“Livia, relax. You’re safe now.” Verdandi said, her voice reassuringly calm as Livia struggled upright. The trembling in her body ceased as her scared eyes took in Týr's symbol on the priest closest to her. Reaching out with evident care, he wrapped her in a blanket and supported her in his arms.

Verdandi’s assistants hadn’t bothered to introduce themselves earlier. Yet now each took the time to introduce themselves to Livia.

{{They are disregarding us. Teach them better. She’s ours, yet these claim her.}}

She’s small for her age. Cute girls get an introduction. Well, J, perhaps the lovely Temple folk don’t want to share their names with you. Put on your big girl pants.

Julia moved closer yet resisted a violent urge to invade their personal space. The motion attracted Livia’s attention, yet when she looked up, there was only confusion. As if seeing a vaguely familiar face, whose name was beyond recollection.

Ouch.

She’s alive, that’s the important thing. Hopefully, she stays clear of Aquila.

Why is Analysis showing her as a Monk? She was training as a Priestess.

Let alone the rest of it. Enlightened Soul? Senator’s daughter? What did I end up in the middle of? What did I do?

And her eyes! No whites, only the bluest crystal.

“All but Víðarr, please take Livia to Eir’s Temple. Ensure she’s comfortable in their infirmary, then return to your duties.” Verdandi said, a tone of command edging her voice. The youngest of the attendant got some points from Julia when he carefully lifted Livia in a classic princess carry. Focused on following orders, he looked both calm and yet disapproving at Julia's closeness staring directly beyond her to the door. His arms cradled Livia closer as the other two attendants stepped forward. The two priestesses didn’t look any happier with her as they flanked him closely.

Nordic folks. So unfair, taking advantage of their height to look down on little old me.

{{Ours.}}

“Don’t mind me. I’ll get the door for you.” Julia said, responding to their wary looks with a smile, trying to keep a pleasant appearance.

[Sense Motive (11 -> 14)

Acting (19 ->[B](2)]

Opening the door to allow them to leave without issue, and not slamming it shut drew on her self-control. Yet she managed it without the metal of the handle creaking in her grasp.

“Since the chamber is already cleansed. Should we deal with the altar now, Yngvarr?” Verdandi asked, looking between him and his lover.

“Indeed. Let me put some additional protections in place and we can get started,” Yngvarr agreed, as he pulled a few items from midair.

{{Ours. We should make sure she stays ours.}}

((Trust. She is her own self. Let them keep her safe.))

Emotions churning within as temptation dragged its hooks through desperation, the urge to go with them growing increasingly palpable.

Yeah, because crowding a shocked child who doesn’t recognise you. That would be such a non-selfish thing to do, J… Right!

{{She’ll be out of reach in that place.}}

After we retrieved the celestial, then I’ll talk to Verdandi about Livia’s situation.

Will she ever remember anything more than vague recognition? I should count it as a good thing. Better for her than remembering too much.

Do they even have Monks around to train her? It’s a very eastern concept.

((How does any journey start?))

The negative emotions churning around inside her twisted her stomach. Bad dates getting possessive and then not taking no for an answer had always annoyed her. Yet what was she feeling now? Well, she didn't know what exactly she was feeling, but it felt possessive. Stalkerish. Kneeling by the door, she rested her hands on her knees and tried to let Ki wash away the negative feelings.

She's alive.

{{For now.}}

((Believe.))

“Julia, stand around here. Try to place the altar, as close to this rune as possible,” Yngvarr instructed, pointing to a distinct symbol. The shape was clear with rays that radiated towards the wall, “it marks the exact centre of the chamber.”

“What do I do once I call it forth?”

“Well, that depends”, said Yngvarr, giving Julia a nonchalant shrug as he spoke.

“And what exactly does it depend on?”

“What sort of altar appears, principal thing stay alive. It could be as simple as a decorative slab of rock. But since all that you learnt is the altar is unidentified. Well, let's assume its more than that.”

Stepping close to the rune, Julia pulled the pouch from her inventory. Taking a moment to indulge in a steadying breath, she wrapped its ties around her wrist before focusing on it. Concentrating on the simple entry she willed it from the pouch, trying to imagine it appearing on top of Yngvarr’s rune.

Light wavered and rippled even before the altar of Set fully manifested in Yngvarr’s casting chamber. Thudding sourceless vibrations lashed outward; a barrage of explosions that echoed through her bones. Across the room, their impact struck Víðarr hard and dropped him bonelessly to the floor. The sudden deadening pressure of the air consuming the noise of his body crashing to the stone. Jagged runes fought their way to life around the border of the chamber, yet they guttered like storm soaked embers. The edges of them crackling with spikes of electricity as they struggled to drive off the predations of primordial chaos.

Vomiting into reality, it slid like a diseased secretion from its hiding place to blight and stain the windows of their minds. Stone whistled and squealed underfoot as if air somehow was leaving it. The solid stone suddenly acting like flesh dying underfoot. Its surface, bloated with decay, looked as if putrefaction was rapidly breaking it down. The softness of its morbid rot pulling her downwards, feeling as if it held her in lips of engorged flesh. Once white stone became foul and spongy as liquefying flesh. Swelling upwards around her calves it sucked noisily at her legs. Foulness coated the senses as the air rotted and curdled into a putrid miasma with rank decaying blood thickly scenting the air.

The bitter metallic taste of copper and iron oozed its way into her mouth. As its invasion plunged against the back of her throat, spiked spores bit and clawed at her face and eyes. In that torturous instant, she tried mentally to hold the altar within the pouch. Yet its power didn’t even react; rather it brushed past her will and the enchantments with disdain. Whatever power that had allowed the altar’s containment, clearly not hers to command.

Putrefying stone arrived as if riding atop the rich wave of decay and entropy thrusting itself into reality. Defiled colours radiated from its shifting surface. The altar itself grappling with a star made flesh chained upon it. The black idol of Set stood upright at its end. Its position made it seem a swollen obsidian phallus rising from the body of a bloated grey maggot. Its strange features were seething and writhing as if the chaotic Deity’s statue was uncertain of its form.

Hair like tendrils extruded only to vanish in an instant from every warped contour. Each was lashing out with shrill screams as they flickered in and out of existence. Malevolent parasitic hookworms, thrashing about, as their shifting maws bit at the air. A black haze filled the air in the writhing motion of each passage. Shrill screams and cracks came from the parasites maws as they cut shimmering vacuums in the bleakness of each others’ haze.

Hope and radiant grace pressed through the flesh of a hollowed, ruined mirage of Elvish beauty. Its essence squeezed tight against the slab, violated and twisted by unseen forces. The altar held the shining captive chained and twisted in on itself by links of the void. They spiked and pulled through flesh and bone alike, forcing it into impossible knots. The lifeless features seemed to scorn her every choice as the altar’s power tried to force her into submission.

Random thoughts flickered through her mind as she struggled against the power. Trying to keep sanity and sense of self intact. Even as buttressed as her mind had become, it fought and clawed for every instant, every flicker of reason. Notifications ‘pinged’ unheeded, pressing against her struggling awareness and trying to shatter her attention. Primal entropy gouged into her legs, stripping free ragged pieces of flesh that crackled and froze. The Abyss' corrupted chaos crystallised into obscene parodies of beauty, even as the idol’s force consumed them.

Air crackled with power as musical ringing words resonated their counter tones, order and structure pressing hard against the devouring entropy and chaos of the altar. A liquid chant whispered far away and yet close at hand, set forth a celestial radiance to push back dissolution. The opposing forces brushing past her to strike each other. Their glancing blows sent her spinning away, only the angle of the strikes saving her from obliteration.

Harsh sibilant words roared and raged even as the forces' pressure spat her away from the altar. The echoing compression of flesh and blood turned into a shrill, tinnitus whine as internal pressures ruptured her eardrums. Deafened even to the sound of her own body hitting stone. Bouncing off the wall, Demonic blood spilled across her sight and stained the floor about her. The trio pushed on, spells and blessing crashing against the chaotic power in their midst.

The rugged Norse warrior, radiating defiant fury, screamed untranslatable words of power and burst into living flames. As spells and blessing lashed out yet again, he gathered himself and leapt forward as a white-hot comet. Burning through a breach that had been cleared for him. Pure flame rolled off Alfarr’s skin as he swept past the idol. In midair spell form struck, not at the idol but at the forces that tormented and bound the shining figure. The power of his strike and unspent momentum slid mortal man and celestial alike across the buckling floor close to Julia.

Even as he cleared the area away from the idol, fracturing strikes cracked the weaken fabric of reality around it. Suddenly adrift on its raft of decay, the altar flailed in fury as it fell, spiralling into the echoing beyond. With the consuming entropy cast out, the wards flared alight with a renewed power and the edges of the rift whirled as reality reimposed itself.

Blackness pulsed forth from the hud’s empty health bar, swelling up to blot the room from sight. Crushing weights grew harder still to resist as they pressed her into the solid ground, the cold bleakness leeching Heat from her flesh.

[Alert:

Catastrophic damage occurred.

Do you wish to use forty shards or return to your Home plane?

Destroying entity: Relic of Set - High Altar

Note: Summoner access restrictions will apply if the return option is taken.]

Julia grabbed onto the first option with desperation and the decision halted the drowning whirlpool of forces flaying her. The rush of power from the Souls stabilising flesh and strengthening her connection to the Abyss.

The faintest line of her health mingled overlaying the blood that blocked her sight. Looking through bleeding eyes to the parts of broken flesh that were dimly visible provided no comfort. Spurs of bones speared upwards through flesh showed where ribs had shattered and flesh squeezed into the remnants. Bone fragments foamed along the curves of flesh that remained across her torso. Armour and clothes formed from Shapeshift, had dissolved away during the struggle to stay on this plane. Naked, her succubus form spread in a state of broken beauty across the stone. Even now, her mind shivered away from even the simplest of transformations, the mending fractures of reality still burning at her senses.

[Achievement: Crash test dummy

Requirement: Take normal maximum health in a single encounter while inflicting zero-damage and yet survive.

Secondary condition met: Damage sustained from a force of chaos.

Reward: Improved Regeneration and Shapeshift combined into Protean.]

As it announced the achievement, the health bar which had stayed dangerously flat slowly increased. Vision clearing as bone and flesh knitted back into place, the sounds of the chamber returned. With clarity came the realisation that Alfarr was nearby. A broad-bladed axe he now held in his hands gleamed in the renewed energy of the wards. His eyes focused on knitting flesh, he had stepped close, hefting the axe with practised ease.

fuck.

“You’re a mess, little Demoness. You were flickering like a drowned candle, thought you were tripping off home. Nearly went to end you. Fine day to still be alive.”

Julia tried to speak again, yet the action had her coughing clots of blood from her lips, injured flesh shifting with the struggle.

“Ship those oars of yours and drift with the tide a bit. The floor might not be the most comfortable, but it will be easier when cleaning the mess up.”

“Alfarr hurry, help me get Víðarr out of here,” Verdandi said, her voice strained with effort but still snapping across the room.

The axe disappeared from his hand as he looked over to where Verdandi crouched near Víðarr. Her assistant seemed motionless on the floor, the power of blessings glowing between them.

“She’s always the boss of me,” Alfarr muttered before a blanket appeared and was carefully laid over the broken celestial, “I’ve only got the one. So pull yourself together, you hear.”

Wanting to groan at Alfarr's quip as they walked away, Julia just settled for rolling her eyes; the feeling of fluid still present in her throat and lungs. Yet while the pain of the injuries was present, the healing process itself seemed to have changed. Even the visible shards of ribs retreated into flesh, slowly merging back without pain. The health indicator ticked upwards regularly, yet it would still obviously take a while before she’d fully recovered.

So many things that can blow past me. Fuck. Why would he talk so casually about ending me?

The covered celestial still looked contorted, the blanket actually made its appearance worse. When it had laid on the altar, the abuse it had suffered was clear and sent thought shuddering away from the injuries. Yet now, with its injuries out of sight, Julia’s mind tried to make sense of what it might have suffered, and it twisted her in knots. With the mutilated mess it was in, she didn't even know its gender, just the beauty in its untouched features was unearthly grace.

Analysis

[Name:

Species: Celestial Ljósálfar

Court: Forest’s Heart

Class:

Level:

Condition: Chaos lock in place, Physical capabilities (Locked), Spiritual State (Locked)]

It’s still alive!