Ah, Polaris. Home of the Second Spire. Of course, there was no telling whether this one was black or not, but that didn't matter so much, did it? The Draco Spire pulsed with heat, while this one crackled with tingling magical energy. This one, too, was probably not a good thing to touch.

But the prospect of stabilization without having to return to Vargas' lair? Now that would be awesome. Spires of any kind had to be special, since there hadn't been one in Ursa, Pegasus, Cepheus, or Orion. But I shouldn't get my hopes up too far, Aethereal reminded herself. Vargas made no mention of this spire, so there's always a possibility it won't work.

The Witch of Winter approached the crackling crystals one step at a time, coming as close as she dared. And then, feeling no less silly than the first time she'd tried to 'commune' with a piece of rock: "Hi, Spire." She tried to feel around with her mind, too, in case 'communing' might involve a mental link like Mother's or Pride's.

No magic sparked to life within her, nor did Aethereal feel particularly stable. In fact, she felt another droplet of Oil ooze out of her. Did she need to be closer, perhaps? Or was communing with this particular Spire up to random chance--as the familiar bonding spell Pride described had been? Perhaps this one would not stabilize her at all, and Aethereal's heart sank at the thought.

She attempted once again to coax out some mind-magic. Different though it was from the winds she was used to, Pride hadn't made it seem like it was impossible to learn magic from other areas. Perhaps the Spire simply hadn't heard her the first time around, or perhaps it needed magic for this communing to work. Spire? she tried again, in her thoughts this time.

A flash. A sizzle. Her vision flared into being, white from pitch black, a popping flare of sensation that roared through her mind.

With it came agony--a sense like an electric lash run through her brain, her head--wherever that was on such a creature; a searing, burning, screaming pain that set her nerves aflame and left them burning on an invisible pyre.

A cold wind swept past her. The white was now blue. She was looking up. Up, into the expanse: she had never seen the cave ceilings and if she had, this would have been dizzying. An impossible depth, like a pool a mile deep, yet it was overhead: could she fall into it-? Would she?

Exhilarating sensation, feet on soft earth, the tickle of grass underfoot. The warmth of a shining sun, and she turned, looked into it with eyes she did not bear-...

Aethereal will feel intense pain searing her mind at the backfiring sensorial link. With this will come visions of a sky, and a single yellow-white sun overhead; there is grass underfoot. This image is fleeting, and she will awaken moments later from unconsciousness, knocked back slightly from where she last was.

@Aethereal

Pain.

It was all she knew. It was her entire existence. It ripped through her, tearing through each nerve ending until there was nothing left to burn. It was fire, it was a knife, and it was a sledgehammer all at once; it crushed her in its grasp and she was nothing before it.

Aethereal shrieked until she was gone, and her blindness abruptly changed. She no longer saw nothing, nor an endless field of white, but instead colors. Her claws sank into soft, rich-smelling soil, ripping through grass roots as she curled them inward. Air flowed past, soothing her pain--was there pain? She was healed, and it must have been a long time: there were no signs of her wounds. But the memory of it was seared into her mind, and she could not have imagined anything so terrible as that.

Confused, Aethereal turned--and there was a huge glowing orb above, and she felt its warmth on her fur. And the light! It was blinding, and the word day flashed through her mind. Her vision was white again, and she flinched, expecting more pain.

Instead, her vision returned to nothingness.

Magic crackled. There was the sound of rushing water in the distance. The memory of pain was sharp in her mind, but when she curled in on herself in a fearful huddle there was no further agony to come. Only her back and wings hurt, as if lightly bruised from a fall--when had she fallen?

Aethereal felt the blood roaring through her, felt the touch of stone against fur and skin. Polaris. It had been an illusion? She could barely think. Her mind was a mess of emotion: confusion, hurt, a healthy amount of fear, and a bewildered thought of Pegasus? that managed to form itself into a word.

All of it drifted in the Spire's direction, carried by magic.

The spire had always been something of great interest to Abra. It was big- extremely big. And magical- extremely magical. She often watched it from afar, but had never been quite brave enough to get close enough to investigate it thoroughly. Well, today was the day it all changed!

It was very pretty- a brilliant blue that glistened with a rainbow of other colors. Just being near it was a little uncomfortable, the magic so thick it was nearly tangible. Briefly, she wondered if casting magic here would be easier due to the abundance of magic.

She was distracted by a thud like some massive creature crashing to the ground echoing from somewhere else near the spire. She followed it towards the source- a massive creature laying nearby the spire. Was it dead, or just unconscious? Did it need healing (which Abra wouldn't be able to provide if it did, but hey- it's the thought that counts!) What even was it? It was far weirder and bigger than any other creature she'd seen before.

Like most problems. she opted to solve it with magic.

She darted just close enough to lay a hand on the side of the unconscious gembound, and she called forth her magic, hoping for well, any kind of result. Well, hopefully a good one, anyways.

Walking through icy-cold tunnels. Blind? Or just too dark to see? Soft clicking echoing further down the tunnel. A wavering connection. Love. Mother?

The gembound shifted, curling in on itself. Abra took a couple steps back, so as to not accidentally be hit by the tail or wings of this gembound. "Um- you alright?" She asked- could they even hear? it didn't seem to have ears. Or a face at all, really. "You fell- I think? And you don't look like you're doing too well." She considered asking the gembound about what she had seen in the vision- but no, they already seemed freaked out. And looking back, that was probably a huge invasion of privacy. Whoops.

@Aethereal

Out, out, her magic reached.

A terrible and dangerous thing in a world where lurked untamed and unknowable sorcery, the accidental and wholly immaterial alchemy of mysterious power left to fester. Seething sources and lost reservoirs, and like an orphan finding its way into darkened streets and harsher living, it forged its own paths. It found its own channels, its own methods, its own sinuous veins of lashing, invisible flame.

To reach out so blindly was to risk being found.

To risk that magic--even mindless--jolting down this new conduit, racing burning lines through corrupted nerves for even a chance at grounding itself.

Once again, the world vanished.

Not only the world--she was gone; her body remained, but reality itself was torn from the Valkhound in a fraction of a heartbeat, in the time it took that power to shock through this newest tether. She did not exist. There was no memory, no being, no sense of self whatsoever: in an instant all that Aethereal was had been obliterated, if only temporarily.

In its place... Had she reached out for the Spire? In its place... Was that what she had found? Or was it something else, something parallel, something close and hidden and trapped- In its place... was chaos.

The magic searing through her burned her away, burned the world away, melted the Spire in a flash of white-hot hatred, grinded and churned the world into nothing, ripped the caves asunder. The pieces shattered, cracked, deafening and silent, and spun away sucked down into the endless dark. She did not fall: there was no she to fall. There was only this whirling maelstrom of entropy: of possibility and impossibility, of light and dark and matter and nothing, of hatred and terror and agony.

There was something out there.

She had found-... It had found her.

A terrible and dangerous thing...

It was as though the smallest candle had been lit, and its flame snuffed away the madness. Instead there was a strange, unsettled silence, a darkness, that tiny light-that-was-no-light: it was... being. Another thing--no; an echo of a thing. Thoughts left manifest, to swell and grow and reverberate. Aethereal had reached to them: and she had opened herself to them: and now they were hers. And she, theirs.

It latched on.

Desperate. Craving. Crawling from a pit of ages, grasping for what it had seen in her.

D͚ ́OϦ L϶Aȱͻ M϶ ϗLΦ␝ਪ

Loneliness. It was impossible to describe the intensity. A flood-? No; a flood was a drop compared to this. An ocean. A riptide. A universe of aloneness, of aching terror in the dark, with not a word for company--had it been damned to remain there, eternally? The keening ache was enough to break a heart from even the reflection of a fraction of this pain.

D͚ ́ONϦ LEAȱE M϶ ϗLΦNਪ

A sensation, like hands snatching at her flesh. Could it BECOME AGAIN?

D͚ ́ONT LEAVE M϶ ALΦNE

Desperation. Horror. Was this flesh, and blood? Was this a way out?

DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE

The thought was left, resonating, the echo blinding and deafening and overwhelming. The chaos fell away, and in its place was left this link: a link with a tether of thrashing, chaotic magic, a mind that was perhaps a mind, or was not: a being, or a not-being, that was desperately lonely, and had not been enough.

And it had waited.

And it had waited.

And it had waited.

And it had waited...

This incident has occurred within Aethereal's mind, and has seemingly not affected the world around her. She is now Sensorial Linked with AΔ ϰΧh̥ of U؎knoϛκ, resulting in intense feelings of loneliness, insufficiency, and pain, until this link is severed by another Barely+ Sensorial Link roll intended to break the bond. The next post should be GM-requested for ongoing storytelling.

@Aethereal

She should have known better than to think it was over. Pain washed over her again, but it was not pure agony as it had been the first time. Instead, it brought with it... emotions. Loneliness, sadness, terror, chaos.

She could not differentiate between herself and the chaos anymore. Nor did she have the presence of mind to try; her mind mirrored what had been pushed onto it. She was the chaos, she was the loneliness, she was--

There was another?

There was another. Aethereal latched on to the voice: friendly, concerned, thank God she wasn't alone. That empty void--it was more than anyone could endure. She was built for the cold, but the cold of loneliness reached past the insulation of her soft fur, past her tough skin and the fat underneath, past everything as it tore into her, leaving a gaping hole where her heart should have been.

"Don't leave," she rasped, reaching out blindly in the voice's direction. "Don't leave," she whispered; don't leave, she begged with her mind's voice. Her claws reached desperately, grasping for whatever they could find. Not to rend and tear, but to pull it closer: to seize it so that she would never be alone. But despite the yawning gap in her heart, despite the anguished longing--some part of her brain sparked, telling her be careful, the beings in this world are small and fragile. If she found something to hold--whether it was Abra or not--she would do her best to be gentle, despite the urge to bring it into a crushing hug.

The other gembound didn't calm down- in fact, they almost seemed to get more frantic once they realized Abra was there. "I'm not lea- ACK!" She was abruptly cut off by a massive claw swiping towards her, pulling her closer towards them. Bewilderedness kept her put, and realization that Wow, whatever had happened to this gembound must've really shooken them.

She'd attempt to wiggle free, though she wouldn't move far- she just didn't want to to be so tightly squeezed by the giant, although they seemed to be trying to be gentle. She made sure to still be touching the gembound- maybe it'd be comforting, and they certainly seemed to need the comfort. "I'm not leaving." She repeated, trying to sound calm and comforting despite having absolutely zero idea of what was going on.

"Im just- what happened? Are you okay- I mean, are you hurt?" Any semblance of calm was steadily falling apart, even more so as something happened. Some sort of link? Magic? Aethereal (and maybe whatever being in the spire she had linked with) would get a healthy dose of concern and confusion as Abra tried to figure out what had happened to Aethereal and how to help.

@Aethereal

The sense of loneliness was twinned.

A sense of loss--of failure. It wasn't enough. It hadn't been enough. Sorrow roiled through the link like heavy smoke: choking, blinding.

Only slowly did it fade, and only then did another, third emotion ripple through. It began with a half-echoed thought: flesh. Was this body, this form that Aethereal inhabited, flesh?

Flesh is weakness. Flesh is pain. It must be removed. It was a concept that came with pain, with fear. Horrors beyond imagining could be inflicted upon such vulnerabilities. No--the flesh must be stripped away. Only stone was immutable.

@Aethereal

Another wave of emotions: sorrow, weighing her down like mountains resting on her wings. Aethereal let out a choked sob, curling tighter around herself. Abra wiggled in her grasp--was it going to leave? She didn't want to be left… no, it stayed; had it only been uncomfortable? Aethereal loosened her grasp for a few moments, only to try to clutch the small creature to her chest again when failure and fear came next, and panicked horror began to take shape--

Not me, she realized, as there came the touch of new emotions: confusion, but most of all concern. Words? She heard words but it was difficult… to focus and understand. Worried but trying its best... who was this? Who had suffered so much, and who was trying to help?

Don't... she implored, a half-rendered plea for the one who felt sorrow to back off. She wanted to keep her own mind. She didn't want to lose herself. The presence who tried to reassure... Aethereal gave it (them) her vulnerability, laying her emotions bare. The loneliness had shared so much with her; she would give back.

A memory: chaos, a hallucinated vision of alien war, burning pain that spread throughout her body, a mental link severed. The vulnerability of flesh: a searing bolt, a stab and a bite. Crushing air. I know. To some extent, at least, the danger of existence.

But there was more: a bed of soft hay, a ringing song, curling into sleep with a sibling nestled against her fur. Fruit rolls! Sweetness dissolving as her vacuum-mouth sucked it to her stomach. Loss, failure, but hope. Stone was unchanging, invulnerable (?), but could a rock do this?

It was the curse of flesh-creatures to be vulnerable, but it was their blessing to have hope and happiness. Those seemed so far, and out of reach, but still Aethereal wanted.

@Abracadabra