Outside 48: Hotter than Inside

[Rebonack]

[A Secluded Desert]

Xeni appears.

He'll likely notice three things, primarily. First, the Icon he holds, the tohuwabohu, begins to diminish. The process isn't rapid by any means. Nor is it physical in any sense of the word. It doesn't get smaller. Or lighter. It just gets less. Second? He's surrounded by what can only be described as an alien garden. It's distressingly similar to the way reality was warping inside the putti arena, full of chrome-like lattice full of burning light, crimson coral-like fungal growths oozing brownish black slime, and drifting masses of iridescent bubbles. The air is starting to feel soupy and thick. And there are also mutated animals.

Like that rabbit.

Xeni may have a hard time justifying why his first thought upon seeing the abomination is 'rabbit'. It looks like someone took the idea of a rabbit and stretched into into something not unlike a tree. Except the tree is also a dragon made of black glass specked with drifting stars. It looks like it should have trouble even moving but it's getting along fine.

The third thing he probably doesn't really register right away. Some huge glassy stone hill, black and glossy near the bottom before abruptly shifting to a dark amber colored agate flashing with iridescent ribbons of green and yellow light. It's impressive, surely. And foreboding, too.

It gets more foreboding when it moves.

"You have a lot of audacity to draw my attention when I'm feeding, faerie. Is it because you crave the void?" comes a voice with the force of a hurricane. A dragon of frankly incomprehensible size cranes her neck to peer down at Xeni. The ridge-line of the 'mountain' begins to glow an eerie blue as fel flames begin dancing between her teeth. The air is filled with a low, reverberating, repeating thrum that rapidly begins increasing in both pitch and speed.

But what follows isn't a stream of irradiated plasma and horrible, instantaneous death. It's a question.

"Xeni? Is that you?"

The seraphim leans a bit closer, a grin equal parts massive and terrifying splitting her face. And then, inexplicably, Xeni's vision of the creature turns into an incoherent smudge of color and light. Everything else is clear, but it's as if someone put a censorship filter over the dragon. She she speaks again her voice is much smaller, much closer, and much more familiar.

"Hi Xeni! Wow, this is really surreal. You're so tiny!"

Meanwhile, off in the distance!

The brief flare of Cherenkov radiation in the unnaturally thick air, a spooky blue glow off in the distance, might catch the attention of the folks aboard the traction city. As they crest a ridge a wide valley in the terrain of rolling hills comes into view. Including the mountain sized dragon parked in the middle of an expanding alien garden. The Glory she sheds is far brighter than the anemic sunlight trying to fight its way through cloud cover, casting anything illuminated by her into stark shadows. Those who find themselves looking at the creature will likely find that a sliver of the empyrean is now lodged in their mind, the mere memory of her taking on a life of its own. A name comes unbidden. Yezekiel, Saint/Sanctified One/Holy One/Sacred of Perseverance.

Those who catch a glimpse of the angel may find themselves gawking, depending on how powerful their force of will is. She is at once both too terrible and too wonderful to look away from. Mutations will set in after a few minutes, though it would take a full hour of exposure to corrupt someone to the point of the nearly unrecognizable 'rabbit' that Xeni encountered.


[Nightmare Forest]

"Yeah, a stream will break the trail of breadcrumbs and we might get lost! Let's look upstream first since upstream is usually uphill but I guess it might not be in an enchanted forest," Lapis reasons as she begins heading up stream. "Don't worry, Makuro if there are any monsters I'll help protect you!"