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| Everything Avril Enzali has done. From enlisting Ashe Stelfire’s aid. To clawing her path back to the land of the living. To dueling her mother in the mountain city of Onno. All of it has led to liberating this woman from the center of a maze of unbreakable ice. Both women share the same shade of red hair and the forehead tattoo. But Celsis Kri is not like Avril. Her demeanor is sharp-edged. She seldom makes apologies for it. A tapestry of tattoos covers much of the Goddess of Conquest’s body. In the past, they granted her powers and weapons, but her chilled shackles now suppress such manifestations. But her bonds cannot negate the ethereal glyphs’ defenses. They have protected her from torture and worse. The goddess’s crimson markings also allow her to explore other places within unseen realms of the mind. And those also seen. Using their common tattoo on both the goddess and her last follower’s foreheads, Celsis has tracked Avril’s progress, or lack thereof, through the events of Repenter and The Brigands. The imprisoned woman had to learn patience over these past sixteen centuries. Her captors have tormented her with promises of freedom if she would only renounce her rebellion against Starm, the Dragon God of the Holy Alliance. And away from the reptilian deity’s notice, enticement to rejoin the Game on Corsis’s side. Celsis refused. And has continued to refuse. Her change of heart endures. The horrors of the Eruption changed her perspective, reminding her of the Weird War from millennia earlier. The realization pierced through her very core. Everything Starm overtly put into motion and everything Corsis covertly orchestrated without the Dragon God’s knowledge, all of it continued the mad agenda the Weird Ones had attempted to inflict on the world. Reshape it into something outside of the natural order. Something twisted. The cataclysm that created the Fire Well was only the beginning. She had undone everything she’d fought to save in the Weird War. And so she rebelled against Starm and Corsis. The Dragon God captured and imprisoned her, while the Master of the Game has continued to whittle at her resolve from the shadows. She bides her time and has recently let something dangerous creep into her mind. Hope that she might walk out of her frigid prison. If only Avril, Ashe, and a group of New Players can breach the cold dungeon. If only they can break her free. Read more about the quest to liberate Celsis Kri in The Breakers. Art by Ringasure. |
