the devil is not as black as he is painted
The wind that raced along the top of the barrow died.
It didn’t still naturally, as if by chance or evening calm—it paused, holding its breath like the world beneath the stars suddenly remembered whose ground it moved across. The flowers on the altar didn’t tremble. The grass did not shift. The chill that hung in the air fell quiet and clean as moonlight on steel.
And then, with no flare nor flash, Safrin was there.
She emerged not from the sky above but from the altar itself, a ripple of light and shadow unfurling in a spiral until she stood fully formed beside the offering he had placed. Clad in a gown of deepest violet that shimmered like oil on water, her hair flowed behind her in coils of celestial dark, threaded through with silver starlight. The night bent subtly around her form, not darker, but deeper.
She looked down at the stiletto, her eyes half-lidded, lashes thick with shadow. "How well you understand me," she murmured, voice soft as grave-moss and starsong. A single finger traced the sheath’s spine, not to test its edge, but to admire the grace of its construction. Such beauty. Such purpose. And none of it wasted."
Only then did she lift her gaze, and Hadama would feel it like a tide rising beneath his skin—a flood of starlight and pride that needed no words to be understood. She reached out, her fingers grazing his shoulder and then splaying over his chest, where her light had once passed before. "With every increase in power the tasks become more difficult but...it's not impossible. Here is what you must do."
Hadama has been given a (hard) quest. He must
1. Complete 2 training threads focusing on using his gravity spikes
2. Host a PQ+ where the use of his gravity spikes/singularity is a central part of the PQ+
3. Use natural gravitational forces in a way that makes something easier/better/good
4. Use natural gravitational forces in a way that makes something harder/worse/bad.
It didn’t still naturally, as if by chance or evening calm—it paused, holding its breath like the world beneath the stars suddenly remembered whose ground it moved across. The flowers on the altar didn’t tremble. The grass did not shift. The chill that hung in the air fell quiet and clean as moonlight on steel.
And then, with no flare nor flash, Safrin was there.
She emerged not from the sky above but from the altar itself, a ripple of light and shadow unfurling in a spiral until she stood fully formed beside the offering he had placed. Clad in a gown of deepest violet that shimmered like oil on water, her hair flowed behind her in coils of celestial dark, threaded through with silver starlight. The night bent subtly around her form, not darker, but deeper.
She looked down at the stiletto, her eyes half-lidded, lashes thick with shadow. "How well you understand me," she murmured, voice soft as grave-moss and starsong. A single finger traced the sheath’s spine, not to test its edge, but to admire the grace of its construction. Such beauty. Such purpose. And none of it wasted."
Only then did she lift her gaze, and Hadama would feel it like a tide rising beneath his skin—a flood of starlight and pride that needed no words to be understood. She reached out, her fingers grazing his shoulder and then splaying over his chest, where her light had once passed before. "With every increase in power the tasks become more difficult but...it's not impossible. Here is what you must do."
Hadama has been given a (hard) quest. He must
1. Complete 2 training threads focusing on using his gravity spikes
2. Host a PQ+ where the use of his gravity spikes/singularity is a central part of the PQ+
3. Use natural gravitational forces in a way that makes something easier/better/good
4. Use natural gravitational forces in a way that makes something harder/worse/bad.
