Crucible of Celestial Portion
The Halls of the Moon are stripped bare. It is an empty space, as vast as any of the other great chambers, but even more hollow than the Halls of Mercury. There is no light but the torch she carries. It burns low.
The Day caste assassin approaches just close enough that the light flickers over the bone and bony, the black jade and soulsteel. She shivers, drops the torch. The light goes out.
"All that is broken can be mended. All that has fallen can be uplifted. All that is forsaken can be redeemed." He says the words softly and channels his essence through trembling fingers. The cleansing light of solar flame wreaths his body. He touches the Monstrance.
Soulsteel screams and wood smokes. Bones splinter and jade cracks. Black clouds vie with golden light. The darkness fades before the power of the sun, but not without a fight. There is a pop, a shudder, and the black iron chains that bind the cage are freed. One of them lashes the sorcerer, blunted but not barred by his anima.
Blood seeps through the Copper Spider's fingers as he holds one hand over a ruined eye. He surveys his work and whispers, "Ouch. Ouch."
Ruined bars are spread wide by filaments of orichalcum webbed with billowing silk. Living saplings, fed by a pool of silver essence, thread through the open latticework where once foul woods from the underworld had been lashed. She stands back and looks at their work and smiles, says, "I think it's looking a lot better... like... like..."
The god nods his head as he touches a panel at its base, adjusting the channeled essence of the city to nourish the roots. "The cage inverted is something that frees and flows. It is a place of changing instead of stagnation, of life and renewal, instead of death."
She smiles and whispers to herself, "...like a flower."
