Attack on Sylica

[Ebiris]

"Is not the mortal body simply a shell for the eternal soul?" Alicia asks since Eblis wants to talk after all. "Even now you maintain those souls here, rather than reduce them to oblivion."

A pause before her voice hardens. "You asked if I knew what I meant bringing the erinyes traitor here, but you should have more mind for what my presence represents. My divinity has been built on the potential of an unassuming mortal nothing to cast down the ageless and haughty. You speak against the core of my being."

She never heard about Eblis having anything to do with the God-King... wait. The Arbiter told her of the ones who were abstaining from that contest and Eblis wasn't among them. Yet he has no worshippers, no champions who could affect the outcome. Why then take the risk?

Still though, Daa-vid is certainly an example of meaning aplenty coming from a mortal, value judgements aside.

[Anastasia]

"SOULS THAT WILL COME TO NOTHING, PRODUCE NOTHING, BE IMPOTENT WASTES." Eblis roars back, as you walk the path deeper into the flames. On the horizon is a shadow, a rising shadow that goes high into the burning sky.  In the distance you see occasional clouds of sulfur and poison, leaking horrid rain onto the flaming ground.

"YOU ARE NOTHING. NO ANSWER WILL COME FROM YOU, NO MEANING."

"No." Antenora's reply  is quiet but carries, looking ahead at the tower. "Alicia is the meaning that saved me, the meaning that changed my path!" A sweep of her spear, super-heated air moved by it, a sizzling breeze. "Alicia means more than an eternity of your petulant little temper tantrums here!" Her voice is rising, becoming a shout. "That is her meaning - she matters to me! She matters to all of us in our home! Alicia is the answer I was searching for! You want worth, fallen? Then look on at Alicia, for she was worth betraying everything I once stood for, just like you! Whatever brought you here, Alicia is as powerful as that!"

[Ebiris]

Oh Antenora, that's so sweet. Hopefully it doesn't get them killed.

Still, she can hardly cower after that sort of endorsement, can she? She's curious if Eblis is referring to The Answer, but she doesn't question it just yet, instead waiting to see how he responds to Antenora while holding her own head up high.

[Anastasia]

The sky darkens as the flames rise higher and higher, screams by the thousands coming from all around you. Yet from the sky above a voice booms, "YOU GO TOO FAR!"

"No! I go not far enough!" Antenora retorts, "Look at us and deny it all you want, but we are the victors! What harvest of happiness do you have? What do you have here besides spite and misery? What fills your heart each day besides a burning rage that has changed nothing? Come, strike us down! Obliterate us! Prove that you can do nothing but rage against us, rage because we are right! Prove us right, heavenly coward! You can't Compete against Alicia, you can only strike out in rage!"

There a silence for a time, a deep silence of rage and fury, of fires rising higher and higher yet. An inferno of infernos is above you, towering high, deep, tall. From them, from the tower, he approaches. A vast nightmare, dark and broken, of magma and fire, of hate and destruction. An angel that looms over you as the tower does, a blame of bright flames in one hand. He is terrible to look at, glory tarnished by sin, broken. He is approaching you, as inevitable as death and unstoppable as the tarrasque. His expression is one of burning fury, eyes locked on Alicia.

[Ebiris]

[01:05] <@Ebiris> roll 1d20+51 avatar sense motive is he gonna kill me
[01:05] <Serith> Ebiris roll for Serith < 61 > [d20=10]

[Anastasia]

As furious as he is, you don't feel killing intent from him.

Suffice to say the word furious is an understatement.

[Ebiris]

Alicia grows in stature to match the titanic figure approaching them, but she doesn't draw her weapon or cast any spells.

She's also careful to keep both her feet on the path.

[Anastasia]

The figure approaches, more and more. When a mere 70ft from you Eblis stops, raising his sword in challenge. "SHOW ME! SHOW ME THIS MEANING YOUR COMPANION SPEAKS OF, ALICIA REYNES!"

You hear a laugh a moment later, the sound of gravel moving. A merely massive thing emerges from Eblis's shadow, tall and dark. A cornugon, but one you know by reputation and report. Gathgorian stands just behind Eblis, matching Antenora's position behind you. He smiles - a dreadful thing far too sharp and malicious to be a smile in truth - and watches.

'Show me as well,' Gathgorian's voice rumbles in your mind, as you feel his presence. The presence of divinity, resonating deep within him. A spark, fragile and frail, but beginning and burning. 'Let me see what the Heavens see as meaning. I have much to learn.'

Antenora's gaze becomes even darker, pools of opal blue light glowing faintly in the darkness. "Gathgorian." She says it like a curse, "Have you found a new master to hide behind?"

[Ebiris]

"Oh he's done more than that," Alicia says darkly. "Following in Abigor's footsteps in more ways than one, Gathgorian. You'll soon see where that gets you," she says scornfully to the cornugon.

Really why are they even worrying, when was the last time any of them even heard of someone trying to ascend and becoming a hunefer? Who's ever even seen a hunefer? But freshly risen deities you can't go anywhere without tripping over one these days it seems.

Unfortunately she's but a mere avatar and not the real Alicia, else she would be quite a bit more stern in regards to Gathgorian's presence. She just settles for ignoring him.

Instead she meets Eblis's gaze. "See, then." She alters reality to pass on memories and experiences directly to the other deity, days and weeks unfolding in an instant as she graces Eblis with her and Antenora's experiences when they first came together. Vulnerabilities and all, moments of connection and exasperation, arguments and agreements on the nature of Law and Chaos, Good and Evil. There's no singular transcendent experience, the closest being the moment Antenora saw Alicia cry after losing Beth and felt sadness instead of glee, her wings turning grey. But it's a continuum, a series of events and slow changes that all built to that, rather than a single world-shattering experience.

Perhaps to someone like Eblis it's petty and meaningless. In the end it's all too human.

But that humanity changed an immortal incarnation of Law and Evil all the same.

[Anastasia]

Eblis takes those memories with nary a word, merely a rumble of power, like a volcano about to erupt.

There is silence.

Antenora and Gathgorian continue to glare at once another all the while. A silent war, as if waiting for a chance to tear one another apart.

Eblis is silent.

The flames around you continue to burn, sizzling and roaring higher in the places the befouled liquid falls.

"MORTALS ARE WORTHLESS THINGS. BROKEN, TWISTED, WORTHLESS HUNKS OF CLAY. THEY ARE UNABLE TO DO ANYTHING, YET IN THEM THOSE ABOVE FIND MORE VALUE THAN US. TO SERVE THEM, TO SHEPHARD THEM? UNTHINKABLE." Eblis's voice is a dreadful thing, the sounds of stones ripping themselves apart. "I CHOOSE MYSELF OVER THEM. WHY DO YOU SERVE THEM, ALICIA REYNES? HOW ARE THEY WORTHY OF YOU?"

[Ebiris]

"Because I was one of them," Alicia answers shortly. "As was almost everyone else in Creation at one time or another. Your little friend there," she glances dismissively down at Gathgorian. "I don't know if he was a terrible tyrant or a petty crook, a cog in a cruel machine or a murderer with a 'code', but he was surely a mortal before his life ended and carried his soul to the Hell it had earned."

"No mortal asks to be born. Just as no mortal asks for you to serve or shepherd them. I could certainly understand you choosing to turn your back on them - you owe them nothing. And yet I have never encountered a celestial who turned their back on mortals and simply ignored them as beneath notice. Every single one of you has to take it further, has to lash out and torture them," she gestures at Eblis's collection of tormented souls surrounding the path, "Has to join up with those who were your moral antithesis," she gestures next at Gathgorian.

"He said he had much to learn, so are you his teacher?" she asks Eblis. "Do you feel pride when he grasps things quickly, do you nurse hope that he will ascend high enough to one day stand beside you as an equal?"

[Anastasia]

"HE IS NEEDED, NOTHING MORE." Eblis declares this in response to you, Antenora's eyes narrowing.

"I pity you, then. I am with Alicia because I am wanted. Need makes a poor substitute for friends and family wishing to have you with them." Antenora replies, keeping her voice level in face of the inferno before you.

"I am beyond pity," Gathgorian says, "This is needed and will happen. What lies ahead will happen because it is needed, too."

"You have it all the same, the only one more pitiable than you is Eblis. How much of your rage against them is rage against yourself, Eblis? Against your failings? Against what you are and what you could be? You, who have reached something none other in Creation has, broods like an angst-ridden teenager! What terrible secret torments you so, fallen?"

Pushing past that with fury and flame, "THUS, YOU WASTE YOURSELF SERVING THE INFERIOR, FOREVER. RENOUNCE THEM AND I WILL SHOW YOU A PATH TO POWER BEYOND ALL OTHERS, WHERE YOU ALONE STAND TRUE. I SHALL SHOW YOU THE TRUTH OF CREATION."

Gathgorian begins to speak again, but a rumbling. A dreadful sound, silencing the devil as Eblis turns his burning gaze on you, as if the flames of Hell have engulfed you. "COME TO ME, ALICIA REYNES. RENOUNCE YOUR FOLLY. I WILL FREE YOU BEYOND THE MORTAL GNATS. I WILL FREE YOU BEYOND EVERYTHING. I WILL FREE YOU BEYOND EVEN SHAR." Eblis extends a hand out, as if for you to come forth and take it.

[Ebiris]

"A life of serving the 'inferior', or a life of hurting them... or a life of uncaring self absorption. You know it all comes down to the Answer in the end," Alicia says. "I cannot renounce what I am, what I believe in. If my convictions are shaken by whatever it is you wish to show me that is one thing, but I'll hardly take it on faith." She nonetheless raises her hand. "What shattered your worldview, Eblis? What liberated you into this fury-soaked existence?"

That's the question she came here to answer after all.

[Anastasia]

You earned a Diplo check, at least. Give me one.

[Ebiris]

[17:57] <@Ebiris> roll 1d20+54
[17:57] <Rei-chan> Ebiris rolled : 1d20+54 --> [ 1d20=9 ]{63}