Tribulations of Wrath, part X: Colossal Clash
It was said that Vek-Dansh would wreak havoc upon the Theocracy, and so he did.
His first step was to offer tribute, from Wrath unto Pride, as the ancient custom of the Dragons had once demanded. Entering into the Dragon’s city under the Star of Midwinter’s laws of Hospitality, he offered riches of ancient hoards: depthlace sapphires from the Bitterdeep, the Grey Dusts of incinerated sorcery from Kushravar, and the final, cyphered journals of the explorer Sankhur.
Amidst the presentation of these offerings, a pouch of salt was also spilt – a calculated clumsiness that did not go unnoticed. Recognising the provocation for what it was, the Sun-Drinker offered an amused warning, reminding Her guest just how perilously close he had come to broach the law of Hospitality. But it was not until the Asura revealed his tribute of Bhalasthum – a gift of magic jealously guarded by Wrath Himself, and offered to Pride that Tanixalthas agreed to allow Vek-Dansh to bestow his tribulations upon Her city without the shadow of Her wings to shield them.
With his promise secured, Vek-Dansh’s second step was to enact the first of his tribulations upon the city of Spinesreach. Unlike his Asuran peers, there were no great proclamations; no grand sacrifices; no aggrandising prayers. Instead, quiet preparations were made, including the purchase of all the salt stores across Sapience and the infiltration of seven of his Sholayu into the city. Moving to a corner of the tundral wastes north of the Dragon without any fanfare, the Chitravin upended pouch after pouch – each identical to the one that he had spilt before Pride Incarnate. From the leather poured a seemingly unending cascade of salt that gathered around his very feet – encrusting and rising into a pile that would quickly rival the tallest spires of Spinesreach. Only then did the Asura proclaim a verse, and it was short, efficient, and expedient:
“We begin.”
Just as the tidal wave that crashed onto Vorastra’s shore once did, a veritable tide of salt crashed onto the Theocracy’s walls. Crushing in its weight, it smothered every street, climbed every wall and filled every crack and pothole. As the magical salt both subsided and spread, it snaked like a wild river through the lower streets, following the parasitic Asura’s will to cover every inch of the city – save for Sky Dreaming’s holy places and Her personal spire – a favour and show of respect owed to a Primordial Dragon. The Theocracy’s granaries and warehouses soon burst asunder, their stores ruined by the cold and wet salt.
Such was the sheer volume of the deluge that it could not be contained, breaching the Dragon’s walls and spilling into the scoured terrain beyond, choking the landscape into a desolate salt waste. Satisfied, the Asura vanished, leaving the Spireans to face not only the catastrophe that filled their home, but also their stomachs – for now, any food or drink would taste of nothing but the sharp, bitter bite of salt.
In the weeks that followed, the Theocracy had to come to grips with the famine that struck. With the Temple of Sky Dreaming’s stores unharmed, the city organised a limited daily food distribution for all citizens who were not rellyw. Undaunted, the ruling council of the Dragon swiftly enacted measures to assuage the symptoms plaguing their city. First, a ritual was conducted, culminating in a curse upon themselves from their Divine Patron, Tanixalthas. Its result was mildly successful, removing the physical salt that choked their streets, yet it revealed that the lingering affliction was a potent illusion that faded and returned in strength, one that affected only Spireans – citizens and rellyw alike.
Refusing to bow to this phantom starvation, the Theocracy struck a second time. Under the leadership of Corruption’s Ghost, a complex Numerological ritual was woven to pinpoint and sever the arcane anchor of Vek-Dansh’s magic at the site of the Empty Throne of their Ard-Dhasani – finding none other than the Chitravin, entirely unbothered by their arrival. Vek-Dansh clinically noted that the Theocracy was ahead of his calculated schedule – yet, their triumph was agonisingly brief. As the illusion began to falter, the Asura simply sacrificed one of his waiting Sholayu, restoring the bitter illusion of the salt in full force.
Despite their efforts, it was not long before the population of Spinesreach starved, feeling the worst of the famine. Though the citizenry was better looked after, with the Regent Pietre Marcelli and his Viceroys frequently offering their allotment of meals to the guards, the rellyw grew desperate as they grew hungry. They gathered in anger, and their simmering fury was soon stoked into protests, fanned by none other than the rebels of the Underspire. Faced with another trial to contain, citizens took to persuading some to pray at temples instead of congregating for riot, while others dispatched those driven mad by starvation with brutal efficiency.
In the wake of the unrest, it was the Conclave of Sustenance who rose to the occasion, led by their Dhasan Frank, who claimed a miraculous solution to the city’s hunger. This was, of course, as we now know, a trick employed by the Asura in the aftermath of the memetic virus to instill the memory of the false Conclave and its spire into the minds of the Spirean citizens. Though some of the citizenry regarded Dhasan Frank’s legitimacy with scepticism in their efforts to reconcile their memories, it was the rellyw who nonetheless rallied under the newfound Conclave’s solution to their woes.
Thanks to the efforts of Her Ghost, formerly known as Legyn, it was revealed that the false Dhasan’s solution was simply bales of barley laced with the essence of Chaos – essence that was stolen from the realm of Umbral Chaos. Enraged, the Empress Xa’azamit (may she live forever) demanded recompense from the Viceroy – a payment that the ruling council of the Theocracy would gladly pay. A plan was soon hatched and set in motion, as a ritual for Sustenance was planned – one that would gather the entirety of the Conclave of Sustenance, along with its Dhasan, and all the rellyw who had gathered under its banner for the hope of salvation, one that would purge the curse that infects the Dragon.
The truth, however, of what the Theocracy’s plan manifested with a sudden, bone-chilling dread that paralysed the gathered rellyw, who realised far too late that it was not the curse of hunger that they sought to excise, but the rioting masses of the rellyw themselves. Above the Spire of Sustenance, the Empress Xa’azamit (may she live forever) snapped a clawed finger, transmuting the grounds surrounding the ritual into writhing tendrils, flapping tongues and snapping maws. A giant Pit of Xa’azamit had opened – a gaping flesh wound appearing as though it was torn into the marrow of Creation itself.
Within the Golgothan maze, the panicked rellyw, weakened by famine and unable to flee, were subjected to a macabre carnival of blood. They died in droves amidst bloody geysers and diseased swamps, their desperate cries swallowed by the snapping mandibles of giant centipedes and the surges of lava wyrms. So too did Dhasan Frank meet his end, at the hands of the demons that stalk the landscape of the depths of Chaos – finally revealing to the Spireans that this Dhasan was none other than one of Vek-Dansh’s Sholayu, disguised as the rebel Conclavist. With this macabre event concluded, the Empress Xa’azamit (may she live forever) considered the Theocracy’s debt settled, as order reasserted itself with the Pit snapping shut – leaving behind a towering pile of salt where a spire never did.
Yet, the Dragon has ever been a creature of relentless progress, endlessly striving towards their grander machinations. Even as the city starved and the rellyw rioted, the Spireans continued their cultivation of the nascent realm of Labyrinthine Chaos. Long had the essence of a new Noble stirred within the Labyrinthine Court – a formless presence borne from Dr. Marcelli’s memories that had brushed against Spirean affairs on more than one occasion. It was, however, during the shadow of Frank’s false conclave that the Dragon gathered and offered their hearts in ritual, to coax the unformed mage into taking shape and form as Xaeletre, the Exigent Magus.
Realising that much of the curse that ailed their city was rooted in illusion, the Dragon, not to be outdone, enacted one of their own. With the newly formed Labyrinthine Noble’s assistance in weaving Umbrael, they cloaked Spinesreach in an artifice of their own. The citizenry was masked entirely as feral gremlins, leaving only Viceroy Csethiro Cerredi to draw Vek-Dansh’s attention as a means of misdirection. To all but the Spireans at the time, it appeared as though they had simply left the city, leaving behind gremlins to rule the roost. In reality, this was a plan to conceal their operations, as they believed that Vek-Dansh could spy on the city and waylay their carefully laid plans.
Tapping once more into the nascent power of Labyrinthine Chaos, the Theocracy summoned minions of Vox the Silvertongue, Herald of Chaos, to emit discordant pulses throughout their city. It was the resulting disruption in the illusion that allowed the Spireans to triangulate the location of the hidden Sholayu, channelling obediently to maintain Vek-Dansh’s cursed ritual. With their prey finally found, the Theocracy laid a trap for the ensorceled slaves, designing and placing canisters of various plagues and ailments that would specifically target the Sholayu’s biology.
Though the plague based on the Aalen Bloom was ineffective, the multitude of plagues from multiple canisters eventually proved effective in consuming the Sholayu spellslaves, leaving their corpses piling in shallow mounds as they attempted to maintain their control over the curse over the city. As the Sholayu failed, so too did the illusion they maintained – revealing that beneath the stone, webs of obsidian-veined rot had been gnawing at the city’s bedrock.
Desperate to excise the rot, the Spireans sought and confronted Vek-Dansh when they found him studying the construct by the orrery in their catacombs. To their fortune, they discovered that the Asura had not yet triggered the subterranean cataclysm; the mandate of his tribulation was delayed by a fascination with the construct buried beneath the Theocracy. Lamenting his lack of time, he offered the assembled Spireans a trade: If they allowed him to finish his research, he would share his breakthroughs.
The Spirean response was swift and deadly.
Allowing only a brief exchange of words, Corruption’s Ghost hurled a ylem-charged leystone at Vek-Dansh, set to explode as an array of ylemnic monuments activated above the city. He was equally swift – the Asura making a sharp, sudden gesture towards the nearby orrery’s mysterious mechanisms. Wisps of shadowy tendrils extended with another sweep of his arm, connecting and jerking the leystone into an opening portal – revealed to be none other than the swirling vortices of Denan Arloi by the glittering light of the passing explosive. Before it could pass through the portal, however, the leystone detonated – bathing the Asura in the white-hot heat of catalysed ylem. With half his body grievously wounded, the body of the Gajatma fell over with a sickening slap of roasted, melting meata only for the Cogger buried beneath the Dragon to stir as Vek-Dansh migrated his soul into the mechanical creature.
Detecting a threat to his home, the bronzework sentinel – a gift from Varach Scolrys to his allied city from so long ago – awakened to meet the challenge. To empower the massive defender, the citizenry of the Dragon was forced to take turns in piloting the sentinel at the expense of their own lifeforce. Rotating their time in the sentinel lest it overwhelm the pilot, they proved victorious as the collective might of the Dragon proved greater than that of Vek-Dansh piloting his Cogger. Ever pragmatic, the Asura recognised his impending defeat and swiftly retreated. The parasite drifted from its ruined mechanical shell in a dark mist to settle upon a snow hare, then jumped to a cat in Tasur’ke, and finally, seizing a dragonfly that swiftly flew through the forest eaves towards Esterport, alighting on the deck of the Vorostran flagship.
Unable to speak for himself, it was Sholayu ‘714’ who announced for the Vorastran entourage: the Theocracy had survived Wrath’s tribulation.
~~~~~
Summary: After securing Tanixalthas’s neutrality through ancient tribute, Vek-Dansh salted Spinesreach into famine and concealed a secondary rot gnawing at the city’s foundations beneath layers of illusion maintained by hidden Sholayu anchors. The Theocracy responded with engineered plagues to collapse the anchors and a ylem-charged bomb to strike the exposed Asura, only for Vek-Dansh to survive by migrating his soul into the ancient Aechrian construct buried beneath the catacombs. Piloting the bronzework sentinel against the awakened colossus, Spinesreach drove Vek-Dansh to defeat, and 714 announced the Theocracy had endured Wrath’s tribulation.
Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 21st of Omeian, in the year 17 AC.