Hynsyr practices deconstructing and reconstructing the Hundred Armed Form until his mastery over it allows him to take the Hundred Armed Form both quickly and easily.
4Hynsyr unspools the Hundred Armed Form, allowing it to disperse back into his aura. He uses the same light to piece it back together, forming each limb and face from memory. When it is complete, and his three faces once again look out upon the desert, he deconstructs the body once again. Each repetition gives more mastery of the form, allowing him to transition in and out of it within mere moments. Every aspect of the construct is etched into the Titan's mind, more clear than even the ties which bind him to Einyar or Yig. It becomes an extension of his mind, as much a part of him as the twelve arms made from flesh and blood.
Go to the location of the silence ooze and try to harden parts of it((whistling to myself and the ooze because nothing is happening :p))
2Clouds of dust were scattered to the four winds after the fighting ended. Even though they blow towards AJAMA as it floats out to the edge of the desert, it finds ignoring a naesent sandstorm just as easy as tuning out a colossal battle. It helps that the sand is entirely mundane. Even though it's getting swept up into the air, there aren't any pseudopods or demons for the Demiurge to avoid. Travelling from one end of the world to the other is so easy that it lets out a little whistle of satisfaction.
The colony of Silence Ooze that it left behind has grown. It hasn't sustained its original rate of growth, which makes AJAMA think that the sand might have caused a little noise during the battle, but what was originally a lake of ooze has become a small bay. It's a more massive than any other mass of goop that the sphere has seen before, which actually makes creating more hard surfaces difficult. Pressurizing one patch of ooze causes more to rush in from outside, disrupting AJAMA's focus.
While being tended to by Ironweavers, Gral begins to plan for the future without the threat of Sands, instructing the Ironwinged to set up joint homesteads with any Shifting Shardforms interested . These " Scrap-ranches" would use the tamed maggots as their main product, farming them en-masse and shearing their outer coats for excess metal, which would then be sent up to the Silken Nest for refinement. Any products not high enough quality will be used in-house as tools weapons, and building materials, by means of a modified version of Ironweaving.
As part of this new initiative, the Winged are encouraged to begin research on new methods of metalworking, under the guidance of the Merchant of the North.
Ironwinged: 6
Merchant of the North: 2The fate of the world is still uncertain, but on the surface this fight is over. The coalition is already dissolving, as the Sentinel legions and Spiderlings take their leave, so Gral recalls the Ironwinged from their battle stations. They tend to his wounds using iron threads, woven over the hole and around the Contractor's broken flight feathers. The Weaver overseeing the project says that these reinforcements should allow Gral to fly again, with some difficulty. He cautions against straining the wing too much, since it will need time to heal.
Afterwards, it sends a sizable portion of the Silken Nest's population out to meet with the herd of awakened Shardforms. The obsidian creatures jump on the opportunity to build Scrap-Ranches, since even as a joint venture it should allow them to provide the Ironweavers with a significant proportion of the raw materials that they were promised. As of right now, they have mostly gathered metal and glass scraps from areas across the desert. They also throw in a few steel pupal casings, which resemble Maggots in overall size and shape. The Shardforms say that they fished the discarded shells out of the Shifting Bog.
Those who remained behind work to develop new metalworking techniques under the Merchant of the North. They are largely unsuccessful, mostly because they've been weaving steel in exactly the same way that they once wove silk. None of the Ironweavers has any real idea of how to improve upon their web-building instincts.
Strike the killing blow
Hmph. Time to go big or go home.
By the power of the smelter's armor and the dawn axehead, help strike the blow. But rather than partition sand and sky into nine, create only one partition. Sand from sky. The war will end, the sand neither assaulting those above nor being preyed upon by the sky-dwellers.
Can I retcon that all that time I spent silent, Awake was communing with the armor? It might be a bit too convenient, but it's either that or he sat motionless with no will to live, having already lost. To be fair, that's basically what I did.
My son shall be avenged!
Send rescue team of sentinels to recover Ekhor, he could not have vanished without trace
Change focus of sentinel legions to killing awake, lead them
Ira: 5
Awake: 3 v Sentinels: 4 Primeligs: 2 & Nazir: 1
Awake: 5
Rescue Team: 3
Awake emerges from his meditative trance. The Nothingness in his spirit jangles in alarm, wrenching his mind away from the armor and back into the waking world. Something has happened to the sand. He can feel is falling still beneath his feet, a sensation that brings instinctive memories back to the forefront of his mind. He can remember being a vague fore within the sand, struggling to close the fissures before it is too late. The Empty did seal them, before it died, but now something is wrong. Cracks are opening again, threatening to kill the sand, or consuming its attention so that something else can kill it. Awake needs to stop it. Or bend it to his purposes.
His plan is almost contradictory: he will shatter the sand to preserve it. Awake heft the Dawn Axehead just as an army of Spiderlings crests the nearest dunes. This is evidently a tribe he hasn't seen before, judging by their increased size and the enchanted armor that they are wearing, but when he sees Nazir at the head of the army he knows that they won't treat him as well as the Dustwalkers. Streams of acid, fire and force shoot past him as they launch their first valley. Awake ignores them. He raises the Axehead above his head, then slams it into the ground. It strikes true, slicing the sand's very being, even when a bolt of magical energy knocks crashes into his wrist.
Somewhere deep below him, Ira is also preparing to strike a final blow against the sand. She tunnels back into the center the the Glass Crater, surrounding herself in a layer of liquid Nothingness to protect herself from the heat, and coils herself around the place the Sunship broke. Old fault lines open up on every side of her body. They quiver, just barely held shut by all of the Sand's focus. She does not have long before the world falls apart. A red-hot axehead crashes down from above, widening the cracks.
Ira opens her jaws, and closes them over some vital part of the sand. It snaps in two, caught between the axehead and her teeth. Something lives, and something dies. Shards of the Sand scatter, little pieces of something infinite. They are not whole but they go on, haltingly, a pale imitation of what once was.
The dead world falls still.