The Beauty of the Garden

[Diamond Master]

The Shadow rolls a 6.
AIiCE rolls a 6.

AIiCE grasps her fiber and ports away as the Shadow seeks to eat the light of her avatar.

The advent of Durin's ultrabright light does not blot out the Shadow. The shadowseed is not vulnerable to the light it feasts on, but it must be the one to make an advance if it is to benefit from its feast. Therefore, once AIiCE is out of its grasp, it leaps to the fission-powered bulb intended to arm the trap. Soon the light grows dark, and the Shadow increases by only a tiny fraction.

If the Shadow is to become truly sizeable, an immense amount of light will have to be destroyed.



As you gaze upon the gorging shadow, you notice it is slightly less disc-shaped than before, as if the higher-dimensional object projecting it has shifted just the slightest bit. The imperfect impression distorts accordingly. The shadow is not mindless - it is capable of choices relating to its goals, and its shape is apparently tied in with some other entity.

[Great Thrash]

It's got to be destroyed, or at least contained. Light is too fundamental to the way the Pantheon operates.

I want to find out if it can travel through matter, so I'll slap a bank of stone down on it, and I'll surround it with clay. If it stays in, I'll begin weaving further enchantments into the container. If it escapes, I'll check to see if firelight and magma light can feed it. If they can't, maybe they'll be the seed of its destruction.

[Diamond Master]

The shadow nimbly evades what you throw at it. It can slip through the smallest cracks, of course. The absence of light does not seem to bother it. When you manage to score a glancing hit with a small piece of lava, you see that its shadowflesh sizzles and sustains some degree of damage, but this is very difficult to do.

[Diamond Master]

You also catch the Trickster attempting to effect entrance to the sacred library you cooked up for the mute giants.

[Great Thrash]

Good, we know one weakness. May be there are multiple ways energies could be used to inflict damage on the shadow. I say we exercise caution and not risk anything more that might make it grow, such as a more electric energy (we know it was interested in AIiCE!)

Does the Shadow have a favorite hangout? I will enlist the flying lizards of the Lava Molt to keep an eye out, and the beings in the Gardens.

Speaking of which.
"Trickster. This is unacceptable. Play your pranks elsewhere. You're a part of this Garden just as we are, but some things are best left alone. Beat it."

[Diamond Master]

The Shadow will go wherever there is light. This weights its time slightly toward the Frosted Arboretum.

"Ha, 'Great' Thrash, do you not know it is my duty to poke my nose into the business of others, to observe and advise everything, no matter how unwarranted? What matters it if a few things are destroyed along the way?"

At this, he drops the little glass sphere he made while at Yerkan's Studiolo. His long front limbs snap down to catch it just before it hits the stony ground. The creature bats the heavy ball upward like a cat.

[Yerkan of Elish]

"Advise? I haven't heard hardly a single word of advice out of your mouth, unwarranted or not. Not that I mind too much; you're entertaining enough to watch so long as you stay off my bad side. I can respect you as an observer - a very active one, but an observer nonetheless. But advice?" I scowl, the adamant beneath my skin showing darkly as my face stretches taught.

An illusory copy of the glass sphere falls ever so slightly faster than the true one, which I hide with a second illusion, so that the trickster will miss if he tries to catch it. I then invisibly snatch the ball from the air just before it hits the ground.

[Diamond Master]

The ball winds up in your hands. You can tell it is a preserved copy of your Studiolo.

The very next thing you know, the Trickster's carrion breath is inches from your face. He has you pinned to the ground, standing over you like a predator. His face is smiling and his ears wiggle furiously beneath his cap.

"If you want that back, you'll have to win it from me," he half snarls. He takes the globe back, giving you a few scratches for your pains.

[Yerkan of Elish]

"You have a good eye, trickster, I'll give you that."

I stand up and brush myself off, smearing a bit of mercurial blood onto my hands. "Careful with that stuff, though. It's poisonous."

[Diamond Master]

"Maybe someday when you're long gone, you'll be immortalized as a riddle, Yerkan of Elish."