Shadows. All-encompassing shadows. The Noble awoke, shrouded in blackness. Which was rather strange considering she had, just moments prior, been buried deep in the pumping heart of a very active lava floe.
She struggled to her feet, flexing bare fingers and toes in the remnants of Illustria Palace. Only to realize that in the Heart's Destruction.. or Absorbtion, she wasn't sure which..
That her armor, covering arms and legs, had become something else.
A quartet of limbs now extended from the space between shoulderblades and tail, pulsing with both primeval mystical power, and as she expanded and contracted silver digits – strange and almost flame-igniting heat signed glyphs.
As these began to illuminate the chamber, two things became apparent. Her wounds were curiously no more, having been possibly the work of the Artifact's removal of existance. And the chamber's suspended disc that had once hovered over the center of the crystal dome had collapsed.
Leaving her with a long climb to the hallway now above. But that wasn't her primaryt concern.
“Where in Anarchy is the lava?!” Her voice echoed in the the chamber, mocking her in her own words.
What had replaced the pulsing volcanic mass was crystal, resplendant in a curious lavender luminescence.
A little hesitant, she reaches over the edge of the collapsed central point. And finds it to be a mixture of glass-smooth points, along with jagged and almost lethal points spiking up from the floor.
There must have been some errant static built up in her clothing, as a little crackling charge becomes a dancing lightning storm across the surface of the floor.
And then the black chamber became purple radiance, crackling behind the protective glass dome that was fortunately still intact.
She marvels in this spectacular light show, fully aware that direct contact for more than a brief instant with the self-conductive crystal could be her undoing. Even with her domineering control of electromancy.
And so.. she waits. With nothing else but time on her hands, she inspects that, her new hands. It is a bit disconcerting, going from bipedal with two arms, to one with six. Digits flex and hands clench. Molten hot runes slowly flicker with untapped potencey...which both amuses and perplexes the cat-being.
“How is this possible?” She speaks to whatever God or Daemon that taken away her everything...
Yet Again.
Her temper flared again, and the longer metal limbs responded in turn. Twisting backwards behind her, the noble is suddenly startled when the quartet become sizzling hot and tear knuckled holes through the inch-thick platform now plating. And aren't even scratched as theyt pull free of the smoldering and heat-warped holes.
Her normally emotionless face twists into a grin as she gazes upwards toward the swinging bridge, fortunately still connected to the hallway leading out of the chamber.
She now had a way up and out of the giant dome, albeit the precarious sort of ladder. She just had to get across the plain of electrified lavender crystal.
Given her boots had transoformed into the lower set of limbs protruding from her back, she was forced to further reduce her regal vestments into bandage strips to bind over her furred and larger than standard humanoid clawed footpaws.
The first step is the hardest, Echoed the mind of the Noble, and outstretched the tentative first footfall at best description.
And at this gentle pressure the stone came alive underneath her weight, but still caused her to flinch at the emissive power cascading away from the minute pressure being applied.
But it didn't wshock her. Carefully, she dismounted the dias, only to remember that it was metal once again. So if the stone had meant to torch her to an electrified crisp, it would have already.
A little more confidence in her step, she nonetheless traversed the glittering crystal sea, her heart hammering in her throat.
It was still quite the distance to the edge of the pit, and more than once she's forced to stop. As the crystal was slick and slippery, but in places protruded in serrated growing stalactites.
After adding a few more strips from her vestments to her feet, the Noble felt more a beggar than someone who was up until recently on top of the world.
The slow pace was still agonizing, as the wicked points were all but invisible on the floor in constant shifting and glowing motion. And more than once she left small splotches of crimson soaking into the charged knifepoints.
It felt like an honest hour or two to carefully traverse the chamber to the downed metal catwalk. Which of course provided a second problem. Getting Upwards.
It was a solid fourty foot climb up the collapsed bridge, long metal planks connected by a fragile chainwork. And in her bedraggled condition, it was going to be arduous.
The first few feet were easy, sure. Just like the ladder it resembled. About a quarter of the way up however, complications began to arise.
The walkway wasn't fully secured any more, so it swayed a little more with every inch gained. Which was odd as you'd think the higher up she got the less it would sway.. and then of course there was the deterioration of her feetpads.
Sure, the scratches - cuts - and nicks were a trivial nuisance up to this point. But now her bandages were beginning to soak through. And as more crimson welled up and out onto the shifting causeway, every step upward began to get a little more slippery than the last.
The Noble slipped, and for a moment halfway up the impasse she thought she was done for. Clenching her fanged jaws tightly together, shifted her weight forward. Mostly to keep the new and awkwardly weighted contraption fused to her back from pulling her down and ending her pain mercifully quick.
A few more planks, and she slipped again. But barely hung on by a fragile thread with with a grapple of the chain support at her left. A sharp hiss of pain of course at this, as this little near plummet reveals a larger problem arising.
The chain is splitting, now that all the protective wards and charms that once held it aloft have fizzled and failed.
If she doesn't climb and quickly so, she may very well end up buried on the floor under the massive weight of the catwalk's metal planks itself.
And the bleeding pain coming from her toes and heelpads is not going to make this any easier. But with a bitter hiss of spiking agony she soldiers on.
Two more planks, then three, most of the way upwards. The end is in sight. Of course, that's when twin points atop her head swivel upwards.
Creeeeeeak.
The platform is giving way, clearly intent on ripping victory from her fingerpads and plunging her to her demise. “Just great..” she mutters, before climbing two more planks.
It seemed to be in slow motion, barely contained by the rattling of her heart just feet from the ledge.
The fragile links shifting. The twisting of a half-fractured ring. Eyes become like saucers. Pulse stops in dread. A desperate push on bloodied footpads up...
CRACK!
As the boards slip back and away from underneath her, as the resounding shudder and explosive repeating sound of the metal gantry become a giant pile on the floor...
The noble... she hung on. Not with hands borne of flesh and fur. But gauntlets born of magic, fire, and energy.
Her 'contraptions' had saved her. As she dangled precariously over the ruins now directly below her, she breathed a small sigh of relief. Before of course resuming the task at hand.
Up. Ever up, she climbed, but now her arms and legs were but useless dangling limbs while the willed-to-life monstrous metal hands quickly propel her skyward.
And they did not dissapoint, as the jerky and somewhat unpredictable nature of her flesh-and-bone limbs moving up was replaced with an eerie and fluid precision.
A mere minute, maybe two at most, and the Noble found herself scrabbling over the edge of the precipice.
Looking back over the journey now, fraught with peril... the climb, harrowing and almost tragic in ending, was now replaced with a cool swirl of relief over her now safe and secured frame.
With the hardest part of the ascension now behind her, the only obstacle before her was the hallway. Nowhere near as treacherous as the climb or even the walk to reach the collapsed bridgeway, the only problem now was the never-ending field of black in the tube pathway.
Sure, whatever feline heritage had blessed her with nocturnal vision was a beautiful idea. But with no light seeing as the strange purple phosphorescence had faded to naught but black again, she was going into the cavernous passageway blind.
Forced to crawl forward was both a blessing and a curse: Relieving pressure on her shredded footpaws and placing it on her still clothed knees and lightly bruised palms.
However, it was both demeaning and perilous, as if StillLeaf or one of her agents would have plenty of time and energy to dispatch the noble before she could even rise to her feet.
So warily she inched, once a familiar pathway now mired in gloom and silence except for her shallow breathing. No pulsing of lava sparking and spiraling past the glass chasm roofway. No crackle of power from the shields keeping it at bay.
Just raw, unchained inky blackness at all sides and below.
The feline continues her awkward shuffle, barely making any more noise than the unsteady and worry-fueled breath at her lips. Or the occasional hiss of pain as the lance-points indoctrinated by those wicked crystal blades while the holes in her feet did their best to try to seal themselves shut.
In the permeating black the journey's time took an ungodly eternity, precious shuffling step by crawling and dragging step.
Drawing purely from memory of passing through the archway leading within an indeterminate amount of times, she figures she is roughly twenty to thirty feet down the surprizingly stabble metal latticework underneath her.
And then she stops. Not because of injuries. Not because of a collapsed walkway. Not even because she's absolutely exhausted herself, hungry, or even thirsty. She has stopped because of...
A Wall.
Clearly she had gotten turned around somehow. Twisted to the side without realizing. So she pushed a hand against it, trying to guage whyh it was there.
Eerily, it was smooth stone, except of course for natural indentations in the core of it. Which seemed just ludicrous.
There had been a few disenchanters with StillLeaf, sure. To go up against the Noble's Stronghold without them would have been suicide. But there had been no mages of this power to transform thousands of cubic tonnage of liquid moltan lava into some sort of crystal, and embed a doorway with solid bedrock.
It had to be a mistake, as there was just no way that any sort of collapse or spell could just block off the path.
So she tried a little experiment. A little flickering spark jumping up and across the flat causeway and bringing the purple stone to life pressed against the metal framework.
"Oh Hells..." She muttered, seeing that.. well...
The end of her Journey was here, Buried Alive.
