My prime burns divine.

I can’t believe this. I refuse. This is all just a dream. But it feels real. Tye pinches himself and the pain of it denies him his lamenting.

This is insane...

Looking around himself the haze lifts with every breath as things begin to come into view once hidden by fog and dew. They’ve been trekking down a literal mountainside overgrown by vine and jungle. With the haze what remains are ruins of homes and buildings carved into its side.

Statues of creatures frozen in time. Broken in pieces. As if they were made of stone. Bones and armor and weapons strewn the grounds and as color comes back to the realm the charring by fire of everything lingers.

“This is hell” Tye whispers to himself.

“This is what remains.” Nora interjects as she pushes past him. “This was once a metropolis, bustling and alive. Filled to the brim with Olcan and goblin souls. They carved into the mountains that are Feralis’ embrace.”.

“Feralis?” Corin asks.

“She is the nature deity who took us in. Sheltered the Firestone and Olcan clans beneath her veil. Shielding us from the chaos that is the untamable lands.” Nora explains. “My ancestors fought their way out of slavery from the old world into the new. The new being an even older world. Untamable, too close to the edge of the planes.”.

“Feralis sits here, unwilling to move. She has traveled through all that has been and she has planted her roots here. Her garden, her oasis, in the eternal void, that we all fall through.”.

“So you’re saying a god rules this realm?” Tye asks.

“A goddess, but she slumbers. She left us to watch as she waits for her mate to mature. A promised spawn from the goblin tribe. Till he matures and becomes her partner. She waits.”.

“So how can a demon be doing all of this?” Corin interjects.

“It’s said that when Feralis went to rest she made a door at the base of a great tree in the heart of the forest above us. She closed that door and sealed it so she could finally sleep soundly. She was tired of time. She yearns for her promised to arrive.” Nora continues “but when she shut the door, sealed it true, something happened. Something spawned from her actions. It awoke or came or was attracted to the commotion of our collective.

It came searching for power overwhelming. As demons always do, hoping to swallow a god who’s not paying attention.”.

Tye listens to the story as he clambers about over the rubble and wreckage. The city is beautiful even in death. Colors come in and out. Things move then stop and start again. It’s made traversing very difficult indeed. Down the mountain they persist at break neck speed. With the sprites prancing and dancing about.

“It took my parents from me and my sister. They fought it, after it’d been killed again and.. some things don’t just die.” Nora continues on..

“I’m told there were pieces being carried away, parts of a whole and the demands to bury them away. It was madness.” Nora shutters recalling. “The pieces are to be split and the demon is to be drained. Was the logic but it never stopped feeding upon us. I’ve a master, Palius, he says that the parts drain either. Drain life and soul, taint what it can. That my father volunteered to carry it himself. A piece of it. Down into the bowls of the goblin’s holds. Lock it away far away from each other.”.

“I’m really sorry.” Locke says as he pulls himself over another mound of debris. “It sounds so brutal.”.

“It was worse than they tell.” Nora replies looking away as she trudged through the grounds. “The Olcan froze, goblins went mad with bloodlust, and the beating of war drums. We hear them still some nights. Goblins aren’t effected the same as Moria. Creatures like me. They become crazed but they can survive. Barbarous and warmongering.”.

The group stops at a ravine. Three brooks collecting into the beginning of a river. A river that cuts through the frozen city.

“Goblins they live mostly underground. There is a network beneath our feet. It goes deep. Nobody knows just how far they’ve dug but you can hear them at times. The war drums and the vibration of their number. It’s never faltered. Pailius thinks they’ve might even grown. Even in madness goblins will persist.”.

“Scary.” Corin says aloud as she chucks a rock into the subtly flowing stream.

“This water is moving. It did not do that before. All these sounds and the smells are new to me. Even the colors have begun to re-saturate.” Nora points out as she surveys the landscape. “With the number of sprites about I can’t figure out how we’ve not succumbed to their thirst. Something’s changed. I don't understanding. I’m missing something...” she says aloud.

The group stands silent. Looking around themselves not permitting even a muscle to move.

Thump thump thump thump.

The sound of the ravine had masked it from her initially by its uniqueness. Its unfamiliar peculiarity. She’d been transfixed upon it. Unable to hear the warnings. The sound. To distinguish the vibration from running water on stone from that of drumming beats beneath their feet.

Smoke begins to billow from unseen holes about the ground and walls. The sprites scatter. They’re all gone. For how long?

“Stop” Nora cries out with a faint whisper.

Nobody was moving but even still they become more frozen than before. The gravel under their feet begins to move as the sounds of thumping and the wails and cackling of creatures begins to bubble from below.

Without a moments notice a green creature cradling what must be a child of its Kin crashes from out a hole. Blasting through like a rocket propelled by fire with stoke alight and smoke smoldering behind.

In a flash it is followed by a hoard of green skinned creatures of goblin stature. Crawling out from every crevice. Wielding axes, and hatchets, and fire, and stone. Cackling and screaming “fire fire fire.”.

“The matriarch! The matriarch! The matriarch!” Kill it with fire! Kill it with fire!”.

Before they can do anything Tye, Nora and everyone else are surrounded by an innumerable amount of goblins. In war chant, drumming and cheering and screaming.

0000oooooooooooooo.

It’s the thumping, the beat of the drums. Music is the sound of matter. We play along it’s dance and it creates.

The matriarch peels herself from the stone. The child cries but not from the touch of fire. She looks to the upstart. Abrabelia, brilliant, her time will come but it is not now. I am fire. I am alive. I am now. 

“The fire is alive!” The matriarch shouts as flame billows from her. Black smoke clouding the air above. Ash falling from the sky. “I know not what demon plays with this much fire without being made to bend.” She issues her retort. The gravel rumbles as sprites grab what they can and run away from the ravine.

The upstart matriarch is back afoot and beguiling her own billow of truth. 

“Madness be damned i am fire which burns true!” She shouts. The color of the flames now pure blue. Indistinguishable from water. Circling about the three combatants.

The matriarch launches herself at Tye grasping his arm in an instant. Screaming with child clinging. “You wield fire as an infant what possibly could you know?!”

Crashing through the flames they’re propelled the goblin matriarch locks eyes with one Tye Lancaster…

Blue.

Void of blue. Absolute and true. Aflame. 

Endless. Deep. Funnel. Steep. Ever spiraling. Sucking in. Consuming…

The goblin matriarch finds herself in a land of giants. Perhaps at the edge of creation.  Wrestling endlessly without remorse or reason. Buckling mountains and shattering continents. They tussle blindly unable to back down. And among them. Those blue eyes peer out. 

Prime.

“My fire is divine”

Dumbfounded she finds herself. If’s these planes? Then they persist beyond the one she does exist and in there this child before her his prime an apex smashing Boulder. These eyes they do offend and somewhere in the lands beyond a fire it burns with no end.

The matriarch is sent back in an explosion and mist and the hiss of cackling water and fire. Mixing and dancing. She faints.

00Ooooo

Tye Lancaster stands before them all smoldering. Atop a broken cobbled rock ravine. 

One elder goblin matriarch lay in smoldering smoke with a child clasping against her. Her consciousness is fleeting as she looks to this creature above her. The butterfly returns again fluttering between them. Flapping wings made of Aether she lets loose a sigh her bloodlust spent. Clear mind and held clutched tight by loving hands of her goddess’ embrace. As all things fade she’s left her head bobbing in the ravine.

Tye can’t help but intervene. Scooping them up and laying them down on the nearest stone as the upstart quakes at what she’s seen. 

“What devilry do you play?” She spits as she shakes and begins to weave her own special sort of fiery creation. “My flame has a name and it will not be undone.” She declares as it takes form of a lion. “Luala” she chants as the fire awakens.

Tye stands alone between him and the upstart matriarch. The elder now undone at his feet. “If I’m to understand she is mine and I’m your man.”

The upstart matriarch screams and the flame given form of a lioness roars. 

“My fire it burns, it yerns it hungers, it must feed!” She screams as it lashed out towards Tye, the rock upon which the elder goblin matriarch lay, clutched by child, and…

Smoke…

Steam..

Hiss……

All in the ravine collect themselves. What air is left is smoldering. No flame to be found. A crouched Lancaster in his palm he holds a butterfly.  

Feralis has returned. 

Obstacle 20. Feralis Awakens