The suddenly changing situation caught the Psionic critters by surprise.
The one that Chandriss opened herself up to had leapt at her, his clawed legs forward ...
       - rolled 7 using 1d20+4 with rolls of 3.  attack Chandriss.
... but the action was more out of instinct for survival than any worthwhile attack.

Meanwhile, Chandriss could sense the other psionic presences in the very close vicinity.
And they her, for they were coming.


Psionic Critter mob currently at 22HD.
Chandriss currently at 9HP

The four legged creatures might well have been a threat all on their own, the addition of more foes would easily overwhelm her.  Had she been in the height of her power, she might have been able to crush them all as the Stonemother, but the Fatebound had needed to manifest her will in order to sense the fragments of the Celestial Engine.  Half spent, she could not hold both of the gifts at the same time.

This was not a fight she could win.

She feared this choice more that any that she had made up until that point, more so than facing the Uncreated on her own, more so even than the Pyreburned.  Yet she had not the power to construct any other destiny for herself.  In a way, she knew that this would be a homecoming.  The bones of the earth had always called to her, and always she had resisted that siren song.  Though she had pulled the billion pieces of herself together into this form of earth and stone once, she had not the knowledge or surety of if she could do it again.  The effort had taken eons, even if the work itself had been accomplished in only days.  Yet with the Shaelat 'Azlia blazing at her back, she had all the tools she needed to attempt this final insanity.   Out of options, beset on all sides by foes, and with more powerful creatures on their way, she fled.  She fled.  She fled into the bones beneath her feet.

Her form flickered, and in an instant she burst into untold atoms, falling into the earth.

As she sank into the safety of mother earth, Chandriss felt the Stonemother about her.
Nothing could harm her now, in that cold, hard embrace.
Within the dirt, she was again one with the world in a way that she had not been since building that body with which to walk upon it.
It was like ... coming home.

Did she sleep then?  Chandriss' conscience drifted somewhat, diffused throughout and within the mother's breast, as she was.
Safe there, below the flow of unnatural energies that washed, ebbed and flowed, above her.
The dark, oily mystic energies that washed from the nearby mountain, up the gorge, towards a location unknown.

And yet, she could sense that dark oiliness slowly seeping into the mother.   Slowly, but inexorably.
Nearby, she sensed a great corruption of the mother ... like a cancerous wound, slowly eating the mother's body, consuming her and filling the empty space with its own, unworldly presence.


There was panic.    But it was not her's.   Yet it was with her.
Her steed.   As her consciousness floated in the earth, she remembered that she'd willed the horse to come with her.
A creature of flesh and bone; already panicked and distraught and in pain ... how was it here with her?
She'd willed it; that was why.
And her will had overridden the reality of the beast's existence: forcing it from its natural form, into untold atoms sucked into the earth.
Thrashing, unprepared and unconcieving, full of fear, it struggled.  Dying.
If it had a a body still (a body in its usual sense) the animal would be suffering a heart attack now.


And Chandriss could feel the pull of that Celestial Engine.  Deep ... deep into that malevolence not far from here.
Felt its purity within the dark oiliness of that unworldly place.
Felt that purity ... dying.

Chandriss felt the poor beast's struggles as vibrations through both the earth and the aether.  Even as she still pulled them both in the direction she was destined, she fell back to wrap her incorporeal arms about the disembodied neck of her dying mount.  She was empty, barely holding herself tethered to this reality as she guided them, and had not the power to alter its fate.  All she could do was offer it what comfort she could as it passed from this world into the next.

When the deed was done, she pulled the component atoms of her saddlebags free from its form, and with a breath dispelled its atoms into the earth in a billion different pieces.  She traveled through the bones of the earth for as long as it took, until she was halfway between where she had entered the earth and where she was headed.  Only then did she rise, approaching the surface and finding a sheltered alcove where she might hide.  Once she was certain whatever cave of crevice she had found was clear, she rose out of the earth entirely and reclaimed the component atoms of her form.  It took only an instant, but it felt like an eternity, aligning her fate with a precision no mortal mind could have ever dreamed to accomplish in a thousand years of study.

Gasping, she emerged from the earth and into shadow, the gems on her body shining brilliantly as they tethered her to reality.  With an almost inaudible groan she pulled the Bastion up over her, burying herself again in comforting walls of stone that would let nothing through from any side.  A comforting cocoon of stone.

And then, clutching the saddlebags of the mount that had served her so well, she passed out.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:56, Fri 15 Nov 2019.

Within her self-imposed crypt, the Lady of Stone slept.
When she finally awoke, her tomb remained ... dark and comforting and safe.

She felt refreshed, however.  The saddlebags clutched to her chest, and the Shaelat 'Azlia gently humming its song of fates contently upon her back.
Outside her demesne, she could still feel the wash of unnatural energies; but within her sanctum, she remained untouched.

And far off, though not so far as when she'd first sensed it, the Celestial Engine laboured; its effect and purpose running not-so-smoothly any longer.
How long had this Engine purred away at its duty?  But now, somehow, proverbial sands were within its gears, and entropy was slowly eating away at its efficiency.

Chandriss did not know how long she slept, or what time it was when she awoke to the darkness of the stone Bastion she had thrown up about her.  Darkness broken only by the dull glow light of the gems which helped her tether herself to this fate.  She had been exhausted and in shock when she had fled, her divine power depleted, her mind still reeling from the assault that had battered through her defenses.  It took her a while to realize she was curled up on her side in a fetal crouch, and longer still to uncurl her fingers from about her shins and straighten herself up into a sitting position.

Yet, what had been the source of her concern?  Already her mind was reeling with a thousand different possibilities.  Different paths she could have taken.  Yes, the vile creatures had been fast enough to dodge the Stonemother's crushing teeth, but why hadn't she thought to amplify the thaumaturgic glyphs about her own form?  Weaving layers of her own divine essence into the words of power, reinforcing the matrix that she pulled from to access the Stonemother's power.  Would that not have increased vengeance of the earthen maw?  She realized even as she had the idea that she had lacked the power, and yet she didn't now did she?

She had… she had broken the matrices which had contained her to withdraw into the bones of the earth, and yet she had been able to pull herself together again into this fate line so simply.  She could hardly believe how much her knowledge and understanding of the intricate spellwork involved had grown.  She could see her own magic woven about her in ways that she had never understood before.  Everything felt different, everything felt…

… her mount.

She had broken the poor beast down into millions of component atoms and pulled it down with her, down into the bones of the earth.  She had tried to save the creature, she had saved it, and yet she hadn't.  Panicked and afraid, it had died, and she had been able to do nothing but hold it.  She hadn't even know its name.  Yet she had held it, hadn't she?  Held it and given it what comfort she could while it had died.  She had held its millions of atoms together even as she had drawn them down, and the image of it was still burned into her mind.  She grasped that image now, fingers reaching down to the earth below as she began to pull up what she needed.  Black iron, and deeper still, to the reaches where the fires were never extinguished.  Down further, pulling upon the leylines of magic that crisscrossed the globe, even in this place.  Drawing it closer, drawing it to her, giving it shape, giving it purpose.

She would give her fallen horse a worthy monument.

An hour later, the Bastion sank into the earth and crumpled to dust.  Standing within where it had once stood was a shape, no, two shapes joined as one.  At the crown sat Chandriss, her wicked curved blades back where they belonged in their sheathes, her eyes blazing ruby in the midmorning sun.  Beneath her, a hulking shape of magic and blackest iron.  Four sturdy legs, a thick chest that breathed forth billowing black smoke, and blazing ruby eyes that matched her own.  A monster, yet all to familiar to one who might have seen her the day before.

Chandriss let out a great cry, her voice steady and resolute, and the tireless iron steed surged forward on hooves that blackened the earth behind her.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:06, Wed 20 Nov 2019.

Borne suddenly onward upon the magnificent power of her metal steed; this one would not ... could not ... panic like the last.
A beast of magic and earth, artificed for purpose, it would serve her as no mundane or mortal animal could.  It’s iron hooves thundered against the very ground.

And Chandriss could sense the magic of the device ahead ... she could almost smell the divine power it radiated.    Deep within yonder mountain, whence evil flowed.  And, for certain, that evil flowed into that divine structure: corrupting and twisting it, adding proverbial sand into its gears, and wearing away its delicate celestial mechanism with unrelenting entropy.

The Mountain itself drew closer by the minute, and she knew with certainty that by nightfall she would be within its shadow.

Her mind was aflame with the power of her newfound understanding, she did not hesitate as she pressed on.  Whatever she faced ahead, she did not doubt her Fate.

She would find that which she sought.

And so it was that, come nightfall, Chandriss found herself in the shadow of the Mountain.

Chandriss remained mounted upon her iron steed, bringing it to a slow cantor and then a halt.

She took a deep breath, preparing herself for what what to come.  She had been putting off this moment for so long, but she had known from the instant that she had set out that this would be her fate.  Could there have been any other, when a Celestial Engine itself was her prize?  She had to face the void, and embrace it, in order to glean the secrets that she desired.  She had always known, but that did not make the reality of it any less daunting.

For just an instant, she closed her stone eyelids, and them opened them to the void.  Before her, the stones of the mountain became air, the Engine she coveted no more obscured than if her power had been so great that she had been able to drag the very bones of the earth up to the surface.  The Fatebound saw all that was arrayed before her, and no stone or earth could obscure her sight.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:15, Tue 03 Dec 2019.

Certainly, no earth or stone could obscure her sight, and Chandriss was the civilisation that lived now within the mountain.
It wasn’t a huge civilisation; but certainly a new city had been carved into the roots, base and trunk of Mont Castlereigh.
Like termites excavating a massive, ancient tree, the creatures moved within.

The Stonemother allowed her to see through the stone and dirt of the mountains, but didn’t provide her with any enhanced ability to see detail at this distance ... for the mountain was deep and huge, and the city far off still.
But moving within yonder city, Chandriss could see, she guessed, several alien races of peoples.

Looking hard, she eventually identified what appeared to be a central temple; tended by many in robes and cloaks.
This temple, she sensed, was where the celestial engine was being corrupted.
And, something else.  Something that corrupted reality itself here.   A Night Gate.

That would be where she struck then.

At the lightest touch, her mount resumed its headlong charge up the base of the mountain.  She didn't even wait to draw near.  No sense warning any sentries who might be standing watch.  With the ease of one long remembered, she drew herself back into the bones of the earth, breaking down the body of both herself and her mount and sinking into the stone.  This time, the beast did not panic.  This time, it accepted the stone about it as easily as it had accepted her.  She did not need to close her gaze, did not need to avoid looking down.  Already she had become more than she had ever foreseen, capable of feats that even the day before had terrified her.  The earth was air, and she flew through it.  Liberated.

She would find that point that was closest to the Temple, moving through the walls and floors so as to remain undetected.  A fortress within a mountain was no fortress at all to the Unmade.  With her understanding of the matrices which held her body tethered to this fate, she could approach without any chance of those who dwelt within raising an alarm. Her senses would be primed for the wards and magics which might guard such a place, so that she did not unintentionally trigger a glyph or spell.

With black iron beneath her and stone within and without, she flew like an arrow towards her fate.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:44, Tue 10 Dec 2019.

As she rode within the stone, approaching the city built within the natural and created tunnels and caverns of Mont Castlereigh, Chandriss could see a thriving community within the confines of mountain.  She counted several races of inhuman beings; but could sense that one was, by far, dominant.
But there were humans here also.

This dominant race was not of Arcem; tall, strange beings with tentacled faces.    She could sense their magical power, their Psionic might.   Natives to such power, and trained.
Any human could brawl, but some were trained to become excellent.   These beings were masters of Psionic abilities; and they used their power to dominate and control others.

Chandriss was more of the small headless creatures that had hunted her earlier.  Some were as pets to the Dominators, while others seemed to have duties to perform: such as guarding locations, or oberwatching slaves.

The remaining two races of peoples fell into that last category:  controlled servants.   This included many recognisable Arcem humans, but also another race of beings that Chandriss didn’t recognise.


The entire civilisation here, from Dominator to lowliest slave, were working (in their own means) to build this city.
The Night Roads in Ancalia had opened only five years ago; and it was obvious that these invaders had set to work to fortify and control this place with alacrity ... and the goal remained.

But a fortress within a mountain was no fortress at all to the Unmade.
And Chandriss was able to approach the inner temple via stoneways that none other could.
However, while her presence went mostly undetected, she could feel the probing Psionic nature of those little creatures ... passively sensing the world around them like a dog smells it’s environs.
And she could sense them becoming ... distracted? conscious? agitated? ... by her existence, even if as they sought to understand what they were sensing.
If you wish, you may make a Spirit Save to ‘avoid’ detection

Chandriss had not known that such abominations existing within the world, and the revelation to her was a shocking one.  Perhaps they were not of this world at all, but rather born from whatever dark domain the Night Gate’s hailed.  She was thankful to the comforting bones of the earth about her, hardly able to remember a time when she had been scared to merge her fluctuating form with them, though it had been only yesterday when she had stopped letting that fear control her.  It was still hard to maintain that state of flux, and she could feel the hollow space that the divine energy she had needed to expend to achieve it like a great void within her, but it was a loss she could and would master.  The arcaninity of the act felt as comfortable to her as if she had been practicing with it for decades, not hours.  She felt at home.

Which was quite the thing, considering how utterly alien the rest of this harrowing experience was.
Still, the bones protected her, and she was sensitive enough to the auras of those who hunted that she wa able to dodge around them.  Closer and closer she drew to her target, her glowing gemstone eyes questing for that which had brought her to this terrible place.

With luck, none would ever know she was there.

OOC:  07:05, Today: Chandriss, the Unmade rolled 14 using 1d20 with rolls of 14.  Spirit.

The temple that Chandriss approached was near the centre of the community, far within the ant-hive structure that plumbed  the depths of the mountain roots.
But it was unmistakable;  both easy to find, and unmistakable as a place of worship.

As she drew close, Chandriss could feel the Night Gate even before she saw it; a rend within space, as though someone/thing had stuck its claws through from the other side, and ripped a gash tall enough for a giant to step through.
It wasn’t a ‘gate’ by any other description; and it was impossible to tell if a road existed on the other side.
But even now, the ragged, torn edges flapped as though by a non-existent wind that blew through from ... from where?

The temple was ‘manned’ by a number of robed aliens.

And there, in the centre of another cavernous room, was the Celestial Engine.   It hung in the air, and glowed: and from this distance, and through the radiance, Chandriss couldn’t tell the form it took.
Arrayed about it pentacularly stood five of the robed Psionic creatures, facing the Engine.   What they were attempting was not evident to Chandriss, but it was obvious that the five were focused upon the Engine.

Three other robed figures tended the room, and watched over the ritualists.
Four headless, Psionic beasts prowled the wall; one on each side of the entrance arch, and two opposite them on the other side of the room.
And even though Chandriss hid within the stone, these Psionic beings could sense ... something.  And it was making them a little edgy, even though they could not pinpoint why they felt this way.

They were right to be afraid, if such alien creatures could even feel something akin to fear.

For any who built themselves fortresses of stone were at the whim and the mercy of the Stonemother.  She had been so ignorant for so long of what she was capable of, but these creatures, these things, had forced her hand.  They had forced her to take risks that she had barely even contemplated before, and awoken her to an understanding she even now was only grasping the full implications of.

Reaching deep into the bones of the earth, the Fatebound felt the lines of force and power, fate and magic.  It was such a simple thing, to move mountains, when once could peer down into the very fires of the earth.  For that was what she saw, in that almost bottomless expanse, rivers and oceans of lava stretching out to the distant horizon far, far below her.  She, Chandriss the Unmade, both real and unreal, perched miles above in rock and earth that to her magic was little more than air.  Brilliant lattices of magic crisscrossed along her vision, dancing lines flowing beneath her.  Some wove their way along the same lines of the rivers of molten stone, following ancient leylines that positively burst with blinding power.  Others carved their own path, alone and free.  It was to the former that she concentrated her will, reaching out with the magic of the Unmade to alter the lines of fate that seared though it from end to end.  The smallest push, the tiniest application of will and intent...

... and the earth rumbled at the Stonemother's caress.

It started as such a small thing, barely perceptible at the edges of understanding.  Yet as the lines of fate snapped back into reality, the stone snapped with them.  With the weight of whole continents behind it, Chandriss brought her gaze up from the bowels of the earth and focused the blazing rubies of her eyes upon the fell temple.  At her back, the Shaelat 'Azlia blazed and sung in a language that only she could hear, its single rune an inferno of her magic.

She knew not the nature of the vile creatures she saw before her, tending this profane temple.

But she knew their fate.

To clarity, please:  is Chandriss planning to destroy the Celestial Engine if she can?

Focusing on the Nightgate and the Celestial Engine, Chandriss called upon the very earth to serve her will.
The mountain itself throbbed and rumbled at the divine desire of the Stonemother, and at her command began to crumble ... collapsing in upon itself.

The earthquakes, one after another, explosively destroyed the caverns and tunnels deep within the mountain’s belly
And it was as if millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced, as thousands of psychic alien beings died horribly.

And when it was done, little remained.
Little, except deep within the stone and rubble and collapsed earth, a ragged tear in reality ... an one Celestial Engine, spinning endlessly about its core.


It took a long time to Chandriss’ mundane perceptions before the vibrations stilled.
But to their earth in which she rode, and the terran essence of her being, it might have been a blink of a moment.
Then, everything was silent.

Nestled deep within her cocoon of stone, utterly enveloped and yet utterly free, Chandriss released a breath she had not realized she had been holding.

None could see her features, and thus she made no effort to conceal her shock at the devastation the Stonemother's power had caused.  She had earned the title standing in opposition to the Sand Princes of the Red Desert.  They had thought her and her disciples easy bait, hapless victims to be robbed and enslaved.   She ahd shown them the folly of their ways, crushing bandit and horse alike beneath jagged teeth of rock and stone.  Never before had she attempted to rattle the very bones beneath her feet though, what would the point have been upon the dunes?  Here though, here was was more in tune with her new nature than anything she might have experienced out on the sand.  Here, she did not call the teeth to her as Stonemother, here she was something new. The devastation it had wrought had simply stunned her.  She had not just brought the cavern down where her will had been focused, she had collapsed most of the fortress.   It had no name, yet, but she knew such a thing would come in time.  Whatever those foul creatures had been, they had been ill fated fools to craft their citadel within the mountain.

She looked about with her gem bright eyes, seeing if even the Night Gate had survived the destiny she had summoned forth.  She could not imagine it would be destroyed by such a simple mundane effort, but neither had she countenanced the ruin that her actions would have inflicted.

More, she looked to the Celestial Engine itself.  Had it been freed of the corruption that had so ensnared it?  She reached out her divine senses to taste it, to touch it.  She prize she sought would be here, the prize she sought would have to be here.  With a touch, her stone steed surged forward through the earth.

The Unmade would find that which she sought.

The fate that the Stonemother had visited upon this place was ... devastating, and complete.
As Chandriss took in the enormity of her will, her attention eventually settled on that place where the Night Gate, and the Celestial Engine had been.

And to her, surprise(?), she discovered that both remained.

The Engine itself, pulsing with Celestial Power greater than anything this world could possible measure, lay crushed and trapped within the wreckage of the earth ... unbroken.  Coming close, and peering upon it with her gem bright eyes, Chandriss found herself in awe.
This ... thing ... was a piece of heaven.  A divine mechanism created by The One (if you believed in such); the sole architect of heaven and earth.  A mechanism to perfectly maintain one part of All Existence.

Untarnished and unmarred, it lay now on earth ... within the earth ... undaunted and spinning.
To her eyes it looked like three concentric rings, of identical sizes; each spinning around each of the other two, somehow without intersecting or interfering with any other ring.   Spinning, in perfect harmony, in chaotic orbits that somehow seemed perfect in their mechanism ... creating a vibrant, coruscating, gleaming sphere from the celestial light they generated, seemingly via the energy their orbits produced.
And within the sphere, what appeared to be three sparks.  No, not sparks: that would suggest 'small' and 'near'.   No, looking upon them, it seemed to Chandriss that she were looking upon three stars; monlithic powerhouses of energy, inconceivable distances away.  Untouchable and Unbearable.
Contained only by the celestial power and harmonic spinning of three gleaming rings.


Who knew how long Chandriss floated there within the earth, her mind and senses absorbed by the Engine.
But as her wits come back about her, she knew that this celestial device maintained ... what??   Her Words and Powers could NOT comprehend its purpose.

So engrossed she was in what she beheld, so utterly enthralled, there was no time or space in her myriad mind to contemplate the hundreds if not thousands of human fates she had just snuffed out.

There would be later, she she was away from the great Celestial Engine.  She had not intended their demise, not intended for the Stonemother's power to unleash so much devastation upon the mountain fortress.  Yet that was the path she had taken.  They had been slaves, it was true, mind and body forced to serve whatever those unnatural creatures had been.  Perhaps they would have considered such a death a mercy, given their fate, but she would never know.  She had never asked, so intent she had been on ending the threat of the Nightgate.

Had she ended it, or just delayed the schemes of whatever those creatures had been?  She had buried them within the mountain itself.  No matter their power, unless they could sing the songs of the earth it would take centuries for the horrors to carve their way out.  Time enough for her to master those threads of magic and fate that she needed to unbind the gate from this reality.  The theurgy was incomprehensible to her now, but already she was beginning to unravel its threads.  It would be hers, she could feel it.

At long last, she knew not how long, she willed her stone mount to began to circle the Celestial Engine.  Effortlessly she glided through the collapsed stone, her eyes scanning every inch of it.  It appeared unharmed, but perhaps a shard of its power had been taken by whatever had been harvesting its power, or something knocked free by her will.  She would not reach for those stars, she would not seek to damage the engine.  Reaching out with her senses, she searched for an echo of the power she witnessed before her.

But if a shard was there, free for the taking, she would find it.

Within the bones of the mountain, Chandriss focused her senses to find any Celestial Shards that might be about the place.

One had been being transported along with the Engine, she'd sensed it back in the valley.
Maybe the dimensional intruders had some present, to aid in whatever ceremony they were enacting.
And just perhaps, a shard of the Engine had been knocked loose during her own assault upon said ritual.

But here, in the presence of the Celestial Engine itself, it was hard to feel its presence.  It was  like trying to identify the flicking flame of a candle held up against the midday sun.


Please make a d2 roll, and describe Chandriss finding that many Shards.
I'll not ask for a Wisdom Roll, as the Fact that Chandriss 'is sensitive to the flows of magic' reduces the target number significantly enough that I don't see the point
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:33, Wed 29 Jan 2020.

With nothing more than an effort of will, she guided her stone mount upwards through the earth and towards the Engine, towards the pulsing source of power that had brought her here.  Even among the chaos, it was so simple for her to sense the flows of destiny and magic.  She was attuned to the very leylines beneath the earth, to see something like a Celestial Shard was to see a star reflecting in the ocean. It called to her, it beckoned, and the Fatebound took the path that would bring her to it.

Reaching up through stone no heavier than air, she extended her hand to grasp two of those most precious of gems.  Shards of burning potential, almost infinite fates expanding out in all directions like the forking branches of an impossibly large tree.  The matrix of power that contained her essence skittered and wavered as she reached out, the Unmade striving to push past the sheer power contained within these glowing crystalline pieces of the raw elements of the universe.

No sooner had her fingers grasped it than she was streaking away, streaking through the earth and back towards New Verano.  The main body of Aikhtiar had set out days before, and though her steed would continue tirelessly through the earth, it would still be a long journey before she caught up with them.

So to clarify, Chandriss is leaving the Celestial Engine untouched?  Buried deep within the roots of this mountain.


Although seeing a Celestial Shard was to see a star reflecting in the ocean, the presence of the Celestial Engine shone akin to the noonday sun; and so it was to Chandriss' credit that, even with her ability to sense the flows of destiny and magic ... the very leylines beneath the earth ... she was able to locate the Shards within that mystic radiance.

Yet she had.  And the Shards burned warmly in her grasp as she carried them through the utter darkness of the primordial earth.

But Chandriss was tired.  So very tired.
This whole ordeal, from entering the canyon filled with dark energies and unseeable psychic entities, her fight with the strange psychic critters, to her retreat within the mother, to the massive expenditure of power to reign godly retribution upon the alien civilisation.
As she fled the scene, she knew that she could not possibly make that long journey back to her people without rest.

Yet, the dark, unholy energies that flowed from, as she could now sense, the Night Gate, out into the mountain and the canyon beyond, continued unceased.
Those energies would only ever be dammed with the closing of that Gate.

And Chandriss didn't feel safe remaining, let alone resting, within this place.
She'd done so earlier, within her earthly dome ... but it had been a fitful and unrestful sleep.

If she could only make it out of the haunted canyon ... perhaps to that place once held by the Surcessant Order of Knights whence Dalton and his team had prayed, and sanctified themselves.

The Surcessant Order was an institution of healing, after all.   A nights rest there must surely bring comfort.

She did not have the will left within her to read the myriad lines of fate of what might happen if she tried to touch the Celestial Engine, and such was beyond her power even had she been at full strength.  So too with the Night Gate.  She understood the basic theory for how she might strive to close one, but translating that theory to practice would take long nights of experimentation and trial.  She had the foundations, but she still had much to learn before those foundations were built up into theurgistic formula.

Already she could feel the threads that allowed her to take shelter within the bones of the earth fading.  She could construct the matrices that allowed her to so effortlessly pass through the dirt and stone, but she was not yet skilled enough to maintain it for longer than an hour.  She could not sleep while melded with the elements, her will would not hold her atoms within such a space in such a state.  Both she and her mount would need to rise, and so as she fled away, rise she did.  As she broke away from the mountain, so too did she break the surface of the earth, returning to that from which she had begun.  Her iron steed left tracks of blackened earth behind it as it ran, its tireless engine charring the ground from which it drew its energy.

Yet it was truly tireless, it would carry her unceasing.

Dalton had showed her the path, and she would take it.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:51, Thu 30 Jan 2020.