A Story of Ice and Earth (closed to Rehtul)

This was the ultimate horror.

A world of water, of storms and violence. One entirely destroyed by the sentient races who had risen to a technological utopia, but in doing so disregarded any respect for the natural beauty around them. Ancient forests had been felled. Winding rivers that had carved the deepest valleys diverted. Large paradises of savannahs that had changed with each season flattened entirely and replaced with fields of concrete. Metal and stone had replaced the foliage, glass and wire and computer and artificial chemicals. It had meant to be a revolution, a beautiful new home, but instead the only thing it had brought about was a terrible destructive anarchy.

The druidess sat upon her throne, gazing out with a tear-streaked sorrow at the ash and dust. It was all dead, or dying, at least as far as her judgemental eyes could perceive. Perhaps somewhere, out there, a small portion of humanity still remained, but woe betide them if this empress of fury found them.

For they had destroyed her beautiful world. And in doing they had begun to destroy themselves. Once the pure waters were so darkly poisoned that not even a mighty unicorn's blessing could heal it, the druidess had emerged. Striding from the deep forest, each step of her goat legs easily capable of fulfilling many metres so fast and fluid was her movement, she had come in a swirl of dangerous beauty. Hair piled up high and struck with a crown of branches and ivy Philomel Van Der Aart had pronounced judgement on them all.

"You have caused the waters to be toxic, you have burned the forests and you have led many species to extinction. Now, your time has come - I come bringing death and terror. For it is all you deserve."

And they fled before her. As her pointed finger caused strangling vines to burst out from the ground and swallow whole villages. As her stomping hoof caused earthquakes that opened up rifts to hell. As her scream summoned thousands of woodland creatures who swarmed those who had once hunted them, then ate their flesh and drank their blood. It was cruel, but to her it was all justified. They had turned nature back upon herself, upset the balance of all that was by their engineering and manufacturing. Broken shards of what had been the greatest of skyscrapers, teleportation towers and devices designed to puncture holes in space and time lay scattered like discarded playing pieces. But they behaved like children, thinking to play god.

So a god had come. Despised their efforts to change the laws of physics, come as a self-appointed cure to the madness. No sooner had they begun to kill themselves and torn holes in reality than she had come - to right their wrongs.

She called down judgement and then took her throne, waiting for her Eden to return. For life to come back. For the flowers to once more bloom.

How many years had it been since the last time he had spoken to another living person? The Mystic removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with a half chuckle at the thought. Dozens of years, maybe half a century. He looked up from the barely functioning monitor in front of him as he felt the earth beneath him tremble with magic. The blackened ooze that had flooded into the city from what had once been the shoreline jostled back and forth harshly, as a tumbler of water knocked on its side.

"Someone's here, someone who shouldn't be," he whispered to himself as he reached out and grabbed his personal teleportation device from his belt. Whatever was going on, it wasn't meant to be on this world, a plane on the verge of death and rebirth.

"I only needed another decade or so and I could have brought all these technologies home with me, or at least their schematics!" he said as he brought a fist down upon the monitor, smashing through it with surprising force. The projector on the bottom of it cracked and gave a final cry as it finally died completely.

Sighing, he shoved his notes into the pockets lining the inside of his jacket and turned toward the shattered window behind him. With a wave of his hand, a disc of ice appeared under his feet and began carrying him out into this toxic world, and toward the source of the magical disturbance.

He ran a hand through his light cyan hair and ran a finger through the shock of white that was once a light blue.

How time flies... he thought whimsically as he approached the edge of what appeared to be an ancient forest. Without a beat he stopped just outside the edge of the trees, floating some twenty meters above ground. His eyes narrowed as he beheld the ancient gray corpses of trees before him. While the technological marvels this world had created were indeed wonderful, the price they exacted upon their planet with their lack of magical ability had done them no favors. True, they had technology bordering on the magical, but the toll they exacted upon the planet in exchange for that power was unconscionable.

He could adapt these technologies to Althanas, however, and make the lives of many people much easier, especially those who lacked magical talent. More than that, he could potentially profit off of it for many years to come, which was never in his eyes a bad thing.

"Now... who's in there?" he said, voice low, bordering on a whisper. Whatever old god had awakened to wreak holy revenge on this world would have to be subdued, at least temporarily, until Rehtul's research was complete.

"Come on out then!"

Beneath the glistening silvery sky the arch-druidess, akin now to a goddess with her kingdom of destruction and rebirth, leaned forward from her briar-knotted throne. Those slate grey eyes narrowed as the words of deceleration and threat echoed over the shattered concrete and twisted spires, slowly becoming consumed in fresh green saplings that longed to claim the earth anew for their own. "Come out!" the words demanded, as if from another embodiment of justice, "Come out!"

This is my paradise, Philomel thought, the years of despair and horror at seeing what these beasts had done to the world clear in the stern lines of her face. This is my world now, stranger. You have no right to be here.

Slowly, raising her chin, she stood up from her throne, jaw tight, fists closed, heart beared. As she did the earth parted before her, and those many creatures of the earth who had aided her quest - the deer, the flatworms, the moles, the foxes and more, chittered and showed their heads from their small plotlands of feeding and foraging. As their sheperedess took a step from amongst the broken glass and tumbled towers to be seen clearly by whatever mysterious entity dared to step into her realm, the creatures bawked and cheered and called, some twisting and racing towards her as she continued to scan the skies and land for her probable foe.

As she sought, then locked gaze on the shadowy figure in the middle distance, Philomel raised her hand. The seedlings around her bloomed suddenly, arching towards her to weave together rapidly, the vines warping and wrapping and stretching before they settled about her shoulders. A further fine wrapped itself about her horns, snapping off to create a green gilded crown and cloak.

"Who dares come into my kingdom?" she answered. "This is my realm now, reclaimed by the right of the trees and woodland creatures. The species here poisoned the land - I took it back from them. I am lord and lady both here. What right have you to trespass?"

Rehtul lowered himself to just above the ground as the woman meandered her way out of the forest. The tailwind carried the acrid smell of used oil from the drowned city just downwind of their location. AS the woman began to speak, a faint spark of recognition caught in the mage's mind. While the woman before him had obviously gone through great lengths to traverse into this world to reclaim it for her natural magics, there was something alien about her, at least to this world.

However, it was far too familiar to the Orlouge. He squinted through his glasses at the woman and saw what through the leafy dress she was casting about herself the legs of a mountain animal. This woman was a faun, and if he was to guess, not just any faun.

"Philomel Van Der Aart, as I live and breathe... I'd heard you'd gone missing, but I didn't think you'd gone so far as to travel to a new world," he said as he dropped his disc of ice to just above the ground, now barely levitating.

"Then again, when both of us are approaching the end of our first millennia, I suppose that's not so hard to believe after all. I'm... not sure you remember me, but I'm Rehtul Orlouge, from Althanas."

The mage's brow furrowed as his lips turned downward in a resigned frown. He knew the woman loved nature. Such was obvious from their few past meetings as well as from the way she had raised her daughter Celandine, whom Rehtul knew far better than her mother. If she was looking to use her magic to reclaim this land, though...

"I think I see what's happening here. You're going to reclaim this world using your druidic arts. I hate to ask, but could you leave the cities alone at least for a couple of years? I'm close to finishing my research into what the race of this world developed and I'd hate to be cut short before I understood what they did and how to utilize their knowledge properly elsewhere."

Through narrowed eyes the faun glared at the being. Her lips, though slightly parted, still formed a stern line, and the creases in her forehead were severe. Slowly, her chest rose up and down as she surveyed the hovering being before her - one she had not seen in decades, if not centuries - and she made no direct effort to ease her tense stance.

Slowly her mind worked, summoning memories of the time with this blue-haired male. Vague words came to mind - "mage" and "ice" and "powerful". In the latter years reports had been made of him drifting to a lone sanctuary somewhere distant and remote. While Philomel had been struggling within, making the ancient forest flourish and struggle to survive through the poisonings of the mortals' despicable machinations, he had been another immortal, quietly biding his time until something new occurred.

"I remember you," she whispered in a haunting voice. As she spoke the animals that had alerted to Rehtul's presence stirrred and gathered about her waist and hooves. Gently she stroked the long snout of a greying, but familiar, large fox who glared with golden eyes.

"I remember you being impulsive. Your cold ice. Your love of ... This technology," she waved a hand to the broken steel towers, satellites and magnetic levitation trams. "You ... Were kind upon a time to my daughter."

Celandine. A whisper of supreme love, pride and joy spread into the ancient faun's eyes, filling them briefly, before it was replaced with horrible loss. So much loss. So many centuries of grieving over ones mortal descendants.

"I have reclaimed this world," her eyes snapped back to glare. "They were killing this planet, threatening my forest. They had driven my creatures to near extinction, even destroyed the last ash tree," she ground her teeth. The fox beside her softly growled, eyes ablaze. "I therefore took their lives. They were warned, but still they persisted. They knew not to harm my forest yet they hacked her trees.down for lumber. They deserved this."

She spat violently on the ground, her magnificent robe and coronet shaking with a rustling and the various beasts about her hissing, growling, buzzing in righteous fury.

"No. This is my land now. You have been gone. You have no right to demand anything of me. No one does anymore."

She spoke slowly, haltingly at first, as Rehtul had assumed she would. There was something different about her now, something... not quite right. She was infused with massive amounts of divine energy, that much was certain. Could she, perhaps, have gone and embraced the stupidity of becoming a god in her own right?

When she began to talk about how she had reclaimed this world, the mage sighed and hung his head. He already knew what it was like to try and negotiate with the Divine from his dealings with the Thayne on Althanas. It was always their way or the highway, no slowing down, no detours. If they had decided to do something, that was the end of it. His suredness increased as he heard her frame his request as a demand.

"Well, I see there's nothing I can do to change your mind. You've embraced the madness of divinity, after all," he said, half to himself as he rose into the air on his dais of ice and smiled sadly down on her. The wind kicked up, whipping his gray hair and white jacket to and fro with as his magic began to pour off of his body in waves.

"I'll just have to seal you away for a couple of years."

The matter of fact tone he took on as he addressed her from up high would have seemed ridiculous if not for the torrents of visible power radiating from his body as he raised a single hand over his head. Blue-white lightning cackled at the tips of his fingers as he directed his energy upward over the blackened, dead expanse beneath him, careful not to damage the greenery that Philomel had already revived. Within seconds a giant magical circle appeared over the forest and held its place in midair for a few seconds before making its use apparent.

Walls of crystalline ice began to rise from the ground at the boundary of the circle, rising with increasing speed until a giant dome of twenty meter thick ice surrounded the forest, and with it the Mystic and the Goddess of the Forest.

Satisfied that his work was complete, he turned his attention down to the woman with a smile and floated back down to just a few feet above the earth.

"I won't keep you too long, but I can't let you cut the power to those cities yet. I need that data. Once I have it, then you can continue expanding your influence over this world."

The steady, almost monotonous way he spoke to her belied the burning fury in his heart, that someone he had known would cut themselves off from mortal races so much as to abandon any sense of empathy or compromise. His eyes, sharp and keenly trained upon her own, dared her to do something about it.

Although her powers had increased significantly the faun druidess had never had her vision increase more than was necessary. Therefore she still had to squint to be able to see the frost and ice beginning to accumulate at the distance of two miles away, confused at his words and their meaning.

Seal her in? What sort of madness was he speaking of? What sort of drug had he been taking? Was the loneliness of a few decades so much it had gotten to his head?

Sucking her breath in the druidess focused her intent and sent her awareness into the earth. All she needed was a physical part of her to touch a natural material, and with hooves on her feet and the remaking of this world with earth and dust as she had wrought, it was easy. Around her the animals gathered, the wolves baring their fangs in a threat to the being who was, in turn, threatening them. The two mighty stags tossed their heads, baring their multiple pointed antlers. The great birds of prey dove down with wicked claws, scraping the air within feet of Rehtul's face. As one came down and feigned an attack, another would begin a dive. Then as it twisted to swoop away it would rise back into the sky, to make room for the next to flash their talons. Continuously then, the ice mage was given a vicious display of anger and tension.

Meanwhile she pushed her willingness into the earth. Closing her eyes she sent herself through root and soil and discarded brick, far far away to the edge of the ruins. Concentration created deep wrinkles on her forehead as seconds passed, but each an age within her mind, filling her with knowledge, understanding, wisdom ...

Frigid. Brutal. Two miles away at the edge of their respective peripheries a great wall was growing. Of ice. Of brutal ice. She tested along it, found it slightly curved, rounded and began to -

"Bah," she cursed him, coming back to herself. Immediately as she spoke than the eagles, buzzards, falcons and hawks ceased their diving and distraction, lifting into the air to circle back towards her and her throne.

Hands curling into fists she glared.

"Ice does not necessarily destroy earth, mage. This is my realm. Not yours. Find your own." Raising a hand she indicated his ice wall. "Bring that down, now. Or this shall not end happily for you."

Beside her the mighty fox finally rose to his paws. Golden eyes glinting like a myriad of sunlight he raised his hackles and began to snarl. The earth around them began to rumble, the leaves on the saplings that had begun to bloom shivered.

"Leave now."

Rehtul stared steely eyed at the godlike faun as she threatened him once more. That she would allow herself to disconnect from mortality so completely as to not realize she was in no position to make demands would have been inconceivable even several hundred years ago. The fact that she thought that she could simply demand he go and it would magically happen was almost funny, if the mage were honest with himself.

"Unfortunately," Rehtul said as he lifted a hand toward the edge of the encasing ice that surrounded the two of them, "I don't think that's going to happen."

A white shape flew out from the edge of the ice wall toward the city.

"I'll just have to keep you entertained while my construct gathers the data I need."

Of course that means I'm going to have to fight with my attention split between her, the beasts she commands, and my construct...

A frown crossed the mage's lips as he beheld the assembled menagerie. This world was on the verge of death, and the creatures in this forest were more or less kept here to repopulate if he had to guess. His eyes lit up with an idea that could perhaps save him some trouble and her significant heartache.

"With the exception of Viridian, if he's here, I'm sure that your assembled beasts are all natives of this world. I would make the suggestion that if you plan to try to force me to open the dome, you move them as far away from here as possible."

The dias of ice upon which he stood slowly folded up under him as he sat down upon it. With a wave of his hand he conjured a table and a icy decanter of pure water alongside two cups.

"While I wait for that information to be made available to me, what would you like to do in the meantime? I don't think either of us is particularly lacking for time," he said as he poured himself a glass of water. After an audible sip the cup clinked back against the table. The air in the dome was still as he beheld the creature the woman he had once considered a close acquaintance.

What a shame.