“Two questions, is this beast known to be associated with any given element or all elements? And is it intelligent or more animalistic, I just need to know whether there’s any amount of reasoning with it I should be trying first.”

I mentally brace myself, internally speak to my furies and let them know to be ready, we have a tough fight ahead, and I’ll enter the cave staying in high alert, hand on Vadahf as I make my way into the unknown

"The Beast has an element,  but it is one you can't exploit directly.  It has fed on the Essence of Destiny and Time. It is said to be very murderous.  Because the ones that enter tend to never come out. Those that do come out say they never found it. Not much is known about it."


You enter and immediately get the feeling of Deja vu worst that you ever had it in your life. Like you have entered this cave thousands if not millions of times.

You continue until it gets dark. Vadahf glows with electric blue light to help you see. Eventually you enter a chamber that takes your breath away. It is absolutely huge and there are distant things glowing on the walls that make it appear that you are looking at the night sky with the stars all glowing resplendently.

I contemplate Kyotsus words when I feel deja vu, I may have been stuck here repeating this for a while. I’ll have to be careful.

The interior room reminds me eerily of an angler fish, luring it’s prey with pretty sights. I was already suspicious that the danger here might be alluring nature that prevents me from wanting to leave. I remind myself with an internal mantra, listing those close to me and the world that I protect. That there is a lot for me outside these cave walls.

With that I will approach one of the walls carefully to inspect the lights and call out, “if you can hear me I would prefer a peaceful solution, but I require the use of this location. I have sworn myself to protect this world against those who would seek to end all life. Please, show yourself that we might talk”

It doesn’t hurt to start polite, some monsters have just been misunderstood of attacked immediately. I doubt this is that case but I will not have it said I rushed to violence. (Says the man with an artifact katana acting as his light, while being filled to the brim with motes...)

When you examine yourself, you find no compulsion to stay here.

You Examine the lights on the walls and they are small luminescent crystals. You get the feeling that they are full of starlight somehow.

You speak then You sense a Malicious Presence behind you and then you turn around and see a small girl in a striped green shirt with Brown hair and Blood Red eyes. She is carrying a blood stained knife. You try to sense her Essence and get a feeling of wrongness. You think her soul is about as strong as yours.

"Poor poor Naive Michael. Always so compassionate. Always wanting to talk. I suppose it can't be helped. You don'thave my perspective on Creation."

"I will never understand why some view compassion as a weakness. It's my strength that not only allows but encourages compassion. But my perspective of creation is different than yours, yes. I suspect in many ways it's far more narrow, but in others I may have seen and experienced more. But that is more philosophical than I suspect is worthwhile here."

And with that I settle into a sword stance, with Vadahf held at the ready and getting a low burn of wind motes for speed and agility going.

I know this girl is supposed to be monstrously fast, which vampires seem to be to begin with so it likely says even more that Kyotsu bothered to comment on it. As such I'll need to utilize her speed against her.

I'm going to play mostly defensively, probing for easy hits but mostly waiting for her attacks and increasing my wind essence consumption rate at that moment to dodge and counter hard. This type of fight makes me think a focus on speed and perfection, focusing on the elements that Kyotsu has trained me in, is the key. I am glad that the villain is clearly monstrous, as it has removed all trepidation on my part. I need to protect Lita, Selene, and Leona. And to do that this creature must die.

She smiles when you enter your martial stance with Vadahf.

"You have discussed it at length with me from my perspective. I'm happy that you decided to move on to the fun part."

You get a vision? or maybe an impression of the knife getting through your defenses and then stabbing you in the heart slipping past your rock hard skin like a hot knife through butter.

But the vision doesn't come to pass with your focus on defense. She smiles. You probe her defenses with a few stabbing strikes and she seems to be really good at dodging them. One of them she takes the bait on. She moves slightly to the side and scrapes her knife along the edge of Vadahf, Stopping you from immediately moving to strike her. You immediately use a burst of wind motes. Dodging back, disengaging Vadahf from her knife and then counter-striking in a diagonal arc. Apparently she saw this coming because she Moves to the side barely under the lethal arc and then continues rolling to the side. Ending up about a yard or two away.

It occurs to me that the things are likely that are making striking her difficult. She has a precognitive defense or has visions of all the possible realities. Similar but different tactics to defeat each. I decide to employ both at once.

I quickly explain to Hermès that we may be fighting a precognitive warrior, and we’ll have to checkmate her to strike true. I’m drawing on a concept from the book series the reckoners, where when hunting an epic with precognition the key is to box them in where all possible dodging paths lead to an attack hitting. With that I’ll manifest Hermès and work towards creating checkmates where either Hermès or I land blows. I am aiming to be as lethal as possible, no blows are being held against this creature.

Meanwhile, I’ll try and throw off her potential visions of possible futures by running through my head all the different forms or combinations I could use and switch to. I’ll let my actual forms be driven by warrior instinct while i try to create too many potential outcomes for her to track.

You quickly explain your plan to Hermes at the speed of thought. Then you send a burst of wind mote through Vadahf, Manifesting Hermes through that anchor. He comes forth as a Cheetah made of Wind.

She speaks as you move into position
"Heh. You are not playing around this time. Good choice with the Wind Spirit. You Always react so entertainingly when I Kill him. He is your favorite isn't he?"

There is a vision or flash of her slipping into Hermes's guard and Striking the core of his Existence with her knife and he dissolves into wind in total agony.

A flash of rage hits you from another lifetime. But you return to the here and now. Vadahf chilling your rage into cold killing intent. Your mind is Clear.

You Try to box her in with Hermes's help. But she flows around your strikes with enviable mobility. You note that her knife went straight through a rock when she misses an attack on you. You have a feeling that a normal sword would be destroyed from parrying it.

Her eyes are now wells of inky blackness and her mouth is an all consuming Void. Pitch black blood is dripping down from her eyes and mouth.

Hermes comments in your mind.
Somehow she has fought us before. She is not evading perfectly like precognition would suggest. I can't help but get the feeling that she has seen our moves before.

It occurs to me that I’m fighting here because it’s a focus of energy, and likely strongly attuned to time and multidimensional nature. I’m going to through my willpower at attempting to seize control of the energy in the area. Hopefully depriving her of some of the power.

I’ll then try and utilize the power flowing through the nexus to manifest clones of myself from these other lifetimes she’s seen. It may be that no single one of us can kill her, but utilizing the nexus to have multiple of us here may prove a winning strategy.

You Try to wrest control from her But she resists strongly. You only get a trickle of power from the Nexus. You Feel the Sidereal Essence flow into you. You Attempt to clone yourself with yourself from other timelines. But it doesn't work quite as planned. Instead of manifesting, you get their memory of 8 different fights with This creature. She seems to be Resetting the timeline over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over Again to when you enter the cave.

She glairs at you.
"You Know"

She Ups the assault, Forcing you back even with your focus on defense. She is taking cuts from your counter attacks but she seems to not care or feel them.

I’ll keep fighting for more of the sidereal essence, utilizing it to help me in my fight but also trying to store some away. Once I have a decent amount of sidereal essence stored I’m going to try doing what she’s been doing, but on a much smaller scale. I only need a few seconds.

I’m going to reset her back 3 seconds during one of the times where she barely dodged a strong blow, and I’ll correct the blow the second time so that she’s dodged into my blade.

With each cut I get against her, I’ll push harder to siphon more sidereal essence from the room, and repeat the process.

Zeke asks
What is stopping her from resetting to the beginning when she thinks she can't win? We need to work on that.

You wrest more Essence from her control. Easily 20 motes of Sidereal Essence. Your sword is fated to strike her and end her. You start your plan. But her fate is a slippery thing and you don't land telling blows on her. But she is losing by inches.

She is starting to look desperate. And black liquid is leaking from her numerous cuts.

I’m going to try and leverage the sidereal essence to ground myself to this timeline, preventing me from being displaced in time and or space. That’s my current plan at least

I continue my push, dedicating part of the sidereal energy I siphon away towards landing strikes and chipping away at her, and gradually putting more and more into a reserve to effectively give me a great deal of temporal inertia, anchoring myself to here and now.

I continue to leverage every cut against her as a way to wrest a little more power, making the next attempt that much more likely.

Ursulus forms a core of solid immutable Earth Essence then you use the Sidereal Essence to apply the immutablelty to your personal timeline.

The world around you shifts back. But time does not touch you.

You continue. Threads of purple Sidereal Essence dance along Vadahf. Cutting into the structure that makes a spirit immortal.

Hermes boxs her in with claw strikes and then you deliver the final strike. Piercing the core of her existence.  She melts into a puddle of inky blackness. Sceaming in agony. Her knife falls and pirces into the ground.

I stay on guard for a little while longer, making sure I can draw deep on the Sidereal essence here and that I no longer feel opposition. Once I'm fully convinced this is no trick, and that she is dead I'll inspect the dagger, probing it with sidereal essence as I suspect it's a sidereal artifact. As long as I believe I can safely carry it, I'll pick it up and wrap it up in a cloth that I infuse with sidereal essence to prevent the knife from passing right through it.

I will then walk to the mouth of the cave to signal Kyotsu that I have succeeded in dispatching the monster and beckon him to come to see the cave.

She doesn't reappear.

Scanning it with Sidereal Essence gives you some errors but you get most of the Important information.

The knife is an Artifact and it is aligned to Darkness. The material is (incomprehensible gibberish). It's power is to cut Anything although things with intense magic behind them seem to resist this. Since Vadahf seems to be fine. Although she might enjoy a ceremonial sharpening.

You try to wrap it in enhanced cloth. To takes it a minute to cut the enhancement then it slides through the cloth with very little pressure

You can safely carry it by its handle.

You walk out of the cave and find Kyotsu looking rather ill. He is sitting down and looking rather pathetic.
"I didn't think I could get sick. The timeline chaged a lot. The rapid switching between them... It stopped. So you finally killed the thing."

"I did, it took me a lot of times being reset before I figured it out. Sorry, if I'd figured it out faster you probably wouldn't have gotten sick. I ended up siphoning off this new type of essence from the walls, which let me start seeing the previous versions and gave me enough of an edge to start landing blows, inching closer each time. And finally allowed me to anchor myself to avoid being reset to earlier in the timeline... I'm glad that monster is finally dead. She was sadistic."

I'll walk over and offer Kyotsu a hand up.

"Are you well enough to come inside, it's an impressive looking place and there's much reforming to do. I can see if Nix can work on her area first, and you might be able to relax in the waters to feel better.

He takes you hand and you help him up. He is unsteady on his feet.

"Just give me a minute. Things are settling back down so I can move without falling over.

After a minute he seems better because he isn't swaying so much.
He walks in with you. He is wide eyes at the natural beauty in here.
"Wow. Sidereal Essence. I thought that would be what's in here. But it's another thing to feel it."

”sidereal you say? It was interesting using it. It paired well with my other talents, allowing me to use them in ways that were aligned with what they normally do but almost as if along a different axis. Like when it combined with ursulus’s efforts temporally ground me. Not to mention the abilities with time itself. It sounds like you know more about it though? And also it sounds rare if this is the first you’ve felt it.”

I’ll settle down and begin sharpening Vadahf as a thank you for her help in such a tough battle. I also make a mental note that I owe all of my furies something in return for this all, once were done here.

You have actually encountered Sidereal Essence before. When you used the mote conversion bottle. It was that Essence that made you see colored threads and mechanical spiders. Ursulus warned that it was very dangerous.

Speaking of that. You are starting to see the colored threads and the Mechanical Spiders. The Spiders seem to be very agitated and angry.

He sits down with you.
"I've encountered it before. But it has been a very long time ago. It is a very esoteric essence. Here it is associated with the stars. But that is just for worlds related to this one. It's main associations are with Time, Destiny and the inner workings of reality. It is also the Essence associated with the Ultimate Martial Arts, The Blossoming of the Perfect Lotus. Before this world was sundered there where heroes that wielded this Essence along with their Ultimate Martial Arts. It was their task to keep the world safe and operating according to Destiny... They failed and they are long gone..."

You are sharpening Vadahf and she seems to be enjoying it. She is preening herself and straightening out her fur.

Ah, I had searched back in the archive to double check but must have not looking in the right one.

"Perhaps it's not too late for that order of heroes to succeed, I am here now and will protect this world. Perhaps Destiny only needed them to protect it long enough to buy time for me to arrive.

And I had forgotten about an encounter with this type of essence previously. I think I can see the tapestry that reality is woven in because of it... and mechanical spiders which I assume are tasked with maintenance of reality. They are VERY upset... I wonder whether it is due to me being thrown back in time so many times or due to my exertion of Sidereal to ground myself temporally... possibly both.

Either way, I should avoid using any of the sidereal essences until they calm down. The ritual will eventually upset them enough, I don't want them to already be riled when that happens. I should begin letting my Furies work on setting up their areas though."

I'm going to go and work on collecting elemental energy and channeling it to my furies to allow them to begin work inside of the cave. The process of collecting and channeling it to each fury should take a suitable amount of time for the spiders to calm down slightly. I'm going to hold onto some Sidereal essence throughout the entire process so I can make sure to see how the spiders are reacting and if the colored threads are doing anything weird.

"oh... that is not good. At all. Don't use any magic at all at least  until your body converts the Sidereal Essence. That will prevent you from becoming a target of their Ire. Any magic makes the Pattern Spiders work harder to maintain Reality.  This irritates them and they have a tendency to lash out at the thing making them work hard.

I would recommend we leave. Now."
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:23, Wed 22 May 2019.

I nod quickly and move to stand and follow Kyotsu out of the cave and to walk as quickly away as possible. I make sure to stop any minor magic I would normally be burning and feel sad at letting it go, even for a short time. I've grown to enjoy constantly embracing magic either through the motes or furycraft, to feel mundane again is humbling. But Kyotsu is right and we must head out quickly and without provoking.

I'll follow him as far as he believes is wise, even if it means traveling all the way back to town and coming back another day.

Either way, after putting a substantial amount of distance between us and the cave I'll ask,
"So I take it that seeing the spiders should act as a very urgent warning to stop pushing my boundaries so far. I'll note that for the future, thank you for being there or I would have continued and just avoided using Sidereal."

OOC: It was in the first thread of this world during the Azure Sky Tower.

You Follow him out and move about 1000 feet away from the cave. He then picks you up and then runs with his full speed. There is a trail of fire behind him and it is also raining blood behind him.

You arrive in the forest outside of town.
"It varies by person.  But usually you only see them when you want to see them or when they are really angry. I would recommend that you wait a week before using Sidereal Essence or go back to that cave."

OOC: Got it, thanks for looking that up for me. I'm not sure how I missed it.

"Got it, will do. I'll avoid using any magic today, in case the sidereal essence hasn't dissipated and it augments it without me thinking about it. Better to be careful. For now I'm going to go see if I can find Lita, Leona, and Selene. I'd like to get this dagger to either Selene or Leona, they can use it better than I can in defense of San Miguel... and honestly I'm constantly worried about not paying enough attention and it just cutting through whatever is around.

I'll go try and find them, my main focus is on finding Lita so I can let her know I'm back for a week, but also keeping an eye out for either of the others to give the dagger to someone who's at least got darkness essence.