Journal Entry #97: Heavenbound

Out of all the Outer Planes, I never thought I would end up in heaven again. As much as I would like to have slept in with my wife and daughter, we have other things to deal with at the moment. That being the corruption sitting within the Champion of Magic. Celu had her arms wrapped around me,  and I can't lie and say I wasn't tempted to stay there.  I swapped myself for the sleepy little dragon who had been sitting on my head while I got dressed, and my wife seemed to be content with that.
 
I made my way down to keep proper. Ironfalls always had a thin layer of snow at this time of year.  I think I'm coming around to it again; maybe it's just seeing a varial and Celu enjoying the snow. Adding more happy memories involving snow. The keep was its normal level of busy for the morning; I was able to sneak in without much of a problem and even collect a plate of fruit. Following the sound of the piano played in a very specific way (Artemis is trying.)  Finding the rest of my companions, I placed a fruit on one of the tables in the sitting room at the front of the keep.  I apologize for being late, but we eventually got down to business. 
 
For obvious reasons, Azyel went through a decently long interrogation. To give everyone a good depiction of what is going on within his soul,  I conjured an illusion of what I saw when I looked at his soul. An orb of black and white represents the god of magic's colors, but around that soul orb were rings of red. Thin and bright scarlet. With the others knowing exactly the cause of his Newfound ailment, for lack of a better term.  We finally figured out why or what happened to the elf.
 
Azyel walked us through what happened in the dream before the Shard fight;  he apparently had thoughts of the origin of magic. which anything he saw and gave a description of is only going to be the shorts interpretation of so there's not much we can gleam from whatever dream he had. Regardless of the trial, he had to perform.  During that dream, he blacked out once when dealing with some shard-related things. This is the moment I believe the parasitic red ring entered his soul or latched itself on.  Attempted to escape reality, according to him,  and a handful of other things which mutated his body. 
 
It was at some point that we decided to bring Liese in on this. The tiny half-elf was fury incarnate after the message I sent her, slamming open the keep doors, stomping over, and smacking the crap out of him with a book.  As he always was cowering behind it plus a chair which I found vaguely amusing as I peeled an orange. We relayed what information we could to catch these up to speed, including the fact that we fixed A Shard. Azyel was getting in contact with his god, but the god of magic only pointed toward Pharasma. 
 
I would say we laid into him for his idiotic situation, and we had to watch him constantly and all of his choices.  Especially recently. Like any self-personation, he was completely turned off.  I even told him that he was like a little child. We have to constantly put on watch; otherwise,  he'll get himself killed.  I might have gone a tad bit off-topic when we were talking about the shard fight and his actions within it and when he killed me. He complained that what he was supposed to do to break the enchantment took 10 minutes to cast; my only response to him was that for the Champion of the god of magic, you lack creativity when using your powers.
Azsire could feel the corruption within the elf,  but it was only when he brought out that doll that we saw desire unnerved. I don't think I've ever seen him draw a weapon when I turned to see him speak about that doll and not like it.  He was holding a staff conjured from Ice. 
 
Start to become a little thankful that Celu and Ava weren't here. 
 
Which led to a wonderful conversation with the Steward of skeins. If we were to deal with both the doll and Azyel, we would have to isolate them in an outer plane and burn away the corruption.  I removed some of the Sass,  and she made it very clear Not to have a repeat of last time.  So theoretically, we could kill a god if we had screwed this up badly enough. 
 
Then, a question came up that I couldn't help but be curious about:  Liese couldn't detect any magic in it. For all intents and purposes, it was just a doll.  Did it have a soul?  We'd seen it interact with the wrong, but only when it wasn't being observed. Azsire disappeared shortly after the doll came out.  I told Azyel, and a majority of the group stood behind me before I looked at its soul.
 
Everything went black as I looked at the soul.  I just went blind.  I had felt the connection to Pharasma,  to her domain of Souls. Then I just went blind. And somebody asked if that was typical.  I explained that a normal person's soul  I can see without an issue;   a demigod or god themselves would just blind me.  But my eyes didn't work. I wasn't blinded, I was blind.  Well, a god soul,  I'll even a demigod soul, is dazzling; if I were to look at them long enough, yes, I would go blind.  This just turned my connection to Pharasma off and blinded me.
 
I'll skip over the doll moving; it wasn't actually caused by the doll. I had slammed silver into the doll so hard that when it moved, I felt a second body. Nagti had been messing with the doll. The most important thing to know about this is that the doll has been trying to get Fae to move it.  But he didn't do it because the doll told him he did it because he wanted to. So unsure about that. Liese had scared the Fae shortly after and took an imp with him to Clancy's bakery. 
 
When we debated what we were going to do or which plane we were going to try to burn away, whatever parasite had latched itself onto this dumb elf.  We eventually landed in heaven. A few of us had different reasons as to why we would go to one of the upper planes, a lot involving talks with gods or the Heart Forge and the case of Burdyr. Well, we informed the Gods of our plan,  and they had to set a separate room aside so we didn't cause any unnecessary problems while we burnt away the doll and the red rings. Liese went to get supplies for our journey. She came back shortly with small packs filled with a couple of tuning forks to all the upper planes, the Boneyard, and for those who couldn't cast Plane Shift, scrolls of that spell. As well as a little magical device that would tell her that we needed her assistance if we were to press the button attached to it. Before she was able to depart, I asked her if I could borrow a bit of her time when she was free,  I wanted her help in constructing a spell.  She weirdly tossed a piece of paper at me that she had in her pocket crumbled up like a little form to fill out for a spell that you wanted to create.  She then said she needed to get back to her Tower because she was pretty sure one of her apprentices was going to blow up the roof. It might have been wishful thinking, but I swear I heard something after she left. It could have just been a loud crash from the kitchen. 
 
With everything squared away, we went to heaven. 
 
The room they prepared for us was surprisingly empty.   It was a cylindrical room,  and between the pillars that lined the room was an infinite blue sky but not much else.  The ground and ceiling were of course ornate but in that way heaven is.  The marble is not too intricately detailed.  Behind us, when we shifted into the plane of heaven, was a door, and the rest of the building, I assume, led to the rest of the plane.  In front of us was a large wooden table with even large chairs. 
 
Everything in heaven was so large. We each took a seat safe for Isaiah, who stood in the center of this horseshoe-shaped round table.
A voice asked who we would like to summon.  The one we wish to assist us the most was Magrim. Well, they could not appear properly in this room,  which makes me think that the room they conjured for us is simply a demiplane directly connected to heaven itself.  Magrim's appearance came like glittering gold sparks and had a dwarf-like shape.  Roughly twice as tall as Burdyr and stood behind him, or at least the spirit of him did. When he appeared, he asked if the elf in the middle was the problem child. Notably, he also commented on my soul and Licia. They had asked us what we wanted to accomplish, each of us saying that we wanted, in some form or fashion, to make sure there was no corruption within the Champion of Magic. 
 
Here's how we accomplish this. Magrim explained that, using his powers,  he was going to target a specific portion of Azyel's soul. When it was visible to us,  it was then our responsibility to burn it out,  his powers would act like a funnel to make it easier to direct them. This was something he said I could accomplish with time but not without practice, as it's extremely dangerous. I'm starting to feel like Pharasma might have a reason not to have taught me how to wield her powers. 
 
Honestly, out of all her domains. It is her domain of Souls that worries me the most.  I always knew I could potentially Target a person's soul, but being that mine is shattered already, I had never wanted that for anyone else.  Still, in this process, we were shown targeting a specific portion of a soul,  giving me an idea.  I need time to work on it and strengthen my connection to the domain of Souls.  But I think it might work. 
 
As Magrim's Vision landed on the Champion of Magic, his body began to Glow,  and veins of gold raced through his body, save for one thing.  htempleple. Magrim said This corruption is directly connected to his mind.  That concerns me for many different reasons. 
Each of us lent something to aid in the eradication of this corruption in Azyel's soul. I know my connection was weaker than the rest,  but I think that is due partly to how worried I am about affecting a person's soul.  Not wanting to break it. It's not as if I had been trying, there was just some hesitation. It did not look like a painless process,  he was holding the weight of so much divinity in a mortal body. I think by the third Champion, he was on the ground curled into a ball, his veins glowing save for that small empty spot on the temple. 
Seeing that it was at the temple left me unnerved. Vague thoughts rushed to the surface, but I discarded them. Now wasn't the time to think about the nature of Shards and...
 
As each Champion placed their power within that spot, burning it away. We knew we had succeeded when a beam of Scarlet Red Energy raced up into the empty building exploding drifting down  particles of silver drifted down glittering never making it to the ground itself. 
 
Azyel's recovery came quickly; while initially exhausted, Magrim handled his physical body with a simple magic spell. Well, simple for a god, that is.  
 
The doll was placed in the middle of the room next,  the gods were not going to hold back as there were multiple people watching this room.  with what was said about the doll itself was important. while not a Shard itself it was Heavily influenced by one.  no that's not quite it. well to put it plainly it was like a little puppet,  able to be manipulated by a Shard.
 
As we stood with our backs to the wall looking at the simple stuffed doll,  you could almost feel the divine power charging up to burn that doll from existence.  well what the Champions hold is truly awesome whatever gods have been watching had made their presence known in the blinding light that followed as we all let into that thing  in the center of the room. A figure cut through the light and glimpsed for only a moment, a sword piercing the doll engulfed in its own divine power. 
 
Leaning over their greatsword, azure wings fully extended up to the sky. Gracefully removing the greatsword from the stone, remarking how good that felt.
 
Was Tyreos.