After the first ten minutes of soaring, and negotiating the inevitable random bug into ones mouth, Tristan's euphoria failed to diminish. He circled overhead, before banking hard to hover above the slowly rising three masters. A smile painted on his face, also inevitable.
"This is amazing.." He spoke dumbly, clearly dwarfed in ego by the experience.
"A true blessing." An elderly man spoke, as the three hovered at level to him. Nearby, a cloud began to roll in, a storm that had threatened them in the previous afternoon from the coast was coming in. With it, carried the acrid tinge of seawater. "But one that will have to be conducted temporarily, that storm is..." He left the sentence unspoken, as beady brown eyes narrowed toward the incoming cloud. It was moving quickly, quicker than a cloud might, and more alarmingly, against the wind.
Tristan turned to confront the incoming could, immediately sensing that something about it moved oddly. Instinct forced him to float backwards, to be in greater proximity to the three masters. Senses trained to the supernatural peeled in awakened dread. This vapour held intention. The three robed figures moved to protect their new initiate, and intonations of spellcraft filled the air. Chimed in unison, a peel of harmonic resonance sheered the air in front of them, as spells both arcane and divine rose protective wards from the air itself. A mage's armour, and a shield hewn from faith itself adorned the three masters like mantles over shoulders, translucent and warded. Tristan began his own protection ward, a simple one, near orison in power. A simple ward to shield the mind from evil forces. Still the cloud rolled forward. Intent, malevolent in an unerring mission. Hassan gripped a holy symbol, a disc around his necklace of Mystra. He spoke in a chant.
"Mother of All Magic, your servants ask for aid from this unknown force!" He petitioned, his right hand cupping the symbol; his left raised in welcome to the heavens above them. A moment passed, and nothing. That their Goddess ignored their plea for aid was unthinkable, and also untrue, as a distance peel of thunder slowly came into hearing. Overheard, a shoot star passed the length of the sky, which all four failed to ignore in wonder. As their eyes turned to face the cloud that slowly clawed the air toward them, they became aware of a fifth person. A woman in long black hair, studded with a diamond spray of stars. She radiated power by mere presence. She wore robes of deep blue, and fabric ethereally whipped around her form. Ribbons and folds of her robes moved with a prehensile yet defensive posturing. She was lined by a power that glowed impressively against the cold night. Mystra herself it seems, or at least her avatar stood to face the oncoming wave of cloud with a single sphere of white-blue magic in her palm. And she arrived with the all the presence of a silenced thunderclap.
Now, dear readers, as one might wonder, what could possibly cause one of the most powerful and influential deity of the Realms to directly manifest, under the principle of Plural of Self, an avatar to appear before the four faithful? The answer was lost upon the four as the Goddess spoke, her voice sliced through the buffeting wind like the proverbial hot knife through butter.
"No. I will not allow you to take my faithful. My patriarchs are under my protection." Needless to say the four faithful floated in abject wonder as they watched. The cloud began to halt, gathering and pooling in places to assess the being that stood before them. It searched, swarmed and broiled in place, some three miles wide. The Goddess' mote of power scintillated the moment the cloud darted a single tendril like an arm for the troupe, it's intended targets.
Like a bolt from the heavens, indeed, as this was, Mystra's star left her palm without a word. The four, stunned to subservience witnessed the act with a perfect blend of fear and wonder. The bolt of light struck into the cloud, receding into it's depths like lightning behind thunderclouds. A deep, bass note thundered within, and light expanded outward through the dreaded miasma. The Goddess frowned for but an instant, before the tendril snaked it's way around her with disarming speeds. Tristan raised his hands in defense. Futility matched him. Mystra wordless threw power to shield her Faithful. A sphere of force that isolated the four from time and space. Otiluke's Resilent Sphere, Tristan thought. Though they could not affect the outside of the sphere, the outside could not affect them. The Mist swarmed the sphere, pouring over the surface, searching for a weakness in the Goddess' Magic. The Mother of All Magic drifted toward the tendril, by now, her faithful would not be able to see her, but they might hear.
"Know this; I will not allow-..". What might've indeed been a caustic and triumphant speech was cut short by a crack of lightning through a cloudless, starry sky above her.
"No! This cannot be allowed to happen still! I beg you!" The four within the sphere never saw, nor never heard the moment a force greater than Hers dismissed her protective sphere. She reacted within an instant, ferrying the three masters away with a Teleport Other spell at will. Tristan saw nothing beyond a grey wall of Mist roll over him and his senses blackend.
The Mists recoiled, laughter stung the Goddess, though no mortal ears heard it. Forbidden by powers beyond hers, and denied by a Pact sewn within the fabric of the existence of her divine status, Mystra shrieked in grief.
"YOU ARE DENIED, WEAVE-HAG." were the only words she heard from a receding, faintly luminescent and now dissipating Mists of Ravenloft.
(All images do not belong to me, and any artist may contact me to remove them. This is purely concept art only, and intended for entertainment only.)
