[sub][i]KhoZee productions present[/i][/sub][centre][h1]DEATH DANCE[/h1]
[h1][sub]Mish-Cheechel the Avenger[/sub][/h1]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/LDRtUBd.gif[/img]
[sub]featuring[/sub]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/ApJH3g8.png[/img]
[h1][sub]ROSALIND[/sub][/h1]
[b][sub]RAGING ROSA | THE DANCE-DEMON | FEVERFOOT | LEAPING LINDA[/sub][/b]

[img]https://www2.gvsu.edu/vangm/backgroundsandotherpictures/pinkrosevine.gif[/img][/centre]

He was an old bjork when he arrived. The oldest bjork who lived, in fact. The place was cold and of incredible size - so great that he could spy it five hundred leagues away across the flat plains of snow and ice. He was an old and tired bjork, in some ways a wise bjork, and by the standards of the Revengers he was a good and virtuous bjork too. That said, he was not a happy bjork. Not a sad bjork, mind you, but by no means a happy one. Happiness is made of different stuff, and one can learn perfect contentment even if happiness does not ensue. Even in his darkest moments, he long ago realised, he had been able to find cause for happiness. Aye, he had scorned it and brought it to ruin, but fate had not taken from him more than it had offered. When he sat in silent contemplation on the nature and manner of his pledged vengeance, the visage of Zima often came to him and brought him to smile. If he shed a tear sometimes, he did not hold it against his eyes. For the likes of Zima it was right that tears should fall, and for the ruination he had brought upon her it was right that he should suffer unrelievable remorse. These were the sorrows and burdens that mortals and immortals alike had to bear, and though Mish-Cheechel the Avenger did not bear them happily he bore them with solemn contentment. The act of bearing without complaint was his silent penance.

The great gates of the palace - lovingly sculpted double ice doors that seemed of boundless height and etched with all the majesty of old - lay open and half-broken as the mightiest of the bjorks passed through. His eyes trailed across the remnants of ice statues, broken figures of what could have been and once well-kept pillars of white and endless shades of blue. Some etched and sculpted in reflected faces. And for all the silence and sorrow that hung over the place, there was a palpable lack of [i]stillness[/i].

For death hung clearly in the air. Death and great sorrow, for the broken pillars and cracked ice, some great ravines that led down into the abyss of the world, strewn ever on in that straight path. A room lingered ever closer, far greater and more boundless in size than any gate could hope to be. For this was where gods once dreamt only for nightmares to thus burst forth. The throne room’s air permeated with the stench of old decay. It was obvious why. Hanging from the walls, chained from the ceilings, pinned and impaled upon pillars as many more lay broken and upon the floor- were demons. If it was not for all their wounds, the frozen blood pooled like black discs, the stench, the frost upon their many eyes, their broken claws and shattered teeth- it would have been like looking at something alive. 

Further along, near a throne made of red stained ice, lying precariously next to a large chasm that jutted straight and out of the palace, there lay a woman. Dead she was, pierced by a weapon so potent it thrummed at his presence but did not move. Her eyes were closed, a gleeful peace upon her lips. Her hair was thick and lustrous as molten gold, revealing two pointed ears at the sides of her shapely face. She had died in rags but even still, the frost and snow had never touched her. It could have been that she would open her eyes at any moment and light up that vast space with a smile, but it was not to be. The bjork let his eyes rest on her for a long time, leaning back on his tail and resting as he took her in. He chuckled ruefully and shook his head. 

“So… you do die after all.” He murmured to himself. He wondered if the Green Murder was likewise lying somewhere, serene and deathlessly beautiful. He had never abandoned his pledge, had meditated on it by dawn and dusk and in the long hours of the night and by the midday sun, but he had expunged all the anger and hatred. Only the duty, in its serene calm and beauty, remained. Were the Green Murder to manifest before him at that very moment his body would have forthwith cut her down - aye, he had prepared himself daily for just such a moment. But it would have brought him not an ounce of pleasure. His eyes remained on the golden-haired goddess. “It is a shame.” He finished, and bowed his head sadly. It was a mockery that such beings should die thus, that such reifications of the quintessence of reality should fall and pass away like all things. “Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.”

He bent down towards her and felt something stir around him. His eyes snapped to the side and he was immediately alert, tail narrowing and hardening in battle-readiness. “Peace, Bishadnik.” It was a double-voice, both male and female.

“That is not my name.” He spoke, rising. “I am the Avenger Mish-Cheechel.”

“Be you who you may, bring her to me.” The double-voice came again. The bjork let his eyes scan the space, but found no identifiable source for the voice.

“Perhaps I will. Perhaps I will not. Show yourself and we can speak.” The manbjork responded.

“Follow the door behind the throne. Bring her to me. Up the stairs and into the tower. Bring her to me. Why have you come here, Mish-Cheechel? Bring her to me.” The voice  faded, and at last he spied a single dancing snowflake, circling gently and never landing. It danced by the crimson throne. The bjork bent down towards the golden-haired goddess, but then paused with his eyes on the golden chain whose serrated blades were dug deep into her chest. He leaned back and considered the odd thing. He had never seen its like, but he had seen enough of the gods and the strange corruptions they foisted upon mortalkind to be wary. He leaned back and with gentleness weaved the world around the wound so that the divine flesh loosened about the terrible blade and allowed it to slip out slowly. The blade hissed and the chain seemed to coil like a snake, deathly energies swelling forth. But for all his weaving, he could not remove the thing from her form.

Clenching his fist, he stepped forth quickly, eyes sharp, decision made, snapped the chain up with speed - it was barely as heavy as a leaf - and flung it with all his power and strength through the great hole. He watched it descend earthward and clenched his teeth. He almost let out a pained breath, but only furrowed his brows and flared his nostrils as his arm fizzled into nothingness and decay. It mattered little, he had returned from a speck of flesh before.

He turned back to the dead goddess and hauled her over his shoulder with his remaining arm - she was light and even in death moved with surreal grace. Even her hair fell elegantly. Even her arms dropped delicately. Even her face fell to the side with easy charm. “Pah. Where were you in life?” The bjork muttered to the divine corpse. “I might’ve been a different bjork if I’d known you.” But there was no response, and he carried her past the crimson ice throne and followed the dancing snowflake through the open door.

He ascended the long narrow set of stairs with slow care, one eye on the snowflake and another on what waited beyond. With each upward step he took, the distinct lack of stillness he had felt on stepping into the palace grew only more poignant. Everything seemed alive with motion. The stairs seemed to breathe. The air seemed to roil around him like invisible waves. The goddess on his shoulder seemed to pulse with some unstilling life. Even his feet and his eyes and his heart seemed unable to resist the dance into which he had wilfully walked.

His body was carried on the air, his toes only barely making contact with each passing stair, until at last he was on the landing. His eyes fell on the open door across the small hallway, and his breath caught in his throat. The world beyond the door was awash with tremendous light and motion. It was like staring into the Gate of Nebel once more, only there was no darkness or death here, but a certain zest, a certain tap and beat, a certain roiling… [i]fever[/i]. 

[sub]Tip.[/sub]

Like a droplet on the surface of a lake spun from stillness.

[i]Top.[/i]

Like the gentle awakening of that first and most perfect of waves at the centre of it all.

[b]Tap.[/b]

Like the beatific rising of a vermilion mushroom, searing surge after undulating surge into the fabric of the world.

It pulsed powerfully, each pulse a rhythmic [i]tap[/i], definite, clear, and loud. Tip-top-tap. He was at the door. Tip-top-tap. He stepped into the nebula of light and movement. Tip-top-tap. Where earth was or heaven began, he did not know. Tip-top-tap. He whirled in circles, and those circles whirled. Tip-top-tap. He was aware of hair, black as dusk and endless as the universe, circling like the thousand arms of an impossible galaxy. Tip-top-tap. Yes, he had always known of galaxies, for he had beheld the dance of the universe. Tip-top-tap.

In the heart of the galactic swirl of dusky hair, he at last saw the twin silhouettes at the heart of it all. Their feet flowed in union and eyes blazed; each shoulder carried the wide horizons and each arm seemed strung to springs - now whirling, now swiftly, stiffly, strictly returning, now rising bent, now extending, now flying and now turning. [i]Stamp[/i], forth they came, [i]stamp[/i] back they went, tip-tap-top, tip-tap-top, tip-tap-top, with the floorless space they played. Eyes widening - I see you, now fear me, come hear me, I’ll free you - heads turning (you’re worthless; off with you, won’t see you, won’t know you). Hips twisting, gyrating, skirts flying, vibrating - [i]stamp, stamp, stamp, tip-top-tap, tip-top-tap, tip-top-tap-[/i]

Rosalind and Aurora whirled and pulsated inside the cloud that held what remained of the dying aeons; the whites in their twilight eyes turned to dusk, the female form that hosted both shifted and turned, losing structure with each movement and returning. With each turn, each stamp, each cry, their frames convulsed, backs arched, eyes swelled, mouths bowed in mutual smiles of agony and bliss - and about them the very stuff the Aurora was made of began to circumambulate the circling, stamping, twisting dancers. And as the dance imbibed the Aurora's light, the dance too was imbibed - so that there, where dance and light tangoed and pushed and grated and struggled, movement became one with light.

Mish-Cheechel beheld then the great weight of all he had ever dreamt, the great weight that all that ever existed had ever dreamt, the dreams of the lowliest creation and of the highest gods. They convalesced all around, those dreams, and they rushed into the blurring feet of the divine dancers and set a greater blaze to the cosmic fire of their otherworldly motion. Their eyes widened in wonder as their hips swayed to an unknown drum: their feet kicked, their bodies moved, their wrists shook - and there, on the wrists of Rosalind, a hundred bangles jangled and echoed and vibrated. With every foot that kicked and let off heat the bangles jangled and sucked up the excess. For a perfect moment it formed a great harmony… and with suddenness, to Mish-Cheechel's instinctive horror (he knew not why) those bangles broke.

And as they broke the two dancers plip-plip-plopped across the serene sea of light. Their movements were clean, rippling with the waves and flowing with the main. Both stood for a second in perfect symmetry and stretched on their toes and rocked on their heels. They brought their hands to their abdomens, lifted their chins, and allowed their feet to shimmer with the light. Their movements were slow and measured, their arms danced around their heads like a ring danced about the world and their feet pitter-pattered on the fluid light. Though unhurried, their dance did not lack any of the earlier force, they seemed to weave their movements - carefully, precisely, as though threading and rethreading and triply threading a needle. When their hips spun, their backs swayed, their shoulders swung, their heads turned, then like a double velvet curtain their hair spiralled - like a galaxy it turned, like the murmuration of ten thousand starlings or more it swirled. 
Then with finality a foot landed, light glimmered and stirred but did not break, and Rosalind’s eyes of dusk, and those of Aurora, emerged from behind the great dark curtains of hair- they glimmered, they smiled, and even in the stillness of finality, they danced.

They stood frozen there for moments - when they did it, stillness itself was a sort of motion. And that stillness gave itself to a quiet, gentle renewal of the dance. They danced like shy waves and gentle skies. They danced like a beaming sun and leaping rays. They danced like little joys and innocence, like the forgetting of past wrongs and pain. They danced like sweet, little joys. And they reached out, at last, for the divine corpse strewn across Mish-Cheechel’s shoulder, and he surrendered her without resistance or complaint, but revelled in his closeness to them. Even as they took Zenia from him the rags in which she was clothed were incinerated and their place erupted loose silken fabrics of gold damask and velvet, which now seemed to hug her form and now seemed to flow freely all around her. It was only so for a few seconds, for her form then mixed with the light and dance and she merged with them, a golden bolt of energy and emotion that coloured everything it touched and gave it an element of crazed energy and joy.

At last, the bjork looked at the two divines whose dance had at last come to something resembling a halt - though nothing save them in that strange and limitless room seemed now to be still. They were in the dance. “Who… who are you?” Mish-Cheechel asked the two strange women, who were so alike as to nearly be indistinguishable from each other - but for the stone arm one of them possessed, with strange colours - now blue, now green, now black - that shimmered through the pale stone. They smiled serenely, their hair shimmered and turned. They seemed in all ways at peace, but they did not speak. And he knew, by instinct, that nothing he said would bring them to speak. He took them in, took in the canvass of pure light and movement and revelrous joy, this impossible space beyond the door, and was glad. “It’s no matter, I guess. But I’m glad I came here.” He looked at them both again and bent his head slightly. “Thank you.”

The light grew more intense all around after his words, the movement speedier, the energies of the dead golden goddess sharper and more potent. The serene smiles of the twin goddesses disappeared in the growing light, and Mish-Cheechel the Avenger felt his own form slowly meld and melt into the soup of light and joy and motion. He knew, in a way, that he was dying. That all things were dying. A part of him thought it a good way to go - but he did not allow himself that indulgence. There was, at the very least, no shame in this death. No, no shame at all.