“Oh, cease your tantrum. Just a Dragon-serpent Tree Sapling, give it a century before Ikesia has a new landmark and easier access to scalebark… Eh, maybe thirty years if the Smoke Witch hasn’t lost her touch. Freakishly good with plants considering her abilities, that one… She all but jumped at the opportunity to assuage one of the many sins gnawing at her soul, she just needed an excuse big enough to silence that ego of hers.”

“You dare… The scales-” began the younger brother, only to fall silent. His voice was gone, for his brother had raised his hand in anger and by his command over the nine winds ripped the air from his brother’s lungs.

The calamitous weather stopped; not because Hedan was calm, but because its opposite overwhelmed it. One storm was scattered to the winds by the formation of another, so mighty it superseded their mansion’s barrier and ripped chunks from the roof, sanding away at the mountain below and sending down rockslides.

INSTANT BOMBOGENESIS

THE UNLEASHED THUNDERING WRATH OF AN ANKHEZIAN SAGE

“YOU DARE?! YOU DARE TO SPEAK OF THE SCALES, OF THE BALANCE WE SWORE TO UPHOLD, WHEN IT WAS YOU WHO THREW THOSE VERY SCALES OUT OF BALANCE THINKING I WOULD NOT FIND OUT? WERE YOU ANY MORE BRAZEN, I WOULD HAVE SLAIN EISENGEIST MYSELF AND HANDED HIS TAILS TO THAT WOMAN, YOU FUCKING BRAT. Now you will sit down, you will be silent, and you will NOT INTERFERE. Try anything, and I will seal you inside our home for a decade, do you understand?!”

The black-robed brother shrank back, his ageless features twisted, for the first time in a thousand years, by genuine fear. Where Hedan was easily angered and readily made his anger clear, Wodan very rarely dropped his whimsical outlook. Hedan knew well that it was best to acquiesce if Wodan felt this strongly about something.

“I am merely concerned with the proper balance of things. Surely, my simple deception could not have roused your anger so. There must be something I was not aware of.”

“You… Are not lying,” Wodan squinted. The storm still raged, but already it began to subside. “Then the fact that Von Wickten survived as an Impurity Elemental - it was not your doing?”

“Not in the least. But… Given his state, he should be an equal problem for all, should he not?”

“If only things were so easy. Tian Feng saddled him with the Armor of Pure Purpose. I only learned of it recently myself, immune to scrying as that accursed artifact is. He seems to have all but vanished somewhere near the Northern Capital after he escaped Agartha. I fear that even what I have done may not suffice to offset Tian Feng’s own attempts to throw a mountain onto the scales.”

It couldn’t be more than another twenty kilometers to Oasis City.

Zefaris sent an aetherwave message as she urged the bears to run faster.

“Bring the titan to a stop. I will pull ahead and warn the druids of your coming, then send you the go-ahead.”

An affirmative ping returned to her, and Teutobochus stopped where it stood.

She arrived at the city’s edge not half an hour later, and found a druid not two minutes later by just heading to the nearest barrier-generating obelisk. Then came the difficult part. Once she got him to take her to a private space away from possible prying eyes, she projected it out in visual form rather than risk someone overhearing. To the druid’s credit, he took it rather well, despite the obvious concern in his face at the knowledge.

“How long until it arrives?” the druid signed.

“It waits half an hour by sled from the city,” she responded.

The druid raised a hand to his chin, thinking for a moment before he signed: “Very well, I will ensure that the Titan is not treated as a direct threat, within reason. If you are able, keep it outside the barriers. You will be held accountable if it causes serious damage or kills someone. Anything else?”

Zefaris shook her head, leaving the druid and sneaking off back to her sled. She sent Victor the go-ahead as she made her way to Ingvald’s, not trying to conceal herself. At her knocking, the blacksmith did not emerge; not until she called out to him and made it known that she had something important to tell him.

Through a narrow crack in the door, possessed eyes stared at her; not by a spirit, but by a manic desire to create which was frustrated by the absence of proper material. He was going insane, she could see it.

“What?”

“Your Fallen Star. We have it.”

The blacksmith nearly doubled her over as he ripped his door open and came barreling out of his smithy, hammer in hand, twitchily glancing left and right before locking a furious gaze to Zefaris.

“Where is it?!”

“On the way, at most half an hour ‘til it arrives to the city’s edge,” she said, pointing the direction from which she had come, and from which Teutobochus would arrive. “The star is the size of a small house, however.”

“Ah, what a lovely problem to have!” the blacksmith beamed. “It is no issue. I can do basic processing on the spot - split it up, separate the core, all that. Just need to get transport sleds…”

He cast a desirous gaze to the bears which pulled Zef’s single sled.

“No, not enough. I’ll need something heavy-duty…”

With those words, he vanished into his smithy, returning with a hastily-written note.

“Here. There’s directions on the back, take it there and tell them Ingvald is calling in his blood-debt and to send it to my smithy.”

Oasis City was thrown into disarray by the arrival of a landmark whose true nature had passed into myth.

Mighty titan of a long-dead king, returned to fulfill its work. None knew that it was being controlled from within, or the true identity of its pilot; Victor had not become known to any significant degree. A great number of curious eyes gathered to get a look at Teutobochus’ approach, the druids having formed a cordon in anticipation of just this.