It’d been hours since she left and the light of day had begun to yawn as Ella paced below the orange setting sun. Night had begun to make its path to be above her head in full display. Stars beginning to peering through the veil of day. That’s when the cataracts contracted into view the familiar faces of two blue moons hanging above her head when they quaked. 

Rippled through them. This power it seemed vibrated through her toe to knee. Elbow and shoulder. 

Random and lashing waves of power instantly left her gasping. An explosion without a bombastic display. Ella knew not what had happened but knew for sure something did so important that every fiber and ounce bade acknowledgment. It set the hairs of her coat straight and vibrating. Tingling as if she’d been run through.

Then a flash from the direction she knew must have been her sister’s destination made it as bright as mid day for a moment before fading away. The commotion of it all was so un ignorable she could hear the wails and screams of excitement that escaped everyone within the estate. As the flash dissipated, the ripples faded, and the noise all about her subsided she gathered of the situation what she could. 

She’d been keeping gran gran and Tetters company having been able to slip away from her Mori majority. Their worry and fear of eminent disaster was too much to bare. They’d shown strong faces as they wished her sister their best wishes but with her absence spanning into the hours their composure became less and less put together. Their company utterly intolerable. She’d had enough when Sir Grant, an elder guardsman, dropped his spoon and everyone jumped in reaction. 

My sister isn’t going to fail she told herself. It felt almost insulting to be around them all. So consumed with their own thoughts of eminent doom they wouldn’t even so much as look in her direction. Which made the act of slipping away all the easier. I think they all preferred the distance she could tell herself. 

So she found shelter in company of Tetters and Gran Gran’s hut at the edge of the estate. As far away from that tension and negativity as she could be. While gran gran managed to hide her anxiety far better even she wasn’t capable of muting it entirely. Having thrown herself into concocting the most complex potion she’d ever seen. Spending as much of her time and attention as possible to babysitting the broiling cauldron and maintaining the fire it sat upon. 

Tetters for his part was all too happy to consume himself with fetching the wood fuel needed to keep the fire more than alive. In his downtime he would ask Gran Gran questions on what sort of summon Nora would return with and the nature of those sorts of things. Gran Gran to her credit responding in a robotic manner with concepts of magic I don’t think even Nora would completely grasp. Much less her and Tetters.

So after hours of that even Ella found herself outside the hut pacing. Kicking the dirt and trying to think of any way she could aid her sister’s success from afar. It’s just that Ella never was very good at magic, at Aether bending. She was a gift of physical ability. Her being so fast and so capable and her smell and taste being so powerful meant little in the problem of aiding her sister who’s now far out of sight outside in the cursed city.

This new development was as much a welcome surprise as it brought more worry and dread. Did this mean my sister succeeded? Did the realm just acknowledge a new summoner or did it just close its jaws in her consumption?

OooOoOooooooo

“My garden… what has happened?” Feralis thought to herself shaken awake by the vibration that ran through creation just now. Then a blast of light that chased the dead of night away for such a long moment. What it revealed to her upon her awakening within this Oasis untouched by the rest of everything was ruin and disaster. She’d protected this realm for an eon and only thought to sleep when the combined might of the Olcan and Stonefire tribes  were granted safe haven.

She’d seen their battles against the other lesser creatures of the realm and felt so confident she could finally get a good nights sleep. How could she not have seen the disaster it’d had brought? So many things she knew, she created, raised and nurtured, defended and loved. Now rotten and old and consumed by itself and tainted by something else. A fowl being from the beyond.

“Damn demons” she spat as she lifted herself from her flower bed beside a pond and garden. It’d been unable to touch the oasis or simply smart enough to avoid getting to close to wake her. Either way just outside her bubble she knew the absolute calamity this monster had done.

The Mori and Goblins had sworn to me they’d protect my gardens. Keep them safe from such things and yet they were but cubs pretending themselves a pack of wolves. She knew the being was simply too strong for them to have beaten on their own. Observing the creature even now as it was… it hadn’t been completely victorious but it had not been permanently undone. Displaced really. Tricked into dispersing. Clever wolves indeed but pathetic in that her gardens, her sanctuary, should be so corrupted.

It would take time for her to undo if she could even do so outright by herself. She’d need help. Pitiful how sleep drained her. It would take time for her to collect herself enough and in that time the demon would do the same. It wasn’t a winning game to be played.

However, this ripple, this explosion of power was intriguing. It was not by origin of a demon but something far more familiar. A being had passed through the realm of immensity. Shook her awake and in so doing shook the demon back into a state it should soon collect itself back together. 

Time was subjective and didn’t take sides but she only needed enough of it to maneuver this beast. Demons were powerful, maybe even more so than her, but demons had limitations. She’d just have to take advantage. With its power collecting back into itself it would be forced to let go of what it had collected before it could grasp out again.

Opportunity was all anyone ever truly needed and Feralis was a deity. She could make it if she so needed.

 OooOoooOooooo

“Oh my goddess!” Is the cry heard so clearly. The curse of the demon had crippled the city to stagnation. Not even the water seemed to move it stood still. So when the sound of a waterfall crooning and creaking rumbled through the estate everyone was beside themselves. 

Aether was blowing through everything like waves and with it came the energy needed for life to find itself aligned with time again. The forest it grew around them and invaded everything but it also was dead and silent and cold. It sapped the Aether away trying to maintain its selfish grasp onto this plane. That’s the nature of this demon, frozen life. 

Maybe the absence of Aether is what drove the madness into the goblins Palius told himself. What an intriguing thought. I should think myself mad if I should be utterly separated from Aether’s touch. Gifted in it all his life he couldn’t fathom how anyone could live without. The use of it, it’s execution, manipulation, it was an intimacy no one was willing to talk about. Even Acknowledge aloud for it might come off as lewd. 

What sort of relationship could you expect with an element which could bend reality to your will? Everyone knew at their core it was a perversion in a way but maybe not? Not so much that you could ignore the benefits of wielding it to the extent someone like himself could. The Firestone Tribe certainly embraced it in a much more unbecoming of ways. A lewdness so extreme it was impossible to ignore.

Brushing these thoughts away Palius found himself overcome with excitement. Anticipation. Worry and dread. Sending Nora off on what many had seen as a last ditch suicide mission had left his nerves shot. Overloaded. She was brilliant, most powerful Mori he’d seen since the greatest generation before him. Even so, the task she was set upon, to call forth a power strong enough to bade the demon’s cursed blanket away seemed near impossible. 

He was an older man and had long let go of fantasies and fleeting dreams. Grounding himself in a hardened sense of cold reality. Hope was good and necessary to push on but Hope did not stop the ever encroaching arm of time. 

This event now though, after so many hours of stewing in his fear. Baking this cake of expected doom for everyone he’d spent the last how many years fighting tooth and nail to preserve. It all fell on one young pupling. His very best and brightest student. Even so he could not stomach the fear any longer.

Now however, an answer seemed to have manifest itself throughout the plane. That bright light came from the summoners stone. His Nora had made the trek all the way through the frozen metropolis, through the frozen vines and pilfering sprites, to this moment. The Aether was coursing outwards from were she must be in waves of power. Saturating this frozen city back into existence.

The water, the dirt, the vines and even the sprites seemed to be regaining color. Even if fleetingly so. The curse may not be broken entirely but it surely has been made to crack. 

Him and all the rest of the elders and anyone and everyone still alive within the estate had made their way to the gates. Atop the walls to survey the city around them. A once frozen overgrown metropolis at the heart of Feralis’ gardens. A cove hidden behind a waterfall. The statue of the Olcan Queen standing high guard above its color returning to it ever so slightly every other moment with every single pulse of power.

It’d been like this for the last while. Hours maybe? Even in the dead of night with only the moons and star’s light you could see it all trying to return itself. To break free.

Palius knew exactly were to train his eyes in trying to find Nora. That summoner’s stone he thought was a waste of time and a doomed mission of last chance. It was surrounded now by a barrier of pulsing Aether that hummed and blinked with power. 

The battle might not be won yet however finally it could be called just that. No longer was it simply a slow decaying slaughter.

Obstacle Thirteen. Scratch