Moving spheres

[Ebiris]

"Thank you Ebony, you may rise," Alicia bids, looking over the courtyard of the fortress ahead. "Aurora looks as busy as ever... we're here to meet with Baleruk and seek his expertise on matter of Chaos, if you could escort us to him?"

[Anastasia]

"Of course, follow me." Ebony leads the two of you along.

Baleruk is in his lair, lying on a great pile of coins. He watches the three of you as you enter and bellows, "AT LAST, THE HOUR IS AT HAND!"

"Baleruk," Ebony says calmly, "I do not believe introductions are needed."

[Ebiris]

"Hello Baleruk, it is good to finally meet face to face," Alicia says, their paths not having crossed either on Benfal or Lifasa when they both fought to save those worlds. "Syala and I have need of your unique expertise."

[Anastasia]

Baleruk looms. He comes in close, his head dominating the view, a single eye as large as you are. It views you intensely, unblinkingly. "Then the mighty Baleruk shall deign to add you. Ask what troubles you."

[Ebiris]

She stands there unmoving as the huge dragon looms over her, somewhat tempted to go big herself but resisting the urge. She's here to ask a favour after all, so no reason to play at one upping the dragon.

Alicia takes a small black handkerchief out of a pouch on her belt, which she then unfurls to reveal it as a portable hole. Reaching inside she draws out a golden statue of a woman, six feet tall and of sensual proportions standing atop a jagged mound of pink crystal.

"This is the Icon of Sensations," she explains to Baleruk, pulling the hole away to set the icon down, all of them currently close enough to 'benefit' from the enhancement to the senses that it bestows. "An artifact of chaos, it enhances one's senses at the basest level, potentially over a wide area to an extreme degree, though I've limited that for the moment to its minimum. But I'm certain far more magic lurks in it, magic that an anarch and scholar of Chaos such as yourself would have an easier time discovering."

[Anastasia]

"We thought it best to go to an expert first," Syala says, "I am chaos, but never as deeply into it as you would be."

Baleruk sniffs the Icon several times, then his tongue darts out. He licks it once, twice, thrice. Little rainbows trickle down its form, cascading against the pink crystal. "The Icon is an anarch," he declares, voice a soft whisper. "It can awaken the same power in others, the power to control chaos."

Syala has a hand on her hip, a semi frown forming on her face. "An object can be an anarch?"

"Anything can," Baleruk declares, "Through an object will become a living thing should it succeed in doing so, in some manner and some fashion. This has the most rudimentary sense of self. It did not become one itself, it was forced into being an anarch. A great scion of chaos made this."

[Ebiris]

"It was made by a forgotten succubus queen - likely one who fell by the wayside in Malcanthet's ascendance," Alicia says, looking a bit nonplussed as slobbery dragon tongue rolls over that anatomically correct golden statuary.

"So you're saying this can turn anyone into an anarch, and possibly become awakened, even animate, in its own right?" she clarifies what she's just been told, since it's pretty out there.

[Anastasia]

In your mind, 'I swear, if that dragon gets the Icon pregnant somehow...' Syala sends, a sensation of repressed mirth carried along with it.

"Yes." Baleruk says, "If you guide it enough." His eye turns to the statue, "It is against common wisdom and knowledge, but you can make someone an anarch. It is the realm of the greatest of anarchs, such as the one shrouded in dungeons and mazes."

[Ebiris]

'I almost want to see how it would turn out when you put it like that...' Alicia sends back to Syala, a feeling of being unable to tear one's eyes away from a disaster unfolding.

"But then how would one guide an inanimate statue? How close is its sense of self to expressing?" she asks Baleruk aloud.

[Anastasia]

"With pure will and focus," Baleruk says, "Once you have grasped it and know what you want it to do. It is not close to expressing, it is primitive, enough to be an anarch and little else."

[Ebiris]

"And given how old it is I don't think it'll attain sapience on its own any time soon," Alicia hums, looking at it. "I wonder what sort of person it would be, though... I suppose it depends on who helped it to awaken?"

[Anastasia]

"Yesssss...." Baleruk hisses, eyeing the statue anew.

[Ebiris]

Bile fascination or not, if this statue is going to be awakened it's going to be under her own controlled conditions!

"Well, I think that's clarified things a great deal," she unfurls her portable hole anew and drops the icon within. "Thank you for your expertise, Baleruk. If either of us can repay the favour one day, do let us know through Ebony."

[Anastasia]

"It will be remembered," Baleruk agrees softly, head withdrawing back.

[Ebiris]

"Farewell then," she rolls up the portable hole and stows it again, nodding to Ebony as she and Syala can then be escorted back out again. "So, we now have the means to make others into anarchs? It makes me wonder why Malcanthet wasn't exploiting that ability."