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gore

When a cellular structure is met with extreme amounts of heat, the fluid holding each organelle in place rapidly boils away, proteins denature, membranes fall apart. Enough destroyed cells, and a tissue starts to degrade. Enough tissue horribly mangled, and there was little left to do. Either way, it was difficult to survive under even ideal Earthen conditions. A burn wound could weep and weep for days. This could weep only for about half an before at last her tolerance would run out.

The Oil that'd been slicked against her hide had been the first to go in the explosion, and then every drop of it injected into her body. The nightmarish plume ate through her hide with sickening pops, and the whipcrack of thunder lashed against her newly exposed innards. Blood sizzled and stained the floor. There was no air in her lungs to fully encapsulate the agonized scream rattling from her mouth. Keratinous faceplate cracking along one side, she was blinded by the light greeting her eyes. They bulged halfway out their sockets, still-yet barely visible through the dimness of the room and their own malevolent blackness.

Draconua collapsed, ears ringing with a low drone of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

And slowly, she hauled herself up onto three limbs—half-stumbling with the phantom sensation of her fourth, eaten through by entropic fire and haphazardly cauterized. Oil dripped from the stump, but rather than favoring it, she merely just hobbled along on it. Every step sent stars along her monochromatic vision. There lay something ahead, the only bit of light in this Godforsaken place. Something to peel apart. To unleash. The valkhound reached for it with a claw, chewed-through fingers and missing talons wavering. They set down on the structure, and she steadied herself against it with a hysterical little laugh.

It bubbled between a sob and a giggle. She had won, she had won. She had used what she had been granted and she had won, but too late, with not enough. She had not been prepared with enough, but—oh, she had won. The challenge had been there, and she had conquered it.

There was this last step, and she could take it before surrendering to yet another new formation.

Voice hoarse and lungs halfway to intact, the monster wheezed. "I will eternally reign victorious."

The structure tore apart, the stone shattering, the limping monster--broken, grinning icon of Chaos--tearing it asunder with a lash of thundrous entropy.

It exploded: the claws shattered, flying shrapnel and scattered rock. And there Draconua was left, with her "reward:" a dim voidlight orb hovering in the center of what had once gripped it, atop its broken stone pedestal.

Emuh fluttered down, landing atop a smashed spire a few yards away. "CHAOS!" he cried, and his tone was one of full approval. "YOU HAVE PROVEN YOU EMBODY IT. LOOK! ALL THAT IS LEFT," he crowed, sweeping out one black wing to indicate the room--taken from plants and insects to nothing but smoldering ash--"IS DESTRUCTION. EVEN YOURSELF--WHO, WHO--WHO ELSE WOULD HAVE THE POWER?!"

He clacked his beak, and the orb of unnatural light drifted from its place to touch Draconua atop her head, like a parent gently kissing the forehead of a child. It spread; it engulfed her, consumed her in quiet fire.

It drained what was left of her. She would feel empty, would feel the darkness rising up to claim her... but feel the brimming of a new power beneath.

The stone raised to carry her from his den; to deposit her just outside. She was too big to keep in here, after all. "KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!" Emuh cried after her, rasping hilarity in his tone.

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

She has also learned the spell:

Font of Corruption

Transcendent Intensity Manipulation. Impart a portion of the user's magic to convert an object or small body of water into black Oilstone or Oil as a true source of Corruption. This Font will corrupt anything nearby over time, granting Corruption Points and providing a place for corrupted Gembound to stabilize.

---

Draconua will also be afflicted with the following chrysalis consequence as she falls into her gemstone.

Stray (minor): Gembound may speak and understand an ancient language rather than their common tongue.

Chrysalis consequence rolled by request.

@Draconua

She'd hardly the presence of mind to acknowledge that dimly-glowing mote of voidlight (and if she had, she would not have recognized it as such. It was but a firefly.) No, no, she was far too fixated on the weary aftermath of such—such power. Her capabilities were far beyond what they once were, uncontrolled, pure chaos. Terror. Destruction. Not a single discernible figure in the landscape but herself and the enthused owl-beast. Perhaps that was the blown-up remains of her missing forearm over there... ?

Draconua hardly noticed the way the firefly planted a chaste kiss atop her shattered faceplate, how its warmth enveloped her entire form and drained what little seemed to remain while carving out pathways for more. Always more. It was always about more.

A dozen eyes watched haphazardly as she was simply carted away, hysterical giggles still yet bubbling from her abused lungs.

The Sleepless Chaos made no movement as she was deposited on the floor. Her limbs were strewn about, stump leeching pus, now. Oilstone made to form around her body, but—no, she shouldn't. Not yet. Something swarmed within her body, yet; like that aborted carcass of a beast lurking somewhere in Leo, the miscarriage before its conception. An intense need to spread—but, this was coupled with a peculiar... lack of comfort with where she was.

All her new forms had been born from the Black Spire, precisely where she had landed before death. Home was far from here, and the incandescent rainbow on that turquoise Spire burned her eyes (and her body, too, she thought in her delirious haze.) No Chaos but her own lay here to provide security, familiarity. She upended it onto the floor, a digusting mass of half-baked flesh and corruption that seeped into the earth.

It evaporated to reveal itself as a crackling piece of Oilstone—shiny and new—and she laid her broken head upon it. There was no rotten, faintly damp scent to it, but... it would suffice.

— EXIT DRACONUA TO CHRYSALIS —