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A Weave of Diamonds

The Far South...

On the border between chaos and reality, lies a crystal maze.

A crystal of pure reality.
So pure... it suffocates.

From the back of Carmine's manta, Gennadi could see it. Amidst the desert... a confluence of three great oasis and an empty city, once great. He sees as the Wyld encroached on this city... and he sees the exact point where something was used. Something that poured over the city like molten metal over a man's body... and over half of the city. Leaving it frozen solid. Crystal, smoky quartz... empty, lifeless. Dead. A great city of crystal. A great jungle of crystal. Spires and giant flying mantas and great lions the size of houses, all crystallized and already broken making for a... unsettling landscape.

As soon as they stepped out of the manta, Carmine looked into her pupil's eyes

"We have come to the maze."

Gennadi: "We've come to the... are you out of your mind, Cara?"

Carmine Tears: "Ikerre did this. Mad prophet Ikerre. You heard the legends, right? He was one of us. He was insane. Nobody even remembers who it is, aside from his Resplendent Destiny. It became calcified when this happened, as well. You have seen it in the loom, have you not?" He asks him with a sadistic smile. "The great tangle. The spiders always try to disentangle a little bit of it. Chaos always try to erode it. And they do...centuries have eroded so much. It is still a labyrinth of frozen fate, however."

"Silly, silly, Gennadi... is there a better place to truly understands the secret of the..."

"Diamond."
"Weave."
"Of your own Destiny?"

Gennadi: "If there is one thing, and only one thing that Exaltion has shown me..." He leans in close to her, foreheads touching, essence of Mars and Venus struggling and intertwining "It is that being mad never stops you from being right."

'Carmine Tears: She turns away from him violently, in effect striking his forehead with hers'. Clearly, hers was made of sterner stuff. "If there is something the Blossom of the Lotus will show you, Gennadi, is that order and sanity are what gives us power. Madness cannot touch the Sidereal Exalted is he is to attain greatness and power."

• Gennadi waves his hand at what surrounds them. "What do you call this if not power? What do you call this if not order? You have chosen poorly, dear Cara, if you wish to say that madness is... ineffective."

Carmine Tears: "That is power, yes, but not directed. The power of insanity rages without focus."

"And the mastery of martial arts requires focus. Like in any battle." She turns to him after looking about her surroundings with disapproval, "Jesters and fools do not make good warriors, Gennadi, no matter how much your kind insists on the contrary."

Gennadi: "You, of all the warriors that walk the world should know... sometimes it's better to be lucky than to be good." He slaps her rear with easy familiarity before hopping down, a backflip and twist before he lands atop a crystal spire, deep bow before he waits for her recital of the challenge.

Carmine Tears: She nearly growls... and then stops, reigning herself in.

Her mien is serene.

The serenity of a volcano as it holds in its eruption.

"Well, then... let us begin the test."

"Breathe, Gennadi. Close your eyes." She says, and there is an edge to her words.

• Gennadi takes a moment, tugs one of his lower eyelids down, and then is almost instantly serene, eyes closed and steady breathes, the sleep of an innocent or the face of an enlightened master.

Carmine Tears: And then, he could hear the tingling of the chains. They wrapped around him... and seemed to shift... something in him. He could hear her voice... "It is Frozen Fate, Gennadi. It is good that you have no Resplendent Destinies to call on, or I might have to shatter them all. You are going there now. You are in the heart of the tangled, crystalized fate. It is so much like us. It is like being emprisioned in the fangs of the pattern spiders, in a mass of threads on the loom fate..."

"You have to pull yourself out..."

"Or be lost into yourself."

"Open your eyes now, Gennadi..."

And as he does, he feels the weight of the world....

And he is in the heart of the crystals. Or what he thinks might be it. Standing over crystals, surrounded by them... smoky, indistinct shapes within. He hears... echoes. Whispers. He is not alone. Something cries... something whispers... someone talks from behind crystals, from above him, from below him, behind his ear...

• Gennadi rubs at a temple ruefully. "Nobody told me there'd be days like this." Still, he knows he can make it through, and knows he's been through worse... if the false-demigods o the fae can come here to test themslves, if the spiders can slowly unravel it, surely an Exalt, Chosen of the Maidens, fate-wrapped warrior, surely he can handle it. It's just picking where to start...

Gennadi: Who knows the tale of the prophet Ikerre? It is taught in the academies of heaven and the schools of creation as a cautionary tale, certainly. The binding, the snarl, the strange crystal land of madness. Everyone knows.

Who knows the tale of the prophet Ikerre? There is only a mystery, a destiny bound to the earth, a legacy of power and madness, ten thousand facets of crystal reflecting nothing. No one knows.

There is only the third way, the way of fate, reason and expectation that, by their very nature, prove true. The art of the era, the aims accomplished, the few known things add up to more than the sum of their parts as Gennadi hums, unconsciously matching his tune in dissonance to the whispers and words.

• Gennadi remembers the tale of Ikerre. He reached within himself for a power not even an Exalted should possess, and unleashed it with a power to freeze time and break chaos. A thing of ultimate order unleashed in ultimate madness. Some say it is not a thing he could develop - and they whisper the name of Primordials who could teach him such a destructive gift. But in all accounts, he froze many things, there besides chaos...
  
  That is why all avoid it. Chaos eats it away and Sidereals try to disentangle it sometimes... but it is in their nature to weave, not to unweave. All left, however, for there are things who walk out of it at times. All speak of it as a cautionary tale... for one might bring out worse things than what he is stopping, when one tries to stop forces like the Fair Ones with all their might... a cautionary tale against Ends, against Means, against Passion, about Restraint.

Gennadi: Restraint. Gennadi knows that word all too well.

The shackles he treated almost as toys as a youth.

The water that tried to hold him from the ocean floor and wonder, but never could.

The passioned grip of a lover.

The biting grasp of a gauntlet around his throat, a chain around his opponent's neck, and waiting to see who had the willpower to last.

The implacable, untouchable front of a mask he wears most every day.

Restraint. There was a reason she told him to close his eyes. Seeing, here, is not believing. For an Exalted, one so intimately bound to the concept, it is best to walk with instinct and sly understanding, one hand raised simply into the air to caress the threads of the snarling tangle. Finding his way along and out doesn't even occupy his mind so much anymore after this flash of insight... The spikes he sidesteps and chasms he flicks across with the leap of a charmed fool less worrying than the real issue:

If what's behind Gennadi's mask, that restraint he places on himself is leading him out... what's behind the mask that's keeping him in?

• There are souls here, frozen. Echoes. Thoughts. People and monsters of chaos were frozen solid for their substance, but things without substance were given it. Dreams and Nightmares and Echoes all exist here. And prowl, on the places where Princes of Chaos, in fact, any creature of chaos, would become simply a statue of quartz or a pillar of salt.
  
  Gennadi is standing there.
  
  And the echoes of the past, the nightmares of many minds and pehaps Ikerre's own are there. Pehaps Gennadi's own thoughts can become as reality there as well? How far do they extend? Fate turn them into pillars of salt, creatures of chaos... and what does it do for Sidereals? Such tightly-bound Fate, what can it do to him?

Gennadi: An excellent question... and an excellent trap, in and of itself. To ask the mind to conjure up it's own snares to free itself? It's brilliant, more shining by far than any of the beams of light that surround him.

Another sidereal, perhaps they would fall. He can contemplate Carmine striving endlessly against the strands that bound her, Alexsei hunting for just the right solution, little Aria bouncing from nightmare to memory, forever distracted by this slice of reality and blinded from appreciation of the whole.

But he is not one of them. Gennadi has no nightmares. Restrained optimism, an icy warmth, tender strikes and apologies while you twist the knife. He has no nightmares, only dreams, bright and shining, warm and colorful, everything these crystals want to be but fail at in their sharp, unfeeling facets.

He, unlike this place, can understand. He can empathize.... but, and it's nothing personal, he has greate things to strive for than this, as mythic as these nightmares may be, the only one that has a hold on him is the status quo.

• Gennadi easily finds his way around. Nothing seems to deter him.
  
  Nothing. At. All.
  
  He finds his way around - clearly, he is somewhere to the south and west of where had been before, but not to the center of the insanity. He walks, and in gusts of paperwinds, his diaries scroll past. Plates of food with burnt castemarks on them. Images of Amethyst burnt on the crystals themselves. Many things on his way.... until a person seems to be sat above a great crystal... something.
  
  A tanned man of azure hair and golden eyes.
  
  "Hey, there. Penny for your thoughts."

Gennadi: "I'm rather fond of them where they are, but the offer's kind of you." He grins, running a hand through his hair. "Riddle contest or something here?"

????: "Not here. Just a bored man and a driven man meeting on a crystal jungle. I know what is in your thoughts, however. Everyone here thinks the same, don't they? It is always... you look there..." He points, and loses himself in the crystals, in their dullness, in the way all is so... still. Real diamonds, crystals and gems seem to have more life than the dull, strict order here. "... and you think, could I do it? Is that what order will bring? Is that what chaos will bring?"

Gennadi: "I know I could do it. What I don't know is why." He shakes his head. "I think by this day, the potential is understood. It is the application that remains mysterious."

????: "You see, it is not a why. We do not try to do it. It happens."

"That is... when we try to do something... and do so much more." "So much wrong."

Gennadi: "More reach than grasp?"

????: "Oh, always. Is that not how it is always, for you?" He asks as he drops down, smiling at Gennadi. "Is it not? Your profession, with relationships... how many tragedies have come from masterpieces, Gennadi? How many?"

Gennadi: "Many, many... and sometimes, it is the tragedy that makes it a masterpiece, Ikerre."

????: "Ikerre? Is that my name? Are you sure? I could be just a stranger. Just a dream, or a nightmare!" He claps his hands in front of Gennadi's face. "How do you figure I am The Madman? Is it my smile? My tux? Is it the way my hair makes one think of a magnificent duck?"

Gennadi: "I figured that anyone else in here wouldn't be nearly as cheery. The smile, of the options presented."

????: "Or maybe that is what you think I am." He opens his hands, showing cards that fall to the ground becoming crystals and breaking... "... so many cards. I ever wonder which of them is me, and which combination of them would make me escape myself. Do you?"

Gennadi: "I suspect, my dear madman..." he reaches out to the man, behind his ear, and flicks out a card of his own. "If it was a card, it would have been this one."

????: "The stolen card? The missing card? The joker on the deck? Oh, that is such a serenity thing to say."

Gennadi: "I'm glad you liked it!" He grins. "I very much doubt my Sifu would approve... but she's not here, is she?"

????: He shakes his head and begins to pick the remains of the cards on the ground, holding the splinters of the shattered in the shape of cards on his hands. Gennadi can see pieces of things there... and then realises the pieces of things are still on the ground, and he picked slivers of other things around them... people, raksha, lizards, pets. He holds splinter crystals of people on the shape of broken cards that, as a shattered mirror, still hold it its total shape. That of cards. A hand of cards in his hand, a hand of broken. "Of course not, only the dead and mad dwell here. Pick a card, find out who you are!"

Gennadi: Not a particularly benign sounding game... But then, in this place, what else can you expect? Gennadi has rarely been one for fairness... sometimes he even properly believes that cheating is just part of being good at the game. Here, of course, that's a terrifying concept.

He rings his finger back and forth, finds a shard that pricks his finger, closes his eyes, and picks it, crimson running down to coat the crystal. "Perhaps, of course, I'm both."

????: And he opens his eyes...

To see...

A card with a man in a blindfold, atop wheels that are at the same time a Loom.

A dead king is over the wheel, being dragged down.
A prince is raising on the opposite, crowned king by the man's left hand...
While his right still holds the dagger that killed the king.
And with his teeth, he holds strings that allow him to control the wheels that form the loom.
His eyes are wide-open and black-bulged, insomniac, tense, verging insanity.

The card is the Vizier.

"The card did not kill you. That is a start!"

Gennadi: "I can see why these never caught on elsewhere." He shakes his head. "I've been mugged more gently than the honesty in that card..."

????: "Images of our souls are hardly ever subtle. How could they be, when sublety comes from the mind? But I liked those, I liked those... they were always a dash of honesty in Creation. Sad that they are gone. Or are they? Are you tricking me, you who are courtesan and not trickster? Or is a vizier a trickster in his own way?" He lets go of the cards and they fall... all of them breaking in a black glass, a glass that seems laced with poison and destruction, noxious fumes reaching up... his fate if he had chosen poorly.

Gennadi: "Every cop's a criminal, and all the sinners saints. It just depends on which point of view it's convient to hold at the time."

????: "I suppose..." Is all he says, making a pirouette to turn his back to Gennadi... Walking behind a collumn...

... and fading from sight.

"Time. Time is frozen here. Is it a land of all conveniences, or a land of no conveniences, hmmm?"
The voices asks, nowhere and everywhere.

Gennadi: "With time frozen, I am not sure you can hardly call it a land at all. The issues of convienence seem to mean little in a land that cannot change. A strange question for a stranger land."

????: The winds of memory blow around Gennadi once again. Echoes of silence.

The sky shifts, an arrangement that never changes, but is never the same whenever one looks.

Gennadi feels something suffocating around him. Tension. Reality.

Where is he?

Gennadi: Where is he? He is There.
Where is he? Over the hills and far away.
Where is he? Where he lays his head is home.
Where is he? Stuck in a thrice-bedamned trap he wants out of.

The deadly shards act as a map with a bit of ingenuity and essence, the whole array of broken shards modeling itself after the recent terrain. He looks for patterns that repeat, fractal sequences, trying to ascertain the simple mad logic of the place. He needs not know where he is, just how he got there and how to get out.

????: Gennadi understands... and he knows, indeed, how to get out.

Past memories.
Past time.
Past the tangled fate.

And finally, he thinks he sees the opening at the end of the crystal...

And in front of him, things begin to shamble.

They look like his father.
They look like Amethyst.
They look like Shaliya.
They look like the Captain that would receive him on his ship, on his name day.
They look like Alex.

Five dolls, broken, shambling, fanged smiles at Gennadi as they begin to circle him...

Gennadi: It's always like this, isn't it? Attachments just serve to drag you down, unmanaged and untamed, they define your existence far more than you, the unbreakable web of the spiders. But here and now, Gennadi can soar, untouched and regal, without guilt or pain to weigh him down. A graceful arc, a step on the head of Amethyst as she waves claws at him, and again, floating through the air, a butterfly having just left a cocoon.

????: They claw at Gennadi... but he escapes, running, coming out of the epicenter.

It is a long walk from there, but away from it, Fate is less mingled, and echoes do not take form. Time is less compressed, and flows like a river, not a tangled, ruined mandala, and thus Gennadi can navigate himself easier. It is a few hours of walk... and he is back at the city, out of the crystallized place, with Carmine sat on an empty, ruined, overgrown park with a picnic carpet, eating some southern dry bread, not noticing him.

• Gennadi keeps that tangled time wrapped around him just long enough to brush crumbs from her mouth, the contrast of tenderness and the view down her front appealing to him. "Does the crazy man always talk to people that take a walk through?"

Carmine Tears: "... oh. You are alive."

She nods absent-mindedly, looking up at him. "Your crystallized dreams looked like a crazy man? Hrm, I'm surprised, I didn't think you swung that way... or were those your fears? If so, must as it pains me, I have to tell they you are right - you are crazy." She says with a mischievous smile. "If it was some manifestation of Ikerre or one of the poor sods caught at ground zero, well - if you could understand him, it means it's saner than usual."

Gennadi: "He tested me on my knowledge of the place, seemed to be Ikerre, and wanted me to pick a card... the ones I didn't draw exploded, some form of horrible poison gas inside."

Carmine Tears: "Oh. I heard of that. If you picked the wrong one, you'd have to fight off some corrosive poison inside you as every bad memory of those around the crystal filtered in you and filled your body with despair and entropy they are denied in the crystal. And then he'd twist into a nightmare and try to kill you." She shakes her head. 'Pity. I'd have loved to know if you could survive that."

Gennadi: "Didn't fight a thing, really. Found my way out, ran a couple of times... Maybe if I'd stumbled out, victorious over a horde of enemies, you'd have nestled me to your generous bosom while I recovered, the rights of the glorious hero."

Carmine Tears: "Well, not really, that would mean you failed in the part of 'finding your way out' and stumbled into too many nests of fears, nightmares, and worse things. So that would mean you were a poor student and needed a scolding and pehaps a spanking. I am doing neither, so count your blessings, my poor Gennadi."

Gennadi: "I spend too much time worrying about Blessings already, dear Carmine. Besides..." He nibbles at her ear. "That last part didn't sound too bad, Cara..."

Carmine Tears: She pushes him away, smiling. "Sorry, but that will stay on your dreams. Now, now, eat something."

"Saturn's next, my dear. You'll need to eat some before that."

Gennadi: "Hrmph. Typical Cara, making me work for anything and everything." He breaks off a piece of bread and sits next to her. "Do I get a hint about what comes next? I know who comes last, but that's after the testing..."

Carmine Tears: "Oh yes, you do, my poor, dear Gennadi..." She leans closer to him, and smiles. Her greatest toothy grin, her crimson eyes seeming to explode with mischief, evil and future pain. "It is An End, Gennadi. Not of the tests, but it is An End... and you must know... if you hold the reins of your Fate tightly enough to say when and how things will end."

The Next Day...

The Peak of Sorrows in Varang.

Not too far from Carmine's Manse.

From there, he could overlook their spires, and see some of the Great Clockworks of the old times. Not like those in Yane... but some could be seen from there. He heard of the Underworld ones, built by the same masters after thier deaths... the strange wonders they must be.

Carmine was behind him, arms crossed... watching.

"This is a good place. It gives one... perspective."

"Fate Ends Now."

She makes a gesture, and amethysts of various sizes fall around Gennadi, beggining to grow... "Anything to ask before I start this in earnest?"

Gennadi: "It's been a long time. When we celebrate my ascension into the glorious ranks of teachers, will you want top or bottom?"

Carmine Tears: The Amethysts continue to grow. Chains whip away from them.

She touches his chest, pressing a point.
And another.
And another.
And another.

"End. Love. Life. Care. Harvest."

The Amethysts grow. Three demons spring from them, made of pure Amethyst.

They look at Gennadi... and he is not there.

He is in the Garden of a Manse. All Sidereals he knows are there, on the Manse, he just knows.

Shalyia, perched up on the edge of a Fountain, watches him wake up.

Gennadi: "... son of a bitch. Didn't even get mad at me." He idly waves at her. "Morning, dear. I guess you're here as part of the test..." A quick check on his body parts follows, all of them still attached. He doesn't think his brain has been turned inside out... and certainly, the rest seems to be in order. He finally decides to sit up.

Shaliya: "Test? Is that what they are calling it nowdays?" She says with... an oddity of sorts. A forlorn giggle.

"So, are you ready?"

• Gennadi files that away, somewhat worried, but doesn't comment. "I am sidereal. I am never fully ready, but I guess you could say I am close enough to count." He lays back out and kips up to his feet, wiping his mouth to try to smooth away the odd taste...

Shaliya: "Well, then... you know the rules." She says, picking a blade from the hollow of her bosom... and placing it on his hands. "You sever your connections. You sever all you love, and you get out of here. My heart, and Their Hearts. That is your Fate, that is the Fate woven here."

She spreads her arms, and lowers her head.

"I am ready."

Gennadi: "And I am not. I have no intention of believing there is only one solution to any problem, and neither do I quite recall being told those are the rules."

Shaliya: "You didn't? But you have seen them! All around you. That is what Sidereals do. That is what it is supposed to happen. No attachments. Even on the expense of our own. If you do not do that, they will. I have to die. They have to die," She points at the interiors of the Manse... "And you won't really miss us. We never loved you. We never cared. This is bussiness. My life is bussiness, my death is bussiness."

Gennadi: "So is my refusal. You don't take the first contract offered, you don't pay the first price, and you don't sign without seeing the fine print." He takes the blade and carefully cleans underneath a fingernail. "I've been told what everyone else thinks the rules are, I've seen the ways that they've been phrased by Bronze and Gold alike, and strikingly enough... nobody agrees. What the rules are, dear Shaliya, has yet to be proven for this particular event. And if I might be so bold, I'd say they are what I bloody well decide they are."

Shaliya: "And what with they disagree?"

Gennadi: "If disagreeing was grounds for failure in a land of our kind, I cannot imagine how anyone ever passed this test."

Shaliya: "They do. Because they let go. You think I like you?" She asks, driving her tumb on his arm, suckling off his blood... "Do you want to know what I told Damian behind closed doors? How we laughed on your stupidity? Do you want to know how much of your life is a lie, driven by us, all of us? Do you want to know how much they can dirty all you love to make your 'choice' miserable?"

Gennadi: "Getting ahead of yourself again." He works the small cut open more for her with the blade, a gracious host. "I'd like to see them try. I'd love to see them waste their time not saving the world and harassing one little western boy. They came to ME for this test, they wanted ME for some unfathomable reason, and you're telling me all of a sudden, they've changed their minds, and want me to kowtow and teach the girl nothing she couldn't get from a protocol manual? I didn't know they, whoever that is, were so *his voice drips with venom* fucking stupid."

Shaliya: She leans down, licking the cut, savoring it with that ecstastic face she always makes... "... yes, they did. But can they trust you? Can you attain power? Do you know what Sidereal power is? It is not caring. About me, about others... here, come on." She picks him by the hand, bringing him deeper into the Manse...

• Gennadi stops suddenly, pulling her to him. "If I cut your throat, then I care about their choices. If I am forced to power, I cannot truly attain power. this isn't about them, it's about me, and while a tour of my elders arrayed in their finery and visions might pass the time, it won't change my mind."

Shaliya: "Your elders? My, why would I show them to you, Gennadi?" She slides the first door. It has another sliding door behind it, but it is dark glass. They can see the other side, but the other side cannot see them. And on the other side, there is... Amethyst.

Lonely Amethyst: She is on his lap. A beautiful demon. Lucien, the Guardian of Sleep. Legs wrapped around him, covered in sweat. Nibbling his neck. "Y... yes... he is... he wants... something. A... ahn! He wanted to end things with me just... just to protect me... idiot... he is planning something big enough... that he wants no... atta... attachmen... uhnnn! "

Shaliya: Shaliya's hands hold him, from behind. He can feel her smile, as Amethyst looks directly at him, without knowing it. "We do not care. You shouldn't too. Her heart, Gennadi. Don't you want to?" She nibbles on his ear... "Cut it off. "

• Gennadi takes a deep breath. His hand clenches on the dagger, one finger caressing the blade firmly enough to draw blood. "If I wanted to cut it off.. that would mean I cared in the first place." He grins, almost feral. "It is possible to have attachments, without the attachments having you."

Shaliya: "Oh, is it? Tough, so tough..." She moves her hand, over his chest... "Hearts do not lie. So fast, so fast, so fast. Poor little Gennadi, no man is a rock. And those who are, they did this. Killed all of their attachments..."

Gennadi: "Rocks shatter. People tear and heal. I know which I trust in more."

Shaliya: "So adamant... not doing anything? Hmmm, pehaps they misjudged you. Pehaps you like to watch." She whispers. "Is that what you wish? To keep us alive for us to be broken, debased, defiled? Is that what you want?"

Gennadi: "Being dead hardly prevents that from happening, Shaliya." He turns back to kiss her cheek. "Even death is not necessarily a final ending. If what you were showing me was true... it would already be dealt with, or have been her choice. I see no reason to go mad over something that does not concern me."

Shaliya: "Oh, really? That is your way, then...?" She begins to bring him by his hand... and opening another door. There is his home town, there. It has descended into madness, someone who looks like his nephew-grandson as the current chieftain... working people to death. "To cut your loves, to cut your lineage..."

• Gennadi taps the blade against his thigh. "That I am whole? Perhaps. It is management, not blind cutting. Surgery, not murder."

Shaliya: "Come again?"

Gennadi: "There is a difference between completely severing ties, and having... priorities. There is a difference between being unable to care, and knowing what to care about."

Shaliya: "... and what do you care about?"

Gennadi: "That... dear shaliya... is a secret, and has no bearing on my ability to gain power."

Shaliya: And then, everything begins to shake. All around him, the threads that make the whole Manse...

"See what you did? Now time's up!"

"We all die anyway, silly, and you get no way out of here!"

Gennadi: "I make my own way. I don't have it handed to me, and that is what makes me all the stronger. Everybody dies, but it's the choices you make in life that matter... and I'll be damned if I regret any of them."

Shaliya: "Big talk coming from someone who's not going to kill because of what he'll regret!"

Gennadi: "Killing you doesn't get me anything. I'd feel much better tearing out the still-beating heart of whoever came up with this setup. And really, this is all about me." He just grabs her tight and flicks his wrist, letting the long chain dangle to the floor. "Right?"

Shaliya: She looks up at him... real or not, she gulps. "You will fail..."

Gennadi: "Then I don't have to deal with a drunken pinkhaired student. It's all coming up aces for Gennadi Ilkov."

There is a paradox to the existence of sidereals. On the one hand, they draw their power from the strictures of fate, from the rules of reality. On the other, Essence, and the ability to bend and break them as you see fit. Guess which one Gennadi has the chain in?

The manse shatters into a thousand curtains, and the curtains into a thousand ropes, each rope a thousand strings and each string a thousand threads. There are so few links in the chain, but they are strong and shining, firmly working their way through a sudden cloud of amethyst.

His actions tangle it all, the burden he bears tugging here and there. In a haze of blue, brilliant white, and cloying purple he swings through the nothingness, trailing a snarl of sharp studded gemstone behind him.

In this new world he can see his target, the angry demons that float menacingly in the darkness. He kicks out, with perfect grace..... and misses completely, whirring erratically through black as the light chases him down. Shaliya wails, but white teeth shine as a sudden crunching sound rips through the void.

The sound of a world full of endings falling down.

Carmine Tears: Snarled violet threads strike at the demons. Three hearts of violet are ripped out.

And the movements are there. The movements she taught him in the dojo before each session, those the tests had brought him through. She walked closer, kicking amethyst fragments downhill, and looking Gennadi up and down. His stance. He had seen through it, understood the fate thar guided him. She touched the snarled threads. They were not a violet snarl.

"A Weave of Diamonds."

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