Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Five: Round Six!]
08-22-2012, 11:09 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
The Fates were nothing like Xadrez' Fates at all. He couldn't be sure why that offended him, as a perfect parallel would've just irked him further. And lo, he hovered wordlessly scowling in the corner like some sleek-chic-meets-spectre-tech coffee table, shoved from centre by the livelier engagements in life.
His Fates were similar to him; they were souls uplifted from the shoal by a divine smile cast upon them. His were birdlike, if they were like anything better-defined than the incorporeal celestial haze, formless wings hefting talons which seized and tugged eddies from Scout's Cloak. It was said they were the audience to those who died while Scout watched over the wars and plagues to end all disasters, the kind that came with the tidal frequencies of civilisation. They had a reputation for misfortune, or rather for the universe coming knocking on your door to collect whatever fortune had distanced you from the battlefield in the first place. Soldiers called them cowards' deaths, but, come disease or hubris or a sword through your vitals, soldiers and cowards alike joined the fold. The great whirling shell betwixt nothingness and the tiny, all-encompassing world, that was everyone's end.
It had been easier, Xadrez reflected, when the only Fates were his own. Well, no, not his. Scout's. His Fates, the ones that should've answered to him when the gods disappeared (because he had His knife and he was Her lieutenant), they were just scared and confused as he was - but with neither knife nor office were free to screech and panic and bedraggle Her gutted Cloak even worse.
It rained souls that day. The Monochrome slunk out of her catacombs, and feasted.
These Fates had just enough similarities to sting - more snakelike than birdlike, sure, but sisterly. They stared at him in the same unison with that same, shared, pre-emptively resentful expression before he opened his mouth. He settled for a nod, and they returned to their gossipping like he wasn't even there. Their wall-lent chattering was in no language Xadrez could understand, which struck him as odd after having travelled so far.
---
It is said, in the Place: if the gods had a house, the reason nobody's been invited is because it's too untidy for polite company. The saying continues that if you were to stand on the doorstep of the house of the gods and knock, nobody would answer. If you were especially curious, you could stand on the tips of your toes and peer into the immaculately polished fisheye lens. The gods, all distorted and reproachful, would stare right back. All of them, even Canis Days' half-lidded hangdog gaze right at the back of the crowd. One might tell you that your staring was rather rude, and you'd concede they'd made a fair point and go back to where you came from.
The gods didn't exactly have a house, and they didn't exactly have a fisheye lens through which they could appraise the world either. They did almost definitely had a big, round, table, though, and it hummed with the magic of the Middle-Gem and had a great grey dog slouched across a good two thirds of of it.
Canis Days was the only god left at the table, which for most intents and purposes meant he was the only god currently left. The thought would've pleased him, if he hadn't done absolutely nothing so things conspired that way. (Having said that, he had done absolutely nothing, which for a god of atrophy was a satisfying little victory in itself.) He basked in the Middle-Gem's apathetic, avoidant glow. Like the other gods, he found there was little else you could do when its moods swung that way. Unlike the other gods, Days was quite content doing little else.
Days' fur was less like a dog's, more the unkempt scraggle-gray of a man lost in the wilderness. The Staglander heard a ringing, and raised a paw to watch the Librarian, who knocked with methodical impatience at the heartwood plinth. It was the only piece of echoak trim in the whole building, and he'd grown to prefer it that way. Echoak ents, despite their habit for repeating things in their ponderous tree-voices, were prized for the resonant properties of their wood. They travelled the Place as they wished, rewarding hospitality with a branch that could connect you back to the trunk. The signal was better in older trees, and from branches gifted during the ent's youth. The best signal, of course, came from the heartwood; after the tree had set roots and stopped thinking in the way you or I think.
The ent whose heartwood the Librarian rapped upon had settled in the Grove of Knowledge. Its polished stump was cut flush to the ground, and the central rings glowed like something festered away in there. Moses had just gotten off the conch with His Majesty, and couldn't think the Librarian contacting now of all times would improve matters.
"Mr Smith," he gently remonstrated, "you should know this is not a good time."
"I know." The Librarian did, and he still sounded apologetic. You don't bother a tortoise like Moses even at the best of times, but events had conspired and here he was.
"It's the Once-General."
The fact the Librarian had to call him to relay this was odder than the event itself. "Which one?"
"Kath's chessmaster."
Oh.
Moses was silent for a time. "I trust you're certain on this."
"I know my history, of course it can't be him-"
"But it's him?"
"Y-Yes."
The tortoise adjusted his spectacles - somehow - in a way as to attract a wandering bee's attention. It saluted a little too smartly at Moses' request, nectaries sloshing with beadlike droplets. One fell in Moses' eye, to much apologetic thrumming and the tortoise's assurances that no, this was quite all right, the bee had been a tremendous help, and would he please direct a hummingbird to the flower he'd just harvested, and have said hummingbird deliver it posthaste to the Library.
"Are you still there, Librarian? Tell me what the Once-General wants."
"I, uh-" there was a scuffling on the line, characteristic of an Echoak respondent's lifting their hands from the link. There was a pause just long enough to mutter "fuck", then a second round of scuffling. "I'm not entirely sure. I'm pretty sure he out-logicked me into agreeing he's a god, but I think he's lost. He sounds lost. Something about finding his pantheon?"
There was some sort of commotion at the gates to the Grove. Not that the Grove actually had any walls around it, but it was one of those sort of places that still somehow only had the one front entrance.
"Right. Assistance in that regard is on its way. Now, if there's nothing else-"
There is
---
Days leapt from the table with a shriek, as though it had glowed blue-hot. The noise startled a pack of other gods, who despite not being all that here mere seconds ago were feeling belligerent, exasperated, alarmed, and self-satisfied all at once. It was all spontaneous and disorienting and everyOne waltzed or stomped or skulked their way around the table like they'd all just woken from a thousand-year nap.
All this activity was too much for Canis Days, whose last act as de facto ruler of the pantheon was to flee over the Whichwerenot Hills, and never be seen again.
---
Meanwhile, back in the Place, a very well-followed phone call was still underway. One of the Fates had emerged from the sitting room, and chirruped with the sorrow of the disaffected - for Xadrez had killed the Librarian. Important as he might've been in the cosmic order, him and his fragile human skull were no match for a ghost with little sanctity for social orders.
(And a paperweight. Xadrez had killed the Librarian with a paperweight, plucked straight from the dead man's mantelpiece.)
Moses
is it
The tortoise, despite himself, suppressed a shudder. That voice had stripped the Place of its able-bodied folk, and sent them all marching off to fight in some war of its own implacable championing. Xadrez could feel all of the eyes in the world worth transfixing upon him. It was almost intoxicating, like hanging suspended delirious in a great sparkling web of everything interconnected with the tactician at its heart.
A billion, trillion eyes could judge him. And under their judgement, he could do no wrong save be a legend.
Tell me
what was the answer I could not be given
Moses hung up, partly because he had no wish to negotiate with an insurgent usurper who should've been dead, but more because they'd found "the rock".
Ring ring ring, unanswered, went the rings on the echoak stump.
The Fates were nothing like Xadrez' Fates at all. He couldn't be sure why that offended him, as a perfect parallel would've just irked him further. And lo, he hovered wordlessly scowling in the corner like some sleek-chic-meets-spectre-tech coffee table, shoved from centre by the livelier engagements in life.
His Fates were similar to him; they were souls uplifted from the shoal by a divine smile cast upon them. His were birdlike, if they were like anything better-defined than the incorporeal celestial haze, formless wings hefting talons which seized and tugged eddies from Scout's Cloak. It was said they were the audience to those who died while Scout watched over the wars and plagues to end all disasters, the kind that came with the tidal frequencies of civilisation. They had a reputation for misfortune, or rather for the universe coming knocking on your door to collect whatever fortune had distanced you from the battlefield in the first place. Soldiers called them cowards' deaths, but, come disease or hubris or a sword through your vitals, soldiers and cowards alike joined the fold. The great whirling shell betwixt nothingness and the tiny, all-encompassing world, that was everyone's end.
It had been easier, Xadrez reflected, when the only Fates were his own. Well, no, not his. Scout's. His Fates, the ones that should've answered to him when the gods disappeared (because he had His knife and he was Her lieutenant), they were just scared and confused as he was - but with neither knife nor office were free to screech and panic and bedraggle Her gutted Cloak even worse.
It rained souls that day. The Monochrome slunk out of her catacombs, and feasted.
These Fates had just enough similarities to sting - more snakelike than birdlike, sure, but sisterly. They stared at him in the same unison with that same, shared, pre-emptively resentful expression before he opened his mouth. He settled for a nod, and they returned to their gossipping like he wasn't even there. Their wall-lent chattering was in no language Xadrez could understand, which struck him as odd after having travelled so far.
---
It is said, in the Place: if the gods had a house, the reason nobody's been invited is because it's too untidy for polite company. The saying continues that if you were to stand on the doorstep of the house of the gods and knock, nobody would answer. If you were especially curious, you could stand on the tips of your toes and peer into the immaculately polished fisheye lens. The gods, all distorted and reproachful, would stare right back. All of them, even Canis Days' half-lidded hangdog gaze right at the back of the crowd. One might tell you that your staring was rather rude, and you'd concede they'd made a fair point and go back to where you came from.
The gods didn't exactly have a house, and they didn't exactly have a fisheye lens through which they could appraise the world either. They did almost definitely had a big, round, table, though, and it hummed with the magic of the Middle-Gem and had a great grey dog slouched across a good two thirds of of it.
Canis Days was the only god left at the table, which for most intents and purposes meant he was the only god currently left. The thought would've pleased him, if he hadn't done absolutely nothing so things conspired that way. (Having said that, he had done absolutely nothing, which for a god of atrophy was a satisfying little victory in itself.) He basked in the Middle-Gem's apathetic, avoidant glow. Like the other gods, he found there was little else you could do when its moods swung that way. Unlike the other gods, Days was quite content doing little else.
Days' fur was less like a dog's, more the unkempt scraggle-gray of a man lost in the wilderness. The Staglander heard a ringing, and raised a paw to watch the Librarian, who knocked with methodical impatience at the heartwood plinth. It was the only piece of echoak trim in the whole building, and he'd grown to prefer it that way. Echoak ents, despite their habit for repeating things in their ponderous tree-voices, were prized for the resonant properties of their wood. They travelled the Place as they wished, rewarding hospitality with a branch that could connect you back to the trunk. The signal was better in older trees, and from branches gifted during the ent's youth. The best signal, of course, came from the heartwood; after the tree had set roots and stopped thinking in the way you or I think.
The ent whose heartwood the Librarian rapped upon had settled in the Grove of Knowledge. Its polished stump was cut flush to the ground, and the central rings glowed like something festered away in there. Moses had just gotten off the conch with His Majesty, and couldn't think the Librarian contacting now of all times would improve matters.
"Mr Smith," he gently remonstrated, "you should know this is not a good time."
"I know." The Librarian did, and he still sounded apologetic. You don't bother a tortoise like Moses even at the best of times, but events had conspired and here he was.
"It's the Once-General."
The fact the Librarian had to call him to relay this was odder than the event itself. "Which one?"
"Kath's chessmaster."
Oh.
Moses was silent for a time. "I trust you're certain on this."
"I know my history, of course it can't be him-"
"But it's him?"
"Y-Yes."
The tortoise adjusted his spectacles - somehow - in a way as to attract a wandering bee's attention. It saluted a little too smartly at Moses' request, nectaries sloshing with beadlike droplets. One fell in Moses' eye, to much apologetic thrumming and the tortoise's assurances that no, this was quite all right, the bee had been a tremendous help, and would he please direct a hummingbird to the flower he'd just harvested, and have said hummingbird deliver it posthaste to the Library.
"Are you still there, Librarian? Tell me what the Once-General wants."
"I, uh-" there was a scuffling on the line, characteristic of an Echoak respondent's lifting their hands from the link. There was a pause just long enough to mutter "fuck", then a second round of scuffling. "I'm not entirely sure. I'm pretty sure he out-logicked me into agreeing he's a god, but I think he's lost. He sounds lost. Something about finding his pantheon?"
There was some sort of commotion at the gates to the Grove. Not that the Grove actually had any walls around it, but it was one of those sort of places that still somehow only had the one front entrance.
"Right. Assistance in that regard is on its way. Now, if there's nothing else-"
There is
---
Days leapt from the table with a shriek, as though it had glowed blue-hot. The noise startled a pack of other gods, who despite not being all that here mere seconds ago were feeling belligerent, exasperated, alarmed, and self-satisfied all at once. It was all spontaneous and disorienting and everyOne waltzed or stomped or skulked their way around the table like they'd all just woken from a thousand-year nap.
All this activity was too much for Canis Days, whose last act as de facto ruler of the pantheon was to flee over the Whichwerenot Hills, and never be seen again.
---
Meanwhile, back in the Place, a very well-followed phone call was still underway. One of the Fates had emerged from the sitting room, and chirruped with the sorrow of the disaffected - for Xadrez had killed the Librarian. Important as he might've been in the cosmic order, him and his fragile human skull were no match for a ghost with little sanctity for social orders.
(And a paperweight. Xadrez had killed the Librarian with a paperweight, plucked straight from the dead man's mantelpiece.)
Moses
is it
The tortoise, despite himself, suppressed a shudder. That voice had stripped the Place of its able-bodied folk, and sent them all marching off to fight in some war of its own implacable championing. Xadrez could feel all of the eyes in the world worth transfixing upon him. It was almost intoxicating, like hanging suspended delirious in a great sparkling web of everything interconnected with the tactician at its heart.
A billion, trillion eyes could judge him. And under their judgement, he could do no wrong save be a legend.
Tell me
what was the answer I could not be given
Moses hung up, partly because he had no wish to negotiate with an insurgent usurper who should've been dead, but more because they'd found "the rock".
Ring ring ring, unanswered, went the rings on the echoak stump.
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow