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MalkyTop · 04-23-2011, 12:56 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

Samael stared out to the completely flat horizon as the dull rumbling continued ominously. By the time he had actually started to move backwards, away from the big-bad-scary-something, everybody else had already sprinted off. It was another minute before he finally turned around and full-out ran, and despite his load and the robes threatening to tangle up his long, loping legs, he caught up. At least caught up to the slowest runner. Zimmer (clothes – valuable, weapons – good quality) was still struggling to keep up with those more well-built for running. Rollo was just about running beside him. Tactfully deciding that a stumpy cartoon character was not well-equipped to carry a teenage girl, he turned towards Zimmer.

“Hey, uh.”

“Yes?” the man panted in response. Samael stared for a while at his rather red face before sprinting on, still stumbling a bit in his robes.

“Hey,” he said again, this time to a guy who looked more able to carry a girl. (Implants, implants and more implants, so valuable it’s mindboggling how valuable it is freaking amazing.) This one didn’t exactly turn towards him but at least acknowledged him with some sort of grunt or something. “Can you—“ oh look he has only one arm oh wow huh. “Never mind.”

The taller guy was laughing. He had a lot of greed for information. Not that that was a bad thing, but Samael wasn’t certain he wanted to leave the girl with him. He slowed down again and grinned sheepishly at Zimmer again as his headband started sliding down his face. Again. “So. I have this girl. Mind carrying her for me?”

“What?” Zimmer spluttered back as something loud and big made a loud and big sound right behind them.

“I need to, ah, that thing back there, I think we can all socialize a bit easier,” Samael blabbered, trying to hide his eyes and run at the same time but ultimately deciding to forget about hiding them, “You know, if it was gone, so I believe it’s a good idea to get rid of it. I’m going to try to get rid of it.” And then he managed to shrug Dorin into Zimmer’s arms. The alchemist staggered and slowed down even more.

“I don’t think,” he panted, “I don’t, I think,”

“You might have to separate from the group to get to somewhere safer,” Samael interrupted. “Like, hide or something. Somewhere. Although if things go right, maybe you won’t have to…though they probably won’t go right…” Samael continued running as he appeared to mull this over. Zimmer ran-waddled nervously beside him and muffled an unmanly yelp when something possibly licked him. Rollo was already getting ahead of him. “Welp, good luck!” And on a cheerful note, Samael turned and ran back, leaving Zimmer to get nipped at by godly snouts.

Although really there was no rush to get anywhere at all. The giant thing-gummy-though-he-suspected-it-to-be-something-like-a-giant-soccer-player was coming his way, it seemed, and he doubted this world, though three-dimensional, was round. He should be able to see the whatever over the horizon very soon. He slowed down to a trot and retied the headband before just throwing it away. It didn’t work well anyways.

If the situation was a little different and his robe less liable to trip him, he might have enjoyed a little jog here. Just something nice and soothing and relaxing. Not even the traps were too troublesome.

But the constant rumbling reminded him that he had a job to do and he paused to squint at the horizon and kick away several annoying pencils. He could actually see the threat now and almost laughed when he did. It wasn’t finished.

Albeit a giant and supposedly a soccer player, right now, it was a bunch of legs. The Tormentor could draw a giant, but not very fast. Especially with the legs already running ‘round.

Right. So. How many rotten bananas would it take to slip up a giant soccer player of yet indeterminable size?

Probably a lot. And there would probably be a lot of ground to cover. Considering the surface area of the foot and all. Maybe he could make a giant, rotten banana.

Actually, which way would it fall if he slipped it up? It could go either backwards or forwards. And slipping forwards would be unfortunate for everybody involved, while slipping backwards would only be unfortunate for the giant soccer player legs, so backwards would be preferable.

He really didn’t think this through.

He really wished he had his clothes back.

GBCE · 05-21-2011, 02:58 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

Gannet was running, running faster than he’d gone in a long time. Maybe when the storm had come in the winter and the waves were smashing their heads against the rocks- had he run then? Maybe he’d dove, down to the cold sand and the eaten bones, maybe that was his head on the rocks, his blood in the water and his voice not the wind’s screaming over sea, not him, not as fast as this, not now. His feet scraped into the false earth and under his skin and his hallowed bones he felt the Oracle’s heartbeat ramming itself against him, over and over and over. He was faster than the wind and ran through the howling jaws of the sea itself, burning on the bleeding rocks and screaming for him to return.

There was a cry behind him, not the sea’s hungry teeth calling but a man’s, pain and fear and crushing weight. He shouldn’t turn back but he did and saw through the wind and water that the chemical man held another in his arms. Another what, what was that? Why did it burn with that light and shadow and twist in the air like a dying man’s hands? The smell of it was intoxicating, gold and black and white. He could see it from here, churning with the empty lights of things he did not know. He would know, he had to, no one on the hollow earth would stop him now.

He slowed to the pace of that not blessed by the Oracle, letting the wind die around him and the water lose its grip. The other’s eyes turned to him and his feet stumbled under the force of the bright thing’s weight. “For the love of God, Gannet,” he was saying, choking on air and the terrible not-scent of this place, “Quit that blasted staring and help me!”

The light and the shadow was heavier than it looked. Gannet’s claws dug into its sides as he tore it away from the stumbling man and the thing shrieked back like a gull. He had no name for the things he smelled under its skin. They were neither of it nor its kind, there was human flesh on the bright thing’s body and the hands that clawed at his arms. The fire inside it flared and the twisting shapes he could almost see burned with the black scent the Oracle had when it reached into the things not yet seen by the eyes of men and ripped away their silence.

“Gannet!” Gasping.

What would the Oracle say of the bearer of the light and shadow? Did it already know of these things, had it seen them before? He wanted to take the thing away from here and bring it back to the rocks under the water, he had to, it rang in his bones and his blood and howled for release, but the Oracle wasn’t here-

It wasn’t?

“GANNET!”

Was it?

There was a droning panic in his head that was crushed by the need to run again, and he did, claws piercing further the thing of shadow and light and it screamed again like the storm on the towering rocks and the bones smashed against the waves. He was moving again and the man of fire and smoke was yelling now that they had to find somewhere to hide couldn’t gasp keep running gasp forever we have to stop somewhere, only going to wear ourselves out at this rate, tripping over the ground and consumed by fear and exhaustion. The wind screamed back, tearing through the earth and water and raining down the sick scents of beginnings and ends and teeth in the water.

Ahead of them the dead-that-walked called back and pointed to a ramp Gannet hadn’t seen before, looming over them all. Had the rolling thing that chased them not come this far? It was hard to find himself when the earth itself was changing shape and nothing smelled as it should. He was no longer sure if this was new ground or old, if it had only been changed or was some new part of the land he had never seen.

How was he going to find the Oracle now, some part of him whimpered and was drowned in the storm.

Martin dove for cover under the back of the massive ramp, quickly executing a neat roll and ducking as far as away as he could from open air. After a few seconds he remembered to check if the others were still with him and glanced around hesitantly, not sure what to expect. Rollo had made it and was currently leaning against one of the ramp’s supports, heaving his chest in and out with a grossly exaggerated level of effort and fanning himself with one… hand? Paw? Hell with it, he wasn’t going to try and figure out cartoon armadillo anatomy right now. Or ever, for that matter.

The guy with the Matrix coat was more or less on the verge of collapse, half bent over with his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. He was mumbling feverishly about something Martin’s augmented hearing couldn’t quite translate and seemed to be checking his pockets for any lost equipment. He looked the worse for wear out of all of them, though by the way he was glaring at the tall guy he apparently didn’t seem to think so.

“For God’s sake, Gannet, you’re hurting her! Put the poor girl down already.”

The lanky guy has somehow managed to get hold of the girl in the dress the scruffy-looking kid had shown up with. His hands were wrapped tightly around her ribs, and though he was shaking pretty badly he didn’t seem to be having any trouble holding her several feet off the ground. Small spots of blood were spreading on the fabric where his claws had started to cut into her skin. His head twitched downwards and he stared at her in surprise, giving a weird, nervous laugh; Martin winced as his claws opened and Dorin fell, soliciting a painfully loud scream as the girl hit the ground.

Zimmer rushed to her side as Gannet stalked off obliviously to peer around the edge of the ramp, sniffing at the sound of bombs booming faintly in the distance. The way he balanced on his too-long legs triggered something in Martin’s memory banks; a tall dark figure in what looked like a suit, impossibly spindly arms and legs and too many of both and a blank where a face should be-

He shuddered and wondered with some level of horror if this might turn out to be one of those games where the point was to make the player insane and start seeing things that weren’t really there. It was doing an excellent job of it so far. He coughed and turned to Zimmer. “You seem pretty friendly with that guy. Is he always this crazy?”

“Gannet’s an odd fellow,” the man replied, checking for Dorin’s pulse and frowning. “Harmless, though, no need to worry. More pressing is the matter of what’s happening to this girl’s body.”

Zimmer’s headache took a turn for the worse as Martin leaned in and Rollo came over curiously. He was sure it was just the unnatural stress of the situation getting to him, but it was getting harder and harder to concentrate. He would be fine in a moment, he was sure of it, especially since they were safe for at least a little while. It... it was odd that no bombs were falling near them, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sure. The lieutenant shook his head to clear it, but to no avail. It wasn’t important. He’d be alright as soon as this passed; damn if it wasn’t inconvenient in the meantime, though.

Something shifted under the edge of Dorin’s sleeve and she screeched with pain, rolling away from Zimmer onto her side. Her hand spasmed and out from under her fingers crawled an emerald dragonfly the size of the alchemist’s hand. It flicked its wings sharply, twice, and sprung into the air, settling on the crown of his head; he tried to swat it away but it darted away from the blows and hovered next his ear, hissing angrily. Softly it began to speak in an odd-sounding language that made Zimmer’s skin crawl, though thankfully he couldn’t understand a word of it.

“Wow, look at the size of that thing!” Rollo said excitedly, suddenly acquiring an oversized magnifying glass that produced a terrifying closeup of his eye. “I think we’re going to need a bigger flyswatter if she keeps this up.”

Martin made a sound that tried and failed miserably to be a laugh as Zimmer abandoned his efforts to chase the glittering insect away. In return it began to furiously nibble at the collar of his shirt. “I’m afraid I don’t know what to do for her, if these are indeed the spirits our Lord spoke of. I’m not very equipped to handle cases such as these.”

As if in reply, Dorin groaned again in pain and covered her face with her hands. The dragonfly hissed and left Zimmer’s shoulder to flit nervously above her, chattering to itself in its odd tongue.

“Alright, well, we’re going to have to deal with that later then,” Martin said, feeling pretty sure that this wasn’t the right thing to say at all. Dammit, the puzzles this game was throwing at him were getting weirder and weirder. Was the possessed girl supposed to be representative of something, here? The player’s inability to escape their fate or some bullshit like that? Oh god, she was probably one of those characters who got set up as sympathetic early on in the story and were brutally killed just to prove that the situation was serious. He winced as she screamed again and clawed at her side near where Gannet had scratched her. Something was moving under her dress-

“Uh, g-g-guys?”

He looked up to see Rollo, now a humorously bleached white, staring directly in the same direction as Gannet, who was laughing sadly to himself and running his claws against one another. As the android hesitantly followed his line of sight, he felt what should have been his stomach sink lower and lower into his chest. Beside him, Zimmer swore in a way that he would have been mortified to admit to in any other situation.

“I-I think we m-m-m-might have some b-bigger problems right now.”
______

In some ways, Samael found the appearance of the colossus towering above him comforting. It was large enough to block out anything else he might have had to worry about, for one thing. For another, the regular rhythm of its bus-sized feet slamming into the ground was kind of similar to the basslines of the few techno songs he knew.

It was also doing an extremely good job of attempting to remind him of his long-lost home.

Four titanic heads sprouted from the monster’s shoulders, each bearing the face of a certain English football player and each facing a different cardinal direction. The mouths of the heads gaped open and were full of raging black flames that exploded out from between iron fangs; thick, billowing smoke poured from them and filled the area with the terrible reek of sulfur. A huge sports jersey hung off a still-sketchy chest, pierced at random intervals by giant spikes adorned with countless numbers of impaled skulls. Occasionally one would tumble off and smash itself to pieces on the craters the thing left in its wake. Even as Samael watched, flocks of tiny black pencils darted about the giant, filling in every inch of its terrible form with some further horror.

It four heads swiveled slowly around, staring over the landscape with their terrible, glaring eyes as the foremost mouth bellowed in rage, shaking the ground under the former demon’s feet. A single skull fell from somewhere high up on its back; it exploded near Samael and showered him in crumbling fragments of bone.

Like he said, comforting.

Woffles · 05-23-2011, 01:56 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

Worked on a post during class. Let me catch some people on IRC or PM, and it'll be up presuming no veto.

Woffles · 05-24-2011, 08:54 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

Pain, not death, is the goal of life. Everything ached while she failed to move away from collossal orbs rolling at her, she cried as Gannet dug himself into her, every spirit in need of release tested the border of consciousness further. Dorin would have much rather fulfilled the other goal.

-

Black, white squares danced behind her. Her arms stung with yearning. Hopelessly she waved around, her muscles incompliant to the task. Her finger stroked along the Eye's leg, smiled, then fell.

Slowly she let it all fade to black.

-

Statues, monuments of people she didn't recognise towered above her. Drowning in a damp puddle of robes, tears solidified, liquified, rendered every last press of sorrow herculean to the eyes.

She blotted out.

-

“So'mo gescht'eks”

You're junk. That's what it said to Zimmer.

Ethereal speech is single so that while you don't comprehend the words and clicks and sounds that form it, you still understand what it says. That's why every fiber in Zimmer shivered in tense paranoia, remembering all the times he had been junk. All those people and places and memories he swore never to gain again.

That's why Dorin mouthed “Junk” over and over, bordering delirium, though she was far from understanding what noise the dragonfly was making.

Gannet noticed, in the peculiar, disconnected way Eyes noticed, but didn't realise what she was gasping for. Oblivious, he slowly reached down. There it was again, the smell of light, of the Oracle Oracle I'm coming he would have yelled. Her chest blew in the white breeze that escaped from her lips and if only he could reach it there's a light in her it's moving do you want me to if only he could reach her, beyond that weary hull around her and finally see the Oracle and smell it and taste it bask in the radiant stream its voice smelled of and he crept closer and over her and cautiously forced his teeth against her lips to taste what the light felt like.

A spectacle, to Zimmer, he couldn't fully enjoy. Young love could very well blossom, and Gannet shouldn't be stopped because of being... He had no words to put it delicately. But still, he knew now wasn't the time, and here wasn't the place for the two to... erm... commit themselves like that. “Gannet!” Again he couldn't add anything. Just, the very thought “The very thought!” of what he was doing was just so out of place! “So out of place!” Frustrating to the man as Gannet showed no sign of remorse, not even recognition of his words. Fragmentarian words made no impact on the simile of social interaction Gannet came equipped with. Zimmer paused too long, breathed between lines, intoned wrongfully in the face of danger.

She woke up, a storybook kiss, lips a luscious red, beauty in her bleeding flesh. Gannet pulled back his avaricious teeth when she moaned in her chronic nonpsychè. Magnet to the oracle, her hands struggled to keep pace with the way she crawled in primal sense over the floor, towards bashful Gannet. Though surprising, he felt no threat. No fear. She smiled. Her head bobbed, she wiped her blood away. She hung over him now, still blood dripped, silently. A slack snake slithered along her palm, trailing though drips of her, snout red. The mockingfly hung above.

“I am not junk!” Spit at Gannet. Nails flew up, dug through emerald hide. The sound of shattering glass broke apart to a tempest of butterflies, kaleidoscope.

Again Oracle. Gannet shielded his eyes. He couldn't look. Prism stars departed.

“I'm...”

The Eye spoke.

“I shouldn't.”

Cut off by silence. He sunk the avarice in his own remorse.

The monster was complete. Others tracked the pencils as they drew, terror like drapes condensing at the bottom. Dorin however slid up, the pose she was in forced so. Tentacles of fire shambled and lashed, whips of flame. Scorched skin hung from stakes in gaps in its torso, spikes protruded, spikes perforated. Topping off the terror, four faces, Davids Beckham.

David Beckham. A funny face, considering the mood.

“Aaaaah! It's the Beckham!” Rollo was a tight ball moments after concrete hair combed back even joined the equation of the monster, and at the completion of the faces bounced around the room in terror. “It's the Beckhaaaam! It's the B-B-B-Beckhaaaam!” He shook Martin, released, flailed around wildly. The cartoon zoomed around the scene at angles and speeds, stopped in the middle of the room, top hat, cane in hand to perform a little song and dance.

“It's the Beckham! It's the Beckham! And I'm gonna disappear!
It's the Beckham, David Beckham! I'll make like Britney Spears!
He got twenty rows of teeth and he once ate the town of Wickham,
There are mushrooms on his feet, these are facts and you can check 'em!”

What passed as dance in song-and-dance these days fitted more as Kalinka than Manhattan-showtime.

A silver gecko chirped to strengthen the girl's laughter. She couldn't help. Mockery made, the chimera retaliated. Torrid thorns, those of which didn't support the Goliath hominid, curled, tensed, lauched spires of searing heat.

Hellish rancor reflected, refracted on the perfect blank mirror the reptile grew. Dorin, though cramped, held her hand up straight, controlling or controlled by the ancient animal.

A sleeping cocoon cracks to do battle.

“Dorin, you're alright! Do you feel well?”

“I'm fine.”

“Your mind is relaxed. Did you do what, I don't know.”

“Let's just say I got a chance to think, okay? Focus on that thing in front of us first. I'll talk to you later about some things.”

“You're fighting that?!”

“I know.”

“...Is that... David-”

“I know.”

“Well, whatever you do...”

“Shh, shut up for a second, I'm hearing something...”

A voice inside. Tones such beauty, such calm assurance it was one of the first to help to stay inside and not force a way out away from her. It introduced as Oracle and they would be together for a while. “She'd be delighted.”

Dorin took slow steps towards her eyes. She stroked Gannet's hair aside, futile, held his claw and murmured, “Yes.” Yes, she wanted to be of the Oracle.

Gannet would protect her, always. He would be a good knight to her.

-

The Guignol's many tails and tentacles wrapped and coiled, wafted smoke. One of the quadruple men noticed Vuul as he marched through the archways. Pounding of feet, pounding of weaponry, truly a warrior's rhythm. Vulm'mram strode towards the beast, unaback from the flames it hurled. Swift on his feet he switched stances and weaponry, the battle a feast to the eyes and mind. No hero could make a battle more akin to art. Blades became winds, winds became tempests and raged through the castle halls. It took rigour and precision to do battle with such fantastic finesse.

Synchronous to his victim's shriek – for no other name the target of such an immense volley was worth – infernal pens appeared again, not to replicate, but to create. Swords stagnated in mid-air, skeletal arms reached for them. The faces of men became draconic as their teeth grew sharp, necks grew long and face grew dismal. And true to their inspiration in dragonry, thunder sparked in their jaws.

No smile was etched on our hero's face, but even the most remote spectator knew he felt pleased. As if by lightning struck, Vulm'mram'Vuul's mind raced. A painter selects prushes, mixes colors, sketches in coal. Vuul conjured up strategies, contemplated stances, sorted weaponry, scanned his opponent. The battle was only to rage more fiercely than already before.

MalkyTop · 05-28-2011, 02:04 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

He had hoped that by the time the giant, monstrous soccer player loped its way towards him, he would have thought of a plan. He didn’t. He sorely wished he did, though considering there was a pair of well-toned legs coming towards him.

After running around for a bit and weaving between legs as thick as two very thick tree trunks, Samael found himself on the other side of the Goliath, which wasn’t entirely what he intended. While it was true that he was desperate to not get squished under horribly-spiked cleats, the whole point of him going up to the giant in the first place was to draw it away or erase it or something. He needed to attract its attention.

A large pineapple suddenly threw itself at one of the faces, or at least tried to but instead overshot it a bit because Samael couldn’t actually see any of the faces when he was so close to the giant. Instead, he threw it at the broad back. It didn’t really seem to do much. He tried an even larger pineapple. Then it occurred to him that, with a giant that covered in spikes, more spikes probably wouldn’t do much. He stopped fooling around with pineapples and instead went for a large swarm of tomatoes. The swarm went for the heads again, and although most missed, some still managed to hit. The monstrous David Beckham grumbled in annoyance and slowly craned over backwards to search for his fruity assaulter. Although risky, Samael stayed close to the cleats. As long as he couldn’t see any of his faces, his faces couldn’t see him back.

Unless, of course, some depraved soul happened to draw a neon green sign that pointed him out just for funsies.

Samael was only truly aware of this development when the four-headed David Beckham drew back his world-famous leg for a very deliberate kick.

Scrambling up one of the foot-craters, Samael managed to get out of the way just in time for the ridiculously large cleat to come rushing by, tearing up chunks of soil (or…white space? Canvas?) in its wake. The neon green ‘HERE HE IS’ sign followed him by way of dotted box.

The tomatoes kept pelting the Beckhaviathan as it grumbled and breathed fire for a bit. Every move it made shook off a small amount of nigh infinite supply of skulls it had. Some of them exploded nearby. One hit Samael on the head. The demon-child responded by hiking up his robe and fleeing, the neon green sign following him all the way. David Beckham wound up another kick, certain that his leg reach was long enough to still catch up. A low rumbling signified that the foot was already coming his way. Samael ducked as the thunderous noise got louder and was very thankful to feel the whoosh of air as a giant shoe passed over him in a manner not unlike a pendulum. Then more bits and pieces of white-space-canvas-soil hit him in the head and he was sent rolling. The tomatoes started flinging themselves about randomly in synchronized confusion.

When Samael managed to push himself up again, he noticed that something else was bothering the polycephalic Beckham. Something that was doing better than he was, honestly. That might have something to do with the fact that the something actually had weapons. Samael took this chance to sneak away and regroup, stepping back from the angry, struggling Beckham. The Beckham was kicking around a bit more, throwing some sort of fit. Samael kept watching the cleats carefully, trying to stay close and keep far at the same time. Because of his diverted attentions, he almost stumbled into the hole.

Beckham’s kick was certainly legendary. It could apparently kick a hole in four-space. At least, that’s what sort of hole Samael assumed he was staring at right now.

Granted, it did just look like an extremely large streak in the middle of a white landscape. But the darkness was also not darkness and there was darkness in darkness and shapes within shapes while also surrounding the same shapes and dammit his eyes weren’t really meant to look at this.

He found himself suddenly wanting to dip his hand in the hole. He told himself it was a bad idea. He looked away as he went through with this idea.

Through this experiment, Samael quickly found that dipping a hand into the fourth-dimension while mostly being grounded in the third-dimension really hurts. He almost thought he lost a hand there but no, his hand was intact, mostly. He jumped back when paint buckets and pencils flew by. The pencils fell out into four-space while the paint buckets only dumped their contents out into a hole. Without the canvas, none of the tools had any effect.

Samael felt as though he finally had a plan. He really hoped the hole would stay open, but it looked as though the Beckham monster was making a few more. Gathering up his robes again, Samael ran back towards the fight, which was getting very intense. David Beckham simply couldn’t shake the robotic-alien thing off. It had also scaled the Beckhaviathon very quickly, dragging behind it a trail of non-soccer-player-friendly damage. Samael hoped that it could still hear him. Then he actually thought about how likely it could actually hear him when he was all the way down at Beckham’s feet and it was clinging onto Beckham’s chest spikes. Samael came to the unwanted conclusion that he might just have to climb the David Beckham.

GBCE · 06-05-2011, 03:36 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

Earlier, in a newly-emptied valley...

Given that Vuul's armor offered a somewhat limited vertical perspective, the Battlecleric was unaware of Ke floating down on top of him. Nor was he completely aware of her as her voice wove its way through his mind, trapped as he still was in the fading euphoria of the battle trance. Nevertheless, he was still aware of the words themselves, and their haunting request spurred him into action. Rituals and tactics and incantations presented themselves in his mind, and his trained instinct pulled from them the Ritual of the Duel. His orators began the deep, pulsing sub-sonic rumble of Vulm'mram'Kham against Tyver Boole; a choice Vuul felt appropriate, given the incantation was first sung by one of his ancestors during a fight against a particularly dangerous human. He would make it a worthy battle chant.

His unnoticed guest clung to his helmet desperately, as the Battlecleric burst forwards towards the not-quite-human. In the same moment, he fired Blaze and Subjugate. A thick, coherent beam of crackling blue-white plasma lanced towards the Not-Martin, but suddenly he was not in its path. A loud KRA-KOOM! echoed across the poorly-drawn valley, and from off to Vuul's side a ring of air expanded. In its center was the Not-Martin, grinning manically, the barrel of his gun-arm still glowing from the weapon's discharge.

But as visually impaired as Vuul was vertically, he was in no sense handicapped for objects moving on his same relative plane. His mind received input from the 360-degree sensory strip which wrapped around his head, and processed all the information simultaneously. Where a two-eyed being may have been caught unawares by Not-Martin's impossible speed, Vuul had tracked the motion as it happened, and dodged the incoming blast even as it was fired, pushing himself towards the Not-Martin, remaining on the offensive.

If this had been a real valley, dirt and pebbles would be vibrating and bouncing at this moment, as the sub-sonics from Vuul's battle chant began to pick up. Their deep rumbling, just below the range of hearing, could be felt in Ke's exoskeleton. Her whole body began to vibrate as Vuul launched into the chant.

"WITHER!"

Vuul was nearly on top of the Not-Martin as the word exploded from his chest. Its arm, which had been lining up another shot, was torn from its socket, and sent flying across the valley. The poorly-made copy attempted to keep its balance against the onslaught of sound, and Vuul allowed Blaze and Subjugate to render its holy judgement upon the copy.

As the white-hot crater which had been the Not-Martin slowly cooled, Vuul felt some dissatisfaction in how quickly the duel had ended. He'd only gotten out a single word of the battle chant; The Ritual was not complete. His orators were still maintaining the subsonic rumble of the battle chant, and his body hungered with lust for combat. On his helmet, still unnoticed, Ke trembled, sharing Vuul's thirst for more.

It was in this state that the Tormentor found Vuul and Ke, after having brought his attention back to the stray contestants. Noting with some disappointment that his Martin-horror had been so easily defeated, the Tormentor decided to try a different tack...

Manic laughter drifted across the valley, its origin uncertain. Vuul tensed, readying for a new opponent, and when the air behind him rippled as some new enemy began to appear, his arm was already whipping around to cast down Blaze and Subjugate's holy fire upon them.

Yet, with his movement halfway complete, a nagging sense of uncertainty began to eat at him. The shape of this enemy looked... familiar. It wasn't until Blaze and Subjugate began to spin up once more in anticipation of being fired that Vuul realized what he was about to annihilate. It was an Alvum. A Lorr; a caste of the priesthood, dedicated to studying the Holy Word.

In a space beyond spaces, the Tormentor cackled, and gave an ever so slight nudge in just the right place...

Vuul watched in horror as his arm continued to move despite his mind's protests. He felt his skin crawl as Blaze and Subjugate thrummed with holy fire. He nearly cried out in angry disbelief as his finger pulled the trigger. Blaze and Subjugate pushed itself against him as the plasma tore through the helpless Lorr. Its weak orators whistled hollowly as it died, its cries growing ever weaker, until silence filled the valley.

Vuul stood, too stunned to move. Atop his helmet, the frail remembrancer held her breath, uncertain what the warrior beneath her would do.

Vuul didn't have time to do anything. Before he could collect himself, the valley was suddenly filled with the corpses of other Alvum, from all castes. Mutilated, maimed, rotting corpses; sputtering, gasping, Alvum lay scattered amongst them. Vuul, attempting to regain some sense of composure, quickly identified the closest of the dying Alvum, and rushed over to help him; a Vhor, the caste of the Justicars and Arbiters. Vuul considered himself fortunate to have found one who delivers the Emperor's Divine Justice here; in the Hierarchy, they lay above the Vulm, Vuul's Warmonk caste. Surely this Vhor would direct him to whoever was responsible for this... carnage.

Vuul knelt next to the shuddering Vhor, and lay the plasma cannon on the ground at his side. There came a hissing from the Battlecleric's chest, as panels shifted and locks disengaged. Still perched on Vuul's helmet, watching the story unfold before her, Ke briefly wished she could see what lay behind that massive chestplate, and what generated that awesome voice.

A low, reedy wind began to pick up beneath her, and with it came words, rumbling a single question:

"WHO DID THIS?"

The Vhor looked up, and a spindly arm shot out of its cloak, grasping the shoulder of Vuul's gripping arm.

"You did, Vulm! You have abandoned your position, you have abandoned the Hierarchy, and you have abandoned the Emperor!"

The wind of Vuul's orators howled weakly as he replied,

"NO. THIS CANNOT BE TRUE. I AM EVER FAITHFUL."

The Vhor laughed weakly; an old, rusty organ with all valves opened.

"Then why are you here, Vulm? Why are you not at the side of your fellow Vulm, where you belong? Why are you not protecting our Imperium, Vulm?" The Vhor's grip on Vuul's shoulder tightened, as the dying Alvum grew more desperate. "Why are you not performing your holy duty, Vulm?!"

"I AM HERE AGAINST MY WILL, YET I AM STILL YOUR INFERIOR, AS IT SHOULD BE."

"State your identity, Alvum!"

The sharp order whipped through Vuul's body, and he responded reflexively, all orators smoothly and crisply howling out lines which had been drilled into him from birth.

"VULM'MRAM'VUUL, BATTLECLERIC, SIX OF ELEVEN OF THE MRAM LINEAGE"

"And what is the duty of a Vulm of the Mram lineage?"

"TO DESTROY ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE; TO MAINTAIN THE SAFETY AND PURITY OF THE CORE WORLDS"

"So tell me, Vulm'mram'Vuul, how can you maintain the safety and purity of the Core Worlds from here? You cannot! You have not! What you see around you is a result of your dereliction! You have allowed enemies of the Empire to corrupt the Core, and you alone are to blame!"

The Vhor took in a final shuddering breath, and formed his next words carefully.

"I, Vhor'vool'Zhan, hereby declare you, Vulm'mram'Vuul, a Vulm no longer. You are now simply Vuul, casteless, pastless, abandoned by the Hierarchy as you have abandoned it! The Alvum curse you! The Emperor curses you! Die alone and unknown!"

The Vhor went limp. Its arm slip off Vuul's shoulder. The seconds oozed by, as Vuul continued to kneel before the Vhor's corpse, unmoving, silent. Ke clung nervously to the battlecleric's head. Should she say something? She couldn't tell how he felt. Probably really bad. Was now really the best time to reveal a rather large spider had been sitting on his head for quite some time? As she sat there, considering, Vuul seemed to reach some kind of decision. The reedy wind of his exposed orators picked up, and another word rumbled through the valley.

"NO."

Vuul stood, picking up Blaze and Subjugate as he did so. His chestplate closed.

"THE ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE ARE HERE. I AM STILL LOYAL! I AM STILL A VULM, AND I WILL CARRY OUT MY DUTY! DO YOU HEAR ME, TORMENTOR? I AM EVER FAITHFUL TO THE PRIME! I AM EVER FAITHFUL TO YOU! I WILL PROVE MY WORTH TO YOU, BY DESTROYING THE ONE OF THE HATED HUMANS, THE GREATEST OF THE ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE! I AM FAITHFUL! EVER FAITHFUL!"

Vuul had entered a run at the beginning of his tirade, and was now in a full-blown charge. Blaze and Subjugate thrust before him, the Battlecleric had worked himself into a battle trance, and would not stop moving until he'd killed something. Preferably Martin.

Elsewhere, the Tormentor watched the raging Alvum with a slight sense of unease. He'd only meant to scare the primitive organic, not whip him into a religious frenzy. He glanced over to another section of the canvas, where his newest creation was terrorizing the annoyingly cheery cartoon and his friends. He was having too much fun with the other contestants for this walking tank to rain on his parade, and besides, wherever Vuul went, someone was almost certainly going to die.

He'd have to delay the rampaging battlecleric, somehow...

Vuul ran. He could see figures ahead of him, growing ever-closer. He did not care who they were; if his target was not among them, he would soon find out.

Suddenly, just as he was about to be able to make out details, the distance between him and the figures grew, and a gaping chasm opened up at his feet. Without missing a beat, Vuul launched himself off its edge, towards the other side. The chasm expanded, the far end suddenly hopelessly out of reach. Vuul adapted quickly. He fired the plasma cannon at the far wall of the chasm, shattering the canvas into an avalanche of debris. Simultaneously, he twisted his upper torso around, and barked out a single word, "FLIGHT!". The forceful expulsion of sound thrust Vuul forwards, closing the gap between himself and the still-collapsing wall quickly. He returned Blaze and Subjugate to the Furious just as he planted a hoof firmly on a large piece of falling canvas. He pushed off, aiming another shout at his legs as he did so. His gripping hand latched onto another piece of debris, further up, and pulled as his voice pushed.

Vuul climbed, as he could do nothing else. He had become an inevitability; inexorable, unstoppable. He would stop only with a death. And so Vuul climbed a collapsing cliff-face, and the Tormentor sighed at this distressingly persistent contestant. If the crazed Alvum wanted to run at things, let him run at things.

Vuul spent the next few hours running a nearly impossible obstacle course at the Tormentor's whim. At first they were obviously placed just to slow the Battlecleric down, but the Tormentor gradually grew bored of boring, mostly-not-lethal obstacles, and began getting more... inventive.

By the time Vuul finally reached a group of actual contestants, he'd been fighting through a guantlet of unnatural, insane, unpredictable traps and enemies, and the scene presented before him was not a noticeable separation from the established norm. Vuul eyed up the giant human before him. Its size did not concern him. So far as Vuul was concerned, this was simply another challenge to see how quickly he could kill everything in his sight.

Blaze and Subjugate slid into his grip, and his quickarms drew two of the Emperor's Gaze plasma pistols. Vuul's stance shifted, his orators began the slow pulse of a new battle chant, and the battle began.

GBCE · 06-12-2011, 03:14 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

Far under the corporeal form of the host named Gannet, a virus behaved in a way that would have been indicative of confusion in a higher form of life. It was a young strain, relatively speaking; it had been something else entirely before coming to this body and reinventing itself for it. Separated from its colony, the virus had no access to the collective memory outside of what little information it had stored in its own coding. It had no precedent for this situation. The organism it was trying to infect was producing in unbelievable levels the signature energy of a core host, but somehow, impossibly, it lacked any trace of the virus itself. Gannet’s strain surrounded it and felt its vanguards settle and immediately go dormant, overwhelmed. The command to yield to this highest function of the virus’ purpose was unbearable; it had no choice but to withdraw and leave the unknown organism with only preliminary symptoms, for the first time deliberately refusing an opportunity to incubate.

Gannet’s virus could have reacted to this situation aggressively. With some prodding it could have enraged its host to frenzy and sent him at the unknown Oracle in the hopes that he would be enough to destroy it. A defensive strain, a “Tooth”, would have done this without hesitation. It was the virus’ nature to eliminate competition or anything resembling a threat to itself or the colony as a whole. But this? The virus was having difficulties considering it to be a threat. It was the Oracle, after all, wasn’t it? Could such a thing exist independent of the infection?

The virus seethed silently, imperceptibly, at Dorin’s latest guest. It wasn’t intended to do much more than encode information; it was only a seeker strain, and it knew little else than how to observe and record. It marveled in its own way at the familiar echoes of the past and future that it itself could not produce, so similar to those of its core host back in the colony. It would continue to wait, it decided. At the present time it didn’t know enough to determine what effects destroying the impostor Oracle would have. It was patient. Sooner or later it would know what to do, and all things above and below would die in their time.

Gannet, in the meanwhile oblivious to the virus’ conflict, was in love. His Oracle queen, she of the always-shadow, swayed beside him and he circled her nervously, half afraid and half ecstatic. He couldn’t stop touching her hair with his unsteady claws, her face with his hands, her lips with his teeth. His fevered mind reverberated with a single, drawn-out note, a diamond bell chiming on into infinity. She smelled like lightning and thunder. The Oracle’s features swam in and out of view before him: a woman’s face, a girl’s, an old and weathered skull, a crying bird, the swallowing sea itself dragging him down deeper and deeper. She tasted like blood and sycamore bursting from the earth, like life in the water where there had always before been bones. Her scent was thick on his tongue and in his throat, and it flew down inside him and was soaking into his insides, thick and dark and so impossibly soft. He in his delirium didn’t recognize beauty, but he recognized her- his Oracle, his purpose. She was beautiful beyond hope.

The not-ground shook with the motions of the giant that he knew, dimly, he should be running from, but it was hard to think of anything else when he was so close to the Oracle. He rested his cheek against hers and felt their bones press together under their fleeting flesh. It occurred to him that it was odd that the Oracle should be here with him. Who was going to protect her? There were no Teeth nearby, he would have heard them howling in the wind. It was just him… he glanced nervously past her glittering eye. He would defend this body to the last drop of his blood but that might not be enough to save her. Nothing else mattered to him now, nothing at all. He brought his mouth to her ear and drew her in with his breath. He was half-drunk with her scent and he swayed as he said, “Oracle, speak to me.”

Dorin turned to her adorer, blinded by the light of the Oracle burning inside her. She felt weightless as air, as though when she stepped forward the ground wouldn’t accept her and she’d be floating, somewhere where gravity couldn’t hold her. Her mouth formed a laugh and she tilted her head to press her lips against him again. The Oracle’s song was in her blood and it roared with all the throats of the sea through her, swelling up from the ground and down from the sky all at once, drowning them both with its force and its fury.

“If both we die, thou of water?...” She didn’t know which of them spoke, but the words took shape from her tongue and she drank them like wine. “Of what use will words be then?”

“I died before, I was younger, I… I drowned in your cave. Under the stone and the storm. My life ended and you held my head in your hands and smashed it on the rocks, and from the corpse of what I was I came anew. I am not afraid to die, Oracle,” he said softly. “I am not afraid of anything.”

His head was in her hands again and his eyes were locked on hers. “You lie, bone-walker. Nothing that lives is free of fear…” A sigh rattled in her throat.

Gannet was helpless.

“What are you afraid of?”

“I…”

She pulled him closer and told him what she saw, in his future and in hers.

“I am afraid…”

They were together again, each a wave crashing against the other, neither able to tell the tears from the sea. He didn’t say it and she didn’t hear it, but it screamed itself to them in a storm siren, beating itself against their skulls and drowning out even the thundering heartbeat of the earth. It pulled them down, clawing and biting and gasping at last for release.

I am afraid of you.

_______________________

Zimmer didn’t know what to do.

The furious roars of the four-headed demon were starting to hurt his ears. They were like thunder, but louder than any storm he’d ever heard, louder than cannonfire and louder even than the fire of the bombs erupting outside his tent. It was hard to believe that anything that lived- or didn’t live, as might have been the case- could produce that much sound. Blearily he pulled himself around the edge of the barrier and saw that a white spider, a white fleck, a dull smear were gathered on the titan’s body like bloated fleas. There was so much sound, so much thunder! His vision shook and he tried to shake his head to clear it. No use, no use, useless, no, useless, useless useless useless useless useless wretch what good are you now -

Merciful God in Heaven, what was happening to him? The lieutenant turned sharply away from the spectacle and rubbed his temples, suddenly overcome with nausea. He gagged on nothing and felt his stomach try to empty itself, but his throat didn’t quite seem to work properly and he choked. The corners of his vision darkened and he felt the sensation of falling, down, down into water from high above. His arms were broken, he knew this, he’d flown too far towards the sun and his feathers were falling out in clumps, covering his face with burning wax. He hit the surface with a deafening roar and sank straight down into freezing darkness, hands pulling him, dragging him into the waiting Teeth below-

Zimmer gasped and his eyes bolted open. He was lying on the ground, fingers wrapped around his own throat in a dead man’s grip. A scream writhed in his throat; he pushed it away and sat up, wheezing. His neck felt bruised and weak; what… had he tried to strangle himself? What the devil was going on? His head… his head was feeling better, actually. No. No, better was not the right word here. This was not better. Not this. Nothing like this, he- his skull was surely cracking open, crushed against stones and he wept as he laughed, his tears burning his cheeks. He was sobbing too, the tightness of his chest holding him like a lover’s arms. He hadn’t felt that in a long time. It was nice, it was so nice, and it hurt worse than anything the sea could do to him now.

He felt himself fall again, but slower, this time. When his side touched the ground he knew it to be real, the earth pressing on him as though he was the one buried, not them. Not any of them, the ones he’d drowned in the water. Or had that been him? Whose hands were whose, who was holding who under and who was crying for him to stop? Which of them was him? Which of them…

“Uh, Matty?”

His eyes flickered to the speaker and widened further and further, impossibly wide, swallowing the shadow of the titan above him. They ached with the brightness of the sunless sky, hurt like the eyes of a newborn now forced to see. Somehow, distantly, he saw a man he knew was himself, curled tightly on the ground and gasping for air. He was disgusting. He snarled like an animal and barely managed to draw himself up, too exhausted to flee.

“Why did you do this,” he said, turning to the shadows, the ghosts, that had spoken. His mouth felt odd and he opened it, spitting blood onto the ground. A whine started in his throat. “Why did you do this to me?”

There was the sound of a cautious step backward, and the tremor of nerves. “Do what? What’s wrong with you, Matty? Zimmer?”

What was wrong with him, him, who was Matty? Was that him, was… yes! Yes it was, he knew who he was. He did. He… he was…

He…

They’ve taken my name, he thought and immediately forgot why.

What have you done to me?

His eyes, weak from the light, turned to the lovers beside him, desperate for answers. The lovers, the Lovers, VI, Arcana Majora, the amorous ones, desire, doubt, temptation, blood sex choice fire, the paired ones, what they were doing wasn’t born of love but something else, something more and beautifully, horrifically worse. Their teeth were locked on each other’s throats and their nails were claws tearing their bodies apart, rending flesh and bone apart in bleeding scarlet ribbons. But now they shifted and everything had changed: each was a serpent wound around the other, each was a bird pinned wing to wing, each was an ocean boiling under the sun, each was an Oracle and an Eye and they were drowning deep inside themselves. They moved like warring dancers, body to body, somehow intersecting but never touching, miles away from the waves collapsing on them both. He watched them sink holding each other and wondered, why?

The others, the shadows, were now speaking to him with fear-thickened tongues. He said something back that he didn’t understand and couldn’t have repeated once it was said. Nameless and faceless. What’s going to come of you now? He felt sick, down past his stomach and into the ground that surely he was a part of, so firm was it under his hands. His head no longer hurt, and maybe that was because he didn’t have one anymore. It wasn’t needed, none of this was, his body was only earth and all things above and below must die in their time.

All things…

He felt the Oracle’s face turn to him, her smile painted on and hiding the oceans of blood. He tried to grin back but he was tired, and this face wasn’t his to wear.

“Do you know who I am?”

He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know how.

She came towards him and laid a hand on his face, his not-self, and it was a spear of ice through the fire that consumed him. He lay on the ground and tried to force his lungs to breathe; looking upward, he saw that she was laughing. Her teeth glittered like knives.

“I am the Oracle,” she said, and he knew beyond all doubt that there was no such thing as death when your life is without worth.

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whoosh! · 06-19-2011, 10:42 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.

Ke was infatuated.

Her heart beat quickly, and her mind was dizzy with excitement and heady joy. Silently she slipped behind a behemoth of scribbled steel (the latest in her Hero's gauntlet of outfoxed traps) and stared out at his shrinking figure. Ke's dark eyes glittered.

And then she was gone, floating above the mayhem that made her chitinous shell tremble even more so than it already did. With the softest of sighs she was close to him again. The only things that hid her from him were the death traps that strained to snap shut around him, which were fortunately focused enough on this task so as to offer little danger to her. There was nothing to stop her drinking in the sight of Vulm'mram'Vuul.

And what a sight! Her Hero, her Muse, the living incarnation of the brave and the bold that populated her plethora of tales; how could she dare tear herself away from that unflickering figure? Here was something unreal made real, a godly being ripped from her most fantastical and wonderful of narratives.

Ah, those stories! Ke knew more stories than any other mortal. She had painstakingly collected, remembered, gambled and risked in the name of her art, but they had only remained words etched on silk and unfading memory. Each familiar character – tricksters, lovers, knights, gods – had never been truly known to her. They were simply words.

Except now...

A vast block of dull metal suddenly appeared beside her, shattering the earth and flinging her aside in the wake of the displaced air. Surprised as she was, it took a few moments before she even attempted to unfold her membranes and battle against the new direction. In amongst her struggle a gleaming black eye caught sight of the Hero again, swiftly fading and glorious enough to make her primitive heart ache.

The Remembrancer had asked Vuul for stories, mere words, and what he had given her instead had been... amazing. Awe-inspiring. And still he had given something more.

Under her love for her Muse, hiding beneath her sheer joy, a long-abandoned hope stirred within Ke. To stand beside a Hero would make one worthy of the inclusion in any story. And that story, like all the others she carried with her, might fade to obscurity but would still be remembered. By someone. Anyone. Somewhere.

To not be forgotten: was that too much to ask? And to be forgotten: surely that was a worthy fear?

Her line of thought lay crippled by her doubts, and Ke had no choice but to look outwards from herself. Her balance had been regained and lethal engineering lay still about her, but Ke's beloved Muse was gone.

She was alone.

Once more.

Immediately she propelled herself towards the sky, or where it might have been. Already a new emotion set her heart aflame, but these fires were born of dread and fear far from the love that had previously consumed her. Fear not of the unknown, but the scenes she knew all too well. So easily this opportunity might bud and die just as all those before it. Ke had met many people. She had loved many of those. And every single time, cruelly and intractably they had been lost to her. Some had been claimed by the inevitable Reaper, but a far greater number were stolen away by Fate: a twisting of paths that all led away from the Remembrancer.

No. This tale would find another end.

She scrabbled for height in purest desperation; perhaps if she reached for an unshining sun she would prove herself to that coldly observing Fate that she deserved this. She deserved to walk in the presence of a Hero not once, but many times. Not forever, but long enough.

In spite of her offering, her gaze was lost in the labyrinth of deathtraps. They sprawled and slouched over unmeasurable wastes, their insouciance lost to the tinge of bitter death that poisoned their appearance and purpose. In spite of her position above this private hell, the movement of a triumphant Muse was stolen and concealed within the movement of those acerbic servants of Reaper and Tormentor both.

Wherever Ke looked, the traps sprung, slashed and smashed. The fleeting figure of Vulm'mram'Vuul had no hope of being found among them.

No!

Ke batted aside her flourishing panic and flew. Clinging to the memory of his vanishing form she darted over the landscape, the sketched machinations of the Tormentor flashing by. It was, however, only when the arachnid paused to gather her breath and her thoughts that the lethal flash of metal caught her eyes. It should not have stood out to her, buried among the other gleams of the deathtraps as it was, but perhaps Fate smiled upon her this once.

It was her misfortune that the Tormentor should smile just as wide.

But Ke did not think of the Tormentor. She thought of nothing but the owner of that glinting metal, her beloved Vulm'mram'Vuul. In such blessed ignorance she swam through the air towards him, labouring less so that he might see her, more so that she might see him. Her bliss afforded her a little hope.

Hope that the Tormentor was more than happy to rip away with a sketch of a fan.

An electrical fan was all it was, suspended in the air. It was very simple.

Devastatingly so.

Mere moments from being reunited with her bitterly sought Muse, a spider as light as a sheet of paper met a gust of air from that very fan. Even the weakest of such similar contraptions would have served to swiftly unravel the treasured progress she had made towards her beloved, but this very fan was made certain to be bafflingly powerful. In one moment Ke had gone from a heart full of hopes to a stranglehold of hopelessness as she shot away from her one heart's desire with all the force of a bullet from a gun. No membranes would help her here, unless she wished to have them torn from her just as cruelly as her hopes.

A wretched scream as ethereal as the spider herself burst free of her, but it was useless. There was no one to hear but the one who enjoyed the sound.

When the forces acted upon Ke eased enough for her to consider herself free, she was far from where she had begun. But she was not far from something. There were many such somethings in the vicinity that might have interested her a rather large degree were she not so distraught.

As it was she could only survey them with a cold stare and an uncaring heart.

Across the way was an impressively large ramp. That, however, was not the point of interest. Clustered underneath it were five individuals of varying shapes, but even that was not what would have drawn a happy Ke to the sight like a moth to a flame.

All five of them stood around like the characters of a scandalous tableau, only the movement in their fixed positions breaking the illusion.

In the centre of it all were the classic Lovers, aptly the centrepiece of any story and thus were well placed. Passion was their sphere, burning them from the inside as they held each other. Slightly to the side was the Prophet, or perhaps the Veteran. From his tortured stance it would be obvious to all that he burned too, but he felt only pain without the joy or love of the couple beside him.

The roles of the other two in this mysterious story were far more shadowy. They were further still from the heart of the scene, staring out beyond the enclosed confines of the ramp. One was not even humanoid. All the same, they seemed to be Watchmen or Guardians, which were lesser if still important roles in a tale.

Ke watched for a little while, but her attention soon dropped away. Then she floated up, without plan or direction. She didn't care about these people she knew only faintly and in passing. Perhaps she should do. Perhaps not.

Likewise, when her drifting later presented with her with another humanoid figure she ignored him to sulk. If not for her sullen stubbornness in ignoring the outside world she would never have come to a halt anywhere near this strange person. As it was her long legs caught upon the ground, perhaps in a rip or a ditch, and left her scrabbling for a foothold. Ke still resolutely pretended the person did not exist. He, unfortunately, seemed to have more social ideas.

“Oh, hey. You're the spider – uh, Ke? Was that it?”

She slid into an awkward if stable stance and stared at him coldly. He visibly drooped, but just a little.

“I guess not. Sorry.” He gestured wildly over to his left and stared over in his chosen direction, awkwardly retracting eye contact.

For whatever reason, Ke followed his gaze and stared also.

And then, but only then, did she fully realise the landscape of the situation. The monstrous giant, the mysterious tears in the blank canvas of their world, and, most importantly, the Muse doing battle against the goliath. She decided to reconsider her situation.

“Your name is Samuel Corson, correct?”

The man swung around, a little surprised. “Yeah, it is.”

Ke lifted herself up into a more comfortable position and dipped her head briefly.

“I apologise for my rudeness, Mr Corson. My name is indeed Ke. It is good to meet you.”

Mr Corson seemed to have been caught slightly off guard, and muttered something about it being fine. He started to turn back to the four-headed giant tearing the land, but hesitated, held back by manners. Ke quickly stepped forward and spoke again.

“Tell me, Mr Corson – what are your intentions?”

“Pardon?”

“Why are you not with the others?”

“Oh, right.” He briefly gestured towards the towered monstrosity again. “I was thinking-”

“You could destroy it?”

“Yeah, I guess. Or get rid of it. Whatever works. These... rip things, they look like they could hold it if it fell in.”

“Oh?” Ke scuttled over to the edge of the harsh darkness, and peered over the edge. “I see.”

“Yeah.”

Silence fell once more over the two of them, but it was at least a little more comfortable. Ke walked around Samael for a few seconds, examining him. She made a curious noise and leaped, stopping to hover just behind the teenager.

“Good sir, exactly how heavy are you?”

Before he could possibly reply, she had hooked him beneath the armpits and lifted him up a couple of feet. Emboldened by her success and not at all daunted by Mr Corson's protests, she shot up a few more metres and hummed to herself in a satisfied manner.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“Why, Mr Corson,” she replied, curling in her head slightly so a few of her eyes met his, “I am helping you. You wanted to take down the colossus, and I dare say you're not achieving much down here. And so I lift you up to the giant, and we both get what we want.”

Happy that he at least understood the terms of this deal even if he did not agree, Ke trilled cheerfully and swooped towards the looming giant.

Show Content

Anomaly · 06-25-2011, 12:03 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.

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Pick Yer Poison · 07-10-2011, 05:04 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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Woffles · 07-21-2011, 12:48 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

She was the Oracle. How could you possibly forget? You imbecile.

The man he tried he really tried to get away crawl back but she was leaning over him, he wanted to get away but his arms were sticks and they broke under his sins and as his head hit the floor and the tears in his eyes and the clouds in his head broke his sight in just the right way he looked at her.

She was beautiful. She was a special kind of beautiful that you could only see when everything was meant to be invisible.

Zimmer's eyes knew why he was forsaken, slithering faces of the Pantheon fixed on his lifeless corpse. But why couldn't his mind his heart his breath his head he was useless remember

He could hear their voice again. It spoke as one and asked him the purest question. “Are you giving up your faith, Lieutenant Zimmer?”

There was a world behind Rollo, and he didn't even care. His eyes were locked. They could only stare in horror and awe, bugged out as the hermit of an endless night, at a monster that kept growing as he feared it. Rollo, of course, exaggerated this to ridicule. His eyes cloned, diverging tunnels. Limbs stiff in the air, face malformed to where it can only scream. An act, as usual.

Rollo was, in all honesty, getting lost. Not in a forest, without light, only instinct to trust, he had eyes around him and he trusted them on where to go. Second only to instinct. Rollo was lost in everything. No instinct played wire in his Crete. Comedy, his Es, was the one relief he knew when confronted.

“Woah! That sure is something alright! Hey, don't be scared though, maybe he just wants a word with us?”

“Rollo, now's not the time to joke around. Why are you always so damn hyper?”

“See, I'm on this drug called Rollo! If someone would get my mind, they'd be like “Dude, can't handle it!””

Credit where it's due: Martin had to stifle a grin when he remembered that late night celebrity dig-up on Charlie Sheen. “Heh, winning.”

A demonic talon clawed through Rollo. Slices drafted, fell, stopped moving and sprang back together. A hammer mashed him into the poorly colored walls. A stain with his eyes revealed the armadillo. Fire to ashes, ashes to him, there was no killing the resurrecting.

A younger shade of Martin would have found it amazing to see this performance unravel. The current only had eye for the monster. But there was still hilarity to the display. He saw that the monster's crux was the one combatant he considered weak. It was hilarious. Why was he even afraid? If Rollo was immune, his alloy was more so.

This was incredible. The scribble, that useless scribble, he stood! Stood and laughed and jumped about, like a jester in the mocking rain that blew too white.

“Did you see that? That was a smile! A honest to goodness smile. This is getting more interesting by the second!”

The Tormentor folded some arms. His eyes frowned, not linked in pairs and as such not linked to direction, or even existence, but the frown was challenging, a glint of daring Asem that sparked interest in his subjects again. An eye died out, though he saw through it still.

“I see you, Spectator.”

“I can see me too. What are you bragging about?”

No sign did betray that Tormentor had Spectator appear. A woman appeared, clad in crimson honey that soon became tears and then became wind. Her hair, unsettled in appearance as if a gust of black current tore through it, shone her appearance as halos, and didn't decide on wings or threads or robes. Her face was jagged, with a smile that surpassed meaning as she had no emotions left ensnared and that could be anything from contempt to interest.

“I know one thing though. If you want to experiment on him, you better do it yourself. Just get in there and start scraping him apart. Be the next Overseer!”

“If you are just here to insult me, Cultivator,” the man of eyes retorted, “then I fear comparisons like that lack an edge. Why do you even know Bryce?”

Silence in her eyes.

“Who is she?”

“Some kind of sacrifice that summons gods. She has like a big life story she can't shut up about.”

“She's my favorite. All those eyes! Marvelous, really!”

“She's still human. They generally have two.”

“I'm talking about the golden ones. Don't you see how they follow everything? Don't you see how even now they're manipulating this battle?”

Her voice lingered, strings of her. “No, you probably don't have enough eyes for that.”

There were a lot of things in Samael's life that he regretted doing. Suspending himself on a storytelling spider, he soon found out, was one of them. Ke's grip was so tight that his hands actually ached, but whenever he looked up, Ke was still translucent and vague. And when he looked down, he didn't want to look down.

Another of them, he found out, was trying to live among and as such associating himself with humans. Because aside from what little contact he had had in his lifetimes, they were batshit crazy. And when he saw what incredible monster was summoned due to their fears, he understood again why Luce had a special kind of hell ready for most of them. The irony of the situation he had been in – until now of course, thank you very much Tormentor – that is, being banished due to being unable to deceive, to a world where everyone is playing in the biggest liar competition ever, was kind of falling.

Ke's shriek traveled as fast as Samael's head, they both roared up, evidence of more torture. Metal bars, before her, around her, caved inside and through her, her world was getting so small and she couldn't breathe anymore. She curled up together, as small as she could, and she couldn't hold it anymore she couldn't bear it, she couldn't carry him, there wasn't enough room for him. I'm sorry, Samael Corson she would have cried, but her tears told only tales she wanted to forget.

He was falling. Well, so far for that life. To be fair though, being a teenager isn't as fun as pop music told him it was. He really hoped being eaten didn't hurt that much, most of his deaths had been quite... decent, actually.

He was still falling. He really thought that that monster thing was bigger.

“REMEMBER! REMEMBER YOUR DYING BREATH!”

Thunder flowed through the dungeon. Vuul tugged on the lashing fire, agonizing tentacles in his talons. Prey to Rend and Dominate. His raving piety hardly towered from the behemoth's shade, but it served more to his own than its victim.

“FOR IT IS THEN HE TOOK YOUR LIFE!”

Slowly, very slowly, Hydra turned to cripple. It wasn't fortunate, but fateful Vulm'mram'Vuul knew no endurance to bear. It burned on, burned on and on until it burned through.

“FOR IT IS I WHO HAS BEEN CHOSEN SERVE HIM!”

When the beast fell from its legs, Vuul switched to the Heaven's Ascent stance, leapt from spike to spike, Blaze and Subjugate a scraping contrail against yellow rags. This fight was to be over soon, and not one for him to fight.

“FOR IT IS GLORY YOUR DEATH WROUGHT!”

A coconut fell from the sky. A crescent axe skewered its hide, and cut the orb in two. The milk was the last in a series of bile and fire and impure liquid the giant's heads spewed at him. A vain attempt to stall him.

It was only to Vuul that Samael's head stuck out. It was hidden in the monster's necks like a wind god hidden among leaves. A dusty procession of buglit eyes that took slow time to gauge distances and angles. It would throw all the angles out the window (except there was no angle left to throw it at) and screw the entire toss up completely, and face a coconut cleaved in two. Like a plant god, killed in the harvest.

Samael would thank Blaze and Subjugate for tearing down the menace, but saw it in the hand of Vuul, fighter. Killer. He regarded him Eurydice and ran, hopefully towards something. Like a mist god, vatha in the forest.

“FEEL SANCTIFIED. YOUR BLOOD SHALL FLOW IN ALVUM STREAMS, AND WITH IT SHALL BE PURGED.”

Unusual for Vuul to recite his chant before he dished out the first strike. Evicted from his clan though, was circumstance unusual enough. He wanted to prove to everyone that he was worthy of a rank in the empire. That he knew the songs, that he could follow orders. That he could kill the enemies of the Alvum empire. Vuul charged right at the weakest of the group, Matthew Zimmer.

Martin shot Vuul. Candid glory burst.

The Alvum staggered, his head spun in confusion as if were he surrounded, as part of his eye was blinded. Vuul considered turning around, working with his rear vision instead, but that left his one weak spot exposed. He stopped the assault, retreated.

Did he fail?

A rather specific attack on the alien. It was caught off guard by the fact that memory doesn't extend to the subconscious. To the ethereal. To a whisper in foxfire that stealthily saved the Oracle.

A lucky break, because Martin didn't know how to activate his arm cannon. His primordial rage taking over had triggered something. A muscle he didn't know he could move, a nerve where he never imagined pain to permeate. Whatever took over was a ley line to the world.

It was a motherfucking kickass ley line.

“Woah, shit! Did you guys see that?! I blasted his fucking eye off! God damn, that was awesome!”

Martin was of calm composure, but it was a strain to keep up polished language. He tended to resort to expletives and dysphemisms when impressed. Erecting a gun from your arm and shooting an alien counted, marginally. It kind of felt different from a video game. Less real.

He turned to Dorin. His gun pointed at Dorin.

He was threatening the Oracle. Defend her.

Gannet heard flames. Illuminating faerie fire shone the way, and when they lit up his destiny he suddenly felt so angry when he saw him talking to her, breathing her, claiming his right to exist next to her as if he was untainted by the stench of purgatory. Eyes were bloodshot, ears white noise. His fists cramped in on themselves, teeth that tore his palms apart. His breath shook, panting as his mouth glared with killer intent. Teeth that tore the world apart.

With oceans of hell he approached Martin. His thoughts were butterflies, danced in the ignorance of the human precipitate. Claws lashed, summer struck.

“Oh h-”

There was a fist in his eye. He wasn't annoyed, he didn't remember how to be.

Brownout in Martin.

Connection Lost.

There was no god that could care less about sacrifice than Pantarei. But being rescinded a right he had by a being that called itself god of death before his eyes was to him worth fighting for. It was worth making sure he got what he was used to. Whatever it took.

“Mehai so'a ba'kai'eks ka'kai'ti'eks skirmai, Tormentor'ets.”

“Now that you've shown up, I'm only left wondering why it took so long.”

“Mus'ke'ti'nai, so'a strimket.”

“You're making words up now, Pantarei. It would be in your best intent not to test me.”

“Makrei'mo'kai, paskai'schiksei.”

“Are you here to meddle? Here to win your sacrifice back? I, for one, would love to see you try.”

“Do not tempt a god, Tormentor.” Even the god's accent bled might. Elongated, impressive, baroque in speech.

“Loose threats, old-timer. It took me long enough to dredge up a cult that still worshipped you. I took her because I am an evil being, and I wanted to stab you right in the little solace you still get. So go on. Take her back. I dare you.”

“You shall mourn the day of turning yourself against me, scum.”

The inescapable whiteness of life let loose his eyes. Vuul was Vulm'mram once more, or at least in breath. There were no words for him to express defeat, taboo in what of the world stood straight. These were words he wasn't familiar with, quarantined in the back of his mind as wrong, spoken in allochthonous tongue and indecipherable diphthong. Words he had to wash out of his mouth, the filth, scum of the earth, disgusting, Vuul. You cannot carry the rank of Vulm'mram like you cannot carry the empire into victory.

Yes he can.

YES HE WILL.

There was no serene grace to his next assault. Vuul was a berserker, lashing into the field, not even remotely aware of what took him down last assault, flailing his weapons around, a dance of swords, a danse sacrale, sacrifice to the spring of death, waltz to Ankt.

Oceans of blood spilled. Leak that reeked of deities. Vuul couldn't hear it, but knew that the world inside her sounded like rain. It was such a beautiful, blightful, crimson rain. As she shook in despair, heart beating, she rained the battlefield.

What was this?

There was red on Rollo. They were questions. Mortality. Elixir of the dying. Worry and joy in scarlet fluid. But what was it? It felt as if with every touch his fingertips grew colder, lifeless, numb in tragic elan. Instinctively, he raised his red hand to his nose, and smelled the gods calling to him. Condemning him. So'a nai'ts'kai so'a evai'kai. That which is not dying is not alive. Their exact words, though he couldn't understand.

When he lowered his hand again, he wanted to feel why his shoulders were becoming so slow, but it drooped alongside his lips and made him drink Charon's wine. It made him see why life was worth dying for, why death was worth living towards. He felt a golden yellow light coursing through his limbs. It took each of them off carefully, and replaced them with ice, then with life and fruit that was worth dying.

There was a pipette in the air. It raced over Rollo, tracing the flames.

As it turned to become pencil, Rollo saw it dripping with Charon's liquid... wine... death... thunder, ice, life, white, air, gods, war, hate, lust,

blood

There was blood on him. He knew that now.

The demon above drew scars on him. His eyes were wide open.

His screams were either ecstasy or agony. He was okay with that.

Slowly the ice was growing over his body. For what is not dying is not alive.

For what is not dying is not worth dying for.

"So there are supposed to be seven rounds in this thing."

"Right."

"And nobody here has ever seen it before."

"Allegedly."

"So I got an idea, while all the important people are too busy to notice anything here."

Doug looked skeptical, and then decided to get the obvious question out.

"What are you holding behind your back?"

Henry revealed a small stack of paper, with grids and signatures, "Well I'm glad you asked. I figured you wouldn't want in until others were, so there aren't as many spots available as there were before."

Doug grabbed one of the sheets of paper. It was a betting pool for who gets offed in round one. He supposed the rest of the papers were for each other potential round. The demon guy seemed a popular choice. 'Who brings fruit to a deathmatch' somebody scribbled in the margin.

Henry continued, "I'm allowing betting up to a round in advance, and with exception for this first round, getting in on a round's pool while it's going costs twice as much, since you've got more to go on. I had Raoul from Legal help me out with some of this stuff. We've also got one for when our own 'entry' gets eliminated, if he does, and if it ends once he's out since it's our channel. If you're interested, we've also got a 'cause of death' pool going. I just took as many suggestions for betting as possible, and people are eating it up."

Doug grabbed a few more sheets of paper to look at them, "Henry, what if the Boss walks in? You'll probably get fired for this."

Henry merely pointed at a square in the middle of the Cause of Death pool sheet round 1. "Spider squished by Beckham Monster." It had the boss's signature.

"Well, can I tempt you today, Doug?"

"...I guess I'll put down some money on Martin for round 2, if only because his components could keep being useful to the story after he dies."

Somebody yelled from over where the TV was, "Oh my god, get over here. Rollo is getting killed!"

There was a black light there to pick him up, but Rollo couldn't see that anymore.

There was a god hidden in the air, but Rollo couldn't breathe that anymore.

Only a couple of the staff were glad that Rollo was eliminated from the game. Apparently most didn't consider that Rollo would be killed first, if at all. It didn't take too long to deal the winnings for the round.

In a sense, it was a poetic end. Killing off Rollo this early in what was certain to be a grim spectacle, it definitely set an example. Still, it pained the group of animators to see their work die away. “Is he dead?”

"It's just a show, man. A show being delivered by some particularly ambitious hackers, but still a show," Henry said, holding an unmoving pencil to a drawing pad.

"I know, but I had a bit of an uneasy feeling. What are you drawing?"

"Uh, I was gonna draw that scene out, but I can't really drive myself to finish it. That alien warrior dude was easy, but I'unno. I guess even after watching it, it's hard to properly visualize how to draw the joyful guy like this."

"Ha, so you do feel bad about this!"

"I guess. I mean I've only spent several years of my life animating him."

Somebody walked over from the cubicles towards the conversing workers, "Oh, hey Henry, Doug. How's the, uh, show going?"

Henry raised an eyebrow accusingly at their new companion, "Why Christian, I thought you said you were going to 'get some goddamn work done you slackers.' Or am I misremembering your words?"

"Yes, yes, laugh it up. I don't know. I just... for some reason halfway through drawing a frame, I just stopped. Suddenly lost all my momentum. I think I need to take a break or something, because I just can't draw Rollo right now."

"You.. can't?" Doug was skeptical, "I'll be right back. Henry, give me your drawing pad."

"Doug, no offense, but you can't even draw when you trace."

"I'm not going to be using it. Hold on a second."

Henry and Christian waited in anticipation to find out what the hell Henry was going on about, and they watched him go from animator to animator. By the time he came back, he had an unaltered sketchbook.

"Uh huh," Christian snarled, "Now what exactly were you out to prove?"

"Nobody could draw Rollo. Something's up."

"Like what, Rollo is actually dead?"

Doug stared at Christian, slightly dumbfounded, "Oh my God. What if..."

Henry popped in, "Doug, don't be crazy. Rollo's a cartoon character."

"But what if!? There's got to be a reason we can't stop the broadcast! There has to be a reason that nobody can draw something they've drawn hundreds or even thousands of times before! There's got to be a reason that happened once the TV showed our most popular cartoon get slaughtered."

Christian scoffed and started to leave, "I'm going to go have an extended lunch, and when I get back, I'm going to continue on my work, no matter what your stupid theory is. Have fun."

Henry flipped the bird at Christian as he left, thinking he couldn't see that, but sure hoping he did, "Doug, your guess seems absolutely insane, and if this weren't the strangest day I've ever had here, I'd normally not even consider the possibility of it. I'm gonna go see if the next round is starting and what happens with that, and you do some of that internet sleuthing you're so good at and see if you can find anything out."

Doug ran immediately to his cubicle and headed first to the most popular cartoon message boards.

Henry took more bets for the second round.

Anomaly · 07-21-2011, 05:15 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.

Not long after entering his cubicle, Doug slowly plodded out, pale-faced. Harry immediately greeted him.

"So what'd you find out?"

"It's not just us, Harry. No one can seem to draw Rollo. A ton of new threads are popping up by the minute about this, as well as about this whole 'Relentless Slaughter' thing."

"You're not trying to tell me that the very concept of Rollo is dead, are you?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

"That... How is that possible? It's a goddamned TV show, Doug. It can't affect the real world."

"But it has, Harry! I don't know how, but it actually has! Speaking of which, has the second round started yet?"

"No, it's been frozen on a black screen since Rollo died. We're beginning to think that the broadcast's over, but no one can seem to change channels, adjust the volume, or even shut off any TVs showing it. That's not just a problem here, either. We've gotten thousands of calls from enraged parents."

"Hey, everyone! Something's happening!" a voice called from the other room. Doug and Harry rushed back into the break room, where at least five or six others had already assembled. The picture on the TV began to distort slightly, almost cutting to static before returning to the usual empty, black expanse.

"Guess it was a false alarm, the-" Doug started, before being interrupted by an extreme close-up of the Tormentor's face.

"Hello, viewers!" the abomination shouted. Virtually everyone in the room was taken by surprise. "I figure now that your beloved cartoon armadillo's dead, I should tell you what's going on! If you're too stupid to pay attention, I'm known as the Tormentor. And before you even ask, yes, Rollo is dead. Actually dead. Haven't been able to draw or animate him? You never will again! He's passed on from your mortal realm, never to return!

"But now that that's cleared up... What's going on here isn't a cartoon, I'm sure a few of you might have realized. I mean, maybe you haven't since most of the first round was hand-drawn. But honestly, the opening scene? Everyone here besides Rollo? Nope, they're real. Even more real than most anything you'd watch.

"See, this is what's known as a Grand Battle in our circles. We're just a bunch of super-powerful beings known as the Grandmasters who abduct mortals, or even gods sometimes, and make them do battle for our amusement. They've been kept largely a secret by now, but you're the first beings in the Multiverse who've gotten to hear about them without being entered yourselves! What an honor for you!

"Anyway, that's why you can't get this broadcast turned off, no matter how hard you try. Nothing you can do can stop me! So I suggest you just sit back and watch six more innocent beings get brutally slaughtered and sent through a pleasing variety of hellish torments. Entertainment at its best! Without further ado, it's time for round two. Bye!"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rollo's horrified screams echoed throughout the infinite white expanse of the Paint canvas, stretched out long past his death. The pencil that had brutally and precisely sliced him to death rose up above his body, and raced into the heavens. With an audible "ding", a massive, gray rectangle appeared in the sky - to all those on the ground, the contents of the box were invisible. Only Ke, from her point high in the air (though she was barely paying attention by this point), could see the message written therein -

Save changes to "Untitled-1"?

The pencil instantly became arrow-shaped as it intersected with the box, making its way to a button labeled "no". In an instant, everything went black, the screams slowly dying out. The contestants felt themselves trapped, suspended perfectly still in the air, a sensation identical to that they had experienced hours before. Had it been hours? None could be sure how much time had passed since the instigation of this "Relentless Slaughter".

Light slowly crept into the room, revealing the same gloomy, dismal pedestal, adorned with massive pillars. One of the pillars, the one Rollo had previously occupied, had crumbled into bits, scattered across the floor. What felt like ages passed before a familiar, hideous cackle assailed the contestants as a shadowy, serpentlike form snaked its way up from the abyss below. It reared up, red eyes and fangs alike gleaming, as it slowly coalesced into the familiar, vaguely humanoid form of the Tormentor.

"Ahahahaha! That was great! I didn't actually know what to expect from that guy, but... Well, you all saw what happened. And by the way, he was a lucky one. He actually gets to die. The rest of you? Not so lucky. It'll get boring if the stakes don't get higher each round!

"Now, then, I suppose I should explain where you're going next." In an instant, each contestant was seized with an intense headache as their vision was replaced with images of the vast ocean.

"Welcome to the oceans of Nerina! Quite a view, isn't it? Maybe you'd like to take a vacation here sometime? Maybe a nice cruise! Well, this is exactly like that! If you define 'exactly like that' as 'in the same ocean as that'." Another migraine as the image changed to ruins deep underwater.

"This is the great city of S'kkoi! Or at least it was, before it sunk to the depths of the ocean. But don't worry, it's not vacant! I'm sure the local sea monsters would love to have you here! But that's not all, there's even a cult down here! They worship some long-dormant dark god that lies directly beneath the city. They throw the best parties, too! If you like your blood being drained." With a last sting of pain, the images disappeared and the contestants regained their normal vision.

"But you may be wondering, how are you supposed to breathe down there? It's underwater! Well, no worries about that! You'll find that you've changed a bit once you get there!" The Tormentor held up a number of his arms, and water began gushing in from the endless expanse above the contestants, pouring into the abyss below. In just a few minutes, the water reached the bottom of the pillars, and slowly began inching upward.

"What are you all worrying about? It's just a little water! Better get used to it!" The water climbed higher and higher, reaching the contestants in less than a minute. Each drew their last breath of air before the water overtook them, and each attempted to hold their breath as long as possible. Eventually, though, each gave out and took a gasp of water. They began choking, held underwater by their unbreakable bonds, utterly helpless. Eventually, their vision blacked out...

Show Content

MalkyTop · 07-22-2011, 04:54 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

The Tormentor actually had much in common with his ol’ Bossman, the more he thought of it. They both enjoyed evil and pain. And as they continuously pursued their goal of wide-spread torment, they both quickly got irritating. Sure, you wouldn’t want them to turn their attention towards you and generally shit on your day, but after a certain amount of time, the things they did and said became…somewhat of an annoyance.

The Tormentor was certainly spicing things up a little, though.

It took a while for Samael to convince himself to get to what he was certain was an upright position. His legs tangled up and he stumbled. It was not exactly odd, as his legs had been long and gangly and easily tanglable before. But the number of legs was very different. Really, he was just completely different than how he was before.

He had changed forms many times, even before the whole banishment-constant-reincarnation fiasco. So first he concerned himself with his surroundings.

Yes. Definitely underwater. Sand and rocks everywhere. He could feel his hair flow lightly and knew that he was probably not going to be able to hide his eyes very well this round. They didn’t seem too deep underwater, though.

But speaking of flowing things, his dress was not exactly wieldy in this environment, all billowing and wet, and if he ever managed to get back on land, it would end up dragging him down. Wait, no, when a guy was wearing it, it was a ‘robe.’ Right. Dress or robe, Samael figured it was probably safe to take it off here. He was already pretty certain what the Tormentor had done and it wouldn’t really matter if he was clothed or not. And also he could figure out how to get used to this sudden new form.

His hands were no longer hands, though, but very unwieldy and large claws. (Still had those square holes in them, though.) He found he couldn’t get them through the sleeves and had to rip it apart instead. He hoped that the girl who he took it from, Dorin or something, wouldn’t mind. But she was probably partly aquatic now too and just realizing how much baggy clothes could get in the way.

And with the robe off (it was white too, everybody knows you shouldn’t wear wet, white clothing), Samael had a good view of all the extra, spindly legs he had, rather thin and segmented. All eight of them came up to his torso, which had a blue back now and a white stomach that had a long, triangular abdomen segment. Right above that, though, was the unholy, cursed symbol. Of course, it couldn’t be hidden under his new shell. It had to be emblazoned on it. Though if he had an exoskeleton now, why did he still have hair?

Samael decided to just take for granted that his eyes were the same, but he suddenly wondered about the rest of his face. He brought his hands up but remembered that they were claws now and more likely to hit him rather than just gently feel. He was probably better off trying to find some reflective surface.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel the spines that came out the side of his cheeks. And he experimented with his mouth. It was now no more than a flap. In place of a tongue and teeth, there were those…small, thin, grabby…things. Segmented, small tentacles? Maybe if he ever survived this, he should look up some crab anatomy. In any case, he didn’t dare try to talk. He probably couldn’t. If he could, he’d find out later. But he was pretty sure all he could do was froth at the mouth and eat some algae.

The city ruins were in the distance and Samael supposed that he was supposed to head there. He would probably meet up with some of the others as he approached. If they didn’t accidentally kill themselves panicking about their new form.

No, don’t make morbid jokes, people don’t like that in the middle of a horrible and scarring fight to the death.

Samael walked forward and realized very quickly that none of his legs were really built to walk forward. He only ended up travelling rather slowly. He tried hopping, as with all these legs, he certainly had to be good at that, but the sand did not make it easy to jump about and he tumbled slowly down the hill.

It was then he realized that, well, now he was essentially a crab. And crabs tended to walk a certain way.

With a small groan, Samael scuttled in a quarter-circle. Then he strode sideways.

Actually, could he swim?

Probably not. Hahahah. No. That was too easy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ruins, of course, had been dilapidated. That was why the ruins were ruins in the first place. And something had to have happened for it to suddenly be in a rather unfamiliar environment it had not been built for. Half of it seemed to have broken off and fallen down into a nearby underwater crevice. But, if one had nigh Sherlockian skills in deducing, despite all the algae and overgrown seaweeds and barely recognizable structures, it would have been made apparent that some of the damage was rather recent, done after it had fallen. Scratches and scrapes adorned what were left of the walls. One large being seemed to have fallen in the middle of it and died, judging by the skeleton. There were carvings in the wall, carvings of a rather interesting symbol. This symbol could be best described as ‘suspicious.’

If you visited these ruins on a daily basis and managed not to run into anything with teeth and a bad attitude, you might have never been able to find a secret area secretly hidden somewhere under the ruins that led to a secret cavern with more secret carvings and skeletons that did not have the sense to be hiding in closets. You would never find an important altar (that was in actuality a fixed up counter dug up from an old kitchen). You would never find a group of gathered sea creatures, some more fishy than others.

You would never hear someone that appeared to be a well-decorated shark and leader raise some sort of important artifact and bellow, “…Today, we test Brother Kum’ai’s worthiness, so that he may be invited into the Brotherhood. Brother Kum’ai, please come forward.”

You would have never seen two secret tests, done in quick succession. The Joining of the Blood required one to slit a fin or an equivalent. The blood would diffuse and the other initiated would breathe it in. The leader shark always seemed to enjoy this much more – his pupils would always, without exception, dilate vacantly and he would stare off into the distance for a few minutes after the test was concluded.

The second test was a stronger test of devotion. It gave the potential Brother the honor of sacrificing. It was always somebody they knew. The sacrifice was always allowed to plead for their life.

If you had come upon this, you would have probably agreed that this was some lame teenager angst emo fish crap, albeit rather deadly. You would be right. You would also probably be slated for a quick sacrifice to their god, lovingly named The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Conqueror of All That Can Be Seen, Ruler of the Bottomless Pit, the Great Beast Called Soggoth, Defiler of the Heavens and Light and All That Is Good, Spawn of the Deepest Fires, and The Once and Future Lord of Darkness.

This would probably cement your first impressions, and indeed, you would probably hold this as fact until your untimely demise. It couldn’t be said to be false.

You would have also probably brought them one step closer to reviving The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Conqueror of All That Can Be Seen, Blah blah blah blah blah and Future Lord of Darkness.

GBCE · 07-28-2011, 04:03 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

SCREAM FOR THE DEATHS YOU HAVE DIED AND THOSE THAT AWAIT

drowning

FOR THERE IS NOTHING MORE SACRED THAN THE SILENCE

again

AND MAY THE LAST BREATH YOU TAKE

he just wished

BE THE SWEETEST ONE YOU KNOW

this time he’d remember

who he was

Gannet’s eyes flickered open.

He was aware of the water in his chest, like a closed fist holding something precious and long since forgotten, brought up from the tide and brine of the ocean. He would walk through the shallow waves of the shore to find it again and he would not fear the water as he had once done, before he had learned that nothing would stop the pull of the sea from taking him down. There had never been any point, he thought happily as he stared into the dark face of the water. There had never been any point in trying not to drown.

He pushed himself up, feeling the weight of the ocean on his shoulders like a comforting hand. Claws scratched on stone; he paused to examine the surface he’d died on. Vast swaths of rock, hacked roughly away by some strange tool, sank away on either side of him, forming the sharp angles of a great and hateful face. Though Gannet could not recognize it, the carved expression was one of furious agony, jagged teeth bared and blind eyes staring straight into the looming sea above. His hand hovered above an open eye; hesitantly he stroked it, unsure if he would be welcome, unsure if this was allowed. The stone held up under his claws. It was cold, far colder than it should be when the water was this warm. Maybe it didn’t want him here. He scratched at the great curve of the eye a little longer, wondering why he was even here at all.

A tongue of water, the effort of some distant force, washed over him and Gannet shivered, suddenly feeling vulnerable. His clothes were gone, he realized detachedly. Bare skin, always unnaturally pale, now glowed softly in the murk of the water. Warped muscles forced to grow far too much in far too short a time lay stretched over birdlike bones, covered in tiny scars from barnacles and razor clams and the claws of a nesting albatross

And eyes

There were two eyes, round and bright as harvest moons, staring at him from the sockets of his hips.

Gannet didn’t panic, though he wondered at first if he should. The sound of the sea, a titanic heart stuck on a single beat, was too loud for his own feeble thoughts to carry weight. He could only stare back at the things sunken into his flesh, as flawlessly joined to his skin as though they had grown there his entire life. Little moons, he thought, waving a hand over them slowly and watching their horizontal pupils track his fingers overhead. Little moons in the night of his body. He reached down to tear them out and froze as a thick black tendril lashed out around his wrist.

The drowned man startled, expelling a stream of bubbles from his mouth. Its grip was like iron on his flesh and he couldn’t pull away no matter how hard he tried. Do you really want to? Yes, he thought frantically, tugging on an arm that wouldn’t even move an inch. He wanted to be free, he didn’t want this on him or the eyes on his body or the statue’s snarling teeth scraping the skin off his back but they were there, and they wouldn’t let him go and he just wanted to be free please please please, child, stop your chatter. We have not the time for games.

Gannet stopped pulling at once, letting his arm slowly sink down onto the great carved face. The tentacle uncoiled like a snake sliding off its prey, letting the blood flow again where Gannet hadn’t noticed it stop. Look at me, it said. Look at us. Look at what we’ve become.

From his waist down, spiraling away from him and ever more out of his control, everything that could have been called part of Gannet was gone. In its place was a mass of rolling tentacles, black as night and writhing like eels. Each one was thicker around than Gannet’s legs had been, back when he had them, and gripped the statue with frightful strength as though they’d been rooted there. He saw with a feeling he couldn’t name that the few finer details that had existed on the sculpture had been ground off by their contortions. As he watched, something that could have been a cluster of beaks snapped under a mass of coiled muscle and rolled off into the darkness below.

Aren’t we beautiful, this new voice crooned, harplike as the tentacles seethed over the stone. Leviathan. Behemoth. I was old before anyone thought to count my years. I see the same in you, O pariah. Leper. You have aeons in your blood, yes, not yours but another’s. You take what was never meant to be given. The tendril, stemming from an arm now winding around Gannet’s ribs, tightened on his wrist.

His head swam, his tongue turned to lead. “I- I am an Eye-”

You are a victim, was the answer, and now the drowned one could see it, a blackness rising in his chest. It pierced him like shards of glass; he gasped for air and felt it burst into the water in his lungs, a leeching plague of night. It churned like a storm-tossed sea, a maelstrom in his bones, pulling away everything in him that might have tried to struggle. He tried to whimper but found that nothing in him would permit sound. A victim of something as old as I, and I as well…

Gannet’s head was hurting. He stared numbly at the rippling black flesh flowing seamlessly up to his ribs, and those terrible eyes glaring at him with the coals of a dying fire. Dying? O thou my brother. Perhaps my capsheaf had passed before your shadowgod called me here, but I have traded no words with death. No, not yet. I am not so ancient as that. The blackness was rising, rising now, spiraling up his throat and surely he was choking now, deprived of air and water and everything besides the darkness covering his tongue like bitter oil and dripping down from the roof of his mouth. He was speechless, helpless, and all the while the eyes of the moon held him in their ember gaze.

But we’ve been here long enough. We have time yet for such idle talk, do we not, my brother? The black cords of night were slithering up, releasing the frozen stone with the sound of falling rain and Gannet was horrified to find that he could feel them as though they were his own. They pushed at the statue with terrible strength and his neck was snapping down as he rushed airborne, waterborne, black tentacles hanging down like taunting fingers above the furious face of stone.

I do not think there is much near us in the way of the living, burned the shadows now creeping into the corners of his mind, growing like roots where they had no place to dig. Images exploded behind his eyes, too fast for Gannet to comprehend, and the shadow was upon him and he no longer had the strength to refuse. But what is death to you, O my brother? You fear nothing. He couldn’t tell if it was laughing or crying but lightning was going off in his head, flickering and flickering and he didn’t know how he’d ever lived like this, anything other than this would be fine please stop please I don’t want to go why’d you let them leave I don’t want them to leave I don’t want to be alone no no no stop please please please I don’t want to die

I don’t want to die alone is the way we all must go. A wanderer, I see it in your thoughts, yes. Wander we will, thou my brother. We carry no fear in our hearts, and the statue watched them leave, endlessly wishing them death in the abyss.

whoosh! · 08-04-2011, 02:47 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.

Ke awoke to find an unexpected glow to her surroundings. While surprising, its rather comforting presence offered the Remembrancer a little sanity to review her situation with.

The vastness of the sea stretched above her, but she felt only mounting claustrophobia with the pressure of all that water smothering Ke and sapping her strength. Tentatively Ke attempted to scuttle across the submerged rock and through the watery gloom, but short of sinking her hooks into the ground and pulling she seemed worryingly incapable of movement.

As this new revelation sank in, a little flicker of panic rose in her mind. The spider rushed to smother it with soothing thoughts, but the atmosphere of unease already present served to inflame and encourage that tiny spark.

Ke attacked to ground with renewed energy, flailing and clawing at it in her feeble attempts to simply move. She made some progress, and yet the pitiful nature of it stung almost as badly as if she had not moved at all.

She loathed and feared this with equal measure. Chitin trembling, Ke burned with the desire to have it all back: her pointless and boring life, worth so much now for the incredible freedom she had squandered. Here she had only a single story, unfinished, and one that was liable to have her killed alone and with no one to remember her in turn.

Ke sagged. Worthless. All of it.

All she wanted, all she needed so desperately in this dark place was to fly. Perhaps then she could pretend to be free.

Ke couldn't know for sure if it would work.

That didn't stop her inhaling the water.

In one beautiful moment her entire body contracted in a miraculous way, and as it straightened out she swept forward like an unfurling fan. Eight wide eyes stared out at the expanse before her, seeing an open sky where there had previously been a prison.

It was no different to flying, and so delightfully easy. A second time Ke slipped forward. Her hairlike tentacles trailed behind her like an exquisite train to some beautiful gown, and in that moment she noted without much amazement that the bioluminescence was her own. Absentmindedly trying to avoid the lurking fear she swam aimlessly, sometimes shying away from the eery stone structures that protruded from the seabed. Although her appearance was amiable enough, it was this fear that kept Ke tensed and uneasy.

But then she saw the spider, and forgot all about that.

At first she refused to believe it was real. The arachnid was tiny and distant, and yet was apparently impervious to the tugging currents of the ocean. It darted forward without pause, but even that was not the most unusual thing about it. The spider glowed with a searing white light. In contrast her own glow was barely separable from the gloom. Entranced, Ke floated closer until she was able to brush it with one of her legs.

A thrill went through her, and she could taste the open sky. Then she had no doubts, none at all, and dredging up the ancient memory she spoke to the spider in a language as old as the multiverse.

“Greetings, Brother.” Ke extended a pale leg.

The creature responded immediately, sweeping in a wide arc that led it to the tip of that leg. It scuttled up and laughed.

“I am no brother of yours, godling. If anything we are enemies, for I am of Anansi. You are none other than a creation of one of his rivals, dear Nyame of the Sky,” it replied in a melodious voice, one that was not so much heard as simply known. “Although it appears that something else has tainted your appearance.”

Ke blinked. Her heart was racing just at the name of the spider-god.

”A-Anansi? Truly? Can-” Ke hesitated. Being more corporeal than ethereal blinded her to most of the knowledge beings such as this creation knew instinctively, and she did not wish to embarrass herself in front of this aspect of Anansi (however insignificant). “Is it possible to speak with him? For as long as I have known of his feats I have wished to meet him.”

Once more the spider laughed and swung through the water.

”Certainly. I did not travel far from him to come here, wherever this place may be. He may enjoy meeting an aspect of dear Nyame.”

With that the spider was reversing its journey, beckoning for Ke to follow with an uncharacteristic chirp. She burst forward eagerly, but suddenly stopped.

Out in the darkness a body was suspended. The changes that had come upon since Ke had seen it last were significant, but still the identity of the person was obvious.

“Dorin?”

Woffles · 08-14-2011, 10:34 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

Yeah, let's do this

This has been taking ages. I am so sorry

GBCE · 08-29-2011, 09:22 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.

Vuul thrashed wildly in the water, striking at nothing. His body burned with futile anger; anger at the humans that had stolen his victory from him. He had them, and now...

Now he was underwater, and his legs felt... odd. Flexing them experimentally, he discovered they were no longer jointed. He raised a few to where his optical circlet could examine them, and was surprised to see tentacles. Armored tentacles.

As he took in his surroundings, he felt a small religious tingle as he realized the purpose of his new locomotors. The Tormentor was truly kind to equip Vuul with these limbs, so that he might bring the burning light of His righteous fury to these murky depths.

Vuul kicked, and shot forward. His lower torso, still capable of independent rotation, began to spin, and the tentacles behind him spun up into an elongated propeller. A pure white missile flanked by a wake of disturbed silt cruised across the dark ocean floor, and for the first time since this battle began, Vuul experienced calm. His mind, usually focused on the next battle, found itself directionless. He tried to focus on finding the humans, but...

The words of the dying Vhor rang through him, and he shuddered. The vision of so many of his kind, dead and dying, haunted him. Where had they come from? Were they real? No, they could not have been; surely the Tormentor would not kill so many of the Alvum. A vision, then, sent by his god, perhaps as a warning for what might happen should he fail in his holy duty. Or perhaps...

Perhaps his god had chosen him for a higher purpose. Perhaps the vision was meant to show that the Alvum were no longer worth the Prime's attentions. Perhaps, in revealing His True Self to Vuul, the Tormentor wished to begin anew, and create a better species, and a more glorious Empire.

The words of the Vhor were true, then. He was Vulm no longer, casteless, pastless, abandoned by the false Hierarchy as the Prime Alumvaeum had abandoned it! He was now simply Vuul, and he would bring death and destruction to whomever the Tormentor may desire.

Which, if Vuul remembered correctly, was everyone.

A shadow began to solidify in the distance, and Vuul could make out straight lines and unnatural angles. As he had seen nothing else so far, he altered course. His mind was once again focused, on the humans, on the non-humans, and on any other beings present in this world.

Vuul was coming to kill them all.

GBCE · 09-03-2011, 01:14 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

Gannet sank like a dead man in the darkness.

His host, his brother of the night, had given up trying to speak to him when all the drowned one could manage was a string of incoherencies. It hadn’t liked the way he talked; it grew angry when he tried to tell it part of the Hymn. Now the invader was curled up at the corners of his mind where he’d left it, neither willing to come closer nor to leave. It said things to him that he didn’t understand from that corner. Little things in its little voice, like a part of himself he’d forgotten about. It asked him where he’d come from, what he’d been before, why he was here and what his real name was. Gannet didn’t understand the questions at all and he asked the blackness to stop; he wanted his brother to leave but that was fratricide. Blood in the veins, blood in the water, wash and wash but you’ll never come clean, I’m in your blood now, O thou my brother. You’ll never be rid of me.

Gannet drifted for a little while longer, aware that the tentacles that weren’t his were moving in strange ways that propelled him through the sea. This wasn’t swimming to him. He remembered holding his breath until fire crept into his lungs and he had to leave the arms of the ocean for air, gasping as the gulls cried far above his head; he remembered spearing fish on his claws and watching them die. He remembered lots of things. He remembered a giant and a chemical man, a spider and a death that walked. Fire and water, a burning ocean, a ship that left him stranded, a light and a shadow wrapped around each other in a spiral, never meeting but winding closer and closer until the boundaries between them disappeared…

He remembered her.

“Is she dead?” he asked softly.

Who?

The question caught Gannet off-guard. How could anyone not know who she was? She… she was… He… She was his, wasn’t she? Or was he hers? She was the shadow and the light, and the Oracle, and the voices in the dark, and she was pain and fury and ecstasy pulling him down to drown.

He felt his brother’s impatience with him at this. The shadows in the corner of his head rolled like a storm waiting to break and Gannet cringed away from them. It was hard to hide from your own thoughts. Carefully he sent his brother the image of her as she’d been when they were drowning in each other; he couldn’t remember her face, but he didn’t need to. He had her scent, the taste of her blood, the shadows hidden in light and the voices she’d spoken to him with, and the Oracle-

Dorin? This girl?

The name didn’t mean anything to Gannet any more than his own did. Words were only sounds, nothing more than the crying of gulls. The darkness of his brother’s mind was heavy on his thoughts as the newcomer searched his thoughts for memories of her and the others who hadn’t been important. It was as if a hand of ice was picking through his head and flashes of faces and bodies burst from his mind unbidden. All the others… he remembered them now. They could have all died and it wouldn’t have mattered. The Oracle hadn’t needed them, had only needed her and him and nothing else.

Ah, the voice chuckled, your lady-love.

Gannet responded with a wave of ambiguity and helplessness. What did his brother know of the Oracle? Beyond the turmoil of his thoughts he saw a mountain of shadows looming in the water and wondered if it was going to swallow him alive.

Is this one the cause of your sickness? Is she your ‘Oracle’? Your damned thoughts are too tangled, all I can read is your maddened chattering. Why did you not see fit to tell me?

I am not sick, Gannet thought uneasily. He hadn’t heard most of what his brother had said. That word had brought a flash of terror along with an image of men dressed in white and long thin knives and sharp things and the needle that had been in his arm. He saw walls stained with blood and viscera and faces hidden by cruel masks; smelled the reek of death and a cruel sterility. Someone else’s memories. He wrapped his arms around his ribs and heard his claws rattle with shivering.

Scares you, does that? Poor fool pariah. You are lucky to have me. We’ll talk of this later when your diseased mind is not so clouded by fear. Look up now, child; look at where I’ve brought you.

The shadow mountain had come far closer than Gannet would have expected even with his poor grasp of time. Cruel faces glared out at him from carved niches and jagged stone claws reached out towards them with a frozen urgency. He felt their hatred, deeper and older than the statue he’d woken on, calling him in so they could tear him apart and wash his filthy blood clean in the water. They hated him, hated him with the revulsion of a mother whose children he’d slaughtered, a ghost who’d died by his hand, a thousand tortured souls who had him and him alone to blame for their screaming deaths. He and he alone was the source of their loathing and it beat against his mind like a hammer, hating and hating and hating him and only him, his name on the tips of their frozen tongues like a blasphemer’s curse. Even the mountain itself was cursing him as it drew him in, promising him an eternity of unspeakable torment in its jagged teeth and an endless slaughter in its stony heart.

The calling was so powerful that it formed a song like the Oracle’s, a din of hate and fear and a burning hunger that yearned to swallow the world in its gaping jaws. He could feel it pulling him in and his brother moving not away, but towards it, bringing them ever closer to the hateful shadows with a terrifying deliberateness. Did he not know? Couldn’t he feel it? Sick with fear, Gannet called out to the darkness in his mind and showed it images of corpses bloated from drowning and skeletal from predators, the bones of their stiffened fingers pleading for it to turn away and leave this place before it devoured them both and they were dragged down into the seething hatred for the rest of time.

But the darkness only laughed, and his brother carried on.

Walls rose around them as they drifted towards the mountain’s base, rotten with tunnels just enough like the ones in the Oracle’s den to give him cause to hope before he saw the things carved on them. The foreboding he had felt was palpable now, a thick wave of tangled thorns that fell on him like a net and smothered his thoughts under a deafening drone of fear. Even his brother, alien as he was, weakened slightly under the terror that wracked Gannet’s mind. Nevertheless he forced them onward, drowned man and leviathan both, into the heart of the shadows that swallowed them and left nothing behind but bones.

_____________________

In the core of the Drowned Temple, a facet of the god called Soggoth woke.

It was a small waking, and a quiet one. It was no more than the opening of an eye in the midst of millions more, the emergence of a thought in a mind so vast it could not be said to be a mind at all. It was a world in on itself, a dark and drowned world that consumed the lives of lesser beings like a whale devouring krill, and like that whale it neither knew nor cared what its fodder had to say, if they said anything at all.

But the voice of one of its children calling from outside the dark was enough to remind it of a time when it had not been so large, when it had not been able to boil the seas with a thought and summon down eternal darkness with a whispered word. This facet was one among millions, and it had time for the words of a child.

“I have brought you an offering, Destroyer. Attend to me.”

Woffles · 09-09-2011, 10:54 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

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.”

Anomaly · 09-15-2011, 04:24 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.

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Ixcaliber · 09-24-2011, 06:07 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Connection Lost.

Martin was used to quickly trying to assess an unfamiliar situation, admittedly most of the time the answer was if not readily apparent then at least able to be inferred from context. He wasn’t really sure how anything could explain the situation he found himself in. First things first; he was underwater, though as a machine, and with the compulsion to breathe completely optional, this was not such a big deal. What was more distressing was that below this waist his body was replaced with that of a shark. A long silver tail curved beneath him and a feel along his back revealed a triangular fin growing from his spine. Reflected in the shattered glass of what was once a mirror Martin quickly identified the folds of skin upon his neck as gills. It might have been the mirror but he could have sworn his mouth was wider than it ought to have been, and inside his teeth were sharpened to a point. It gave him an intimidating smile, or would have done if this bizarre situation had given him any inclination to smile.

As bewildering as suddenly discovering yourself to be half shark is, it did not seem like an explanation was going to be forthcoming. He hesitantly pushed it to one side and focused on things he had half a chance of coming up with some kind of rationalization for. Around him, the debris of what was just about recognisable as being a house at one point. The walls had crumbled away and seaweed had grown across more or less everything but it was apparent that at some point in time it had been a building that someone had lived in. From this vantage alone Martin could see scores of buildings, some more ruined than others. The tallest structure remaining was a skeleton picked clean; it laid across the town several stories tall. Martin gazed out across the underwater ruin and tried to piece together a rational explanation for what was going on.

Not that it did him any good. The only explanation that made any semblance of sense of this far-fetched situation was the notion that he was dreaming. Admittedly he had never experienced a memory lapse during a dream before, or to be more accurate he couldn’t remember having a memory lapse during a dream before. Still if this place was something constructed from his own subconscious he had to wonder what the hell was going on in his head to produce such a dark and dismal visage. Martin not feeling much like wandering… swimming around a dark and dismal mindscape, tried to force himself awake without much in the way of success. He pinched himself and though his perfectly recreated skin registered the pressure and slight pain of his pinch he did not jolt upright in bed like he wished that he would.

The next couple of minutes were spent attempting to recreate that feeling of falling that jolts you awake just as you are falling asleep. Though, since he was underwater, it was easier said than done. Hell, he couldn’t even splash cold water on his face. It was as he futilely tried to unbalance himself something stirred in the ruins. If he had been paying attention to his surroundings he might have noticed a long thin shape slinking across the ruins, cautiously approaching him. It was not till the creature erupted from the shadows of a nearby ruin, all teeth and eyes that Martin reacted. He would later admit that it was not the best or manliest reaction. He jammed his eyes closed, instinctively pulled his limbs in and angled himself way from the oncoming threat (as best he could in the couple of seconds the creature took to reach him anyway) and whispered to himself ‘wake up wake up wake up!’.

The creature, its scales slick and midnight black, plunged its needle sharp teeth into Martin’s shoulder. Artificial pain shot through his body as the eel-like thing attempted to puncture his metal chassis. Martin quickly opted to turn off the artificial pain, and after taking a quick moment to recover he reached over and grabbed the creature. Though the creature attempted to struggle and squirm loose from his grip, the more obviously mechanical of his hands gripped it tight and pulled it loose. It flailed in his hand, alternating between trying to slip free and dig its fangs into the mechanical hand that held it tight. Martin swung the creature round; slamming it against the ruined wall until it finally stopped moving.

He took a look at his shoulder, gashes torn through the memory polymer that was his skin. The water around it was ever so slightly red as blood diffused from his body. It was rather obviously as fake as everything else about Martin, but somehow he did not think that would matter if there were any real sharks in the vicinity. He glanced around anxiously searching for some kind of shelter he could take. With none in his immediate vicinity he picked a direction and swam, deeper into the city, looking for somewhere he could hole up. Though he wasn’t exactly sure what was going on he was pretty sure he wasn’t dreaming.

MalkyTop · 09-27-2011, 10:29 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

Really, it wasn’t so bad once he got the hang of it. ‘It’ being ‘everything he wasn’t immediately familiar with’ which, actually, now that he thought about it, could be easily simplified to ‘everything.’ Water was a rather paltry obstacle and he walked through it with ease. Walking, by the way, was also not much of a problem, though his neck was starting to ache from staring sideways too much. Maybe it was just that once he got his bearings, his instincts just kicked in. His crab instincts. He never realized he had crab instincts.

Samael slid down another hill (…dune?) and almost gently collided with a rock at the bottom. The city was growing ever closer, but he still felt that he was going extremely slowly. (Perhaps his crab instincts weren’t as strong as he had thought.) Honestly. Of all aquatic life, of all the fast-swimming sharks and octopodes and what-have-you, and he got the crab, pretty much the only one who moved ponderously. Well, besides starfishes. And probably a bunch of other things he couldn’t think of. Oh man, at least he wasn’t part-sea cucumber. (How would that even work?)

It was while he was thinking about this that he saw a creature barreling towards him out of the corner of his eye. Samael turned to greet it, claws raised. (Actually, he hadn’t really managed to learn how to use those yet…oh well, hopefully he would learn quickly.) The black streak whipped around him as he snapped at it and hissed (though it just came out as bubbles). It seemed to slither through the water a few feet away before circling around, waiting for him to turn his back. As Samael stood there, giving off a few warning snaps, he realized that the city wasn’t perpendicular to him anymore. Which would be a big problem if he wanted to keep going there.

Well, even if he was sideways, he could still keep an eye on the thing. And he could probably keep retaliating if it suddenly shot towards him. And in any case, he could just try running as fast as he could. Which was admittedly not much at all with these gangly crab legs.

Letting out a large sigh in the form of more bubbles, Samael turned sideways, snapping a claw again when it seemed the creature started towards him. And then he galloped away.

His speed surprised him as much as it did the creature and he managed to trip over himself but was upright again a second later. The creature began circling around him, closer and closer, before it tried to constrict him, but he managed to clamp on to its tail and squeezed hard enough to discourage it from any other attack, and it simply followed far behind, settling for a sullen glare.

Samael suddenly found himself in the ruins of the city. Well, that was good. But he really was expecting to see at least one of the oth—

Samael tumbled in the water when something suddenly slammed into him. Looking up, it was an unmistakably sharkified…what’s-his-face. Matthew…no…Martin, right. Sharky Martin Sharkface was looking for what he crashed into as well and as they locked eyes, he seemed to tense up.

Samael raised a claw in a pacifying greeting, causing Martin to get up and shoot off.

“Hey!” Samael tried to shout, though it came out a garbled mess. The demon attempted to follow, but Martin was too fast. And also, Samael tripped as soon as he got up.

"Hey! Martin! Wait!"

Though of course, it was unlikely anybody could understand him.

GBCE · 10-14-2011, 07:02 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Adenreagen.

Cool and dark. He had seen the darkness before when he was being held under the water, breathing out air and replacing it with liquid that turned the light around him to a black pitch that he couldn’t tear off his eyes even though… no, there was nothing on his eyes, he was above the water not under it and the one in his hands had stopped struggling long ago, he was blind but gave one last feeble kick as the darkness came for him. Or did it? Was he standing in the light? Was that even truly him? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t think didn’t want to think, not thinking would be the easiest thing to do, the most painful, most gentle, most most most most!

Dark and cool. Heavy. Pressing down upon him even though he couldn’t see. And yet there were things around him that he knew to be present, that had been there long before his colony was settled so many millennia ago. His eyes opened, and he saw the light amid the darkness of the leagues of water he sensed above him: water upon water upon endless stretches of water. He might live his entire life trying to reach the surface and still die down in the dark.

“Are you giving up your faith, Lieutenant Zimmer?”

The Oracle to his Creator had spoken, and he had wanted to die rather than answer, he had thrown himself into the water to be held under, slamming the man’s head against the shore until it caved in, and continuing until there was nothing but mash in his hands and blood upon the waves. No… he had sat and cried before her majesty, being moved away from her before he could answer. One shining moment to speak directly to his God, and it was torn away from him because he was to afraid to speak, too busy remembering the buried memories of his that belonged to someone else.

No. I am not. I will never.

He looked again. There in the darkness lay the ruins of an ancient city, a shadow outside the cave he appeared to be in, the entrance surrounded by curiously jutting spires that waved in the current. Current. Widening his eyes in panic, he again realized that he was, in fact, underwater. So deep that light might never reach down to where he was, so deep that the air his lungs were burning for what was impossibly out of reach. Try as he might, his lungs cried for that deadly action of breathing and he inhaled. So desperate for air he breathed and felt water rush in through all five of his…five? The rush of water cleared his head, but brought its own mystery. Five. He had gills! He would survive under the water, for however long he was forced to be here. His panic over impending doom subsided, he again felt the need to find his link to God, to ask a link to the divine his burning questions, and began trying to swim out of the cave.

Instead he fell forward, the ground rushing up to meet him and at the same time staying level. Instead of falling, he rolled, though the spires in the cave seemed to move with him and keep him trapped. He remembered an immense underground cavern, a place where one of the few Mouths dwelled, spouting the words and commands of the Oracle. A cavern filled with Teeth to protect it, and Eyes to watch over it. A dank place filled with the skeletons of the dead and the flesh of the living, a place he arrived in only to be sent away to watch, to learn, to observe. Zimmer shook his head and looked around again. Was he truly in a cave? He had gills, maybe the spires were part of him as well, considering the way they moved even though they appeared to be rock. He tried to reach out, but one arm was pinned under him, and the other he couldn’t feel at all though some of the spires seemed to move the way he had wanted his arm to reach. He knew now that he truly wasn’t human any longer, but some mix of human and creature.

Spines? What has spines? Spines and gills and cannot swim, but can walk? Oh. OH! OH GOD HELP ME!

Zimmer realized with a shock that he was never in a cave to begin with. He was a spiny creature with one of his arms and face, but the rest of his limbs were replaced with spines except one that glinted like metal off a glowing fish in the gloom. He was a delicacy among certain of his peoples, what the traditionalists called an urchin.

I’m an urchin. AN URCHIN! He tried to cry out into the sea, but only a colored ring of chemicals drifted out to show his anguish. I can’t even talk! But I can protect myself with the spines. I have to keep my wits, or else I’ll never survive like this. Oracle help me, Oracle please, please…Oracle. I must find it. Must ask her why my Lord would do this.

Resolute, he began rolling to the sunken city, reveling in the speed a tumble down the slop accomplished, bouncing off rocks and impaling small fish as though they were not even there and slowly drawing them in to the primitive mouth that awaited their flesh. Zimmer watched with fascination as some of them struggled in their death throes, wondering how fish became so small as to be impaled by a creature like the sea urchin he had become. With a start he realized that they were large fish, some reaching three feet long, recognizing them from the waters of his world, which had brought them from a planet so long lost. He must be abominably large for creatures of their size to be impaled on small clusters of spires. The puzzle of his size occupied him so much he didn't notice he had reached the city until he bumped into one of its walls. Looking at the architecture up close and comparing it to the fish he had thought small, he realized the city was massive, built on a scale for beings of gigantic proportions. Using the wall as a reference, he quickly sized himself up.

I’m almost three feet across! And that’s just my core, the spines put me at almost a dozen feet. And I can see all around me, in every direction! I’m an eye with a spear wall to protect me. Heh… hehehehehh…. I’m an Eye. Oh Gannet, would that you could see me. I’m more an Eye than you for our Oracle.

He remembered being tasked as an Eye for the Oracle, “Go and see, see what lies among the waves and the shores, see what lurks in the plains, for I am the Oracle, and he has awoken. He is the heart that beats in the darkness, he is the blood that will never cease.”

Wait…That wasn’t his memory, it belonged to another, and the end wasn’t even part of that memory, but came from beyond. Shaking himself out of his stupor, he listened to the chanting that came from within the city itself.

“…or the Bringer of Despair. The Deathless Prince, the Bringer of Night, these are the words that shall set him free…”

Looking for the source of the chant, he saw a creature with giant tentacles swim down to a temple, and it appeared to be waiting for whatever was inside to come out to it. Though the creature was unfamiliar, Zimmer felt that part of it was like him, sensed the Oracle among the beast, knew that he had to reach it.

“I am the sin and the temptation and the desire, I am the pain and the loss and the death of hope. The disciples of the light rose up against me, and bound me to this place for all eternity. I have been imprisoned”

As he watched, a giant shadow loomed from the temple, dwarfing even the leviathan. It spoke in a voice similar to the chanting, but much deeper, much more sinister, much more maddening.

“This is my darkness, child. This is my domain. You little things that live here in the dark and still die in the end are only my subjects, to do with what I will. You want me to attend you? You think yourself old, but I witnessed the birth of your race, and its life, and its death of all but you. I was before Time and Light, before the Cataclysm that sank the city of my kin and I beneath the waves. You think yourself eternal, but I have seen your cycle to its end, a thousand thousand times I have seen. What is it you think that you have to offer me that would please me?”

It was so terrible, that voice that spoke to the leviathan so great. And yet it stood before the frightening majesty of that being, unshaken by the unspoken threat it contained. But for the urchin that observed it, it was too much. The tendrils of its words seeped into his mind: the power of a being of dreams and nightmares fighting for dominance against the already embattled dogma of God and the creeping madness of the Oracle. Zimmer began to laugh, and scream, and rage against the terrors going on in his mind. Memories that weren’t his and yet belonged to him, visions of pasts and futures so terrible they made him want to gouge his eyes to stop them. If only he could reach with his spines, he could end the torment of what he was seeing in the water and what he saw in his mind. But he couldn’t, for they were made to protect him from predators, not made to bend and reach.

Instead he began to spin against the wall, trying to snap off his spines. Succeeding in a breaking a few, the local agony a relief from the torment in his mind, if only that voice would STOP. He could see the city sinking beneath the waves, watching it from the eyes of a thousand beings who lived among the buildings in this forsaken place. Could see it in the ancient memories of an Eye on the shore so high above, watching a place forbidden to them vanish as it hunted for fish to eat and bring to the ever hungry Teeth that protected the young Oracle. Hear the preaching of blasphemy of believing in the existence of beings great enough to rival the one true God, that only He was there to shield the just and the weak. That beings such as the one in front of him shouldn’t exist. There was a war going on in his mind, and Zimmer was powerless to choose a side, or even make them silent. He slumped down against the wall next to his broken spines, waiting for the shadow to leave, and maybe leave his mind. Forced to listen within, and what it said to the leviathan that had asked an audience.

He began to cry.

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GBCE · 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.”

Anomaly · 12-06-2011, 05:11 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.

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