The Furies are at home in the mirror

[MalfGuy2]

---

"Follow the yellow brick road..."

The soothing, quicksilver-gold light on the horizon calls to you as you fly northwest.

Back to the home the late Lore had arranged.

...Or so you thought.

A ghostly, phantasmal canopy greets you once more,

Only to fall silent.

Only to disappear.

Like it was a desert mirage all along, this 'Solais' of the oasis' makings had been blocked out of your perception...

"Forever."

"What do we make of this?"

"Here's hoping it means nothing. Come on, where's those stringy red berries again?"

"Then what /are/ we looking at?"

Your senses drift amongst the incorporeal tangents proffered up from the sands.

They are many.

They must forever change.

"But I can never change."

The quietude of earlier is broken both by the sound of your wingbeats, and a distant, echoing, warbling voice across the bay.

Ghosts rise into the evening sky.

"Who are you, ghosts?"

An aileron-dip of one wing lets you adjust your flight pattern, and you find yourself in Delphina Bay proper. Island-keeps and tiny lighthouses dot the landscape.

They rise up, like the fingers of a curious toddler,

About to greet you, to make a toy of the grander skies above,

And so too, does the beginning chord of wooden guitars & enchanted-iron percussion instruments.

---

---

"Told you so."

A massive party along the beaches of Nereides had ensued - Plenty of the small apes congregate.

Even moreso the ones with gills, fins, needle-tipped teeth, the hallmarks of the ocean.

Along the easternmost periphery, a scuffle between town guards, the Lumin-King-- Or whom you assume to be Mother Nature's Chosen--

And various miscellanneous Occultists.

"We can stay out of that."

"This IS their jurisdiction."

"We're here to party and drown our sorrows, not make more."

On the western periphery, a massive Leviathan dropped down from his own flight path to the sandy shores.

A notable amount of shimmering, ephemeral-looking smallfolk hop off the Leviathan's back.

Now that they've slown down, you can get a closer look: Those feathers are really just cyan- and prismarine-tinted scales.

"Another of the loves of the sea and air."

"Like a more draconic mirror."

They very much ARE a Dragon. They just inexplicably don't have wings like you do - And their pronounced neck-collarbone...

It was built to cannon their Element instead.

You're just a reckless, area-attack-only Monster by comparison.

The sound of the music, though amusing, does little to distract you from the Dragon.

"I can't look away."

"What's wrong with us?"

His head finally turns to face yours after some brief small-talk with the mortal populace.

Instead of a normal, formal greeting, or anything befitting a Monster,

You decide to condense the tiniest sphere you can manage that reflects all your magickal types.

Glyphs float all around it, trying to contain the ball as you will it to float towards the 'Dragon'.

"Behold! The ultimate disco ball!"

"I didn't throw it hat hard."

One of his dozens of smaller, clawed hands reaches out to 'catch' the air wave right in front of the ball.

"...I'm sorry, little one, but isn't this a little early to be giving away your heart?"

They get the idea.

It just came off culturally insensitive, or something - What could this possibly mean to them?

Think of a deflection.

"Absolutely not."

"We'll just say that we were wanting to play ball."

"Yeah, play ball. It's a party after all."

The prismarine scales ripple around where his uppermost shoulders are, and you hear a few short grunting noises.

That must have been his way of chuckling.

"Though that's more appropriate, I still have a responsibility to my cultivator juniors present."
"Perhaps later, we can find something else to do."
"I am Lord Shenlian, the Stormy-Pebbled River of the Fifth Heavenly Barrier."
"Who are you?"

---

"...Well, i'm sure we can enjoy some plum wine, and a game of this 'Go' of yours back home in Xuefeng."

The commotion of both the band & the arrests off to the east had begun dying down, and some of the small-folk from Shenlian were returning to him.

It was time to go.

"A new space to hunt in?"

"It's so difficult to see him turn to leave. Why?"

"You get the distinctive feeling that if Delphina Bay were to be attacked, right here, right now, that the Demons up and invaded,"

"He would instinctively shield you."

"Perhaps even lay down his life for you and his coterie."

"What is this?"

A shaking of your head.

You pressure your ankles, forcing a full vertical take-off. Shenlian's tubular form followed suit,

One Monster zooming in an erratic, elliptioid line,

A Dragon taking well-measured diagonals.

The plains & the northern coasts rise to greet you, as does the distant Vdalion volcano range & snow mountaintops.

"Where Truth and Ideals met."

"This is meant to happen."

"Now you're getting it."

Almost immediately on landing in a beveled-roofed town, Shenlian's fellows dismounted once more for the general square.

"Unfortunately, it /is/ getting late in my spot."

"I hope I see you tomorrow, dear Kynodisme. Maybe we will discern your nature and Heavenly Barrier then."

In a flash of prismatic lights not unlike your own, the prismarine scales disappeared from view.

---

---

IN MEMORIA(M), REPRISAL

Your vision shifts once more. You weren't surrounded by the snow, but by the golden sands Lore had called home.

He, too, had inexplicably returned barely a year after the fact,

"But something's wrong with him."

"I.F.F. thing is pinging like mad."

Something blackened, something terrible, something entropic threatened to tear through Lore's chest cavity. He's barely able to talk like this.

Regalus' platinum cloak puffs in the wind. He was pointing Lore out to Oliphr, to the Clinic, to a 'Basil' character that swoops in to grab Lore's shoulders and take him away,

But it barely phases you now.

You'll investigate Lore later - Let the professionals handle it for the time being.

Your eyes locked to the emeraldine-vermillion luma grid glow behind Regalus instead.

"I could... I could give you that power, too, Kyno,"
"But you might explode. Hels, I might explode."
"I don't even know if it's allowed."
"I'll have TWO weird, Timestream-cycling creatures on my hands!"
"But, if the stains of time insist..."

You nod your head.

Just the once.

Deeply.

It was what you were meant to do. Now, then, and forever again.

He knew you were meant for it, the day you first came to Nightview, and asked all those strange, esoteric questions...

He simply denied the Truth.

"Someone will re-unite Father Time and the Lord of Time's scaly visage. It might as well be us."

"What was, will be."

"What will be, was."

---

"Ready."

"Aim."

"Fire."

The cultivator sect dojo had failed to fully deter you.

Not a one of Lord Shenlian's disciples could break your sheer force, though Xuefeng's second-in-commands put up a valiant effort.

Few lasting injuries.

Fleeting blood only temporarily stains The Truth in red.

Raw Mana and Timestream Runes taken from their personages, now bound to yours.

"The brotherhood, the battle..."

"Chasing that same adrenaline high, but with lower stakes."

"Helps that those berries are common here too."

"Definitely helps."

"We stand atop a lonely mountain."

"Lord Ao Kyno Shun, Seventh Heavenly Barrier..."

One of them weakly gasped out from the sidelines as their fellows tended to their broken arm.

"Did you hear that? They respect us."

"They respect power."

"They respect Divine Chi."

"They respect the Divine Storm."

Wash away the anger.

Here we stand, a shining example of what The Storyteller's will originally meant.

Live it up a little. You get the distinctive feeling you won't be called a Lord again in a very, very long time...

---

"Horizon Signal acquired. Temporal perception instability quelled."