>>5202747Panic is brief, before it settles into fear, anxiety, and then deeper and deeper into its worst form, despair and resignation to the end.
Disaster after disaster have struck the Bandru’ii rings and this is the final death knell to mark their passing.
A circle is burnt to contain the outbreak, Bandru quarantined and the nearby ring of trees examined, for spread, new born saplings in Ash’sen examined for taint and grimly put to the blade if they display any.
Across the empire the wedding veils of every dryad are marred black by dye and those that live in nearby nations begin migrating back to the rings, to pay respects at first, but then after for an entirely different reason as a vague hope blossoms.
Action 1: Widen the Maw
(Upgrade the locus again)
He won’t die, he can’t, but we are left lost on how to save him.
Poxylos has no cure, no measure of Ayatana can expel the virulent scourge. For months, despair is all the rings can do.
That is, until a plot is hatched from the shadowy ranks of the sentinel mundane. The Locus gives us access to the whole of the unseen.
We use the Locus to send some force to stop the Spirit of Poxylos at its heart.
If we cannot fight Poxylos on the material plane we will fight it in the unseen, kill it where it stands or drag it back in chains.
And like that, the spark of hope engulfs the entirety of the rings, from all corners of the mighty empire voices flood in, geometers and totem carvers and minstrels and warriors and saplings and clade members and every last daughter of Bandru not yet mentioned summon themselves to Ash’sen to see what they can offer, what they can contribute to save Bandru, for if they could bleed their own sap for a second of his life they would in a heartbeat.
The Locus as it stands is immensely potent, but it is not enough.
Even more upgrades and expansions to the locus are undertaken, tinkering and toying and experimenting in whatever they can and adding grand new sections to the construct as they are devised.
What results is an even stronger locus, allowing potent spirits to be recruited in a balanced way at an even greater rate.
On the other side of the country, Valmad goes missing from his garden.
Bandru won’t die, he can’t.
Action 2: A Forgotten Melody
Sylvea is the second to know of the infection, and is abruptly ripped from Bandru’s embrace by her closest aides before she can be told.
She is wordless after hearing the news, silent for several days. She summons a host to accompany her for a voyage telling only her closest confidants the destination and departs upon the royal Canon Thalassa “Gilded Helm” without another word, vanishing from the empire before the hope of slaying Poxylos was ever established,
Queen Sylvea, ruler of the empire once promised to the exiled empress arrives before Karu the Lady of Laluga to enlist her help with healing Bandru, or at the very least learn the song she sings, for the dreamer loved it so.