Vigil VII: Strife Amidst the Clouds

[Morty]

[Training Grounds - Svetlana and Wenomir]

Wenomir rubs his chin.

"Polish... I've never heard of a 'Polish' people. But it did sound somewhat like the language we spoke back home. Our people are called Morynians, the plains-folk. Once fierce warriors of the lost empire, I was told, beloved by the gods. Now..." He shrugs. "Not much left of that. But maybe your people and mine are echoes of the same idea on different worlds. The Nexus seems to like that. At any rate, if you ever want to practice or discuss your fighting form, you know where to find me."

[5a Violista]

[Training Grounds]

"I guess your god is a nature type?" she says. "In my home world we have some bad experience with a nature god. You could say it's a constant war."

There is the question where go next. Wenomir seems to be nearby, but he is talking to someone else. As for other people, we might ask in Discord.

[Training Grounds]

The paladin blinks.
"Nature god? What does that have to do with anything?" he wonders aloud.
It seems like a total non-sequitur to him.

"No, um...she's a goddess of the night." He doesn't mention more. "Darkness, not nature."

[Ironsmith]

[Felicity's Lab]

"Felicity asked me to put a ball of fire in that bowl," Lapis explains helpfully, pointing at the bowl in question.

The bowl is pretty unremarkable.

Ceramic meant to hold very hot objects.

The ball is a little more remarkable.

Imagine somewhere took a video of a large fire and then used video editing to smoosh it into a sphere.

Just a sphere of roiling fire.

Sitting there.

In a bowl.

It feels pretty hot, even from a distance.

Felicity's Lab

"It's fine, come in! I could use an extra pair of eyes for this. My specialty's biochem, not that I actually completed my master's. Best I've got is a bachelor's. We're playing with fire, Lapis here turned it into a marble. I'm gonna get some tongs." Felicity walks over and opens a drawer, grabbing the tongs and using them to pick up the sphere of fire- so long as it remains solid, anyway. Eun might notice that despite the heat, Felicity's not wearing gloves. She probably should, actually, but she's not used to hot things hurting her any more.

[Felicity's Lab]

Eun seems skeptical of what Felicity had described at first, but looking at it, yes, that's exactly what it appeared to be; a roiling mass of fire, compressed into a spherical shape. It didn't appear to be using any particular fuel source, which leads Eun to believe it's yet another of the Nexus's "up yours" directed at the laws of physics. There seemed to be a lot of those here.

"...I see." She says finally, setting her clipboard to the side. Admittedly, the fireball had her curiosity; science as she understood it said this was impossible, but here it was, directly in front of her, which meant she had a hundred questions pertaining to it. How was this done? Was it replicable? Could it be reconciled with the principle of conservation of energy, or had they created a perpetual energy source?

She lets out a little sigh and forces herself to slow down. Safety first. This thing was definitely giving off significant amounts of heat, which might build up in this room and induce hyperthermia for the occupants; she'd have to measure the rate at which that occurred to make sure it wasn't a risk or to institute appropriate countermeasures if it was. Then there was the possibility of toxic byproducts; mundane fires tended to result in emissions ranging from carbon dioxide (non-toxic, but displacing precious oxygen and presenting a risk anyway) to hydrogen cyanide (very toxic) depending on the fuel source, and they wouldn't be able to tell until symptoms set in if this fire was doing the same. There was also the obvious possibility that it might ignite something, but Felicity seemed to have taken care of that preemptively.

Eun reaches into her Hotbox and produces a set of goggles, a facemask, and a flame-resistant garment resembling a shower cap, slipping them on and buttoning up her lab coat. "All right." She says, giving a little smile. "Let's see what we can learn."

[Rebonack]

[Felicity's Lab]

The fireballl continues burning, oblivious to all the curiosities and questions being directed at it.

Lapis has no idea what's going on with it or why it works just that it does. She is a very small child and her understanding of the mechanical underpinnings of the cosmos is limited. She knows about tending to the grounds and chasing birds and doing things with swords. That's about the extent of her technical expertise. But she doesn't mind learning! Learning is fun.

Now then...

Do our science heroes have any tools for measuring the strange and seemingly impossible object?

Because if they're just making a visual inspection they'll spot a few obvious things. Aside from looking like an orb of somehow solid flame and giving off heat there will be a small steadily growing layer of silvery black powder in the bottom of the white ceramic bowl. It definitely wasn't there when bowl was fetched so maybe it's some kind of combustion product? There are only a few grains thus far but they catch the light pretty well.

Does the lab have a mass spectrometer?

Those are handy.

"I learned I can make fireballs," Lapis announces.

She's learning things already today!

[Earl of Purple]

Felicity's Lab

Dr. Eun might note that Felicity's lab is designed to handle fire and smoke. For messing around- I mean, doing science- with strange orbs of fire is almost what this lab was designed for. Although hyperthermia is not an issue Felicity has to worry about until after the metal fittings have melted.

Felicity has some thermometers, fire-retardant scales, and a lot of other equipment that's handy with fire and chemicals. Including a mass spectrometer, a DNA testery readery thing and so on. If you guys can think of something and it actually exists, and it'd be helpful in studying biochemistry and/or hydrocarbons, Felicity probably has it.

"I really want to poke it, but that's a bad idea right now. Oh, what's that dust it's making? Lapis, can you grab another bowl, please?" Felicity has no idea if this could ignite her, or if she's still somehow burning given that this fire came from her.

[Ironsmith]

[Felicity's Lab]

Oh, look. Felicity had the necessary tools already. It'd save the trouble of having to pri-

BEEEEEEEEP

Ugh. She'd just changed the radiation filters on her Hotbox, she shouldn't need to do it again so soon. It could wait a minute, but that alarm was going to get annoying.

Right. Back to the matter at hand. This fireball was definitely producing byproducts, so it had to be burning something. Maybe something in the air? That didn't seem likely; if the air were flammable, the whole lab would be on fire, unless it was somehow being fed into the flame.

Eun grabs a pair of forceps and gently scrapes up a sample of the powder, putting it to the side where it would be easy to access. Maybe figuring out what this thing was giving off would tell her what it was burning.

[Zefir]

[Training Grounds]

The paladin blinks.
"Nature god? What does that have to do with anything?" he wonders aloud.
It seems like a total non-sequitur to him.

"No, um...she's a goddess of the night." He doesn't mention more. "Darkness, not nature."

[Training Grounds]

"It was just a wild guess, I thought your liking of nature maybe related directly to it." Mia says. In her world only two gods exist so she still struggels with the fact tat there are a lot more aspects god fill.
"Night sounds a bit dark, but unless you do blood sacrefices or anything alike, I won't mind. Or do you?"

[Rebonack]

[Felicity's Lab]

So long as you're taking notes on all the things you do then it counts as doing science instead of just messing around.

Those are the rules.

"Okay!" Lapis replies brightly.

Okay.

Get a bowl.

Where were the bowls again?

Hmm...

Lapis seems to zone out for a moment as she pulls up her quest log. C'mon c'mon ah hah! There! She accepts the 'Science Adventure' quest! Several objectives are already checked off but that's okay she's mostly after the next one. Retrieve Bowl. Hmm... she doesn't see the little floaty arrow so she slowly starts turning in a circle until there it is! She skips off toward the area where the crucibles are kept and collects another one. Lapis doesn't bother putting it in her inventory just her hands are okay. Then she skips back over toe Felicity!

"Here's one!"

Objective complete? Oh wait, no, not yet. She probably needs to wait for Felicity to tell her the next thing before it completes. The rewards really aren't that great but Lapis is having fun.

Should anyone decide to test the powder it will mostly consist of silicon 28 and silicon 32 with a few other trace elements. If our heroes are familiar with stellar nucleosynthesis they should recognize these elements as the fusion productions of oxygen.

[Earl of Purple]

Felicity's Lab

Felicity puts the fire in the other bowl, and puts some of the dust in the mass spectrometer, where she'll find it is silicon 28 and 32. Earl has no idea how long this will take.

"Thank you, Lapis. Now, let's see... Ah ha!" Felicity grabs an electric scale and will try to weigh the ball of fire. She wants to poke it, she wants also to try dumping it in water to see if it's waterproof, but that might destroy it so that's best done last.

"What's that beeping? Should we be worried?" Felicity isn't too concerned because she thinks it's probably the smoke alarm again. She's had to turn that off nearly every time she's in here. Which is a point, they should have a fume cupboard, shouldn't they? Were they can work on weird stuff without accidentally filling the air with lethal levels of deadly neurotoxin.

[Ironsmith]

[Felicity's Lab]

So long as you're taking notes on all the things you do then it counts as doing science instead of just messing around.

Those are the rules.

"Okay!" Lapis replies brightly.

Okay.

Get a bowl.

Where were the bowls again?

Hmm...

Lapis seems to zone out for a moment as she pulls up her quest log. C'mon c'mon ah hah! There! She accepts the 'Science Adventure' quest! Several objectives are already checked off but that's okay she's mostly after the next one. Retrieve Bowl. Hmm... she doesn't see the little floaty arrow so she slowly starts turning in a circle until there it is! She skips off toward the area where the crucibles are kept and collects another one. Lapis doesn't bother putting it in her inventory just her hands are okay. Then she skips back over toe Felicity!

"Here's one!"

Objective complete? Oh wait, no, not yet. She probably needs to wait for Felicity to tell her the next thing before it completes. The rewards really aren't that great but Lapis is having fun.

Should anyone decide to test the powder it will mostly consist of silicon 28 and silicon 32 with a few other trace elements. If our heroes are familiar with stellar nucleosynthesis they should recognize these elements as the fusion productions of oxygen.

Felicity's Lab

Felicity puts the fire in the other bowl, and puts some of the dust in the mass spectrometer, where she'll find it is silicon 28 and 32. Earl has no idea how long this will take.

"Thank you, Lapis. Now, let's see... Ah ha!" Felicity grabs an electric scale and will try to weigh the ball of fire. She wants to poke it, she wants also to try dumping it in water to see if it's waterproof, but that might destroy it so that's best done last.

"What's that beeping? Should we be worried?" Felicity isn't too concerned because she thinks it's probably the smoke alarm again. She's had to turn that off nearly every time she's in here. Which is a point, they should have a fume cupboard, shouldn't they? Were they can work on weird stuff without accidentally filling the air with lethal levels of deadly neurotoxin.

[Felicity's Lab]

Eun watches over Felicity's shoulder as she checks the powder. Silicon isotopes? Why would this be producing silicon isotopes? There's no silicates in the air here, and even if there were, the most common ones aren't flammable. Chemically speaking, this reaction made no sense.

BEEEEEEEEP

"That's on me." Eun replies. "My Hotbox needs its filters changed. Again." She sighs and decides to go ahead and fix that. She sets down her Hotbox, pops open the side panel, and reads the display.

"Good god, 300% saturation?!" Eun mumbles in disbelief. That was well outside the Hotbox's safety parameters, obviously. Normal usage wouldn't even come close to that. It had to be a glitch; she wouldn't be seeing radiation levels that high unless she was standing right next to a nuclear r-

...Oh.

Ooooooooh.

"Oh, " BEEEEEEEEP

Now it all made sense. The silicon isotopes were exactly what would result from a star's oxygen-burning processes. She hadn't considered it because that normally requires several orders of magnitude more mass, heat, and pressure than were in the room, but apparently, the Nexus didn't care about things like that.

[Rebonack]

[Felicity's Lab]

Lapis is helping!

Also the box thing that Eun has is beeping.

And Eun looks kind of worried maybe?

The girl glances between Felicity and Eun, now looking worried herself.

"Did I do something wrong?" she asks.

It is probably worth noting that the radiation being kicked out by the orb would require prolonged exposure to start causing radiation sickness. The amount of oxygen being fused is enough to keep the orb 'burning' and no more. Frankly that isn't a tremendous amount of energy.

Even so, standing next to an unshielded fusion reactor probably isn't a great plan.

[5a Violista]

leaving Training Grounds

"No, I like nature because I've spent practically my whole life there," Zophiel says.

He shakes his head, too: "If she does or not, I wouldn't know. She's not from the church I go to, and I definitely don't worship her. Just get power from her, is all."

[Purple Eagle]

[Training Grounds - Svetlana and Wenomir]

Wenomir rubs his chin.

"Polish... I've never heard of a 'Polish' people. But it did sound somewhat like the language we spoke back home. Our people are called Morynians, the plains-folk. Once fierce warriors of the lost empire, I was told, beloved by the gods. Now..." He shrugs. "Not much left of that. But maybe your people and mine are echoes of the same idea on different worlds. The Nexus seems to like that. At any rate, if you ever want to practice or discuss your fighting form, you know where to find me."

[Training Grounds - Svetlana and Wenomir]

Svetlana rubs her cheek in thought as Wenomir speaks to her of his homeworld, nodding in agreement when Wenomir posits his 'same idea, different implementation' theory. "Yes, I agree, and... I am sorry to hear about your home."

She nods with a grin, eager for the next time they spar. "It will be soon." After a moment's silence, she turns towards the direction she came from. "Now then... I must leave, Wenomir-san, and apply for a job at HALO. I would like to get that done as soon as possible, I feel most at home in a lab... or in the skating rink. Perhaps after our next sparring, we will even share a drink in the bar."

After exchanging goodbyes, she'll wave and then saunter away.

[Earl of Purple]

Felicity's Lab

"What's up? It sounds like something's wrong, and I don't know anything about that tech there to know what." Felicity's generally one of my more knowledgeable characters when it comes to technology, probably knowing more than I do without also being some degree of insane.

Eun should probably tell Felicity about what it is, though Earl is legitimately unsure if Felicity can get cancer, given her already altered biology.

[Ironsmith]

[Felicity's Lab]

"We're.... we're not looking at a fireball here." Eun begins unsteadily. "Somehow, someway, you got your hands on a... ah.. " She takes a second to steady herself. This is important, she needs to explain it coherently or they were all in big trouble.

"It's a star you guys have the dwarfiest of dwarf stars in the bowl here which is crazy because it's way smaller than should be physically possible and I know it because it's giving off enough radiation to set off the safeties of my Hotbox which generates gamma radiation in its usage and has a built-in filtration system to keep us from getting sick so we need to get some shielding in here or we're all gonna get radiation poisoning and lose our hair and probably die."

Good job Eun. That was very informative.

[Rebonack]

[Felicity's Lab]

Lapis panics.

Oh no.

Oh no oh no Eun said that they might die!

She did something bad!

She did something really really super bad!

If they die then Cessie and Wenomir will be mad at her! What if Cessie won't let her be friends with Cora anymore? What if they have to keep her in a cage because she's dangerous?

What should she do what should she do!

Panicking, Lapis does the very first thing that comes to mind.

In a flash of incandescent light the little girl unfolds like a four-dimensional piece of origami into something like a tree, something like a dragon, something like a deer, something full of eyes around and within. Something that burns with starlight streaming out of the gaps between her scales. Something that should probably be saying 'Be not afraid' right now but totally forgot to.

And then?

The seraph eats the fireball.

And the bowl.

And a pretty big chunk of the desk, too.

She really wasn't aiming that well.

[Earl of Purple]

Felicity's Lab

"A star? Seriously? Oh, wow!" Felicity's far more excited about the prospect than she is scared. That's why she worked as a supervillain's lab assistant.

And then the star is gone as Lapis unfolds and takes a bite out of the table. "You, uh, could have just turned it back into normal flame, Lapis. Don't worry, though. I think we're safe now. We are safe now, right?" She looks at Eun for that, who is probably shocked and speechless.

[Ironsmith]

[Felicity's Lab]

Well, yes. They probably were safe from the star now, given that it no longer existed. They weren't in too much danger of acute radiation poisoning; her sleeping pod could handle any of the symptoms for her, and Lapis and Felicity were probably both immune (and even if they weren't, she'd be plenty willing to lend them her pod for a few hours, provided she had a few more to sanitize it afterwards).

Of more concern was the fact that this little blue girl had, over the course of the past several seconds, transformed into an eldritch being beyond human comprehension, devoured a small star along with its surroundings, all without anyone acting as though anything bizarre had occurred. That was, once again, a little too surreal for Eun.

Eun leans up against a nearby table, already experiencing the lightheadedness that usually preceded a fainting spell. No, no. She'd already embarrassed herself once with that round of panic, she wasn't about to do it aga-

Aaaaand there she goes.

bumpf

[Rebonack]

[Felicity's Lab]

Oh good.

Lapis acted just in time. It looks like everyone's okay and no one will die. She's glad because if she did something that made people get sick and die then she would get in SO MUCH trouble!

But then Miss Eun starts looking sick.

And then she falls over.

For several seconds Lapis goes very, very still. She stares at the motionless woman on the floor. Anything Felicity might be yelling at her is largely unheard. Her wing-like ears droop. Her glow dims. Her shoulders sage as the gravity of what just happened presses down on her.

"I killed her..."

Then in a blur of motion she lunches herself skyward and vanishes through the ceiling.

Where could she have run off to?

Well...

Anyone who knows Lapis pretty well could probably guess. Unfortunately both of the scientists in the room don't know her that well. You see, whenever Lapis is sad or frightened or even excited she heads straight for-

[Anika's Room]

In a flurry of flickering, doleful light Lapis will scramble in through one of the windows and crawl straight under Anika's bed. It's largely immaterial what state the room is in and whether or not Anika is there. This is a place that's comforting to the young seraph and so that's where she is. Pitiable sobbing sounds drift up from below.

"I didn't mean to..." she gasps over and over through her tears.

Angel tears are a pretty potent magical reagent, aren't they?

Hopefully someone has a bottle.

[Shadowcaller]

[Anika's Room]

Anika is actually in her room.

But she's far from concious as she seems to have simply collapsed onto her bed as soon as she got into the bedroom and is breathing soundly in her sleep. As Lapis sobs she starts to stirr and flips over so she's laying on her back.

But she doesn't wake up being something of a deep sleeper.
"...six boar butts... gotta get..." She mumbles in her sleep.

[Rebonack]

[Anika's Room]

Oh hey.

Anika is in her bed.

That's even better.

You know how children will often times crawl into the beds of their parents in the middle of the night when they're feeling distressed?

Okay imagine a scenario like that except Lapis is currently not folded into a child-shape and she's nearly the size of a tiger at this point.

Granted, Anika is pretty big so maybe that isn't too big of a deal?

Thankfully Lapis has been busy existing for the last several minutes so at this point she's mostly concrete in appearance. Great big vaguely cervine dragon with leafy pinions covering six wings. Which are full of eyes. For some reason. She'll snuggle up next to Anika and make some sad snuffling noises. Poor thing. Maybe she should just go to sleep for a while? Would that help? She doesn't know what to do.

[Shadowcaller]

[Anika's Room]

"...why does this boar not have a butt..." Anika continues mumbling as Lapis slips up besides her.

Then they lay there for about five minutes.

Just before the bed collapses underneath them with a loud crack.

Yet somehow this have only caused Anika to start to slowly open her eyes. "...huh?"

[Rebonack]

[Anika's Room]

The groan of wood doesn't make for much warning before Lapis gets dumped on the floor. There's only one conclusion she can possibly draw from this.

"I ruin everything," the seraph laments.

Don't worry, Lapis.

That probably wasn't your fault.

The bed was no doubt sabotaged by that terrible goblin.

It just took...

An elf and someone slightly smaller than a sabre cat getting on the bed to wreck it. Clearly.

"I'm sorry Anika I broke your bed," Lapis wails.

[Shadowcaller]

[Anika's Room]

"Wh-what?" Anika asks the universe at large as she finds what she's laying on is much harder than she remembered. Then she notices Lapis laying next to her.

Oh no!

"Lapis! By Elune, what's going on?" She felt her back hurt as she attempted to get up but she couldn't recall why that might be the case until she sees that the bed has been destroyed. "What happened? It's fine, it's fine. Beds, uh, break a lot you know." She slowly gets up and looked around.

Last thing she remembered was coming back to her room and... had she gone to sleep next to Lapis? Damn, she couldn't remember at all!

[Rebonack]

[Anika's Room]

Okay.

She needs to tell Anika what happened.

She needs to take a deep breath and just say what happened without letting all the words come tumbling out.

Lapis opens her mouth and the words absolutely start tumbling out.

"I was down at the training field hitting dummies because I had finished the weeds and didn't have anything else to do and Felicity came there and I was talking to her but then she set herself on fire and so I tried pulling the fire off and made it into a little ball and she wanted me to take it too her lab and put it in a bowl so she could do science things but then Eun came and her box started beeping and she said the ball was poison and it might make people DIE and so I ate it and I thought it would be okay but it wasn't Eun fell over and I think she died and it's all my fault!"

Yep.

Lots of words.

Doesn't explain why Lapis is in Anika's bed, though.

[Shadowcaller]

[Anika's Room]

Anika its down to listen to all of this. She seems to have difficulty following it though. Looking rather confused until she heard that someone was dead. Oh no!

"Uhh... okay! We gotta get back to... those people!" She had no idea who Lapis was talking about but that wasn't important right now. "Show me the way. Lapis. We can probably still save them!"

[Zefir]

leaving Training Grounds

"No, I like nature because I've spent practically my whole life there," Zophiel says.

He shakes his head, too: "If she does or not, I wouldn't know. She's not from the church I go to, and I definitely don't worship her. Just get power from her, is all."

leaving Training Grounds

Mia looks confused. "You get powers from a god but don't worship her?" she says "Don't get me wrong, but it sounds like you somehow owe her."

[Earl of Purple]

Felicity's Lab

Oh, that's not good! Felicity hurries over to Eun, checking her pulse and such to ensure she's still breathing before she tries to figure out how to wake her. Felicity stands up again and opens a cabinet and pulls out a metal first-aid box, yellow with three pink butterflies on it. Opening the box up, she... realises she has no idea how to use any of it. How do you wake someone up who's fainted? You could throw water on them, but that's not friendly and it might break some of Eun's tech. For all Felicity knows, Eun's a cyborg who has taken off her waterproof shielding to repair or upgrade her fancy innards, and water could be lethal.

So Felicity's going to kneel next to Eun and try slapping her face gently, see if that works. I'm not even sure if Felicity's noticed Lapis escape through the ceiling, though she's noticed the seraphim isn't there any more.

[Ironsmith]

[Felicity's Lab]

Fortunately, Eun's only out for a few minutes. It doesn't take much effort on Felicity's part to wake her back up.

Eun groans as she sits up, gingerly feeling the back of her head where it had hit the floor. No serious damage, but painful all the same. She looks over at Felicity with a dazed expression, taking a moment to re-orient herself. "Ow." She mumbles.

It takes her a minute to piece together what happened. Her head hurt, Felicity was sitting over her, and she was laying on the floor with some amount of time unaccounted for. Yep. She'd passed out. It was Delmah Phor all over again.

Wait. Something wasn't right here.

"Where'd that little blue girl go?" Eun asks groggily.

[Rebonack]

[Anika's Room]

"Are... are you sure?" Lapis, the completely normal small child and she wasn't ever anything else you would be crazy to suggest otherwise, mutters uncertainly.

But then she thinks about that for a moment.

Of course Anika is sure.

Anika is always sure?

When has Anika even been uncertain about anything?

Ever?

"Okay but please don't be mad at me," Lapis begs as she extracts herself from the ruined bed and heads out the door. The labs are pretty far away, relatively speaking. It'll probably take a few minutes to arrive. "Anika is it usually easy to make people stop being dead?"

Lapis was under the impression that being dead was usually permanent for people. Barring truly extraordinary circumstances, of course.