Plains are gentle to the winds that stride upon them. The air sifts between long grasses, soughing. Each gust carries a subtly different note. I am well familiar with this ambience. It is the sound of waves. Over the great length of the golden barrens, a tide is coming in.
The acacia is an island, its canopy broad and lonely. The only place of shade for many tired footfalls on the way to the venomweald. High are its leaves, and high am I, among them. A view of splendour. It is gratifying, to own this land and rule it, but my reign is not quiet.
There is, on the far northern edge of the Fractal Sea, a stretch of coast still marked by the number-perfect lines of bays and estuaries where the waters first drew their border, long ago when the world was young. And on this coast there is a lagoon, which is peaceful and still, good sailing in even the smallest rafts which hain sometimes string together upon which to fish. Stories say that it was not always so. Stories say many things.
The only story likely to catch the interest of the traveller is a simple one. Upon a slab of waveworn stone at the far eastern end of the water, there is a series of faint depressions that present themselves only to a keen sense of touch. On a few scarce days every year, when the six moons align their pull, the water rises just high enough to fill these markings evenly. Using the pale reflection of their light, these etchings can be read. It is said that they always read the same words, no matter the tongue or text of the traveller, but this is something one must see for oneself.
Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place.
I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face, And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again.
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice And pray to God to have mercy upon us.
Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again.
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us.
The extract is from T.S. Eliot's work Ash Wednesday, slightly edited. The teaser is for a long-ass trashpost I've been fiddling with in bursts for more than a month now. Currently all that's left to do is write an epilogue, edit out countless major character and plot inconsistencies, summarise, and format the damn thing.
Flux emerged from the waters of rebirth as a moth from its chrysalis: Slowly, delicately, stretching new-found wings with the purest form of innocent confidence. I bid you watch him, and watch him well.
See the glow of gold and forge-red within his folds and ribbons. This is his soul, for what alighted upon him from the nether worlds was only waiting for he on whom one could be implanted. See too how its light steams and dances over the sea-drops that fall from his body. For he is no longer of water but of oil, infused with fine metals. He has become a thing of paint. Watch, now, as Flux stares into the moonlight of his first morning.
And what moonlight it is! There are six moons aligned in the heavens tonight, and they shine as one, from bright Vigilate to shaded Cogitare. Even the narrow river that had once been Lex seems to sing to its sisters.
Flux stargazes. For some time he continues. He has never seen the moons this clearly before, nor even considered such a display anything more than a waste of his attention.
They're quite splendid.
Around him, the islands and bays of what Flux has crafted out of his home are all gone. The surface is still, and, passing over, he does not disturb it. The memory of what was and is now lost to chaos strikes many chords in his heart, but they are tangential, distant things. Indeed, Flux remembers very much, and his memory is true, and he does not stay to live it again. What is seen is seen. What is done is done. I am who I am.
Yivvin is still there, in the artist's mind, where he will remain forever. Flux does not summon him, though he knows that he will come at the call. There is no need. Neither mortal nor god has anything left to say- It is over. Promises have been kept and lost. Those who ascend do not look back. Life is made of pain and pleasure, and regret only blocks both.
Flux was who Flux was, and now he is who he shall be.
I wonder if I am still 'he'.
Flux supposes that is not the case, or never was. It is little more than a curious guess. Much about himself he now realises that he does not really know. Nor does he know how long it may take to find out if there is an answer to that question. For now, he remains Flux. There is much that Flux has yet to do.
The shining spirit travels over the water, gently swirling and unfolding and coalescing as it moves. In not so much time, Flux has passed the border of the lagoon he once knew as his, and looks out on a dune-crest over all the lands he has seen and never travelled. I suppose I never desired to leave behind what was mine. It is a glorious realm.
Then, too, so is this. Perhaps it, also, is mine.
Perhaps this whole world is shared between all those eyes who behold it. Who can say?
There comes a red glow to the far horizon, and it draws nearer. Flux stays to watch.
It is not dawn.
The wildfire draws near, chasing a shoal of embers ahead of it in a cloud of smoke. They swim like creatures fleeing a sudden noise and Flux traces them in his mind's eye, drawing out the sinuous curves they travel before they die. Soot and smoke roils around them, following its own pattern of revelry as it grows. Flux watches the tide come in, as he has innumerable others, other tides and waves and flotsam. A renewal, a sculpting of elements. And not beyond my capability to craft and control. Nothing is. Flux sees it as one evolving whole from the moment it crests the horizon to the moment it halts over his head.
"You have left your puddle, Flux. At last."
It has been years since the spirit last mocked Pyre, and he has grown. Not changed, perhaps, but Pyre's sons number twelve where once there were seven, and he gazes down half again upon the rival he once matched height for height. The flames wreath his legs like a silken robe, barely obscuring the work of muscle below. Smooth shoulder-curves are mantled in smoke.
Flux takes in every stroke of Pyre's body. He is beautiful. As magificent as I was the day I looked upon the bone-scorpion's necklace. More, even. As if to feel the surface of Pyre's chest, to touch him and see if he's just a dream, Flux stretches out, slowly, something like a hand.
In a sweeping blow that sears the night air, Pyre slams into Flux's core and tosses him aside, a brilliant flare erupting at the point of impact.
"Disgusting," he sneers, as Flux reforms upon the ground. "That I should in my reign be forced to touch one so cursed. Yet I am brought to do so by a duty; One which I owe to my very self, and to you, slime, for you have abandoned it."
Pyre advances, leading the blaze behind him, and is not shocked to see his once-rival give way before him, turning aside again to avoid his path. Flux does so at his own leisure. He is an actor of Pyre's stage, now, so let the rightful lead be taken, lest the scene be unbalanced.
"When I first met you, you were noble. A high being, as I. Indeed, with patient effort, you may even have one day been worthy to stand before my face and name yourself my true nemesis. Now look at you. A disgrace! Where are the tides of today, that you have spent such years commanding? Where is the handsome figure, that I judged to hold such potential? You have thrown away all that you are!"
A stamped foot, another blinding fireburst. Cinders flurry upwards and all around.
"Your power is wasted upon you now- An insult to your own kin, and a burden to mine, that I must see you to ash and tar when I could be engaging djinni far greater. And yet you have lost even the simple decency to grovel.
"Hear me well, foam spirit: I came at your own call. The echoes of your wish for death carried far, and the windlings caught it. Fickle vagrants be they, but even they know well who and what they are. Your words were carried to me, and I came to bestow what final mercy is within my power. I came, across sand and stone, to find you. Now I see you so far rotted that you would kiss your own cancer, and pronounce it wholesome.
"Is there still a shadow of your true self left, Flux? Enough to beg forgiveness for what you have made of yourself, and await your reckoning? Enough to regret? Or is even that flickering hope too dim to last?"
Now Pyre stands at the head of the dune, and Flux is in danger of falling down its slope. He feels no fear, though the blaze stands shining above him, and the black pillars blot out the stars. No- Flux does fear. A fear for life and realm. But he consumes that emotion. Relishes it. Tastes the tension, the risk. Flux savours the sensation if impending death, a connoisseur.
His new body comes undone, all but the prism-form that gleams where once there was a face, and fans out in a folded half-circle beneath that peak. The disk splits sixfold, flows, and ripples, and like a moth, Flux ascends on young wings, wings tipped in the squared false-hands of an idol.
The imago rises to match Pyre, who grimaces, but does not give a single sand-kernel worth of ground. From the fluid pyramid, a face is formed, a visage familiar of old.
"It is not right to hold silence to a rival of long years. Behold, Pyre, for now I face you as who I was, and what I am. For these things are not undone. In seasons gone I mocked you, and I am still the mocker. In days past I administered the waves, and I am still a baron, though I now intend to rove the ways of this world, and take to the earth and the skies also, and seek out all that which wanders in hope of the voice of a lord.
"Gaze upon me, blaze-speaker, and know: This is I. This is Flux. This is the face of the true self, the only self, for it is the face of the moment, the face of now. And it, like all else, shall change, grow, aspire to greater grandeur. What I was, I was in earnest. What I did, I did with pride, and will soon continue afresh. The only truth in this world is the truth that evolves. Thus I am who I am. No more- And no less."
And as Flux speaks these words, the first faery drifts down from the blackened sky, and alights upon his forehead. It is a moth, a striated umber moth, and on many wings it watches Pyre with the eye-spots that Flux never had.
The fire-djinn lifts his face to the sky, and exhales a slow plume of red.
"You make no apology for the disgrace of your kind and your station. You renounce the words you spake in better senses. You reject the mercy of a wiser Djinn. Very well, Flux. Your decision is clear, and I shall not dispute."
Then the two powers are swelling, shining, a great blaze and a little glow, and the fire is a sighing, flowering hell of black and yellow, but this oil does not easily catch, and this metal does not easily rust.
"...So be it."
They surge forth.
I no longer strive to strive towards such things. Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings? Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign? Because I do not hope to know again.
And Flux draws back.
The spirit is quite surprised, indeed, to be alive. Certainly, he knows that Pyre left him only the choice between death willing and death violent, for there is no way to outpace such a fire, even should he reach the shore, and so he fought long, and well. Certainly, too, the faery proved remarkably effective in dissolving flame and gale, though it be but one. And we well know that the body is a malleable thing, of which we all stand to learn much- How much more a body of paint to an artist?
Pyre breathes deeply, and roars conflagration still, sharp against the last moonlight. But he is grounded, now, a sizzling heap upon a wide field of ash, and he knows well how soon Flux may corner him, how simple it is for the flow to part before the obstacle and move on. They have passed each other many times, and, at last, the ranks of the fire do not rise again.
"It is a strange thing," speaks Flux. "That, a time and a day ago, I wished to speak these words. For now that they come at last, they are heavy and ashen upon my soul. Thus I say to you, Pyre- Do you yield?"
A brief cloud of flame plumes again, and Flux disperses it with hands like ribbons.
"Never! Not to such as you. To death at the hands of one greater and more beautiful than I- Therein may lie some bitter honour, but this aeon shall not pass before I rid this world of your degeneracy!"
More fire, adding to the thick, low smoke. Flux delays the final collision. Pyre is not the only one to have spent much in this duel.
"There is no need for death in the moonlight. I never asked it of you, nor shall I force it. I ask life. Will you give me that?"
It is a curious dilemma, made none the less charged for the fact that Flux knows how it will end.
"Mark me, Flux. You shall be but a stain on the sand before the sun rises, if I must give my life to have it be so. For I, at least, will die as myself, free and pure to the last!"
He does not. Not yet. He is not certain that his sacrifice will destroy the painted being, not while Flux holds the upper hand.
"And yet I must live, and will not trade my life for yours, nor both of ours for nothing. If I flee from you, you shall return for me. If I let you destroy yourself as you wish, I may die. There is only one way, Pyre. Do you not know it?"
Another question. Another answer.
"I know it well- You shall fall upon me, and seek to destroy me before I may destroy you, and then I shall destroy us both! Come, coward! Cease delaying what must take place!"
A tragedy, that Pyre still fails to admit to himself that he is not capable of the final step. Only the cruel would name it otherwise.
"I wish you no despair, Pyre. These shores have seen enough of that already. Make your last peace and give yourself back to the ether, the primordial winds. It is not my night to fade."
"I refuse it. I deny your empty promises now and into eternity, and if the Flux that was still lived, he would honour me by sparing them."
And, of course, he does.
"Then it is over, for you as it was for me. I know what it means to seek death and find nothing. Goodbye, old friend. I will remember you with warmth and light."
Flux leaps, six wings fusing into two, and before Pyre can struggle to open up his own heart, he claps them together upon him. There is a final wave of embers as they collide, but Pyre is gone. The wavering candle-lights of his progeny look on, uncertain. They are too young to mourn. Only Flux remains to pay the final dues.
"Go," he bids them. And, one by one, unsure of the meaning of mercy, they disappear into the haze and the ash.
Flux sees them all. Watch him well and closely; for we will not hear of him again for some time. See him as the final glow upon the ashen dune, the final sound as the crackle of fresh charcoal dies at last. Know that he smiles without a mouth, for these nameless children are too small to remember him and too young to travel far, and he is glad that they will live on to claim the dunes and the shore once again. Listen, closely now, for his prayers. Flux prays to the wind, and the dawn, and the waters and what lies beyond them, prays even to Yivvin, that these sparks will not one day dwindle in the dust, but will burn, brightly, and carve names of their own into the legend of ages.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence; Not on the sea or on the islands, not On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land. For those who walk in darkness, Both in the day time and in the night time, The right time and the right place are not here. No place of grace for those who avoid the face. No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice.
Exhaustion. I can see the light creeping on, one moment at a time, from day into night and night into day, again, and again, and again, and again. The bitter moons tug the tides with fleeting and jittery pinches. Mocking me. Sand sifts away from where I hauled it. Each wave pulls me with it, up and down, a sick, limp sack of fluid.
There is a kind of disgusting interplay between my substance and that of the ocean. The pain does not disturb me on its spiny drift through cycles of localised cuts and aches, but the horror is a thing all its own. To feel oneself melting into the water and become slime. A stringy, oily mess with no surface. With each slice of torture, a brittle black flake begins to swim in me, and I can feel it move. I can watch it and I do, obsessively. The more I watch the fragile crystal platelets shatter and grow, the deeper I am incited to nausea. This is not my body. This is not who I am.
Flex.
"Never!"
You are growing into your final shape and need space. Flex.
"Shrivel up and die!"
Sure. But first, flex.
Something is dripping inside me, a feeble flow. I am being distilled. Colours are separating into the watery gunk as it bleeds out of me. They form a set of layers that slide over one another in eddies. A false skin, a membrane sticking to me. Sticking to me as the sea is peeled off my flesh. And the steam billows on.
I'm curled as tightly as I can, to try and hide as much of myself from the metamorphosis as I can, but now I give a reflexive convulsion before I return to fetal position.
Flex?
"Silence!"
No. Flex.
I try to breach the surface to form a mouth and shout, but I cannot. I am already melded with the formless entombment and it bends around me. But I do not give in. Noble even in death, I do not surrender.
Rather than watch myself be destroyed beyond imagining, I dig myself into myself and try to pull, to rip, to swell and burst. I can feel my strength but it does nothing for me. When I try to perform even the slightest stretch, the motion stirs a flurry of new precipitates into my body. The meniscus, the skin, expands to accommodate my motion and I cannot contract it back into my previous shape. I no longer bend in the ways that would be right for suicide. The disease has slit my hamstrings.
People get tired, time goes on. Friendships only last so long and online friendships can grow especially faint. The human beings constituting those friendships wear thin and move on and change, and nostalgia accumulates in the absence.
Gods Toun (Nice handwriting) Zephyrion (Windbag) Slough (Snug and cozy in a wooden mech) Niciel (Lets Falas do the hard work) Illunabar (Needs coffee) Jvan (Cancerous blogger) Teknall (Has his shit together) Kyre (*Jaws theme*) Vowzra (Part Grizzly) Vestec (Having the time of his life) Ull'Yang (No one can hear you scream) Astarte (Needs less coffee)
Demigods Lifprasil (Nice GuyTM) Keriss (Serves stabby patties by the dozen) Belvast (actual lolcat) The Bard (Blazin' it up in a pocket dimension)
Avatars Yang'Ze (Dusting his fists) Heartworm (Well-earned vacation) Violence (Ready for the smackdown) Majus (Big spoon) Minus (Little spoon) Notte (Music nerd) Meimu (Flower nerd) Piena (Nerd-herding nerd) Goliath (actual fucking Terminator)
Heroes Allure (THAT DASHING BOY) Falas (Ready to rumble) Loth (on an adventure) Lakshmi (Doing her very best) Grot (Has the munchies that only angels can satisfy) Gerrik (Wears contacts) Susa (Has 53287248324342 followers on Instagram) Bez (u fkn wot m8 ill fkn smash u) Ventus (Still waiting on a pay rise) Makeda (Anime protag, probably low-key emo)
Other Big (Probably not Shrek) Violet (monologuemonologuemonologuemonologue) Tira (Obligatory coming-of-age stereotype) Dancer (High on life) Tular (Ate toasted cheese sandwiches before bed again) Murmur (Plays in a screamo band) Ommok (Mayor of Ogreville)
To Be Introduced Amartia (Demigod of all the best things in life) Kinesis (Demigod of being Robocop's waifu) Conata (Demigod of getting her name mixed up with Cortana) Flux (Who's this asshole?)
To think it would be so simple to beat back the cancer. To think that Yivvin would tell the truth.
I did.
No, you didn't. You promised a cure. You promised a return to glory.
And you had it, for a time. You have it still.
The dryness burns. I no longer have the strength to reconcile my limbs into a recognisable shape for more than a few precious moments apiece. I do it anyway. I wane with every collapse and recollection, my limbs taking on a different number and configuration over my face with each little death.
No more waves come to my hands. My focus is too tightly chained to the twin effort of holding myself together and keeping the water out, and between them I may soon be torn apart.
I am an ocean spirit, dying of thirst.
Drink, then.
Looking up, my home is a masterwork. It was many but lonely hands that built this wonder, for my sons abandoned me long ago to seek their own way, and I did not stop them. I don't think I even noticed them go. Even the windlings no longer come. They fear what I do.
There are islands. Deep pools, and shallows. Currents and salt rivers. Springs. Mid-water dunes. False beaches. All crowned in pale dust gothic, the architecture of sand in every sweeping arrangement that can be.
It is deteriorating before my eyes grain by grain, and the sea laps up the remains. So much water. The source of my body, so long ago, and all I need do is to give it back. To regain what I am and heal what is mine.
Do it. All this might be yours again. You cannot resist much longer, anyway.
If I do, I will be lost. Forever. Never again will I be able to assume this weathered form in all its many variants. At best I might manage an imitation, to torment myself with what is gone. Such a beautiful shape.
Give in, Flux. This has gone on too long. No one has ever escaped their ascension alive, and there is no one left to kill you.
There is no one left to kill me.
You would not be able to kill yourself if you tried, either. It is too late for that. There is too much of me in you now.
"Why, Yivvin? Why me?"
I am as I am, Flux, and all else bows.
"Who are you?"
You have asked me before and not been satisfied.
"Then satisfy me, before I give up my soul. Lie to me, only let me know."
A pause. I stand up, dragging myself. There is nothing else I can do.
In little traitor steps, I carry myself within breathing reach of the edge. I no longer expect an answer, but one bursts into me, stained with regret.
I don't know, Flux! I am a child. A child god. So have I been since my first memories in the world-womb, so will I be until eternity has come and gone. I do as I do, that it may be done, that I may have seen it. So that I may grow up in a beautiful place. I can't say more than that. I am who I am.
I have no words. Only a pit where once they lay in my throat. It is over. The conversation of years has burned through those supplies of hate that seemed so bottomless. I allow myself to stumble, and I fall, chest-first, arms spreading, one foot still hopelessly pressing against the soil. There is a moment in which all is suspended and I am nothing.
I guess you think this is unfair.
I'm sorry, Flux.
The sea fuses with me and the energy that surges back into my heart is so intense that it drowns out the pain. I can see my fingers splitting themselves apart in exquisite detail, staining, as rust in water or gangrene on skin. A ragged puddle forms from me and billows demon's breath to the moons. The steam tastes of teeth and glass and burnt wire. Where once a face cringed it has now twisted until it frayed into splinters and I roar a gargling curse- Perhaps my fury alone is enough to penetrate the armour of time and space and drive it into Yivvin's ribs like a stake.
"A HELL OF TORMENT FOR YOUR ETERNITY IS TOO KIND! LET YOUR DEATH COME SOON, IF THE GODS BE MIGHTY, AND LET IT BE OF GIBBERING FEAR! YOUR TEARS WILL BRING NOUGHT BUT PEACE TO THE WORLD, SO MAY YOU SUFFER AND WEEP IN THE COLD MADNESS FOREVER!"
I scream. The sound echoes out into nothing, and nothing hears. Even I can no longer deny the emptiness of my words. It is already over.
I'm sorry.
Let none of you call out to gods in times of need. Trust me. I have tried.
Vec
Timemaster