Thousand Isles (Riot God Quest)

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Big Act:
Overseer Employment
Final drug herb (+2 Lifebinder)
Necro-scepter
Nightmare of The Old World (+2 Omake Points)

Small Act:
Faraway Bridge
Inchling Dust
Dark Readers
The Healer of Minds

Non-passing Acts:
The First Act

Overseer Employment
The floors of the Ocean Skyscraper quakes as the ___s apply changes to its layout. Halls and corridors twist, and walls and floors turn. Pumps rang to life as they flooded several corridors and chambers for the purpose of allowing acquatic species to traverse the floors above sea level. Conversely, there were pumps hard at work keeping several halls and corridors below sea level free of water to allow the more terrestrial species to traverse the underwater portions of the Ocean Skyscraper. Some rooms were split into wet and dry by durable glass walls so that species more inclined to water may meet and speak with species more inclined to dry land eye to eye. Perches and balconies were installed to accommodate airborne travellers, and ledges and alcoves ran through the corridors to accomodate the tiny and vertically challenged. The building is to be made accessible to all species regardless of capability and need.

This is in preparation for Project Overseer's future employees. The ___s have installed a new program in Project Overseer's system, allowing it to assign and prepare positions and jobs. There are four classes of jobs the Project Overseer can prepare: Engineering, Logistics and Commerce, Security, and Relations. Jobs are further divided into four ranks, each with their own responsibilities and privileges: Intern, Employee, Manager, and Executive.

The Intern Rank is for individuals that are nominally under training. Their pay is small but so is their responsibilities.

The Employee Rank is for individuals that have passed the test and have been deemed worthy of being hired by Project Overseer. They are given a living wage and the option to live in the skyscraper.

The Manager Rank is for individuals that have been given the responsibility direct and manage employees and ensure that work is done in a timely manner. They are given good pay and the option to live in the skyscraper.

The Executive Rank helps directing the progress of the city. They are close to Project Overseer and are consulted to provide advice to the AI and its administrator. Executives are given the responsibility of directing a large group of employees and acting as the face of that group to the general populace. That high responsibility warrants them a high pay and a good room in the skyscraper.


Project Overseer deployed several computer kiosks throughout the Uneven Isles just for the express purspose of providing access to the employment system's online portal. While the employment system's reception was lukewarm at first, the system was a hit, and hundreds and approaching thousands became under the employ of Project Overseer. Derzor itself would become one of those that applied for a contract with Project Overseer, whose superhuman physique and intellect would earn it a quick rise up the ranks in all the job classes, becoming an executive in the affairs of the scaled fish and the deep sea before the first half of the age could pass.

The Invisible Star Tribe of the ruinarins, some nocturnes, and verbose parrots were quite miffed about being displaced by their homes by the onset reconstruction, but many were turned around by Project Overseer's employment benefits. Many of Project Overseer's first regular employees came from the population that called the tower home, and now they roam the labyrinth of carpet and flooded halls along with other employees and contractors. No longer are the halls of the Ocean Skyscraper largely empty of animal life as people of all races roamed its halls for work and life.

Final drug herb
Many of its ilk have sprouted in the ages past, but today, no more of its kin, no new kind of mystical herb would grow, for this would be the last age the ___s would be touching this patch of the world. This mystical herb grew spade-like leaves of a purple hue. The herb possesses a nootropic effect, and those that consume it would find themselves temporarily able to learn more easily. The herb would be called thyme.

The people of the isles would covet the purple herb, seen as a valuable learning aid for the intellectually challenged, a mental block remover to the scholarly, and a source of inspiration to the artsy. Some of the more unscrupulous would use the herb's effects to become better scam artists and sell dyed leaves as rare sprigs of this herb and as anti-aging panaceas. This would cause an uproar as many authorities became alarmed at their skill, so much so that it was deemed bordering mind control. Many of such scam artists would be caught by authorities, headhunters, and Project Overseer's security personell to be executed or sentenced to reclusion perpetua, but some would manage to escape, going into hiding, forming an underground criminal group so well hidden that much of the isles never heard of them or believe them to be a hoax. Project Overseer would periodically issue public announcements about them so that the general public does not completely forget of their existence.

Like all the other mystical herbs that popped up in the past, a golden variety exists out there. Regular thyme was already found to be quite valuable, it stands to logic that its golden variety would be even more valuable. All of the isles would scramble for its search. Regular people and unscrupulous people search for it to exploit its permanent nootropic properties. Project Overseer's security personell comb the weedy corners of the numerous platforms for the purposes of keeping it away from the hands of scumbags. In the middle of the age, the first golden thyme would be discovered by an inchling, who consequently uprooted it and quietly sold it to the crab people priesthood for an extortionate price. Project Overseer would install heavy monitors and security around the hidden grove the crab people planted the golden thyme. Word wouldn't come out until five years after the crab people's acquisition of it, and it would take until the end of the age for someone unscrupulous to infiltrate the heart of the crab people's sacred groves and steal a sprig of the sacred herb. The thief would be caught two days later, but the sprig that he stole was long gone.

Necro-scepter
Anwik was a pious nocturne. Born from impure fertility, piety and loyalty to the standing stone was engraved into his heart long before he was even born. He attended all the masses the high priest held before the menhir. 21 green signs marked his dark skin, a sign of his devotion to the blessed stone. If the high priest had allowed him to take one more often, his body would have long become a tapestry with more marks than there were letters in a novel. He prayed thrice a day for three hours at a time to an effigy of the malachite menhir within his home. No one was quite as pious as he was in Grimhaven, and that piety is why he became the wielder of the Necro-scepter.

The Necro-scepter is an artifact crafted from obsidian and adorned with twisted jagged bones. Atop the scepter is a brass-plated horned skull whose eye sockets glow with green fire. It emits an eerie black aura, shrouded in whispers of despair and decay. When held, a cold unsettling feeling would seep out, surrounding its wielder with an ominous aura of fear and terror that penetrates the hearts and souls of all those that approach.

Anwik believes the Necro-scepter as a sign of being chosen by the great menhir. With the Necro-scepter, Anwik was able to manipulate flesh, healing injuries as well as disfiguring and turning others into grotesque beasts. Anwik would be called an apostle and those who followed him were turned into monstrous abominations with unnatural strength, high senses, and resistant to magic, but none of will that once belonged to them. The monsters created follow the commands of their creator.

Anwik drained the life of those that opposed him, and that stolen vitality was channeled into his body, strengthening and empowering him. As Anwik approached the divine dome that housed the Malachite Menhir, his body had morphed into something cursed and unrecognizable. Gone was the gangly propertions of a malnourished nocturne and in its place a hulking monster of sinewy flesh and limbs.

The ground creaked with each ponderous step. There, at the foot of the holy menhir, awaited the chief of Grimhaven. Anwik smirked as he saw the chief freeze in place with that stupefied mug of his as he witnessed the Chosen One of the Malachite Menhir approach.

The chief was a large hulking nocturne with a torse as stout as a skycraper's foundation. Arms as thick as support pillars hung from its shoulders, and wicked claws longer than a nocturne was tall adorned each of its fingers. Drool drip from its too-full mouth, unable to be closed fully by the number and size of the knife-like teeth jutting from its gums. While the wing-arms on its back was quite muscular and thick, it could never possibly carry its monstrously bulky body. Its skin was incandescent with the light of a thousand marks. Even its glassy eyes and cavernous mouth was aglow with an eerie green light from the marks etched within. It stood fore the menhir as though the standing stone was its throne.

Anwik's monstrous form stood twice the of a normal nocturne, yet their chief, blessed by the marks of a thousand rituals of the Granite Heart, still stood twice as tall as he was, but he was not deterred. Anwik stood under the entrance arch undaunted. His many gangly arms splayed open like wings on his back while two trunk like arms hung on his shoulders with one holding the abominable scepter like a mace.

The chief roared. A wall of sound swept through the temple, sending and splintering the tables that was so carefully arranged. The nocturnes that hadn't yet fled from the scene were crushed to pulp as the wall of sound passed through them, liquefying their flesh. But the Anwik was made of sterner stuff than that. He faced the wall of sound like one would face the surf, and like the waves of the sea crashing upon a concrete pillar, the wall of sound parted against his tough body. A cloud of sand and splinters followed the wall of sound and crashed upon Anwik and the walls beside him, leaving shallow bloodless scratches on his surface.

The chief was perplexed, but its confusion was shortlived as anger smothered all feeling and painted all the chief could see with an irritating red. Stupid disobedient heathens, the chief wanted to scream, but its disfigured mouth mutated that to an unintelligible beastly bellow that shook the sub-urb's steel underbelly.

The chief charged at Anwik with a wide swipe ready to cut Anwik into fleshy ribbons. Its body blurred as it sprinted, leaving craters and deep gouges on the concrete floor. The chief crossed the hall separating them in a fraction of a second, causing a fierce wind to blow. It was much too quick for even Anwik to dodge, but he was quick enough to move to defend against it. Just before the strike could connect, Anwik's arms that splayed behind it moved to cover his left side.

Claws of steel met bones of dense calcium. It was a strike that created a deep crater where Anwik once stood, but it was not quite enough to break even one of Anwik's blesed bones. Anwik was sent flying, to crash into one of the many high-rise apartments of nocturne bone and leather.

The building collapsed, burying the upstart in rubble. The chief snorted, somewhat satisfied, but then suddenly, pain erupted from its fingers - no, its bones! It came from the hand it used to strike upon the upstart. The chief saw that the once flawless metal swords it called claws were cracking. The meaty fingers the claws were attached to were shriveling and graying, as though old age had struck them.

While the chief was inspecting the damage to its claws, the pile of rubble exploded as Anwik jumped to the sky. He held the scepter high, ready to strike down upon the chief. The chief parried the hammer strike. Anwik jumped back ten paces before sprinting forward to a headbutt. The headbutt hit the chief square in the chest, sending it skidding backwards five paces, much to the chief's surprise.

The chief began growling, indignation burning hotter and brighter than it ever had before. The chief charged forth with to strike upstart which Anwik parried with his scepter. Steel claws meet brass-plated bone. The two fought in the square around the Malachite Menhir, demolishing all structures that surrounded them. The chief attacked Anwik with savage swipes and ferocious blows. No less than seven times the chief had leaned forward to lop off Anwik's head, and an equal amount of times Anwik ducked away just before the jaws could close. Anwik countered with unpracticed blows. Although he couldn't quite match the savage skill of his chief, he made it up with superior grace.

The two fought for hours, evenly matched. The land that surrounded the Malachite Menhir was reduced to dust, and the two now stood in a crater one hundred meters deep. The sub-urb underneath them cried and cried in pain with every blow exchanged as each of their steps left dents in the submarine city's inner hull.

Then, the chief felt something that it hadn't felt for a long time. Fatigue. The chief's arms trembled and slowed, disobedient to his commands. Its vision blurred and its heart struggled in its chest. Something was wrong. He felt weak, almost as weak as the chief had been before he had embraced the menhir's blessings.

The chief craned its head down and looked at its own body, and was horrified by what it saw. The chief had become gaunt and thin, skin sagging from its limbs as the muscle that once filled them out had wasted away. Broken yellowing claws tipped its fingers, streams of blood flowed broken teeth, and ribs poked at its now gaunt chest. Despite the weakness that now pervaded its whole being, the chief saw that its skin was still flourescent and not one mark had been scrubbed away.

Anwik erupted into laughter when he saw the chief appalled at its transformation. It was unworthy of the menhir's blessing if it did so to oppose the holy rock's chosen one. It would be akin to moving against the Malachite Menhir's will. How impious of them. He had held back the power flowing into him from his every strike, but now he could no longer hold it back.

The chief could only look in horror as Anwik began to tranform. His skin bubbled and warped as the flesh beneath melted and swelled. The flesh pulsated and the stolen vitality flooded into his veins. The wing-like arms on his back twisted and writhed as though in ecstasy as more of their kin sprouted from the bubbling flesh. His back hunched ever so forward until he was forced onto all fours, but before he could slam his arms to ground to balance himself, two pillar-like arms suddenly sprouted from his back, slamming to the ground and stabilizing him. His neck lengthened, his snout elongated. Glowing eyes opened up along his neck and around his head, bathing the crater in an eerie otherworldly light the same way the Malachite Menhir's eyes would wash the temple with its holy green light.

The chief had to crane his head up just to gaze upon Anwik's face. Whatever Anwik had turned into could no longer be identified as a nocturne. It was more akin to a fleshy perversion of a dragon. Wings made of hands splay behind it, blocking what little light of the sea above, forcing the chief to face the Anwik's wicked light alone.

Quicker than a blink of an eye, Anwik swiped the chief and hend it close to his chest. The chief could feel and hear Anwik's monstrous heart beat beside him, rumbling like a turbine and burning like a reactor. Anwik twisted his head near his chest to gaze closely upon the struggling chief in his hand. The chief's struggles grew weaker and weaker with every passing moment as it was siphoned to the Necro-scepter which laid on his other hand. Soon, the chief grew still in his grip, no longer possessing the strength to squirm even against his relaxed hold. With each bone it broke in the struggle, his disturbing smile grew larger and larger, baring its uncloaked amusement.

Anwik dropped the now near dead chief to the foot of the Malachite Menhir, and a new mark appeared on his skin.

Faraway Bridge
It arrived quite suddenly in the dead of night. The ground did not shake when it was built. The sleeping folk did not stir when its metal skeleton rose from the deep. No guard turned their head, no lookout witnessed its coming, no bird saw the concrete, brick, and metal flowing and enfleshing the bare metal bones. Not even the very fishes heard of it planting its foundations firmly to the bedrock. It came so quick and quietly that it wasn't there one moment, and there it was in the next. All the creatures could not believe that such a great structure stirred not a soul as it pulled itself out of the aether.

When the first rays of daylight shone unto the world, the creatures of the isles awoke to a great new bridge extending out to sea. It was a wide bridge made of metal, concrete, stone, and bricks put to gether in a chaotic but beautiful artificial symphony. Each inch of the grand bridge was a work of art.

The bridge was paved with colorful bricks that formed a strange abstract mosaic. The bridge wasn't of bricks of uniform shape; some bricks were short, some much longer, and some of some strange curved shape that's perfectly nestled between equally strangely-shaped bricks. Like the bricks that so pave the bridge, each picket of the metal fence that forbade all from simply walking off the sides of the bridge was unique. Pickets were of differeing lengths and shapes with ornamentations at differing locations, all cohering to the aesthetics of its surroundings. The hundreds of cat's-eyes embedded throughout the structure come in a rainbow of colors, from red to green to white to black and to colors not readily visible to the human eye. They are embedded everywhere, on the road, on the fences, and even on the sides of the pillars. At night, the cat's-eyes would glow like stars, marking the bridge's outline with their ethereal reflective light.

The bridge extend out from one of the disused docking areas of Marrow Town. It stands a hundred meters wide and some kilometers out ot sea before abruptly ending. Stout columns periodically dipped into the sightless deep. Large blocks of an indestructible material served as their feet, planting their foundations firmly atop the bedrock. The strange material resembled a mixture of metal and ceramic and was impervious to all known damage; this material would be dubbed by the denizens of the deep as bridgestone.

However, the most intriguing aspect of the bridge would be that the bridge slowly grew towards the sea, creating new bridgebone, concrete, metal, and other materials ex nihilo. To the casual onlooker, the bridge seemed like a static ungrowing structure, but the bridge grew a measurable two to five centimeters each day. The bridge's growth could no longer be denied when at year's end when new columns began growing at the bridge's underside. No longer would it be a measurable growth but also a countable one.

The bridge captivated the minds and imagination of all of the isles' residents with its splendor. Many people wanted to have a piece of its splendor in their homes, so they took pieces of the bridge - some brick, picket, or cat's-eye they particularly liked - and hung them over their tables so they could admire them everyday. Some of the less scrupulous would harvest material from the hunk of masonry and sell them to peoples living much farther from the bridge such as the ruinarins and nocturnes.

Even Project Overseeer was not immune to the allure of harvesting material from teh bridge, seeing as it is a near unending source of material. As the AI impregnated the structure with its nanites, Project Overseer would begin to notice more peculiarities to the bridge. The beams and rebar that so makes the bones of the bridge seem to be made of some mysterious adamant metal that is distinct that so makes the bones of the platforms. The density and mystical make-up of the metal prevented Project Overseer from infiltrating its nanites in the adamant metal's structure. This metal would be dubbed bridgebone.

The bridge's mystical properties seem to be concentrated on its bridgebone. While nobody has been able to get a sample from the bridge, it has been observed that it was bridgebone that grows first as the bridge grew longer and longer. It was also here where the material that so enfleshes the bridge was created. It was curiosity that would occupy many people's mind for many years.

But there would be no one more fervently curious than the rebar dragon. Like many of the isles, the rebar dragon would learn of the curiosity that was the bridge only through word of mouth. Months had passed since the appearance of the great bridge when the words finally reached the dragon's ears. At first, the rebar dragon merely dismissed the structure as some inferior mortal construction, but as more words filtered into its awareness, the more curious the dragon became. The word of it being no mere mortal construction intrigued the rebar dragon to no end that eventually, it simply lost the will to resist anymore.

Marrow Town would fill with screams as the rebar dragon appeared one day. It passed through the town's gates and through its wide thoroughfares. The people in its path tried their best to step aside, but in the busier streets, some simply couldn't step aside as the rebar dragon squeezed in its concrete body through. Those that were in the way where squashed underfoot, may that thing be a car-beetle, guest, or inchling.

The rebar dragon would stare down at the guards and heroes that arrived. The warpicks and warhammers forged for the express purpose of striking the rebar dragon lay ready in their hands, yet not one of them wanted to provoke the beast. The rebar dragon was known for its terrible intelligence and not for its mercy or temperance. They couldn't engage the dragon there, not there, in the middle of Marrow Town, where the rebar dragon could reduce all that they love into nothing but ash and cinders. The guards firmly planted their feet on the cobblestone, positioned in such a way that if the dragon didn't want a fight, it could only go where they wanted it to.

The rebar dragon did not want to fight. No, it simply could not afford waste what little mental energy it had on fighting. Mental energy was a precious resource to it, and it need that to have any motivation to do anything at all. But it also did not want to go wherever the townsfolk wanted it to go. It didn't want to take any detours, it wanted to go straight to the bridge.

The guards tensed when they saw the rebar dragon open its mouth. Their grip weakened, as though they were dunked into a tub of cold water. They feared the worst. Some of them have resigned to their fates. But the rebar dragon did not spew nuclear fire, but rather, words.

The guards never fell to the ground faster than ever before. They covered their ears with their hands, but it couldn't drown out the dragon's hateful voice. Some speared their ears so that could be spared from the dragon's abominable reprimand, but they could still feel its contempt through their the vibrations from the ground. The rebar dragon ranted, expressing its contempt and disdain upon all the creatures that stood in its way. The people of the isles have acclimatized to the dragon's rant some time ago with many no longer flinching at hearing an exerpt of an exerpt, but this was not part of the great rant.

This was a wholly new rant. It was a new impromptu speech, with a wholly different motivation, intent, and emotion. Where the previous speech expressed the rebar dragon's heaven-reaching anger at its perfect designs being stolen and bastardized, this one spoke of the rebar dragon's contempt and scorn at the guards for holding it up in its pilgrimage to the bridge.

It was awful. The guards could only curl and shrink under the rebar dragon's overwhelming contempt. Tears flowed like rivers as the dragon attacked their sense of worth. Their heart hitched in their chest as their organs felt like giving up, feeling like they were not worth keeping alive. They tried to keep themselves together, but with the barrage of hurtful words spewing like a waterfall, some could not do it and died right there and then.

The guards had to endure this torture for thirty minutes straight. The rebar dragon looked at the heroic figures that thirty minutes ago were brave warriors. Some lay still and cold, dead and having given up. Others curled into a ball, whimpering and crying, their pride and sense of self-worth shattered into infinitesimal pieces. The rebar dragon could only snort. Of course such inferior beings could not withstand even a very very short rant of its.

The rebar dragon moved on, leaving the wrecked guards behind. Thirteens steps since, the rebar dragon yawned. It was getting tired. It seemed that its short rant tired it more than it thought.

Just a few streets and some turns later, the rebar dragon would find itself before the great bridge, and it was grnader than it could have imagined. The rebar dragon looked down upon all mortal creations (mortal meaning people that aren't it), but the bridge was simply too wonderful for it to be anything other than some immortal construction.

The rebar dragon examined the bridge closely. The aesthetics was simply divine! Despite being asymmetrical and made of a discordant array of colors and shapes, the bridge managed to not appear busy. The discordant parts blended together, each piece fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, forming a harmonious whole. The designer of this brige had to be an interesting one.

The rebar dragon was dismayed to see all the pits and potholes all the people made on the wondrous bridge. Alas, it is but one of the many flaws mortals possess; they do not seem to be able to appreciate true art. Oh well, another set of people it would add to be destroyed (where did it put that plan again?).

The bridge had fully absorbed the rebar dragon's attention. Everywhere the rebar dragon looked, there was another intriguing feature. It keep striding forward to examine closely an interesting pattern, it would then discover another a little farther away that begged its attention. Without even knowing it, but comments began slipping out of its mouth. It gushed at just about every interesting detail, and calmly critiqued the parts it thought didn't mesh with the bridge's artistic vision.

If anyone heard the rebar dragon speak right there and then, they would surely have fainted with shock. Everyone on the isles had a preconceived idea of what a dragon is like: an angry loudmouth with a voice of a chainsaw constantly spewing hateful obscenities. But the words the rebar dragon uttered were not spoken in the angry rant or contemptuous speech it typically used to speak with mortals. The voice was a smooth carefully calculated harmony laced with great admiration. Gone was the deep anger and contempt that constantly simmered just under the dragon's surface. If anyone had heard the words, they would have believed the voice belonged to an angel.

Then, before it even knew it, the rebar dragon reached the end of the bridge. The rebar dragon broke out of the trance when it realized that the detail it was trying to examine was actually the horizon. The bridge stopped so suddenly, in the middle of the sea. The end looked unfinished, as though the bridge was meant to be even longer than it currently was. The concrete slab was bare of any fancy brickwork or ornamentation, the fencing not yet installed, and the inner structural beams jutted out, exposed to the elements.

The rebar dragon laid its body down on the unfinished segment. A sigh escaped its mouth. It could feel the motivation in its core guttering out at any moment now. It was a shame that such a beautiful construction had such a disappointing end.

The rebar dragon was just tinking its foreclaws into the bridge's exposed bones. The music helped alleviate that fatiguing disappointed that weighed heavily on it. It was strange though. It sometimes got a long bassy note that was impossible for its claws to make. A mystery for another time.

As it was about to turn and walk away, it suddenly noticed something peculiar. The crystals and grains in the concrete were moving. The motion was slow, but definitely there. Not only that, the grains weren't just moving, the concrete slab was actually growing! It observed the bridge for an hour and found that it definite grew a millimeter or two.

It knew that the bridge was too perfect to possibly be a mortal creation, but it could have never imagined it to be like itself. The hunk of metal and masonry was a dragon, only a dragon could possibly that beautiful. So excited was the rebar dragon to the possibility that it began freely speaking to the bridge. It complimented its beautiful body, commented about the aesthetic vision of its biology, and shared many of the ideas it had made while strolling there. The long bassy noise emanating from the bridge's bones was enough to thoroughly convince the dragon of the bridge's inner life. The rebar dragon talked and talked to the bridge for hours on end, talking until sundown and well into the night, when fatigue finally caught up to it and forced it to slumber.

The next day, Marrow Town would awaken to the rebar dragon sprinting through its thoroughfares. The isles had never known the rebar dragon was capable of such speed. Marrow Town sighed in relief that day, but that relief would quickly be smothered when the rebar dragon returned the next day, the day next, the day further next, and so on, to see the bridge. It felt like the world had turned upside-down when the rebar dragon started to regularly pass through the town to visit the bridge. Project Overseer was horribly concerned at this development.

Inchling Dust
A new ability have arisen among the inchlings. Inchlings can now produce a golden dust that allow them to share their abilities and typed powers to other individuals. How long these abilities are shared depend on how much and how large their recipient is. To give some of their abilities to their fellow inchlings, it would take only a handful, but to share it to a guest, it would take ten times as much.

The dust couldn't be simply stolen. The dust must be willingly given for the ability to be shared; that is an property of the golden dust some unscrupulous individuals would discover. The dust is useless when gotten second-hand. It is only ever effective if it is straight from the source. The sharing of one's dust is typically a sign of trust. While some generous souls freely share their dust, some are more guarded in its distribution, only sharing it to those that they truly trust. To carry someone's dust is to carry the essence of one's concern.

A cultural boom would occur among the inchlings during the age as many inchlings would feel for the first time what it's like to be typed. The power of beasts flowed through their veins, and the elements answered to borrowed command. The health and toughness of beast-types could be shared to the diseased and grievously injured to help them recover. The arts and jobs that had once gated by natural powers only possessed by certain individuals had been opened up to the general masses with advent of the golden dust, granted that you knew the right typed inchling to share some of their dust with you.

While the sharing of typed powers is quite fine and dandy, it wouldn't be the most significant thing to be shared. Every inchling was granted the power to create this golden dust, and while some would argue such beings wouldn't have anything significant to be shared, there are still those that yearned what the regular inchling had. It is an unfortunate fact that certain individuals are dispossessed of such basic abilities by their birth or through grievous injury, but through the golden dust, the blind saw with borrowed sight, the deaf heard with borrowed ears, the mute spoke with borrowed voice, the lame walked with borrowed grace, the flightless flew with borrowed wings, and the dying lived with borrowed time.

Nightmare of The Old World
The monsters of the dark bargain roam the isles. The monsters of the deep swim listlessly beneath the waves, flinching at the barest sound, fearful it may be a continuation of the rebar dragon's rant. Those that remained aground were savage beasts that oft wreaked havoc upon the Concrete Jungle. Their monstrous biomechanical forms prowled the streets, ruining the pavement beneath and demolishing in their way.

Project Overseer's Security Corps patrol the streets of the Uneven Platforms, keeping the populace safe from the rampaging bargaining beasts. As the monsters are immortal and impossible to kill, the Security Corps' goals regarding engagements with creatures are never extermination of such creatures but capture and control. Project Overseer would construct a secure compound for their containment and study. A bargaining beast would occassionally break out, but throughout the compound's existence, none would remain out for long.

... Until the start of the new age.

The ___s called out to the bargaining beasts, to those that dwelled in the deep and those that roamed atop the Uneven Platforms. It was a siren call that none could resist. The monsters pounded on the masonry, twisted through the bars, tunneled through the concrete, and jumped over the walls. Project Overseer could do little to stop them.

The monsters jumped to the sea like a man possessed. Even men and women that had been tempted by the Bargainer's offer but not maddened by the rebar dragon's rant lost of control of themselves and jumped for the waves against their will. All the bargaining ones of all the Urban Sea were called to the same place. It was an irresistible force, compelling them to come, even if they didn't want to. The monsters congregated to some point in the sea, grinding their bodies together. Soon, their flesh would, their bodies melding together into one mass of undying rotting meat. The bargainers were horrified at the sight, but they could not stop. The compulsion was too strong. Their bodies fused, becoming a biomechanical leviathan.

It was sinuous serpent of flesh and metal. Scales of plastic clad its skin, while pipes and ducks of copper snaked over its body like ivy. Instead of eyes, the beast had compound eyes resembling dark windows and screens strewn throughout its lenght like portholes. Seven rows of ivory and iron arm its mouth, and seven pairs of arms are attached to its body at even intervals. The leviathan resembled a large submarine, with the symbol of the apocalypse painted prominently on its side.

The leviathan bellowed with screams of a hundred horrified folk, reflecting the discordant screams of a hundred souls in its mind. The maddened men had realized the horror of what they have become, receiving temporary lucidity, just to know that they've transformed into a much more horrific monster, yet that lucidity would fade, as their minds were broken down and melded together. The many of them that had been driven insane by the dragon's anger and hate had finally been given peace in death, memories of their suffering scrubbed away from the sea, and in their place, a new consciousness is born.

The leviathan possesses the collective might and physical power of all those that composed it, along with the ability to manipulate and transmute inorganic matter into more biomechanical horrors. It cannot bask in the sun any longer than an hour or else it begins to burn and fall into a torpor until no sunlight shines upon it. Intense electromagnetic fields also causes it to become paralyzed and unable to act.

In the office of the Bargainer, a bright red phone appears on the Bargainer's desk. Occasionally, it would ring, and when the Bargainer answered, the leviathan's voice could be heard on the other side. The leviathan could call the Bargainer at any time, even while awake.

The leviathan could be seen drifting through the deep. It could be seen weaving through the underwater streets lying in the city in the abyss. Whenever the leviathan passed by the sub-urbs everyone would stop whatever they were doing to watch the magnificent yet unsettling beast pass by their homes. It would occasionally bump the sub-urbs, causing the ground to shake and tilt. Some would come to fear the leviathan's bellows and the sight of large objects underwater.

The crab people of the deep would crane their eyes upward to the leviathan hovering over them. Its compound eyes trained on them and smirk on their mouth. The crab people were frozen in fear, petrified by the sight of a monster marked with the symbol that so haunted their nightmares, but when the leviathan opened its mouth, the voice that exited wasn't a thing of nightmares. The leviathan was oddly friendly to the crab people in a way that it wasn't to all the other races, acting like a loving parent at times. It was willing to listen, to give advice, and even held the crab people in their predicaments.

So friendly was it that the some crab people would begin to question their fear of the symbol emblazoned upon the leviathan's side. It would begin a fierce philosophical debate among the crab people and even among the scaled fish on what the symbol truly meant. Was it a symbol of warning or a symbol of hope? Some crab people would approach the leviathan for the meaning of the symbol on its side, but to their confusion, its answer was the same as orthodox opinion: it was a symbol of the apocalypse and should be avoided. Some would begin to wonder, could the leviathan even see the symbol on its body?

The leviathan possesses an extreme hatred of the rebar dragon. It was a hatred that matches the hate the rebar dragon was capable. The leviathan was liable to lose itself in its rage whenever the thought of the rebar dragon appeared in its mind. Even the crab people, who it dearly cherishes and likes, are not safe from its rampage. It often loses control of itself, thrashing everything around in hopes of striking low their most hated foe.

At night, the leviathan could be seen stalking the shallows, in search of its most hated foe. The darkness of the night helped little in its search as it weaved between the supports that so held up the platforms above. Whenever it saw figures in the dark that vaguely looked like a dragon in the right angle, the leviathan would rise from the foam and snap them into its gullet. The leviathan would become infamous for capsizing ships and attacking the platforms' edges. Whenever the leviathan would appear before one without it immediately attacking you, it is advised that all should remain silent and still before the bargaining beast, lest it construe your intentions as pertaining to its hated foe.

Dark Readers
The Iron-blood Children of the ruinarins would dig up a strange find among the rubble of the northwest corner of the platforms. It was a pair spectacles made of soft black substances that easily bends but would always return to the shape of glasses. Any ring or hole made in the substance is filled by a translucent film that acts as the glasses tinted lenses.

A spirit possesses the glasses. This spirit is terribly curious and quite quick to learn. It is capable of seeing whatever can be seen through its lenses and could hear all that was spoken within earshot. The spirit could give visions to those that look through its dark lenses, but it cannot show something it hasn't or known before. The spirit is quite friendly but becomes easily attached and doesn't like not being worn or its wearer giving it up.

The first wearer simply hung it over its fireplace. The first wearer didn't like wearing the glasses as the visions it gave often distracted it from work, but nevertheless kept it nearby. It was a fascinating item with clearly magical properties. It made several experiments with the dark readers, often involving hammering into different shapes. It was quite fascinating to see it reshape itself back into spectacles.

However, the item would be lost in the war against Grimhaven, alongside Iron-blood Village and the platform it was built on.

The Healer of Minds
Jeni looked upon Le'ig. She could feel how broken he was. Despite being conceived well after the dragon's rant, she could see the same cracks in the inchling's psyche. That draconic anger out of place in a inchling's mind and the mind buckling all around attempting to contain that anger. The young inchling was a reckless one, charging into battle with wild abandon. She had been told that he's an incarnation of the One Who Will Be.

Jeni hugged Le'ig, reaching out his mind. Despite not being born typed, she had powers that allowed her to heal the wounds in her fellow's minds. Their elders was quite puzzled with her abilities and they couldn't sense any typed energy within her. Nevertheless, her abilities were tentatively classified as Unicorn-type.

When she bore witness to the wide gaping wounds in her fellows' psyche, Jeni couldn't help but feel pathos. She could feel their pain emanating in her chest, and she just had to run up to them to take away their pain. Her heart aches whenever she thought about the people she couldn't save, all those whose mind did not simply crack but shattered. The vessel that had been forcefully overfilled with the dragon's anger shattered into pieces that fell into a sea of hate. There was no saving them. Even if she dredged up the pieces from the fathoms of hate, the acidic hate would have worn the pieces down almost to dust, not enough to make a full mind.

Jeni dedicated her life to reversing the damage of the dragon's rant, but her life would to come a snag when the Grimhaven suddenly exploded like a bomb.

---

The world so turns. At the middle of the age, Anwik, now crowned king of the Grimhaven and the nocturnes, plotted to take over the isles. He would show the power of the menhir and make all the isles bow before the holiness of the Malachite Menhir. Grimhaven could only bow before Anwik, the Champion of the Malachite Menhir, and those that opposed were quickly disposed of and offered to the Malachite Menhir. Many of those happy accepted being sacrificed; better an offering to the divine than be made a slave.

Alas, it would have to be a story for another time.

With the era's end, the world let's go of your influence, to drift into the void, until it reaches out again for another go. You'll wait patiently. You know that that wouldn't be long.

Assessing...

Choose one of the following perks:
[] [Perk] Monster Maker
Acts that create individuals gain +2 points.
[] [Perk] Artisan
Acts that create artifacts and artificial objects and creatures gain +2 points.
[] [Perk] Landscaper II
Acts that change the shape and composition of land may pass as Great Acts.

The world expands once again, and you anticipated its coming, but this time, the world did not give you a barren patch of its expansive ocean. As a celebration of a last Era of the Epoch, the world offered something special for the occasion. The world showed three special islands that could come to be, but only one could become true. Choose one.

[] [Island] The Black Meteoroid
A black mountain that lies in orbit around the world. An ovoid mass of dark rock and stone lying just at the edge of the planet's gravity well. It lies quite far from the world and its moon, them being just pale marbles in the sky.

Deep craters pockmark its sooty surface, some dug so deep that its bottom had never seen the light of day. While the depths of the craters remain in permanent shadow, it is not devoid of light. It is in these deep dark craters where mysterious purple crystals are exposed. Veins of this mysterious mineral lace the core of the Black Meteoroid, all emanating a strange energy that seeps into the rock. This energy may substitute part of the needed power to realize Acts.
[] [Island] The White Comet
A dirty iceball lies in a highly eccentric orbit around the sun. The White Comet is a hunk of glacier hurtling through the void. It wallows in darkness, wallowing in the harrowing cold of outer space. So far away is it from the sun that it's light is weak and pale, barely enough to thaw the frozen air coating the planet like frost. However, in 90 years or so (or 4 and half Ages), the comet would close to the sun for its frozen surface to begin sublimating.

Frozen in a vault of ice, there is a peculiarity. A large mechanical raptor clad in thick turquoise plates and armed with sickle-like claws. Its unsettling red eyes stare ever forward, frozen in its hate. This is the Glacier General, trapped in a glacial vault, but that may not remain so forever.
[] [Island] The Red Debris
Further out than the world, in orbit around the sun, is a field of debris. This field of debris is made of rock that is primarily red, and a mysterious force seems to be keeping it apart, prevent it from collapsing into some planetoid. It accompanies the world in its orbit around the sun, a constant companion, finishing its revolution at the same time as the world.

Strange whispers pervade the area. It is similar enough to your voices for the world to listen to its suggestions. It might require some power to stop it from listening.

Nikon woke up one night. Something has disturbed her sleep, a uneasy feeling seeping into her bones. She opened her eyes saw Ilmer, the boss, standing at the window. He was staring out the window, his right arm outstretched to empty space, reaching for the distant featureless horizon.

Nikon sat up, massaging her sore shoulders. She fixed the armband covering her glowing mark before approaching the family patriarch.

"Hey boss, what did you see this time?" Nikon asked. It was then that she noticed that his mark was bare, exposed to be seen by all.

"Something is coming," Ilmer cryptically said. "We must leave the platforms. Now!"

"What's coming?" Nikon asked.

Ilmer turned, his bright reflective eyes boring into her own. "I don't know. I couldn't see it very well. A green star rose from the sea and the platforms burned."

"Papa?" It seems one of the young ones was woken. She stands by the doorway, trembling, gazing at Ilmer with sleepy eyes. "Where are we going?"

Ilmer turned his eyes to the distant horizon which promptly became glassy, under a trance. "Nowhere is safe. We must leave."

"Leave for where?" Nikon questioned.

"Somewhere far away," Ilmer answered. "We will get there by boat. We'll ask Derzor for directions."

"Go. Wake everyone up. We must go. Now. Before the first ray of dawn."



"The happy you has happily got the happy it, happy dear," the rebar dragon said. The bridge happily moaned in reply.

The rebar dragon proceeded with its next lesson. Its claws strummed the musical cables from its latest invention. The rebar dragon wasn't quite capable of producing similar sounds the bridge could make, and it had to resort to using a tool to effectively teach the bridge how to speak. The constraption was made from a series of pipes and cables that when strummed would produce a longing moaning sound not dissimilar to the bridge's voice.

The rebar dragon had always found starting on a project a very daunting task. Whenever it thought about gathering the materials needed to start building something, its will would always drain from its core like it had suddenly become a sieve. Many of its projects were doomed to remain a formless plan forever. However, something have changed recently.

It couldn't help but notice that it had become more motivated lately, harder to bore and focusing for longer. There was this strange feeling that lingered in its core, giving its core a boost of energy. Whenever it looked and thought about the bridge, that feeling would flare, causing it to become stronger and making it more motivated. It was that burst of energy that allowed it to overcome that sudden loss motivation that accompanied starting a project. It was how it managed to even start creating the constraption it had in its hand.

The feeling was too fascinating to study... but there was also a large number of things that it also now eager to start!

"The ___ I ___ly built the ___ building."

"Oh sad no, sad you. The sad you is not sadly speaking the sad it in a correct sad manner. Sadly add more feeling."

The bridge dragon was a slow learner, but the rebar dragon didn't mind. It gave it the excuse to hang out with its fellow dragon. Plus, it liked the feeling of having something that it didn't lose interest in. It was saddening and frustrating when it made something it really liked but then abandoned when it suddenly lost all motivation to go on.



Atop the roofs of Marrow Town, blending with the slate shingles and hiding behind the brick chimneys, a dark figure lurked. It was a nocturne, garbed in Project Overseer's Security Corps. In its hand was a pair of binoculars which it used to spy upon the bridge, a place the rebar dragon visited almost everyday.

"Security Officer Milner, anything to report?" A voice spoke from the communicator in the nocturne's ear.

"None, Manager Torres. Ekkitser-muenit is still at the bridge. As far as I can tell, the contraption it brought is the same thing as last time," Officer Milner answered.

"That's good to hear," Manager Torres remarked. Her voice seemed very relieved, too relieved, as if it was shaken before.

"Were you expecting something wrong, manager?" Officer Milner asked.

"No, not really, but I'm - upper management will be glad that it isn't something more dangerous."

Officer Milner could only humph in agreement. Like many of the isles, she had thought that the rebar dragon was just some dumb beast, like the madmen its rant created, but when she took on jobs about raiding the rebar dragon's home, it was then she understood why Project Overseer seemed to be utterly terrified of the rebar dragon. The rebar dragon was in possession of a wicked genius, capable of imagining the most awesome inventions and plans. Although all she saw were unfinished schematics, she could already realize how horrifying they were.

The rebar dragon had never finished, let alone having started building, but the contraption worried them all. The contraption appeared to be finished, a thing that they've concluded was something the rebar dragon was incapable of. Whatever had changed, the rebar dragon could now finish projects, that they feared what else the dragon was now capable of finishing.

"Should I have a closer look, manager?"

"No, Officer Warei is under the bridge, monitoring the situation. Stay at your post and keep watching. Understood?"

"Understood, manager."

Officer Milner looked to the horizon. A sliver of blue was beginning to peek through the distant horizon. That meant that her shift was almost over. In an hour or two, she would switching with Officer Kenji, a ruinarin. She could then go and loiter at the command center and listen at the dragon's singing. She had to admit, despite how terrifying the dragon's intellect was, there was something soothing in the rebar dragon's voice. Whenever she listened to the rebar dragon talk with the brdige, she couldn't help but feel the pride and happiness in the dragon's voice, washing and drowning away all her worries.



Anwik lies in supplication before the Malachite Menhir. His followers supplicated around him, facing the menhir and expressing their piety and loyalty to the stone. Abominable monsters supplicate behind him, borne from nightmares and the flesh of heathens and traitors. Murmurs of prayer and praise emanate from the crowd with Anwik's the loudest, serving as a guide for others to follow.

Grimhaven have drastically changed since Anwik had declared himself king. Gone were the densely-packed medium-rise apartment buildings made of nocturne skin and bone, and in their place were abominated nocturnes, turned and killed, their living flesh crafted into grotesque cabins. Much of old Grimhaven had been reduced to dust and rubble in the scuffle between Anwik and the chief, but the deep crater created in that grand battle was nowhere to be seen, having been filled up and flattened.

Greenery once covered the plains of Grimhaven, but the grass and trees that so grew in its soil weren't plants. The viridian grass are hairs growing from the skin covering the soil. The trees bore bony trunks and boughs that splayed chitinous leaves in the air. An imitation of nature crafted from the flesh of the fallen.

The mandatory prayer sessions comes to an end. As Anwik uttered the 617th and last verse of the prayer, the crowd of followers that supplicated alongside it stood from their submissive positions and returned to their duties and activities.

Anwik turned to his army of abominations. The warped beasts stared at their king and commander with glazed eyes. Twisted thews and wretched jaws await ready to snap into action at a moment's notice, and their skin was aglow with a thousand marks. Each stood higher than any tree, their mountainous form as large as a cabin, yet before their king, they were like children.

Anwik stood over twice their size. His limbs were akin to pillars of the worlds, so large and long, they could be thought to hold up the sky. His skin shone with a verdant actinic light from the amount of overlapping marks. So many was his marks that no surface of his did not glow with that fluorescent light, from the insides of his mouth to the insides of his eyes.

Over a hundred monsters under his sway bowed before him. His army was ready.

Anwik craned his head upwards, towards the rippling ocean surface quickly approaching. The ground beneath him trembled as the sub-urb moved for its annual emergence from the deep, and soon, the invasion could. The heathens and traitors that had escaped from the dome could be reclaimed and redeemed.



Hansel strolled onto one of the piers on the nortwest side of the Uneven Platforms. He leaned on his cane; his knees had begun to weaken with age. Accompanying him were many junior and senior magi, clutching their grimoires filled with prepared spells. The security personnel of Project Overseer put the harpoon launchers into place. The undersea security teams had been tracking the movement of the sub-urbs. The annual surfacing of the machines was nigh, and the isles were feeling rather paranoid.

In the past five years, a growing light was observed within Grimhaven. With each passing year, that light grew larger and brighter, becoming a sun in the deep. Some tried scrying the goings on within the dome, but something seems to be interfering with their magic. They could only see glimpses: mounds of flesh, nocturnes feeding on grass, and a standing stone with glowing hollows. The mystery was making everyone anxious, with some becoming insane with worry.

Even more concerning was the nocturnes emerging from the accursed city. They were all strong specimens with numerous luminous marks on their bodies. They were particularly aggressive against other nocturnes, cursing them and calling them heathens and traitors. Whenever they can, they spouted religious fruitcake, singing praises to some malachite menhir and its chosen. They were impossible to question as they refused to answer, even after treatment or torture. Project Overseer attempted to rehabilitate the more decent specimens, but it found their conditioning to be impossible to break.

As the sun peeked over the horizon, they saw Grimhaven surface in the distance. It was bright, shining like a second sun. Then, it exploded, like a bomb.

And hell broke lose.



White Rain ran. The world was filled with noise as the floor beneath him shook and trembled. The roars of terrible monsters rang. He could not dare to turn his eyes back lest he trip and be ripe to be taken. Iron-blood village burns.

The floor tilts. A shadow falls over White Rain. He looks up and sees one of the higher platforms collapsing, thankfully, not over him. He didn't know the platform's bones could be broken. He didn't know that there could be monsters that strong. Tears flowed from his eyes as the floor's tilt steepened. The horrendous shrieks of metal masked the horrid prayers of the monsters.

The platform's edge came into view. Hope burgeoned in his heart, one that withered when he heard the buildings behind him began collapsing. Emerald light shone from the streets below, from the monsters prowling the streets and striking down all that which moves.

The bridges that connected the platforms to its neighbors were at their limit. They strained and buckled under the weight of the sinking platform. Hundreds were crossing, unheeding of the groans and cracks of the bridge underneath. Some even fell to the brine below, pushed by desperate fellows. Some took their chances on the tense cables above. Some of the bridges even snapped as he approached, sending many to tumble into the uncaring sea below.

Suddenly, White Rain tripped. The platform quaked as the last of its strength fled from its bones, its body to battered and riddled with holes. The platform collapses, sending White Rain and hundreds of others to sink into the Sea below.



Whatever the monsters are made of, it can't possibly be natural.

Jeni gazed out the window. The Ocean Skyscraper had a prime panoramic view of the Concrete Jungle below, and she could see how the city crumbles in the wake of these unnatural beasts. Their bright blinding bodies couldn't be missed amongst the rubble. Project Overseer had provided their warriors with the best weaponry it could muster, but they felt inadequate before the monsters. For every one they slew, 10 warriors dead and 20 drones destroyed.

Jeni turned, and saw the people panting and laying on the floor, relieved to have a reliable roof over their heads, but she could see that they haven't relaxed at all. Her heart ached as she saw their spirits become stained with despair and terror. Soldiers were being wheeled in, bloodied and broken. Doctors of all races tended to their fallen warriors, intent on making them stand up once again, but there wasn't enough. Not enough beast-typed inchlings, regeneration-focused magi, or trained physicians and surgeons. Their attentions stretched too thin to accommodate everyone, leading many otherwise preventable deaths.

The burden of survival was breaking everyone's minds. She could already saw some cracking, and she did her best to keep everyone together. She couldn't bear to think of letting anyone break under her watch.

She had gazed into the eyes of the monsters, and it terrified her. More than anything she known before. Those soul-piercing eyes, they showed untold suffering. The minds of those monsters, they were... they were mangled and warped, shattered into pieces then put together into a malformed thing with pitch and heat. The monstrous mind screamed, no longer cognizant of whether it was in pain or in bliss. All the pieces were there, but... could it still be saved?

Jeni had once thought the rebar dragon was the worst thing that had graced the Uneven Platforms, but she found that she was wrong, terribly wrong. There was something worse.



"Go. Go. One at a time. Don't push. Keep going." Aniki had been saying the same things in the last hour or so. Her voice had honestly gotten hoarse from ushering so many people. It was as if the crowd never got thinner.

Crab people were lining up to enter the Leviathan. Only crab people. There had been some guests and inchlings that tried to hitch a ride but spurned by the biomechanical horror. The more onerous disregarded the warnings and decided to step into the Leviathan anyway and promptly fell to the horror's gullet.

The Leviathan had kindly offered to take the crab people safely to the depths. Many were quite alarmed, fainting even, at the notion of entering the Nightmare of the Old World, but just as many pushed through that fear just for the hope of salvation. Aniki was honestly worrying at this point. The Leviathan was huge but the crab people were large and many. She worried that the horror would become to heavy to swim at some point. Some pointed this out, but many were desperate, screaming that they would fit, pushing and risking falling into the acid pools below just for a smidge of salvation.

Gunfire and monstrous roars resounded in the distance. Stray bullets drizzling from the sky, the ground quaking in fright. People were dropping their belongings just to be able to squeeze better into the Leviathan, some even scrambling up the sides of the biomechanical horror to ride atop the serpent's back.

BANG!

An explosion sounded nearby. Many fell over their feet as the ground shook. The last few people to board the Leviathan froze in their steps, turning to the sound's source. A spiderweb of cacks radiated from the nearby building. The large drone splashing in front of them snapped them out of their paralysis.

The mangled hunk of metal and circuitry barely functioned, but managed to give one last electronic warning. "You need to go," the drone said. "Now!"

Aniki's blood ran cold. The nearby building exploded, sending chunks of concrete and rebar flying like shrapnel. She almost tripped as she ran for the Leviathan. The Leviathan had closed its mouth and begun to back away from the platform's edge, leaving a few of the ushers (including her) behind.

Faith. She had to have faith.

Aniki jumped into the deep. She closed her eyes. She had faith that the Leviathan would catch her.



Martin covered his son's mouth to keep him from screaming. The ground was shaking with the monster's steps, each becoming stronger and stronger. It was getting closer. Objects were flying an inch above the ground as the ground shook harder and harder with each successive step. His wife, Anika, was busy cradling and comforting their baby who had yet to cease its frightened cry. He hoped the sound of crashing shelves and clattering merchandise would mask the sound their child's cry.

On the other side was a nocturne, curled up on the floor, cowering and whimpering like a dog. It shook and trembled like a wooden house in a fresh gale, laying in a pool of pee and tears. He had never seen a nocturne cry, let alone be scared so hard, it peed on itself. Nocturnes and guests, once mortal enemies, now under one roof, equally terrified by some common monster.

"HEATHENS!" The abomination shouted it. Its voice making the walls shudder and glass shatter, spoken in the nocturne tongue, masked by an accent he couldn't place. It was so loud that all sound fled for a moment, silencing all din.

The nocturne shook harder, so hard that it was akin to a seizure. Martin scooted his family a little farther from the shaking nocturne, fearful that it could turn feral with its intense fear, and he would be proven right in doing, but not for that reason.

The roof suddenly gave way as a giant fist smashed through the concrete, crushing the terrified nocturne under its bulk. Anika's scream pierced through the silence, barely audible to his bleeding ears. Little Andre tightened his embrace of his father, preventing him from breathing deeply. Bright green light assaulted their eyes, emanating from the writhen skin of the warped beast.

The massive fist lifted, leaving a crater in its wake. Whatever had once been under its fist had been reduced to dust and twisted metal. Only a red stain on the crushed concrete was left of the poor nocturne.

Martin dared not to move. His chest bare moved as even his breathing became slaved to his fear. The rumbling of the ground grew weaker and weaker as the monster went farther and farther away, but he did not move, not until the quakes faded, blending into the natural frequency of the platform. Then, Martil released the breath he was holding.

"Thank the Sea," Martin said, then turned to his terrified family and said "Let's go."

Anika and Andre listened to his ushering, lifting their butts from the floor, but when Martin tried to push his own, sharp pain radiated from his thighs. He looked down and he saw blood soaking his pants from wounds deeply carved into his flesh.

"Oh no!" Anika covered her mouth as she knelt by her husband and inspected the wounds. "Here take little Carina for a moment. I'll go find medicine."

"No, keep her," Martin answered. "Go on without me."

"No, no, no, Martin! We're not going without you," Anika replied.

"I'll just slow you down," Martin tried to brush her off. "Look, we're close enough to the tower. You can get there on your own."

"No, Martin. We're not leaving you behind. We're close to the tower now. I think we can take our time," Anika replied with a strained smile. She then leaned in to kiss her ailing husband. "It'll be quick. I'll go look for penicillin and painkillers. Andre, stay here and watch your father and your sister."

As his beloved walked away to search into the debris. As Andre idly drew figures into into the sand. Martin figured that it dumb luck that they ducked into a pharmacy to hide. They did not have to go very far to find medicine. Multiple times did he try to stand up, to assure his wife, but every time, his wounds flared in protest, burning with debilitating pain. He never felt so useless. Anika, Andre, and Carina should be already on their way to the tower, safe under Project Overseer's roof, behind the Uneven Platform's last stand.

It was then when he noticed. The pill bottle that had rolled to his side. Sleeping pills, the label says.

Martin picks up the bottle, popping it open. He picks a pill from within and gingerly put it in his mouth and swallowed it.

This better work.



Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

The Bargainer looked at the shiny object lying on its desk. It was an executive ball clicker, a gift from its good friend the Leviathan. Six balls hung by wire between two metal rods. Whenever the ball at the one end hit the stationary balls, it sent the balls on the other side aswinging which would to the same to the other when it swung back and hit the other balls. The toy had been amusing it for days, months, and maybe even years. It was difficult to gauge the passage of time in the dream realms.

The door clicked, but the Bargainer did not look up. Many mortals visit the Bargainers in their dreams, guided to this place by some mysterious force, but only very few ever engaged the Bargainer, most immediately turning around and leaving through the door. It had left the Bargainer quite lonely. It had never realized how lonely it was until it someone to talk to. However, this time, the visitor did not immediately leave.

The Bargainer looked up as it heard the visitor pull up a chair and sit. It was young guest with very scuffed clothes. Dirt and dust clung to the cloth like the man had walked through a battlefield. His pants were dyed red by an outglow of blood.

The guest gazed intently into the faceless officer behind the desk. The Bargainer promptly ceased the desk toy's constant clicking.

"I assume that you are here for a dark bargain," the Bargainer said.

The man nodded. "I am, otherwise I would have walked out already."

"I see." The Bargainer produced a contract from underneath its desk, placing it firmly on the desk. The document was blank save for the large symbol of the apocalypse printed centrally on the paper. Beneath the symbol were two signature lines, one left blank and the other signed by the Bargainer itself.

"Are you not going to ask me question?" Martin said.

The Bargainer steepled its hands. "Oh no. The fact that you're already here means that I already have the answers I need. All that is left is your definitive approval and agreement, and once it is give, it cannot be given back."

The Bargainer slid a fountain pen to Martin. Ink black as night drip from its golden nib. Martin hesitantly grabbed the pen, and began writing his name on the signature line. The thought of putting someone's name instead crossed his mind, but quickly shook it off.

Martin gingerly placed the pen back on the desktop. He looked into the Bargainer's staring straight at the apocalyptic symbol that made its face.

"Does it have to be my name on the paper?" Martin hazarded.

"No," the Bargainer answered.



The bridge dragon was an unshakable thing. When the platforms shook under the assault of the monsters, the people of Marrow Town fled to the bridge, to settle upon its formidable bones and stable foundations. They knew the rebar dragon was there, but they did not care. They knew that the rebar dragon hated them with all its core, but they had nowhere else to go.

Marrow Town burned. Destruction followed the emerald light. They blocked the gates out, broke the convoys of fleeing residents, and now many were trapped within the walls of Marrow Town. Many embarked upon their boats and car beetles to sail upon the endless blue, but not everyone could get on a boat or had a boat of their own. The bridge was their only option.

The rebar dragon looked on the burning town, disgusted. It hated all the people of the isles, but all this destruction and deconstruction was too crude, too unrefined for its tastes. It lacks sophistication and focus. Where is the artistry? That visionary spark? It couldn't see it. It hated it. The fact that it gets to destroy the world in such an unrefined way is an insult to the art!

The rebar dragon charged into the fray, washing nuclear flame into the battle field. The monsters had been ugliest things the rebar dragon had seen. Gnarled muscles enfleshed ungainly limbs. Bones too heavy and dense for their own good, shaped more akin to rebar than any good skeletal bone. Wings too small with muscles too large to ever give enough lift to take off. Leathery skin riddled with unending glowing runes, so bright that its glare hid the monster's silhouette. It had never seen a thing so devoid of artistry and creativity. A bargaining monster had a more sensible and inspired design than whatever it was facing.

The monsters took awhile to burn, but they did burn. Even after their flesh had turned to char and their organs had been cooked to death, the marks on their skin still glowed with their baleful emerald light. One by one, the monsters that invaded the premises of Marrow Town was reduced to ash and char. With each monster killed, each warrior's spirit was raised, eventually raised so high that they cheered when the rebar dragon struck the decisive final blow.

Then, the cheering suddenly silenced. The warriors that had fought at a respectful distance from the rebar dragon suddenly became grizzled and old. The once hale and young warriors became wizened and gray, and strength from their bodies drained away, leaving behind an aged body devoid of vitality. When their bodies fell to the ground, to their horror, their skin tore like paper and their bones crumbled like chalk.

From up above, it descended. It was bright, as bright as the sun, and its incessant shining bathed the town in malevolent emerald light. The rebar dragon narrowed its vision as its discerning eyes eyed the strange creature. Its true shape hard to discern through the glare of its solar shine. A body like a mountain with columnar limbs to hold it up. Muscular wings large enough to cover entire city blocks in shadow splayed open behind it.

The rebar dragon narrowed its eyes as the figure slowly descended. There was something distinctly unnatural with the figure, something that it couldn't help but find draconic. All life around it decayed and withered. Men and women fell over, weakening and promptly turning to dust. What little grass and herbs that flourished in the gardens of Marrow Town blackened and died. Yet, even as vitality drained from all life around it, the rebar dragon stood hearty and hale as it always had.

The perfection of its form does not reflect the great imperfection of its inner self. It was clear to the rebar dragon that this being was the source of all ugly abominations that so besmirched this flawed world. What little beauty the natural world had, its ugly servants managed to erase. Unacceptable! This unnatural being better had an explanation. Whatever it had planned to replace it with better be as magnificent as its destruction was unrefined.

"Insolent worm, this angry I angrily demands that the obedient you sadly explain these shameful displays," the rebar dragon shouted. Despite being a creature a quarter of the other's size, the rebar dragon was not afraid. There was no room for such thing in the dragon's nuclear core.

The descending star settled on the ground. It stilled as it heard the rebar dragon speak to it. It had understood it. Many a savage beast had screamed their savage roars that its troops, but never before did it understand them with such visceral clarity. Not even the admittedly tasty crab people who tried to speak nonsense spoke with such feeling that it could feel all five of its hearts stagger with each proclaimed word.

"Pagan," the star began. "I am Anwik, and I am here to reclaim the heathens and traitors that had escaped from Grimhaven."

The rebar dragon snorted. "Obedient Anwik, the angry I angrily demands a happy reason for the angry troops angrily destroying the calm all."

"Pardon me, pagan, but could you speak Ekkimatsu, I cannot parse your thoughts clearly."

"The obedient you contemptuously lie. This happy language this proud I proudly created could be happily understood by the happy all that happily thinks. The obedient you is happily capable of thought, there is no angry reason as to why the obedient you should be sadly incapable of understanding the angry I."

"I... I... What are you?" Anwik shrank slightly at the rebar dragon's rebuke. Anwik pointed his strange scepter straight at the rebar dragon, but it stubbornly didn't have effect.

"The angry I angrily refuses to angrily answer the obedient you's sad question, until the obedient you have obediently answered the angry I's demand."

Anwik was beginning to doubt. The power the Malachite Menhir vested upon him failed. Was it a sign of disfavor? Had he done something wrong? "I don't understand. You should be dust. I cannot take more vitality from you."

"The obedient you disobendiently refuse to obediently answer the angry I's angry question? Then sadly die in the angry I's angry fire!"

The rebar dragon spewed fire at the giant monster. It charged forward to strike with heated claws, but before it could come close enough, Anwik struck back with a backhand that sent the rebar dragon flying through several solid brick walls. He sent the dragon flying so fast that it created a sonic boom.

The rebar dragon landed in a crater near one of the biggest and busiest docks of Marrow Town. It had long been vacated hours ago, but it nevertheless remained remarkable intact until the rebar dragon wrecked a large part of it. Anwik followed the flight of its opponent, standing at the edge of the crater. He tried to flush away all the doubt and fear, fearing that it might have become too impious to be scepter's wielder, but what he saw under in the crater shook its belief more than it had before.

The rebar dragon's entire left side had cratered, revealing the dragon's inner guts. Anwik was troubled to see that there was no flesh or bone inside, but stone, concrete, and steel. As he continued to gaze upon the strange beast, the more puzzled he became. The grains and crystals comprising its stony flesh moved and morphed according to its motions. Rebar jutted out the cratered side, exposed and twisted to the air. Its soft black scales sloughed off its skin like hot pitch. Anwik had never seen a creature like the rebar dragon, moving like fleshborn folk yet be made of unliving stone and steel.

The rebar dragon groaned. Pain. Pain and disorientation. It had never experienced something this strange and intense. It was quite novel. Despite its body cracking, the rebar dragon did not back down. It is not the quality of dragons to simply give up. It was angry now, so very angry now. Its perfect visage ruined, desecrated, vandalized. This stupid monster. Going around destroying all that is beautiful. It should be insulted, lambasted, shamed. No being this worthless should be allowed to exist and live in this world!

The rebar dragon ranted.



The Leviathan stalked the deep. It could hear it, accursed ranting. It belittled, mocked, ridiculed. It wasn't addressed to all the isles, but directly addressed to someone named Anwik, mentioning that name over and over again, each one expressed with more and more mockery. It spoke of being worthless, unworthy of anything more than scorn and contempt. It planted enough seeds of doubt for misery to stay full for years to come. It rang throughout the isles, shaming Anwik for all his ineptitudes and inadequacies.

The Leviathan hated it. It seethed as it listened at the dragon's grating voice. It abandoned whatever it was doing to pursue that grating voice. The dragon's scorn failed to settle in its hate-filled mind.

The Leviathan found itself under one of the many platforms. This one was quite low, its bottom sunken under the ocean waves. It could hear the rebar dragon above, ranting loudly. With wild abandon, the Leviathan charged into the concrete like a battering ram and broke through.




With Anwik's battering, the concrete had become rather thin. He had dug a deep crater, but it did not silence the rebar dragon. The rebar dragon's concrete flesh was gone, becoming dust. Its bones had been flattened into sheets, and its nuclear core had been quashed to a flat lump of metal. It was blind, it was deaf, it was without heart, but it persevered. Ranting. Ranting. Ranting! Why?!

With every word that escaped that accursed mouth, Anwik felt himself weakening. He so wanted crush that accursed pagan to dust and twisted metal, but he couldn't. Strength was fleeing its grasp. It was harder and harder to gather the strength to destroy it. Doubt was strangling his ability to gather that strength.

Worthless... The dragon's words were starting to set in. That strange tongue the dragon used, it felt so piercing, so intense. Even though he didn't know the language, he could still viscerally feel that intense hatred and mockery pierce through his thick skull and settle in his soul.

Worthless. Worthless. Worthless. That stupid stone was wrong. How could he possibly been worthy of holding such a wonderful item when he folded so easily to a barrage of words. It was so strong. He couldn't possibly resist! That strength and vitality he stole was worthless. Even with the power vested upon him, he was worthless. His action were worthless. His piety was worthless. Could it be that it was not worth the reason the Malachite Menhir chose him but rather pity.

Yeah. That sounds about right. Pity. The standing stone pitied him, who was worthless and powerless, so that he could be someone worth something, and he still managed to mess that up. What should have been a coupon to power, fame, and strength, to become closer to his faith, to take back the traitors and heathens that left the embrace of the menhir, wasted on someone like him.

His grip loosened, the scepter clattering to the floor. Anwik slumped, unceremoniously crashing to the ground like a pile of dishes stacked too high. Tears flowed. Anwik cried. He wasn't enough. His piety was not enough. He was unworthy.

The ground shattered, and Anwik was swallowed by the sea.

As he should be.