Lord Zee
yoshua171100 Years into the Era of the New Gods
“The traveler’s past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, but the more remote past.”
Days passed as he walked and the towering forests that flanked the road slowly gave way to shrublands so dense that they verged on untraversable. In places like this most travellers had no choice but to stick to the paths cleared by the locals between their farms, and that was especially true of those of the human variety. It helped to have scales in a place like this. Of course, the traveller could have walked straight through it all without blinking.
There wasn’t a better way to attract attention than not blinking, though. It was surprising how quickly most people caught onto that detail, so the traveller had to remember. Blink every so often. Don’t just walk through and over any obstacle, stick to the main roads. A century and he still forgot, sometimes, but there had been less people then. Less eyes watching.
Now? The number of little Drakhorey-looking people pausing to gawk and scowl at him as he made his way to their city was astonishing. Once a few hundred had seemed like so many. For there to be this many of them when even one could change everything? He truly questioned the sanity of his peers who thought they were still in control. At least that was mutual.
The world changed. When the traveller finally made his way into the veritable labyrinth of wooden multi-story buildings and narrow streets that was the Eft’s city he was thinking about his reason for coming. In search of a favor. It wasn’t something he had a habit of doing, but a century was enough time to learn that there are things that you just can’t do yourself, or at least not do well. So, he made his way through the city asking after a name he’d only overheard once. And wasn’t that a strange thing? To live a century and only hear something spoken the once.
“Say,” the traveller stopped a passing Eft, “Have you seen the An-Clastaphon?”
The Eft looked at him strangely, saying, in their draconic language, “What are you talking about, human? Looking for another one of your kind? Nobody keeps track of you lot.” It didn’t even wait for a response, melting back into the dense crowd the moment it was done speaking.
“Hm,” the traveller paused and reflected on the fact that this hadn’t been working. He’d been making his way around the Shard asking the same question and the response he’d just been given summed up the vast majority of his journey thus far. It made him more confident he was looking for the right person.
It was also beginning to get on his nerves. Patience was a virtue, but there were limits and he was fast approaching his. If asking one person at a time wasn’t working, well then why not ask everyone at once? He found another local in the crowd and whispered to them, “You haven't seen the An-Clastaphon recently, have you?”
The words echoed in the ear of every living being in the city. Just on the edge of hearing, without a clear source, but intelligible and clear as could be.
The reaction was instant; the crowd halted in confusion for a brief moment, looking over their shoulders and at each other as they searched for the source; before, eventually, shrugging and moving on. However; there was a different reaction, the traveller could sense, in the palace guards walking down the street nearby. Their movements held a mix of fear and anger as they began to shove aside Efts, searching for the culprit.
The traveler's grin grew and he pivoted towards the guards. Guards were the sort to be most suspicious of words whispered in their ear in general, but any reaction was worth the follow up at this point. He strode towards them only to make it barely halfway before a scaly hand gripped his arm, spinning him around. It was an Eft, barely distinguishable from any other in the crowd. As he opened his mouth to speak, it shoved a rolled-up note into his mouth before melting back into the crowd as though it were never there.
After, irritably, pulling the note out of his mouth the traveller glared at the spot where the Eft had vanished. It took him a moment before he bothered to open the note and read it.
Avoid palace guards.
Will kill you on sight.
Go to farmhouse
3 miles west starting from western terminus gate.
Cellar door set into nearby tree in middle of wheat field.
Will kill you on sight.
Go to farmhouse
3 miles west starting from western terminus gate.
Cellar door set into nearby tree in middle of wheat field.
”They’d try...” The traveller muttered before the note dissolved in their hand, instantly rendered to ash.
Finding the western gate was as easy as bothering enough Eft’s for directions, so before the palace guards had even given up on their anxious search the traveller was gone and off towards the lonely tree. When he did find the tree, and the door, he swung it open and stepped in without even bothering to knock.
Inside was what once may have been a cellar for spirits to be imbibed; now, it was cleared out, gloomy and lit only by a single torch placed next to a bed frame. It was silent, though the traveller could sense magical fields set about the edges of the room; concealing something. “Lay down,” something whispered to him from the darkness.
"Doubt that’s a very popular pitch,” the traveller remarked as they gave an exaggerated shrug while walking over to and collapsing into the bed, “But if that’s what you need, alright.”
The voice spoke again, this time, louder. It said, “Among our arts there is no mediocrity of attainment; should you study it, you shall have everything or you shall have nothing. To set yourself upon this task is to dedicate your whole being to it, for one who knows half their craft knows nothing. Do you understand?”
“Oh not this again. Does everyone have a cult now?” the traveller muttered under his breath before speaking up and answering with some level of tiredness, “I do understand what you’re saying, yes.”
“One of the chief anxieties, then, is the concealment of our art. We are thieves of knowledge beyond our rank; revealing clearly our lessons in the land shall lead only to all our misery. Speak not her name; her attention is not what you wish. Do you understand?” The voice continued, its tone demanding.
The traveller spun his legs off the bed and sat up before starting, ”So actually, I do wish. I am definitely looking for her attention. Have you seen her recently? Or, sorry, have you ever seen her or know someone who has?”
There was, for a while, a stunned silence. Then, slowly, the voice returned, this time unsure, “Our masters would know. We can send you to them. It is your life, and your death.”
”Great!” The traveller hopped off the bed and clapped, “Then if you could just point me to them and I’ll handle all the life and the death stuff?”
“Lay down,” the voice instructed, “Unless you feel that falling down and bashing your head is a fitting end to your journey.”
“I’d be more worried about the floor,” The traveller tapped his head with his knuckles before sitting back onto the bed, “Got a thick skull.”
A figure then emerged from the sides of the room, as if stepping out of nothing. It seemed the magic at the edges of the room hid them; he was an Eft, hooded and robed, carrying a cup of tea. The Eft slowly lowered the tea to the traveller’s mouth, slowly dripping it into his mouth. They whispered, “I wish you good luck on your suicide.”
Then, the traveller felt his soul splitting from his body. He felt an urge to walk, and when he did, he found that his soul did not walk in three-dimensional space. It walked a strange angle, until he hit his first obstacle; his divine nature began to split atwain, his very soul being stripped of its divinity. A searing pain unlike anything he had ever felt before spread across him, but his soul kept walking.
His mind went blank. Darkness overwhelmed him as consciousness seemingly fled. But, when he came to, he was walking; nothing more than a loose conglomeration of emotion manifested into a vague mockery of the human form. Ahead, a city being torn down in its entirety, set upon a sea of nothing. The rocks and the trees and the grass blurred around him, becoming one in the face of the city.
The false moon shined down upon it all. The flesh writhed, and an Eft, spotting the traveller walking towards the city, lowered himself into prostration, his voice dull and flat as he said, “The divine walks our city, and the world entrail. What honor brings him to make gracious hosts of us all?”
”Fuckkk.” The god hissed and repressed the pain. He straightened up and affected a smile, but unmasked as he was the building anger was unmistakable. He reigned it in. He always did, but the feeling wasn’t something easily hidden by a joke and a grin in this place, wherever it was. When the traveller, the god, when Orynn Kaseyk spoke his reply it was with as much friendly humor as he could manage, “Just saying hello. Well, that and me needing to ask one little thing: do you, oh, happen to know when I can find the An-Clastaphon?”
The Eft rose to his feet, answering, “She watches the sixth city of Olan; through a breach into the parabola. If you seek her, your arrival is fortuitous; you have landed in the seventh city, Alaman.” He pointed behind Orynn, “Walk that way, and you will find yourself in Olan. There, they are always silent and in hiding. Make yourself obvious and she will steal you back into the waking world.”
Well, thanks,” Orynn stumbled over the words, almost bemused. He stared at the Eft for a second before suddenly smiling more genuinely, “Direct and helpful huh? Maybe this place isn't as bad as the trip.”
The god waved fondly at the Eft as he pivoted on one heel and set off. He didn’t bother looking over his shoulder, but he did take the time to occasionally scream nonsense and profanity. Enough time so that ‘obvious’ might have been an understatement.
As he walked away from the city, the landscape coalesced around him, taking shape once more rather than its previous blur. Though, especially with his perception, he noticed that every tree looked the same, every rock was shaped in the same way as every other rock, and streams needing crossing flowed the exact same, and were encountered in a regular pattern.
Several hours of walking later, he arrived; a city, every window and door facing one way, away from some great hole in the sky. Orynn could see people, always walking in places where they could not see the hole in the sky and the hole in the sky could not see them, and, most notably, he could hear nothing from them; not even footsteps.
But what he could hear was muffled speech on the other side of the hole. It was blurry, but he could vaguely make out the shape of the An-Clastophon, and the shapes of two other things, yet unidentifiable.
”Ok, needlessly creepy,” Orynn made the observation to himself as he made his way through the city. He took some care not to bother the people, too much, but still screamed at the hole once he found an appropriately dramatic square to do so from, ”An-Clastophon! Hello? Hey, you got some time to chat? Hellllo?! You hearing me here?”
The An-Clastophon’s hazy face snapped to the hole. The people fled into their homes as Orynn felt a force dragging his half-body towards the sky. He saw the An-Clastophon say something, and one of the hazy shapes slid out of frame. Then, his half-body hit the hole. He could feel his divine essence flee the Lushlands and shoot back towards him as he was pulled through.
Once his eyes were through, he could finally perceive the room -- they were in a room built entirely of obsidian, the An-Clastophon only visible through the glowing of her eyes and his godly perception. There were several doors built into the room, one of which he could perceive was recently used. And finally, behind the An-Clastophon, he could see a godly pillar, one of eight that stabilized the land.
Once he was fully through, the An-Clastophon flatly commented, ”You shouldn’t have been able to survive in there.”
Orynn rolled his shoulders and reached up and out to stretch while he replied, “Ever the disappointment, me. Still, good to see you alive. I was starting to wonder, you know.”
The An-Clastophon narrowed her eyes, looking him up and down as if sizing him up as she said, her tone dry, “Oh, I’ve died before. Didn’t take.” She then, seemingly satisfied, said, “I don’t much encourage social calls, so I assume you need something from me?”
”That alone would be enough for me to drop by,” the god joked as he glanced around the room curiously, “But unfortunately, you’re right. World’s gotten a lot smaller in the last century and it’s getting harder to hide when you need to. Lucky for me, I know you.”
She nodded, saying, almost sentimentally, ”It was easier back then, you’re right. Once, I could run abroad the land and still keep my movements hidden. Nowadays, a thousand eyes would see me if I tried,” she paused, her voice taking on a fairly neutral tone, with the slightest tinge of admiration, “Even my experiments get infested with eyes nowadays. You should have killed all the mortals you saw in there. They’d just fill it up again, but it would feel good.”
Orynn frowned pointedly, “And here they were being so helpful. I didn't take you for the indiscriminate slaughter type. Oh things have gotten harder, but what would we fill our forever with if they were easy? We have to change, fit the times. Rise to the challenge.”
He gestured around as he added, “All of which brings me here, to ask for help. A first by the way.”
She let out an exasperated chuckle, responding, ”What is helpful to you may not be so helpful to me. They’re willing to divulge a great many secrets they shouldn’t know, because they know I can’t reach them,” she caught herself, shaking her head with a sigh before returning to business, ”In any case, let us get to business. What, exactly, were you looking for help with?”
“Like I said, hiding,” Orynn answered, “Things, people, myself. Going unnoticed gets harder and harder, and me? You could say I’ve never been the naturally subtle sort.”
“I see,” the An-Clastophon commented. She thought it over for a moment, then said, “And what are the requirements for this help? Does it need to be replicable, and portable?”
”Be great if it was,” the god grinned at her between words, ”But I figure more might be needed to throw off anyone looking for me than anything or anyone I’m trying to hide. Could be I might be able to tolerate a double standard. One thing and then another.”
Her maw split into some beastly facsimile of a smile, and she said, ”I have just the thing already laying around. All I ask in return is a favor to be used on a future date, and something more immediate. I can explain it after we’ve concluded our deal, but it will take you but five seconds of effort and isn’t harmful to you or anyone else,” she then added, reassuringly, “it’s just something I’m not able to do myself, otherwise I already would have.”
“A favor is it? I’d take you up on that for curiosity alone,” he met the An-Clastophon’s gaze and went on with a smile, “And likewise for whatever it is you want now! So tell me, what can you only get from something like me?”
She held up a finger, saying, “I’ll be right back,” and she went to one of the doors, exiting the room. Orynn was left alone with only the pillar for company for a minute before she returned, carrying a steel box. She walked up to him and held it out, saying, “I can’t explain how it’s made; only that within is a secret that powers the magical field. Show it to your most ambitious mortals and they’ll learn, with time, to make more.”
The god was leaning against the pillar when the An-Clastophon returned, but stepped forward to take the proffered box. Albeit, not without comment, “It’s in character, at least. You’ve settled up, so what about me?”
She sat down, rubbing the back of her head with a hand as she answered, “For the favor, I will find you later on when I’m ready to call upon it. For here, I’m going to drop my guard. Perceive my head and my brain within. You’ll find a complex web of divine leylines within,” she brought her hand down, “sever one at random. No matter what happens to me afterwards, you may go. And this time, use the front door,” she pointed to one of the doors, “it may take you an hour or two to get out of the maze. Make sure to recover the outside door in ash once you’re out.”
“Hm, not what I expected,” Orynn remarked, before quickly tapping the An-Clastophon’s outstretched finger. In the span of a moments contact the god reached within, found a thread within the tapestry, and tore it out before burning it away. He shrugged and finished his thought, “But why not?”
The An-Clastophon’s eyes rolled back into her head as the leyline was cut, her body spasming once before it immediately fell into a violent seizure. The room was silent except for her trashing body, until, as quickly as the seizure began, her body gave out. It lay there silently on the floor, dead.
The god kicked her body, lightly, and then not so lightly, before remarking, “Even if you have died before, it doesn't look fun to me. Oh well.”
With that he turned to the door and casually stepped out. At least, until he’d wasted more than one or two minutes in the maze. After that Orynn Kaseyk, the god of Defiance, finally lost his patience. To his credit, after punching holes in enough walls to reach the exit, he did remember to set it on fire.
