The Battle Majestic (Round 4 - Magpie Skies)

Originally posted on MSPA by Baphomet.

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Vex’s world and the one you and I are used to vary in many fundamental respects. There are no planets, no stars, no galaxies, not even gravity. There is only “down”, a universal constant pointing towards the infinite sea beneath the buoyant islands that make up the entirety of the land mass. That sea is the domain of Ungol, God of the Mind, and the multicolored fluorescent spheres that dance beneath the surface mirror the similarly spherical crystals spiraling in obscure patterns through the dark half of the sky – the domain of Devari. It would not be strictly correct to define the “sea” and “sky” as actual, physical locations; while that may be true in some ways, events occurring at unusually high or low altitudes tend to be less “real” than those occurring at ground level.

The ground was a long, long way beneath Vex. A swarm of luminous orbs yielded to him in dance as he fell. Looking down, the lights beneath the sea, hazy and distorted, shifted in ways that seemed to mirror the content of his mind in ways he could not explain. He knew, or rather he hoped, that when he was ready these lights would coalesce into something he could understand. Dreams reveal the nature of the mind, after all. For now, he was content to let them swirl pleasantly.

Vex was dimly cognizant of a dragging sensation from his right arm. The physicality of his own body was not something his awareness was currently equipped to deal with, but the insistence of this particular sensation was itching at him to be recognized. He turned his awareness towards its source.

A monstrous mass of black and indigo was revealed through a haze, tentacles thrashing, toothy maws opening in silent screams and consuming themselves endlessly. Vex’s revulsion was stifled by two centuries’ familiarity, which also dampened the impact of the realization that this twisted abomination was lashed to him by similar appendages. In contrast with the lights beneath him, this thing moved in ways excruciatingly foreign to his mind’s contents.

The form of Devari materialized beside him. His voice came from everywhere, calm and collected and speaking their shared native tongue. As he spoke, his long, slender arms casually reached through the haze. “You’ve got a little something there, Vex.” With an unconcernedness contrasting sharply with the gravity of the motion being performed, the hand plucked the retching mass away from Vex and tossed it into the definition-defying aether above.

Vex’s mind suddenly snapped into sharp focus. For the first time in a long while, his quick tongue failed him. “You…did you really just…”

Devari smiled facelessly. “I can’t take him off you for good. But, I’m not going to be so kind as to guide him back to you when we’re done here.”

Vex was pounded by waves of emotion: relief, gratitude, clarity…the recognition of how much of his mind had been devoted to fighting off the effects of Magog was immediate. A figment of Vex’s mind in his shape resolved itself, arm healed and whole. It turned to face the dream god. “Why didn’t you do that before?”

Devari’s towering neck coiled its way around Vex, serpentine. The faceless head stopped inches from his face. “We all have old grudges on you, Vex. They seem less important in your absence. Welcome home.”

Vex shook his head. “Home? Am I really going home?” He paused a moment, his expression growing more concerned. “What has happened to it while I have been gone?”

“Don’t look down,” Devari replied.

Naturally unable to resist, he looked. The swirling colors in the water below arranged themselves neatly into the shape of a daylit balcony reaching out over a verdant valley. Vex stumbled slightly as his feet touched the cobblestone, Devari’s distant chuckle fading away in the emptiness behind him.

Vex felt giddy and apprehensive all at once as he recognized Jabal’s domain. Jabal, Adma Kilu, God of Love. Jabal, whose wife Vex famously seduced prior to his merging with Magog. Vex repressed a smile as he remembered the love god’s reaction upon discovering that Vex had not only foiled yet another of his meticulously planned, jealously guarded, horribly ordered soulmate pairings, but one that Jabal had personally engineered for years to be the perfect mate for him. Vex’s opposition to Jabal’s approach to his station had fueled their rivalry throughout the countless eons, and likely had much to do with Vex’s view of sex and romance. That Devari chose to drop him off here proved that he wasn’t quite as apt to forget “old grudges” as originally stated.

Vex merely smiled and began to think about how he was going to get out of this one. Was he still dreaming? In the domains of the gods in his world, the distinction was largely inconsequential, but could he escape from here into the world below? Did he even need to? His sudden disappearance from the world for the second time might be used to trigger a friendly response from his rival. And there was the other thing…with a sudden rush, he realized he didn’t have to censor the content of his thoughts to starve his emotional parasite any longer.

His son was trying to replace him. The moment he had been whisked away for this abhorrent contest, he had been clambering up the mountainside to the Hall of Gods to prevent this. The infallibility of youth had convinced the man that he could run things better than Vex, the power of chaos geared not towards interfering with Jabal’s particular take on love, but towards death. Death, which his half-divine heritage had postponed beyond the limits of, in his eyes, the tragically-short spans of his friends and loved ones. Death, whose caretaker’s execution of her duties was the only manifestation of order that Vex did not openly defy.

Following the fraction of a second it took Vex to consider these things, he realized he was getting off-track. Deciding that an open and direct approach might serve him best this once, he called out to Jabal.

A pair of luminous eyes suspended in nothingness opened in the courtyard leading to the balcony, followed by another, and another. The form of the Love God blinked into existence shortly thereafter. Barring the host of disembodied eyes floating around his head, continually darting back and forth in search of infidelity, Jabal took the least liberties with his shape. He took the form of a well-dressed and well-built specimen of Binti, the local name of the intelligent inhabitants of this plane. Tall, lanky, four-fingered and –toed, with large low-set eyes and pointed ears sticking straight up.

All pairs of eyes focused on Vex and narrowed slightly. His expression was unreadable, but his stance was defensive. Vex smiled widely and held his arms out to Jabal. “Jabal, I’ve returned.”

“I can see that, obviously,” was his quick reply. His gaze darted in every direction, searching for deception. He settled lower on the tips of his foot-fingers and sighed. “Where have you been?”

Vex did not lose his grin as he nodded to a covered area inset in the mountainside, where several plush seats rested. “It’s quite a tale. Sit with me. I will tell you of it, and then you must tell me of what happened while I was gone.”

The Love God held up his hand in Vex’s direction as the satyr began making his way to the seats. One pair of eyes darted away from him and searched the area surrounding the chairs. “Tell me now,” he answered, sternly.

Vex stopped, looking back and forth from him to the eyes. He chuckled lightly. “Oh, I see.” He held out his hands as if to show he had nothing to hide, and spoke quickly and with no variation in tone. “I was stolen by a powerful being, thrown into a fight to the death with seven other beings from other worlds, and I’ve returned here with the help of Devari and a hallucinogenic drug.”

Jabal frowned and replied in a tone facetiously mirroring Vex’s. “Your kid re-lit your fire in the Hall of Gods, he’s restructuring your domain as we speak.” The eyes searching the seating area returned and he sighed loudly, pinching the bridge of his short nose. “And he’s even worse than you were. What are you doing here, Vex?”

Vex’s complexion blanched where his skin was visible. “I don’t know. Can I stop him?”

“Well, maybe.” He waved a hand in Vex’s direction, speaking mater-of-factly. “I think you’d have to come here in the flesh. So, this fight to the death, does it end?”

“When all but one die.”

“And you go home afterwards?

“Supposedly.”

Jabal nodded slowly. “And the others, are they a threat? Can you win?”

Vex paused a moment to consider his answer. “I don’t know.”

“Well,” Jabal replied, “You might want to figure that out.”

The two old gods stared at each other wordlessly for a moment. “I have to go,” Vex said quickly.

Jabal said nothing. Vex reached out with his mind and grasped the invisible threads tying this domain to the others, quickly found the one he was searching for, and pulled. He disappeared with a short blink, leaving Jabal alone on the balcony.

Vex pulled himself into being in the center of a grand cavern, whose floor was a shimmering mass of black hair. Ecstatic moaning came from every direction, and closer scrutiny revealed endless bodies, men and women in twos and threes and fours, some of them made of the ebon strands, and all feverishly coupling with each other. Vex looked longingly out into the pool from a raised dais in the center, as a silken mess of black slithered from the mass in his direction. It coiled around itself, flexible strands shifting into solid forms, splayed out from a central mass. It formed the shape of an unclothed Binti woman, lying comfortably across the ground. Color oozed across the blackness, giving the impression of flesh.

The woman smiled. “Vex,” she called to him. She reached out and touched his right arm gingerly. “It’s good to see you.”

Vex was at a loss for words. The woman was beautiful, always. Even after eons of familiarity. The perfect woman. Lira, Adma Ryli, Death-Goddess.

“You are whole,” she said, her eyes brightening, “Have you come to be with me again?”

“Only in my dreams,” Vex replied. His immortality during his time as a god was due to his link to the Hall of Gods. Death, for him, was impermanent – a visit with Lira, a moment to be one with her, and then, rebirth. This link was not something he shared with Magog, and thus it was something he lost. With the loss of his godhood, the rebirth would no longer come. He would have, at most, one more opportunity to share himself with her in this state, and he was not certain he was ready for it yet.

Lira’s expression darkened. “I have missed you. Where are you? “

“On an island,” he replied, “in another world, in a battle.”

She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “Why? You should be here, Vex. You have to fix this.”

Vex wracked his brain for a moment, recalling the details of the opening speech which now seemed so long ago. “I was taken by entities called The Executive, S, and Talis. They gathered eight beings, myself included, from across several universes to hold a battle to the death. When one dies, we are all taken to a new location. There will only be one left.”

He told her his story, starting from his departure from the Hall of Gods, through the destruction of the Bubble Universe, his deceit with the natives of Firestar, until his arrival at this place. The concern on her face grew when he described the circumstances surrounding his return here, and when he finished, that was the first thing her questions concerned.

“So, your body is still in the temple?”

“I do not know. I believe so.”

“Vex, Nalu must have given you that drug to test you. They likely know you are not who you say.”

Vex’s preoccupation with his current predicament had caused him to disregard his previous one. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Then you have to return! Return, and try to win. I will tell the others of your fate, and we will try to find this Executive and free you. If you win, or if we succeed, then I think we may have found a way to return you to your prior station. Or rather, your son found it, and has used it to take your place as Adma Poki.”

“And I can use this same method to reclaim it from him?”

“Almost certainly, but you must return first!”

Vex paused. “And if I don’t?”

“If you fail… if we fail... well…” She pulled herself closer to Vex, her lips a mere inch from his. “There is always room in my bed for you, Vex.”

A small part of him yearned to close that gap between their lips, but he simply nodded. “One way or another, I’ll see you again.” She nodded in turn, and let go of him as he blinked away to Devari’s domain.

The Dream God was awaiting his arrival, his long fingers steepled in contemplation. Vex held out his hand to him. “I am ready. Take me back.”

“It’s not that easy,” Devari responded. “I’ve been trying to maintain this connection with your mind, but this drug you took is serious. Most of the humans that have taken it were snatched up by their gods and not released. I think I can take you back, but not directly. We will have to return through the domains of the local gods.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“It means we’re either going to have to seek permission or break through. I hope you are on good terms with them…?”

Vex was silent.

An omnidirectional sigh preceded Devari’s response. “We’re breaking through, then.” The long, slender fingers snatched Vex’s consciousness directly out of his figmentary body and tossed it through Devari’s blank, crumbling face.

Devari and Vex materialized atop a helical spire of glowing magma encased in a glistening, glassy shell. Several similar spires rose from the ground around him, casting a red glow over immense globes of obsidian hanging in a network of interconnected tunnels above them. Devari spread his wings and flew upwards effortlessly, directing them towards an open pathway. Upon rising, it became apparent that the ceiling of this place was an upside-down landscape, immense and looming. The landscape seemed to spread out from one central location; a single glowing spire rose from the ground below all the way up to the ceiling, which gave way to it, almost giving the impression that it was draped over it like a tarp.

Vex’s attention was drawn to this indentation. He studied it for a moment, and then recognition brightened his figmentary eyes. “That’s the island. It’s inside-out and upside-down, but I’m sure that’s it.” He stopped and appraised the surrounding ceiling. “We’re beneath the earth, and the roof is ground level.” He considered the parallel between the concept of a volcano and the tube of glowing magma reaching up into the center of the mountain above, but decided that the explanation would be too difficult to translate, especially since the concept of a volcano was foreign to their shared homeworld.

“Then we go up,” Devari responded, as he flapped his wings, ascending through the obsidian spheres. Rising between them, an immense stone face came into view. It was ornately carved and beastly, some kind of cross between a monkey and a jungle cat.

By the time Vex recognized the face from the statues in the temple, its golden eyes had already opened and trained themselves on Devari. Its gargantuan mouth opened, and it bellowed loudly.

“AHUUUU!”

The cry rang out through the entirety of the alien landscape. Dark spheres and hollow tubes and glass spires rang with the reverberating call. It was not a beastly cry, it was a summons—one answered by the world itself. The magmatic stalks directly beneath them shattered, as did the spheres and tunnels. The shower of glittering stone shards condensed into one massive swarm, and the magma contained within coalesced into ascending globules.

Devari took no pause; he flapped his vast wings more frantically, urging the air behind him, flying straight for the highest point in the world. The magnificence of the inverted landscape became apparent with proximity, undeniably massive and whole. What must have been valleys in the ocean floor manifested as large ridges in the ceiling; what were mounds in the mountainside became divots in its surface.

Details in the natural landscape were not the only things to come into view. Vex noted two structures built directly in the mountainside. One, a massive building constructed of gold and stone and gems, with something resembling an inverted gazebo hanging from its lower surface. Vex supposed that this represented the main temple. A second structure, composed of the obsidian and glass of this godly domain, appeared to be more representative of a tunnel passing directly to the surface, somewhere further up the mountain than Vex had climbed. It seemed to be connected to the central magma vein by a small sprout.

Further down the mountainside from that structure were tubes of dirt and rock that seemed to be visibly spreading. Vex took note of their presence, but did not have time to deduce that they might contain the base of another of Sen's world trees. The cloud of planet-stuff was almost upon them.

In flight, the magma had fused into one amorphous mass, and tendrils of flame leapt from its surface. Shards of dark glass and stone drew themselves to it, as a long rope of lava lashed out towards Devari's arm. He withdrew it immediately, but was somewhat surprised as fingers erupted from the end and made a quick grasping motion.

The shape, being hastily formed mid-pursuit, gained a semblance of definition: another arm there, a waist, a head; the fibrous flame migrated to the head and back, giving the impression of long hair. The glassy shards placed themselves around the figure's waist and arms, forming a skirt and wings. Obsidian eyes opened and narrowed in anger.

Devari launched himself towards the larger structure, as the fire-woman's wing broke apart into a string of pointed fragments. Whiplike, it shot out and wrapped itself around Devari's torso, sharp edges digging into his white flesh that crumbled like sand, small flakes whirling down to the ground below.

"Vex?" Asked Devari's voice from the air around him. "Good luck."

With that, he drew his arm back and tossed Vex towards the hanging platform. He rolled and leapt to his feet as the flaming woman crushed Devari's body into a white powder. The rest of him blinked to nothingness as the woman shouted something in a foreign tongue. Tentatively, Vex forced the connection with the woman's mind and extracted a translation: roughly, "Back where you came from, trespasser."

Vex suppressed a smile. The woman twisted around, eyes fixing themselves on him, finally completing her overdue transformation. She would be pretty good-looking if she weren't so angry, Vex decided. She rose to the level of the platform and alighted on it, and was surprised to see that Vex did not cower or flee from her. He merely stood, smiling, head cocked slightly to the side. He looked around, as if bored, and directed his gaze upward. The pillars connecting this platform to the ceiling were rough and naturalistic, and above it was a dark tunnel extending upward.

Disarmed by his nonchalance, the woman decided to try to get a rise out of him. "It's a long way up," she said, snarling.

Vex continued to smile. "Yeah, I guess it is. Can you give me a lift?"

"A lift? No, I won't gi-"

"That's okay," Vex interrupted, shrugging. "I'm a pretty good climber."

"You're not climbing anywhere!" she shouted, and reached out with a spined hand to snatch him up. He reached out his hand as well, offering a handshake.

"I'm Vex," he said, cheerfully. "Unemployed."

She stopped. Her face shifted a few times, as though she couldn't decide whether to be furious or amused.

Vex frowned a little. "Oh, excuse me. I guess this isn't one of your customs. I'm with this group of beings, they do this thing..." He counted off on his fingers as he listed the events comprising the custom in question. "Grab hands, shake them, say your name, say what you do for a living."

"I am Ahu, Earth-goddess! You're in my domain! You've lied to my people, another of your fellows has desecrated my temple, you nearly ruined one of Malabog's virgins! You told my people you are a god! Why are you here?" She responded, clearly getting a bit exasperated.

"Oh yeah," replied Vex, "Sorry about that. You see, there's a perfectly good explanation for all of this."

He did not continue, much to Ahu's increasing annoyance. "And that would be?"

"Well, this...uh, being brought us all here to fight to the death. He lied to your shaman and told her we were all here to end the world, so they'd want to kill us. They were supposed to be..." he shrugged and waved his hand as if searching for the proper term, "...obstacles, I suppose? You know, we'd fight each other, they'd chase us around a little, we'd go back to fighting again. Keep things interesting. The last place didn't really have anything like that, so I appreciate the variety."

Ahu's shoulders slumped, and her eyes darted back and forth across Vex's face. "The...last place?"

"Yeah. For some reason it's set up so that when one of us dies, we all get taken to another location. Anyway, I thought I could tell them a few lies so they wouldn't want to kill us anymore, and honestly that worked out pretty good for them too, because one of us might have taken a few-"

Ahu held up a hand. "Wait, stop blathering. So you're saying I only have to kill one of you, and the rest will go somewhere else?"

Vex paused. "I suppose you could think of it that way, but it's really supposed to be us who do the-"

"Great," Ahu interrupted, her face splitting open into a wicked smile. "I'll start with you!"

The stone feathers on her arms split off into a spiked chain with one swift motion, which she flung with immense force directly towards the center of Vex's torso.

A loud cracking sound accompanied the whip striking the stone of the platform on the opposite side. Vex smiled, the chain apparently embedded in his chest, but leaving no wound. With an angry shriek, Ahu dashed forward and grabbed for him, hoping to finish the job.

Her hand passed through.

"Did I mention," Vex began, his illusory smile shifting more into a smirk, "that I'm a pretty good climber?"

Ahu's eye twitched in rage, her mouth forming a furious snarl. Her eyes shot upwards, just in time to see a patch of stone in the tunnel up to the real world shimmer. There, right at the top, multiple hands holding onto the rough stone sides, was Vex. He smiled and waved down at Ahu, whose face contorted into a visage of pure hate.

"You know," Vex called down from atop the tunnel, "You'd be pretty good-looking if you weren't so angry all the time."

A vicious ball of flaming rage shot up the tube as Vex casually finished his ascent.

Mohea and Nalu, being the two women with the most invested in the events that led to Vex's uncovering as a false god, were two of the four women tasked with carrying his body to the top of the volcano to offer to the Gods. After the unfortunate incident with Nalu's contact with his cursed arm, they had managed to tie his limbs to a long post to haul him by, two women to a side.

In addition to her own embarrassment and inner turmoil, Mohea was keeping a close watch on Nalu. Her demeanor had shifted radically since the bedroom rendezvous--or was it since she touched Vexmagog's arm? Her skin tone seemed to have paled considerably, and she thought she could detect a hint of dark rings under her eyes. She carried the writhing, mumbling body with an expression of part contempt, part determination. Her eyes seemed to be darting down to that mess of indigo frequently, and, a bit after the start of their trip, she was the first to notice the change.

"Hey," she said, "His arm stopped glowing."

A quick inspection revealed that she was correct. The purple, swirling incandescence between the cracks in black stone had uniformly solidified into a stony mass. The incident was noted, but not thoroughly investigated. That would prove unfortunate for them, because if they had dared touch it, they would have discovered that it was no longer dangerous, it was quite brittle and easily removed, and that removal of the stone would cause the arm underneath to be small enough to escape from the restraints. This cursory examination was not performed, and these facts were not uncovered.

Almost to the top, Vex's mumbling ceased, timed conspicuously with a rumble in the earth. His blue eyes blinked, and he made a quick examination of his surroundings. He yawned. The women stopped in their tracks.

"Good morning, ladies," he said, sleepily. "Where are we headed?"

By the time the volcano erupted, the women were chasing him down the mountainside as he cackled gleefully.