<div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family:Quintessential"><span style="font-size: 26px">The Failure of the Chosen</span></span><br/>
_____________________________________________________________________________________________​</div><br/>The beauty of the forests of Asdenni was contradictory that day. The emerald floor was sprawling, flourishing, consuming the wild veins of trees, mottled with the vibrant patches of luminous growth. Aureate ribbons lined the eternal canopy, shifting, moving, flowing with every breeze that kissed the leaves, every fragrant wind that brought with it honeysuckle and sage. However, the golden song was silenced, the birds hushed, hesitant, too terrified to speak, to herald the sky. The world was holding its breath.<br/><br/>Levani stood amidst it, gold eyes wide, watching from beneath her hood. She was listening, statuesque and still as she did so, peering through the veil, through the illusion. There were things that stalked amidst the depths of Asdenni, unwelcome things which deigned to move freely beneath the sunlight. Their presence was felt deeply, prickling her flesh, standing the hairs on the back of her neck, dragging their claws up her spine. They molested the earthen artistry around them, poisoned it, relished in rolling in the lifeblood of its creation. Hatred. They were made of hatred. She shrugged her cloak closer, as though to guard against the shudder of disdain that wracked her, like a painful ripple across her hackles.<br/><br/>Confident of their position, Levani took the moment of silence to muster her strength and wrap her hands tighter around her magnificent staff, an elongated piece of dark wood decorated with glowing, green runes. The butt of it struck the ground, clearing power down through the dirt and giving it shape. Building up her will, she allowed it to flow through that which connected them both, and offered it to the living and inanimate things beneath. It stitched between them, quilting a blanket of animation and thought. She allowed it to become what it willed, fought against her desire to force her own image upon it; cleared the depictions from her mind until beneath her feet rumbled with the power and life it had been given.<br/><br/>A golem split from the ground, a canine formed of plant and rock and dirt, its eyes the rough gems of another world. Runes that mimicked her staff, the two inexplicably entwined, ran along its sides and back, giving it will and thought, allowing it movement. Gifts from She and He who gifted Levani herself.<br/><br/>The rumble had garnered the attention of her quarry, as Levani had intended, and she listened as they squealed and chirruped, blind animosity redirected.<br/><br/>One by one, the things of enmity and horror broke into a run, on mutant, slick limbs, before tumbling into the traps she’d set moments before. Vines and roots burst from the earth with a violent hunger, strangling and clawing, mangling legs. The construct she’d summoned darted forward, jagged, stone teeth sinking into throats, into the supple flesh. They all watched her from their entrapment, their hatred the only living remnant in their eyes. Deer, foxes, wolves, all of them, their flesh tattered, their bones broken, giving way to a growing, black sickness from within. It dappled their skin and worked its way deep into their soul. Their bodies broke as they fought to escape, fought to rip her apart.<br/><br/>There was hardly anything left of them except for their anger and their pain.<br/><br/>Without a moment’s mercy, Levani pulled the curved blade from her leather trousers, and joined her partnered creature, spilling the blood until the fight and madness bled with it. When it was finished, there was only silence. No birds, no insects. Just her breaths as they pulled in and released, the aching malevolence in her bones paling, quiet. The vines and roots creaked, slid away, leaving sad, shattered corpses. Her golden eyes closed for a moment, blocked out the dark massacre beneath her feet.<br/><br/>The sounds of the wood crashed like a wave when they resumed again, a welcoming, peaceful reprieve. Levani took this moment to lean against her temporary companion, glancing up at the sunlight that breached through the trees above. It was warm, illuminating the soft, creamy skin of<a class="link link--external" data-proxy-href="/proxy.php?link=https%3A%2F%2Fc1.staticflickr.com%2F3%2F2896%2F32751759014_798092886c_o.jpg&amp;hash=a96787da8e70dba523737a0a4fb6898a" href="https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2896/32751759014_798092886c_o.jpg" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">her face</a>. Though the morning was over, the rest of the day beckoned, and she could not bathe in the sun like the languid beast that she used to be.<br/><br/>The bloodied blade was wiped clean on her cloak and sheathed at her thigh once more. She raised her staff high and brought it down, striking the earth, gratefully returning her canine golem from once it came. It crumbled and the ground swallowed it, taking with it the bodies that they had rendered apart, taking with it the plague that splattered the dirt. The magic scattered, dissipated, and its remnants returned to her. She began to walk, the path secured in her mind, more sure with every familiar tree and bend and rock. Some of the gasping weeds shriveled pathetically beneath her feet as she moved, a side reaction to the power that throbbed in her staff and, as an extension, her body, so she brushed them away with her boots. It burned a soft trail through the wood, accented with the dappled emeralds of coiling grasses.<br/><br/>The trek took time and distance, as Levani had traveled far tracking the monsters that had meant to take root there. She climbed over brush tangles and up rockfaces and dashed across creeks, until she found the clearing.<i>Her</i>clearing. A giant tree dominated it, its roots a labyrinth snaking across the ground and into the forest, loomed far above the canopy. Its lavender leaves were bushy and pregnant with fruits, shaded the deep purple of a plum. At the base of the tree, the roots were lifted and tunneled, making a path deep into its heart. When she had first found it years ago, hardly an adept with her gifts, it had taken days to convince the kamuna tree that Levani was not an insect coming to infest it, but it had won out to her cajoling in the end, and made her a home, a small, living fortress in the northern wilds of Asdenni.<br/><br/>Levani lowered her hood, revealing soft, copper hair, the roots a deep black, the locks<a class="link link--external" data-proxy-href="/proxy.php?link=https%3A%2F%2Fc1.staticflickr.com%2F4%2F3943%2F33553977116_c42e40721f_o.jpg&amp;hash=a6edb1fc8d22383b36d2d7113d492a72" href="https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3943/33553977116_c42e40721f_o.jpg" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">short and splayed</a>. She was highly decorated, with studs and hoops climbing the curve of her ear, the long, maroon feathers of a sciolo bird adorning her lobes. Layers upon layers of leather thongs with various stones and runes laced throughout decorated the length of her neck, some even dipping down to lay across her chest.<br/><br/>She descended to the kamuna tree, to the belly of the beast, where the roots parted in her presence. To eat, to rest, to meditate and clear her mind of venom.<br/><br/><a class="username" data-user-id="51" data-username="@MercPhish" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" href="https://blackdahliaroleplaying.com/members/51/">@MercPhish</a>