Antarctic Termite

I saw that day / Lost my mind / Lord, I'm fine / Maybe in time / You'll want to be mine

Because I do not hope to turn again.

Because I do not hope to hurt a friend.

Because I know that tides still surge.

Because I bring a second purge.

Because I know that place is only place,

And I know that time is always and only time,

I mourn for those who've seen the face

And those who've never heard the rhyme.

Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?

For it knows not the death it brings.

For these wings are no longer wings to fly,
But fans with which to beat the air.
These eyes are no longer eyes to cry,
But voids with which to stare.

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
I mourn for those I cannot save,
And pray for those caught in the wave.

I cannot stand upon this throne of lies.
I will not home to yonder skies.

I will not hear the mad god's rave.
I cannot yield before the grave.

Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
The infirm glory of the positive hour.

And so dreams cross, and must collide.
And so I stand before the tide.

And so I know my cause is wrong.
And so I stand before the song.

I saw that day / Lost my mind / Lord, I'm fine / Maybe in time / You'll want to be mine

The monster roiled into the gulch, and was met.

Angelic light lanced out from the clifftops, piercing the sepia change-eater. No sooner had the volley ebbed than an incantation rose, and withering demonfire engulfed her body, the voice of vampires and young liches covered from the sun. The writings of Belruarc exploded around it, and the mists of the Valley burned.

The cloud of dust settled, and the shapeless stain remained.

"Run," begged Whisper the cursed. But they would not.

Flux glided to her. A faery halo hovered behind him. "Have you no words, o pawn of my tormentor? Is there nothing I can offer to save you from the flesh?"

Whisper took Wit's End from her back, flipped it once and buried it deep into the dirt.

"No," she said. "But first, a song."

I saw that day / Lost my mind / Lord, I'm fine / Maybe in time / You'll want to be mine

Recall the day of childhood's end
Or loss of first and only friend
When words alone sufficed to hurt

Do not forget where we found bliss
In times and places that we miss
For growing up is full of pain
And choices we won't make again

So let me tell you what I know
Of mother's love and true words told:
It made me cry, and left me cold.

* * *

Whisper crept through the misted valley, thinking of lost days. The vivid fog hurt less when she did that. The future was agony, and thoughts thereof pain, and though most of her memories hurt, some were still worth seeing one last time.

* * *

Whisper hovered above the ring, that oh so thin river of glittering rock upon which the vast factory floated. Tilted on its side, she could see only one listening-horn, and one many-eyed antenna. Even as she watched, Ovaedis revolved slowly on its axis.

She was bright, and full of colour. Every shade and hue of her was pure. Elsewhere her firstborn daughters played. Whisper realised something.

"You're a coward," she said. "Afraid of your own actions."

Maybe. If I am, so be it.

Jvan didn't care. Whisper narrowed her gaze and fumed. She was younger, then. Not so resigned.

"Have you ever done anything out of love? Anything?"

In the way that you feel it? No, she replied. No, I have not. And, maybe that's a lie, said Jvan, but it's easier than the truth.

"You don't even understand why you're doing this."

What I don't understand are my own memories. Jvan's voice carried on, nowhere to be seen in the rocks and the imagen but clear in Whisper's head. I created a something much like you, once. Much like the Sorority. And I executed a plan much like the one I had for you. And it caused me great pain.

The light doesn't shine everywhere, Diaphane Whisper. I only know so much. I do this to avoid the mistakes of another me.

Do you understand your role in this?

Whisper hardened. "When I first fell to earth, it was in a place of hiding," she repeated. "The place you call the Darkened Spires. There was life there, and Flickers. But nobody came there from beyond. And nothing left."

"Wander fell in a place on the outside of those spires. She hatched in a world where no matter how much she consumed, she would never be able to taste it all. And she would never be great enough to draw the ire of all the Flickers therein. So it has been for all the sisters who've gone into the sea."

"They only saw the beginning of your plan. I saw its end."

"The inside of that valley was a microcosm. I was change-eater, its elemental residents were Djinni. I fought them alone, and ate, and won, and lost, and they beat me back to grow again. I wondered why it felt so natural. Now I know."

"We found a balance, there, in the Spires. The stable ecosystem you built into us. Perpetual war."

"And maybe I was always weird. Maybe I was always different to my sisters. Because they would never have seen the truth of it, but I did. It was horrible."

Whisper opened her many eyes and stared again at the great pale slope towering away far ahead of her. "I will fight to change our future. I don't want to kill or starve. I don't..." She choked. "...want to see my sisters die."

Good, said Jvan.

The sound rose first as a distant whine, and Whisper didn't know what pained her. She raised her feathered tendrils and gazed at them, watching sepia stains flow through the blood.

She yelled Jvan's name. Jvan stared at her from inside the factory. She felt that gaze upon her, and screamed.

The sound collided with her and Whisper was destroyed in the force of a thousand hallucinations, perception without self. Whisper's body screamed and Whisper's senses heard that scream, but Whisper herself was gone.

Drop by drop Whisper's ego returned to her, the flow of awareness applied to raw senses that we call consciousness. She gripped herself in a ball above the reef, slowly became aware of the fact that something was growing within her. A memory of nightmare flashed scene by scene through her brain.

They floated there, Jvan and Whisper, god and victim. No words were exchanged.

Go, said Jvan. There is nothing more we have to say to each other.

Whisper fled.

I saw that day / Lost my mind / Lord, I'm fine / Maybe in time / You'll want to be mine

Flux stood among the acacias of his home, holding a stylus and with it scribing subtle curves upon the earth. Clay was not a medium often used for the magic of ciphers, but alas, he could not work stone.

Yulosi rode up beside him on her black wether-goat, her lich's eyes glowing from behind her hood. Her staff lay across its back in front of her, trailing lizard skulls.

"Done with tha'?"

"A moment." Flux added the final glyph and gestured forwards. Yulosi took a stem of inkcap mushroom and ignited it between her fingertips, whispering a prayer to the demons and touching her staff to the pattern. It glowed briefly.

Flux lifted the clay slab and fitted it to its place in the pattern. The gulch was a dead end, its stream long since blocked by landslides. Unguided travellers found it often, and were turned back by its steep slopes. Flux intended for the next arrival to come here by choice.

"I get the impression you'll be spending the night here."

"I will," he said. And he felt the wave of a presence pass again in the back of his mind.

Mirus shone its aberrant light directly into the pit of stone, destined tonight to be full. Flux glowed in its center. The urtelem who had chosen to accompany him had once again curled up for the night. It was a brief hour's rest they were taking. Work would resume before dawn.

For now- just this moment- all was silent. Flux was the only one awake.

Yet he was not alone.

A presence turned its gaze upon him and at that same moment Flux vacated the space, ferrying his incandescence with him and leaving it dark. His hands trailed behind him like scarves of ferrous liquid. He touched the pattern of spiral algebra on the wall he'd been facing.

The presence passed on. Like a patch of light between dappling branches, it wandered thoughtlessly back to him. And he was gone.

His quarter-circle wings curled effortlessly behind him and he settled among the copse of holy trees above. He increased his golden light. The stranger looked at him, but he was touching the bark of a tree nearby, and when it looked again he was elsewhere.

Thus he moved, and led the dance of that night, with sweeping, flowing steps; a silent dance, of look and look-not, touch and not-touch. His arms flowed smooth in his wake like twin dancer's sashes, and the presence was lured to his rhythm. Be it what it may, yet in this, small thing, it was an excellent partner.

Flux landed on a single point in the gulch and dimmed his light, bowing as a cloud passed over the moon of Mirus.

"I think not, Yivvin," he said into the dark. "My story's not yet over. I'm growing still."

I saw that day / Lost my mind / Lord, I'm fine / Maybe in time / You'll want to be mine

Though patient days may ease the rot
And sleep remove its sting,
The traitor winds have not forgot
That one regretted sin.

It is a mortal I betray
His flesh was once my own,
And though I beg and though I pray
My burden's only grown.

I will not lie or plead with him
I will not preach my cause.
This blood is shed for Horror's whim-
I cannot stay my claws.

* * *

Whisper reached the foothills of the mountains where Grot had once walked.

The earth was covered in shallow lakes marking his footsteps. Flowers grew there now, ferns and water-lilies, and animals grazed at their side. She heard it all, the song of nature with no words, every nurtured stroke and blade of grass. Aihtiraq's gift followed her still.

She passed through a thin passage where a Matriarch once stood, along with a girl named Tira and a monk named Dancer. She flowed into the Valley of Peace.

She was told that it would burn. She had not expected this.

The wrath of betrayal and pain and justice and suffering dug into her, the claws of a thousand lost children given a place to tear. Every righteous word ever whispered by an angel sickened her, shredded her brain and made her weak.

And yet she did not die.

Whisper stalled for a moment and travelled on. She saw the great sigils before she stood between, disguised though they were. She opened her eyes and stared down their scribe as she entered them, and gold flashed, one on each side of the valley, to snare her with its magic.

The stone uncurled and stood before her, a half-blind urtelem aged by a hundred years of rain and still bearing the scars of that long-gone day. Whisper billowed in her cage. She dwarved the stoneman. Her face signed.

'You broke formation, didn't you?' The urtelem nodded. 'Why?'

The stoneman signed, 'Because once there was a girl I could not save on a battlefield, and that pained me all my days.'

'So you grew strong.'

He nodded.

'Nothing will save you.' said Whisper the cursed. 'If you do not flee, you will die.'

He shook his head. He smiled.

Whisper flared her sepia blood and screamed in the narrow alley. Her body swung like a coat of iron chains and slammed the ground and walls, shattering the sigils, shattering the walls, bringing down the stone, shattering everything.

Golden glyphs exploded above her and she emerged from the rockfall like the dark dust it had raised. The urt put his fists to the ground and squared himself. Whisper adopted no stance.

The lines shone from his fists to the sigil below her and there was a blur. The ground exploded towards him. Whisper stood in the shattered wake and watched rocks fall into the huge gouge she had torn into the earth. She saw the stoneman standing in the chaos and did not hesitate. She somersaulted her tail upon him.

Then he was broken, and nought but cracked stone remained, still bearing his moving face.

Whisper did not mourn. She travelled on.

I saw that day / Lost my mind / Lord, I'm fine / Maybe in time / You'll want to be mine

Flux sensed a golden wind flow between the bars of his angular head, and raised his gaze. The soughing winds of Change blew upon him, and he felt a shift in the air.

Somewhere distant, I am remembered, he thought. Somewhere distant, I return.

Flux swished his sheets of fluid and glided on over the terrace of his garden, appearing like a man in a robe hurrying to retrieve something forgotten. The leaves of many years whispered beside him, in yellow and pink and blue, and the ataractic mists trailed into cirrus-shapes above.

As he went he touched so gently the every fallen twig, sampled the birdpecked berry and lifted the fallen rock; such was his nature that meticulosity had been folded into the paint of his very being, and become effortless, as easy as a constant breath and almost as absent. Yet nothing was changed, though he passed it by, no rock left turned, no bird disturbed. Even the angels that whispered sweet nothings as they smoothed each other's hair in the boughs did not notice as he passed, for Flux was as a shadow within water, a flick of shade that only hints at the calm giant that hides within.

He reached the pool of a waterfall and, sprinkling seed from the bird-feeder to the koi as he passed, flicked his shape up the spattered rocks and 'round the bubbling cliffs to the stream. There, where a small watermill was turning his mixer, a small house like a windmill-lighthouse stood at the edge of the Valley.

Flux flapped his wings and was up in a fizzle of amber-glowing quicksilver. He landed effortlessly in his most private room and reached for his books.

A quintet of codices all opened as one, and each sash of the Sculptor either held or examined the self-pressed pages. All of a sudden, he snapped them all closed with a fantastic sound.

Flux reached out to his chained-up Halo as it glowed with an indigo light on the end of its copper fixture. He unlinked the copper chain and set it gently where it belonged, floating still as a disc behind his pyramid face.

There. That would do him for now.

He swept his way cleanly out of the rooms of paints and pigments and down the valley's foothills, to the dojo where skeletons were training. He passed the clear-glass grove where faeries gathered over howdah'd rocks and rang the great bronze bell where his friend awaited.

"Whachu-"

Yulosi quietened as her old friend bowed. A vampire peered out from behind her and she smacked him across the face without looking.

"Flux," she said. "You old bastard."

Flux smiled. There was talk to be had.

I saw that day / Lost my mind / Lord, I'm fine / Maybe in time / You'll want to be mine

harder to read, already canon

easier to read, annoying code

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Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@Frettzo Since when was Vestec fucking chiselled?

_{holy shit, that jawline's got me moister than an oyster}

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

DO IT VESTEC MISSES HER VERY MUCH

@Rtron

VESTARTE IS GETTING READY TO SAIL ONCE MORE

WILL THE JOKER FIND HIS HARLEY? WE SHALL FIND OUT IN THE NEXT EPISODE OF DESPERATE GODWIVES

@Frettzo

*CONFUSED SCREAMING*

I saw that day / Lost my mind / Lord, I'm fine / Maybe in time / You'll want to be mine

'Soul, soul, where art thou?'
I'm in the place that you choose to forget
I'm in the dark that you hide in regret
I'm in the cold that showed to the earth.

'Mother, mother, help me now!'
The mother has left you to cry and to roam
The mother has sent you away from your home
The mother has spurned you and cursed you from birth.

'I'll run! I'll flee! I'll break my vow!'
The oath that you took is stronger than you
The oath that you chose is only what's true
The oath that you live is all that you're worth.

'My soul and my oath and my mother of life,
All have conspired to bring up the knife.'

'And thus I will go, since nothing remains.
Thus I will go on to finish my pains.'

Whisper.

Time had passed. There would be no more delay. Whisper had shared her poetry with the Realta of Lex, and thus eliminated her final reason to exist. They sang her a solemn song in her own tongue as she left.

Somber times await the one
Who'd chase the earth and spurn the sun
Yet may the flow of yonder years
Bring thy song to future ears...

Whisper heard her lessons of tune and voice sound clearly from the choir, assembled in sputtering rusty ranks on either side. She twisted Wit's End on her back and unfurled a fluttering feather in farewell. The Realta watched her go.

A final voice cried out from the throng. Its accent was native.

"Wait!"

Whisper opened an eye. It was colourless in the dark of her skin.

"Grandma, wait!"

It was Dust. She couldn't have been much older than Wander when she'd first made the swim to Lex.

"I wanted to say goodbye."

Just that.

"Dust..."

Dust waited, patiently, for the words. Whisper had nothing to say. She prompted.

"Will we even hear from you again?"

Whisper turned to her. "Dust," she said. "Daughter of my daughter... Run."

Dust startled. She listened.

"Flee this place. Fight everything you love, abandon all you trust. Spurn gods. Drink oceans. Ride winds. Beg before kings and pray beside beggars. Suffer, Dust. Leave your sisters behind. Whatever happens," she said, "cannot be worse than the end I will bring."

Whisper turned and fled into the skyglow. Dust stalled in her shadow, then leapt to sprint after her.

"Can I flow beside you? Please!"

She let her. When her daughter began to flag, Whisper leapt into the atmosphere and burned on her way down.