If you take care of me, I'll take care of you

The mouth of the tunnel gaped before its gaze and for the first time in Regalia's life, it hesitated. The Voidmother had warned it to take care in this hole, a comment that Regalia had completely disregarded, but now, perhaps, it wondered if it should. If, perhaps, it was wrong, that it was not the heavenly being it thought it was. That this entity of chaos...was something more. But a moment later it pushed these thoughts aside. Vague speculation would get it nowhere when the answers, the truth, was right before it. All it had to do...was go forward. And so it did, drifting forward and beginning to descend down the slope of the hole.

As Regalia went deeper, it began to feel a deep sense of foreboding. It could see nothing in this place. While it couldn't necessarily feel the chill in the air, by the way the movements of its body were slowing, it guessed that it was cold down here - very cold. It could detect whispers, but it was unsure if these whispers came from the world around it...or if they resonated in Regalia's head. A telepathy spell, perhaps? Or something else? It didn't feel right, yet still, it ventured further and further into the darkness.

And then, when the hole opened up, it was like the world flipped on its head. The lights were different down here...somehow wrong. The purple light...no that didn't seem normal and the strange stone that sat in the middle of the cave...it was wrong. Just from a glance Regalia got the feeling that this thing didn't belong here, or at least that it shouldn't be here. It was something powerful and chaotic, something truly dark in a world that suddenly seemed so much brighter then it thought. Again, Regalia hesitated. It felt nothing physical, for that was a sense they could never have, but its mind was whirling with activity, questions popping up right and left - what was this place, why was it here, what was this chaos, and why did Regalia feel so out of place here? If this was what the Voidmother described, if this was the chaos that could be of the true Creator of this world, that Regalia had thought was itself, that it had acted so conscientiously to be throughout its whole life, then why did this place feel so wrong?

All of its beliefs were turning on its head. All that it knew about itself were suddenly thrown into question. Because this stone was wrong and Regalia didn't belong here, yet this was truly a place of power. And Regalia, hungry for answers, hungry for truth, began to lean into the whispers that beckoned it forward. It approached the stone and cast its voice out, to whisper against the slab of oily stone that shone like moonstone. "What are you," it whispered, one of its thousands of voices. "I am Regalia - I am Truth and I am All. This world is mine to guard and protect, the creatures here are my children and my wards, yet I do not belong here. Why?" As it spoke, it pressed itself against the stone, head-shaped gas first so that its sensory "eyes" touched the altar, in an attempt to divine something.

Regalia drifted forwards, tapping what little there was of its nervous system against the Altar. The hydrogen gas making up its being - in a metaphorical and metaphysical sense - began to expand and press sharply against the walls of the Hole until there was nowhere more to go. Hazy light bled through the fresh darkness in its vision in spiderwebbing cracks. The distinct sensation of flesh and limb tearing through a wall stuttering through the Gembound's now-corporeal? form.

It? steadied itself on the fresh rubble and stood high in the billowing black swarming the ground and skies, a thunderous roar echoing from its throat. Toxic-green lightning crack!ed at the end of it, illuminating the silhouettes flitting about in the ruined city - fleeing or ensuring their doom through attempts to fight. They were alien in every sense of the word, and completely dwarfed by it.

The landscape it exacted its destruction on was vast enough to scrape the horizon, made of broken buildings not at all like those cobbled ruins in Orion or those fortresses in Canis; no, it was entirely different. Before Regalia - or whatever it saw through the eyes of - had come, it might've been an architectural marvel, a city of ancestors built on modular arcs and otherworldly spires.

Another earth-shattering roar, and that was the end.

A "blink" later, and the gaseous beast would be back in that void-white room, intangible once more. The Altar stood silent before it, iridescence pulsing and swarming beneath the matte surface.

Regalia has acquired 3 Corruption Points and is now considered to be Touched. This thread contains more information on what that means.

@Regalia

If you take care of me, I'll take care of you

At first, Regalia panicked when its body began to spread and it was like...physical sensations? It...it wasn't gas anymore, or was it? But it could feel. It was solid, corporeal, and it was terrifying to feel, to know what it was like to be mortal, to know how it felt to have flesh and blood and a voice without magic, roaring to the sky it rage as lightning blazed down from above. For a moment, it was thrilling - almost freeing - to have form and shape. But as soon as the vision ended, and it was back as its gaseous self, it almost wanted to curl in and hold on, so that it wasn't thrown out of its world again.

That was strange. A vision, of some other place. It hadn't recognized it at all, although it bore faintly a resemblance to the city of Orion. Not the same, definitely not, but of the same sort of structure. It looked down at the Altar, curious. This...this was it. This was the place of all truth and answers, where the power dwelled, where knowledge was hidden. And Regalia hungered for it, oh it hungered with everything it had.

The whispers had already gotten louder and it strained to listen. It wanted to see more of this darkness, more of the chaos that the Altar promised. More visions of destruction that had brought Regalia to the understanding. It was not the perfect god that it thought it was, but merely a fledgling deity. The egg of a greater being, the first step towards true divinity. And here...This is where my journey truly begins.
A paw of gas raised forward, drifting along the surface of the shimmering white altar, magic pulsing through the shifting nebula. Show me more. Speak to me. I want to hear your voice. I want to see your face.

Chaotic magic, pure in its rawness, swarmed through the gaseous Gembound again, urging, beckoning for it to seek more, more, more - ! Images flickered through its nervous system, all vignettes of those that'd come to this very Altar before:

the splitting of Oily-white stone, a creature roaring, fire billowing in its wake;

clattering hooves, unintelligible ancient tongues, and the crackle of magic shooting through the many-clawed hand resting on it;

a black dog lying before it in prayer until he nearly perished from unfulfilled necessities;

alien silhouettes kneeling and pressing against it for all its promises of power.

Many had come to this place, before. This place of holy unholiness, this antithesis to order. Many had emerged changed, driven to fulfill what chaos demanded: conquest, destruction, consumption. Regalia would be no different, if it allowed chaos to blacken its stone and twist its magic.

The Altar awaited.

@Regalia

If you take care of me, I'll take care of you

The images were welcome in Regalia's mind - more then welcome, drinking in the knowledge almost greedily, the wisps of the past and of what lay beyond the altar. The history, the purpose, the presence...and Regalia was convinced, now, that there was something in here with it that was alive. Or, at least, some kind of magical phenomenon that drove it forward and twisted its mind so. Perhaps in its normal state, Regalia would recoil with disgust from the way the Altar seemed to exert some form of control over its will, but all it could currently think about was pressing forward and deeper, not caring at all that it was falling into the trap of corruption and chaos.

Or was it a trap? Perhaps it wasn't a pitfall but a ladder - the ladder that Regalia had been searching for all this time. A ladder that hung so tantalizingly above its head, but each grasp revealed that the next step was farther then the last. However, ever so stubborn and confident was Regalia, that it didn't shrink back from the challenge, nor did it concern itself with the danger of falling. The others that had come here had come here searching for answers. Listening to what the Altar offered to them and subjecting themselves beneath its will. But Regalia convinced itself that it was different then them. They were mortal creatures with mortal desires of power and conquest and greed and magic. But Regalia wanted something so much greater, so much more important. The Answer. Divinity. Godhood itself. It wanted to look in the face of the Creator, if there even was one somewhere in the vast infinity of the beyond and understand.

And with this idea planted so firmly in their psyche, they reached again, pressing against the altar, magic spreading out across its surface, calling for whoever was there. Whoever existed here, if there was anything. And if not, then for the magic that swarmed this place, or what chaos was dripping from these stones. It thrust itself towards anything it could get its mental claws upon and opened itself, jabbing forward with its song of a thousand voices, ringing through whatever mental link it could forge. "Speak to me," it demanded, many voices echoing. "Show me who you are. I am here to know you, to understand. Show me!"

Corruption: 3

Regalia's magic brushed against the matte-white stone, churning and pulsating with irregularity; and, the entire Hole plunged itself into a silence only the dead knew.

The air went stagnant and suffocating - and there was no way for the star-spattered Gembound to have escaped: black clouds ate through the room's immortal void-white, bleeding from every pore and enveloping Regalia in His influence.

Electricity - putrid and radioactive in its coloration - crackled through the cloud cover. It illuminated the massive, shadowy claw sweeping for Regalia's being. A crushing grip closed around the creature's chalcedony heart and pulled it closer to the Altar.

Chaos swarmed over it, seeping into the nebulae that made up its being, and His voice roared in response:

"S̴̳͂̋͑̓H̸͍̖̔̊͜O̵͉̿W̴̪̖̼̮̩̎̈̿̅ ̴̯̯͙̪́̈́̀͘͘M̸̢̞̯͋Ę̴̡̤͍̌͐̽̚ ̷̘̹̠̮͉̊̉͒T̵͎̬̅̊̎̋H̵̒̊́ͅÀ̷̫̜̭̝͛̒̓̃T̶̡̟̥̣͆ ̷̘̜̾̂Y̶̧̅ͅO̴̢̼̗͖̼̊́̄Ụ̴̄̈̋̌͠ ̶̩̰̰͉̤̈́̈́́̈́A̵̤͔͊R̴̺̜̻̻̒͐E̶̹͉͗̍̊͘͘ͅ ̵̡̻͑̆̀͘̕W̷̥̪̜̭͊O̷̥̲̯͛̽͆̚͝Ř̸͍T̵͚̟͌̅͘͘Ḩ̸̢̌̅̓Ÿ̶̝̻̮̺ͅ"

The toxic clouds peeled away, then, and left Regalia alone in the Hole; alone, with the monstrous desires rolling through its heart. Consume came at the front, with destroy and take nipping at its heels. All that to BECOME WORTHY.

Regalia will experience an excess of violent and chaotic urges for 3 cycles. It has also received 1 Corruption Points (free of the exceeding 5 points/day consequences) putting it at a total of 7 Corruption Points.

@Regalia

If you take care of me, I'll take care of you

To be honest, Regalia had not been fully expecting anything to happen beyond what had already occurred. Perhaps more visions, a crackle of energy...but the full encompassing darkness that it felt its mind brush against and the utter silence that consumed it was a surprise. If it could breathe, its breath would be caught in its throat. Its every atom was stuck in place as the air suffocated its movements. The steady stream of minerals that it fed off of, which, down here, had been very little, was suddenly completely cut off, leaving it with a sense of hollowness and disconnect.

And then...He was there. His influence, his presence, it was everywhere. At first, it saw the claws coming towards it and it was confident that it would not be touched or moved, as no claws before could touch it, but then it closed around its heart, which it was wholly unaware was even corporeal, and dragged it forward.

Golden eyes widened slightly with shock. It could feel Him in its veins. It could feel chaos swarming its entire being, shrouding it in its grasp, infecting it as it swarmed into the lights of its mind. A shiver ran through its gaseous form as the desires began to take over. So alien and so...unnatural in its well-ordered mind. But as it began to take over, Regalia began to understand that this was what it was asking for. This was what it wanted. And when His voice roared in its mind, a storm consuming and threatening to throw it from the ladder, it accepted its mission without hesitation. It reached back hungrily because this was Him. This was the Creator it had been searching for.

Worthy. I am worthy. I will show you that I am worthy.

As the toxic clouds began to dissipate and release it, Regalia drifted there, still for a moment before turning without a word. It had gotten what it had come for. It had heard His voice. It had seen His visions of chaos. It knew what it had to do now, the path forward. The path it was meant to follow.

It would follow, oh yes. And it would take a seat at His side.

*exit