Pure gold strikes her open palm!
Falling to the ground at the dictations of the blast, I struggle to look around as everything collapses. Chairs, stools, barriers and tables, are all coming undone and the ground is shaking unlike it ever has before. It's coursing with power the likes of which I have ever seen in all of my life. I can barely look back for even with a raised palm covering my eyes fully, I am still blinded.
I look to the ground meekly as does everyone else, but I manage to get a foot up. Barely running away, I fall again as thunder roars with all it has. Stormful wrath carves its way across the ground, a trail of gold in its wake where molten metal should be. It all starts to rise from the ground and I fall a short distance as screams take over the soundscape.
I hit the ground and groan, rising up in my trench and clinging onto the walls for dear life as more and more builds up. It's all vanishing, the ground as it should've been, the things we set up for the sake of our brief and grim stay. Only gold remains, growing. Struggling to spread my legs out for the sake of my own decency, the sky lashes out again, striking me down.
Panting on the ground, I watch with widening eyes as a heavenly feeling sparks up my body hairs. I rub a hand on on opposite fore and swat it away as the shock bites viciously into my skin. Turning around and looking up, the walls around me break away and a vast expanse of flat, worked gold covers the land as far as I can see. Spotting the edge, I run to it as fast as can as a forest of lightning stakes its claim along the path.
Nearly falling into the water, more gold spurts out to catch my feet and I stop, turning around endlessly. A palace is forming, this power of the storm is forming a palace without end of pure gold. I strike my palm three times out of reverence for our people's beloved patron as I am beholden to what it must've been like for him in ancient times. And like Thunder in the Age of Divine Heroes.
An opening in the expanding construction appears and the light almost seems tolerable now. Covering my brow with a palm, I struggle my way to a wall-like thing I can grab as electrical excitement trembles and shakes my joints. As if the God of the Sun, Ihtuntar has been reborn, the horizon is alight with only one body, that of the Lady-Heir. Wreathed and cloaked in storm born gold the likes of which bring only one image to mind.
"The p-painting!?" I cry as a pair of wings spread from her back, a wingspan as far and further as the corners of my vision. Still in her skyward palm, divine power befitting only of a god. She rises and rises with her growing creation and walls cut me off, making me stumble back into the walls of a forming hall. Spreading my palms wide and tightening them on the first edges and corners I can grab, more and more starts to come about.
Banners, curtains and carpets roll out from nowhere on sparking wires weaving themselves together. Statues push up from the warping metal to form beautiful visages and mannequins walk themselves into position as their plate follows like a line of chicks. Gulping, my grip slips and I fall, barely rolling out of the way of a falling piece of decorative cloth as more and more accents join the grandeur. Stumbling forwards towards what is clearly intending itself to be a window, I stop at how the glass is forming on streaks similar to the sky's strength.
Shakily taking off the latch, I swing it open and look out to the great dark depths below and then up as chanting breaks up the ceaseless rumbling. Thunder-shoguns, all around are the mightiest warriors in the land in one spot that isn't the source of our power. Perhaps all of them are here and they're all offering their swords and oaths to the great power bringing the whole sky with it. So bright the power and so grand the palace that the land is going dark so that all may gaze upon its righteous beauty.
Stepping back, I slip as if I am a child first learning to walk and my rear bounces along the soft, homely warmth of the cloth. Feeling the silkish and satin resemblance, I glance downwards, my eyes widening more than are already as I notice the way the lights are being reflected. Scrambling desperately across the floor, I stare back at myself in the murky reflection the floor is able to give. The pattern in the gold, it is not smooth and simply polished, it's harkening itself to the talents needed for crucible steel.
Only, the pattern is precise, aimed and intentioned, a storm is painted in all its glory here... Thunder-gold, a palace made of pure thunder-gold!
Clutching my heart, I rise up and stumble around, finding my footing as this part of the building reaches its end. I cup my mouth and roar for anyone, anyone at all but no one replies, not even the echoes one would expect from such orchestra-intended halls. Only the thunder roars in response. I sort myself out, rearranging my sash into its appropriate position and begin to walk.
Putting a hand along a charred black table, no blackened palm greets me and I put it back to my side. I touch the cloths and pull them out, amazed at how many clan sigils are present and I even find mine treated as an equal amongst them all. Stormlight arcs above as both decoration and a source of light, as golden in form as the holy metal clanking beneath my feet. Each step in itself a rumbling raincloud as well.
I breathe my awful silence and move to push open a door, statues far more complicated than the ones at the Senate handling it. They nod and bow, closing the door back as it were like trained servants. Straightening my clothes again, I walk through many more halls and keep look up as paintings and carvings come to be. Even though the Imperial Palace is much the same and older, so much so, I cannot help but feel this place inspired it.
No artisan's hand could possibly work any of this into being, this is all the work of the divine. I blink and freeze, the word coming back through my mind. Divine. Yes, the power of the heavens themselves, the greatness of those whose spilt blood gave birth to all life like ours.
Another door opens without my need and I walk in on a freshly completed piece in front of me, the need to crane my neck not here. I frown as its intent is clearly portrayed to me. There are two figures at a harbour or dock, a lone, tatty ship awaiting to take away the hastily sent cargo. The Lady Bosphama fares her daughter safe travels and their tears inspire the sky to cry as well as the distance comes into view.
A land of great mountains and shores dominated by that which has descended from ours. A dark tunnel opens up and the ship enters it, strange-legged savages attack and the ship sinks. But the cargo is safe, a girl awakens on the filth and runs to safety until she finds it amongst dwarf people with spines on their backs. For a demanded price, she finds her way up into the light of day and some kind of town or city, one with three ways, three paths.
"Triple Path Way..." I read what has been translated into our tongue before looking further along the tapestry-like telling. Several figures come into view, some creature with a beaked face, a young man and a creature with glowing bulbs on its head and needles for legs. A grander figure comes to view and he welcomes them all into his keep until trouble arises. The beaked thing reveals itself to be something more.
Moving past what seems to be travel nonsense, a mountain defined by a man-made wedge comes to view. The group climb it and fall apart as the creature the Lady-Heir found herself with seemed to be more trouble than it's worth. A mural of some kind, of a girl clearly of the Grand-Kingdom, she mends it all back together. The group leaves the mountain with some kind of magical machine.
I rush forward slightly and a clear, heroic visage of the Lady-Heir comes into view, with what must be a wyvern buckling under her strength. Nodding along further, she and the creature which she set out to save are alone together, close in their embrace. Something is left behind and the Lady-Heir is left heartbroken. More and more adventures with many great and lasting friends being made along the way.
She was there for all of them until fate and circumstances driven in by evil men tore it all apart. She had to part with all of them until the man from Triple Path Way became her only companion. The two cross a vast canyon, the Redstone Canyon, Forge of Thurnmourer. They travel a flat-grounded desert until a mountain crowned with an anvil-shaped peak comes into view...
"No... H-How...?" I question incompletely, the awe of a child I once thought lost to me rising back up as they meet a figure at the edge of the Molten Sea. Clearly written for all to read, it describes itself as 'Thunder' and I step back, forcibly putting my mouth back closed as I go back in. Keeping an index along the art, I keep on going until I find a strange scribble-like thing.
Blinking confused at first, I nearly fall to my knees as my education comes back to sing for me. At the top of the Anvil-Peak did Thunder go to rest, there the power of Thurnmourer left him, forever at his side and Loyal. The capitalisation in the writing... It can't be.
"Loyal Lightning." I mutter, covering my mouth with my sash-holding arm as the burden it should be bearing slips from my body. Hearing a voice from deeper within the palace, I rush down the halls, slipping and sliding as it becomes clearer. Doors close loudly from one way and I turn to them, rushing onwards through towards the sounding torch at the exit of this labyrinth. Striking up against a door, I steady myself, realising that I have lost much of my senatorial aesthetic and effects.
I might as well be a commoner now with the way I am dressed!
Voices call out from the hall behind and I turn as others come rushing in, much the same, their weapons and ornamentation gone. We stare at each other in silence, some not sure if they should know the other or not, our usual means of conduct gone. A man with blond hair steps forward, some of his royal lineage still clear. We bow and kneel as the prince heaves with excitement.
"My Prince, how would you have us go?" I question as he steps up to the door I am at, his hands eager to find a way to open that which doesn't seem to have a handle or knob. A lock snaps open and gears move, electricity sparking across the metal as it comes alive with movement and expression. We step back, some of us nearly sliding back to the ground because of how weak we are. Our cores thoroughly shaken to the absolute.
"Enter." the voice of a woman calls, the voice of the Lady-Heir. The doors finish opening and the great walk to a grander throne awaits us. We hobble in like scared men who have never seen magic in their lives and many fall on the way. Prayers leaving their lips as a slithering mass of gold lightning coils above.
Stepping back as it lurches overhead, I can't help but smile at the living lightning that once stood at the side of a god.
Further beyond, however, is a sight I can never forget, a woman of the finest golden skin and hair that can raise armies from a strand alone. The Lady-Heir is -exactly- like the painting I was right to fear, no, that painting is nothing like her now. No man could capture such beauty and power accurately, it is beyond even the minds of mortals to grasp. I finally fall to my knees after slumping increasingly in my steps.
With shaking arms, I push up and gaze upon her in her entirety. Even The Lady Bosphama cannot find it in herself to move from her spot on the ground at the side of her daughter. My mouth moves without my expressed will and I blink as the sound of prayer drowns out the storm. It is coming from all the others and myself as well...
"Thunderborn..." I say, unable to truly grasp what divine sight is making my heart quiver and my mind lose its sense.