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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nephis" data-source="post: 9195569" data-attributes="member: 20459">Cudgel still in hand, ARUNNY stands stunned, staring at her two lost family members. As soon as Uzmehr seems able to stand on his own - albeit on very shaky legs, the figure supporting him lets go and steps back. The young priestess rushes forward, hands outstretched, and her father weakly grasps them to maintain his balance. They stare at each in shocked joy, disbelieving their sight. "Father!" Arunny whispers. "Mehtapchichek!" (my little moonflower) Uzmehr answers. Together they gasp, simultaneously, "it's truly you!" After a beat that seems timeless and too short, they turn as one to regard the still shrouded figure, standing nearby. Arunny's mind is alive with scent of the explosions of thousands of tiny stars. One contains the thought of whether or not she only imagined the sound of Ahaan's voice earlier, alerting her to their father's plight. That thought explosion releases the scent of a memory: that of a more obscure meaning for her brother's name. Ahaan is commonly understood to mean "auspicious dawn" and other, similar meanings. But it also refers to "one who is of the nature of time itself." Has he somehow been transformed? What does his shroud hide? Does she truly want to know: can she? Should she? Will it drive her mad? Is he actually, truly here, at this moment?"Ahaan?"[HR][/HR]AHAAN's hands would be trembling if they were within the bounds of his sister and father's perception.  He seems to realize that they cannot detect those hands so he pulls them from the heavy, entombing sleeves they are clad in.He then holds what he sees up to his shrouded face seemingly to confirm what he already knows.Wraithlike, those hands that just wielded a deadly blade for the life of his father are barely there...blinking out of this existence.He reaches for the hilt of his blade.  Only able to manifest the will or physical strength (who knows which) to heft it for a moment, all eyes follow the weapon as it crashes to the ground with the metallic sound of steel on stone.He pulls back his cowl and his golden mane, his eyes, his face...all barely there... "Nerull, you are too swift to claim your prize..." he whispers...[HR][/HR]As ARUNNY stoops to pick up the fallen short sword of her twin, she glances upward at his face, back-lit by Her Light. The Seer notices a halo of Moonlight surrounding Ahaan's shrouded head, a wispy ring of rabbits, head to tail, the Celestial Messengers of Maba. This sight is somewhat reassuring, for it feels like a good omen, that the Moon Maiden's protection has not utterly left her brother. That something can still be done to combat whatever has apparently happened to him, is still happening.Still kneeling at his feet, holding the sword, the priestess watches the ring of Rabbits dancing around his silhouetted head. One skips slightly, another limps. Less hopeful, then. She remembers their own battle with Nerull, hers with Ibhea and Qamra, and the experience of being cursed by his high priest. During their journey, Maba had entered her dreams, telling the Seer that she has been healed, the debt has been paid.Paid how? Her brother's state seems evidence of payment: has her curse been transferred to her twin?"Dear Heart, what has happened to you? How can we help you?" Arunny asks him, for there must be a way. She has only just found him: she can not lose him now.[HR][/HR]AHAAN's apparitional hand reaches far from the folds of his heavy sleeves.  Like a phantom, he grazes his sister's own hand with the smallest of touch.  She sees images of her brother much younger than he is on this date, so she must be glimpsing the past.  A spectral figure bearing a scythe in one hand and an hourglass in the other can only be Nerull the Reaper or some terrible, yet lesser, manifestation.  The thing whispers to her young brother.  Tells him of this thing that will come to pass with his father many years from now and that he himself will perish in pursuit before Ahaan finds him in the far-flung desert and delivers him from this terrible Caiphonian fate that will befall him.  That the only way is to pledge his soul to Nerull and the bleak deity of time and death will give him a second life so that he might be the salvation for both his father and sister in their moment of greatest need.Ahaan senses that this is not mere circumstance...that Nerull's offer is from a place of spite...of ire...that some event would transpire in the future or perhaps had transpired in the past...that only Nerull knew of.  That there was a harboring of vengeance animating the deity toward something wicked, something vile.But it didn't matter.  Ahaan instinctively understood that the portent that was before him was the truth.  And so he took it up without even a moment worth of consideration.  His soul for the deliverance of his father and sister?  A small price to pay.[HR][/HR]ARUNNY frowns at the "vision" she receives, courtesy her brother's spectral touch, for while she can hear the overtones of citrus, attesting to Ahaan's "truth," that his understanding of his circumstance is the correct one, she can also sense earthier undertones of falsehood, not unlike Ibhea's whiskey. The Seer pulls forward other memories, some long forgotten, some completely unknown - wisps of memory woven in from her father's store. She watches the Moonlight continue to swirl its wisps: is the Maiden giving her these, or her consort? Suddenly, a picture superimposes itself over the vision given by her brother. In it Arunny sees the great tapestry of their lives, hers, Ahaan's, and even Uzmehr's, and within that woven cloth, a figure holds the two ends of a broken strand of the weft, holding them eternally connected. The female figure raises her head and stares steadily at Arunny: her mother. The priestess gasps as comprehension blooms in her mind, understanding the sacrifice her mother made. Falling are scales of the false mythology of her mother leaving their too human life: here is proof.The Seer places her arm around the nebulous figure of her brother and calls out, "Nerull! The sacrifice has already been made! You cannot receive the price twice: release my brother! He is the son of Uzmehr Dark Moon and is not yours to have. The one who was once known as being of the Nature of Time itself will be taken outside of time and transformed by the Maiden and her Consort." After a moment, Arunny repeats, more emphatically,  "he is not yours to have!"[HR][/HR]</blockquote>

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