Editing Site 3: Diamond Hearth (section)

==Kin==

Erkum Whitedreams was a thick man with pale skin, long fair hair, and a wispy beard braided in a dozen strands with the ends tucked in his belt.  When they first met, Rivers had known him for a thaumaturge by the wards that hung his belt, but he still didn’t know the full extent of his abilities.  One thing was certain; he knew his way around the frozen halls of Diamond Hearth like no man living.

As they walked through passages of pure, transparent ice, over the halls of palaces buried for over a millennium, the young sorcerer did his best to stay close to his guide and away from his mistress.  She did not seem affected by the cold, but then her kind was adapted to dealing with… diverse conditions.  Her skin was a pale purple, her lips black as pitch, and her eyes had the same liquid onyx appearance that certain amalgams had accepted.  She was a neomah, a demon courtesan, and she totally creeped out Rivers.

Erkum’s husky voice sounded through the hall, echoing eerily through the chill noon air.  “This should be a good spot, if you’re looking for old magic.  The owner of this hall was a potent anathema sorcerer, one of the big bads.  It’s said that in this room he once commanded the souls of Malpheas to attend a masked ball and amuse his guests.  Amused they were, at first…”

Rivers clenched a fist before him and closed his eyes.  Momentarily, wisps of blue essence began to flit from between his closed fingers and under his thumb, slowly filling the room with ethereal light.  Erkum looked at him with barely concealed envy, slowly stroking his beard.

Rivers opened his eyes to the full glory of the hall, but he ignored the ornaments and architecture, instead focusing on the pentagram in the center of the chamber.  “That’s definitely no second-circle demon cage.  There must be god’s ransom in starmetal just in the essence transformer shields.  Maybe your story…”

But at that moment, his voice was drowned out by two simultaneous sounds.  One was the sound of Unbreakable Faith screaming its song of doom.  The other was a voice that came from Erkum’s side, as the neomah’s head rotated to an impossible angle, tearing its own flesh and bone as it did so.  Its mouth opened so wide that the jaw ripped loose as a blast erupted from its open jaws, nearly deafening them and causing the fragile walls of ice around them to crack and groan.  Indeed, it spoke, if such a tearing in the fabric of air could be called speech, the howl of a mad god-maker from beyond the edge of creation.

“I see You!”

With those three words the demon burst into black, oily flames, and then collapsed to the ground.  Erkum watched in horror for a moment before the ceiling shattered and a block of ice the size of a small house turned him into a thin red sheet.  Rivers took to his heels once more.