Hidden 6 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Antarctic Termite
Raw
OP
Avatar of Antarctic Termite

Antarctic Termite Resident of Mortasheen

Member Seen 4 mos ago

ZOTASH'E
-Sling
-Flute
-Skull of Ventus
-meeting Sable
--The Cure
-Terrestrial Citadel
-Gneissposting?

LAMBDA
-Dwarf / Elemental fights?

DABBLES
-Dabbles the Dove, Prophet of All-Beauty
--High Administrator of Alefpria, Chief Advisor to Lifprasil, and Pilot of the Fathership
-Exit stage left, spacewards
--BLESSED ARE THE MEEK

JVAN
-Xos-tied
-Collected Memories

FLESH CENTAUR SCULPTOR
-Fight Help
-Hear the whispers
-Seek power
-Burn It Down

AMUL'SHARAR
-A certain business with the deer
-Where the World Begins and Ends
--roleplayerguild.com/posts/4604565

TIRA
-Finish with Vowzra
-Fly south
-Meet the Mother

PHI
-Phiposting

THE MERCENARY
-Who cares

TAUGA
-Two more Marquisate posts I barely even remember
-I told you they'll grow in
Hidden 6 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Antarctic Termite
Raw
OP
Avatar of Antarctic Termite

Antarctic Termite Resident of Mortasheen

Member Seen 4 mos ago

Some general plans

Phiposting



-Jvan and her pipe
-The Mercenary
-The Spirits of Sky City
-Malley at the Terrestrial Citadel
-Sable's childhood
-The Januaract, and the Januaires

Phi - awww, kids
Phi - FIX YOUR RELIGION
Phi - kill a man
Phi - Invest!
Phi - Orianaposting?
78.media.tumblr.com/ae1e10bcbe4b0d969
Phi - Belvast
Phi - Missionaries
Phi - DREAM SUBTERFUGE

Tauga plans?
Hidden 6 yrs ago 6 yrs ago Post by Antarctic Termite
Raw
OP
Avatar of Antarctic Termite

Antarctic Termite Resident of Mortasheen

Member Seen 4 mos ago

Lambda reared back on one leg, flexing the other, slowly, ever so slowly, in a perfect arc forward, leaning back as she did so until her body formed a perfect Y. With equal slowness, she held her muscles still as she brought her leg down, landing gently. Then she repeated the same motion in a fraction of a second. This time, when she landed, she didn't stop.

With her remaining arm crossed tightly over her chest, Lambda kicked from one side, spun with the movement, kicked backwards in the same direction, and, landing there, stepped backwards, spun, and kicked from the other side. She landed in a fighting stance, hand held perfectly still in line with her face.

The wind whistled through the branches of the feather-trees. The light was pink and pale yellow.

Lambda finished her training there, and bowed to the impromptu dojo as she left. The paper screens forming its walls had been woven here by Remph, and were a shadow of the Remph temple further in the multicoloured tropical jungle of Julia. She was always welcome. All Pronobii were.

Recombinance was hanging from a weaponstand 'outside'. She stepped past it and did some more calisthenics, not yet exhausted- but then, no one was watching, so she could probably call it a day. Eventually the huge reptilian tyrant waiting under the canopy snapping at silky things bothered her with its crooning, and she went to comfort it with a cluck of the tongue.

Fighting had changed since her loss. With only one hand with which to strike, Lambda could no longer punch without also dropping her guard; she was unbalanced and side-heavy. The Remphs had taught her to make up for it with the use of her legs. With Jvan's blessing, she was gaining ground rapidly.

She smiled. A little. "Watch your ass, Vestec," she murmured. "I'm coming for you."

"I decided I'd come to you!" A voice declared cheerfully behind her. Vestec was floating behind her, laying on his side with his head propped up. A theater mask replaced the missing left half of his original mask. "You should really pray to Teknall. He can give you a new arm instead of having only one."

If Lambda had a heart, it would have stopped beating. As is, her neck flipped one-eighty degrees and froze there, like the automaton she was, unable to form any remotely appropriate expression behind her blindfold.

"What? No warcry? No making good on those oaths of revenge? I'm surprised. I would have thought that you would have leapt at this opportunity." He sat up, the theatrical left half of his mask forming a grin. "You should know by now that I like to appear randomly. Now, tell me l-"

Eight months of training vaporised in Lambda's head and she punched him twelve times.

Vestec didn't move. He even leaned forward into the punches, giggling as they hit. When they stopped, he flipped over on his head and looked at her. "Are you quite done? Get it all out of your system? If that's a yes, I've got something you might be interested in. Something to do with your little crusade to get all of Reathos' parts together."

Lambda, who had not yet gotten it all out of her system, responded by trying to drown out the sound of his voice with the sound of her shin colliding with his head- but Vestec had mentioned her god, and even if she wasn't listening, she couldn't but hear every word.

Vestec giggled again, head taking the kick without flinching. "I'll just keep talking then. You keep hitting till you get bored. Deal? Deal."

This seemed to floor Lambda, who promptly marched back to the dojo to fetch a bigger weapon.

Vestec followed, continuing to talk. "They're scattered across the globe. You have one. My daughter has another. I forget where the rest have gone, not interested in looking too hard you see, but thats not why I'm here. You know the legend I spread about it, of course, and how an undead and unbeatable army of your...cousins would you say? Th-"

"I know the story, you slimy prat!" said Lambda, running at him with Recombinance.

Vestec giggled, continuing as he moved to the side of her spear attack. "That is why most people want it. That's why you want it. The army, and perhaps to destroy it. And to do that, you're going to have to march across the continent and through at least two empires to go get it. Probably more since my son and his empire are going to want them too. Which means you're gonna lose your quest."

"Even if you get everything, even if you manage a big enough army or move fast enough, you're going to lose. Everyone. And everything. Your little mutated worshippers of Jvan are going to tumble down and she's going to toss you aside and move onto her next project. See, that's the difference between Jvan and I. I let you know that I'm going to abandon you for something more interesting from the beginning. Jvan, Jvan lets you believe you're special to her, and then tosses you aside. I can help so your race doesn't be eradicated entirely, Lamy dear."

"We are not-" Lambda swung at him with the spearaxe with increasingly less wild blows. "-Jvan's people! We rebelled against her! We don't need her and we don't need-" She was an excellent fighter, when she wasn't a stupid one, and it was starting to show, even with one hand and no ice around. "-your filthy help-" A nearby tree crystallised explosively as Vestec appeared near it. "-you utter mongrel."

"Creative insults! Not the best I heard, but pretty good. And, if you were so 'rebellious' and 'independent' then why do you reek of her blessings?" Vestec disappeared and reappeared holding a Remph. It looked resigned. "And why do you have so many of her worshippers in your people?"

"...They're a gift," Lambda said, taking a moment. The brilliant flora at her feet began to die, an expanding circle of energy drawn into her siphon. "Jvan owes us. Now she'll repay us."

Vestec giggled. "A 'gift'? Gifts don't spy on you for their giver." Chaotic energy flashed and the Remph disentegrated into glittery dust. "There. Now she can't watch our conversations. As for Jvan owing you, she doesn't repay her debts. Not like me. She lies and evades them."

"Face it. You're as much Jvan's nation as you were Reathos'. Before I killed him, anyways."

"..." The deathly creep accelerated somewhat, approaching Vestec's feet. The already hot tropical air began to shimmer around Lambda's head. "...Maybe so. But even a self-centered, childish tyrant-" her grip tightened on Recombinance- "-is better than you."

"I understand. You're upset. I killed daddy, then doomed your...cousins? Cousins. They're cousins at this point. To be slaves for whoever grabs daddy's bits and throws them together. And I'm not asking you to choose me over her. I find it delightful she's still getting followers and armies. Makes it easier for her to fight back whenever someone else comes to kill her and her followers. I'm here to offer you help, so you don't die like the change eaters are. Or will be, at anyrate."

"...I choose death," said Lambda, and the forest exploded.

Ice ruptured everywhere, from every tree and the humid air. Dewdrops condensed into a thick mist broken only by Lambda's blazing form, shot towards Vestec on a spear of dead ice, Jvan's weapon shining in the dimness.

"Oh nooo, whatever shall I do you're coming at me so fast I'm gonna die the panic the terror oh such hubris, woe is me woe is me!" Vestec wailed, his mask twisting into an exaggerated frown. Right as Lambda reached him he disappeared with a 'pop!', and appeared in the Realm of Madness, giggling. "I'll let her stew for a bi-"

Something tugged at the back of his coat, and Vestec found himself lifted up on the end of a long, burnt arm. "That was unfair, Vestec," said a voice he'd never heard before.

"...HOW MANY AVATARS DOES JVAN HAVE?!" Vestec exlaimed, looking behind him. The huge charred flower laughed.

"Still less than her sister," it said, and tossed him through a portal beyond which Lambda's weapon still waited.

Vestec hit the ground as the spearaxe sailed over him, halted, spun and then stabbed him in the chest. "Not very fair." He grumbled. He appeared to have been nailed to the ground. Looking down, he clucked his tongue. "This doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would." She stabbed him again. "...Back to my original point. What's not very fair is having an avatar do your dirty work."

Lambda was as surprised as he was, but didn't hesitate to continue impaling him with Recombinance.

He looked up at the angry pronobis. "Question. Why do you have an avatar of Jvan helping you? Its very rude. And doing nothing to disprove my point that you're a servant of Jvan. And you do know you're not... doing anything right? I mean, it hurts more than when Logos stabs me, but that's only because Logos doesn't even hurt me."

"You bullied her," said the Isonymph, standing clear of the raging blur of fire and ice that was rapidly melting the surrounding debris into slush.

"I wasn't bullying her. That would imply I was using my powers to make her do something she didn't want to, or to make her feel bad. The latter she's doing quite well on her own, and the former I haven't even been doing. What makes you think I was bullying her?"

The Isonymph wasn't so easily swayed. "You bullied her."

"Did I though? She seems really okay." Recombinance shoved through him again, twice in succession. "I mean, aside from the eternal rage. You should really get that under control. You're getting Violence all excited. Tell me when you're done, then we can talk about it."

They were there for a while.

A Remph came and watched the scene. Vestec shot it with another chaos bolt, intercepted by the Isonymph. "You're no fun!"

It purred strangely, and let the bolt go. The Remph imploded into copper feathers.

Lambda's thrusts grew slower, shallower, and finally she raised Recombinance and sank down on it as it fell, sprawling loosely on Vestec's chest and dripping acid. The two floated in a puddle of cold mud, surrounded by ice. The body of her lizard lay frozen on the ground. Lambda's drain had killed everything visible and burned much else.

"Just die," she begged.

"Mmm, no." Vestec replied cheerfully. He patted her on the back. "Feel better now? Got all that rage you were so impotent to use against Jvan because she rarely deals in person out? Would you like to listen to how I can stop your people from being eradicated as war hungry maniacs, or do you need a few more stabs?"

Lambda didn't seem to be breathing. Her mouth formed the outline of some unspoken words.

'Stupid... bitch...'

"That's a new one. I haven't been called a bitch before. Stupid, plenty of times. You get points for originality." Vestec rolled Lambda off of him, pulling the spear out of his chest and tossing it to the side, taking her arm with it, this time still attached to her body. He sat up, rolling his shoulders, and looked over at Isonymph. "Alright, my meddling Jvanic avatar, whats your name and purpose? Phi's is to cause as much trouble as possible, Hearty's was to experiment and expand, so what's your goal in life?"

Isonymph kinked itself a few times, trying to figure it out. Eventually it raised its hands in a bundle. [colour=crimson]"Make... Things,"[/crimson] it said, and between its palms there was a tiny planet, resplendent in its pride.

"Oooh, pretty. And for what purpose do you make these things?" Vestec wandered over, looking at the small planet the Isonymph had made. It was full of tiny life.

The big flower looked at him with its head of petals. "To make things."

"Innnnteresting. Any things, or do you have an annoying moral code that'll stop you from taking requests and doing them? I might have some..needs for someone as talented as you at making things. Think of all the fun we could have! You and I, putting our resources together to create all kinds of fun!"

"..." The thing passed its levitating orb over to Vestec, then grabbed him by the wrist and leapt into the earth. After a moment's travel, the earth was full of stars. Then they hit the clouds, and it was all black again.

They landed on the surface of the planet called the Mineworks, on the slope of a coastal mountain of almost pure graphite. Great pipes sent glowing fumes into the blackening haze, and tcrawlers moved around their feet. Heavy carbon liquids spilled against the shoreline in waves. A shining swarm of gliders swept above.

"Ooooh." Vestec looked around like a small child, head glancing this way and that. He was impressed. "You made all of this? This... miners dreamland? Why? What does it all do? Make ore? Spew noxious gas? Hide Prometheans?"

"...I make things," it said, developing eyes with which to look him in. The flower blossomed and the ocean was suddenly drained into a deeper abyss, leaving a tarry jungle to harvest the sulphur it left behind, flickering with blue flame.

"Yes yes, but what do the things you make do? Look pretty? Save animals? Create weapons of war to conquer galaxies? Protect innocents? What do they do?" Vestec turned around to face Isonymph. "There is no point in making things with no purpose."

The Isonymph's eyes boiled off, and it flipped the universe inside out, reappearing beneath an ocean in the Graveyard Worlds. Cold grey pulsar-light bleached everything, giving it a constant flicker, and stray Jvanic lances shredded time and space as they floated by, sleeping.

"I̷̡͘ ̛m̷̵͡a̸k̛e͡ ̀͘t͠h̨̀i̸̴n̡̡͢ǵ̢s.̵"

"Yes, you've said that before. But why? What do these things you make do?" Vestec pressed, looking around in amusement as they went to a new area.

"I..." Some of the Isonymph's arms went to its head, squeezing and tugging. Teeth were pulled out of the gaps between the petals as they moved. "They..." Another pause. Tug turned into yank and the Isonymph drew blood, shredding the petals it managed to pluck from its face. "Ţ̴h͏͠e̡͟y̢.͞.̴̢.̵̕҉"

It looked to Vestec helplessly. "They are," it explained.

Vestec held up his hands. "Alright alright, I can accept that." He spoke soothingly, moving towards the Isonymph. His hands gently grabbed hers,pulling first one set free, and then the other two. "Lets stop mangling our headfaceskullthing, shall we....Oh my, I don't know your name. What terrible manners. What is your name, Avatar of Jvan who makes things and doesn't like bullies even though I wasn't bullying Lambda?"

It grabbed his hand and pulled them into another ocean, a Galbar one, where a warpfisk was glowing. The Isonymph gently plucked a sea-lily from a nearby whalebone and handed it to him.

Vestec giggled, taking the flower gently. "Why thank you. This is a very pretty flower..." Something seemed to click. "...And its your name. Your name is Lily. Pleasure to meet you Lily."

Lily wriggled.

"My name is Vestec, though I suspect you already know that. Shall we go back to Lambda and share your name, or do you have more beautifully and exquisitely crafted planets to show me?"

"She knows," said Lily, picking him up by the ankle and depositing him on Nihean, the ice daughter. The heat of their footprints caused a small garden of black plants to flourish. In the distance, a blue geyser erupted. "I taught her everything."

"Excluding how to give up, obviously,"

---------

note to self: remember the 'I don't get mad' line Lambda drops in the epilogue when someone calls her out on how mad she is

[color=8882be][/color]

Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Antarctic Termite
Raw
OP
Avatar of Antarctic Termite

Antarctic Termite Resident of Mortasheen

Member Seen 4 mos ago

Additional Memories of All-Beauty

(May His Name Be Sung Forever)

Collected by Dabbles, the Dove,
Administrator of Alefpria, Chief Advisor to Lifprasil, and Pilot of the Fathership


What follows are transcribed, as accurately as possible, the recollections of our Lord in the days before His ascension, revealed to our Lord during His dance with the forces of Time, and since relayed to His servants through the ascended Dream (for All-Beauty is All-Enlightening, Most Charitable). The setting down of such Dream into the Alefprian script has been undertaken with the greatest of prejudice, wielding every art of literature and wordcraft that All-Beauty has bestowed upon me, and distributed with His approval and His blessing. Though we may never understand the finality of what our Lord has become in His long journey through primordial Time, it is my hope, as the Dove, that reading such passages may invite the faithful to meditate on its earliest steps.

Praise unto All-Beauty.




My greatest thanks and acknowledgements to Monk, the one who speaks in tildes, for her kind donation of an ink-printing device; without which my lack of thumbs would have made writing troublesome.





Jvan waited, wearing a sarashi and a big silver knife and not a substantial amount else, swimming circles in the clear blue waters of Atoll. They curled their many-finned tail upon the endless mosaic floor of the palatine cathedral, and gently turned some idle thoughts as they studied the sounds echoing in from outside.

Coral breaking. Screams. People moving very quickly. It was much like they had expected.

The grand door banged with a shoulder thrust against it, then slid open soundlessly. Jvan raised head and looked up through a pair of fractal lenses to see two more Kirghal join the room, three hundred fins whipping in rippling waves along the sides of their tails. Prrhyi was resting both upper-arms upon his shoulders, gauntlet-blades curving easy over his knuckles. His lower-hands held a pneumatic pike.

Ceeln, of course, swam up as close to Jvan as they needed to be to embrace, but eventually resisted the urge. Jvan smiled. Ceeln did not smile.

Said Prrhyi, “Tueda, the Senate is taking the city.” As if it needed to be announced. “We are leaving. Now.”

“I know.”

Ceeln did not question Jvan’s calm, but was thankful for it. “We can leave by the Palatine tunnels. If you’ve-”

“I haven’t,” said Jvan. “We’re not leaving that way. We’re taking the Horror.” Ceeln looked again, noticed the myriad tools on Jvan’s knifebelt. Heard Prrhyi’s caution. But nodded.

“Lead the way.”

It was a quick and lethal route to the reef where lay the war engines, though not so lethal as Prrhyi had warned. Jvan had helped clear the route for them. Ceeln briefly touched each drifting body as they passed, and was only slightly less disturbed by the way the bodies had been carved, than by the way Jvan had managed to strike every last one in the back.

These were things Ceeln would become very used to over the course of the civil war.

They swam out into the blue of the open sea and Jvan flipped the glowing stone key out of their knifebelt. In the sea-filtered mid-day light, Ceeln’s ailing eyes came to the aid of their hands and ears, and saw the Horror. Ceeln recognised it instantly, even as a blur of black, and wondered again at how Jvan’s creation towered over the other war-engines. There was something foreign about it, though Jvan had never left the city of Atoll. Something primal, almost sublime- some cruel aesthetic twist that neither exalted nor belied its duty to kill.

Prrhyi’s vision was none so poor, nor so easily led aside. “We’ve been sighted. Tueda! They’re bringing war-whales!” Prrhyi’s hand clamped Ceeln’s wrist and his ample body dragged the smaller worm along like a toy. “They know where we are.”

“Yes,” said Jvan, thinking: Excellent. “Come in quickly. The hold.” Still acutely conscious of the beasts the Senate had hired and how quickly they were closing, Prrhyi pushed Ceeln into the copilot’s niche, stuffed himself into the Horror’s cargo bay, and trusted the now-rogue Senator. Ceeln realised suddenly that Jvan’s niche was the only one with controls.

Sharp zips and chirps echoed through the Horror as it came alive under Jvan’s fingertips. It kicked off from the reef, folded away its massive legs, and thrashed into the sunlit waters with such force that a smaller engine toppled in the wake of its tail.

Vast as it was, the Horror did not have time to escape the mercenary beasts before they closed. Grapples were shot, gripped the surface of the Horror, held; teams of saboteurs crawled their way up along the cables and onto the hull, wielding explosive kits. Ceeln and Jvan, it seemed, were not wanted alive.

Jvan’s lower-hands cracked their knuckles and traced eight circles over the smooth interface. Valves blew open along the sides of the war-engine, releasing charges of razor eels. Inside the Horror, Ceeln heard nothing, but watched Jvan’s alarm-lights flash back to normal, one by one. No more saboteurs.

Jvan accelerated the Horror towards the city’s edge with the whales still in tow. With another arcane gesture, the Horror’s sonic weaponry pressurised, released a blast of sound that dislodged the grappling cables. It pressurised again, focused, amplified, and penetrated the closest war-whale with a pulsed echo that crashed into the city below, razing gardens, leaving the beast to drown and sink under the weight of its broken spine.

“That was my favourite garden,” said Jvan. Ceeln tried to find emotion in the voice of their twin.

Free of pursuit, the Horror churned away from the grand city, out from its towering reefs and into the open sea beyond. Ceeln breathed, then was startled out of calm, clutched suddenly to the padding of the copilot’s niche by a set of hidden restraints.

“We’re taking a dive,” Jvan advised, wearing no restraints at all, and sent the Horror plunging into the dark. Ceeln waited.

“…Where are we?”

“The tunnels,” said Jvan.

“We’re not in the palatine tunnels.” Jvan laughed a relaxed and brotherly laugh that darkened Ceeln’s thoughts.

“No, we’re deeper. We’re in the magma tubes, under all of Atoll.”

The obfuscation of deep water grew suddenly blacker as they passed away from the last of the light. No wonder Ceeln felt so alone- these were the god-tunnels, the undersea haunt of the Cavern Lord, Achozaal. Some said all of Atoll was built to contain him. “We can’t hide here, Jvan. Once they find the palatine tunnels empty, they will go deeper. They’ll come for us.”

“I’m not hiding,” said Jvan, and Ceeln heard something pressurise. Jvan traced a supple finger over the words scratched into the inner walls of her masterwork.

Ringing, Call, yet Mask Faces Not; Blinding, Discern Song; for that which Sees gives Voice its Hooded Glam, Unreaching, and ye who Know be the Bell that Beckons- a Socket in the Skull of the Choir.

Ceeln heard the crack of the Horror clamping into place, the groan of the great ram winding back.

“Jvan…”

The collision slammed the Prrhyi against the wall of the hold, blew the water from Ceeln’s lungs, banged a still-unrestrained Jvan’s head against the forward window, and rocked and shuddered on long after the war-engine recovered, deep into the guts of Atoll City’s foundations. Woozily nursing a bruise, Jvan strapped in and prepared the next blow.

“Jvan!”

The Horror ram crashed again into the stone, an instant of shock that quaked earth, cracked rock. Ceeln lay, near deafened, even under the Horror’s heavy armour; the sound reverberated through all the city and all the ocean, was heard in the very dreams of those who would survive the war to come, reverberated forever more, and was feared.

“Tueda!”

Jvan rubbed three palms against two eyespots, and, one-handed, steered the Horror away. Ceeln lay recovering.

“Strap yourself in.”

“I… have,” said Jvan, light of head. Ceeln exhaled.

The pressure pushing Ceeln’s tail up against the top of the niche told them that the Horror was rising. Ceeln saw the blue blur through the war-engine’s eyes brighten, but the sunlight brought their soul no warmth.

“We’ll have to… We have to… Fight the Senate, Ceeln. We have to fight it again. Soon. I don’t want to fight them if they-” Waving hands, as if Jvan’s sisterbrother hadn’t preempted their entire sentence. “The treasury, the war-engines. The people. They’ll come for us again. But without Atoll on their side.”

Ceeln nodded, reaching out to grab Jvan’s wavering lower-hand and grip it. “I know. I understand.” Ceeln had understood from the minute the Horror had aimed its ram, though they would never have guessed that such powers were possible, even from Jvan. Guilt stabbed Ceeln. They had underestimated their little twin.

Atoll and its wealth would not be wielded against them. Ceeln squinted through the windows as the war-engine turned south. No, Atoll would not be wielded against them, because Atoll lay in ruins. The song of quake and aftershock still echoed from the capital, and would do so for many days as the city’s volcanic foundations collapsed on themselves, folded up and vanished into the tunnels below, a maze of lost bodies and crushed buildings from which many Kirghal would one day be born. Ceeln prayed that the noise would not reach them through the war-engine’s armour, but sounds carry far under water.

It had been worth it. Not worth the decade or so that Ceeln had left to live. But for the centuries ahead of their slow-aging sister, it had been worth it. So Ceeln believed.

“Jvan...”

“...”

“It’s in ruins. I know it is. I can hear it.”

“I know,” said Jvan, squirming in their seat, turning back to watch the city of their birth as it crumbled. For a while no more words were passed, but it was not a silence of shock.

“...You always thought this place was beautiful.”

And Jvan, who had carved a pattern into the skull of every palace guard they’d murdered, replied: “It still is.”

And Ceeln trusted Jvan, seeing, if only for a moment, if only through blind eyes, if only through a veil of despair for what a sister could become- seeing the horror and the beauty as one.




Jvan’s right upper-hand drew lazy perfect circles over the skin of the commander-engine, watching the lifter-engine in its pheromonal thrall inch closer and closer to the Project. Her left hands both fidgeted with a scrap of godmeat they’d picked off the workshop floor an hour ago, and her right lower-hand held a stick of some biomechanical wizardry, a little tube grown like a tower.

Closer, closer, closer closer closer.

Cakk!

The fleshen mountain of a mechanism butted against its socket, casting a bright daylight shadow wide enough to lose villages in. Jvan slowly relaxed the cords holding the socket open, letting it clamp the mechanism into place. The lifter-engine withdrew. Everything held.

Jvan harumphed with a whisper of a smile. Taking the tip of the tube in her teeth, the demigod took a shallow breath through her crushed lungs, let the device whirr; wheezed out a cloud of black fog, marked with a wisp of carmine. The command-engine purred.

Yanking a bolt on the prosthetic steel legs that took over where her body terminated at the navel, Jvan flicked open a familiar silver switchblade and jammed it into the thick flesh of the Project. A metal leap threw her from the shaded canopy of the command-engine, and she let gravity take her down the slope of flesh, skidding on two legs and a knife edge down to a lower level of the Project, leaving a deep, long cut behind her.

But what was ‘deep’, on a Project this vast? Jvan looked off the side of the slope and saw its shadow stretching beyond the horizon.

She leapt off to a lower slope, and clanked towards a special cavity. The joyride had burnt her skin again, though it had only taken a few seconds. Jvan didn’t mind. She loved the way her fragile deep-water skin scorched in the terrestrial sunlight, the sensation of old meat sloughing, loved the patterns she made as she stitched new skin on. She liked them even better than the ones left by the natural healing process she’d experienced when she was alive.

“In today?”

Jvan’s voice echoed into the cavity, down into the endless caverns riddling the Project, past innumerable chants and poems written in scars. She waited a few seconds, long enough for the command-engine to catch up and skitter back next to her, then shrugged. She took another half-lungful of stimulants, adjusted her old fractal goggles.

The sun was bright. So bright.

Jvan tapped the hinge of her knife to her lips, thinking. Then she clambered on top of the command-engine, settled her land legs into ‘stable base’ configuration, and flicked it open.

“‘Tis familiar, to see yon youthful artist catch the germ of inspiration,” said a slow and ancient voice from the cavity. “Hast thou finally seized upon a name?”

“Yes,” said Jvan, carving two lines in a deep right-angle glyph taller than she was, then another, identical to it. ‘L L’.

The Cavern Lord crept a little closer to the mouth of the cavity, carried by a myriad spidery legs, ancient goblin face asmirk with curiosity. “And shall yon youthful artist tell her patron what that name may be?”

“You’ll see,” said Jvan. She carved a set of three horizontal lines connected by a vertical one, then a narrow angle with a bar across it. ‘E A’

She took another breath of stimulance, feeling her broken torso spasm around her ribs. She drew another glyph, a vertical line with a horizontal one descending, then one with three equilateral rays. ‘T Y’

Jvan motioned the command-engine back and looked at what she had carved.

A L L - B E A U T Y

She quirked a smile.

“A curious nomer, suited to a curious being.”

“Yes.”

“Be it the second Horror?”

“No,” said the demigod. “The Horror was a moment. Like an image from a dream. My whole life was just a flash of colour and music, a singular aesthetic, flowering in a moment, gone in the blink of an eye. But my Project will last forever.”

“Yet Horror has not abandoned thee.”

“No. It hasn’t. And it never will, Achozaal. Horror is my art. It’s my gift to the universe, my splash of blood on a colourless canvas. All-Beauty is the horrorsome, the free body that will carry my gift to the next world and enrich it, make it brighter, darker, more strange. It will live among the gods.” Jvan turned to the goblin god, watched his spiderlegged body rest motionless in the cavity, hiding from the sun, patient as the newt from which he took his shape. “But horror is just one art. All-Beauty will witness all beauty. Horror, glory, silence, peace, rage… All. It’s my gift, and eternity will be my reward.”

Achozaal thumbed his gossamer beard and gazed upon the Project. Her reward, indeed.

“Art thou well suited to eternity, Tueda of House Nuul?”

Jvan shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be? If I see everything, I’ll just start again.”

And Achozaal thought: Ah.




“-she wouldn’t. There’s nothing for her to take here. Tueda is practical more than she’s a killer.”

“You don’t know that, Qelang! You know nothing! There’s nothing stopping her from-”

“What do you think will happen if we swim? That’s the Horror, fool! The fucking Horror! She has us cornered anyway, it’ll only-”

A sound flashed, a snap of distorted static, so high and so brief that it was no more perceptible than a flash in a thunderstorm, leaving nothing but tinnitus and death. Jvan crept from the Horror and swam into the limestone village, wearing no armour. There was nothing left to be slain.

The bodies of Qelang and his friend lay on the brown-coral floor of the village, bleeding from the mouth, the gills, the eyes. It was the first time Jvan had seen one of the Shark Folk up close; they weren’t a common kind of merm in Atoll.

But they still bleed red? thought Jvan. Jvan lifted the body of Qelang, such that it could be lifted by thin arms (even four of them). He was bigger than Jvan, though his tail was shorter.

I wonder what it tastes like. Jvan pulled off their goggles and pressed their lips to the body’s bleeding gills, softly kissing its neck. Oh. Like that. They kissed it again, for good measure.

Jvan let go of the body and put the goggles on again. Lifted a hand to their goggles. Pink- translucent pale skin, and carmine blood underneath. Ceeln’s skin was the same, but their blood ran umber. Strange, how common red blood was in the fish people, and how rare in Jvan’s own.

One day I’ll have shining blood, thought Jvan. They opened their silver knife and put a small cut in their wrist, wincing a just a little. Deep, crimson blood, as expected. Blood in blue and gold and green and pink. But eventually, I’ll come back to red. I like this colour.

These were good moments, moments Jvan was fond of. Alone, unsupervised, and powerful, surrounded by flesh over which Jvan had control, it was like the days they had spent in their workshop, years ago, before they had worked for the Senate. But there was no time for these things any more. Jvan sighed and swished up and back to the Horror.

Target neutralised, Jvan later signalled across the seabed to Ceeln’s vast army, via the war-engine’s whalesong. Then, Life is too short to see everything.




Jvan hovered, laying back, the light of the sun filtered yet warm in the surface-waters. Below, the city of Atoll lay thrumming, rebuilding, makeshift bridges strung across the crevasse left by the quakes slowly being replaced by new coral.

It was over, said the people aloud. They were wrong, and they knew it, and everyone knew that they knew it. The life they knew had been over since the moment Ceeln fled the city with their sister and war captain. What had begun on that day was only now starting to reach its crescendo. The war had not been the throes of death, but of birth.

Even now, Prrhyi and his men were chasing the last of the old Senate through the streets, marking them one by one for trial or for slaughter. Even now, the body of Jvan’s would-be replacement lay alongside them on the roof of the Palatine Tower, carved from gills to tail-tip, a trophy to behold.

Jvan waited for the cry that was inevitable.

“Jvan!”

There it was.

Ceeln shone in the daylight, so bright their armour, so bright their voice. On a day years ago, Ceeln had found Jvan on the same roof, spoken to them in the same voice, to give them the gift that Jvan now wore as a trademark, those bright fractal goggles; but now Ceeln was old, senescing rapidly, though the twins’ years numbered the same. Now it was Jvan who was nearing the prime of life. A prime that could last for centuries.

“Ceeln!”

The two collided, and embraced. Jvan’s goggles banged on Ceeln’s collarbones and they both winced. Then they laughed. Said no one: it is done.

“Jvan...”

Nameless feelings in Jvan’s chest swelled until Ceeln realised that some things cannot be spoken over. Ceeln rubbed a hand on Jvan’s back, felt hot young blood still pumping. Jvan’s grip was now as strong as Ceeln’s was. “...It’s for you,” they said eventually. Jvan perched their chin on Ceeln’s shoulder and listen.

“All I am and all I was, all this war has won… It’s for you. Take it. It’s all I could ask that you take it. You loved this city, and you still do. I pass it on. It’s yours now. Make it...” The right words escaped Ceeln, but when they saw the face of the one to whom they were speaking, the word came unbidden. “Make it beautiful.”

“...Thank you.” Jvan held their sister with shivering hands and wavering eyes, able not to savour the moment, only to live it. “Thank you.”

Jvan opened their knife into Ceeln’s chest.

There was a briefest heartbeat of surprise, then Ceeln clutched Jvan again, tighter than ever. Jvan wrangled back a sob.

You gave me the world, Jvan half-mouthed, half-whispered. You asked nothing else. Ceeln. You knew this was coming, didn’t you? Somewhere in your heart of hearts, you knew you’d be my martyr. But you loved me. And you were afraid. But you loved me. And you let me have it all. I was a child, but you made me as a god.

“...Ceeln?”

...

“...Ceeln...”

Jvan kissed their sister’s forehead, feeling something, then let the body lay. As Jvan watched, it began to break open, both it and the body Jvan had prepared to frame as its murderer falling slowly apart into pieces, pieces that would one day emerge from the plankton as new life. One by one the germs of Ceeln’s descendents disappeared into the ocean, leaving only a sister for an heir. In death, Jvan saw that he was male.

They stayed there for some time.

But that time was never Fated to be long.

“T H O U O F F E R T H Y S E L F A C I T Y,” said God. “B U T I G I V E Y O U S O M U C H M O R E.”

Jvan turned and felt true terror. Everything turned black, everything turned cold, everything turned silent. Rising from the tunnels, from the depths of the earth from which this petty palace had been raised, and now gazing upon her with eyes that had been blind since the moment of God’s birth, was the Ancient.

“H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A”

Jvan tried to escape, but Achozaal was God and Reality was His web. Surrounded by His spider limbs, Jvan could not even turn from the face of the Cavern Lord, but was forced to behold it, and melt before its awe.

“LONG HAVE I WATCHED THEE, TUEDA OF HOUSE NUUL. LONG HAVE I WAITED. WITHIN THEE SLEEPS THE SEED OF THE DIVINE.” Achozaal undulated forth on the goblin-headed body of the newt, took Jvan’s knife in His delicate hands. “TODAY THOU HAST PROVEN THY WILL TO POWER.”

Achozaal lay his hand on the chest of the Kirghal. Jvan’s lungs imploded, crushing their chest, quenching the feeble spark of Fate they called a life.

“TODAY THAT SEED SWIMS FREE.”

With a swipe of Jvan’s own knife, Achozaal cleaved Jvan’s oh-so-human upper body from the tail. Female in death, Jvan’s severed flesh split open- and was immolated in god-flame, ending her mutant lineage forever. Only a whisper of undead lust would remain.

Still laughing, Achozaal reached into his chest and tore out his own cavernous grey lung, forced it into Jvan’s arms. It heaved and inhaled, breathing life into her carcass: life unliving, unfeeling, undying. Jvan awoke a demigod.

“FROM THIS FLESH,” said Achozaal, “SHALL THEE BUILD THY TRUE REWARD.”

With a blur of divine power, Achozaal departed that place, and took his darkness with him.

All that remained was the blood of Jvan, hanging in the waters like a carmine fog.




Jvan lay, laughing, upon the spray of earth that surrounded the god-sized crater. The tip of the spear shone in the night, illuminated by a distant fire, a raging glow on the horizon that was slowly growing closer. Jvan put her hands around its haft and felt where it impaled her.

They’d missed. The idiots.

Growing woozy, Jvan settled her head such as she could against the bank of mud and stone, prosthetic legs still kicking deep trenches into the well-turned dirt. The silhouette of her command-engine grew clearer as the fire grew closer, as did the sound of the army still approaching. Too late. They could kill her, maybe, if they had the aim for it- hah! - but too late.

The crater now lay empty. All-Beauty was gone.

Gone where? She didn’t know. All she knew was that it was gone- somewhere, somewhen, into a new world, into a new life. A Jvanic emulator, carrying within it everything that was Jvan.

What would it see? What would it do? Jvan could only dream, and laugh.

Oh, the joy of birth!

As for her, well, she had no intention of waiting out this army. With a shaking upper hand, Jvan flicked open her trusty silver knife, and ran it across her wrists. The psychochemical preservatives in her veins ran down into her lap, fluorescing in every colour. Blue and gold and green and pink.

Now, thought Jvan, laying her head in the fading nothing. Now I want to start anew.




Thus end the revelations of our Lord.

Praise unto All-Beauty.
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Antarctic Termite
Raw
OP
Avatar of Antarctic Termite

Antarctic Termite Resident of Mortasheen

Member Seen 4 mos ago




C'mon, please.

Tune out. I've made myself clear. Stop wasting my time and my frequency.


You haven't even listened to me though!

You've made your point four goddamn times, do you even listen to yourself?


I suppose this means you will not be sharing your resources.


What- I d- No! No, I bloody well will not! What are you two, conspirators?


With him? Ew.

The scoundrel is correct. I do doubt his theory holds any merit, but I believe you have a responsibility to share your bounty.


Yeah! Listen to Margos!

Shut up. Margos, you want to hook my star skeleton to some half-dead frogs? Try and make them squirm on a hook? Weight them down with it and drown them in that quicksilver you like so much, maybe?


You are being distinctly unfair.
I have sound reason to believe that the force you've discovered with that metal is linked to muscular contraction. If strong enough, this mechanism might be used to kick into action a stalled heart. Have you considered that every time you've jolted yourself with it, you notice a distinct spasm?


Hold on.
...
Huh. You know, you might actually be on to something.


See? You could totally share!

Shut the hell up.


Listen though! You c-

Oh god here we go again.


-ould use your corrosion force to tease adamantium from ore! It's the metal of gods! I saw it in a dream! I can't explain how it all worked, but you've gotta let me try!

No, adamantium is a myth. You might as well join that gang trying to turn lead into gold.


But if you just-

I AM NOT! LENDING YOU! MY STAR ARMOUR!


I'm inclined to think that applies to me, also.


Can you both just listen to me? I am! Teetering on the edge! Of discovering how to reverse corrosion! I created chalcanthum from copper and I TURNED IT BACK INTO COPPER! Pure copper, without heat! The purest I've ever seen! If I can do this with iron, do you realis-


Hello?

↑ Top
© 2007-2024
BBCode Cheatsheet