sphere, but keep the vortex open, to keep the flames out as best she could, to allow Imogen to do her work.

She hoped it would be enough, she needed to conserve energy to help repair the land if they could help this elemental first.

[Imogen]

There were a lot of tricks to effective use of fire, but the first step was almost always contact.

If you want to light kindling, you need to touch a spark to it. If you want to set a torch ablaze, it is best to take another to it. A blaze could spread far and wide from where it was set, leaping trees and chasms on the wings of wind, but it all came from that fateful first contact.

That was the part Imogen wasn't looking forward to. Whatever kind of elemental thing it was that Norani hoped to heal, it was putting off heat the way a real wildfire might, enough to cook the air and blister flesh at a distance. Imogen's Pact staff was quite fireproof despite its apparently wooden construction, but even if she were in a hardy Orkhan form and protected by dragon's scale, she herself would have suffered for the proximity. An albatross was, if anything, even less suited for life in a desert kiln. It would take only moments for her to become the most exotic roast fowl that the Atraxian sands had ever seen.

...but thankfully, that wasn't her plan. Not that "throw yourself into a fire" wasn't the sort of plan Imogen sometimes came up with; she just happened to have a slightly better one today. Her bird flesh couldn't stand the heat- but why should she need to get that close to it herself?

The Sunsinger kept close to her blazing orb of novafire as she rode Norani's tunnel towards the flame, feeling the air grow hotter and hotter as Elementalist prodigy's protections waned. As the temperature rose to threatening levels, superheated air and flames licking at the fraying magic surrounding Imogen, the bird shifted course an imperceptible degree--a minute adjustment of infinitely small proportion--and flew into Slipspace.

The albatross shimmered, becoming translucent as a ghost, and the threatening heat vanished immediately. The veil separating her from the physical realm was thinner than the thinnest paper, but no element could penetrate it, and her phased-out form passed through the inferno like an illusion. This was a trick she'd seen Carina pull many times, but it wasn't sustainable. Most of the time, the caster suspended themselves in slipspace for a matter of seconds, to allow some weapon to pass through themselves. Here, Imogen held on just a little longer, ensuring she could skim the top of the flames harmlessly before making a mad dash upwards.

Her weapon, charged with great mass of writhing novaflame, did not. It trailed beneath her like a missile, aiming for the heart of the flames- and once it was close enough, the spectral bird-witch directed it to release its charge, the pent-up energies of the copy of Raxen's ancient spell suddenly freed upon the sands.