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Sleep eluded the feverish stargazer as he watched the silver jewels of the night sky with active malice from his lonely hilltop. For the fifth night, he had chronicled the position of every major constellation, and for the fifth night he fell into a fit of whispered cursing at the result. The stars remained in the places every astronomical index had said it would, but the success of the newly invented science was exactly the problem; he was seeking to bend the paths of the stars.

"Not even the slightest deviation..." he muttered. But then, if it had been easy, he wouldn't have fought to achieve it. The astrological art of a Warlock's magic was indeed rooted in the power and permanence of the stars. It was their claim to fame by which they looked down with pity upon all other wizards who bound themselves to feeble terrestrial elements, and a practice that Haldigur Bar'thon had twenty-five years of experience with.

He sighed as his eyes easily picked out the configuration of star signs; Arnog the Mason was finishing his arc into the west, and straight above him danced Kellia, Maiden of Blades. The signs meant it was an auspicious night, but furthermore, a test. His magical powers, thrall to the cyclical dance of such gods, was at a noontide and he felt foolish for even trying to influence their motion on such an evening. Something, however, caught his eye. Out on the grassy plains below, a light rose from within one of the many ruins of the ancient Teagur empire that had once ruled this land. He extended an invisible tendril of his own astromantic power and felt it was a magical flame, disgust overtaking him.

"You pathetic little elementalist. You waste your life bound to the fleeting power of such whimsical beings. Disgusting," he growled into the darkness, wishing he had yelled over the gentle breeze wafting across his face. If for no other reason than spite, he had to try once more to move a star...even the slightest deviation of the smallest star would mean he was breaking through the chains, getting ever closer to perfect magic. So, he lifted his hand heavenward, clenching his teeth and forcing all his power into Enir Tritacha, feeling his chaotic power surge, then drain from his body until he saw it.

"I've done it...I've..." he murmured, falling to his hands and knees, a single proud tear in his eyes, dripping down into his grinning mouth. He watched Enir Tritacha's light begin to dim by degrees which his honed star-sight could make out. He watched it until the dwarf's glimmer was all but gone, and fell into deep slumber.

Something, however, was not right. He dreamed of blinding light, and awoke with a start as a great cacophony overwhelmed him and forced him to retreat into the world of the waking. He rose, dusted himself off and looked to the sky to make sure it hadn't all been a glorious dream. There it was, or rather wasn't; the warlock had done it.

And yet the gods send me a dream of pure pain...do the heavens think to rebel so soon after a mortal has become their master? he wondered. Arrogantly, he laughed at the stars.

"I will take you all into my iron grip soon..."

"I will take you all into my iron grip soon..."

In that moment, as the last words passed between his lips, the would-be master of the stars felt some presence at his back, where he had thought no creature would dare to stand without announcing itself. He was on the edge of omnipotence - who would dare?

When he turned, the question was answered, and all thought was blasted from his mind from the sheer import of what was before him.

The ground was smoking as if struck by a celestial object that had burned with the intensity and force that should have driven it into the earth, suggesitng a heat that would have turned diamond into gas and yet was localized so that he himself had not been killed. That must have been what awoke him, but if in the blankness of his thoughts some small part of him was screaming that he should already be dead, and he did not even know why.

What rose from the ashes there was difficult to see in its entirety; jet black and shining, bipedal and inhuman, hunched and lithe, it possessed legs that faded into mist where terrestrial creatures had feet and arms that were longer than the star gazer's body. Eyes the color of distant stars stared out over a mouth full of black teeth that impossibly stood out against the absolute darkness of the creature's frame. These suggestions of features were all that could be seen, but its intent was clear.

The gazer felt a tug at his mind that brought him, screaming, back to alertness, but he was unable to resist as he felt knowledge pulled from him and copied like notes from a textbook.

"Your language does not possess the words," said the creature, its voice nebulous and thundering, booming from organs never meant to reproduce human speech, "to describe the severity of your crimes, Blind Eye." The creature took a step forward, and its eyes were narrowing and its teeth stood out against the darkness of its flesh as if they had been white. "I am the god of the star you have trifled with, and I am here to chastise you."

It reached out with one of its long hands.

OoC: Ball's in your court now. Negi, Video, e'erybody, I'll get to you guys in the morning. -OoC

As the being's appendage reached for him, Haldigur's mind suddenly raced to life. There was a premonition of horrible agony, the type he had only felt once before; in the very dream that had thrust him from sleep to this moment. His confidence faltered, but as he took a step back, he mustered the best of it and laughed mockingly at the creature.

"A god, you say? It seems my powers are beyond your own, since your star went spinning..." he trailed off as the creature's arm reached him and gripped his waist with a grip that was impossibly hot. The Warlock wondered why he did not burst into flames. Then it was cold, then hot again. He had been tortured by magic before, however, and sent the pain into the back of his mind long enough for his gesture of defiance.

"Your star was just the first of many! Are you afraid!?" he shouted, calling forth all of his mighty magic into a violet wave of shadow magic. The energy washed over the form of the star-god, but even the moment it left Haldigur's fingertips, he knew it had barely even registered in the being's nervous system. He'd spent himself with that one great spell, and was unable to do anymore than writhe in the creature's grip.

"Wh-why? Why would you deny me my ascension? I--" he stared into the being's eyes and for the first time, he truly knew fear. For the first time, he simply could not overcome.

"I am your god! Release me!" he demanded in a quaking voice.

"I am your god! Release me!" It did not sound much like a demand at all; his voice cracked, and the terror tat filled his eyes was far too real.

The hand around his waist constricted, and he felt another pulse of cold, and hot, and cold, the flaring of a sun and the intolerable iciness of the void. This creature was pumping such energies into him as he had never known, though something in the god's face told him that it was passive, that nothing could stop it from-

"Listen, Blind Eye."

He felt some force reach into his brain, ethereal fingers unlocking centers of sensation that he had not previously been aware of, and then he heard, the cashing of worlds slammed together and the vacuum of oceans drained away in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat....

His eyes locked with those of the star god, and he trembled as he realized he was not being tortured: he was merely feeling its pulse through his skin.

"Then you understand that small part - but your understanding is forced, artificial, as is everything about you. You see nothing, Blind Eye, not your own actions or the field on which you or playing or even the face of the god who holds you in this hand." He smiled, then - or Haldigur processed it at a smile, there was nothing else the twitchings of its face could be, unless the thing did not lie and he somehow could not see it. "I will show you."

The god held up its other hand, fingers splayed, and ran them across Haldigur's body, and Haldigur began to scream before he realized he was in pain. His skin split along the lines that the fingers had traced, rivulets of blood that refused to run opening on his face and torso, his clothes sliced cleanly through and falling off of his body, and then his skin split in thousands of directions, directions that had surely never been traced, had never even be gestured into, tracing out glyphs and shapes that no human eyes could follow without spiraling downwards into motionlessness. In three heartbeats, three rotations of aching cold and scorching heat, Haldigur's naked frame was white parchment covered in red shapes so numerous that he held the appearance of one made of blood.

Then the skin broke completely and flew off of him in shreds, perfectly cut into tens of thousands of pieces. They twisted and burned, and Haldigur felt them, felt them burning as he felt cold air touch his muscle tissue and his bones, and he was far past screaming.

"Learn, Blind Eye, what I have to teach you." The words cut into his mind past the pain, were beyond the pain, but in no way lessened it or helped him look past it.

His musclulature peeled back from his skull as his eyes were torn from his head, and he lost the ability to scream, to experience anything save for pain, as every muscle in his body burst and split and tore away from the anchoring bones, and the bones shivered into splinters and hung in the air, the nerves screaming, they should have been dead or at least he should not have felt any longer, but he did, there were no words, and then in an explosion of gore Haldigur as a physical entity was gone, lost in a cloud of viscera, but his consciousness lingered and no part of him was allowed to die.

"I will not kill you, Blind Eye - it has been ordained that you are not yet allowed to die. Instead, I lay a curse upon you, and the heavens will see it carried out."

No one but the star god could hear Haldigur's mind screaming. A twitch of some invisible muscle, and all of the disassociated sorcerer slammed back together again, first in a mash of writhing grotesqueness that twisted and drew in on itself, screaming through a mash of orgas entirely unsuited to the purpose, and then rearranging itself - slowly - into the proper shape of a man, like the process of being run through a meat grinder going in reverse. He was screaming, but the star god's voice cut through the fabric of the world.

"You cannot see me now, not as I really am - you are limited to what your senses can see, and even that from a single angle. You will grow in power, Blind Eye, until you believe yourself equal to me, and then master to my masters, and you will come when you can see me for what I really am. When that time comes," here he twisted, and the still-writhing mass of flesh in his hand ceased to howl for a moment, "I will drag you screaming into the heavens, and your punishment will begin."

His hand opened, and Haldigur hit the ground whole and naked, vomiting up air and water and things he had never eaten in his life, unable to scream for the spasms that wracked his frame and unable to think for the screaming echo of the pain he had just experienced. For a moment he wished he had died.

The star god was looking down at him, appeared to be looking down at him to Haldigur's blurred vision. He was waiting for some last word to be said - Haldigur knew, was compelled to speak.

But did he dare?