Lords of Creation: The World Madly Spins (IC Thread)

[SpeedWitch]

The Storm Descends: The Circle Continent

As Dia left the Suzerain, she looked down upon the Circle and saw the serpent cutting through it. Much of the earth was gone, massive quantities of water spilling into the underdark - not just from the ocean, but the continent's own rivers.

Her rivers.

Dia's waters churned, recalling the last time she risked her life to save her siblings. What she said at Solace was true: she had exerted herself. Much of of her energy was spent withstanding the Daystar. In this weakened state, she knew she could not save her kin alone.

So she would help her kin save themselves.

Diverging from the Surzerain's plan a bit, Dia turned towards the hurricane of fangs and dove down, ice forming at the front of her jet stream - plowing through wind, stone, acid, teeth, and all manner of grotesque things from that storm.

Seeing a river about to slip beneath the continent, she swerved to meet it and took it into her waters - a humanoid catfish immediately popping up and out of her body in a canoe of ice. The archon let out a few blubs of surprise and thankfulness before his boat suddenly swerved to the side, his river becoming a new tributary of the River Dia that stretched out from her to the lands below.

Gather the others. Evacuate the coast. Leave no one behind.

Dia kept up an exterior of ice around her waters, the ice cracking and rapidly reforming as projectile after projectile struck, preventing her from being tainted by it. Considering the threat before her, she was doing rather well.

And yet.

As she bent down and collected more of her kin, she felt the corruption they could not withstand flow through her, and she shuddered. Wan'shi had already wounded her, and it wasn't even trying. But she could not spare a thought to process the ramifications of this. She could only drive her form forward and try to freeze those infected waters, the now half-frozen River Dia using her tributaries as legs to skitter along land, sea and sky like some bizarre insect.

Time passed. The winds howled. Mountains ran with acid before crumbling. Life perished.

Dia shuddered again, but not from any acid, teeth, or defiled blood caught in her channel - was there? - yes, a few of her fellow divines weren't merely rescuing other archons, but other life as well - lizardfolk, kobolds, even a few centaurs - at first she was confused, but then she recalled her own sacrifice for her kin once more, and thought it only fair not to question it - even as one of the archons stretched too far towards a cave with a family of cowering lizardfolk inside, and was bisected by a massive fang, killing its archon instantly.

---

Hand of the Desert God

Something shifted through the air - something powerful, but not the serpent. Dia swerved to the side as a giant hand of sand skimmed past her and rammed into the darkness at the eye of the hurricane. The shock caused Dia to retreat to the storm's edge, dragging her kin behind her.

---

At the Edge of the Storm

As she broke through the clouds, Dia saw two forms on a nearby hill - the body of a strange, earth-like, four-legged creature, and a humanoid woman with legs like the creature's from the waist-down. Like the sand, Dia sensed something in this one - a divine, no - a deity, like herself, and so she rushed down to meet her, halting and hovering in the air from her a few meters away, the back of her form still trying to work its way out of the storm before Wan'shi got the better of her archons.

I won't waste time. I am the River Dia. I stand against the storm. As do others of our kind.

You mourn for this creature? Dia turned to study the corpse. Its likeness, essence - yes. This is your creation. And the Serpent crushed it.

There is no safety on this world. Not until it is slain. I aim to accomplish that.

Will you help us?