Awaken the Keepless

[Tearen Wover]

Nealaphh walked slowly back to the camp as Keepless did its part in keeping the Ash Lurker at bay. As the shockwaves from its mass accelerator reached the god-mind, Nealaphh calmly isolated itself in a spacial warp, allowing it to keep moving in a straight line, as if the ground it was walking upon was not, in fact, oscillating at an alarming magnitude. With a final blast, the Ash Lurker was sent crashing to the ground, crumpling up in an immense heap as it dug a large trough through the dense drifts of volcanic ash. As Nealaphh neared it, the beast clumsily clambered to its feet and shrieked a defiant warning cry for Nealaphh to stay away. Such scare tactics did not work on the god-mind. With a slight glimmer of the eyes, Nealaphh detonated the space beneath the Ash Lurker, sending it hurling back into the sky like a rag doll. As it reached the apex of its arc, the god-mind, slowed time in the creature's relative area, causing it to hang uncannily like some dark, scaly piñata. Suddenly, the shadow seemed to take on a strange shimmer as it activated its Relativity Shift, causing time, from its perspective, to slow down even more.

Now, able to act with extreme precision, Nealaphh activated a spacial rift directly on the Ash Lurker's ventral core. The shadow watched as, in slow motion, the dragon was torn limb from limb with the concussive force of the blast...as if a grenade had detonated almost within its immense bulk. The temporal distortion lasted long enough for Nealaphh to catch the dragon's twirling, decapitated head with a telekinetic grasp, and send it hurtling like a meteor into a nearby rock formation, where it vaporized on impact. It was only after this thorough coup de grace that Nealaphh allowed itself to return to the normal time stream. The remaining body parts of the dragon began to thud with thick squelches into the ash underfoot, and the collected Gorons looked on in combined awe and horror. The shadow simply walked back to the center of camp and began to patch up the damaged tents using a meager portion of Omnillium.

Well done. Nealaphh said to Keepless, not bothering to speak to the prime automaton further. The robot's capabilities seemed to be quite vast; far beyond what Nealaphh had been anticipating. The god-mind would have to be cautious in how it dealt with Keepless in the future...

...

The following morning, the billowing clouds of volcanic precipitation had blown away with the new wind, and the skies were a bright, fiery orange color as the Ashen Steppes' blurred sun rose above the jagged peaks in the distance. The Gorons had been tending to their wounds throughout the night, and though Nealaphh was no healer, the god-mind had done his best to help in the repairs to the injured workers. By mid-morning, the troupe was ready to move on, and their lizard mounts, which had burrowed into the ash the night before, now emerged from the silky substrate, ready for a day's march. The god-mind mounted up on his own lizard and looked down at the Keepless, who had heretofore been watching in a curious fashion. Perhaps it would be best...not to abandon the automaton to its fate within the Steppes.

You are free to travel with us, if you so wish. Nealaphh messaged softly, gesturing to the spare seat available on his lizard's saddle. Whether or not Keepless actually took the shadow up on its offer did not matter to Nealaphh; the fact that it had offered was good enough. Still, Nealaphh and its Goron brothers had a schedule to keep, and if they did not find the large deposit of nickel that Nealaphh suspected lay nearby soon, they would have to report back to Darunia empty handed. Again, Nealaphh did not care about the social ramifications of such a non-result, but it would be a waste of time in the end, so the god-mind would prefer to use as much of the day as possible to dowse for the final outflow point of the lava tube that had carried the nickel up from the depths of the Ashen Steppes.