Empyrea's Story

There were faint whisperings deep in the waters of the grotto. This place was sacred. Despite Eras gaining so much influence across Gaia, here he still could not touch. It was a shame what had happened across the seas in Siv'en. Gaia had no choice but to flee here as there her pool was tainted. Eras seemed to have worked strategically, for now she was trapped in Ellaria.

"Worry not, they will heed the call..." Empyrea was not so sure. She meddled all she could. Any more and those who regulated beings such as herself may sweep in and...She shuddered to think of what would happen.

"They have been called. Now, we let everything fall where it shall," The World Spirit of Gaia sounded weak, but she knew too well of fate and what happens when you meddle beyond where you should. It's almost a sick joke. Whatever you try for fails. Gaia had learned this the hard way, the first time. After all, Eras rose for a reason, did he not?

"Sagittae and Atargatis, how did Eras get his power back from him?" Empyrea wondered. Tartarea spoke up. Nobody had noticed his presence arrive, but he wasn't happy.

"The stones have been removed from the tower, is how," He rumbled. From above, the pool would emit the sounds of crashing waves as the spirits of the seas on Gaia went back and forth, blaming each other for losing track. Had anyone alerted the dragons?

"Patience," Gaia whispered. Eras had been hard at work over the thousands of years since his power was so stripped. The pool pulsed as the powers shifted and some of it was returned to Gaia.

"A great threat to the grotto!" Gaia wailed as she felt the jotunn shift. She knew it wasn't what it seemed; they all did. As there was a great disruption in the Weargtooth Mountains, the pool began to whisper. The Bogscale began to gather at the edge. They heeded the call to action, but knew they had little power. The Reshar too understood, quizzically enough, and scattered to warn the Alneh.

The waters grew still as Tartarea leapt to action, channeling his flows to strengthen the waters of the grotto and beyond, the channel to the sea. The grotto must be protected!

”Oh ye of little faith…” Ha’Ari spoke, a purring bass that filled the air with a serene peace.

He appeared in the grotto, an enormous lion of fire and light. Leolik looked upon the three spirits with eyes alight with compassion. His flame was like a soothing balm - a comforting hearth - and the light that shone from His face chased away the darkness of the heart.

“I have heard your cry, children of the cosmos, and I offer salvation from the Longest Night if you only ask. My own champions have been called, and I have claimed the land of the Royale Prairies as an inheritance for my children.”

Far away, amidst the rolling plains of the Royale Prairies, the Avatar of Ha’Ari roared in defiance of Eras. No, it was more than defiance. Leolik, the King of Kings, rebuked the errant star and its wicked heart. His gaze peered into Eras’s innermost being, into the crooked corruption within, and He felt both pity and disappointment.

But the Everlasting Flame still burned, and as long as He willed it, that region would be protected from the life-sapping power of the evil star.

"Gaia would rather destruction than her Spirit feed Eras back to power," Atargatis swept into the Grotto. Periwinkle twinkled on the waters above. Still the Groenbogs were hubub with chaos as Nightfall was realized.
"Those from elsewhere have really opened the door. We need to return the stones-" Atargatis was silenced by a harsh look from Tartatea.

"The stones are a lost cause," Tartarea sighed. He retired to keeping an eye on the shorelines. Gaia herself had fallen into a slumber.

"They aren't," Atargatis calmly finished explaining how the stones had saved them the first time around. The acid lake, true enough, was no longer a challenge. The rooms, though! Still a few stones remained. Sadly the number, unless all, would never be enough to stop Eras.

"We can improve upon it later," Empyrea chimed in with a yawn on her breath. Something was draining her more so than the others, "Welcome to our humble Dance."

The Lifegiver Grotto was all the much more radiant and potent with the giving of life to the Alneh now that a new God had been welcomed.

Leolik nodded to the two spirits. “Eras’s hubris is great, and he has hardened his heart to almost the point of no return. My prophet conveys my warnings to him as we speak, but he will not heed my voice. Though I protect Gaia from his fury with my outstretched hand, and my champions stand against his titans, I will only stand against his authority for so long.

“If the stones will not be retrieved, then a plan of redemption for Gaia must be written into the Weave - a plan that will release her from Eras’s yoke.”

"The champions have been called," Atargatis continued as if he had no ears, when he knew the fate of Gaia truly rest in the hand of her children, and the Champions. Tartarea grew dark and disappeared. With him the twilight glimmer faded. Empyrea frowned after him, then after a moment her astral eyes grew wide as the moon. She too grew dark and disappeared back to her waters.

When Atargatis spoke of Champions, he was not just speaking of those native to Gaia. When Gaia, the planet, sent out her call, he felt it brisk by his spacial mass. Atargatis had no doubt the call would reach those from other realms - just as he remembered a different type of call reached other realms not so long ago.

Atargatis pondered on this, before finally speaking up again to Leolik.

"Redemption, is for the guilty. Of what guilt should Gaia be redeemed?"

As a mountain rose from the sea in the center of the storm, the magmatic forces below stirred with fervor. The symbols on Stormquake grew more and more dense, until finally the entire hammer was aglow as if it were made of lava itself.

The Wyrm completed it's melding into the heart of Stormquake, offering the forces of fire deep in Gaia's belly to aid his cause. The Wyrm of Eruption, unknowing of intention and blind to all but power, tingled as once again it knew it would implement itself upon the realm. Sheodin was lucky to have Stormquake facilitating The Wyrm, as the great hammer nullified a few of The Wyrms weaknesses. In turn, Stormquake would find certain weaknesses brought to light. Regardless the Wyrm would not burn to hold, the Wyrm would not grow heavier the longer it was held, and the Wyrm wasn't as inclined to argue every move before it was made. Right now, The Wyrm was simply at glee.

Still, Gaia slept.

Another force made itself present. Empyrea breathed in some of the storms, wishing to absorb some of the energy back into herself. After a moment of frustration- the energy would not return! - Empyrea realized that it wasn't a storm caused by Eras's awakening, or a storm caused by great giants moving about.

Empyrea moved to swirl around the mountain, willing the oceans of her mass to slow every so slightly as they raged. Not enough to stop the storm- she realized she wasn't strong enough to put a total end to it. Empyrea grumped at the thought of a foreign God having more power than she in her own ocean. When she saw the glowing hammer Empyrea all but lost her grip on the sea with a gasp of shock.

Sheodin stood at the peak of the floating mountain. Arcs of pure mana danced across his body, crystallizing stone as they grazed the former island. Electricity wove through his mane while eyes, shining like stars, looked upon the storm with satisfaction. For those who had never seen Sheodin, he would very much appear a storm god in fleshly form.

He focused on the altered Stormquake, and he Saw the threads of reality that formed the weapon shift and warped into something else. Though he worried about the outcome of the changes, he could not spare time to truly inspect its new form.

There was work to do.

The archmage peered at the mountain, seeing beyond sight and into the Weave where the threads gave form and defined the very essence of everything in existence. They were stiff, rigid, and tightly woven where the mountain floated in space, but the turbulent air reminded him of frayed cloth whipping in the wind. Sheodin reached out with his will and plucked at the mountain’s threads, and then he slammed the Wyrm of Stormquake into the peak.

A ripple passed through the stone as rock cracked and buckled. The mountain bled with lava as the power of the warhammer forged it into something new. Earthen fires burned and rock was molded like clay by Sheodin and Stormquake’s will, forming what appeared to be a massive barbed spearhead.

Sheodin turned to face Empyrea as the mountain reformed, and he looked upon her with eyes that glimpsed beyond past, present, and future.

“Daughter of Gaia.” He spoke in a voice that was echoed by the storm. “Spirit of water and air, lend me your strength so that I may smite the parasites that threaten this world.”

"You know not what you wield," Empyrea manifested a form in a swirl. She was a gargantuan version of herself, each finger as large as a human child of Gaia. Empyrea brought her face close to Sheodin.

It wasn't complete in his grasp but the entirety of it's form was there. The Wyrm of Eruption- able to channel the forces of the very magmatic surrounding core of Gaia. Those who were able to withstand it's power as it coursed through them, hot as the fires beneath the realm, were few and far between.

Neodin's own hammer was able to absorb a bulk of the side effects - Neodin wasn't weakened to an extreme degree, nor was he struck with a fever whenever it came time to equip. The power of the magma was his. As deep below it churned, the planet warmed in the slightest, the feet of the giants burning. A grinding echoed faintly over the seas from the south as Ni'Thorne expressed displeasure.

Empyrea continued to steady the churn around the newly formed peak- but didn't slow it any more.

The storm continued to build in ferocity as the floating mountain changed shape. Sheodin maintained eye contact with Empyrea even as he clenched his fists and the storm started to fold.

A sound reverberated through the heavens, akin to the turning of gears, and the universe slowed to a crawl. Sheodin’s mane stuck out in an odd angle, buffeted by a frozen gale. Drops of rain lazily drifted through the air like graceful snowflakes, and everything grew silent except for a distant drone. Streaks of lightning bled across the sky like streaks of water. All the world grew still - except for Empyrea.

“Then tell me, ocean spirit.” Sheodin’s voice reverberated from everywhere and nowhere. “What strange magic has infected the instrument forged by the combined will of my world? How has Stormquake, the weapon of protection and retribution against the forces of the Void entrusted into my care, been corrupted?”

Another Sheodin, merely a flickering image, stepped through the frozen storm like a phantom. He passed through space and time and stepped between the folds of reality. An ancient power lingers in his eyes - eyes that could peer from the Beginning to the End.

"Corrupted, but strong. The blood of Gaia courses through the veins of your existence in this realm so long as you wield the Wyrm. Use it wisely," Empyrea dissipated in a mist.

Eras had his eye on the newcomer, who spoke in demonic numerals.

The flickering image of Sheodin nodded, and then he vanished.

Time resumed at its normal pace, and the sky screamed with its battlecry. The ocean roared, and the thunder echoed the drums of war. Sheodin looked upon the maelstrom that stretched from horizon to horizon. Snow was falling, cooling and freezing the reformed mountain that floated in the eye of the hurricane. The frigid air fell from the upper reaches of the atmosphere, causing the churning waves to turn to icy slush in mere moments.

It was ready.

Sheodin raised Stormquake into the air and spun it in slow circles. The titanic hurricane twisted and coiled as if it was being pitched like a sideways tent. Gales howled as the raging clouds were crushed into a horizontal cyclone that was hundreds of miles long. Then, with a deafening boom that would be felt across the world, the storm collapsed into the end of the mountain.

The mountain and Sheodin vanished, leaving a shockwave that cut grooves into the ocean floor and a contrail of dissipating clouds streaking into the horizon.

Frendor Falcon-Wind listens carefully for signs of life