Re: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 1: Godsworn Valley]
05-07-2012, 11:19 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.
The Temple was majestic, or as majestic as a grand hall partially sunken into the ground could be. Suspended from the lopsided, sloping ceiling, high above the stone-set floor, hung on threadbare industrial wire a worn chandelier with half its crystals missing and the other half cracked. Yet despite its circumstance it still held about it a palatial air, like a noble lady stripped of finery yet holding her head high; against the injustices of the universe, against circumstance and reality it shone with a pure white light. It shone above the workers that scuttled below in the business of war, like it had shone above bustling debutantes and dancing brides, balls and banks and business and history hanging on by threads and fingernails on the edge of changeless unknown oblivion in the face of war’s and nature’s inevitable, destructive force, in the faceless maw of entropy and memory’s decay; it shone, shouting out the solid fact that it existed, shining, here and now, and would shine - forever -
Motes of light played across the high-rising beams that dove in arcs across the space; they fluttered and flew in space like stars in a finite, crumbling cosmos doomed to die not the fiery death of the supernova, but the slow, agonizing, depressing demise of the dwarf stars - a cold, cruel, sputtering end to infinite complexity. She felt it inside her twinge slightly, as if it felt its nuclear comrades so close and so far away, and shivered, involuntarily. As she watched the glittering mass, its lights grew brighter - casting wild shards of undulating shadow over the walls, the arched ceiling, the stone and earth floor, and the obsidian altar set just beneath its light, as if attempting to escape it.
A billion glints of light glittered in the altar’s black glass, playing in the velvet cloth and tassels, teasing the yellow flames from the little braziers: look at me look at what i can do - High above, the chandelier tinkled from breezes and the distant percussion of explosives, pouring shaking light and night all through the background noise of war. And its light, joined with the glow of a hundred monitors and diodes and gauges, was all there was in the space - there was barely a beam of the weak day allowed into the hall, shining through gaps and broken windows taped over with plastics and nailed over with planks. The darkness in the temple was pure, absolute, untainted with day, and it spun - about the sparks and motes and their glow, weaving it into itself, warping and twisting it into a form that coalesced, with finality, into a woman, dressed in the black of night.
The standard interpretation of such appearances, especially with metaphorical ideas such as being dressed in night, often dictate that the apparition be clothed in some form of godly (or, if one was fashionably inclined, ungodly) robe made of stars and blackness softer than velvet, moving independently of reality and physics and seemingly encompassing the universe while remaining the same size.
The circumstances of war do not generally lend themselves to standard interpretations.
The Goddess Obscura arrived regaled in leather, studded and dyed raven-black to match Her short hair, a birchwood quarterstaff gripped like a scepter in pale, perfect hand. The armor seemed designed to obfuscate the identity and everything else about its wearer, which - just perhaps - it was. The overall effect was not dissimilar to combining a heavy metal biker with a ninja, with some royal blood and war-torn soldier thrown in. Behind a pair of shades clipped flush with Her visage, Her gaze went where none could follow; it chose to radiate from every patch of shadow, as if the darkness were staring back.
Rachel felt a sudden absence; her companion soldier was kneeling before the goddess.. <font color="#486858">“Your Tenebracity.”
“Lieutenant Mills.” Obscura took Mills’ hand in hers, and pulled him to his feet. “How goes the war?”
The lieutenant saluted smartly, gesturing in Rachel’s direction. “We’ve located the myth you sent us, sir!”
The eyes in the shadow narrowed. “Her?” A dozen invisible stares orbited her, unseen but felt like protrusions in velvet silk, trees on open veldt. ”Not her. This is not one of mine. She-” The gazes became cutting, incisive, darkness delving deep-
light blazing light heat
The dull thud of the staff landing on stone floor, bounces punctuating by the wild discord flailing, twisting, across Her visage. “She is,” She sputtered, “She is light; light!” At a stroke, the quarterstaff was in Her hand, and across her neck, birch scraping metal - “Who sent you?! It was Desolo, wasn’t it?”
Children are taught without fail to make eye contact with a conversation partner, fellow communicator, or simply when eyes are available. But Her eyes were unseen, obscured, and they were the one place that a stare didn’t seem to come. Rachel stared, terrified, into the black glass - “N-no! No one!”
”Or Res Rex, that dead factfucker!” She stopped. “No one?” The shadows lengthened, the cutting gazes returned; now plumbing and searching with care-
Deities are not, on the whole, omniscient; they tend not to know things until they choose to find out. Some gods and goddesses are better at it than others; those who deal in information, clarity, facts often find it easier to understand and plumb the depths of knowledge the world offers up.
It could be, however, that they just know where to look.
On the other end of the scale, the deities of the night, of the unknown cries and calls that come from the rustling shadows, the holies and unholies that play the game in things forgotten, in lies and espionage - they, too, deal in information. Not the hard statistics and solid facts of the Desolo and his like, but understanding - intuition and the sort of serendipitous knowledge that is only found under a web of misinformation and lies, like the shape of a ship in the fog, the nine-tenths lying underwater, unsaid, unspoken existence just underneath the veneer of ignorance. In those uncertain certainties lie the realm of implied truths and political languages, the gods of secrets, the goddesses of subterfuge.
The Goddess of Subterfuge - one of the Night Sisters, of the Dark. Obscura.
And it is very hard to hide something from a goddess that makes hiding somethings Her job.
“You aren’t from here, are you?” It was phrased like a question, She spoke it as if were a question, but there was nothing but statement in her words. There are many things that become certain when the Goddess of Subterfuge is definite. “You’re an unknown. An interloper.” Her voice was dispassionate, cold - superior; a pondering voice meandering on decisions concerning vaporization, among other things. “An outsider.”
If anyone had noticed Rachel flinch, no one passed comment.
She stopped pacing, and turned to face the lieutenant. ”We may use you yet. Mills.”
“Yes sir!”
“The Nightgazer I sent is still out there. Gather a squad to retrieve it. And take this one with you,” She gestured in Rachel’s direction, “and put her to the test.”
He saluted. “Yes, sir!” As activity once more began to bustle, She drew close to him and whispered:
“As far as possible, if you will, lieutenant. And then farther. And then, farther. She is an unknown in the balance of this war. To change that, we need to know what she can do.” She laughed, softly, the kind of laugh that leaks documents and topples regimes.
“And if she dies, one less unknown for us.”</font>
The Temple was majestic, or as majestic as a grand hall partially sunken into the ground could be. Suspended from the lopsided, sloping ceiling, high above the stone-set floor, hung on threadbare industrial wire a worn chandelier with half its crystals missing and the other half cracked. Yet despite its circumstance it still held about it a palatial air, like a noble lady stripped of finery yet holding her head high; against the injustices of the universe, against circumstance and reality it shone with a pure white light. It shone above the workers that scuttled below in the business of war, like it had shone above bustling debutantes and dancing brides, balls and banks and business and history hanging on by threads and fingernails on the edge of changeless unknown oblivion in the face of war’s and nature’s inevitable, destructive force, in the faceless maw of entropy and memory’s decay; it shone, shouting out the solid fact that it existed, shining, here and now, and would shine - forever -
Motes of light played across the high-rising beams that dove in arcs across the space; they fluttered and flew in space like stars in a finite, crumbling cosmos doomed to die not the fiery death of the supernova, but the slow, agonizing, depressing demise of the dwarf stars - a cold, cruel, sputtering end to infinite complexity. She felt it inside her twinge slightly, as if it felt its nuclear comrades so close and so far away, and shivered, involuntarily. As she watched the glittering mass, its lights grew brighter - casting wild shards of undulating shadow over the walls, the arched ceiling, the stone and earth floor, and the obsidian altar set just beneath its light, as if attempting to escape it.
A billion glints of light glittered in the altar’s black glass, playing in the velvet cloth and tassels, teasing the yellow flames from the little braziers: look at me look at what i can do - High above, the chandelier tinkled from breezes and the distant percussion of explosives, pouring shaking light and night all through the background noise of war. And its light, joined with the glow of a hundred monitors and diodes and gauges, was all there was in the space - there was barely a beam of the weak day allowed into the hall, shining through gaps and broken windows taped over with plastics and nailed over with planks. The darkness in the temple was pure, absolute, untainted with day, and it spun - about the sparks and motes and their glow, weaving it into itself, warping and twisting it into a form that coalesced, with finality, into a woman, dressed in the black of night.
The standard interpretation of such appearances, especially with metaphorical ideas such as being dressed in night, often dictate that the apparition be clothed in some form of godly (or, if one was fashionably inclined, ungodly) robe made of stars and blackness softer than velvet, moving independently of reality and physics and seemingly encompassing the universe while remaining the same size.
The circumstances of war do not generally lend themselves to standard interpretations.
The Goddess Obscura arrived regaled in leather, studded and dyed raven-black to match Her short hair, a birchwood quarterstaff gripped like a scepter in pale, perfect hand. The armor seemed designed to obfuscate the identity and everything else about its wearer, which - just perhaps - it was. The overall effect was not dissimilar to combining a heavy metal biker with a ninja, with some royal blood and war-torn soldier thrown in. Behind a pair of shades clipped flush with Her visage, Her gaze went where none could follow; it chose to radiate from every patch of shadow, as if the darkness were staring back.
Rachel felt a sudden absence; her companion soldier was kneeling before the goddess.. <font color="#486858">“Your Tenebracity.”
“Lieutenant Mills.” Obscura took Mills’ hand in hers, and pulled him to his feet. “How goes the war?”
The lieutenant saluted smartly, gesturing in Rachel’s direction. “We’ve located the myth you sent us, sir!”
The eyes in the shadow narrowed. “Her?” A dozen invisible stares orbited her, unseen but felt like protrusions in velvet silk, trees on open veldt. ”Not her. This is not one of mine. She-” The gazes became cutting, incisive, darkness delving deep-
light blazing light heat
The dull thud of the staff landing on stone floor, bounces punctuating by the wild discord flailing, twisting, across Her visage. “She is,” She sputtered, “She is light; light!” At a stroke, the quarterstaff was in Her hand, and across her neck, birch scraping metal - “Who sent you?! It was Desolo, wasn’t it?”
Children are taught without fail to make eye contact with a conversation partner, fellow communicator, or simply when eyes are available. But Her eyes were unseen, obscured, and they were the one place that a stare didn’t seem to come. Rachel stared, terrified, into the black glass - “N-no! No one!”
”Or Res Rex, that dead factfucker!” She stopped. “No one?” The shadows lengthened, the cutting gazes returned; now plumbing and searching with care-
Deities are not, on the whole, omniscient; they tend not to know things until they choose to find out. Some gods and goddesses are better at it than others; those who deal in information, clarity, facts often find it easier to understand and plumb the depths of knowledge the world offers up.
It could be, however, that they just know where to look.
On the other end of the scale, the deities of the night, of the unknown cries and calls that come from the rustling shadows, the holies and unholies that play the game in things forgotten, in lies and espionage - they, too, deal in information. Not the hard statistics and solid facts of the Desolo and his like, but understanding - intuition and the sort of serendipitous knowledge that is only found under a web of misinformation and lies, like the shape of a ship in the fog, the nine-tenths lying underwater, unsaid, unspoken existence just underneath the veneer of ignorance. In those uncertain certainties lie the realm of implied truths and political languages, the gods of secrets, the goddesses of subterfuge.
The Goddess of Subterfuge - one of the Night Sisters, of the Dark. Obscura.
And it is very hard to hide something from a goddess that makes hiding somethings Her job.
“You aren’t from here, are you?” It was phrased like a question, She spoke it as if were a question, but there was nothing but statement in her words. There are many things that become certain when the Goddess of Subterfuge is definite. “You’re an unknown. An interloper.” Her voice was dispassionate, cold - superior; a pondering voice meandering on decisions concerning vaporization, among other things. “An outsider.”
If anyone had noticed Rachel flinch, no one passed comment.
She stopped pacing, and turned to face the lieutenant. ”We may use you yet. Mills.”
“Yes sir!”
“The Nightgazer I sent is still out there. Gather a squad to retrieve it. And take this one with you,” She gestured in Rachel’s direction, “and put her to the test.”
He saluted. “Yes, sir!” As activity once more began to bustle, She drew close to him and whispered:
“As far as possible, if you will, lieutenant. And then farther. And then, farther. She is an unknown in the balance of this war. To change that, we need to know what she can do.” She laughed, softly, the kind of laugh that leaks documents and topples regimes.
“And if she dies, one less unknown for us.”</font>
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