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A shaft of dusty light ignites a space that has known only dark for millennia.
Darkness cries and darkness flies. The light has come, now day has won. But darkness lingers: the light it fingers, ever testing, never resting. Darkness waits and darkness hates while light excludes still dark precludes, for it once was and yet will be. The light will bend, the light will end. The darkness waits for equinox for then there's born a paradox.
"Chibs! Bring the lamps! We're through."
Yidhra, who passed from time and space in an age unknown, awakes to find she know herself though her senses fail. She knows she need not sleep, but cannot wake. Not yet.
Suddenly light floods into the fossilized crystal that has contained her for so long it feels as but a moment. Yidhra's eyes open and see nothing in the light.
Mistress! Mistress awaken! I am stolen mistress! Please save these men from me! Do not slumber! Wake, and save their minds!
A resounding crack leaves the quiet air impregnated with dusty silence. The crystal cocoon falls away, and Yidhra is herself and yet is not.
Five men standing tending to fluttering lamps; their flailing light casts dancing shadows across an ancient, dusty library.
A sixth man holds a oilcloth wrapped bundle under his arm.
"S!@*." One of the men says stupidly. "There was a lady in that rock."
<"Is that what I am?"> Yidhra asked in her native Aklo, looking down at herself and moving her body around a bit - first the arms, up and down, then shaking her legs a bit. After a moment, she realized that the sounds coming out of her mouth were nothing at all like the sounds the men had spoken - and knowledge flooded her mind. Oooh, right! "Hi." she said in Common, raising a hand in greeting. At least, it was probably a greeting. "I am a lady! I think. I haven't checked yet - I might actually be a man who looks like a lady. Or both a lady and a man - does that happen? I don't suppose you know where my book is? It'll probably eat your brain if you try to do anything with it, and I don't object to that, but I have a lot of questions about where I am and what's going on, and it's hard to hold conversations with people that don't have brains anymore." Or with people who had exactly zero sense of social norms and regulations.
For all of her odd statements, though, she was being friendly enough - for now, at least, and hopefully her lack of hostility would help put them at ease.
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Three of the men titter nervously while two look perfectly abashed at the prospect of potentially having their brains eaten by a book.
The sixth man: the one holding the oilcloth bundle, glances down to it then back to the being of questionable sex. "Are you alright? You do realize you just climbed naked from a rock?" His hand eases closer to a strange sidearm that looks like a bent dagger through which someone has drilled a hole.
Yidhra looked down at her body, then back up at the man. "Oh, I did? Yup, lady!" she looked back up and smiled. Yidhra spun around a moment later, reaching out as she did so - and a cloak of inky darkness appeared between her fingers. By the time she'd turned around completely, it had settled over her shoulders and hidden the form of her body in the shadow of the void. "I know that word, so it must be an important concept... well, this should do for now."
"But seriously - book, brain, eating. Like foot... fool... food! That's the word! Except not really, because it's just your mind and not your brain, and apparently those are different things." She seemed rather confused about the subject. "I don't suppose you have any normal clothes, though? This cloak won't last forever - yet - and apparently people get weird when other people don't wear clothes." She didn't understand why this was the case - or disapprove of general weirdness - but it might be inconvenient for her immediate plans. More relevantly, she seemed utterly oblivious to any potential danger, though it was hard to say if that was good or bad...
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A lanky man with a massive beard sets his still sputtering lamp on the ground and buries his arm in his pack for a moment before producing a fur lined bit of well tended leather.
The man shuffles forward tentatively, his eye downcast and a smile growing huge and white beneath his beard.
"Jameson!" The man with the odd dagger hisses, but Jameson pays no attention and holds out the bundle to Yidhra.
"You can have my poncho: it's warm and mostly waterproof. It'll be a bit big, but it'll do the trick until we can find you something proper."
He chances a quick glance at Yidhra's face, his smile flaring. "Gods, but you are pretty."
Yidhra promptly snagged the item - revealing a fair bit of skin as the cloak was lifted - and brought it beneath the cloak before starting to put it on. "You're welcome." she said absentmindedly. Poncho equipped and modesty(?) thus preserved, she began looking around the area to get a better sense of where she was. "Soooooo, I could be wrong, but I'm going to guess that you fellows didn't come all the way here just to worship me. Not that I'd complain, mind you, but I have no idea where or when I am, and anything you could fill me in on would be great. I'd really appreciate it if you could help me out."
She could also do the smart thing in regards to her book, and simply snapped her fingers. The silly thing should've been buried with her - and ought to still recognize her as its owner, considering their bond, but magic had funny rules and didn't always do what she wanted it to. More relevantly, she actually could use a greater type of summoning power to retrieve it, but that expended energy the sensible part of her mind thought should be preserved for now.
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All but the man holding the oilcloth bundle start nodding dumbly at the mention of worship.
The leader starts to say something, but shouts in surprise and alarm instead as the bundle tears free of his graps and, shedding the oilcloth wrapping, flies to Yidhra's waiting hand. Happily?
"Hey! That's my score, and I'll be needing it back." He draws the odd, bent dagger and points it at the goddess. "Now if you please."
His men look horrified, as if the dagger were pointed at each of their mothers who was holding a new lamb.
"Oh, is that a threat?" Yidhra asked, disconcertingly cheerful. "You know, if profit is your motivation, you really should be asking for my help instead of threatening me. After all, anybody besides me who wants to study this book will go insane if they try to use it... but I can stop that from happening, and I bet you'd get a much better price from your customers in that case. Also, I'd rather not have to kill someone I just met - I'm never going to make friends if that happens. So you see, we all win if we're nice to each other. Right, boys?"
Maybe the man's friends could convince him to see reason. If not? Well, he was threatening her - and her instinctive reaction was to immediately eliminate threats. That she hadn't already was simply due to her paradoxical nature of both being and not-being anything at any given time. She'd put her very best effort into resolving this peacefully, but if that didn't work, there were always alternatives... like dropping a man made of stone onto his head.
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"You'd kill me? Ha!" The man is amused and angry now. "Yer naked, and I've got a gun, so good luck with that." He draws the hammer back on the gun.
"Don't do it Donovan." Jameson speaks up. "She ain't done nothing but take what's hers. 'Sides, look at all them books around us. They'd fetch a good price, right?"
Another of the men speaks, "It'd be a shame to harm something so purdy anyhow. C'mon Donnie, let's just let it ride. She seems pretty sure of herself."
A third draws himself up to speak, but a loud shot drowns out whatever it was.
The man drops, blood spraying from his chest. He writhes slowly, clearly in pain and barely hanging on to life.
The man with the gun, Donovan, looks to the two men who had spoken. "Chibs, Jameson. Shut yer damn mouths or get what Jed got. I lead here!"
He turns back to Yidhra. "How 'bout it missy?"
<"I think my instincts as both healer and ninja fight a lot, but right now, I just want you dead."> the Goddess of Paradoxes said in Aklo - the only language she spoke in after the feeling of combat arose. Her inherent powers surged briefly, reaching into the Dark Tapestry and calling forth a stone man-like being that popped into the air next to Donovan. However, it was rather more... well... fearsome than a standard specimen of its kind.
Letting out a bellow of pure rage, the Vilstrak slammed its arms down in a pair of bludgeoning blows.
for plus Bleed 1.
for plus Bleed 1.
Savage creatures were far more deadly than normal entities, however... and its Feral Savagery made it fast enough to slam forward again with its first arm, all in one brutal succession of attacks. Assuming, of course, that it was fast enough to hit...
for plus Bleed 1.
...Nope.
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As Yidhra raises her arms to summon the Vilstrak...
"I'll take that as a 'no.' I'll just take it then." Donovan fires the gun.
Seeing his shot go wide, and seeing the anger in the eyes of his men, Donovan opts to cut his losses and moves for the rope ladder 30 feet away and starts to climb.
An icy void tears open the air near where Donovan stood seconds ago. The Vilstrak roars, then looks to Yidhra.
She indicates Donovan as the target and the creature charges, but Donovan proves too spry to be hit by such a clumsy attack.
____
Indignant and offended, the 4 standing men rush after Donovan...
...and pull him off the ladder. On the ground, they thrash for a moment, but the 4 men manage to hold the gunman fast.
"Whatcha want with 'im?" A beaming Jameson asks Yidhra.
Yidhra calmly strode forward - and as she went, she sent a Cure Light Wounds spell into Jed, the man injured by the earlier gunshot.
She wasn't especially good at healing magic, but that ought to be enough to stabilize and help the man. With that, she headed over to the captured man, then smiled at the others. "Thank you very much." she told them, before bending down slightly to look Jameson in the eye. "You have made me very upset, hurt people who were nice to me, and tried to claim my important possession as your own." she said clearly. "Also, you saw me naked." The Vilstrak lumbered up behind her, and it didn't take much imagination to realize what kind of pain those massive arms could cause to someone who was helpless on the ground. "So how about this - why don't we let that guy decide, since he's the one who actually got hurt?" She pointed over to Jed. "I want to be a nice goddess, so if he says that you should be punished for your sins, then you will be. On the other hand, if he thinks you deserve another chance, I'm happy to give it to you. What'll it be?" she inquired, looking towards Jed.
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Jed slowly comes to his feet, blood oozing from between his fingers pressed into his belly.
"Take his gun. Leave him here when we leave. If fate wants him, fine. He'll die soon enough otherwise. No sense putting it on our souls."
Jed stands grim-faced, looking Donovan right in the eyes.
A creeping fear crawls onto to Donovan's face as he looks back to Yidhra. Are you a merciful goddess?
"We care more about why you do things than what you do." Yidhra noted absently, retrieving the 'gun' and looking curiously at it. It was probably a good thing it had already been fired, else the chances were excellent that she would have shot herself with it. No sense of danger at all, this one... "It's kind of funny how few people have noticed that... for daily life, anyway, not magic where one wrong line in a circle makes a cute little Qlippoth eat your face." She eyed Donovan carefully. "I don't care about you." she said in the most cheerful voice she could manage. "You're one of countless fleshy little beings living short lives in the cycle of souls, and whether you live or die is completely meaningless to me. You are beneath my contempt and dislike, and when I'm gone from here, you will also be beneath my notice." Her voice remained entirely non-threatening and cheerful. "So... if you do die here, try praying really hard before you do and repenting for your sins. And if you live, maybe I'll buy you a drink sometime. I haven't tried alcohol yet, and it sounds fun. Tie him up for now - we'll untie him before we go."
Hopefully, though, she'd have some actual clothes before getting smashed... With that, she skipped over to the bookshelves and focused her powers, beginning a long ritual that would summon another being to her side - Sathua, an existence that this world would recognize as an Eidolon. The truth was... a little more complicated than that, but the term would suffice for now. "Go find something useful." she told her companion - and Sathua darted around, calmly looking around for any books that seemed noteworthy or interesting. Or, you know, anything else that was really obvious and Yidhra should have been paying attention to.
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Donovan is quickly bound and gagged. The other men sit quietly in a corner, watching Yidhra perform her magic.
As Sathua springs from the void, a small gasp escapes the knot of waiting men, but they say nothing.
Sathua circles the room and swifty returns with a stone chest the size of a large book. The seam of the lid seems sealed and the keyhole is a perfect, single void in the center of the block. It is locked.
"Oooh, good abomination!" Yidhra said, hugging her Eidolon for a bit before looking curiously at the book. She muttered something a moment later - a Detect Magic spell - just to see if it was holding any power, then tilted her head to examine it more thoroughly and she if she'd retained any memories about what it might be. "Hmm..."
Yidhra held up the chest for a moment, looking at it from below, then shook it up and down a few times. "I dunno, I guess we could break it open." she said, glancing towards the other guys there. Her Vilstrak's stone melding wouldn't allow it to phase through a box this small and bring anything out of it, but with a shrug, the goddess scavenged something to carry the book in and simply pocketed it. They could deal with it later, once they were outside of this place. "Ready to go?" she inquired.
"Do whatever you want." Yidhra said, perky and cheerful. She held up her mystic tome a moment later, and blood seemed to flow out from the eye in the center of the book as its pages flipped open. She snapped it shut a moment later, though, satisfied. "Yeah, come find me when you're done, but don't be afraid to come earlier if anything seems too dangerous for you. I can't promise that anything here is safe." She pushed up onto her toes, then jumped up and pat her summoned servant on the head. The Vilstrak melted into the floor, heading back to its home as its summoning was released, and Yidhra hummed as she wandered around the center of the room and looked to see if anything interesting was still in the area. Who knew? Perhaps the books here would have advice, or there was a buried pirate treasure... or just something shiny that could distract her for awhile. Or not. She was basically fine either way.
Yidhra shrugged slightly and adjusted her things as Sathua hopped onto her shoulders. Then, quite calmly, she began climbing out of the chamber... pausing halfway up to shout, "Don't look up my poncho!" Popping above ground a moment later, she looked around and glanced towards the sun. "...Meh, Azathoth's better." she said, feeling strangely competitive on the subject. She stuck her head back into the hole a moment later. "You, uh, you all remember that you're going to have to carry everything up the ladder, right?" she inquired before looking around the area outside of the... library? Tomb? Pit? Eh, it didn't really matter what it was called...
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Yidhra turns from the cavernesque library and finds herself in a sparse jungle through which can be seen an immense body of water on all sides. The sun shines pleasantly down, but the moisture in the air is thick and sticky.
It seems the same distance to the shore of the little island in any direction, but a good sized paddle boat lies at anchor to the north.
"...I should probably wait for those guys." Yidhra said, putting her hands on her hips as she surveyed the area around her. Well, at least she had the poncho, though that was going to be of limited use in a place like this... oh, well. While she waited, though, she idly began to walk through the area, looking at the plants as she did so.
It would be good to know if any of these were dangerous - or helpful. She was rather less confident on mortal geography, though - she'd have to ask those nice fellows about where they were and what she should know about the place. And if they had any spare boots...
"Ooh, fun!" Yidhra hopped over to the flowers, though she did stay far enough away to avoid any... unpleasant side-effects. Such plants were actually very interesting to her - they were living things that, by growing, brought death to others. It was a mysterious arrangement that appealed to her appreciation of paradoxes, and she hummed happily as she fetched a long stick and began poking the flowers to pass the time.
"It's probably all of the world's evils or something..." Yidhra said, pulling out the box and looking at it. "..." Bonk, bonk, bonk. If whacking it against the ground a few times wasn't enough to pop it open, the goddess simply tossed it to her companion - Sathua was actually rather good at opening locks and disabling devices, and might be able to do something with the box. If that failed, they'd just have to seriously smash it... or find someone who could open it, at least. Either worked for her.
Yidhra hopped backwards, focusing her powers as she did so - and another Vilstrak appeared out of the air, though this one seemed far more normal... a typical example of its breed, albeit with the same sort of entropic tendencies that all of her allies had.
With no hesitation, the stone warrior struck out with a pair of powerful slams in a full attack.
for
for
Sathua, meanwhile, merely pulled backwards to keep away from the warrior and allow Yidhra's summon to do its job. The Eidolon was many things, but it was not a warrior and had no intention of exposing itself to combat.
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The knight blocks both attacks on his shield then starts straight for Yidhra, provoking the Vilstrak to attack again.
This time, the entropic creature lands a telling blow which the knight manages only barely to stop from becoming a mortal wound.
Five feet away now, the knight remains intent on Yidhra!
"Hi!" Yidhra said, smiling at the knight. That didn't stop her from reaching down and unsheathing her weapon - one of her few possessions, formed when she made her body - in a smooth movement as her Vilstrak came up behind the knight to trap it between the two of them. On the downside, it couldn't steady itself enough to attack with both hands. On the bright side, they had the knight flanked between them, Yidhra's cloak was still on, and it was a heck of a lot harder to avoid blows from both front and back. With no hesitation, Yidhra flicked her blade out in a smooth slice from lower left - the beginning point of where here blade was drawn - to the upper-right... just as the Vilstrak aimed to slam the knight from behind and stagger it enough to allow Yidhra's blow to hit.
for
for
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Yidhra's blade takes the knight in the chest and the Vistrak slams him further into the sword.
The knight crumbles to the ground, clearly dead. A moment later, he dissolves into fine, white sand leaving behind his armor and weapons.
"Mistress! There's more in this box!"
Loyal follower,
Should you awaken, you will be faced with a force of pure chaos. She will be but a remnant of her full self, but take care.
It should never come to that though.
"Ooh, fun!" Yidhra said, sheathing her sword - and staggering slightly as she attempted to pick up the heavy armor. She gave up after a few moments and instead put the shield on top of it, though she did grab the longsword, the gold, and her own equipment - including glorious clothes! And also shoes! Whew - those went on right away, and she nodded in extreme satisfaction as she read the letter, even as her summoned creature melted back into the earth. "...Let's keep the box." Yidhra said, attempting to fit the armor and shield inside of it after taking her own things out. If it stayed bigger on the inside - and she loved things that didn't match normal rules of size - it could be quite helpful in her journey.
Still, who'd placed such a trap for her...? She'd definitely have to look into this at some point, and her expression turned a bit more serious as she looked back towards the entrance to the library. "How are you guys doing down there?" she called.
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Sathua nods enthusiastically, "Oh yes, Mistress. We should keep this box."
The armor and shield distort as Yidhra pushes them into the box and the lead closes easily.
A moment after she calls, Jameson's face appears below. "Still here then?" He makes an expansive gesture. "There's quite a lot down here, but we making good progress of it." He shrugs. "I expect we'll be done in about two days time."
"Well, there's only one boat, and you'd be stranded here if I took it." Yidhra pointed out, blinking down at the guys as she peered in. "Tell you what... I'll eat some sunlight - that's how I normally eat anyway, though Azzy tastes better - and then I'll come down and help you guys. Maybe we can get it done faster by working together."
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After eating her fill of sun beams, Yidhra climbs down the rope ladder into her former tomb once more.
Jameson's men have made a great deal of progress with the books; the majority have been sorted and catalogued by century if nothing else.
Currently, the men are loading the books onto wooden pallets, and they clearly mean to haul them out of the hole with rope.
Now that many of the bookshelves are clear, many features of the room stand out where before they did not. Yidhra notices many torch sconces around the room, yet only one has a torch in it: unlit.
Looking closer, the goddess can see that this sconce is mechanized and designed to be pulled. She cannot tell what this lever might control, but a good deal of stone resting on a manufactured ledge above her says that this level probably isn't meant to be used as whoever did so would have to contend with a few hundred pounds of falling rock...
Temptation... rising! "I found a rockslide!" Yidhra said cheerfully, calling attention to the trap and waving to the other guys. "Once we're done, I can try pulling this lever from a distance to trigger it. There might be some kind of hidden passageway around here that whoever built this place was trying to hide." To demonstrate her claim, Yidhra whispered an arcane word and pointed a finger - one of the books they'd sorted floated upwards as her Mage Hand took hold of it. Ooooor they'd just randomly put a trap there to mess with whoever was here, raiding the place. She was exactly the kind of person that could do that.
...
Or whoever had written that note had put the trap into place, knowing that Yidhra was boundlessly curious and the sort of person who would pretty much always set things off on purpose just to see what happened. Hmm.
"Oooh, that would work too, wouldn't it?" Yidhra asked. "If it goes wrong, though, you could get buried under tons of rubble, and-"
Click.
Yidhra turned back to look at Sathua, who was sitting near the lever and calmly waving its tail back and forth.
"...Or Sathua could do it." she said, glaring slightly at her companion for showing her up that way. Supremely indifferent, and assuming the rocks weren't falling on their heads, Sathua merely wandered back towards the group and sat there before beginning to groom itself. On the same assumption, Yidhra used Mage Hand to give the lever a firm yank from a good distance away.
Yidhra tapped the side of her head a few times, but she hadn't brought much in the way of engineering knowledge with her, and that probably wasn't enough to identify whatever this was. Instead, as the sounds continued, both she and Sathua slowly tried to track them down and see if they could pinpoint any interesting things about the noises - such as notable absences (hiding a hidden passageway?) or otherwise learning more about the movements and whatever they might signify.
She was relatively certain that something was occurring - admittedly, she was the sort who would create an incredibly elaborate setup just to have it do absolutely nothing, but most beings weren't like that. It stood to reason that a change would be happening somewhere, didn't it? "Anyone find anything?" she asked primly.
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No answer greet the question for over 10 minutes. Finally, a dusty, dirty, terrified face appeares above the hole. "What in Nine Hells have you done? Daedan was crushed to death and we lost half the books!"
"What are you on about?" Jameson snaps. Nothing happened in here.
"Well it did up here." the face says simply and disappears.
Jameson looks at Yidhra, then bounds to the rope ladder and is out in a blink.
When Yidhra reaches the surface, she does not see the island oasis she had seen the first time. The immediate vacinity looks like it had been badly tilled by a drunken giant.
And dominating the island now stands a 300 foot spire of glimmering white stone.
"Bwahahahaha!" Yidhra laughed, placing her hands on her hips as she surveyed the changes. "Behold! I have summoned forth a... tall... white... thing..." she trailed off, then tapped the side of her head a few times, trying to figure out if the stone had any particularly important things that would stand out in her memory. Like, was it a magical device, or maybe a religious symbol of some kind?
Oooor, you know, maybe the local people just loved building giant phallic symbols for use in obscure fertility rituals. As the goddess of paradoxes, she could state with authority that many mortals did things that made no sense whatsoever, and she loved them for it. "Go find an entrance and check for traps." she told Sathua, sending the Eidolon off... though she did stick close enough to ensure that her companion wouldn't be harmed by the distance between them. She turned towards the humans a moment later. "So, who wants to check out the giant spire and see if much better stuff is inside? If there's magic, maybe we can revive your buddy with it..." Or turn him into a horrible undead monstrosity that they'd have to permanently eliminate, but hey! Her mortal life wouldn't be any fun if she ran away from everything remotely interesting...
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After a careful inspection over an hour or so, a single door is discovered in the tower's base. A strange, faintly glowing symbol quickly fades out of sight.
It was the holy symbol of Gozreh.
The engineers examine the door carefully and believe they have discovere a way to open it. They look to Yidhra for direction.
Yidhra glanced at the symbol as it appeared...
And immediately cheered up. Deities who were more than one thing at once - such as Gozreh's dualistic nature - were very appealing to her.
"Well, this isn't an evil location!" Yidhra said, pointing forward. "And since there's a door, people are clearly meant to enter. Watch your step, let's go, and don't be afraid to run if you have to!" She drew her blade with one hand, leaving the other free for casting, and nodded for them to open it. Once that was done, Sathua was sent forward to check for traps and ensure it was safe for the others to enter.