The Relentless Slaughter [Round 3: Tormentorland]

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

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She heard the wind. It rushed over her, resounded on ripples in the lake and formed a star chart for the subterranean lost. Whispers, they told the myth of origin. The world wasn't born, dust to dust. It was meant, nothing to dust to nothing again. Nothing was the voice that scared her. It told lakes that leaked into the water and slowly sanctified it with gold, nothing yet also everything. The gold was black, she was black because she tried to blot out the light with acrid ice.

Light that shimmered down, but also shone right at her.

In front of her hung the diamond dust she feared, a bulb that illuminated the mandala's dance above, song the surface sang. It was god's presence where it crept in the world and called your name and told you everything you wanted to forget.

And you were hurt, hurt so much more again.

Where she had sunk to laid the darkness of S'kkoi. Ruins weathered in the crashing waves, though not the tide but the thunder crashed them. Thunder that bellowed from even deeper, smog that overtook her eyes froze her in place. Her dress slid down like glass, stalling her with a foreboding premonition. She was empty right now, hollow gates of the Pantheon. Demons only spoke to her, but their colors were the same. Dorin couldn't tell, and what told in her stead she couldn't hear.

YOU SEE NOTHING
YOU ARE NOTHING
AS YOU STARE INTO THE ABYSS
ABYSS STARES INTO YOU

The sacrifice screamed, but her teeth ingrained and covered her lips so that still they didn't open and the smoke and waves shushed them and softly sang a cold lullaby.

Like raindrops, beams of light suffocated in the ocean. She had no way to go, her lantern was not strong. Though she had gills, she was drowning in water she couldn't swim in.

Until a familiar voice breathed.

dorin



Dorin




“Dorin! Move!”

But yet she moved, like a snake shedding skin. She danced the straining dance she performed when her lover held her in his stretched arms and teeth but no one led her feet so she just fell down and she felt so alone

and she felt so empty

and she felt

that

the

gods

had

betrayed

her




UPHYLIA
I DECLARE WAR
DARE YOU BRING LIGHT
WHERE LIGHT HAS NO MEANING

Those words bent the waves. Shocked, as if exploding from her gowns, little gems and golden snakes and gods and lightning that spiraled to the surface, carried Dorin in a shaft of ether, golden light as if Ariel's ascent. Her lantern shriveled gray. She stopped kicking, lifeless puppet she hung suspended in the tears of the bleeding black lake.

And darkness in its wake, oh, darkness in its wake.

None cheat death. Dorin knew it was inevitable like nightfall, but when the world stopped and the Tormentor began it stayed forever day. Fate filled with light. But death caught up with wanton torture. Demons came to seek her, and drag her down, and sacrifice the world and turn day into night.

Teeth and smoke and leashes latched at Dorin's legs, blackness of the new moon that even in the sordid water found a way to dim out light. Ungeziefern lunged from the gaps in rock, gods and spirits valiantly stood to fend them off. She was ground and flesh, grey area, a battlefield for angels and demons. Conflict that swung in perpetual motion, like an orrerie, they were planets. War of worlds.

As her mind stopped she knew her place being alive. She was No Man's Land. What man held her had left. And that sorrow sunk into her like a loadstone, dragged her down to her feet because she knew only he held the breath of the ocean and only he could save her and only they should be alive not them no never them. They were useless, junk over and over again. Words that weren't words and eyes that couldn't see and teeth that didn't eat and the Heart of the Oracle if she would stop beating.

Soon a storm of black and white oblique formed around her. Shik'Skara's shell faded in the light of the golden torrent. Her weary eyes focused on the crystal hull, but as the world spun around her she felt sick. Her eyes tried to close, but for the first time she felt she had nothing to shut them with. Like a tortured soul she watched the wind pulled from her heart and waving away from her.

I... am afraid of me too.





Ke swam in her kin's trail, water that seeped with hollow stones. The morning light shone deeper, more confounded, a trail she never could retrace if she were to be left alone right now, but her destination was visible even through the troubled seabed. Like beads of light Anansi's lineage spun out silk and drew her in, and raindrops caught on the web in the ocean and the thread stuck to her like Obsession and Reverence and words that meant God to her because on those words lives were built and stories were told.

And there hung the Pandaemonium.

“Dorin?”

God descended from the sky and devoured her words. The ones he offered instead were nectar. As Ke seemed confused, Shik'skara spoke out of place, even though he was taught never to. “I can... translate for you.” The crystal had stopped in its words, expecting interruption on his own.

Ke shook her head, such as she could. “I was raised by Nyame. I can understand him.”

“Nyame.” Anansi turned around, fast like shaking off snow, but still with divine composure. “Is my dear sister truly still with us?”

Ke didn't speak, for it would bring bad faith. She wouldn't talk to a god. She didn't dare.

“My darling Nyame created you, did she not? Are you one of her Remembrancers? Yes, I see you now. You carry many stories with you.” Anansi smiled in a way only God could. “Tell me a tale, o Ke, Remembrancer of aeons past. Let us trade our stories.”

Ke glittered as she was asked to recite. She would perform in front of Anansi, a storyteller, weaving a web for Him. She hoped it would be satisfactory, she took her first breath.



This story is one from a distant land, from a distant time. It tells us of a man who had the habit of walking by the ocean shore each day. He loved the sounds the sea made when it was silent, he loved how it smelled when she was angry. His favorite spot in the entire world was where the oceanside climbed up a mountain, where he could undo his shoes, sit on the cliffside and do nothing but rest.

One day, as usual, he had contently sat himself down under a tree on the cliff, when suddenly a strange glimmer caught his eye. In the tall grass laid a pendant, wonderfully golden and shining like the sun. The man picked it up, curiously examining it, and slowly opening the case. Inside was a picture of two young girls, so innocent and pure he sighed aloud at the very sight. As the waves settled down – perhaps too placated by the miraculous pendant – the man swore he could faintly hear music playing inside of it. The trinket was no doubt of great value, but the thought of selling it never crossed his mind. He was a good man, and he had all he wanted with his spot by the sea.

Days and weeks went by, the man slowly making the accessory his own. The first few days he had spent even longer hours than usual waiting by the tree, hoping he would meet the owner, and they would talk about how they both loved seeing the sun set in the ocean. Maybe he would ask them who those charming girls were. Now, he took great pride in showing the pendant to everyone he passed, bystanders too marveling at the amazing object. He was a happy man, who had everything he could wish for in life.

But slowly, as he grew older, he started taking the world for granted. On days of heavy rain, he would no longer push through to the top of the hill. He would think, the trees down here also provide coverage. I can also enjoy the view from here. And so he sat himself down, and listened to the wonderful song the pendant played. And yes, as he aged even more, he went outside less and less, settling for less in life. As long as he still had the pendant, he thought, he would still be happy.

But the man had forgotten what his days were like. He had forgotten how happy he used to be, and how happy he used to make the sea. For all that makes people happy shall have impact on two people at once, and none can fight or argue without they themselves bearing an equal burden as the enemy. In his visits, he had placated the sea when she was upset, delighted her when she was content. By leaving her, he had made her hate him.

As one more day he had sat himself down, almost at the coast so low, the sea wouldn't bear it. With raging waves, she took his pendant from him, the diabolic object that tore their love to shreds. But the man sprung up at once, not intent to let his prized treasure go this easily. He swam and dove down into the ocean, following the pendant's heavenly glow deep down, until the dark water drowned out any sight other than its surface. He had met the bottom of the ocean, and wanted to reach for his pendant when suddenly he felt in his hand something different entirely. As he escaped back up, he saw what he held. A glass pearl from the ocean floor, and when he looked at it, he saw a mirage of a place locked far away in his memory. A cliff, with a tree, and two young girls playing beneath it.



She was under Anansi's spell as she spoke. Though she had hardly a mouth, her tale carried farther than she could. Every drop in the ocean her her story, and felt so moved that it whispered it to the next.

“You have not lost a single of your prowess, Ke. That story is just as beautiful as when we first met.” If gods could cry, Anansi cried.

“O Anansi, I beg you to forgive my dishonor, but I must know. Where did I tell you this myth before?”

Anansi wiped his tears. “Child of Nyame, I shall keep to my end of our exchange. As you told me your dear story, I shall tell you mine. Remember it well, for you have already forgotten it once.



Long ago, in a desolate village in the clouds lived a young boy and his older sister. Their parents had left them long ago, and no one else lived in the village anymore that could care for them. Still, as much as they often didn't get along, they were kind to one another in the end. They vowed never to leave each other, for they would both face grueling loneliness were they to.

They spent their days in the village, playing games overday, and when the sun left the sky, retiring to bed and telling each other stories all night. They told each other about what shapes they saw in the clouds, what relics were buried in the village's ruins, what they would be like in twenty years, stories of alien races that lived on the surface below them, stories of stealing a ship and soaring through the world with it.

Life passed, and the two children got older. The brother has spent his days working out, becoming a stronger, swifter man and exploring deeper into the world around them, while the miracle of life had befallen his sister. She was now a proud mother, carrying her young children everywhere she went. Overday, she played with them and cared for them in every step. Overnight, the children kept her awake with the grandest tales in which she recognised herself.

Her brother was always tired. He went to bed.

As the children too matured, the brother was met with a most unfortunate decision. The island of clouds they lived on was simply too small, and the stories his sister told were not enough for her brother and her children. One fateful day, his sister found herself without a man on the island to look after her, and even though her days were no less exciting and busy, she couldn't help but feel lonely at night when her children fell asleep.

The sister kept a grudge against her brother for leaving her alone like that. She kept her stories to herself and her children, withing the boundaries of the sky. But she didn't know her brother's leave was far from a selfish desire. He only wished best for his Nyame, and her poor children...”

Anansi and Ke exchanged stares. As Ke bowed before her God, oddly enough Anansi did the same. “This is why you were created, Ke. You were Nyame's desire to keep her stories to her own. After your current situation, I want you to promise me something. Return to the heavens, and tell Mother I wished no harm in leaving her. That it was for the best, and that no day went by without my wishing it ended otherwise.”