Ability Progression: Ramirus Past Future 1

Calling upon the powers of Ramirus (Lynmard Lomstedt Custom Kit), Lynmard cast a primal spell on those gathered to have their consciousness transported back in time. From the Dragon Cult were Issa, Silver, Camilla, Citra, Eletha, Cinna, and Allisa, while Hexenblood had members Naaji, Amir, and Gehrman present. Lynmard doused all of them into a slumber, after all went black for those present. Consciousness in the ether of time was strange and imprecise. The group had set out clear functions, goals, and roles, but all these things seemed to slip away from them as they were drawn closer and closer to an event that had taken place nearly a thousand years ago, the day of the Great Storm, meticulously recorded by the Qadir as their greatest grief.

The intent had been to send the group to Kouriyasui, allowing them to investigate and explore the area as the Qadir commenced the final battle against this holiest of Dragon sites in Farah’deen. Yet, instead of all coming out on the other side together, the group was seemingly split up. Worse yet, they were seemingly not even themselves. It was here that they realized the law of time: unless a Dragon in the past specifically called forth people from the future (something Lynmard could also do), then those participating in the primal spell would simply have their consciousness locked into those of other mortals present, and be powerless to interact with the world beyond watching through the eyes of others. Time could not be changed, at least not by established Ailor rules of physics, it could only be witnessed, or lived out through a fated Rabanus Future Sight that was already written in time. The past could not be interacted with, only suffered.

The Dragon Cult people could vaguely understand who they were to each other. They opened their eyes on a perch of Kouriyasui, that massive mountain, with the shadows of Dragons flying in the clouds as the peak was obscured. None were themselves however. An ethereal communication existed between them, and they were quickly able to figure out that they had been transported into the bodies of a military host of Sihai. There were hundreds of them, all clad in entirely black armor and cloth, all with white feathered wings, and all bearing the banners of the Sheng Empire. Even more so, Camilla was able to recognize Ao-Shun, a Dragon she had only ever seen in depictions and heard of folklore, as it was not in the Zhong Kingdoms. Indeed, Ao Shun was one of the two dragons of the Sheng Empire, and had not been seen in centuries in the west, but here he was, the White Dragon of Dominance, clad in what looked like silver armor. It was a peculiar sight to behold to begin with, a Dragon clad in armor, as there had been no historical record of that actually ever occurring.

The Hexenblood members meanwhile awoke in a very different place, their minds awakening in the bodies of a trio of Qadir, found in what looked like a massive control room near the foot of the mountain. Hundreds of Qadir were controlling a vast array of what looked like keyboards, their hands replaced with biotics that split their fingers into dozens of smaller digits that rapidly pressed the keys to control a whole host of Clockwork machines. In front of them out the window stood machines so complex and massive they could barely begin to understand. Vast clockwork beetles with huge clockwork lances on their back, upright golems that towered taller than the All-Beacon Temple’s tower, and a whole host of smaller vehicles both on the ground and in the air, held aloft by rapidly spinning blades. What looked like a commander speaking in that distinctly nearly unchanged Qadiriq language, gave the order to attack, resulting in a feverish clattering of keyboard ticks in the control room, and a variety of scribes and workers running back and forth with mem keys and storage devices.

The army started marching forward, some of the centipedes and beetles chittering and rolling their way down the hills, pushing up vast clouds of sand to cover their approach, while the dragon Ao Shun and the Sihai raised their helmets and leapt from the foot of the mountain. There were no Black Dragons in sight, they appeared to circle above high up in the clouds. Neither side could understand why the Sihai were here, Sheng Empire Sihai least of all, or a White Dragon, when this was both outside of their jurisdiction, and no historical record of it was ever told in the Zhong Kingdoms. Ao Shun approached first with a fearsome slipstream of air that made his movement seemingly too vast for a being so large, lifting up one of the large scarabs and slamming it into a group of others.

Naaji and Amir tried to compensate for the constructs having been disabled, their minds almost reaching a state of overwhelming with how much information was being processed and entered all at once. It made modern Clockwork engineering seem like child’s play, to only operate parts of limbs or pieces independently, while these technicians were controlling hundreds of machine parts within these colossi, and somehow their brains weren’t frying in their skulls. The Sihai Archon dove in after Ao Shun, their white feathered wings in stark contrast to their black armor and hair, their weapons engulfed in silver fire as they cut and diced their way through the smaller Clockwork beings. The Clockwork army was however not helpless, the large scarabs aiming their massive lances at Ao Shun, and taking fire with huge beams of white light that seemed to hurt the dragon and crack parts of its armor. Sihai Archon were impaled on Clockwork claws left and right, and the attrition rate was obvious, with losses mounting on both sides.

The avatar of Issa and Silver landed in the Qadir control room, causing a momentary panic from the attendants, but the controlling technicians soldiered on with their instructions to the machines, knowing that the army would grind to a halt if they left their station. Issa stabbed Naaji’s avatar in the shoulder, however another hand slid out of his shoulder, a clockwork addiotic, seizing onto the weapon and locking it in place. Amir’s avatar meanwhile unfolded its actual face, revealing a harpoon crossbow of sorts, aiming at Issa and impaling them in the head with a bolt, causing Issa’s vision to go dark. Silver immediately responded by cutting one of Amir’s arms off, however Amir turned to him then and shot once, twice, three times more until he too was dead on the ground. Immediately an attendant ran to the scene and installed a new arm on Amir’s Avatar in six seconds flat, allowing him to continue controlling his part of the army.

The Sihai Archon were obviously not enough, Citra’s avatar attempted to assist Cinna’s to escape from a group of smaller Clockwork beings before the two of them were incinerated by a blast from one of the beetle lances, while Eletha was snatched from the sky by one of the Clockwork centipedes and dismembered. Ao Shun was receiving more and more hits until he started bleeding, snarling and roaring out as he summoned funnels of air to suck up the hundreds of smaller clockwork beings on the ground. Gehrman was in the back of the Qadir control room, his Avatar seemingly just observing, but he was able to use this somewhat back position to observe others in the room. No mutations, no magic, it was all just Qadiriq clockwork tech, everyone looked mundane, albeit highly modified with tons of additiocs and biotics.

Camilla and Allissa were seemingly the only ones left on the Sihai side, which had now lost three fourths of its force, the remainder beaten and bloody corralling around Ao Shun to use their Primal Magic to deflect any oncomers. Ao Shun suddenly looked up at the top of the mountain, and shrieked an unnatural sound that none could ever have heard, a wailing Dragon cry at the sudden realization of a horror taking place. Ao Shun once more created the slipstream funnel to fly up to where Marik and the others supposedly were, but it was too late.

Up in the clouds above Kouriyasui, a blinding sickly green light erupted, sending light rays through the clouds on all sides, followed by an ear-splitting droning noise that drowned out all other sounds. Ao Shun interrupted the slipstream of air, forming instead a dome of air around himself and the few remaining Sihai, while vast funnels of sand spewed forth, torrents unending from that cloud-covered top of Kouriyasui, streaming into the valleys around the mountain like a pyroclastic flow from a volcano. The sand engulfed the Clockwork army in mere seconds, rapidly rusting and destroying the connections until they all collapsed one by one, the vast beetles with lances on their backs going last as their heavy joints gave out.

The Qadiriq commander tried to yell some sort of security orders, but the visors and windows of the control room (which was in fact, a massive triangular vehicle, of which the control room was the cockpit) did not hold, causing sand to jettison into the room. The room filled up in a near instant with a deadly flurry, Naaji and Amir’s avatars reaching a re-formed hand out to each other for but a moment until they suffocated to death, sand covering every orifice. Gehrman’s avatar lasted for a few moments longer, having quickly attached a breathing apparatus to his face. He reached for devices, shaped like round disks with holes in them which he could not understand, attempting to insert them into a device, which looked like it would be for safekeeping, before entering a keycode that only he could see, eventually succumbing with his hand on the control panel.

Ao Shun continued to make those wailing shrieks, the Sihai who remained meanwhile having lowered their weapons. There was nothing they could see outside of the shield Ao Shun had created for them, just the Dragon throwing an absolute tantrum inside of it, and the Sihai silently hovering with their wings awaiting their next orders. Eventually Ao Shun seemed to calm down or more specifically resign himself to the situation, the lights of a Leywarp spell forming, as the Sihai were cast one by one back to the Sheng Empire, Ao Shun following last, leaving nothing living behind in the valleys of Kouriyasui.

And then the group all woke up. Mere seconds after they had gone to sleep, in present time, with only their memories to tell.