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whoosh! · 12-09-2011, 08:26 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.

The light of Anansi began to fade, but at first Ke didn't quite realise what was happening. When a phantom sea began to appear before her eyes, however, it became quite clear: she was the one who was leaving, not the spider-god.

“No!”

The word escaped her before she could claw it back. So childish. A tendrils of shame began to creep up, but panic quickly set in. Childish or not, she couldn't bear to go. Not yet.

“I don't want to leave you,” she said, or perhaps screamed, or even whispered, as she darted closer to Anansi. One world waned as another grew in its place, and amongst the senses caught atwixt these two realities Ke could hardly see, or hear, or understand this united disintegration and convalescence. She clung to her single desire, and rushed closer.

It was because of this singularity of mind that she was able to detect a slowing of pace in her blind frenzy. She thought she was merely confused at first, as she had been when this all began, but soon her beloved Anansi was coming no closer. Slowly, regretfully, he extended a leg and pushed her away with the tip. She choked on her shock, floundering, but he began to speak, and did so in sombre tones that cut clearly through both sea and Pandaemonium. .

“You can't escape with me, dear Ke. That isn't how this game works.”

“Why not? Why can't it be that easy, just this once? Why not for a god?”

He sighed, a fractured and breaking sound like poorly recorded audio of the incoming tide. Without saying another word, Anansi reached out and, still fading, swept her closer to him. Compared to him, Ke was no bigger than his largest eye, and it was to one of these that he held her up to. More than a speck in his presence, but far less than an equal.

“Nyame awaits, child,” he whispered.

And then there was only the gloom of the vast sea.

Ke immediately swirled in a spiral, gazing all around the vista of this ocean, but he was gone. No golden light fell reassuringly upon her. Only the comparative sparks of the minor gods threading in and out of Dorin gave any hint that it existed. Somewhere. (But not here, not any more.)

Without Anansi, she tried to organise her thoughts and plan the next step. She tried to push aside the loneliness and fear, the bitterness of loss and the length of the years that separated her from all who loved her, but she failed. Long-forgotten memories reared up, washing over like the waves of a sudden sea that threatened to crush the remembrancer. The happenings of long ago ascended, remembered. Occurrences so ancient they almost seemed to have happened to some other Ke.

But even then, these were precious memories. Dizzying, intoxicating memories.

Memories of Nyame and Anansi.

Allow her mind to drift, she passed through days, years and fleeting moments in a single breath, until she found the day she Fell.

Nyame – beautiful, heartbroken Nyame – had sent her from the reaches of the Sky to the lands of mortals, mortals who trailed through the dirt of an imperfect world. But from this ugliness, this dullness, beauty of incomparable degrees sprang forth in the form of their most wonderful stories. Like yarns they had been split and woven and shared, but Nyame wanted them all for herself.

With this purpose Ke Fell and took her place in a living shell amongst those who lived also.

But she was not sent unprepared, not by any means. Nyame had granted Ke many gifts, and she still found uses for many of them: the use of flight so that she could always touch the sky, an incorruptible memory so that she would never lose that which she took... However, there was one she had buried and forgotten as well as she could, the day that she lost faith in Nyame.

Ke considered its use an affront to the humans she had grown fond of. It was a powerful, terrible gift: the ability to neatly slice away the ideas and memories a mind hoarded. In short, the power to remove all traces of the stories she stole away. For what use is a thief is she leaves behind her spoils?

Within Ke, the dormant sparks of a forgotten gift began to rekindle, and a dangerous idea began to grow.

At the very same moment, however, Ke became acutely aware that Dorin must have been watching her think or, at the very least, remain very still for a very long time for little reason at all. Oddly conscious of this, she allowed herself a slow backwards somersault through the thick water, and thought furiously as she did so.

'There are... how many of them, at this time? Six? Six unpredictable, messy situations. But if they could be united, they could be controlled. Maybe even used to defeat the Tormentor, if my own plan drifts astray. Yes. And forcibly removing an idea is hardly the cleanest or only way to influence a mind...'

She said none of this in ways that could be heard. No contestant and no overseer could be allowed to know what she had remembered. Not yet. Not when she had such an element of surprise, should the knowledge be used aptly.

”Dorin.” Ke somersaulted arcing over the girl until her eyes met the gleaming blackness of her own.

“Yes?” A little guarded, a little terse. Or tense. Not surprising. The Dorin that had fulfilled one half of the Lovers had been a very different Dorin to the one that glowed here now, and not only because of the adjustments that had been made to have her suit a more aquatic environment. It wasn't hard to guess why. Ke was all too aware of the bright godlings that still crawled on and in her skin.

“Do you think you can survive this game of the Tormentor's? Do you think you could kill us all?”

As if waiting for her cue, a soundless cry shuddered through the sea, through their bones and their souls. Ke turned to the ruins, blurred by the water between the two of them.

“I think we should find out.”

Dragon Fogel · 12-26-2011, 03:33 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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"Brothers, the hour is nearly at hand," said Elder Carcharodon. "We have spilled much blood since our order began, but soon, soon, we shall have our ultimate victory."

There was a cheer from the gathered cultists. The Elder thrust a ceremonial dagger into the heart of a frightened eel chained down into the middle of a mystic symbol.

"The ritual has begun. Soon, Soggoth shall come, and this miserable world shall fall before him!"

The cultist's cheers grew louder. They had fulfilled their purpose. They simply had to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Five minutes later, the cheering began to die down.

"Elder," one of the cultists asked, "where is Soggoth?"

The Elder had no answer. He had conducted the ritual just as commanded! Why had it failed?

He soon settled on the tried-and-true tactic of leaders everywhere in such a crisis: Blame somebody else.

"This must be the work of the Sisterhood of the Eternal Claw!" he shouted. "Too long have we tolerated their heresy! Clearly, it is Soggoth's will that they be exterminated before he manifests himself! Ready yourselves for battle, my brothers, and we will color the oceans red with their blood!"

The crowd cheered.

"DEATH TO THE SISTERHOOD!"

Meanwhile, in a small cave on the outskirts of the ruined city, Caridea the Great Mother had failed in a similar ritual, and consequently had made a call to arms against the Brotherhood of the Burning Fin. Her reasons had been similar to Elder Carcharodon's.

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MalkyTop · 12-31-2011, 10:52 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

Clicklicklick. Clack. Clacklacklack. Cliclacklackclick. Clacklack. Clicklack. Clicklacklick. Clack. Clicklick. Clacklick.

Martin didn’t know Morse code…well, not exactly. But he did have a program that translated it. So maybe technically he did know? But the epistemological argument about whether he did or did not know Morse code wasn’t as important as the question of why the pursuing crab monster knew Morse code and was clicking and clacking after him.

Martin (or a program inside Martin or whatever) translated the message. It said, ‘stopmartin.’ What the hell kinda message was ‘stopmartin’ oh wait ‘stop martin’ oh he got it now why did a crab monster know his name.

Martin whirled around. Crab monster, which had been struggling to keep up, stopped right in front of him. At least it was a courteous crab monster, he guessed?

This was a chance to ask questions, he realized, but there were too many questions to ask. “How’d you know my name” seemed a good start, though, so that’s what he asked.

Crabman clicked and clacked. ‘younotremember’

“No,” he replied, assuming that was a question rather than a statement.

‘tormentor’ Oh dear, he didn’t like the sound of that. ‘saymartinsaymalfunctionthismalfunction’

“…What?”

‘nevermindiamsamaelifnotrememberinbattletothedea thtormentorhostnotusuallycrab’

Well, he got some of that. Crabman was named Amsamael. Or maybe Samael. There was something about death (didn’t like the sound of that) and also Crabman’s not actually a crab.

“Well, I’m not usually a…shark thing either.”

‘iknowtormentordidfishthing’

Abruptly, Samael started waving his claws around. Martin eventually recognized it as sign language, which he knew as much as he knew Morse code, that is, simultaneously not much and very much. Look, do you know sign language, this clacking about isn’t the fastest thing in the world.

“Neither is reading sign language with crab claws.”

Live with it. What other questions.

“Well…you said something about a battle to the death, right? Am…am I supposed to kill you…?”

Please don’t. If anything, kill the Tormentor. There are others and we should find them.

“I don’t really want to find someone who wants to kill me.”

A crabby claw suddenly clamped on his arm, which was something that he never wanted to see a claw do. Before he could yelp, Samael (Amsamael? It could still go either way, really) started scuttling into a shadowy ruin. Martin couldn’t really do much besides follow.

From somewhere appeared a procession of grim-faced fishpeople, which was impressive as Martin had thought fish only knew how to gape mindlessly with large, flappy mouths. They did not carry weapons, but carried themselves in a warlike manner.

“Are those the others?” he said drily, only to have a claw slapped across his mouth (another thing he never wanted a claw doing). They waited until they passed. And then Crabman thumped a claw on the back of his shoulder (the crab equivalent of tapping someone on the shoulder?) and pointed to where the procession had come from, which wasn’t Morse code or sign language, but he understood it nevertheless.

“That’s a bad idea,” he said, but Crabman was already scuttling away and between swimming around alone with the knowledge that there were a (potentially large) number of other fishpeople out there who were supposed to kill him or staying with a guy who actually knew what was going on, Martin was pretty sure he wanted to stick with Amsamael. Samael. Crabman.

Ixcaliber · 01-02-2012, 01:37 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

It was a lot to take in at once. Whenever anyone was taken to be part of a Grand Battle there was inevitably a period of shock as they attempted to process this information and accept their new situation. However for most the nature of the competition was presented to them in a manner that was clear and unequivocal. The sudden interruption of their lives and the subsequent interaction with a semi-omniscient being who clearly and calmly explained what was going on and what you were expected to do with the seven strangers who were paralysed alongside you; it was pretty difficult to dispute the reality of that. To be informed of the same information through another method; say through the slightly dodgy sign language of a half demon half crab, it seemed far less grounded in reality. The nature of his predicament delivered thusly seemed ridiculous, but then again the situation he found himself in seemed pretty ridiculous no matter which way he tried to explain it.

From his vantage in the ruin of an old building he had a good view of a rocky slope leading down to the ruins of a street; it was along this street the ghastly procession of threatening fish people had marched out. The street, like everything in this ruined city, was shattered and through the cracks grew a multitude of plants, most of which Martin could not put a name to. For a moment he watched as Samael picked his way down the slope. Martin decided as he watched the crabman making tentative progress down a potentially treacherous terrain that there had to be something to what he had said; he had after all known who he was and of his malfunction. It was a large leap of faith to take based on the word of someone he had just met, but he didn’t see that he had a lot of choice. Pushing aside any lingering doubts Martin swam after him.

“Assuming that this battle to the death stuff if something I’m willing to buy, what are we doing?” Martin asked. “Are we actively participating? I mean are we at this moment heading off to find the other… ummm… contestants… and kill them before they can do the same to us? I mean that makes sense, why would you even want to enter a battle to the death if you wanted to do otherwise? But if so why not just kill me while you had the opportunity, why clue me in on what is going on here?” Martin hung back as Samael scuttled onto the overgrown street. From here it was obvious where the fish people had come from; down the street there was a sudden outcrop of rock, and at its base the jagged mouth of a cave. It was perhaps the only true shelter Martin had seen so far in this wreck of a town, though it looked a little too dark and a little too ominous to really be appealing as such.

Nobody is here by choice.

“Oh.” Martin said. Samael used his claws to push the foliage, what Martin had decided to think of as overgrown seaweed, out of his path, as he began to make his way down the street, towards the foreboding cave. Martin swam lazily after him, easily keeping up with the demon. Martin was thoughtfully silent for a while and when he did speak again he did so with resolve in his voice. “At the first opportunity we all team up and take down this Tormentor character.” He said. “We force him to reupload us to our original bodies and then turn him in to the authorities.”

Samael stopped for a second and stared at the well-intentioned shark man who didn’t quite get the mess that he was in. Though he could probably stand here and attempt to clumsily articulate just how dangerous the Tormentor was, and just how thoroughly screwed they all were, he could not see what would be gained. Instead he signed ‘Good plan Martin’ and scuttled onwards. Martin was more or less silent until they reached the ominous cave mouth.

“Are you one hundred percent certain we want to go in there?” Martin asked nervously. “I’m not particularly sure that any place in this entire sunken city could really be called safe, but this is perhaps the one place it is possible to absolutely certain that something nasty is waiting in there.” Samael evidently had already made his mind up. He scuttled onwards into the darkness, and Martin reluctantly followed him. Martin followed the clacking of Samael’s spindly legs and the feel of the wall through the darkness. The passage was just wide enough to admit the pair, and it seemed to twist this way and that, but always sloping downwards. “I really don’t like this.” Martin muttered to himself. Samael clicked and clacked and it took Martin a minute to realise that this was not just the sound of his movement, but a message.

‘shush’

He couldn’t argue with that, at least not without fear of waking up whatever horrible monster lurked at the bottom of this passageway, and Martin was pretty sure that there was one. Slowly his eyes began to adjust to the darkness and he could make out the winding passage that was leading them down, down, constantly down. Carved into the stone walls he could make out jagged symbols which for some reason he couldn’t articulate made him feel uneasy; as though someone was tying knots in the pit of his stomach.

“I’m getting out of here.” Martin whispered. “And I suggest that you do too Amsamael.”

‘wait’

Martin turned and swam back the way they had came, intent upon fleeing what whatever abomination lurked at the depths of this claustrophobic passage. However, upon rounding the last bend in the twisting corridor, he found himself face to scaly face with a group of the same dour faced fish people that he and Samael had watched before. Before Martin knew what was going on he had been grabbed by a person who was half octopus and was being restrained. The leader of the group; an unpleasant cross between a human and an eel regarded him critically, smiling with a mouth full of jaggedy teeth.

“If I am not mistaken, I would say that we have caught one of Carcharodon’s Brotherhood of the Burning Fin.” The eel person paused, as if wanting to see Martin’s reaction to this. His expression was one of confusion, he’d never heard of the brotherhood, but that did not necessarily mean that, at some point in this wretched battle to the death, he had not thrown his lot in with them. “We shall see what the Great Mother says about this.” The eel seemed to derive a great deal of satisfaction from this idea. Without another word they resumed their journey down the twisting passage.

Dragon Fogel · 02-01-2012, 04:19 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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The Hermit cautiously peered out of his shell. His meditations had been disturbed.

S'kkoi had been his home, long ago, long before the cults or any combatants had arrived. But the Hermit had removed himself from society, and devoted himself to a search for true enlightenment.

After centuries of mediation, the Hermit had learned to hear the voice of the ocean itself.

For weeks now, that voice had been growing unpleasant, but bearable. Until today, when the Ocean was screaming, and the Hermit could no longer maintain his meditations - the Ocean's piercing howls would simply awaken him again.

He realized what it meant: The Ocean was afraid. Afraid of something that was drawing near.

Whatever it was, the Hermit would stop it. The Ocean would once more be at peace, and the Hermit could resume his search for enlightenment.

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whoosh! · 02-25-2012, 07:42 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.

Reserving in spite of my increasingly tenuous grasp of everything.

whoosh! · 02-27-2012, 08:56 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.

“Do you think you can survive this game of the Tormentor's? Do you think you could kill us all? I think we should find out.”

Dorin followed Ke's gaze to the ruins. In the ensuing silence eldritch song scratched at the door of their consciousness, the rising, keening wail of all that should not be known.

“You can't be serious. We can't...”

“I see no reason why not. We are all powerful creatures here, Dorin. Combatants with weapons, however they choose to manifest themselves: steel, soul or brushes with the divine. And something or someone will die, sooner or later.” She somersaulted thoughtfully, glowing tentacles trailing behind her.

“That's still no reason to chase actively seek out fights with... things, things like that.”

Dorin.

Shik'skara snaked into view, his crystalline form no less beautiful underwater. Don't forget your duty. Dorin, having forgotten precisely that in addition to his presence, snapped back from him as if stung. Still he continued. The ritual remains incomplete, and your only remaining hope – for a meaningful death, for a fulfilled duty – is to survive this and return.

Suddenly pale, she uttered a single somewhat unimpressive word: “But...”

Do you understand, Dorin?

Ke had drifted backwards from the pair, nervous as to their relationship and her intruding presence. Even so, she saw with perfectly clarity as Dorin began to tremble and turn towards the inky ruins. She heard, faintly but just as clearly, her utterance of agreement. Her short mollusc tentacles closed around her, flame red hair entwined with pale skin.

“Ke?”

The arachnid in question drifted anticlockwise around the Exempt, peering hesitantly at her pale face.

“I am here, Dorin.”

“I'm ready. What do we do now?”

“You turn around slowly and do what we say, lackeys of the Sisterhood of the Eternal Claw,” a voice rasped from behind them. It was a voice quite derelict of any warmth or joy, or even willingness to see the recipients survive the day.

The three of them complied beautifully.

They found themselves facing a chitinous behemoth, inky-black blue and glaring at them with beady eyes. Some kind of coral spear was grasped in its claws and held very pointedly towards them.

Not a word was said. Dorin, however, found purpose in raising her hands into the air with deliberate slowness, palm faced towards the lobster. Ke didn't bother to attempt to follow suit. They watched each other, until the obvious question became too difficult to leave unasked.

“Who is this Sisterhood?” Ke said it slowly, as if she feared even talking too fast might provoke the creature.

It merely sneered back.

“Don't play dumb. You're not one of the esteemed Brotherhood, so you're one of them. That's how it works.”

It narrowed its eyes.

“I'll admit that you look a bit freaky, but maybe that's what that damnable Sisterhood does to you.”

Suddenly, a keening cry pierced through the darkness. The lobster cast a glance over his shoulder, but jerked its head back immediately as Ke began to move. She stopped again just as quickly, only flinching as the lobster matched the cry.

Several others appeared out of the gloom, armed similarly to the crustacean. There were a few fish, a seahorse and an eel. Aside from their weapons and a stormy countenance, they didn't seem too imposing. The chances didn't look too bad.

Ke dashed backwards, twisting and darting away from the group as fast as possible. She was as fast in this new form as she had been in her old, and if she could just-

One of the fish appeared in her path, blocking Ke. She veered suddenly and avoided crashing into them, but they effortlessly swooped in front of her again. She kicked at it, pushing herself backwards and staggering it.

A hurried rush of prayers could be heard, slightly garbled by panic and filling the water like a swarm. Dorin. Ke twisted around, trying to figure out where she was, but only succeeded in getting rammed by the fish. It's teeth snapped at her shell, fortunately glancing off. Taking advantage of its confusion, Ke lunged forward and clamped her mandibles around its head. It struggled, so she wrapped her half forgotten tentacles around its body. Its flailing weakened, and she took the opportunity to bite down hard and pull.

For a moment, not much happened. Both creatures strained against the other, but Ke held advantage. Blood began to cloud the water, blocking her vision in lazy streams. The thickening prayers boomed in her skull now, each name uttered a white hot brand, and between those words and her rising blood lust she could hardly think. It didn't matter.

She was winning.

Something cracked. And suddenly, in one glorious, slow moment, the head of the fish tore free. Ke could see nothing but a red haze, but how much was blood and how much was violent euphoria she couldn't say. She didn't care. The fish was dead.

Then she became very aware that the prayers had stopped. It was, in fact, utterly silent.

Triumph fading and panic rising, Ke spun around. She clawed at the bloody murk, but there was nothing to see.

She realised it was getting darker. The sea here had never been well lit, sunk beneath the waves as they were, but there had been some light. Now, however, it had most certainly faded. And as she stared on, the darkness became more and more complete.

Ke broke free of the blood and ploughed through the tarnished light. Long pale limbs pushed out in front of her, questing into the dark, but she saw and felt nothing but ocean.

She was certain she was going to suffocate.

Instead, she whimpered. The darkness was absolute now.

Ke couldn't tell if she was sinking or rising, moving or remaining in place. Expending the last of her hope, she spun around for the last time.

There!

Relief exploded over her at the sight of the light. Golden and unwavering, its divine nature was unquestionable.

“Nyame?”

Her voice sounded weak, and there was no response. She hesitated in the dark, just for a moment, but she had no alternative but to go closer. She did so.

Very quickly, everything clicked into place.

Dorin stood at the centre of the light, godlings wrapped around her raised arms like exotic bracelets. Ke couldn't see her face, but the human stood tall and straight, all signs of wavering or weakness removed barring a slight tremble in those arms. Corpses of cultists floated nearby, the sigils of numerous deities still glowing around them. For threatening their ward, the gods had exacted unflinching vengeance.

The bodies, however, were not what Dorin faced, nor were they the cause of the all-embracing darkness.

It was an eye. Or perhaps many eyes. Ke stared at the spot where this sight should be, but her mind refused to let her comprehend what she saw. It was not something to be understood by lowly creatures such as she. The overall impression was simply of being Observed: not just now, but everything Ke was, everything she would be or had been, were Observed and Known, all in a single glance of this... this thing. It wasn't even focused on Ke.

It was looking at Dorin.

The presence that lurked behind the eye, of which the eye was only a small and meaningless facet, began to speak. It spoke in the voice of fallen empires, shattered planets and extinguished stars. It spoke with the voice of the Void itself.

And the Void demanded sacrifice.

All through the ocean this voice thundered, from the sunlit shallows where flying fish leaped, to deepest trenches were nightmares slept. All heard, and all understood.

Soggoth had been called, and Soggoth had been awakened. But still the Way was Shut, and only the offering of a god would clear the Way. Or several.

The Void demanded Sacrifice, and it demanded Dorin.

One of those who heard was currently admiring the slaughter before him. He didn't know exactly who they were (although some had screamed about the everlasting glory of the Brotherhood of the Burning Fin or some such in their last breaths) but Vulm'mram'Vuul was certain his god would be pleased.

When he heard the bone-shuddering voice of the Great One, he was convinced.

He smiled as he received his new duty.

The corpses of the cult already forgotten, he turned swim away with only sacrifice on his mind.

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Ixcaliber · 03-09-2012, 08:11 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

Doubt was Martin’s biggest problem.

Well doubt and a group of dangerous fish-people who did not seem to hold any fondness for him.

The eel lady, who seemed to be the leader of the small group of fish people, didn’t believe him when he said that he was not of the Brotherhood of the Burning Fin, and that he had in fact never heard of the Brotherhood before now. Though to be fair to her, his voice reflected the uncertainty he felt on the matter. He certainly didn’t remember joining any Brotherhood of the Burning Fin, but who was to say what he had done in the time before he could remember? Samael had explained to him that he was in a battle to the death, but before then who knows what he was thinking? There was the potential he had joined up with them simply because it seemed like what he was supposed to be doing. Though that didn’t really explain how he had ended up on his own in the middle of the ruins; the place which was the first thing he could remember in this battle. No he figured he probably was not a member of the Brotherhood of the Burning Fin. Not that the eel lady who was leading the way down the tunnel was likely to believe him anyway; no matter how solid his conviction.

Martin was pretty confused. It was perhaps not his most immediate concern, but the fact that there were other people here had been bothering him, and finally as he came face to scaly face with those people he figured out what that concern was. It was that they lived here. They had not been put here as a hazard, this was their home, as bizarre as that might seem. Now, if he were the sort of person inclined to do this sort of thing, if he got some kind of weird kick out of strangers slowly murdering one another til only one remained, then he would want to set his conflict in a secluded environment; one where there was no possibility of a bystander contacting the authorities. What kind of person had so much power that they could do this kind of thing without fear of repercussions? It was a baffling thought, and more than a little chilling to imagine that one person could have all that power.

Of course all that was dependant upon Martin believing Samael’s explanation for everything that was going on here; an issue on which he was not one hundred percent certain. But how else could he account for his current form, for his current whereabouts, for the crab knowing about him and his malfunction? He sighed. Ever since his malfunction doubt had always been his biggest problem; his lack of memories, his lack of context, meaning he could never really be truly sure of anything. Well he was sure of one thing; this entire thing was giving him a headache.

--------

Samael continued to make his way down the dark tunnels. He had heard the echoes of Martin bumping into the fish people, but he didn’t really have a way to respond to that; turning around was not an option, there had been no alcoves in which he could conceivably hide and even then he doubted that his bulky form would go unnoticed. No, his only real option was to press slowly on and hope that some means of evading them would present itself before they caught up to him. Internally he cursed whatever crazy train of thought had possessed him to come down here.

The passage twisted around a final time and then opened up into a dimly lit cavern. It was… well… cavernous. Almost immediately the rocky floor dropped away on both sides, though the path that Samael had followed continued; a massive rocky outcrop stretching into the centre of the cavern. Throughout the cavern there were patches of moss-like bioluminescent algae emitting a faint pale blue glow. Samael hesitated at the entrance to the tunnel, peering down at the murky depths below the outcropping. He could not swim, and he was heavy enough that he did not doubt that such a fall would be, if not fatal, that at very least debilitating. A narrow ledge of rock stretched off to the right of the tunnel mouth, just wide enough to for Samael to stand upon, maybe, he was not really certain. It looked precarious, but the only other apparent option was the outcrop and really, he might as well paint a bullseye on himself.

Samael reached out with one of his stubby crab legs and hesitantly tested the ledge. Even under a tentative prod, part of the ledge crumbled away, dispersing dust into the water around it. Chunks of rock ricocheted off the cave wall as they plummeted into the murky abyss. Damn, he thought to himself, suddenly finding himself out of places to go with the sound of unfriendly fish-people getting ever closer.

--------

Martin kept expecting to run into Samael as they descended down the tunnel, but he never did, and soon they were emerging from the claustrophobic confines of the tunnel into a cavern that was practically agoraphobic. Martin, his limbs still pinned to his side by the bizarrely strong grip of the octopus ladies, had no choice but to follow the group into the cavern, along the rocky outcrop, to the point where it concluded; a heavy stone altar, discoloured from ink and blood.

“Great Mother!” The eel woman bellowed to the vast cavern. “We bring you one of the Brotherhood!” For a moment there did not seem to be any response. Martin glanced from one member of the Sisterhood to the next. Then he followed their gaze, down into the murkiness beneath him. In the depths something moved; something enormous. A dark shape grew and grew as it rose; an enormous mass of tentacles the colour of rust. It rose past the outcropping, finally coming to a stop in front of the group, its numerous tentacles trailing in the depths below. Massive inky black eyes regarded Martin coldly. The beast’s maw was filled with rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth and was large enough to potentially swallow him whole.

“Oh.” Caridea’s booming voice was tinged with what sounded almost like disappointment. Though perhaps not quite disappointment as such, more like incomprehension. “I don’t think I like this little man, who is he and why does he keep staring at me like that?” The eel lady rounded upon Martin and slapped him across the face with her tail.

“You are not worthy to gaze upon the wondrous visage of the Great Mother.” She snapped. “Avert your eyes while we decide your fate.” In the presence of the Great Mother doing what he was told seemed like a very good idea indeed. Though he stopped staring at her face, he found it impossible to avert his eyes completely; she was almost omnipresent, everywhere he looked in the cavern there was some part of her. “I apologise for this brother’s impudence, Great Mother.” The eel lady continued. “I found him-”

“I found another little man.” The Great Mother interrupted excitedly. “He was floating down down down into my deep dark depths on the back of a delicious green oval.” There was an awkward silence.

“That is…” The eel lady floundered for words to describe what that was, “fantastic.” She finished. “This man,” she gestured back towards Martin with a flick of her tail. “is a member of the Brotherhood of the Burning Fin and-”

“Loook!” The Great Mother raised one of her countless tentacles to just in front of the group. Contained in her grasp Samael looked equal parts terrified, bewildered and bored if such a mixture of emotions were possible. One of his claws was pinned by his side, and it was possible to see a slew of jagged cuts along the tentacle that held him. They were the best he could do, but bearing in mind the size of the Great Mother they might as well have been papercuts. “He isn’t very talkative.” The Great Mother mused as she shook him violently from side to side. “He didn’t want to play with Tabitha. He makes me very sad.” Tabitha, as Samael could rather unfortunately testify, was the bloated carcass of a blue whale. The Great Mother had been rather insistent that he play with her pet.

“Another infiltrator from the Brotherhood of the Burning Fin!” The eel lady exclaimed. “Who knows what diabolical machinations he would have put in play had you not stopped him?”

“What’s the Brotherhood of the Boring Fin?” Caridea asked curiously. She raised a tentacle from the depths; shaped like a scoop and filled with massive chunks of melon. She gulped it down happily.

“The Brotherhood of the Burning Fin is the cult lead by that blowhard shark Elder Carcharodon.” The eel lady practically spat his name. “It was probably these two that somehow disrupted our ritual to summon Soggoth.”

“Soggoth!” The Great Mother suddenly exclaimed. “We need to summon Soggoth! He whispers to me in my sleep. He is so very lonely. It is really quite sad.” There was a pause as her inky black eyes darted back and forth between Martin and Samael. “These little men don’t want me to see Soggoth?”

“Precisely, Great Mother.” The eel woman replied. “They are very bad men.”

“KILL THEM BOTH!” The Great Mother exclaimed. “Soggoth will be so pleased; he likes it when the little men bleed.” Martin’s heart pounded fast, or well it did not because he did not technically have a flesh and blood heart any more, but he felt that same panic. Maybe he hadn’t been all that panicked before now because everything felt so unreal? It still felt pretty unreal so that likely was not the problem. More likely it was that before the sight of the Great Mother he had not really believed that these fish people could kill him.

“I’m not with the Brotherhood!” Martin exclaimed, finally finding his voice. “I don’t know any Brotherhood and I don’t know Soggoth.” It was at this point, as the multitude of fish people prepared to sacrifice Martin and Samael, that the voice of the void ripped through the world, demanding the blood of a god; demanding the death of Dorin.

“Soggoth!” The Great Mother pressed her face up against one of the numerous openings dotted across the walls of the cavern. “Great Soggoth! Mighty Soggoth! How handsome you look! I will find you your Dorin! I will open the way for you!” In a quick movement Caridea was back before the group of visibly concerned looking fish people. “These aren’t a Dorin!” The Great Mother scoffed at Martin and Samael. “Get out there and find a god called Dorin!”

“You heard the Great Mother!” The eel woman snapped. “We don’t have time to deal with these two.” For the first time in a good ten to fifteen minutes Martin felt the pressure upon his limbs lift. The members of the Sisterhood were not wasting any time. They were halfway to the tunnel entrance already and they were moving faster than they had when they’d dragged him down here.

“…And don’t you dare let that Brotherhood find it first. Soggoth is mine, all mine!” The Great Mother called after them.

MalkyTop · 03-18-2012, 04:19 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

Samael slowly got up. They certainly got off lighter than he thought they would. Behind the both of them, Caridea hummed something sweet and started to descend back down, tittering out something about making the place all nice and pretty for Soggoth’s arrival.

Martin was already starting to move. Samael moved a bit more ponderously, thinking on what he had just learned, but sped up as soon as he realized that Martin certainly wasn’t waiting for him. Fortunately, though, it looked like he was being stopped by someone up ahead, and he was easily able to scuttle up in time to hear Martin insisting, “…I don’t know anything! Leave me alone!”

’What’s up’

“Look, you tell him.” Martin, apparently not realizing the irony in his words, nudged Samael forward towards a rather large hermit crab. Samael gave a curt nod, from one crustacean man to another, but was very annoyed to see that the hermit crab seemed to have an actual working mouth with which to speak actual words with and shit.

“I assume you’ll be claiming that you’re not part of the Brotherhood, too, hm?” the hermit crab said gruffly.

’Some lovely ladies were asking us about that earlier. No we are not.’

The hermit crab stared at Samael for a few seconds, then turned back to Marin. “Why’s your friend here waving his claws around like that?”

“What? Oh, uh, it’s sign language,” Martin replied sadly, already realizing what was going to happen.

’Martin, translate for me.’

Martin sighed. “He said we’re not.”

“Now, you see,” the hermit said, leaning back a little on his shell and crossing his claws, “I do find this hard to believe. There’s no reason for some random bystanders to be here. It’s just the Brotherhood and the Sisterhood. And, since it appears you are not female, then you must belong to the Brotherhood. And in that case, I want to talk to your stupid cult leader.”

“…Yeah, he says that we’re still not. Um, he says also what you’re supposed to be doing here if you’re not either of those guys. The cult people.”

“I’m,” he said, standing as tall as a hermit crab could, “the Hermit.”

Samael bubbled something that might have been an ‘oh’ if he had the ability to vocalize it before starting to furiously sign once more. The Hermit held up a claw. “Hold up, I’m not done.

“I’m not looking for trouble. I only want to convince you all not to summon Soggoth. None of you cultist types know what you’re even getting into! Do you even realize what will happen if Soggoth is summoned?”

Martin rubbed his forehead while keeping one eye on Samael’s claws. “…Sure. Yeah. He’s saying don’t tell him this next bit – oh. Ow!” The sharky-man raised his arms defensively. “I’m sorry! It was a mistake!”

’Dorin is one of the contestants and an ally. We can’t let her get killed. We should team up with this hermit.’

“Look, I might not know entirely what’s going on here, but what I do know is that whatever’s going on, I want to stay out of it. You can go save your friend or whatever, but stop dragging me into this! I don’t really want to do whatever the hell you want so – “

’Martin. Martin. Stop. Please. Martin.’

“ – you can stop acting like we’re best buds and like you know what I should do and no I won’t stop.”

“Well.” The Hermit stared at the both of them under half-lidded eyes. “I don’t quite understand this…one-sided conversation, but it seems that the two of you know the sacrifice that is intended for Soggoth.”

“He knows,” Martin sputtered, pointing at the crab. “I don’t, and I don’t want to get caught up in anything so you can ask him about it ‘cause I’m going to find a safe place where I won’t get my head chopped off or get castrated or whatever by some giant crazy feminist women fish cult.”

“…Considering that you understand him and not me, it seems you’ll have to come along anyways, though.”

Martin stared blankly and then, tilting his face down into his hands, gave out a slow, loud, sigh.

Woffles · 03-23-2012, 05:23 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

Alllriiiight!

GBCE · 05-01-2012, 11:37 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

Soggoth k’doam ilu natamn dgasatok k’vvaalikisstri eualiyy maita? K’Soggoth dgasatelka kv’mn’ koiis sk’koi

He couldn’t understand it.

The song wound through his head like a needle pulling wire. Each verse was a loop, a tiny circle around his thoughts in a winding pattern, a ragged tapestry, binding what had opened and shaping what was formless. Where the Oracle’s whispers were fire and stone this was water and ice: the promise of the glacier that crosses mountains, the fathomless power of the sea that lies sleeping. There was a deepness in his mind he never could have imagined, plunging down and down through the abyss to the ancient heart of a dreaming world where the fires of origin still burned. Gods swam like fish in its core. His song was one of calling, a resurrection of the primordial dead and deathless whose names existed in a language that had never been spoken, whose words were power. It called to him too: he, a man, a creature of filth and war and sickness. He was a speck in their shadows, a ghost in the drowning myriad, but still it summoned him with its sonorous hymn. It bound him to itself, a stitch in its endless weaving. The frailest worm and those deepest gods were bound by the dead one’s calling, were brought to life with its promises. He could not refuse.

Zimmer smiled.

____________

Caridea babbled happily to herself as her cult panicked.

Her countless tendrils were spread throughout the Sisterhood’s lair in contented lumps, tangled around stalagmites and poorly-carved idols of Shoggoth’s incomprehensible form. The bulk of her body lay back away from the entrance near a sacrificial table that rarely saw use. The rest of the Sisterhood was near the cavern’s entrance, busily plotting to obtain the sacrifice; for the most part they ignored her, as usual, and so the Greatmother had found a way to amuse herself. In one tentacle she held the crumbling remains of a shark, its condition worsened by being repeatedly ground across the cavern floor in mimicry of a menacing walk. Curled in another was the broken corpse of a Brother, his gills limply flapping as Caridea thrashed him from side to side. Both were gripped so tightly that her grip nearly bisected them; deep cracks oozed pitifully along the Brother’s shell and the shark’s spine was obviously broken. They jumped fitfully in her grasp, voiced alternately in a screeching whine and a heroic baritone.

“Grr!” The Greatmother said, jiggling the fish man’s corpse. “Grr, I’m a gross old jerk and I’m going to stop you from summoning Soggoth so I can have him all to myself! I am going to be best friends with him and we will look into the abyss together every day and eat ice cream and pennies and babies! And you get none! You get nothing because you suck. You suck a whole bunch and you are never ever going to get do anything again!”

“Not if I have anything to say about it!” The shark replied triumphantly. Its nibbled sockets stared blankly at the ceiling. “Caridea is the best in the whole world and she’s going to get to Soggoth first because she is the best at everything. She’s so pretty and brave and smart! Caridea is much better than Car…caro… sharkman. He eats rocks because he thinks they are PEOPLE!”

The tentacle lifted abruptly and began to slam the Brother against the rocky floor headfirst, smashing his face into a wad of meaty pulp. The Greatmother giggled happily and shook the battered body. “You’re dead, Brother! You can’t play anymore. Too bad!” A tentacle as thick around as the dead man’s waist snaked out and snared another corpse from a nearby pile, dragging it to the shark by a wilted fin. With a dismissive flick the sad remains of the predecessor were tossed onto a heap of similarly destroyed corpses, most long since ground into what largely resembled hamburger meat. Caridea was just about to resume her pantomime when her newly chosen toy groaned and opened an eye.

“Don’t….” he said, hanging loosely in the Greatmother’s grip. His gills shuddered. “Don’t…”

Caridea frowned slightly.

The Brother winced in pain as the kraken lifted the rotted shark and jabbed it into his side. Blood and other viscera oozed from a sweeping wound that encompassed most of his torso, purplish intestines beginning to push through where his muscles had been severed. The jagged edges of the cut were fresh and still red with bruising. He whimpered as the shark approached again. “No… no, stop, please…”

The kraken stared at him for a few long moments. Her tentacles twisted aimlessly and her eyes drifted across the cavern, crossing in thought. Her beak clapped once and then she gasped and brought a cluster of tentacles to her beak. “You’re alive!” The Greatmother squealed. She paused and examined the room. Distantly the silhouettes of her Sisters could be seen, hurriedly scheming and ignoring their leader’s morbid games. None of them had turned at this exclamation. “You’re ALIVE,” Caridea said louder, shaking the wounded Brother and prompting a muffled scream. “ALIVE.”

The Sisters did not respond. Irritated, the kraken’s eyes swiveled back to the Brother, now futilely attempting to staunch the fresh clouds of blood leaking from his stomach. His murky skin had gone pale. “I don’t get it,” Caridea said peevishly. She gave him another shake for good measure. “This is a stupid joke. You’re a terrible doll!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” the Brother said desperately. His mismatched teeth and snakelike jaws marked him as some kind of dragonfish, not that the Greatmother could differentiate between most species further than “squid” and “not a squid”. “You… the Sisters, I-I… We were just trying to get close enough…”

“You are just so boring,” Caridea said. She smacked him with the shark. “Start being dead.”

“Stop! I’ll tell you everything,” the dragonfish man begged. He twisted in her grip and flinched as another cloud of blood bloomed into the water. “We- we have a weapon, a- a secret weapon and Carcha- carbo- charch- our leader said it was going to st-stop the Sisterhood forever and win us Soggoth-“

“Soggoth!” Caridea burbled. “I like Soggoth.”

The Brother blinked. “Y- yes?”

The Greatmother laughed. Her tentacles rippled away from her great golden eyes, piling up on each other and away from the colossal glistening beak suddenly visible under her webs of flesh. It yawned once, clacking loudly in the close confines of the Sisterhood’s cavern. Several Sisters turned at the sound and shouted in alarm at the now-struggling dragonfish pulling desperately away from the razor edges of Caridea’s maw.

“Sisters!” she shouted, and crammed the hapless Brother into her beak. His screams echoed in the cavern for a moment before ending in a swift crack. Caridea heaved herself forward, flattening the few Sisters unwise enough to approach her. “Those horrible Brotherhood people have a thing! A secret thing! And we need that thing because it’s bad!”

A few of the Sisters looked at each other skeptically but the majority roared in agreement, hefting bone spears and tridents in the air. A brawny lionfish woman screamed and stabbed the Greatmother’s corpse pile ferociously, heaving pieces of desiccated fishmen into the crowd.

“We should go kill them!” Caridea cheered, waving her tentacles gleefully. “We should go kill all of the Brotherhood, right now! That sounds great! I like this plan!”

The consensus from the Sisterhood was, by and large, concurrent.

____________

Ten thousand gods are not a burden born lightly.

Dorin’s mind was in a thousand pieces, a halo of lonely light glimmering around her aching head in the dark of the deep. Each voice a spark and every spark an inferno; every god was a microcosm as she felt their thoughts and their hearts surround her. Their hopes, their chosen children, a million years away in their separate worlds waiting for their return. She turned her head, skin lined by their light in the gloom of the sickened ocean. They were radiant. She saw their bodies glowing in the ghostlights: an iron god of fire and hate, a seething cathedral, a bird, a woman, a cat-eyed man and child, a weeping red worm and a green liar, a man who killed death, a mask on stars, a glass king, a sword of sand. There were others, infinite others, too many to see, too many to hold in her mind for more than an instant before they overtook her and she ceased to be Dorin and became the eternal. Their forms were a language, a coal on her lips that she dare not speak. It was agony, holding them; it was ecstasy.

She was prepared to die for them. The Eye of the Faceless Deep demanded it, demanded a feast of gods to herald its return to the surface of the world from down in the dark where it slept. It was a worthy thing to die for, she knew. It was a death she did not deserve.
One came to her then, one child among titans. It was light enough to rest without crushing her mind, though its touch was foul poison and it turned the water dark with disease. She was untouchable in her radiance, she was immaculate. She gave the broken creature her hand and felt its tears running down her palm. The patterns they spelled burned her skin.

my hands are broken my eyes are blind, the sick god said. all my suffering was for you, all my pain. i loved you. Its fragile hands slid to her neck, wrapping around her throat, but Dorin pushed it away. It recoiled as though she had thrust a blade in its heart. my hands, it wept, my beautiful beautiful eyes… we only loved you, we only wanted to hear you sing. we only wanted to have you. all the years in the dark, can you dream? can you dream of us? we were so close to being warm. we were so close to being whole…

“Enough,” she said. In that single word she felt the power of a thousand gods surging in her like a tide of fire, searing away whatever threads of the Oracle still existed in her. In the brilliant light of the godshead she saw its body, cringing away from view: tangled limbs and broken hands, too many of them, hiding the gashes in its throat and the hole in its chest and the ragged red tracks running down its cheeks. Its skin was translucent and torn, a terrible drowned apparition whose bones pressed through it as if trying to be escape. It face was beautiful, long and pale, and in the pits of its eyes its pupils glowed like stars. It looked at her in confusion and pain, endless pain, but she had nothing to offer it. She was not a part of it anymore.

you cannot!, it wept. Its broken hands pressed to its mouth, thin red tears streaming over claws and down its skeletal chest. we loved you, we loved you, we love you. how it hurts, this breaking. what agony! have mercy, have mercy, our love…

“LEAVE US,” The gods commanded, and the Oracle screamed, holding its empty heart as the sea came up to take it

and he felt himself begin to die.

______________

Carcharodon was displeased.

The newcomers before him were not of the Sisterhood’s get- that much was obvious- but they were strangers nonetheless, and queer ones at that. Too much like landdwellers, not enough like the spawn of the Deep Dark. Ordinarily he’d have them sacrificed without further ceremony, but even he would not dare to disrupt the Great Culling that was to come. Soggoth’s endless hunger might refuse a gift that was not the Dorin, and he could not risk bringing the Dreaming One’s ire down upon his clan. Nor could he spare warriors to deal with them; the Sisterhood’s constant spars had left his cult irritably depleted, and every living Brother was needed to fight them back and continue the search for the Dorin. To complicate things further, the damned Hermit had chosen this moment to align himself with the strangers, bringing him out of the agreed neutrality. Carcharodon would need Caridea’s agreement to kill the wretch, something the leathery old bitch would never agree to so long as he was the one to propose it. His teeth ground. What a marvelous waste of time.

The colossal shark thrashed his tail, buffeting the smaller of the visitors into the rocky walls of the abyssal trench. Next to his bulk they were little more than minnows, slaves to every minor current. Children. Hardly worth his effort. “I will not insult your intelligence by commanding you to leave. I believe my desires are clear already.”

The Hermit cleared his throat. Amongst all the strangers he was the one had paid the least mind to the Brothers’ jabbing spears and snarled threats. Carcharodon would have admired his bravery were it not for the common knowledge of the Hermit’s so-to-speak diplomatic immunity. Had he lips, the shark would have sneered. He detested nothing more than a coward in a hero’s skin. “Great Brother,” the Hermit was saying, “As the wiser of the two Deep Prophets surely you must acknowledge that your ritual will bring nothing but sorrow to the Deeps. Caridea denies this, but we know-”

“Do not feign camaraderie with me, Hermit,” Carcharodon rumbled. He circled the strangers, casting his massive shadow over their upturned faces. Guards waited patiently around the valley’s lip, watching the guests for any invitation for a fatal mauling. “I owe you your life. Nothing more. You are lucky I do not summon your beloved Caridea and end your lies once and for all. Even a fool knows a heretic when she sees one.”

“This is not heresy!” The Hermit insisted. He swam closer to the Great Brother, prompting a growl and a half-hearted spear thrust from a nearby anglerfish. Carcharodon silenced the Brother with a glare. “What heresy is there in preventing your madness from destroying us all? What cause do you have to summon Soggoth? His coming will achieve nothing but to bring an end to this world!”

Though they dared not speak, the Great Brother sensed his guards grow still with tension. Any mention, any hint that a cultist was even considering disobeying the holy gospel of the Deep Dark was punishable by immediate sacrifice- yet there was nothing he could do nothing to the Hermit in the space of his own temple. Not even a rebuke would be worth it. The old fool was too set in his ways, too important to be tossed aside like an unruly Brother or Sister…

“You should know the magnitude of your words, Hermit,” Carcharodon said lightly. With one fin he gestured to a burly octopus man, who nodded and swam down into the darkness waiting in the trench’s pits. “I know I will not be able to convince you of the importance of raising our great lord from his slumber. Instead… let me show you something a little more tangible…”

“Nothing is worth the end of the world, Brother,” the Hermit said sternly. “Not even-”

A piercing scream erupted from the darkness waiting below, an old sound to Carcharodon but no less unsettling for its familiarity. His guests recoiled in shock, wincing and searching the darkness for the source. The Great Brother’s perpetual smile grew even wider as they tried to shield their ears from the agonized shriek. “What are you keeping here, Carcharodon?” The Hermit demanded. The sound had not fazed him; his wrinkled face was set with determination. “One of your Brothers? Are you torturing a Sister?”

“Torture?” The shark mused, gliding placidly in the gloom. His shadow disappeared in the murk of the trench floor. “No, I think not. We’ve acquired a minor advantage over the Sisterhood, you see, Hermit. We no longer need to resort to such petty tactics. Entero,” he called down to the struggling shapes in the depths, “Bring up Scyliorhin.”

The thing that the octopus man dragged up, screaming and clawing at its face with bent and broken hands, was obviously unfamiliar to the Hermit even as one of his companions recoiled in disbelieving horror, glancing nervously at the others. The old crab only stared at the creature with open revulsion before turning back to the Brother, every inch of his face wrought with uncomprehending disgust. How interesting, Carcharodon thought. What else were the old idiot’s newfound allies keeping from him? Perhaps he ought to have a closer examination of these guests.

“What is this?” The Hermit said angrily. His beady eyes were fixed firmly on the struggling prisoner, biting and clawing at anything that came into reach. More guards arrived to restrain the writhing thing even as it turned its empty gaze on the strangers, mouthing at them incomprehensibly with a mouthful of shattered teeth. Thick black blood flowed in misty clouds from its blackened fins, now more closely resembling talons; its body stretched impossibly thin in every direction in a twisted echo of the fish men holding its broken limbs. “What have you done to this man?”

“We have done nothing,” Carcharodon said calmly. His obsidian eyes scrutinized the furious sage, gauging the Hermit’s reaction. “We have only been given a gift. Speak, Scyliorhin,” the shark bellowed, “Tell the Hermit your name!”

“SON OF BLASPHEMY! DO YOU THEN DENY US, PAGUROIDEA?” The tortured thing cried, sobbing in between its screams. It thrust its head upward, searching the water blindly with blue-on-black eyes. Sickle-fingered claws strained for the sunlight. “WE ARE THE FORSAKEN BONES OF THE SEA AND THE BURNING BLOOD OF THE DROWNING DEEP! WE SEE YOU, PAGUROIDEA! WE SEE YOUR UNREPENTANT SINS! WEEP FOR YOUR END, SINNER! YOU WILL NOT SAVE THIS EARTH!”

“You see, Hermit,” Carcharodon said, “We have more than one god on our side.”

_________________________________

He knew long before Gannet what had become of the Oracle. Still, he led him to her, and watched the dead man drown.

She was beautiful, as she’d always been, but magnified under the infinite lens of ocean she was radiant. Even the sleeping gods in his soul rose at her image, their hollow whispers a subtle hymn to her majesty. She wore pantheons like pearls, draped around her bare form and shining in the face of the darkness. Only by the power of the Sleeping One could the-man-called-Zimmer bear to look upon her without burning into ashes; he didn’t know how Gannet managed. Perhaps it came from being an Eye.

“Go,” he told him, unmoved by the fear in the man’s face. “She is yours.”

He didn’t see what happened next, only heard the song of the Oracle falter and then suddenly, furiously, end.

_______________________________

No, she told him,I don’t recognize you.

There were no other gods, no waiting ocean, no spider-child hanging on their every word. Everything was black. There was nothing beyond the heat of their bodies, nothing beyond him and her alone together in the gentle silence. They floated like moths in the twilight, pale flecks in the settling dark.

Her face was blank. He could no longer read the faces of men as he once had, but he could read hers like a holy text: there was nothing of him left in her. Not even anathema. No warnings. Nothing but her, and she was something he didn’t understand.

I don’t recognize you, she said to him. Her palms faced his, perfect and pale and smooth. I turn you away. Go back to the thing you were. I cast you off.

He didn’t have the words to respond. Instead he reached for her hands, but they fell away and the water went cold where her arms had passed, cold enough to turn his blood to stone. What was the thing he was? What am I?, he wanted to ask, but an Eye must never ask questions. An Eye may only obey. This is the hymn you died for.

She had nothing more to say to him, he saw. She was finished. Her eyes were on something greater, on a field of infinite stars somewhere in a sky he couldn’t see. Only the smallest part of her mind knew that he was even there, waiting for her. Dorin, he managed. He couldn’t remember her real name. Dorin. Please. I’m here.

Her eyes slid past him but her saw her perfect brow crease and it broke his heart. His god, his love; everything in her that should have been his was gone. In its place was a void, echoing on forever with the whispers of strangers and the cold touch of foreign lovers, pushing him away. He felt fear, he felt pain, he felt the slow rot building up in his chest like the sickness he was, burning out his heart in a pillar of smoke. He felt weightless. He felt nothing. He could not leave her side.

She- or not she but the thing she was, the thing he no longer knew- was tired of him. He could see that at last. She moved as if to strike him but instead it became a gesture, shaping a circle in the void with her hands. You cannot imagine, she said. You cannot imagine the things beyond your tiny world, your pitiful life. You are nothing to me, she told him, you were never anything at all.

She was right, he realized. She had always been right. He was nothing.

There wasn’t anything left for him to be.

_____________________________________________

“Mother! Greatmother!”

Caridea frowned. This was the third distraction in as many minutes and she was getting very annoyed by all this bother. It wasn’t very often she left the Sisterhood grotto; why did her Sisters have to make such a fuss about everything on her big day? It wasn’t fair. They were always front flank this and rear flank that and fifty percent losses these and it was just horribly dull. She could find the Sacrifice on her own, she bet, if she really really wanted. Only it was easier to make the Sisters do it. Then she didn’t have to worry about running into those terrible Brothers and getting a stomachache.

“Mother, something’s wrong,” an angelfish was saying anxiously, tugging on the kraken’s tentacles to get her attention. Caridea tried to wave the Sister off but the little creature clung to her like algae, frantically waving a spindly trident. Grudgingly the Greatmother waved permission to speak, hoping she would forget what she was here for and leave. “The Brothers are doing something to our soldiers. We don’t know what it is, it almost seems like a kind of poison, or- or sickness or something, our healers have never seen anything like it- Mother, our Sisters are in danger! We can’t continue the attack without imperiling the search for the Sacrifice!”

“What silly nonsense!” Caridea exclaimed, pushing at the Sister with her tendrils. She hoped the awful girl would leave soon. “I didn’t give anyone permission to get sick! Have them arrested for disobeying orders. We need people listening to me! Always!”

Her attendant decided to ignore this statement and pushed a small scrap of something dark at Caridea’s eyes, which the Greatmother batted at irritably. “Look,” the angelfish urged her.

“Fine!” the kraken snapped. She snatched the scrap away and lowered it in front of her left eye, scrutinizing the material. It seemed to be seaweed of some description, scratched with complicated scribbles in a vague map of the surrounding sea. Dark blobs indicated the Brotherhood’s abyss, surrounded by clusters of fish skulls of various conformation and size. The rest of the map was marked with X’s. Disinterested, Caridea waved the map at the impatient Sister. “I don’t get it. What do you want?”

“Mother,” the angelfish cried, “We can’t find the Sacrifice. We’ve looked everywhere! We… we fear the Brotherhood may already have her, and with the sickness-”

Caridea scoffed. “That’s stupid. You’re stupid. They don’t have her. She’s over there,” she said, and lifted a tentacle in a southerly direction. Her golden eyes rolled in irritation. “Can’t you hear her? She’s in the Black Temple. She’s so loud, I wish she’d stop. Talking to all those weird people. What a crazy person!”

The angelfish stared up at the babbling kraken, horror dawning on her face. “You… Greatmother…” Her fins flared in distress, brilliant red; she searched desperately for witnesses but her Sisters were too far away to hear.

Caridea ignored her. “You’re all too slow! Too slow! You should have killed the Brothers by now, every last stupid one of them! Why’d I trust you? What about them, huh? I am fed up with everything!” With one sweep of her tentacle she buffeted the Sister back, tossing the map off into the deep as the angelfish flailed for balance. “I am leaving! I am going to deal with the Sacrifice myself. Yeah! Yeah, that’s what I’ll do,” she said proudly. “I can do anything I want. I’m the best!”

The angelfish didn’t bother to stay to watch the Kraken lurch off towards the Temple, humming happily to herself. Map and trident tossed aside, the Sister simply prayed that she would be able to reach the others before the Greatmother had time to doom them all.

___________________________

YOU ARE THE DEAD THAT WALKS.

The words rolled into his mind like thunder.

Martin flinched, his head colliding painfully with the wall of the cavern the Brotherhood had placed them in. Stars and error messages darkened his vision for a moment before he regained himself, shaking off the sudden throbbing in his head. The voice was loud, as though someone had shouted into his ear with a megaphone, but the cavern was empty except for the crab boy and the old guy. “What the hell was that?” Martin said.

Samael and the Hermit merely looked at each other. Neither seemed particularly fazed. “What do you mean?” the Hermit asked cautiously.

Martin frowned. The last thing he needed was further proof that he was going insane. “That… the voice. Just now? It said…”

DEAD THAT WALKS. THEY ARE NOT THE CHOSEN. THEY ARE DEAF.

The android sighed, holding his head in his hands. “Nevermind.”

THEY ARE BLIND TO US. THEY ARE BLIND TO THE SEA AND THE VOICE OF THE DEEP. WORTHLESS. THEIR DEATHS WILL COME.

The Hermit and Samael stared at him uneasily for a moment longer before lapsing into disinterested silence. Martin slid down against a wall, keeping his hands pressed to his temples in what might have appeared to be frustration. In reality he was trying to recall everything in his programming that had to do with long-range telepathy and psionic communications, particularly the kind that left no individual tracking code and didn’t seem to be transmitted from any recognizable source.

Alright, joke’s over, Martin thought as loudly as he could. I know you’re a telepath. I don’t know how strong you are but you must have a reason to talk instead of trying to brainwipe me instantly. Who are you and what do you want?

The voice responded with a thin wail of a laugh. LITTLE DEATH. YOUR CHANGING FORM DOES NOT DECEIVE YOU, DOES NOT CLOUD YOUR MIND AS THE OTHERS? SUCH MARVELS OUR EYES HAVE SEEN. WHICH OF THE GOVERNED WORLDS DOES THE WALKING DEAD HERALD? ANTHOUSAI? CORILADAE? BLESSED HYLEROROI? SPEAK, DEATH. TELL US YOUR SINS.

Martin glanced irritably at his two companions. Even someone without an ounce of psychic sensitivity should have been able to at least pick up on the wave disturbances caused by a transmission of this strength, even if the words were evidently in some kind of code. The two crustaceans had not even budged. Only the Hermit had made any move that might indicate disturbance, and that was merely a concerned glance in Martin’s direction. I repeat, state your identity.

PAGUROIDEA DOES NOT HEAR US. NOR THE DEMON. DO NOT CONCERN DEATH’S IMAGE WITH THEM.

I will not continue this communication if you refuse to cooperate.

The voice made a noise that only the most liberal of xenolinguists would have interpreted as indicating amusement and drew itself closer to Martin’s mind. He recoiled instinctively; whatever was sending the transmission was big, far bigger than he had expected. He would have identified it as a team of psychics working together rather than any one source but for its unmistakable note of commonality. The transmission pulsed and he found himself receiving an image: a broken figure, nauseatingly thin, with black sclera pierced by bright blue irises.

The fish thing? Scyliorhin? Martin thought in disbelief.

HA HA HA, GOOD. NO. YES. HE IS ONE OF US, BUT ONLY A VESSEL. ONE OF THE FEW SUITABLE TO WEAR OUR BLESSED FORM. ONLY AN ANCHOR. TEMPORARY. WE ARE INFINITE.

Sorry, but that doesn’t answer my question. This must be someone’s idea of a joke, Martin decided. Even in whatever bizarre place he’d found himself in there must be unauthorized psychannels. His mental filters were most likely malfunctioning; an uncommon occurrence, but not unheard of. Are you a collective? A hivemind? What organization are you registered under?

THESE ARE MORTAL WORDS. THEY DO NOT APPLY TO US. WHY DO YOU ASK US OUR NAME, DEATH? DO YOU NOT RECALL OUR FIRST VESSEL IN THIS WORLD? HE FEARED YOU. WE ALL FEAR YOU. YOUR IRREVERANCE WOUNDS US.

Something triggered in the android’s memory- an image of a spidery horror crawling towards him- but he pushed it away for now. It was becoming increasingly clear that this wasn’t an ordinary transmission. He could feel the voice’s words as though they was his own: there was nothing human about it, but something deeper, calmer, infinitely more terrifying and seething with life. It regarded him with a thousand years of predatory cunning, watching without eyes. He was a threat to it, he realized. It was sending him a warning. As clean and as clinical as a medic’s report, the voice wanted him gone.

Martin shook off the fear creeping into his stomach and gave a mental push to the voice, relieved when it retreated willingly. It was just a scare tactic. A simple manipulation of instinctive stimuli by an amateur psion with a stolen amplifier. Why are you afraid of me? Why are you telling me this?

BECAUSE WE CANNOT TOUCH YOU.

In Martin’s mind there was suddenly an image, brilliantly rendered in colors no human eye could trace: a man standing before a ragged pit, stiffened against the wind that raced towards him from over the stony shore. Something black and oily was pouring up from the ground, neither liquid nor gas but reminiscent of both, curling towards the man with wisps of curling fingers. It settled around his shoulders like a shroud and he staggered forward, stumbling into the earth as it swallowed him whole.

WE CANNOT CONTROL YOU LIKE WE CAN THE OTHERS. WE CANNOT MAKE YOU SEE US, WORSHIP US, DIE FOR US. YOU ARE NOTHING. YOU ARE BARREN EARTH WHERE THERE SHOULD BE SOWN LIFE. OUR VESSELS FEAR YOU BECAUSE THEY KNOW YOU ARE OUR DESTRUCTION, SOMETHING WE CANNOT REACH. WE ARE A GOD. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DENY US. THAT YOU BEAR OUR VOICE WITHOUT MADNESS IS PROOF OF YOUR IMMORTALITY.

You… Something was rising to the forefront of Martin’s mind, a combination of a fragmented memory- who’d want to take the risk of malpractice?- and the impression of the voice itself. It presented itself to him, absurd in its simplicity. He didn’t want to believe it; he nearly laughed. A… disease? You’re a disease, and you can’t infect me.

He felt its cold agreement, unfazed by the discovery. It had no need to lie to him. WE ARE MANY THINGS. WE TOOK A FORM NO LIVING THING COULD REFUTE, BUT YOU ARE NOT LIVING, DEAD THAT WALKS THE EARTH. WE WOULD NOT WASTE A HOST WHEN THERE ARE LESS WORTHY MEN TO OFFER.

Something about the way the voice intoned the last few words made Martin frown. The sacrifice. The sacrifice they’re all talking about.

SHE DENIES US AS WELL. SHE DENIES HER SALVATION FROM THE HANDS OF THE MULTITUDE. BUT THERE IS HOPE FOR HER, DEATH. WE DO NOT SAY THE SAME OF YOU.

And then the voice was gone, and Martin was alone with the feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong.

__________________________________

Soggoth slumbered as Caridea drew ever closer, trailing the bodies of Brothers and Sisters in her tentacles.

She moved through the water like a ghost, passing over the ruins of the city that had always been there, ever since she had crawled from her mother’s corpse six hundred years ago. She eyed its melted towers curiously, not having seen it from above since she was a nymph. She’d never noticed the extent of the destruction before. What kind of thing had the power to do that, she wondered, to topple all the buildings like so many stacks of shells? It wasn’t Soggoth. Soggoth would never hurt anything. It must have been something almost strong as him, she decided, and stopped swimming long enough to register this information. After a minute of silence she came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter anyway. No one was strong enough to stop her, she thought happily, crushing the corpses with ease. The Sisterhood had been wrong to hold her back, to think that she wouldn’t just get whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it, because that’s what always happened. No one could keep her from anything. She was simply the best there was and that was a fact.

The Black Temple loomed in the distance like a beacon, radiating the slumbering thoughts of Soggoth at her. She had to hurry, Caridea thought. The Sacrifice was waiting.

_______________________________

Soggoth k’doam ilu kv’mn’ koiis sk’koi.

She understood it perfectly.

Her time was coming, the minor flaw of the sick god’s son dealt with and the sweeping face of the godshead now turning back to her. Was she prepared? Would she flee? Did she fear the darkness that would come? No, she told them, smiling. They were so gentle, all of them, even the gods of death that sat in the shadows with their swords. They would not hurt her now. She was too precious. She was the catalyst that would burn this world to ashes. They loved her.

The endless caverns of the Temple echoed to the planet’s core, swimming with the primordial Firsts- Love and Death, Pestilence and War- legacies that outlasted even the Sleeping God, yet were little more than his servants to be tossed aside when they no longer served him well. They were not bound to her pantheons as the other gods were, yet they swirled around her wailing their eulogies to the world they had built from the dust of long-dead stars. She scorned them. Who clung to stones when they could have pearls? With a flick of her hand she banished them, sending them back to the world’s core. She did not need them as witnesses. She had eternities for that.

The Sleeping One stirred, barraging her with waves of torrid dreams. She lifted a finger; a thousand gods rose at her command in a shining shield. She felt some perish, but it was like losing grains of sand from a desert. They were hers. They would die if she commanded it, but more importantly they would live to see her fulfill her sacrifice. She felt their eyes on her, brimming with pride. They adored her beyond anything else in their universes.

G’ka malidam myn’nk K’Caridea.

Dorin turned, smiling, to the cracked and ancient path of bones that led to the Temple’s gate. It was time.

__________________________

“What is the thing I was?”

It was the first thing he’d said without the tinge of the Oracle’s madness coloring his words. The alchemist attended the dying man; he could spare the shell of his body and he was fond of the poor creature. His true self was elsewhere, amidst the churn of ancient gods bearing up the body of the Dreaming One. He could spare these few moments before his mortal form disintegrated.

The dead man’s eyes were clouded, blind. He lay in the hollow of the broken city, limbs twitching upon a heap of nibbled bones, crabs and eels, their tiny legs weakened by the sickness fleeing his body. The alchemist was immune, shielded by the grace of the old gods, but he felt the madness creep at the edge of his mind, searching for a sanctuary. He could offer it nothing but the cold comfort of his presence.

“What was I?” the man asked again, not to the alchemist but to something else, something Zimmer could not see. Perhaps it had come to be with him, he mused, or perhaps the man was simply delusional. Another spasm wracked the Eye’s body and he curled away from the alchemist’s hand. His back was hollow, shrunken against his bones. Dark spots had appeared across his heaving sides, bleeding onto the mass of tendrils that grew from the sockets of his hips. Zimmer wondered if his body would fail before it fell apart or if the wretched thing would stay dreaming even as his life slipped away, his bones sinking into the city’s ruins. What a terrible place to die, the alchemist thought. A million years from home.

There was little he could do comfort him. “What is your name?” he asked quietly, touching his hand to the side of the Eye’s face. He shuddered in response, pulling away. He didn’t seem to be able to move his tentacles.

“Why… are you asking?”

The alchemist turned the man’s head to face him, searching the blind eyes for some hint of the Oracle’s power even as feeble claws raked weakly at his wrists. Ordinarily he would have feared further infection, but this time he was too well shielded. The Eye seemed to sense this and subsided, breathing raggedly. “Do you remember her?”

“Who?”

“Dorin.”

For the briefest instant the dying man’s face contorted with rage and he bared his black teeth, pupils shrinking to pinpricks under their patina of blindness, but between one breath and another the fury was gone. “I don’t know who that is,” he said dully. He coughed, choking on black fluid that burst from his mouth in clouds. His eyes searched fruitlessly for the alchemist’s face. “Who is she?”

Zimmer could have laughed. “She is everything. She was yours, once. She is the sacrifice that will bring a dying world to life.”

Again there came that strange flare of anger, dissipating before the alchemist had a chance to register it. Perhaps he was only imagining its existence. “I don’t know her,” the Eye said. “I don’t know you. You should… leave…”

“Gannet,” Zimmer said, but the dying man didn’t notice. He was trying to rise despite the frailty of his collapsing limbs. His skeletal back arched with the effort, forcing his ribs into sharp contrast against the near-translucence of his skin. “This world is going to end. Does it frighten you?”

“I fear nothing,” the Eye said. A sharper note entered his voice, deeper and crueler than Zimmer had heard from him before. “You see my dying. I died… once…” He frowned. “No. Did I?” His eyes snapped to Zimmer, staring at the alchemist through their fog with sudden clarity. Suddenly the city seemed to have grown cold. “Who are you?” the Eye said quietly.

Zimmer frowned. This was growing distracting, pulling his focus from the Sleeping One’s song. “You know me,” he said impatiently. “Don’t play the child. I am the blood of the Oracle.”

“The Oracle?” Whatever fugue had possessed the man seemed to be fading with alarming speed. The thing- he no longer wanted to call it an Eye, no longer wanted to call it anything- strained forward, clawing towards Zimmer on broken fingers. “What happened at the Oracle when you left me? What did you do to me?”

Unnerved and preoccupied by the affairs of the divine, Zimmer could only stare. “I did nothing. I wasn’t there-”

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?” the broken man screamed. He slashed at the alchemist with feverish speed, falling short but only by an inch. Zimmer felt the current ripple past him and crawled backwards, far too slowly.

The thing that had been Gannet snarled at him, shaking with tension. A spasm passed through his tentacles and he laughed, spitting out blood. “You left me,” he mumbled, smiling at Zimmer with dripping teeth. “You left me down there. All alone. Are you afraid to die alone, stranger? Alone in the dark with a hundred screaming madmen pulling you deeper and deeper down?

“Gannet,” Zimmer said, horrified.

“Who’s that?” he said disinterestedly. He examined his claws as if he had never seen them before, then looked back at the alchemist with an expression that sent the gods quailing from his soul. “I don’t know who you are,” the thing said slowly, “but I know why you left me. I know what I did to you.” It laughed, gasping for air even as it dragged itself closer to the helpless alchemist. Bone splintered and cracked with every step it took. “And every second, every hour of the time that I was in that damned cave, I was waiting for this. I was waiting for you. I let those damned things take me because I was waiting for a chance to pay you back, and I knew that if I just waited I would find you here. With me.” His laugh was a seabird calling, screaming and screaming and screaming. “I did all of this for you, dear. And here you are at last.”
_________________________

“I’m here!” Caridea burbled happily, waving the battered corpses of the cultists before the towering expanse of the Black Temple. Her eyes rolled in happiness. “Are you excited, Soggoth? Are you? I brought presents!”

Unceremoniously the kraken flung the bodies to the Temple floor where they burst into bloody clouds, muddying the water with viscera. Caridea ignored them. “Where is she?” she asked breathlessly, searching the shadows and flapping her tentacles excitedly. “Where’s the Sacrifice? I’m ready!”

Here.

If there was any divine distaste in Dorin’s voices the Greatmother didn’t notice. She dwarfed the tiny human by a hundredfold; when she appeared the kraken might have missed her but for the blinding radiance that surrounded her fragile soul. Even then it was more a matter of the ethereal song binding itself to the girl’s body that caught Caridea’s attention. Breathlessly she rose up, looming before her like a thunderhead. Each of her eyes was as tall as three of Dorin, but the Greatmother gazed upon her with such reverence that the pantheons stilled in respect.

“You’re so beautiful,” Caridea whispered, echoing in the hollow halls of the Temple. Her tentacles coiled gently around the girl’s halo, a shielding embrace. “I didn’t even imagine. He’ll be so pleased with you.”

Dorin smiled back coolly. She was done with words. “Do it.”

The kraken nodded, silently, and opened her beak to begin.

_________________

The Brother’s trench rumbled with the force of Carcharodon’s roar. “SHE FOUND IT!”

Martin stayed silent, partially out of respect for the shark’s distress but mostly out of tact. Even trapped in their tiny cell he could feel the fear amongst the Brothers, the absolute terror of their leader. It didn’t seem like a very efficient way to run a cult, but then he’d never much been into religion anyways.

SEE HOW THEY PANIC.

He sighed. I thought you’d left.

The voice- the entity, rather, though he still didn’t know what to call it- chuckled. WE DID NOT TELL YOU HOW REFRESHING IT IS TO HEAR YOUR DERISION. YOU ARE A STRANGE ONE.

Why is Carcharoguy upset? Martin thought, vaguely uncomfortable at its sudden change in tone. Where before it had been caustic the voice was smooth, confident. Things were going well for it. He wasn’t sure if that was necessarily a good thing. What did they find?

THESE CHILDREN WISH TO SUMMON A GOD OF THE OLDEST BLOOD. THEIR SACRIFICE WILL WAKEN IT. THIS ONE WAS WEAK AND DEAF AND COULD NOT HEAR THE HYMN. THE OTHERS HAVE CLAIMED THE GIRL FOR THEIR OWN.

The cavern floor rumbled again. Martin looked at the guards curiously; they had retreated in with the prisoners, quaking and paralyzed with fear. The Sisterhood has her? What does that mean?

HAVE YOU NOT WITNESSED A SUMMONING, DEATH? ONLY THE CALLER BENEFITS. ALL OTHERS BECOME THE OFFERING. THESE CHILDREN WILL DIE.

He didn’t have to ask what that meant for him.

WE SEE THE FEAR IN YOUR MIND, DEATH. DO YOU FEAR WHAT YOU ARE?

If we could at all avoid getting me killed that would be great, the android replied. Reflexively he felt the socket where his weaponized arm used to be, not that it would have been of use to him now. I guess maybe save the rest of these people while we’re at it.

YOU ARE ADMIRABLE FOR A DEAD THING.

The voice was growing louder and more steady, thick with self-assurance. It blocked out the bellows of Carcharodon’s rage and the frantic prayers of the Hermit, trying to reason with the terrified guards. Martin found himself perversely amused by their efforts. It wasn’t as if the apocalypse was going anywhere. Everyone on this planet is going to die, then.

THAT IS MUCH THE POINT. BUT WE ARE INFINITE IN OUR MERCY; SHALL WE SHOW YOU HOW IT ENDS? A CHILD SUCH AS YOU MIGHT LEARN SOMETHING.

The android shrugged, realized the voice probably wouldn’t pick up on the gesture and send it a mental nod instead. Sure. Why not?

Abruptly his view of the cavern shifted and Martin was thrown bodily to the floor by a tremendous blow, except that instead of the cold stone he expected he felt himself collide with only more water. He plunged into a freezing void and sank down and down into a writhing blackness that caressed his body like a lover’s hands. Stunned, he struggled aimlessly against the forces but met only air, and smoke, and then his eyes opened and he saw the endless reaches of the Black Temple unfurling before him.

Twisted and distorted carvings covered every inch of the colossal space, every tiny fragment ¬¬of a broken scale or wayward talon painstakingly detailed with slavish devotion. Gods and monsters coiled in seething knots in every direction, winding in and out of each other until it was impossible to tell when one ended and the rest began; furious, agonized faces peered out from every surface, curses on their gnarled lips and slavering tongues bared. Unspeakable horrors bulged from the walls and seemed ready to peel themselves free of the stone to devour the Temple’s occupants, every inch of their surfaces engraved with impossibly fine precision. Martin reeled; his gyroscopic stabilizers must have failed for him to be experiencing such vertigo. It wasn’t until he saw the faint, shining spark that floated in the center of the atrium that Martin realized the sculptures’ true scale: each carving was stories high, the largest taller than a skyscraper. Warships could have been lost in the space of this single room, little more than toys in the endless shadowy depths. Alone in the depths floated the Sacrifice, miniscule and infinite all at once.

The voice murmured something he couldn’t hear and the android’s vision blurred for an instant. When it cleared he was within arm’s reach of the girl he had seen from a distance. At this range the sculptures were unrecognizable but for vast sweeps of smooth stone, but he barely noticed: the Sacrifice caught his gaze and held it like a diamond glittering on a field of stars. She herself was pretty in a youthful sort of way- a little too last year’s Prom Queen for Martin’s taste- but the glow of the silvery halo surrounding her transformed her into a goddess. Her face was bright with rapture, her eyes shining like lamps in the dark. She didn’t belong here. Martin wanted to pull her away, to take her out of this hateful place, but when he tried to take her hand he found he couldn’t move. His body was simply gone.

YOU ARE ONLY A GUEST. WATCH. THEY ARE NEARLY TO THE END.

Beyond the girl loomed a shadowy monster, a sea monster off the borders of some ancient mariner’s map, little more than a speck on the Temple’s caliginous surface. Its arms were wrapped lovingly around her, carefully out of the halo’s glow. Colossal eyes shone in the light as its beak clicked softly, murmuring a string of words that set Martin’s teeth on edge and made the wires in his fingers tingle. He ignored them; it was easy with the Sacrifice to distract him, to guide him in this darkened place. He wanted so badly to hold her…

DO YOU DESIRE THIS ONE, DEATH THAT WALKS? The voice was thick with scorn. OUR VESSEL TO THIS PLACE DID, ONCE, UNTIL SHE TORE HIM FROM US. HE WAS A GOOD EYE. SHE HAD NO RIGHT TO TAKE HIM. WE GAVE HER A CHANCE TO SAVE HERSELF, TO SAVE THIS WORLD, AND SHE TURNED US AWAY. SHE WILL PAY HER PRICE, IN TIME. THESE GODS… THESE LESSER THINGS HAVE DAMNED THEMSELVES IN MAKING THE GIRL THEIR MARTYR.

Why? Martin thought vaguely. What could go wrong with her?

YOU ARE AS FOOLISH AS THE REST.

He felt it, then, the voice’s purpose.

WE DO NOT REGRET WHAT IS ABOUT TO BE DONE, DEATH. KNOW THAT THIS IS TRUE.

He knew in his heart how it was going to happen. Perhaps he had always known, since the moment the voice first spoke to him; perhaps he had accepted it hours ago. The voice was overtaking him, making him a part of itself, and he could see it: a twisted, dying creature, heart torn out by its own broken fingers. Its hands were on him, guiding him, moving him towards the darkness stirring in the Temple walls at the kraken’s summons. It was inevitable now, but he felt no fear. He felt nothing except for wonder, and the growing suspicion that this had always been meant to be. In his last few moments he only had one question.

Why?

YOU WERE A GOOD HOST, DEATH THAT NO LONGER LIVES. WE WILL ALLOW YOU THIS.

As the Temple walls began to crack and shake and the behemoth’s voice rose in exultation, the voice melted into Martin Holden’s mind and he laughed as he felt its anger, its terror, and its overwhelming spite as it gently nudged him forward.

WE DON’T LIKE TO SHARE.

______________________________

In the end all it took was a single word.

The gods that surrounded Dorin came from her body and were bound to it, bound to her by unbreakable chains forged from the rituals of summoning and sacrifice. There were patterns that they must follow, legacies they must not break. She was their anchor: she was all they saw, all they could feel in the drowning deep of the city of Sk’koi. They were her attendants, her masters, her slaves. Not a single one of them thought to answer to the god that waited beyond to devour her. Not a single one, for all their power, could disobey her. Not a single one even knew how, except for the one lonely being that the Sacrifice had cut free.

It was easy, for the Oracle. All names are much the same, and all it had to do was whisper one in place of another.

It wasn’t as if the Dreaming God knew the difference between one mortal and the next.
____________________________

Dorin felt the deception instantly.

It was as if someone had plunged a knife into her heart; she grabbed her chest but found that she was drowning, drowning in darkness and poison and fire. She was empty, so burningly empty: her halo was ripped away, shattered in the boiling hatred of the Temple and the wakening mind of Soggoth. They were gone. All of her gods were gone and their absence was the purest agony she had ever felt. Every inch of her skin burned as though soaked in acid, every vein in her body a wire of pain burrowing into her skin. Her portals were lakes of fire burning into her bones. She screamed but no sound came out, only black and twisted words that burned her mouth to speak, howling the names of long-dead cataclysms. She heard the kraken wailing in fear and tried to push the beast away, but no gods came to her call, only the freezing cold of the ocean and the empty hands of sickness.

GIVE THE DEAD MAN OUR LOVE, WITCH.

k’soggoth dgasatelka kv’mn’ koiis sk’koi soggoth k’doam ilu natamn dgasatok k’vvaalikisstri eualiyy maita, k’soggoth dgasatelka kv’mn’ koiis sk’koi koiis sk’koi k’soggoth dgasatelka sk’koi

WE HOPE THIS WORLD WAS WORTH IT.

__________________

The Sleeping God woke to a poisoned earth.

In His infinity He beheld Sk’koi with a thousand eyes burning eyes, watching the city crumble as His mind swept through it in the throes of His waking. It had become something alien in His absence. He did not recognize its ruins, though He mourned for the city that had thrived a thousand years ago, that had carved His name into the very bones of this world. His thoughts were languid, unfurling themselves over the darkened waters with the leisure of one who has slept through aeons and would have remained until the end of time had His Name not been spoken in the hall of the primordial ones. The sacrifices He had been promised were nothing more than a ruse, after all, a mortal when he had tasted gods in his dreaming waters. Those who had summoned Him had failed.

His all-encompassing mind felt them as it spread through the ocean, opening to everything that swam, that crawled, that walked upon the face of the abyss. Miniscule fears and petty desires. He did not hate them for their faults, did not wish doom upon them for their broken promise. He did not wish anything at all. As His mind touched theirs He felt their bodies failing, turning back to the dust from which their souls were borne with screams of silent sorrow. He did not wish them harm. He did not wish that their minds and hearts would turn to stone, but it was the price they had agreed to pay. He could not refuse.

The Temple parted like so much sand at his touch, a hundred years of stone dissolving at the slightest wave of His fingers. Hands as large as cities gripped the crumbling stone, coiled tight with alien muscles as the Dreaming One rose into the sea and turned His head to the darkening sky. The oceans boiled, the earth groaned with agony: all the endless tapestries of life unraveled in a single moment of wondering though. It was strange, the Dreaming One considered as the world came to an sudden and cataclysmic end, that He had never once considered He would not want this world to die.

Such was life, He mused.

Anomaly · 05-05-2012, 02:48 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.

"Congratulations," Henry mumbled before handing Doug his winnings. He'd put money on Samael.

For Doug, however, the winnings were empty. On one hand, money, but on the other, someone might have just died for real as a sacrifice to some kind of elder god that might have actually been a real thing somewhere.

"Henry, do you..." Doug started.

"What?" Henry replied, in the midst of taking bets for round three.

"Do you think the Tormentor was right? That this is real?"

"How could it be real? This kind of thing doesn't happen, Doug. Someone hijacked the network, that's all."

"But what about Rollo? You can't ignore that."

Henry was silent for a moment, then turned back to taking bets.

"Hey, it's the Tormentor again!" someone called from the TV room. A herd of animators and writers flooded in all at once.

"Ah, there you are!" the Tormentor yelled as Doug walked in.

"What?" Doug asked no one in particular.

"What do you mean, 'what?' You know what I'm talking about, Doug."

Doug's jaw dropped as everyone in the room affixed their eyes on him. "You... how?"

"How? Because I'm the Tormentor, that's how. And by the way, yes, this is real, Doug. A guy actually just died as a sacrifice! It was great!"

"Wh... Why are you doing this?" Doug stammered.

"You're kind of slow, aren't you? There's no reason for this! Well, except that it's extremely entertaining. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be doing it!"

Doug yelled and ripped the TV cord out of the wall.

"You know that's not going to work, Doug. You can see that. ...Well, maybe you don't see it clearly enough. Let me help you with that."

The TV cord turned into a snake in Doug's hand, promptly biting him in the face. He fell to the ground, screaming, as a number of eyes started emerging all over his body. Everyone else in the room gazed in horror as the Tormentor's laughter echoed through the building.

"Oh, don't worry. He'll live! If anything, i've helped him overcome one of the infinite deficiencies of your miserable species! Don't go away - the fun's just about to begin."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Each of the six remaining contestants suddenly found themselves on a cold stone floor, still half sea-creature and completely unable to breathe. Some flopped around uselessly, some remained still. A wave of black washed over each of them, and, after seemingly an eternity of feeling as if every fiber of their being were exploding in a different direction, they found that they had returned to their normal forms.

The black coalesced into a familar form, malicious gaze affixed upon each simultaneously. "That was great!"

One of them found that they were no longer restrained, in spite of the pillars towering over them. They took a step, only to find a massive red worm glaring them in the face. They quickly backed down.

"Oh, right! Let me introduce you to the Spectator! She's supposed to be running another of these things, but there was a little... 'incident'. Don't mind her, she might not horribly mash your bodies together for the sake of art!

"But anyway, you didn't come here to not die horrible deaths. I've got something to show you!"

The contestants felt something similar to being sucked through a hole the size of a pin head, before emerging, levitating in a blue, sunny sky over some sort of amusement park. An enormous statue of a familiar, cartoonish armadillo towered over the park, and several of the attractions seemingly defied the laws of physics (or at least safety precautions) entirely.

"Welcome to Rolloland, the happiest place in the Multiverse! Looks like a great place, doesn't it? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and everyone's out having a wonderful time! Doesn't it just remind you of being a kid all over again? Well, I'm sure you're going to enjoy your stay! This is one of the most popular amusement parks in the Multiverse, in fact! You'd be surprised how many universes broadcast The Rollo Show. Well, somewhere along the line someone came up with a way to cross universes, and their first thought was 'interdimensional amusement park'. ...Sure, why not?"

The Tormentor clapped a couple of hands. Some clouds immediately began rolling in from the distance, threatening to overtake the sun and ruin the day for a lot of park-goers.

"Now, as I'm sure you know, places like this aren't cheap! You'll all find that I've given you some Rollobucks, the only acceptable currency in Rolloland! Don't spend them all in one place, or you'll regret it. Now, then... Don't you think this place is just way too nice? Don't worry, that'll end by the time those clouds have come in all the way!"

The Tormentor clapped two more hands, and the contestants found themselves standing at the gate to the park. Considering the wide variety of visitors, they virtually blended in.

"Oh, and one more thing." The Tormentor snapped his fingers, and the huge, garish sign over the gate suddenly read not "Rolloland", but "Tormentorland". The giant picture of a grinning Rollo also turned into a grinning Tormentor, giving several thumbs-up at once. With that, he disappeared.

Show Content

Woffles · 05-12-2012, 03:46 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

yes yes go go go

MalkyTop · 05-22-2012, 02:49 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

The last several minutes of his life had been an extremely confusing whirl of events and confusion and Samael found himself feeling rather meaningless to it all, though it was a feeling that accompanied many cycles through various lives. There were slumps in his motivation very often, considering that it always got harder and harder to find something completely new to do in every iteration. It got to the point where he now skipped the hormones-fueled existential crises bit because going through them over and over again got very ridiculous very quickly.

So, deliberately not dwelling on every single thing that didn’t go the way he would’ve liked to while he was a crab, Samael dug down to the root of his current issues and decided that he needed to stop wandering and start scouting. Start getting organized. Maybe gather the others, if not to start actually forming concrete alliances, then to start understanding who they were and where they stood because he honestly wasn’t very certain about any of them very much.

Samael looked himself over. The second thing he noticed was that he still had square holes in his hands, but that wasn’t as important as the first thing, which was that he was entirely naked. He rather regretted tearing off his robes at the very beginning of his crabscapades but pushed that aside in favor of looking for a hiding place before somebody called the cops on him. Before any parents had the time to be suitably shocked and affronted, Samael jumped behind the nearest stall and huddled near the ground. It would be really nice if he could just stay here for the rest of the round.

“Sir, customers aren’t allowed back here.”

If only.

Samael had gone on countless field trips as various children to numerous amusement parks. He had started off hating the damn things and grew to completely loathe them. The horrible food, the rides that threatened to toss his entire digestive system inside-out, the games that were obviously rigged in someone’s favor (that is, not him), the sickly bitter layer of lies that blanketed the entire place…

…and the crowds. Samael hated crowds. A gathering, an assembly, a shindig, that was all fine, but crowds. With crowds, it got hard to ignore the collective burden of guilt and sin that everybody carried about them. With crowds, it all blended into this one guilt-sin-black mass that hovered above and around him and generally made him feel misanthropic. He would like to just leave through the gates already, but seeing as he was severely lacking in clothes and self-confidence in his body, he would do the next best thing and hide in a corner, shut his eyes, and cover his ears.

“…Crap, maybe it’s one of those creepy pets…pretty sure that cephalopod dimension has humanoid – “

“Shut up please,” he snapped. The lady managing the booth shut her mouth, but not for very long.

“Okay, so you are sentient. I’d appreciate if you would put on some clothes and leave, not necessarily in that order, and don’t you dare make the excuse that you didn’t know that this dimension has a clothes requirement because we did put up signs and it’s in the brochures and all – “

“Shut up,” Samael repeated, this time uncurling slightly and glaring up at the lady who was definitely a teenager. She wasn’t human, but humanoid. She was somewhat stocky, her eyes thin, her ears long, her teeth sharp. Her skin was an interesting shade of bronze. What Samael didn’t particularly like about her at the moment was how she was looking at him. She slowly raised a pointing hand towards him, which did not lessen his dislike of her.

“The sign,” she rasped, causing him to look down and realize that what she was pointing at specifically was the pentagram emblazoned brightly on his stomach. “You’re him, aren’t you.”

Samael quickly recognized the signs of what was about to come. “No, no, no, I’m just, ah, a regular…being. From Dimension X.”

“That’s not even how we classify dimensions,” she said, her excitement growing while his skin started to feel itchy. “And a species of your description isn’t in the list of known dimensional beings that are sentient and connected to the interdimensional transport web. You’re him! You’ve finally come down in mortal form!”

That was it. He was undeniably being worshipped. He didn’t even know who he was supposed to be. He supposed he ought to be glad that it was only one person. One time, he had been born into a Satanic cult. It was a horrible and short life.

Samael took a moment to get used to the metaphorical fire coursing through his veins. As much as this situation wasn’t one he would like to be in, it definitely offered a lot of opportunities. After a while, he looked up.

“Do you mind getting me some clothes?”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The girl’s name was Adora, but she went by many internet handles, all suitably dark and brooding. She hopped into the closest souvenir shop and grabbed a Rollo T-shirt, a Rollo sweatshirt, Rollo flip-flops, and a Rollo baseball cap. There weren’t any Rollo pants, just plain sweatpants. Pants tend to be the least-designed clothing. He tried to pay her back but only ended up forcing a fraction of what he owed into her hands. She immediately sighed lovingly at the touch of his hand and kept his Rollobucks in a very special place in her wallet. He never realized that there could be special places in wallets.

“So where’s the exit?” he asked, already lost in his short time in the damn place. Adora was happy to escort him there, shouting at some insectoid wearing a grav-stability belt to man the booth for her. Along the way, she felt the need to act as a tour guide. Which struck as an odd topic to hit upon with a deity or whatever she thought of him as. But whatever.

“So on the other side of the gates is…?”

“The InDim Train, able to take you to any dimension that’s connected to the rails.”

Right. Probably not able to save him from the battle entirely, but good enough to at least get him away from the park and any stupid thing the smug bastard had cooking.

“Good. I’m taking it, then – “

Before he could even reach the gates properly, there was a bright flash and then an explosion. Samael’s new cap almost blew off his head. Bits of InDim Train rained down, as well as bits of passengers. The employees still alive consoled everybody nearby that this was unprecedented and apologized for the inconvenience and assured that the Trains would be up and running soon enough and would they care for some complementary Rollobucks?

“Hey,” Adora said, craning her neck upwards at the sign above the gate. “Did that always look like that?”

Elpie · 05-27-2012, 07:18 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Show Content

Are you giving up your faith, Lieutenant Zimmer?”

Ha. Yes, he should certainly think so.

Because Rolloland had failed, either out of genuine unoriginality or simply willful stubbornness, to come up with a name for a rollercoaster other than “the Rollocoaster,” there were a number of Rollocoasters in the park, each marked by a different color. Higher energy colors represented lower energy coasters—Rollocoaster Purple was a ride for children, and Rollocoaster Red was The Big One, the one the teenagers all had to dare each other to give a try.

Zimmer had a great admiration for the engineering that had gone into the coaster. It displayed a great reverence towards the classical rollercoaster form. Had Zimmer had access to the sort of gravity-manipulating materials that had clearly gone into its design, he might be tempted to build the most efficient coaster possible: a straight line, or a simple loop, that merely simulated the ups and downs of a standard coaster by warping local gravity. He is certain, at least, that most of his fellow Orashaldi scientists would have done so. But Rollocoaster Red was not merely a centrifuge; it had a humanistic purpose beyond the stimulus of the human body to release certain endorphins; it was an experience. The swirling loops, the track that hung in the air and teleported the car from place to place, the animatronic armadillos that leered at the passengers, the dark tunnels and the matrices of neon tubes that darted about the track like a school of fish, all of these aesthetic details contributed to the whole.

The Lieutenant did not need to take it on faith that once he reached the front of the line he would be rewarded with the thrill-ride experience of a lifetime. The evidence was there, all around him. It was a hypothesis he could prove with repeatable observations.

After replacing his shredded clothes, prudently purchasing a bright yellow Rollo-themed umbrella, and of course investing in a Rollo-On-The-Go Line-Bypass-Pass because he was a man of limited patience, Zimmer was nearly out of Rollobucks. That was all well and good. He had enough to grab something to eat, but for obvious reasons wouldn’t want to be filling up his stomach until after he had worn himself out on the coasters. He wasn’t the nauseous type, but there was no reason to tempt fate.

Shortly before the boarding station—was that what one called it?—the boarding station for the coaster, there was a set of lockers where one could deposit any valuables or small objects that might fly out of pockets at high velocity. Zimmer felt around in his pockets for the assortment of dangerous, important, or sentimentally significant chemicals hanging there. He smiled, laid his umbrella down next to one of the lockers and hurried past.

The cars seated two. Zimmer walked past a heated argument between a human mother, a father and a young boy as to who should be the odd one out, and seated himself comfortably in the car in the very front. After a few seconds, the mother joined him, sweating and exasperated.

“Hello,” greeted Zimmer cheerfully.

“Hi,” said the mother, lowering the safety bar. She was a heavyset woman, and with the bar as tight as it could squeeze against her stomach, Zimmer still had quite a bit of room to move about.

This did not faze him. As the coaster jerked into motion and began to ascend (nearly vertically!) the alchemist leaned back in his seat as far as he could. The blood began to rush to his head. “Are you excited?” he asked of his companion.

“I don’t even like these things,” sneered the other. “On the way down—depending on your definition of down, I guess, you know what I mean—on the fast bits I might try to hold your hand. It’s a reflex.”

The coaster continued to drag the car upward with a soft ching-ching-ching-ching-ching-ching-ching sound.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” replied Zimmer, losing none of his easygoing affability. “I’m going to be working with dangerous chemicals.” As he spoke, the alchemist began to assemble a small laboratory space on his lap, with a small burner, an apparatus to hold a number of vials, and a number of miniature measuring devices. They wobbled uncertainty at a sixty degree angle to the ground.

The mother blanched and folded her hands on her lap.

<font size="1">Ching-ching-ching-ching-ching-ching-ching-ching

The mother didn’t look down. She wanted only to see her family in the car behind her. Of course Geoffrey had wanted to be with his father. At his age he was too fearless to need mothering at times like these, and he would want to show his dad how tough he was. Of course no one had considered her needs. She was an after thought. She looked over to the man beside her, who had lit the burner and was waving a vial of something blue and crackling over it. The silence became unbearable. If she didn’t say something to him she would need to look down just to relieve the tension.

“Um, excuse me,” she said. “What exactly are you doing?”

“Ah! And to think I thought you’d find this boring. It’s nerdy stuff, you understand,” grinned Zimmer. “See, there’s a disease inside of me. It’s dormant, now, I think. I had, at one point, believed that the disease was an agent of the Light of God—a microscopic crusade, of sorts. However, I recently saw an afflicted man forget the name of his love—forget his own name—and I began to worry. God, after all, is the Source of all ingenuity—I know from experience—and He would not act through something that spread ignorance and forgetfulness.” Zimmer’s hands were a blur. He seemed to know what he was doing. The mother sat politely, having learned long ago to be tolerant of all faiths.

She thought she heard Geoffrey cry, “Mom, look!” It may have just been wishful thinking on her part, or someone else’s son’s voice carried on the wind, but still she looked.

She looked out, and as there was nothing to see but sky, she looked down.

Barring the fact that it kept getting farther away, the view of Rolloland from above was quite beautiful. It looked exactly like the map (there was the haunted house, there the ferris wheel, there the big top) but more dynamic. There was a murmuring laughter rising up like smoke from every corner. Lights of all colors shone in every context. Running along the border of the park on one side was Rollo River, and on the other side were the various subsidiary parks she would be visiting over the course of the week—Wiz’s Wacky Water World, Armadillo Zoo, and the bizarre “Rollo Strip” nightclub junction. A network of levirails snaked between all the parks and out to an assortment of hotels. For a moment she saw Rolloland as an ecosystem, as an economy, as something fascinating in its intricacy and complexity, as anything other than a money-sucking tourist trap that would give her son ADHD and her husband gonorrhea.

And then she grimaced to see the storm-cloud building on the horizon. And then she shuddered to see the fire under it.

As a point of fact, her first thought (absurd both from a rational and humanistic standpoint) was this is good news for us; what are the odds that there will be two accidents in one day and then the panic set in. The mother grabbed at Zimmer’s hand, but, rapt in his strange science, he slapped it away. “Synthesizing something to purge an unwanted virus from my system should be simple. From a theoretical standpoint it’s a simple modification of the eternal youth extract, which already defends against the body’s own cells turning cancerous. Unfortunately, none of my instruments can provide enough kinetic energy to catalyze the reaction I need. Which is where this first drop comes in. You should hold on tight right about now, by the way.”

Ching-ching-ching-ching-ching-ching ching ching ching, ching; ching. Ching. Ch. . Ching. Ching chign ching-ching-ching-ching chingchingchingchingchingchingchingching

A graduated cylinder flew out of Zimmer’s hand, and he giggled. He was almost positive that the vial in his hand was probably a universal antivirus of some sort, and if not, it was something else that was also interesting. He imagined the trembling of the rollercoaster and the inexorable pull of artificial gravity shaking the contents in all directions he could name and some he couldn’t, causing strange and divine reactions. It was not too much of a stretch to imagine, for a similar process was going on in his brain.

Lieutenant Matthew Zimmer’s brain was an aggregate of beliefs. Even the most rational, secular part of him—the scientist, the mathematician—founded all of its knowledge on a series of postulates established thousands of years before. All that he knew about the fundamental properties of the universe he had derived from miniscule, barely significant perturbations in data, expanded into truth by the application of these postulates.

For a few seconds, gravity reigned; Zimmer became weightless due to the simple mechanical properties of acceleration, and then remained weightless due to a conspicuous negation of gravity. His burner blew out.

Zimmer’s belief in the Orashaldi God was not altogether different from his belief in science. Millennia ago, a framework of belief had been handed down by some theological philosophers, complete with a definition of knowledge and a set of criteria for proving and refining that knowledge—a spiritual analogue for the scientific method. Everything in Zimmer’s life had lined up perfectly consistently with these beliefs; he had been rewarded for faith, he had experienced miracles, he had achieved immortality and wealth in the service of his religion. As a matter of fact, his first direct confrontation with an omnipotent and capricious being was the first incident in his existence that contradicted the scripture, so his conflation of his own God with the Tormentor might be seen as more of a coping mechanism than a reasonable logical leap.

The coaster began to teleport the alchemist and the screaming, crying woman next to him at random between planes of existence in a way that Zimmer found familiar but not unpleasant.

The same could be said for Zimmer’s encounters with Dorin, replete with a personal Dial-A-God network in her brain. There was nothing about her that was not heretical, but a combination of his decaying psyche, the miracles he’d seen her perform, her aura of divine authority and his borderline-pedophilic attraction to her compelled him to find a place to accommodate her in his personal theology. The tenets of his original faith, and of the basic principles of scientific reason, had begun to fray around the edges. And then came the Oracle, which in its early stages began the process of plastering over his internal disputes and substituting a warm, comfortable certainty.

Zimmer giggled and slapped his thigh (allowing a thermometer and a scale to go soaring off into the distance) as the coaster went round in a dozen loops and whorls. The face of a cartoon armadillo, the symbol who had been brought to life that he might die for his God (and are not the scriptures full of such beings?), laughed at him from all angles, sharing in his joy. He had lost any notion of where the ground was and he didn’t care.

The Oracle, though it was perhaps less dormant than Zimmer suspected, hadn’t gotten the opportunity to finish its surgery on the lieutenant’s mind. It was left open, a gaping bloody hole in his head, perhaps with a scalpel and a sponge lying inside. The Oracle had been shoved aside by another God, one far more murderous and terrible and fast-working. That particular possession had gnawed on his sanity for a time and then been cut off (mostly) by an instantaneous change in scenery, and now Zimmer was on a rollercoaster.

A rollocoaster, sorry. The car disappeared into a tunnel, or maybe visible light had just been turned off on a local level. In any case, the Orashald was moving very fast and could hear nothing but rumbling and screams all around him. He became momentarily certain that he was going to die, and hoped that his erection would die down before the woman whose name he hadn't gotten noticed it.

A chemical reaction was occurring. Disparate, uncontrollable elements were being fused into something that could not properly be predicted, but at best hypothesized.

Rollocoaster Red slowed to a halt. Zimmer was grinning like an idiot. The woman next to him took a proper inhalation for the first time in about forty-five seconds. The safety handle released.

Zimmer clapped the woman on the back. “You did great!” he laughed. He fumbled around in his jacket. “Here,” he said, handing her a small vial. “A little gift for putting up with me. It’s the secret to eternal youth. I know your husband will appreciate it.” He winked and strolled off.

The woman was left holding the vial of clear liquid in her trembling hands. “Mom, Mom!” Geoffrey cried, hugging her waist from behind. “Mom,” said Geoffrey. “Wasn’t that the coolest?”

As Zimmer passed by the lockers to grab his umbrella (that rain would be heading his way pretty soon), he came across a photo booth. On the screen on the back were a series of photos, reaction shots of the passengers on the first drop. He examined one in particular, showing two cars. In the back car, a boy and his father held hands and raised their arms, screaming in joyous glee, sharing a perfect moment of familial bond. In the car in front, the boy’s mother sobbed openly and gasped for air. Next to her was Zimmer, holding a beaker over his burner, his mouth turned up at the edges and his hair standing on edge above him.

It was a beautiful memory, but it would cost almost all of his Rollobucks to get a framed copy, not leaving him enough for dinner. Ah, well. Maybe after he killed one of the Tormentor’s other chosen, he could take their money and—wait, that wasn’t right. Once he killed one of them, he’d be shoved off somewhere that didn’t take Rollobucks. Zimmer chuckled. The internal currency exchanged was a great trick to keep you coming back. So, he’d need to convince one of the other battlers to buy him a meal—maybe Dorin—and then kill them. Poisoning their food would be the obvious method.

Zimmer walked up to buy the photo.</font>

Show Content

chimericgenderbeast · 06-29-2012, 08:10 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.

Vuul had failed.

The Tormentor had demanded sacrifice-- the epitome of his faith had demanded slaughter and bloodshed and the cleansing purification offered by the holy flame. Soggoth, in his brief moments of gnashing and gnawing at the Alvum's mind, had demanded bloodshed; he had lustily craved the surrender of blood to satisfy his coming. Carnage was all that was required of Vuul to entertain the mercurial whims of his master, and he had failed. The Tormentor had reshaped his form-- providing a body capable of swiftly coursing through the seas of S'kkoi. He was to torpedo through the water, bringing righteous deliverance upon its inhabitants, bringing the mercy of death to the captives the Tormentor had seen fit to entertain the Alvum with.

And yet Vuul had failed in his duty. He had no responsibility in the slaughter that occurred; he was not a participant but merely a weak, cowardly observer. He was foolish to think himself a conduit of the Prime Alumvaeum when he was incapable in succeeding in the orchestration of the Tormentor's will. All that was required of him, all that was demanded of him-- he had failed in his duties. The biological euphoria of revelation had died down, the pheromones that drove his ardent faith into ecstasy had been reduced to trace concentrations. Vuul was alone, dealing with his failure. He was foolish to think himself a conduit when he was but an insignificant speck, a fumbling inferior with heretical dreams of rising above his station.

Vuul had failed. There was no possible penance-- no quantity of carnage, no exemplary display of annihilation to perform to appease the cruelties of the Tormentor. Nothing that could bring atonement for the Alvum's failure.

The alien paused, taking in his new set of surroundings. A promenade of concession stands lined one half of his panoramic field of vision, while the other half consisted of an amalgam of other edifices. In the distance he could see towering metal sculptures, marked with specks of movement as trains hurtled along their rails. Further, past even the most distant of these colossal skeletons, Vuul could see the gathering storm. It was clear he was no longer favored by the Tormentor-- his god had chosen to enact his own retribution. Vuul was no longer the chosen harbinger of The Chaos Unconquerable. He was forsaken by his god. He was caste-less, separate from the false Hierarchy. He was alone.

His optical circlet refocused, drawing itself into a tighter focus around the crowds surrounding him. Many of those around him were the hated humans-- weak, pathetic, unworthy of the sharing in the vision the Prime offered. What interested him was the decorations they bore-- their clothing was adorned with icons of the now-dead Rollo, the captive that the Tormentor had judged unworthy. Yet, even after his death his existence was remembered. The sensation of religious trance almost inched into the Alvum-- he could not help but compare the park to the religion he was used to. It was a false religion, to be cast down, but it had the trappings of a true faith. The paraphernalia its petitioners were adorned in was comparable to the accoutrements of the Hierarchy's faithful; the processions of followers riding the metal machines could almost be likened to the penance rituals of the Alvum, where pain was willingly endured in the hope of redemption. It was a false religion, but he had been cast aside. His faith had rejected him.

Mechanical actuators hissed and hooves clapped against pavement as Vuul set off. Somewhere in this locale was a new faith, one willing to accept a petitioner such as himself.

Show Content

GBCE · 07-11-2012, 09:17 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

Junior Bathroom Attendant Atlaua Four calmly watched a man vomit enthusiastically into a sink and smiled.

It was a slow afternoon and there wasn’t much to do otherwise. The man, whose former name Atlaua did not know and would not have cared about, had yet to notice him. This was not as unusual or offensive as it might have been, since it was a generally accepted fact that no matter how interesting they otherwise might be no one will ever completely notice a bathroom attendant. They are sort of like decorative furniture, even in Atlaua’s case. In at any rate the attendant was enjoying the company, such as it was. It was rare for any guest to stay so long in one bathroom. He briefly considered that this was simply the man’s species’ natural habitat, but struck that idea as he slammed his head onto the sink and said, “Son of a bitch.”

Rolloland had a very vague policy on swearing. The number of languages spoken within its boundaries- even with the assistance of complementary endoneural translator chips- made it almost a statistical certainty that at some point an innocuous request for directions spoken in Eleélese would sound very much like a request for a highly illegal sex position in Uluumian and that the resulting casualties would make for very expensive legal proceedings. All Rolloland employees were therefore required to studiously monitor their own language and express a casually polite interest into the conversations of anyone else using expletives, mostly for the purpose of providing two targets for any potential offended customers and thus reducing the likelihood of a lawsuit by half.

So it was that Atlaua issued a polite hey-there-hello-sir-how’s-it-then to the man, who flinched and reflexively punched the mirror.

Bad-day-then? the attendant said cheerfully, brushing a few glittering shards off his nose with a pudgy foot. His gills flapped inquisitively.

Black blood welled from the man’s hand, pattering onto the otherwise spotless sink. He rolled his head backward, staring at Atlaua with fever-bright eyes. “The hell are you,” he mumbled. He seemed to be looking at something just slightly to the right of the attendant’s head.

A primitive world, this one, Atlaua thought placidly. He slunk up onto a sink and smiled toothlessly at the man. Atlaua-sir-junior-bathroom-attendant-sir-Abystroman, he said. He stuck out a six-fingered hand. Pleasure.
The man didn’t accept. He was just now taking in the languid bulk that was Atlaua stretched out under the paper towel dispensary. The attendant supposed that he might appear alarming to the sort of fifth-worlder this man clearly was, who didn’t recognize a law-abiding citizen when he saw one: an overgrown salamander, translucent-pale, with tiny red eyes that didn’t see so much as they picked up heat signatures and analyzed chemical compositions. Each of his feet was as big as the man’s head and the porcelain groaned under his weight as he leaned forward conspiratorially.

Drunk-sir? He encouraged.

“I wish,” said the man. He looked around the bathroom with reluctantly dawning comprehension. “Rolloland?”

Yes-sir-welcome.

“Horrible...”

Little-bit, said Atlaua happily. He was mostly just glad this conversation was headed somewhere productive. Did-you-come-with-a-party-are-you-lost?

The man gave up his tenuous grip on the sink and slumped against the pipes. “Yes. No,” he said, “Yes.” He held up his hands to the soothingly pinkish lights and stared at them. “There was a girl.”

I-see.

“She…” Something crossed the man’s face; then he spasmed and resumed emptying what was left in his stomach.

Atlaua wriggled closer and pawed at his shoulder comfortingly. Relationships-are-difficult.

“No,” groaned the man. He clawed weakly at the tiles. His claws screeched painfully; Atlaua’s gills flopped in displeasure. “She killed me.”

You-are-very-much-

“No, no, listen,” begged the man. He stumbled to his feet, towering over the attendant. “I was,” he said, “I was on a ship, and then… the Oracle, and then I was somewhere terrible and, and there was this girl, and she… I… I don’t know who I am,” he finished. He looked at the ceiling as if the answer would be written there, which it wasn’t, unless the answer was ATLAUA-WAS-HERE-PLEASE-DO-NOT-FIRE-ATLAUA.
Atlaua nodded. His thoughts had drifted to his next break.

“The Oracle. They left me there,” the man said. He sounded upset. “With the eyes, and the teeth... And then… I was someone else. Here.” He gave the mirror a plaintive look. “That’s not my face. My eyes are brown.”

The attendant nodded sagely. He was starting to understand now. It was rare, but the dimensional shuttles to Rolloland sometimes scrambled the brainwaves of less intelligent guests. There was an entire chapter dedicated to the phenomenon in the Bathroom Attendant/ Trauma Counselor’s Handbook, Fourth Ed. At this level of damage there was nothing he could do for the poor creature except a quick bullet to the frontal cortex or, on a much less merciful front, years of extensive therapy. It was sad, he mused. Rolloland really should have tightened the restrictions years ago.

Can-you-tell-me-your-name-sir, he said gently. Ambystromans don’t feel pity, but they do feel sympathetic hunger and Atlaua was willing to accept a compromise. Maybe-I-can-help.

The man made a sound that served equally well as a laugh or a sob. “I don’t remember.”

Definitely the bullet, thought the attendant. He performed the Ambystroman equivalent of a sigh and reached to take the man’s hand, which, in retrospect, was the single worst decision in the attendant’s life.

He felt a claw pierce his wrist, electric symphonies exploding behind his eyes with ponderous dignity as someone else’s body hit the floor. The smell of salt water and smoke rose up from the floor into his waiting cartilage. Someone else turned their head to the man and Atlaua saw that his eyes had widened in shock, but he was bursting with eyes, running down his chest and arms and hands in neon waves of sightless glittering horizons and Atlaua couldn’t tell which he was meant to look at, to see through, to use, and the man backed away in terror and left him there, melting into the sea.

Dragon Fogel · 08-05-2012, 11:08 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Show Content

Ke found herself disoriented by the shift in locale, even moreso than the first. What had happened? Who had died?
An entire story had passed her by. How could she have allowed this to happen? She had been right there. She should have been following the story, guiding it, remembering it.
She was a disgrace.
But Ke knew that dwelling on her failure would do no good. With a new round came a new story, a new opportunity, a chance for redemption.
She would not let the story pass her by again.
Then she felt a cold touch on her shoulder. She turned, and saw a very large green man glaring at her. He was dressed in a black uniform, with the word SECURITY written on his hat.
"Wonderful, now it's a Tara N. Tula costume," he grumbled, pulling some handcuffs off his belt and awkwardly trying to fit them around her forelegs. "Just how many of you troublemakers are there today? No, don't bother answering that just yet; there'll be plenty of time in the cell."
For just a moment, Ke froze. Then she snatched the handcuffs from the security officer and pushed him to the ground.
"No! Not again!" she screamed, scurrying away as fast as she could.
The officer soon picked himself up, and pulled out his radio as he ran after her. He needed to warn the central office.
"Got a Code Fourteen heading for the Ferris wheel. I'm in pursuit, may need backup. This one's stronger than she looks."
The dispatcher on the other end acknowledged his report. He was about to disconnect, but then he realized he was gaining on his quarry and decided that time was too short for that. He rushed towards her, and reached for one of her hind legs...
And then Ke found her second wind. She slipped out of his grasp, leapt through the line up ahead, hopped over the fence as the operator yelled at her, and then began climbing up the side of the spinning Ferris wheel.
The security officer groaned and raised his radio again.
"Sorry, I've got to amend my last message," he said. "It's a Code Twenty-Two now."

Elpie · 08-15-2012, 07:07 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Zimmer considered the hulking tripedal thing before him. He had forgotten its name.

“LIEUTENANT MATTHEW ZIMMER,” it said, looking down on him with one eerily focused eye-thing. Zimmer could tell that the thing—something with a V, and then a lot of nonsense, and some more Vs—was trying to decide whether to kill him or not. Its entire form shuddered with the barely-constrained potential for violence. Its voice was a scream of rage with the violence turned down. There was something primal and majestic about it that agreed with the primal, majestic feelings Zimmer was currently feeling within himself. Although that may have just been the antivirus coursing through his system, which appeared to double as a mild stimulant.

”LIEUTENANT’MATTHEW’ZIMMER DENOTES A WARRIOR OF HIGH CASTE,” said the tripod, a little uncertainly.

“Yes,” affirmed Matthew. “A Lieutenant.” He really wished he could remember this thing’s name. It was so ostentatious. How was it that he had barely seen it across two rounds?

The tripod solved the problem for him. ”I AM VUUL,” it said. ”A FAILED WARRIOR OF NO CASTE. HAVE YOU COME SEEKING THE TRUTH OF ROLLO?”

”Yes!” replied Zimmer excitedly, before even thinking hard enough to figure out whether he was lying or not. It was the sort of question you answer in the affirmative, especially looking up into that eye—that one eye that might as well have been a hundred rifle barrels.

”THEN I WOULD OFFER MY SERVITUDE,” said Vuul with barely a moment’s hesitation. ”AND FIGHT BY YOUR SIDE.”

Well. That would certainly simplify the “poison their food” plan. “I accept your pledge,” he told Vuul, trying to hide his excitement. “In the name of God and Empire, I name you Ensign Vuul. Together we shall put our foes to the sword and divine the truth of Rollo.”

Ensign Vuul knelt—an odd, spidery movement that put him at eye level with his Lieutenant—and twitched ominously at the words “God” and “sword.” If Zimmer wanted to maintain his hold over this magnificent creature, he was going to have to find it something to kill. Or maybe take him on a ride or two, if there were any that could fit him. The problem was, he couldn’t go around gunning down civilians—it would attract too much attention, and also be terribly immoral, maybe—and he had no idea where he could find the other contestants. It didn’t worry him too much. God had led him straight to Vuul, after all, and would not leave him to wander now. He simply had to follow the divine Hand tugging at his soul.

A haunted house loomed in the distance, shrouded in fog. “Rise, Ensign,” Zimmer snapped, enchanted by the mystery of the place. A journey through hell was the perfect place to begin a pilgrimage, besides which the scientist in Zimmer wanted to see how Vuul would react to repeated stimulus. “Glory awaits.”

The crusaders marched on into the fog.

chimericgenderbeast · 09-02-2012, 07:12 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.

The Alvum ominously trudging forward, the haunted house the pair now approached, the thin parade of other tourists-- Zimmer's focus was at several places at once. But his attention was most captivated by the fog-shrouded mansion. A more sane, level-headed individual might approach his situation with some sense of trepidation. But for Zimmer this was a step forward, another leg of a pilgrimage whose final destination still remained unknown. Trepidation had no place in the heart and mind of the crusader; any of the faculties responsible for responding to the simulated fear now present were eroded or dulled to nonexistence.

Vuul, for his part, seemed to have subconsciously accepted his role as a blessing of God. It was impossible to discern the emotions governing the marching leviathan; Zimmer could only make his assessment from the purposeful stride of the creature, there was no face he could gauge. He could certainly hypothesize, speculate-- although, xeno-psychology had never been a field he had paid much attention to, nor one the Orashaldi faith had much interest in outside of small cadres of itinerant preachers. For now though, the once-Battlecleric seemed to be a pliant servant. Such speculation needed confirmation, but that would come in time.

Part of Zimmer contemplating balking at the monumental task of corralling such a majestic, primal creature. This part was silenced in short order as he entered the haunted house.

There were only a smattering of distractions-- a procession of other park-goers, a uniformed attendant, and a long disclaimer noting the simulated perils and torments of The Rolloland House of Terror. A brief scan through the myriad disclaimers and sub-paragraphs earned half a chuckle from Zimmer, before he returned to focusing on Vuul. He briefly contemplated retrieving a journal of some variety, to more accurately satisfy the scientist inside of him.

The ride was beginning. Already, the front end of the line-- or whatever sections of it Zimmer could see past the towering figure of Vuul-- had started to sidle forward. Zimmer settled for simple observation. In front of him, Vuul took a few steps forward. A mixture of curiosity and stimulants fueled an already-burning excitement in the alchemist as his turn to move forward came.

As it began, the ride seemed somewhat innocuous. A handful of what appeared to be ghost materialized through the walls, skirting between any open spaces. Zimmer scanned the ceiling for some form of holographic projector-- and when no such device appeared, he briefly turned to speculating as to how the Rolloland engineers achieved such an effect. His mind flitted to fanciful methods, such as recording intransient echos of paradoxical timelines as a method of achieving the spectres. His proposal was far-fetched, perhaps, but it certainly fit the level of science involved--

--He was now falling, Zimmer realized. The hallway had become a vertical shaft, somehow. The screams of other tourists now filled the sudden abyss, reverberating as they yelled in absolute terror. An accidental look upward and Zimmer saw someone flailing, helplessly trying to maintain themselves. With an uncertain prompting, Zimmer laughed. In front of him, Vuul had reoriented itself quickly, its hooved feet clambering against the sides of the pit as it attempted to find a reliable foothold. A few attempts to scramble upward failed to support the creature's weight, but it was approaching quickly. Zimmer braced for an impact that never came.

As the two nearly collided, Zimmer felt the inexorable tug of an animatronic hand. Above and below him, he could see false panels opening, the ride reconfiguring itself to cordon and isolate its passengers. As he lost sight of Vuul, he privately cursed himself and architects of this ride-- convincing the beast to go a second time would be much harder.

Ensign Vuul landed with a heavy crash. He was now alone-- away from the profligates and heretics and the hated humans, but separate from his charge.

Just as he had pledged himself anew, the Tormentor had worked to separate him from his new shepard-- there was no doubt that this isolation was his work. Was this his punishment for dereliction, for failing to properly serve The Burning Light or whichever of the myriad Names he took? To never again know service under another, to never have a place and to never belong? Vuul considered these questions as he shifted around, hunching forward and allowing his stance to widen as far as the thin corridor allowed. His form was sloppy, he realized-- he moved a half-step slower than he had when he had used this stance last. The decades of experience and now-dead instructors who once stood above him admonished him-- for distracting himself, for questioning himself. Their reprimands were a background to the echoing screams elsewhere in the house.

Vuul loped forward. This penance would be endured-- he would not fail, not again. Long, spindly fingers reached into mounted compartments, withdrawing a set of military-grade combat knives. There would come a time when the brilliant illumination of rending plasma would be necessary, but the vast assortment of his weapons were too cumbersome here. The set of combat knives would do in their stead-- their weight in his hands was a comforting refreshment. He stampeded forward, the almost-sensations of tingling ecstasy driving him as he almost felt the echoes of a martial trance.

A constant stream of information cycled through Vuul's sensory strip as he charged. There were no overt threats, nothing capable of stopping him. An animatronic soccer player briefly blocked his path-- without thinking, a heavy leg kicked the machine against a wall, smashing the crude machinery.

Vuul paused, examining his work. The smashed wall, the fragments of broken electronics, the interplay of shadows-- it all combined. Vuul could see the vague outline of the Tormentor's figure-- the multitude of clawed, fractal arms, the haunting grin, even the multitude of eyes crossing his surface. For a brief moment, it was all there, but just as quickly the simulacrum disappeared, returning back to being the strewn-about wreckage of a robotic soccer player. It was an omen. The Hierarchy had a system for recognizing omens, for cataloguing paraphernalia and processing the vast inventories of its reliquaries, and Vuul knew that what he had seen for a fleeting moment would not fit. But the Alvum could not dismiss it. Even as the Tormentor had abandoned him, he left haunting manifestations of his will. Even now, Vuul felt his scrutiny as The Chaos Unconquerable judged and found those beneath him wanting.

Further away, an exit opened up. With some hesitation-- a feeling Vuul had never experienced in many decades-- he started to leave, uncertain as to what he had just experienced.

Zimmer had already left the ride minutes earlier, and now had several multi-colored balloons-- some careful haggling had barely allowed him to circumvent his absence of any Rollobucks. He perked up at the sight of his new companion, apparently unscathed by its ordeal. He approached, hopefully to persuade the creature to participate in another trial. His inner scientist's thirst for knowledge remained unsatisfied, and he still had little to gauge the Alvum's behavior.

"Ensign Vuul. It is--"

"IT IS THE TORMENTOR'S WILL," Vuul interrupted, his voice a roaring foghorn, "THAT THIS PLACE BE DESTROYED."

Zimmer stopped. His mind almost stopped in apprehension-- both that his hold on Vuul was this tenuous, but the greater fear that just as quickly as he had been granted his servant, it was to be taken away. In an instant he snapped back to his stabilized insanity-- the will of the Divine worked in curious ways, certainly, but it would not be as quick as to remove his blessing yet.

"He wishes to obscure the truth-- the truth of Rollo, that is." He lied.

"ROLLO DID NOT SURVIVE." Vuul said. The tripedal alien twitched uncertainly.

"But surely you see his truth lives on--" Zimmer interrupted his frantic speech with a gesture to the monumental figures eclipsing the park, the smiling face of Rollo watching them from the distance, "--he was merely an icon of a greater belief, a truth greater than you or I. It is that truth that we must divine, Ensign Vuul. Surely you see that?"

Ensign Vuul responded with a deep, sonorous hum before settling to a more relaxed posture. "VERY WELL. WE WILL FIND HIS TRUTH." He finished.

In the distance, an ashen beam of flame leapt from the clouds down to the ground below, punctuating their exchange with an uncertain finality.

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Woffles · 10-21-2012, 07:36 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

There was a whirlpool that passed through her, draining the ocean. In one timeless move, Dorin was thrust from one land to the next, gods like lights exploding in every direction when she hit the ground. She coughed up the brine, and with it the ghosts she held secret. Her eyes squinted, ocean sublimating, but for a long while the light could only blind her. An infinite glow to the blackness of Soggoth. And it's hard for a girl to talk about infinity in any meaningful way. She borrowed the words from the seabed that took her voice.

Uphylia. She let the name roll off her tongue, and she was the lady of the lake. The salt seeped through her lungs, and the honey, so sweet and so black, coated her heart. And when she stretched and sprawled against the floor of a world she surpassed, she tasted what being a god is like. And a god of gods. And she wondered with her tiny mind how far the echelons of echelons of rulers towered over her. She puzzled the place of her guide, her god, her captor and her savior. And she looked around her, for the first time in a long while with her eyes open, and saw the flitting shapes of gods beneath and around her. They were all so useless against the demon. And she expected it in turn to be useless against the Tormentor. And what would match the Tormentor, then?

Uphylia. Mother Caridea had mumbled it as well, in an inexplicably lucid catarrh. It meant something to her, but nothing altogether, like an old king. Lines and lineage drew her arms in manacles, and she suspected she'd forgotten the name of another god, Uphylia, like the mute sacrifice. She reflected on her death such far as she was in dying it, and she looked at her guide through the afterlife.

"Uphylia..." For the first time aloud. Gasping syllables, no breath in the water, no souls on the ferry.

"What said you?" Her ghost replied.

"Is she a god? Do you know the name, Shik?" Dorin allowed her eyelids to wheigh down.

"Uphylia is the gate. A powerful sign." The crystal spun for a while, considering its words. Godly chitter filled the cold iron floor they were on. Soft gold, or such an intent. "She will lead the crusade and she will bring torches to the altar. She is the hands of a god and the mind of the mortals. She is the tether between now and then, but also Heaven and Hell." Shik'skara glowered in colors she didn't have words for. "If someone called you this, Dorin, it is important you should tell me. Mari'molau naushikaa sariterau uphyliaan. It's ode to disaster. It's a name you don't know."

Interesting times.

"It's... Nothing. I heard it nowhere."

"If you heard it nowhere... It is where you should be most wary."

Dorin perked up. She staggered across the empty hull, hollow siren's eyes peering straight at the trespasser she'd heard enter. A clerk, of no importance. "Is he alive?"

"If he's of the Tormentor, unlikely more alive than it. Do you taste blood?"

She kissed him. Lured him close with her gaze and her divine presence, then pressed onto his lips. And then, she decided that he tasted very boring.

"Blood, but no blood. It'll be red fluid. Will it suffice?"

"For what divination?"

The man, enthralled, heard nothing. He heard the shores in her shell.

"The mramr'shik snashi."

"Doesn't need blood. Ashes will do."

She looked at the man, and the man looked back, and she delivered a kiss of death. His life was sapped, and while she'd never performed the rite it tasted very familiar. The man melted into fire, and into dust, and the dust then twirled onto the floor. Dorin knelt down, and sculpted tiny dolls out of muddy, ashen clay. With a touch on their foreheads, yellow lines alit the creases in their bodies, and they were under Dorin's command.

"What do you need mramrs for, Dorin?"

"Caridea called me Uphylia. It's time I take this name upon me. Feel free to follow, Shik'skara. Let's lead the crusade, and bring down the Tormentor."

She had changed form, and she had changed roles. She would need to know as much as she could about the Uphylia she will be. She would track down Ke, and ask her for stories.

-

"Pantarei, you really should see this! She's gonna come kill us! Cute, isn't it?"

"Nash'ri nashja. Pschrini ra Counselor to'vrishnehe. 'Are you god' mawa rashtitai?"

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**Schazer** · 11-21-2012, 08:00 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

The ferris wheel spun beneath her, staid enough in its movement to bring the thrill and panic of the chase down again to an absurd and calming crawl. Ke had only to take one extended step from the roof of one car to the next to stay atop the wheel, repeating as necessary every half a minute.

The monotony of it rendered the guards' chatter far below trivial, or maybe that was just the view. The world stretched out before Ke in a way that shouldn't, as if had grabbed the plane of the earth by its horizons and curled it up towards her, like a beast curling back its lips in a snarl. The intended effect was to accord an incredible, improbable view to whoever had reached the wheel's peak, all the better to stare vacantly out across the rails-linked theme parks. Ke could hear the parkgoers underfoot, car after ponderous car of people more excited by a spider on the roof than the improbable vista.

They'd squandered fifteen Rollobucks and ten minutes of themepark endorphins being sponged out by the mundanity of the "ride" just to sit on top of the world for half a minute, and wasted all that time ogling Ke. What did they want from her? Ke had nothing to give, least of all to the sort who'd shut themselves in little glass cages - she doubted they'd have any stories worth telling, either.

A gust slammed moodily into the wheel, rocking the perspex cradle and its mewling contents. She could leave right now, Ke mused. Leap, and fly away before the sky was full of storm and consternation and a howl like five feet of steel walls, shutting off escape.

She should leave right now. The Tormentor would find her, sooner rather than later, probably, but what could that monster do? Torture her? Kill her? Twist her form into some abyssal beast? It dawned on the spiderling that their Grandmaster lacked the subtlety to really strike fear into her. Those scuttling guards far below had terrified her even more!

Ke didn't know what to think any more, other than that she'd had enough of everything being difficult. She felt very childish and petulant and struggled to feel anything but justified in doing so. Security didn't help matters much, when they finished conferring and one of them shot something at her. It lodged in her exoskeleton, right above her first shoulder and eliciting a squeal of pain.

The bespectacled, betentacled couple in the car beneath had just enough time to wonder what was going on overhead, before a great white spider slipped from the roof and fluttered away. Its visage flickered like a hologram on a budget, settling eventually on a furiously flapping armadillo with a pair of comical wings. Ke felt nothing, chitin not contorting with subsequent pain the way stabbed or cut or impaled muscles did. To see her limbs vanish from sight from beneath her, like paint the exact colour of the ground far below trickled down her legs from where she'd been shot, that was disconcerting. An anxious flailing; a thrash of a head, now fronted by a snout, brought into collision with her own invisible legs; at least confirmed that Ke had, to all appearances if to nothing else, assumed the form of a dead contestant.

Not sure what to think of this development, Ke amused herself instead by looking down at the groundbound ants, watching a hundred or more nondescript dots to see if any chased her. They didn't, but the wind was already picking up, so the armadillo nee spider glided on down, down onto the bright and plastic firmament. The guards chased her, at a stroll, and she saw others of them standing in a deliberately dingy alley along the Durastep cobblestones on which she’d landed. Ke corrected herself.

They weren’t guards, for to call them that would imply something in this fake and pristine cage worth protecting. All artifice and emptiness and officious decrees about what she shouldn’t look like. If she wore the armadillo husk, the Security’d pay her no mind, and Ke would pay them the same discourtesy.

What did her outward appearance matter, after all? They could paint this fibreglass back alley in which Ke stood with all the shades of spooky and ominous and dark deals and Danger!, but they couldn’t paint the blue of a sunny, cheerful sky. They couldn’t paint raucous yells of empty-minded children who felt thrilled or surprised on command.

The clouds at the edge of the sunny, cheerful sky rumbled on cue, as if in reprobation. The Tormentor can, though. Subtle as a palace of solid gold, for sure, but the power is his. Ke reminded herself to not forget it.

Without much recourse, Ke skittered under the creaky, painted-to-look-peeling sign that proclaimed this single street as Old Town. A vendor or three hawked licensed merchandise from all the Halloween episodes, and the windows not frosted with dust and cobwebs were boarded over, boards tastefully dusted with artificial grime. At the street’s end loomed a haunted house - an honest-to-Nyame haunted house - on a hill, framed by the gnarled black trees and the still-cyan sky.

Parkgoers were staring at her, probably waiting for Rollo to dance or scare them or at least be a bit more thematically appropriate. One of the vendors leaned over, proffering a pointy witch’s hat.
Typical.

“Do, you, uh, want a hat, or, like, some other kind of prop-”

Ke did not want a hat. Ke did not want security’s disapproval, however, lurking in the “ominous” corners as they were, and waved a half-hearted limb in the crowd’s direction. One jig, a smattering of polite applause, and she excused herself into some sideshow entitled “Mister Mystery’s Curious Collection.”

All without a single word.

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MalkyTop · 11-30-2012, 08:33 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

An explosion was not good for the amusement park business. Dodger Scruton wasn’t much of a businessman, but he knew this well enough.

On the one hand, he had never wanted to run the business. It was only a series of ill-timed deaths that led to him inheriting everything from his fabulously wealthy, eccentric, and distant great-second-cousin-twice-removed-in-law, including the management of Rolloland. And the reason he couldn’t refuse the Rolloland bit was because, through some sort of strange space-law mumbo jumbo or something, the entire distant-family fortune was all tied up in the amusement park and its maintenance and it would take quite nearly a lifetime to separate all of it legally. He had been trying to siphon the money out into different bank accounts but it was a tediously slow project. Still, what he had gotten by now was nothing to sneeze at, and perhaps an explosion like this would be a very nice excuse to close up this place and leave it forever.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to get space-arrested. The giant geese incident had been bad enough, but this was worse. He could get locked up for safety negligence because of this. So it was time to figure out what the hell happened and then find someone to blame it on.

It was unlikely to be an accident. So…terrorists? But there was no meaning behind this attack, was there? Cultists, maybe? Just some mad bomber?

Dodger leaned back in his fancy business chair and raised his crest in thought. He had some security looking around, but they certainly were no detectives. And he couldn’t just hire one now because the only mode of transportation had just exploded. Well…the InDim wasn’t the only way to go in and out. He had his own private teleporter. But the matter-transference line seemed to be down, as well as external communication. Which certainly led credence to this being a planned attack.

It wasn’t very necessary, though, as Rolloland was Really Goddamn Large and it would be easy enough for a culprit to just hide and practically impossible to even get a tiny hint of the train of events. But Dodger was as much of a detective as he was a businessman so his own speculation wasn’t worth much at all. Unless there happened to be a detective among the parkgoers, he was most likely going to just finger someone random and frame him. Dodger was not much of a businessman, and so he found that idea somewhat disquieting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Samael had stood frozen for quite a long time, unsure whether he was supposed to run away or towards the flaming wreckage.

The dissonance of the reaction wasn’t helping his indecision much. There was very little screaming. No pause in the rides. No fuss.

No worry about the burning bodies. No worry about whether this was a planned attack. No worries.

Samael wondered if it was his act of going towards the train that caused the explosion. Maybe if he hadn’t tried to get out, then this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he…technically…

No. Even if he hadn’t tried, one of the others would have. He just happened to be the first. He didn’t cause this. He should leave. No, he should try to help. No, he shouldn’t draw attention to himself.

His body was itchy with imaginary blisters. Adora haltingly set a hand on his shoulder. Security had finished closing off the scene and were now taking some people in for questioning. Samael could tell that she didn’t want them to see her skipping on work.

He could take the chance to explain what was happening to the proper authorities. He could bargain and ask for a nice place to hide and wait for the round to blow over. He could even tell them that one of the other contestants did it and convince them to use lethal force, if they had any of that sort of stuff. Which they might.

No, that was wrong.

But if there was anything he had learned, there wasn’t any such thing as wrong or right. Just what you thought was wrong and right. Wanting to not die and win the game wasn’t wrong, nor was it right, it really was just sense, when you thought about it. And this was an opportunity to try to get rid of someone, or at least injure them pretty bad. If he let it go, one of the others might take the chance and point fingers at him instead.

No. Nobody would do that. I don’t know a lot of them, but none of them are the type. And there isn’t anybody I want dead either.

Oh, yes there is…

Elpie · 01-05-2013, 01:44 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Show Content

There was something less than story about this, Ke remarked, standing bipedal and uneasy in line to take her seat. The screens all around blared this narrative of “Rollo” to anybody who would listen. But “Rollo” was not a story, not quite. It was at best an exhortation, at worst a cruel deception, wrapped in images and soundbytes. These people were here to pay homage to “Rollo.” They completed the story with their coinpurses, taking on the form of Rollo in their garments and food and accessories. Despite being four limbs down, Ke realized that the security guards had actually given her a leg up—she had been able to become utterly Rollo, for free, in this place where Rollohood was absolute power.

A Rollo laughed at her from a screen above. Huhuhu-Hoy! ”Huhuhu-Hoy!” mimed Ke perfectly. The laugh was another piece of Rollo capital, another source of clout in Rolloland. How had Rollo been the first contestant to die, if he’d had all this power?

On another screen, a rolled-up Rollo yelped in agony as a giant sneakered foot punted him across a nondescript desert. The source of the power, Ke reflected, was not Rollo itself, but an virulent idea of “Rollo” shaped by distant puppeteers. Those who did not voluntarily become Rollo—naive and self-centered, the perfect consumer—were forcibly assimilated, Rollofied by the strange weapons of the “security” forces.

Ke wondered what a Rollo unleashed would have looked like, a character free from propaganda—Rollo as trickster figure, Rollo as revolutionary. She wondered what was the story of “Tara N. Tula,” a figure so abhorrent to the security troops, presumably one of her own kin. As she took her front-row seat to Mister Mystery’s Curious Collection, she reminded herself to withhold judgment and consent to simply listen, the dutiful recorder.

The stage was dark, yet. The remembrancer could make out black shapes, some walking upright, others rolling along the floor, setting up some manner of apparatus in the center. A musical score tilting unsteadily on the line between Vaudevillian and foreboding whirled through the room with no concrete origin. The tent smelled of processed food and ozone.

When the lights went up, Ke made sure to take in every detail. Most pertinent, perhaps, were two of her fellow battle-contestants: the beautiful battlecleric, his armor still spotless, the relative calmness of his demeanor representing a turn of the page in his life, so to speak; and the alchemist, smiling greedily in the shadows of his new companion, garbed almost entirely in Rollo. Ke tried to imagine what had happened that had brought them to this place, but she had the creativity only to tweak or adapt stories, not to create new ones on the spot. This “Grand Battle” was getting away from her. The former spider shuddered and drew her attention (only having two eyes was a hassle—her brain was designed for peripheral awareness, not distinct focus) to the man on stage.

Zimmer, on the other hand, was built inside and out for laser focus, shutting out his general surroundings to completely, perfectly examine a single moment. He paid no heed to the armadillo peering at him from a couple rows away, nor even to the violently-inclined alien sitting impatiently next to him. His personal theology presumed that God would provide for what he considered to be the little details. He was watching the show.

Mister Mystery was a wiry fellow dressed in a suit boasting a subtle Rollo theme. His undeniable showmanship seemed to emanate entirely from his eyes, which flickered strobelike, scanning the room as though counting money. The saw in his hand quivered slightly in time with his trembling wrist. He looked like he was either addicted to something or merely very passionate about it, and whether or not this was merely part of his act Zimmer felt an immediate kinship with the man. The alchemist leaned his chin on his palms and his elbows on his knees, drawn in by the spectacle.

“Ladies,” he began. “Gentlemen. Neuters and hermaphrodites and entities with sexual hangups beyond my comprehension. I... am Mister Mystery. And this... is my Curious Collection.”

Mister Mystery’s curious collection turned out to mostly be a collection of high-end Rollo products, but the manner of his presentation transubstantiated them into holy objects, the flesh and blood of Rollo himself. He juggled four 5DVD discs of Rollo’s classic antics with one hand, made Rollo tee shirts appear and disappear both on himself and on audience members, pulled Rollobucks out of children’s ears, and an infinity of another tricks, one after another after another. It was miraculous. Zimmer was enthralled both by the craft (or was it magic?) with which Mister Mystery performed his feats and the collective experience, hundreds of souls suspending disbelief in the name of Rollo. It was the closest to an Orashaldi holy service he had experienced since this battle had started. Most of all, Zimmer was fascinated by the box and the saw.

The box simply stood there, elevated to Mister Mystery’s eye level, shaped in imitation of a certain armadillo’s shell. It was just about big enough to hold an average human. The magician-collector never acknowledged the box except to lean his saw against one of the legs, nor, thereafter, did he acknowledge and make use of the saw. The audience, glued to the first image of the magician holding the saw before the box, were held in a constant state of anticipation—juggled, like the discs. He wondered whether it was the promise of bloodshed that was intriguing them or the prospect of audience participation, the dismantling of the wall that held performer and consumer at a distance.

Finally, Mister Mystery afforded the audience some release. “For my next trick,” he announced, rapping the surface of the box, “I will require a volunteer from the crowd.”

”Me,” affirmed Zimmer, raising his hand. Some dozens of other audience members raised theirs as well. The Orashald took solace in the fact that his hand could reach slightly higher than most of the other prospective volunteers, therefore setting him apart as a more desirable candidate.

“How about you, little one?” Mister Mystery asked, indicating a blue-furred boy in the front row, who appeared to be around eight. The boy clapped excitedly. Zimmer seethed, exchanged a glance with Ensign Vuul, and came to a snap decision.

“Shoot to wound,” he commanded.

Faster than Zimmer could register, his loyal ensign pulled out a plasma pistol and fired a beam of scalding carcinogenic energy into the volunteer’s shoulder. The boy-thing had only a second to let out an abortive scream before shock got the best of him and he collapsed in front of his seat.

All eyes turned toward Vuul, who stood tall above the crowd, weapon still drawn. Zimmer stood calmly, still raising his hand. ”CORRECTION,” declared the battlecleric, his voice scrambling the assembly’s nervous systems and surgically assaulting their willpower. ”LIEUTENANT’MATTHEW’ZIMMER IS THE RANKING VOLUNTEER AND THE MOST DESERVING.”

Mister Mystery, too good a showman to lose his groove to even the most lethal of hecklers, only blanched for a moment. “Quite right!” he said, tipping his hat to the Alvum and surreptitiously tapping the panic button on the underside of the box. “Come on, down, Lieutenant, er, what was it again?”

“Matthew Zimmer,” said Zimmer, leaping cheerfully through the rest of the crowd and over the steaming unconscious child separating him from the magician. “Only a humble supergenius on a search for truth, like anyone else,” he added, winking at the boy’s weeping mother. He was no showman, but understood the need to engage his charges sympathetically.

“Lieutenant Matthew Zimmer, everybody!” cried Mister Mystery, lifting up the saw. “Be warned, Lieutenant,” he stage-whispered as an aside. “Sometimes, the truth hurts.”

“And sometimes pain can do a body good,” countered Zimmer. The magician pulled a lever on the side of the armadillo shell, opening it up to reveal a man-shaped mold inside. Zimmer crawled inside obediently, grinning.

Encased in the skin of Rollo, thought Ke. Would it save him from the saw? The Rollo figure was known for his regenerative properties, his constant endurance of unending pain. Ke thought she understood quite clearly why Rollo fascinated the Tormentor so much.

The box shut, leaving only Zimmer’s head visible.

Zimmer, however, was no Rollo. The basic socializing ethics implicit in the Rollo stories would have frowned upon the alchemist’s command to Vuul to shoot the boy. She looked over at the Alvum with a mix of awe and unease. Did some still think this was all part of the act? And did their belief make it so?

Mister Mystery began to saw through the thick scale of the box. Armadillo: little armored one, in a language foreign to her. Ke wondered how she knew that. The Tormentor’s ability to bring languages together was truly wondrous, in that it allowed individuals of different cultures to communicate while also having the subtlety to account for the quirks unique to each culture. Rollo, a pun on Roll, also the Latinization of the Scandinavian Rolf. Ke scratched her head, feeling the awkward paws touch the strange, mammal face.

Zimmer kept on grinning.

Mister Mystery grunted. A look of panic dawned upon him. Through her two eyes Ke could see a red tinge to the arm working the saw. For the first time in quite a while, the remembrancer felt confident that she knew more of what was going on than most of those around her. She consented for the time being simply to watch.

Zimmer’s smile broke abruptly. The alchemist let out a gasp, then a scream. The audience let out a scream, then a gasp. Ke could perceive a touch of red on the saw. The box was vibrating in a way that suggested a struggle. All of it was perfectly genuine.

Ke bristled. Should Zimmer die, she would once be transported out of the ringside, likely to struggle with some other grotesque shape-change or whimsy of the Tormentor. There would be no guarantee that she would be able to continue to observe.

Plus, each successive death brought the tale closer to a close, and Ke was left with the feeling that this one was just starting.

Besides, Zimmer dying by the Tormentor’s direct intervention seemed somehow to be below the entity, as it violated the fundamental principle of the battle; that the players would live or die according to their merits or, at the very least, according to chance. He was cheapening the narrative.

Or was this merely another form of torment? Was the blood-red god-thing merely playing off the remembrancer’s anxieties? Was he daring her to step into the story as an active player?

Zimmer continued to howl, a chord of manic laughter occasionally hiccupping its way through his pain. Vuul was fidgeting uncertainly. What was he wrestling with? Loyalty? Faith? Self-restraint, even? The battlecleric had changed since those glorious minutes she had spent atop his head.

Ke had changed, too.

“Huhuhu-hoy!” she announced, standing up and spreading her arms out wide, peacock-like, demonstrating her consummate Rollosity. “Rollo here! If you don’t mind me interrupting the horror show for a moment—” –a sarcastic air on horror show, dispelling the crowd’s belief, making it safe to laugh again— “And I’ll tell you a story.”

The grinding of the sawblade stopped. Zimmer moaned. The audience had their eyes on Ke.

Slow and clumsy in her armadillo suit, the former arachnid clambered into the ring and walked past the injured boy and his mother, towards the magician. “Quite a collection you got here, Missssster Mystery!” she barked. Her mockery, again, constituted a transfer of power.

“Help,” whispered the magician (who of course viewed Rollo, and by extension her, as an authority figure) so only Ke can hear. “I’m killing this man but it’s... it’s not me that’s doing it.”

“And a real swell show you’re putting on!” Ke added.

“I’ve summoned security,” said Mister Mystery. “They’ll be able to deal with all this. With that thing with the gun.”

Ke winced. “I hope you don’t mind if I step in for a minute!”

Zimmer was looking up at her in awe. The myth of Rollo had taken hold in his brain, clearly. Blood was trickling from his mouth. Mister Mystery reclaimed his stage presence as though buttoning a coat. “Not at all, my dear Rollo!” he said. “This is your land, after all!”

Ke smiled, first at the magician, then back at the audience. “You’re right,” she said. “This is my land.”

The storyteller took a deep breath, dropping the wacky-armadillo act. She tapped into an old voice, one steeped in oral tradition, and hoped that the Tormentor’s magic would convey the effect in the translation. “This story comes from before my land. Before Rollo had so much as a rock to crawl under.” Her use of the third person brought the audience into a time of myth, connecting them to Rollo-the-idea, not any individual Rollo. “In those days Rollo spent all his time rolling around a great desert, trying to find a little water or some bugs to eat.”

This was one of the universal trickster stories. The trickster always had to be down on his luck, with no advantages save his brain. Ke knew a great wealth of trickster stories—originally Anansi stories, largely, of course, but not all—and this one adapted nicely to the situation.

“Lotta people wanted to pop open that shell of Rollo’s and cook him up for their supper,” Ke lamented. “And worst of all was Bobby Cat, who was fast and mean and strong and smart and had claws could cut through rock.

“Now, Rollo’s shell wasn’t gonna do him much good against these claws, but he had one other thing he could do when Bobby Cat came calling for his supper, which was dig a hole. Bobby Cat couldn’t fit in a Rollo-sized hole and couldn’t dig out a bigger hole without dulling the sharp on his claws. So he was always hoping to catch Rollo unawares and carve his shell out and cut his throat afore Rollo could get away.

“Now, one time came Rollo had what he though was a stroke of luck, which was, he found the biggest anthill he’d ever seen, a genuine ant-mountain, taller even than Rollo was. Now to Rollo this was a feast you couldn’t find outside of one of Rolloland’s many delicious concession stands.”

Ke wasn’t sure why she’d put that part in, but somehow, it didn’t break the mood.

“He dove right in there and started gobbling up all the ants and wrecking that big beautiful anthill. And many ants died that day, but the ant queen, she got to safety.

“Now, most ants don’t bear a grudge against the likes of Rollo because they’re simple types and understand that Rollo gotta feed same as anyone else, and he was a higher form of life than they were and that’s just how things go. But this queen didn’t see how any form of life should be higher than her, she having built that lovely ant-mountain which was taller even than Rollo and had been around longer besides. And now Rollo’d come along and wrecked everything she’d built and killed her people.

“So, as soon as she was out of danger, that ant queen went looking for Bobby Cat. And she told Bobby Cat, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to take what people I got left and get to building a scrumptious-looking anthill right by the foot of that mesa yonder. And when Rollo gets hungry again after filling himself up on all my citizens, he’ll see that anthill and try to eat up all the ants inside. But there won’t be any ants inside, and that’s when you’ll jump him from up atop the mesa.

“And Bobby Cat said okay, that’s how we’ll do it. And he shook the ant queen’s tiny little ant arm with one of his sharp, sharp claws and told her to get working on that fake anthill right away, and he perched himself up on top of that mesa and waited.

“And it happened like you’d expect, where Rollo got hungry again after not too long and was rolling around in the shadow of the mesa where it’s cool and saw that anthill and thought he might have himself some ant, when wham! down comes Bobby Cat claws out and scratches Rollo right down his face and knocks him out cold.

Now, you’d think this would be the end for Rollo but you’ve gotta remember that Bobby Cat wasn’t about that food chain the same way Rollo was with the ants. Bobby Cat, like all cats, he loved to play with his food. Torment, like.” Ke shot a glance at Mister Mystery, who looked back at her quizzically.

“So first thing Bobby Cat did was he cut Rollo’s armor all up, flayed him, like, so Rollo had to walk in the sun all day with his back muscles exposed, and it gave him the wickedest sunburn. And you better believe that Bobby cat likes his meat cooked, so he walked Rollo round on a string for days at a time til that meat was good and burnt up and Rollo near to dying.

“Couple times, Rollo’d try to dig himself an escape, but Bobby Cat would just pull on that string and bring Rollo back up to the surface. So that wasn’t going to work, and he needed to come up with a plan to trick Bobby Cat.

“So one morning he said Bobby Cat, why won’t you just kill me and eat me now, and not play with me like this.

“And Bobby Cat said, Rollo, I want you good and burnt and cooked up afore I eat you. Raw armadillo just tastes like processed ant.

“And Rollo said, Bobby Cat, I gotta figure this torment you’re putting me under has gotta hurt you half as bad as it hurts me, since you can’t catch any other supper lugging a half dead armadillo hanging off you on a string, and since you got that nasty burn up atop your head.

“Now anyone looking could see that Bobby Cat’s pate was looking handsome as ever, but there weren’t a lot of mirrors those days and Bobby Cat couldn’t hardly see his own head. So all he could say was, what burn are you talking about, Rollo?

“To which Rollo replied, the burn that’s got your head burnt read and ugly as a buzzard.

“And Bobby Cat, who was just as vain as you’d expect from a cat, got awful embarrassed and started trying to cover up his own head, and then started looking for a hat. And then Rollo said Bobby Cat, since I can tell this bothers you so much, and I being a slave to the food chain bear you no grudge or grievance, I humbly suggest that you go back to where you cut my armor off and use it as a hat, to protect you against the sun. All I ask, as payment for that idea, is that you kill me quick tomorrow, and spare me this torment.

“Bobby Cat, who had to admit that Rollo had always looked good in that armor, went back and got it and put it on his head, which satisfied his vanity. And to this day that style of hat that looks like Rollo’s armor is the height of fashion and you can buy one at any of Rolloland’s many gift shops. And he promised to Rollo that after a night’s rest he would kill Rollo proper and cook him up for a delicious armadillo breakfast.

“And of course that night Rollo took his armor off the sleeping cat’s head as quiet as could be. Of course he still couldn’t just put his armor back on and run away seeing as how he was still tied by that string. So what he did was he dug a hole out at the end of the length of the string and he hid in that hole and covered the hole up with his armor, which he curled up into a ball. So what Bobby Cat saw when he woke up the next morning was a ball of armadillo plate, which he thought was Rollo, having stolen his armor back.

“But Bobby Cat knew his claws were sharp enough to cut right through that armor, so he crouched down beside the ball and said, Rollo, I’ll kill you slow for this. So he jabbed one claw right through that armor real quick. And Rollo, down below in the hole, saw that claw, and let out a shout, so Bobby Cat would think he’d drawn blood. So Bobby Cat got a little more encouraged and stuck three claws right through the ball of armor. And Rollo started screaming as though his very guts were getting shorn out.

“After that performance Bobby Cat was worried he’d kill Rollo too soon, so next he only stuck one claw in and sort of swirled it around, like, trying to draw out the pain. And Rollo saw his chance, and picked up the rope that tied him to Bobby Cat, and sawed it off against his claw. And before Bobby Cat could think as to why Rollo wasn’t screaming any more, the armadillo had grabbed his armor and dug his hole down deep and out of sight where the cat couldn’t get to him.

“After a couple of days resting up and fixing his armor and sticking it back on himself, Rollo got to thinking how he could avoid this situation in the future. So he went and found the ant queen, whose role in his sorrows he could guess at. He found her starting work on rebuilding her ant-mountain, so it would be bigger than it was before, even. And he said Ms. Ant Queen, you spent all that time building that second anthill for Bobby Cat so Bobby Cat could kill me, and I’m still alive, so you have just as much reason to hate him as to hate me, now.

“And while this wasn’t strictly speaking true, the ant queen was indeed furious at Bobby Cat, and her little insect mind turned to revenge.

“So Rollo gave her a proposition whereby he vowed never to assault her glorious ant mountain, and in return she would send a contingent of ants to watch over Bobby Cat, and if Bobby Cat ever came near where Rollo was hanging his head, they’d whisper in his ear so he could get away well beforehand.

“And from then on anytime Bobby Cat set his sights on Rollo, by the time he got there Rollo was miles away. And he never found out why, because he was too big and too proud to pay any attention to the ants.”

It was a decent story and a great performance, and though it hadn’t been exactly what the audience was expecting, it had a certain kind of power. The crowd cheered at the story’s conclusion, and many of them immediately ran outside to the gift shops, stacks of Rollobucks in hand. Even the mother of the boy who had been shot seemed to be somewhat entertained.

Zimmer, for his part, realized that the agonizing pain and general all-over-the-place-ness of his mid-abdomen had subsided completely. Mister Mystery recognized his part in this minor miracle, and opened the box back up to reveal that the lieutenant was completely intact. “Just an empty shell after all!” he remarked. The audience laughed in relief at the dissipation of the suspense of the act and at the thematic tie-in to the story. Zimmer laughed with them.

Mister Mystery’s voice dropped and took on a sinister, forked-tongued quality. ”Nicely done,” he told the odd, eloquent Rollo.

Vuul heaved his form up out of the crowd and onto the stage, bowing nervously to Rollo. ”I AM ENSIGN’VUUL,” he said tremulously. ”PLEASE ACCEPT OUR OFFER OF SERVICE, O ROLLO.”

Zimmer, vaguely aware that he had cheated death due to this Rollo’s intervention, was only mildly perturbed at his inclusion in the offer. He offered the Rollo his hand. “What are you?” he enquired.

The Rollo smiled. ”Only a humble supergenius on a search for truth,” it mocked. ”Like anyone else.”

Zimmer beamed.

* * * * *

”Wait, wait, wait, wait,” said Henry, watching the screen.

“What?” asked Christian.

“That was a new Rollo story.”

Christian recalled the past several minutes. “Huh.”

“The only new Rollo story anyone’s been able to come up with since Rollo ‘died.’”

“So it was.”

The two looked at each other silently.

“Do you have any idea what that means?” asked Henry.

“Nope.”

“Cool,” Henry sighed. “Me neither.”

After Christian had gotten back from his lunch they had dragged Doug’s corpse into the refrigerator. It had been a long day.

* * * * *

The girl walked up to what appeared to be the leader of the security force surrounding the tent. “Are you going in there?” she asked absentmindedly.

The officer shook his head, Rollo-gun at the ready. “There’s a Rollo in there who seems to have the situation under control,” he said. “We’re a little nervous about starting a situation with that... big thing... in there. So we’re waiting to see how it pans out.”

The girl giggled. “That’s not Rollo,” she assured the officer.

“Rollo’s dead.”

GBCE · 01-11-2013, 05:54 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

just gonna staaaand there and watch me buuuurn