For all the hatred he leveled at Nemean, regardless of whether she was present to be hurled abuse at or not, Fahl had to admit to at least one positive result of her repulsive existence: her infuriating attitude provided perfect fuel for the fires of his ambition. Just the sight of her drove him to feverish pursuit of power, returned him swiftly to his quest for improvement which seemingly had no end. Masters, Valkhounds, Valkhands—every time he thought the hierarchy of the caves fully understood, the addition of another rank rattled the iguana to the core, and childhood aspirations of mastership grew vaster and more nebulous. He needed to be more than another skull for the strong to grind into dust underfoot. The Children of Rot's survival, too, would be better ensured if more formidable mages could form protective barriers against threats and hide their fellows from prying eyes.

Living in the caves and not choosing to live a totally reclusive existence meant rumors inevitably would be overheard. The one which guided him over to this section of Polaris possessed a particularly appealing flavor at his current moment of emotional weakness. Unlike fantastical tales that metamorphosed into entirely different settings and subjects involved to the point where they were scarcely related, the stories mentioned of the place he stomped toward possessed a common figure and a goal. Only the methods to achieve it varied, enough of a distinction for him to entertain the hearsay as truth. Rage overruling apprehension, he put this information to the test.

Fahl filled his lungs to capacity before letting breath explode from his throat. "Emuh," he bellowed. "I've come for your trial."

"WHO GOES THERE?!" came the squawking shriek, from the little round door that led to the Trial room. Assuming, of course, that Fahl was close enough to the Trial room to be heard.

With that assumption in place--the black owl that touched down just inside was notable for several reasons. First was his ragged appearance: his oil feathers were almost jagged, uneven and disheveled. Next were the glowing green eyes, and curling black ram's horns aside his head. Ah, and his size: enormous, tall as a man or taller--if Fahl knew what such a creature was.

Lastly? Lastly, Emuh was currently wreathed in smoke and flame. Talons clicked upon the rock as he approached, eyes narrowing. The smoke wisped away--replaced by a strange humming, a vibration in the air around the black owl that made him seem almost an image, instead of a flesh-and-blood beast.

"FAHL, you say. EMUH is--EMUH! YOU WISH TO TAKE MY TRIAL?"

The owl made a show of looking Fahl up and down before clicking his hooked beak. "PAH. UNWORTHY. But-... YOU MAY TRY. DO YOU KNOW THE NATURE OF YOUR ELEMENT?" Emuh asked, turning and lifting off into the darkness beyond.

And darkness it was: pitch black, empty, and--suddenly--bitterly cold. Hadn't there been stone there, a moment ago? Visible rock? But no--Fahl would find himself floating the moment he entered. Drifting in black, cold nothingness.

"ENTER, IF YOU WOULD TAKE THIS TRIAL. AND WE WILL SEE WHAT YOU KNOW!"

---

Fahl's Transcendence Trial will begin after he enters Emuh's cave of ascension.

@Fahl

If Fahl had retained any spare breath left to lose, it would've been snatched away. Talk was one thing—wagging tongues prone to exaggeration, he'd eventually learned that reality in many instances was desaturated compared to whatever colorful tales other Gembounds shared, much as he valued his teacher Imp's experiences. This encounter, however, was a rarity, the towering figure making itself known past the unusual door before him far outstripping the simple descriptions he'd caught wind of. While he'd been beside giants in the past, the self-declared Emuh's height and demeanor demanded acknowledgement, and he couldn't resist shrinking back at the judgment leveled towards him. A grown lizard, that piercing gaze reduced him to a mere hatchling freshly evicted from his chrysalis.

Cold dismissal of magical strength akin to jamming a talon into a festering wound, his teeth ground together while fighting back a hard wince. Dying embers of resentment toward Nemean flared up again, their subject having been replaced by a more present target. Despite insecure parts of him nodding in agreement at the assessment given, overall he hated being presented a reflection of his own personal doubts.

"Would I be here if I didn't," he retorted in answer. The bravado veiled a disturbance shivering through his mind at the implication made. Had he missed an important detail about fire besides its warmth and brilliant burn? Hopefully this seed of dread wouldn't sprout into more debilitating consequences in the darkness ahead.

Outwardly, his confident act was bolstered by a haughty upward thrust of the snout. Anyone capable of interpreting shifting scales could read a different story though in the yellows and oranges swirling over his hide. Hesitance might've sunk into toes, but Fahl dragged them forward, following the owl to whatever fate awaited him. Instant chill soaked him, worse even than that of his native Pisces, in the discombobulating void he wandered into. Temptation grew to draw on his power to warm stiffening limbs, but the urge was suffocated; wasting energy wouldn't do when who knew how much of his limited reserves would need expending.

The ground was gone. The light was gone. There was only Fahl, drifting in an infinite darkness--or at least, it seemed infinite. There must have been walls, somewhere, because Emuh's voice echoed as the owl called out from somewhere distant.

"Energy... matter... what is the difference? Have you seen the stars? EMUH HAS. Without these things... There is nothing! But WITH THEM-!" The cackling voice stopped, plunging the room once more into silence.

That was, it seemed, as much of a hint as Fahl would be getting.

Until something bounced gently off his face. A rock-? Just floating there, midair, invisible in the black before Fahl's face. What was he meant to do with that..?

Fahl's Trial of Transcendence has begun.

@Fahl

Maintaining any firm grip on reality proved difficult without stimuli for a whirring mind to latch onto. No ground holding him up or sight guiding his way, Fahl found himself frozen in place figuratively and very nearly literally, incapable of discerning a path forward. Composure faltering in the face of bewilderment, eyes darted about and distinguished nothing from the endless dark pressing in from all sides. His sharp inhale echoed back at him, the only sound heard until Emuh chimed in, his words utter nonsense to someone who knew nothing of a world beyond the caves other than vivid visions from a rift in Eridanus.

Silence fell once again. His jaw tensed, a deep frown forming in thoughts, but a sudden collision jerked Fahl's head back. It was nothing more than the poke of a rough-edged object against his snout. In such emptiness it might as well have been a smack though. Furthermore, he hazarded after a disgruntled huff, this could be his salvation: an offered light, but one that must be ignited first.

Certainly he had an idea of its position, hovering in close proximity to his face. Without a proper view, however, executing his usual method of point and set on fire seemed unreliable. The mark could be entirely, embarrassingly missed despite being a mere puff of breath away. In fact, that seemed the best option; he would do with his mouth what he had accomplished using a determined stare and unleash an unbelievable wave of heat at risk of pushing the tissues of his throat past easy repair. So close to nostrils, it'd have to be caught up in the resulting blast.

He mustered up a healthy lungful of air and blew. The applied force unlocked another similar attack instead.

The stone ignited: a flare into plasma, at first so blinding bright it was impossible to see anything beyond it. Then it dimmed, a little.

What was left was a single star glowing in the void around Fahl. A star, and... a few pebbles, circling it as if in orbit.

"NOT WHAT EMUH WOULD HAVE DONE..." came the distant, echoing squawk, but it didn't offer anything else, nor did it seem to imply that the result was somehow wrong. "THIS IS WHAT IT IS LIKE-! OUTSIDE! BEYOND! -BUT MUCH LARGER. YOU ARE ON A ROCK." Emuh's distant speech, though perhaps interesting or informative, didn't help with the immediate problem facing Fahl.

The light began to dim, fading away. Of course, there were ways to ensure it remained burning--or Fahl could create a new 'star' from the other stones, if he so chose, though those would burn as but a brief blip, as well.

1/3

@Fahl

Always had his heated breath appeared as a shimmer before eyes, promising pain should anyone's flesh cross its path. Never once had it burst forth as a brilliant beam of white light instead. This was something new, maybe entirely different, from the volcanic eruption of air he tried calling forth, and yet the cast felt correct in this moment all the same. The stone blazed so brightly in the abyss that Fahl needed to squint eyes to endure the drastic change in lighting. Once it stabilized to a more tolerable level, his jaw shut with an audible click of teeth, and he surveyed his handiwork with a faint glimmer of satisfaction. Though the comparison might've been a stretch, the burning stone reminded him of Orion's ceiling—small, luminous, and distant.

Not what Emuh would have done? No matter. It was his trial, and he'd proceeded in the way unique to him. The other mentions of an outside and his apparent location on a rock—yes, that was generally what the caves were made of—he treated as a distraction to pay partial heed to, most of his attention fixated on the surrounding pebbles now revealed as result of the previous effort. With proper line of sight, now was the time to start falling back onto his preferred magical techniques over innovation. At least, that had been his plan until noticing the original rock's diminishing glow which threatened to welcome the void in again.

That wouldn't do, not after the fantastic work he'd just achieved. Fahl fixed the rock with a death glare, daring it to grow dimmer in his presence, and mentally reached out to the flame. A steady sense of intense heat filled him, and he tugged, willing the temperature to anchor itself in one position.

The 'star' flared, then calmed, settling into a faintly twinkling but steady white burn.

Around it rotated several little rocks, now, and... it was the strangest thing. They seemed to be--alive? One was gray, one brown, but another--another was speckled with blue, as if it somehow held glimmering water across its surface. And another held blue, and green, as if little threads of moss had colonized it. And wisps of white, moving across the other colors, over them, a haze that extended upward from the stone.

For a moment, Fahl would feel as though he were... elsewhere. A million miles away, from the cave, from his troubles. In another world--another galaxy--another universe. This was...

...this was creation.

Then he was back, and no--it wasn't creation. It was just a little ball of light, a few illusions, some swirling pebbles--right?

So... did it feel terrible, ominous, when another blazing white light suddenly appeared? It, too, was gently spinning--but it was spinning this way, threatening to collide with Fahl's nascent little solar system. The same white glow that had seemed soft and nurturing, but strong, in Fahl's star now--on this intruding speck--seemed potentially devastating, instead.

Was this what Emuh had meant by the nature of his element..?

2/3

@Fahl

It was if his brain had been plucked from his body, carried off by invisible hands, and shown an existence so utterly separate from the caves' familiarity. As he returned to the present that'd been before this drifting away of consciousness, limbs were found numbed, the mental trip seeming to have leeched feeling from them in his absence. A strange revelation had accompanied him on the journey back, and Fahl gazed upon his collection of rocks, burning and not, with a mixture of pride and silent respect. This model was his doing, and if he ever learned how to, maybe he'd have the chance to make it flourish in a variety of ways, much as those odd visions had demonstrated.

But a pit formed in his stomach upon witnessing the approaching twin to his own brilliant light source. If it touched a pebble, or worse, knocked his main rock away, no doubt the entire peaceful system would be thrown out of balance. Unaware of any options to dissuade the other rock from its current collision course, he'd have to end this threat in a more definitive manner. While it did burn, surely it could be pushed to the point where its composition broke apart into vapor. Staring his foe down, he raised a paw to hover over the advancing object in the distance. Element-infused will demanded it burn into oblivion.

The magic flared, very literally: the little approaching star swelled, its white fire glowing brighter and brighter, heat baking Fahl's scales. The light's brightness became blinding, the entire room glowing too bright to see-

-but Fahl had saved his star-

-and then... there was ground underfoot again.

Silence, a dusty cave, dimly lit--and Emuh, fluttering down to land before him. The giant owl clicked his beak, a gunshot sound in the quiet. "WELL THEN. YOU HAVE DONE IT. GOOD JOB." A foot shot out, aiming to tap Fahl beneath the chin--gently, but not as gently as it could have been. "EMUH STILL DOES NOT THINK YOU UNDERSTAND ENERGY! BUT AT LEAST YOU CAN CONTROL IT."

At once, Fahl would feel a strange sensation... like he was being drained. Like his magicka had fallen through a hole in the vessel that was his body and his stone, trickling away. But this vessel, leaky now or not, was expanding. The wound through which it drained would heal, yes; and then he would grow stronger. But for now... he had to mend himself, and practice.

"NOW GET OUT," Emuh barked, and turned to take flight.

3/3

Fahl has Transcended. He is now a Transcendent Pupil, and may work his way back up to Transcendent Master. Upon attaining this rank, his player may post in Update Me to choose a Specialization (viewable in the Magic section of the Guidebook).

He has also learned the spell:

Reverse Gravity:

Transcendent Intensity Manipulation. Gravity in a fairly large radius around the user is nullified, so that all Gembound and objects within float weightless. Experienced users can cause affected targets to "fall" upward. This spell is exhausting to maintain for more than a few seconds, depending on how much matter is affected. Transcendent spells may be used once per thread.

@Fahl