Re: The Relentless Slaughter [Round 2: S'kkoi]
11-27-2011, 05:11 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.
Brother, my brother, why have you forsaken me?
Destroyer forgive me, for I have sinned. There are more worlds than you can know.
Look on the one before you. Peel his mind apart like the pages of a tome. Do you not see it, the gift I have brought you? Feeble I may be, but I have known war and I have known glory. My kind is no more; I have known death. I have taken the body of a mortal to come to you, O Archon. Through him I have seen waves broken on the shores of a different world and seen the seas of that place boil with the blood of a god. Would you refuse me then, Destroyer, if I brought not this world but another to its knees before you? The veils of the universe bind even one as boundless as yourself. I bring you eternity, Eternal One. I bring you salvation.
YOU RISE ABOVE YOURSELF.
I rise-
TOO FAR.
The voices were spears of crystal arcing through his head. Somewhere in him he knew something more than the brilliant pain, but he had no name to give it.
You cannot refuse me! You cannot turn me away! I offer you the conquest of the universe itself! I am blood of your blood, Harbringer, and you will attend to me!
YOU OFFER ME NOTHING.
There was light, and sound.
The floor of the cave was damp and scented with the salt of an unfamiliar ocean. His face was cold, pressed to the rock. From somewhere far above came the sound of waves mingling with his own slowing heart, the seawater in his veins flowing out beat by beat.
Rise.
The word was air to a drowning man.
Rise.
It had no face to show him, only the neverending tears of its divine agony pooling in the sea invading its home. Its body was contorted, convoluted, writhing. Skeletal hands flapped uselessly by its sides.
Drown.
The blood in him was the same as the water around them, dust to ashes and ashes to salt. He could taste it on his lips like a lover’s kiss.
“No,” he said, but didn’t know why.
The hands twitched in the water, rose above his head and let it fall on him. The salt burned in his eyes and his skull, but he could not refuse. “I am the sea,” it said. “I am the waves that break down the mountains, I am the flood that covers the earth. I am the storm that swallows the sun. I am the water that drowns."
He asked, “What am I?”
YOU ARE A MOTE IN THE EYES OF A GOD. YOU ARE A SPECK IN THE SPANSE OF AEONS AND YOU PRESUME TO CAST YOUR GAZE AT THE HEAVENS? YOU ARE NOTHING. YOU ARE DUST. I HAVE DEVOURED THE WORLDS YOU SPEAK OF AND I HAVE SEEN THE EYES OF THE DYING EXTINGUISH THEIR LIGHTS IN THE DEEP. YOU WOULD GIVE THIS TO ME? YOUR WORDS ARE EMPTY AS THE SHELL OF YOUR BODY. PERISH KNOWING THAT FOR ALL YOUR FURY THE FLARE OF YOUR LIFE COULD NOT ILLUMINATE EVEN THE SMALLEST BREATH OF DARKNESS. SUFFER AND DIE. IT IS ALL YOU KNOW.
He was colder than he could have ever imagined, but it was the furthest thing from his mind. For the first time in his life his eyes were open and he could see past the shuddering ribs of the Oracle’s body and through the walls of stone, into the vastness of the living sea. He saw the ruins of cities drowned by the waves, the carcasses of leviathans drifting into blackness; he remembered strands of songs he had never heard and longed for the faces of people he had never known. Memories played in his head from the eyes of a thousand nameless others, bound together by the infinite song of the Oracle.
He was an Eye, and all around him lay the wasting husk of his blindness.
NO! NO-
He was alive.
He felt his brother die with the detachment of a distant observer. The blackness welling inside them both passed through Gannet’s mind like a current even as it burned into the intruder lurking inside him, drawing it out with burning claws in a stream of agony. Screams of fury and terror warped, distorted, fluctuating into a wavering roar that drowned all everything but the sound of his brother being pulled away piece by piece. For an instant Gannet tried to save him, pull him away from the infinity yawning before them both, but it was like trying to hold back the ocean with his hands; in between that breath and the next the darkness swallowed the creature invading his mind and he was entirely alone.
Why have you forsaken me?
As the eye of the Devourer of Light closed for another thousand years, Gannet felt its gaze fall upon him and the blackness swelled-
In the absence of light there can be no shadows, for the blind must first know how to see. Thus you go forth into the darkness of this world, and you shall walk unparalleled among the sightless. You are blessed. Never forget.
We give you this body as our own was taken. No longer may we walk the living earth or follow the paths of men, speaking the words of our forerunners and wearing the skins of our children. Our suffering is our gift, and the same we give to you…
This is the Hymn of the Eye.
He woke with his face against the ocean floor and wondered if it was a second chance.
All around him the dying screams of the shadow in his head were fading, collapsing around him in waves. Though he could feel it in the fragments of his thoughts the pain was beyond him somehow, like the imprint of a hand against a window long after it had gone away. The echo of the leviathan’s protests were fading, subsiding back into the familiar song of the Oracle. He breathed it in and drowned, longing for its voice to speak to him again through the swallowing sea…
And like a ship on the horizon, there it was.
It was faint, a newborn chick’s heart fluttering away, but it was there and it pulsed in his head in the spaces where his brother had been. Come, it said, come. I am your blood. Can you deny me? Blessed are the kinslayers.
He rose from the sand and rock in a convulsion of the muscles he didn’t know he could use, trying not to notice that the eyes on his sides had gone cold and white, blind to the Temple above him. Its poison song was fading even as the Oracle’s call grew stronger, pulling him through the water like a bird through the wind, winding his way to it through the deadness of this strange ocean. Dimly he felt the grasp of the Destroyer start to weaken on him as the song reached a crescendo, pulling him further and further into its tapestry until he caught sight of its source.
The water around the creature boiled before him with disease, black and thick with oil that coated its heaving sides. Spines of bone and other things jutted out from it in all directions, covering a quivering heap of flesh that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat matching his own. The rock around it crumbled and reassembled over and over, barraged by the force of waves a thousand worlds apart. He felt its face turn towards him with the tortured movement of its altered flesh and knew at once that he had found something far more terrible than merely a god.
“Gannet,” it said through broken teeth. “Gannet. There you are. Look what you’ve done, Gannet. Can you see it now? You’ve killed me…”
The images of the alchemist with his blood of fire and smoke clashed with the apparition before him, but even through the water and the stone he could taste the scent of the Oracle running through the creature’s veins. The fury and pain couldn’t hide it from him, not him, not the Eye of the Oracle who sees darkness in the light. It was here. It marked the alchemist’s skin like the tattoos of a convict.
“Have you given up your faith, Lieutenant,” he asked it, feeling the song of the Oracle guiding his words. “You belong to the sea, sufferer. Surrender and die. Only the drowned may speak in the voice of the water.”
“You bastard,” it said. He wondered who it was meant for.
With claws of flesh and bone he drew a claw down one of the twisted being’s spines, feeling it quiver under his hand. “You are forsaken,” he heard himself say coldly, smiling. “Your body and soul are mine. The earth and air have forced you out and the fire has consumed all that you were; only the sea will take you. Will you deny me? You are damned, and for all your toil you shall know only pain. Drown and know release.”
He released the creature, knowing that it could not flee, that no one escaped the Oracle even in death. Everything must die. There is no such guarantee for life. “Come,” he told it, feeling its agonized ecstasy through the alien thoughts joining them together, “she waits.”
Brother, my brother, why have you forsaken me?
Destroyer forgive me, for I have sinned. There are more worlds than you can know.
Look on the one before you. Peel his mind apart like the pages of a tome. Do you not see it, the gift I have brought you? Feeble I may be, but I have known war and I have known glory. My kind is no more; I have known death. I have taken the body of a mortal to come to you, O Archon. Through him I have seen waves broken on the shores of a different world and seen the seas of that place boil with the blood of a god. Would you refuse me then, Destroyer, if I brought not this world but another to its knees before you? The veils of the universe bind even one as boundless as yourself. I bring you eternity, Eternal One. I bring you salvation.
YOU RISE ABOVE YOURSELF.
I rise-
TOO FAR.
The voices were spears of crystal arcing through his head. Somewhere in him he knew something more than the brilliant pain, but he had no name to give it.
You cannot refuse me! You cannot turn me away! I offer you the conquest of the universe itself! I am blood of your blood, Harbringer, and you will attend to me!
YOU OFFER ME NOTHING.
There was light, and sound.
The floor of the cave was damp and scented with the salt of an unfamiliar ocean. His face was cold, pressed to the rock. From somewhere far above came the sound of waves mingling with his own slowing heart, the seawater in his veins flowing out beat by beat.
Rise.
The word was air to a drowning man.
Rise.
It had no face to show him, only the neverending tears of its divine agony pooling in the sea invading its home. Its body was contorted, convoluted, writhing. Skeletal hands flapped uselessly by its sides.
Drown.
The blood in him was the same as the water around them, dust to ashes and ashes to salt. He could taste it on his lips like a lover’s kiss.
“No,” he said, but didn’t know why.
The hands twitched in the water, rose above his head and let it fall on him. The salt burned in his eyes and his skull, but he could not refuse. “I am the sea,” it said. “I am the waves that break down the mountains, I am the flood that covers the earth. I am the storm that swallows the sun. I am the water that drowns."
He asked, “What am I?”
YOU ARE A MOTE IN THE EYES OF A GOD. YOU ARE A SPECK IN THE SPANSE OF AEONS AND YOU PRESUME TO CAST YOUR GAZE AT THE HEAVENS? YOU ARE NOTHING. YOU ARE DUST. I HAVE DEVOURED THE WORLDS YOU SPEAK OF AND I HAVE SEEN THE EYES OF THE DYING EXTINGUISH THEIR LIGHTS IN THE DEEP. YOU WOULD GIVE THIS TO ME? YOUR WORDS ARE EMPTY AS THE SHELL OF YOUR BODY. PERISH KNOWING THAT FOR ALL YOUR FURY THE FLARE OF YOUR LIFE COULD NOT ILLUMINATE EVEN THE SMALLEST BREATH OF DARKNESS. SUFFER AND DIE. IT IS ALL YOU KNOW.
He was colder than he could have ever imagined, but it was the furthest thing from his mind. For the first time in his life his eyes were open and he could see past the shuddering ribs of the Oracle’s body and through the walls of stone, into the vastness of the living sea. He saw the ruins of cities drowned by the waves, the carcasses of leviathans drifting into blackness; he remembered strands of songs he had never heard and longed for the faces of people he had never known. Memories played in his head from the eyes of a thousand nameless others, bound together by the infinite song of the Oracle.
He was an Eye, and all around him lay the wasting husk of his blindness.
NO! NO-
He was alive.
He felt his brother die with the detachment of a distant observer. The blackness welling inside them both passed through Gannet’s mind like a current even as it burned into the intruder lurking inside him, drawing it out with burning claws in a stream of agony. Screams of fury and terror warped, distorted, fluctuating into a wavering roar that drowned all everything but the sound of his brother being pulled away piece by piece. For an instant Gannet tried to save him, pull him away from the infinity yawning before them both, but it was like trying to hold back the ocean with his hands; in between that breath and the next the darkness swallowed the creature invading his mind and he was entirely alone.
Why have you forsaken me?
As the eye of the Devourer of Light closed for another thousand years, Gannet felt its gaze fall upon him and the blackness swelled-
In the absence of light there can be no shadows, for the blind must first know how to see. Thus you go forth into the darkness of this world, and you shall walk unparalleled among the sightless. You are blessed. Never forget.
We give you this body as our own was taken. No longer may we walk the living earth or follow the paths of men, speaking the words of our forerunners and wearing the skins of our children. Our suffering is our gift, and the same we give to you…
This is the Hymn of the Eye.
He woke with his face against the ocean floor and wondered if it was a second chance.
All around him the dying screams of the shadow in his head were fading, collapsing around him in waves. Though he could feel it in the fragments of his thoughts the pain was beyond him somehow, like the imprint of a hand against a window long after it had gone away. The echo of the leviathan’s protests were fading, subsiding back into the familiar song of the Oracle. He breathed it in and drowned, longing for its voice to speak to him again through the swallowing sea…
And like a ship on the horizon, there it was.
It was faint, a newborn chick’s heart fluttering away, but it was there and it pulsed in his head in the spaces where his brother had been. Come, it said, come. I am your blood. Can you deny me? Blessed are the kinslayers.
He rose from the sand and rock in a convulsion of the muscles he didn’t know he could use, trying not to notice that the eyes on his sides had gone cold and white, blind to the Temple above him. Its poison song was fading even as the Oracle’s call grew stronger, pulling him through the water like a bird through the wind, winding his way to it through the deadness of this strange ocean. Dimly he felt the grasp of the Destroyer start to weaken on him as the song reached a crescendo, pulling him further and further into its tapestry until he caught sight of its source.
The water around the creature boiled before him with disease, black and thick with oil that coated its heaving sides. Spines of bone and other things jutted out from it in all directions, covering a quivering heap of flesh that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat matching his own. The rock around it crumbled and reassembled over and over, barraged by the force of waves a thousand worlds apart. He felt its face turn towards him with the tortured movement of its altered flesh and knew at once that he had found something far more terrible than merely a god.
“Gannet,” it said through broken teeth. “Gannet. There you are. Look what you’ve done, Gannet. Can you see it now? You’ve killed me…”
The images of the alchemist with his blood of fire and smoke clashed with the apparition before him, but even through the water and the stone he could taste the scent of the Oracle running through the creature’s veins. The fury and pain couldn’t hide it from him, not him, not the Eye of the Oracle who sees darkness in the light. It was here. It marked the alchemist’s skin like the tattoos of a convict.
“Have you given up your faith, Lieutenant,” he asked it, feeling the song of the Oracle guiding his words. “You belong to the sea, sufferer. Surrender and die. Only the drowned may speak in the voice of the water.”
“You bastard,” it said. He wondered who it was meant for.
With claws of flesh and bone he drew a claw down one of the twisted being’s spines, feeling it quiver under his hand. “You are forsaken,” he heard himself say coldly, smiling. “Your body and soul are mine. The earth and air have forced you out and the fire has consumed all that you were; only the sea will take you. Will you deny me? You are damned, and for all your toil you shall know only pain. Drown and know release.”
He released the creature, knowing that it could not flee, that no one escaped the Oracle even in death. Everything must die. There is no such guarantee for life. “Come,” he told it, feeling its agonized ecstasy through the alien thoughts joining them together, “she waits.”