Member
Lord Zee
Vec
JFK
Fetzen
Thayr
BingTheWing
Jiugui
&
When the Monarch departed, Yudaiel was left alone, an entire world to herself. The moon was her jewel, her throne, her prison, her... home? It was mercifully quiet, and she had sanctified peace about her, but not within her.
She brooded over this new yoke of hers, ‘punished’ with the order to remain apart from the Galbar and deny it her molding hand. She had foreseen the need to work her will through more subtle means -- brute force, as she’d brought to bear about Ashevelen -- was neither elegant nor particularly effective, and it was taxing. It also doubtless risked alienating the other gods… individually Yudaiel feared none of them, for her will was potent, but together they could undoubtedly be her ruin.
Perhaps this was for the better. Her vastness was great, grand enough to stretch across the void and touch the Galbar even from her throne on the moon, perhaps; however, her mind’s reach went even further. Through observing and making subtle touches upon the mortals or the other gods, whether through discreetly manipulating them through visions and ideabstractions or by outright imprinting her will upon lesser minds, she could still do what was done. Whatever she pleased!
If Yudaiel possessed a voice, and space a medium to carry it, then her sudden and violent cackling might have shaken the world. She gazed forward and saw the path. The goddess was more than a mere Reverberation upon the tapestry: Yudaiel was the Lady of Far and Near, She Who is Ever at the Shoulder, the Great and All-Seeing Eye.
And let all flinch from her gaze!
SPRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUT! went the rush of magmatic pressure, and out flew a cannonball dressed in black and white, skin red as currants, mind sloshed as the waves of the sea. To the surprise of exactly no one, this was Jiugui blasting off again, his bulbous form having been ejected from the heat of the underworld and sent flying through the storms and aftermath of the explosion that had devastated Termina and the surrounding lands. This had given his balloon-like body unreasonable lift and, somehow, not sent him away from Termina, but towards it. In fact, he had flown towards the centre of the explosion with insane speed, slurring a scream all the way.
The scream came to an appropriate halt when the orb of wine, robes and flesh crashed into water once more (smacking into some floating mountains first) - only that this was not water, but a vile, tar-filled slush of death; it was a foul concoction of the scummiest make. It was like face-planting into a mire, only that the mire also tried to sap you empty of all your drive and energy. It was the anathema of life, a black abyss that served only to make the certain end as miserable as possible for whatever was unfortunate enough to fall into it.
That was if your name wasn’t Jiugui, that is. As it turns out, the drunk god was already so sloshed, so unfathomably wasted, so lost in the liquor labyrinth, that he didn’t seem to react to the effects of the Tlacan Sea. The god stood up from where he had crashed (relatively unscathed, if compared to, say, a mortal undergoing the same thing) and staggered around in the shallows of the murky death sea for hours and even days, and the only thing the draining force of the murderous mire could do was, possibly, suck some of the alcohol out of him. He was far from immune, of course - the god grew weaker staying in there; however, like a drunk stuck in an icy storm, he didn’t make a fuss out of it. It did cloud his already overcast senses, though, so the drunk as a skunk man also became virtually blind as a bat and slow as a sloth. After his second week in the sea of doom, the drunk decided that he felt a little tired. It was time to find a place to call it a night.
So he looked ahead. Yup, that was the exact horizon he had been staring at for roughly a fortnight. He turned around: There was the opposite horizon, which hadn’t been as studied as the former, but was still pretty familiar. The god wasn’t quite sure at this point - he knew by now not to trust his senses. He stuck a finger in the air to measure the direction of the wind, which he did - a deathridden, stinking breeze blew from the northwest - but that didn’t really tell him anything about whether there was a comfortable barrel to sleep in over there.
So Jiugui plumped his behind down in the malicious silt and got thinking: How would he get out of this one, huh? He raised his cup to the moon above and produced thereforth a pleading poem for the eye in the sky:
From molten caves and lands of frost,
In foreign lands I am now lost.
Tell me, bright moon, can you see
A refuge for my cup and me?
In foreign lands I am now lost.
Tell me, bright moon, can you see
A refuge for my cup and me?
He then took another sip and waited. Far above and across distances vast, the invisible eye turned its gaze. Yudaiel heard him.
She had seen Jiugui before, and how… curious was he! How capricious! His very aspect, every fiber of his being, seemed to be intoxication and impetuousness, with only the brief and occasional oasis of lucidity. In a sense that was revolting, disgusting, abominable; the chronically unpredictable were things that Yudaiel could hardly keep herself from loathing, especially if they were not trifling things but gods that could shape the world! Yet unlike Ashevelen, perhaps this one could be guided and steered.
His will did not seem so strong as that of the Monarch, who she hardly dared to try dominating -- not yet! -- or even Epsilon, who she’d struggled with so recently. She needed practice if she was going to subjugate and break that loathsome fly Iqelis, and it seemed as though this one, this Jiugui (as she’d heard him call himself when observing his past encounter with Zenia) not only needed, but wanted guidance. Hmph! She could give that.
A dart raced through the void, cast out from her pupil, and reached the Galbar in an instant. It was a small thing, hard to detect, and even if the Monarch might have somehow sensed it, he surely could not object to something so small… she wasn’t even touching that world below, much less bending it to her will. She sent only a simple vision to Jiugui, and none other.
The formless dart struck Jiugui with all the weight and sound of a snowflake. It probed for only a moment, then found his mind, pierced it, and thrust him into an ideabstraction.
The silent, dead, and inky sea’s mirrorlike surface was suddenly disturbed. The sandbar and shoals, which had afforded Jiugui the ability to wade even so far from the shore, began to recede as massive currents of water tore them away. Something beneath the water was drinking the deathly sea, and a great whirlpool appeared around its maw. Jiugui became a leaf in the river, mere flotsam. Titanic tentacles erupted from the water all about him and began thrashing wildly, stretching to brush the heavens and seize the stars. One by one, each twinkled light was captured and hurled into the maw of the colossal beast at the center of the whirlpool.
The moon was suddenly not overhead, but hanging above the horizon just before Jiugui. It was resplendent and glorious in its divine light, and that light reached out to grasp at the drunken god’s hand, to pull him away and to safety. Jiugui reached with his left hand, throwing it forward and ahead of his body, but the moon’s rays just barely swept through his fingers. He threw his right arm forward to try again, but missed just barely. Over and over he stroked, thrashing wildly for his life, and each time the moon’s hand -- and the beach upon the horizon! -- seemed ever closer and yet still he could not touch it.
Like a moth to the flame, the drunk hobbled forward through the muck and silt, chasing the brightness of the horizon with a silly giggle on his lips. Before long, and without him noticing much, he had left the shallows of the beach and moved onto solid ground. Here, the toxic sea no longer affected him and his divine aura slowly began to recuperate, returning his untrustworthy senses to him. Eventually, his giggles quieted down and the god was left pondering the oddness of his sight: Did light always reach out to him this way, or was this just another vision, like that pink elephant the other day? He squatted down and ripped loose a wet fart, mumbling ponderously to himself.
"Whasher you…"
The beach was blanketed beneath a cool and thick fog that seemed to suspend itself above the black seawater, for the haughty mist was pure and would not suffer to become one with the Tlacan Sea. But the dampness in the air was not so picky about other things; the cold nipped as Jiugui, and beads of water condensed upon a rocky outcrop further up the shore. In the moon’s light, they glistened like so many tiny diamonds as they rolled down the boulder, dripping into the sand.
What better drink for a parched god?
Not one to turn down a free lunch (or drink, more like), the drunk god staggered over to the rock and gave it a sloppy lick. The stoney texture didn’t sit well with the god, but he had to admit that the taste was quite refreshing. In a salute as graceful as could be, the fat man raised his cup to the moon with quite the momentum, spilling its contents in a shower all throughout the region. “Thzank you, dear moohn. These bruuuurp theshe dropslets shall… Shall foreffez be known az…” He then suddenly squinted and peered at the droplets again. No, they needed a small detail to be perfect. He grasped a droplet with unfathomable dexterity and twisted it clockwise. Within the second, the alcohol percentage within the fluid had jumped to ninety percent - that was not “by ninety percent”, but “to ninety percent” - and the god had another lick. Forget texture, forget refreshment - with something like this in your mouth, you wouldn’t remember much of either soon enough. The god felt satisfied and toasted the moon once more, saying, “I shall calliz ‘moonshine’ in your z’honourr.”
Meanwhile, all throughout the peninsula, the alcohol Jiugui had previously spilled into the air like a nuclear fountain rained down in torrents. Most of it hit the deserts in the centre, where the alcohol evaporated and momentarily caused a cooling effect so wild and powerful that it sucked in great amounts of moist air from the coastal areas. For a few hours, the region so devastated by the battle of gods and Codex’s might, was drenched in a typhoon and a hurricane’s worth of water, and the endless dead wastes could finally drink again. Many of these wastes could not hold the water for long, of course, and much of it ran off into rivers heading for the shore. However, all the land had needed was a mere sip, and soon enough, life that had lived there before began crawling out of its hideyholes. There were lions, deer, antelopes, bison, camels, jackals, cheetahs, goats, buzzards, eagles and, of course, lots of small animals for these to harass and feast upon. Shrubs and grasses populated the inner badlands and savannah while the coasts drank deep in the mists of the Tlacan Sea and filled with thick mixed broadleaf forests. The highlands that could keep water sported flora that thrived in the rich soil and filled with all kinds of birds and cloven-hoofed ruminants. All throughout the more fertile regions, fruit trees like dates, mangoes, apples, pears, lemons, olives and many more sprouted; nut and seed plants like pistachio and walnut trees, sesame and flax; grains like einkorn, emmer, barley and spelt - everything came to magnificent fruition.
All of this passed without Jiugui noticing any of it. He staggered in place and grinned stupidly at the moon as though it was a lady actually paying attention to him. “Whashu thzink? Like the pun?”
The moon had no words of course, but it gleamed brightly for a moment, and in Jiugui’s blurred vision, seemed to blink. Or was that a wink?! The moonshine in his chalice was alight too with a lunar glow, imbued as it was with Yudaiel’s touch. And when Jiugui proclaimed his cheers and drank deep, the spirit within his chalice tasted of more than just fiery potency… the vapors wafting up from it were laden with the scents of smoke and brimstone and salt and blossoming flowers, of rich earth and decaying leaves and also rotting meat. The smell that reached his nose found its way to his tongue too, and there came a chromatic myriad of tastes, too: mulled wine and acrid bile, the metallic tang of blood but also the sweetness of pure water as it reached a parched throat. Every taste and smell that Jiugui had ever experienced, could ever experience, and never would experience were all there, muddled together.
It took what felt like a long time to live through all of those sensations, to reach into the whole mix but then take the time to discern and contemplate and feel each one, individually, and grasp its quintessence. By the time Jiugui understood the whole of it, the moon had sunk below the horizon and a more luminous and golden jewel had taken its place overhead. Still, the moon could see him, and he could see it too, through stone and time and space. He looked through the Galbar and met the moon’s gaze upon the other side, and then he finally brought the elixir to his lips.
He drained it all at once, but not easily. He did not gag or recoil from the flavor, but there was just so much of it, it felt as though he was drinking a lake, maybe a whole sea. A thousand gulps were not enough to empty that one chalice, but the first drop shattered his perceptions of reality! The stones, the sandy beaches, the nascent and verdant plants that had sprung forth from his influence, the wisps of dense fog -- all of them breathing and shuddering -- were aligned to one heartbeat. Though he was not out of breath, Jiugui began panting that he too could fall into the rhythm of the world. Ah, that was natural and right. He began walking across the lands that would be named Nalusa, his body in one world even as his mind was stretched taut as it was pulled into a hundred others, with nary an ounce of its being left in that plane where his corporeal form had remained.
The scent was ever in his nostrils throughout the whole journey. Languidly, Jiugui’s eye drifted back to the chalice in his first hand. Chuckling slightly, he tossed the cup to his second hand. With great dexterity and none of his usual clumsiness, he caught it without a single precious drop of the moon’s milk having been spilled or lost in that instant the chalice had been in flight. He tossed the cup again, and began juggling it between his third, fourth, and fifth hands. That soon seemed trite; why entertain with such simple tricks when he could see and perceive physics and all of Reality? All secrets and desires were there before him, so he turned back to them. His whole body tingled and was hypersensitive, he perceived every grain of sand in the wind that brushed his cheek, made out the color of every tiny ray of light that came to his eye. There was an itch upon him, though -- a thirst! He looked back to the chalice and laughed, for in all his joy, it seemed he had forgotten to even savor his drink; it was full to the brim, not a drop having been tasted! He started slowly, with just a small sip.
He shivered, and felt everything so much more vividly: the warmth of the sun, the cool kiss of the gentle eddies of wind, even the rumbling and churning of his gut were all there, and he perceived each one separately and so much more distinctly than before. There was an ominous headache, too. A throbbing, searing pain erupted from his head for just a moment -- it was as though a shivering hot knife had been thrust through his skull -- and then it vanished, but his sight was altered. Everything, even space itself, seemed oddly distorted, but in a way that felt true and right. He Saw now, with his third eye, the soul of the world and the hidden nature of all things. The many truths of existence and Reality likewise presented themselves to him now in a frank manner that ideas and ideals were seldom wont to do!
A mycelium network grew out of his soles, or perhaps it was his soles that connected to a network that had always been there? As he already was one with the planet, with space and with time, he could naturally feel its every impulse like a hair standing alone in the wind. The network spoke to him in flavours and textures, and its voice was sound that became colour in patterns like fractals. The scents whispered to his nostrils, and as Jiugui crossed seven continents and fifteen seas, he arrived before that most beautiful, serene being: The mycelium of reality had led him here, to its heart and core - a mushroom rose valiantly to greet the god, and Jiugui greeted it back.
“Lo,” he said, “a cap as fine as yours is sure to outshine my nightblack bandana.” A bow met by the mushroom’s bow.
“Nay,” replied the mushroom in a billion voices and radiated forth a fractal spectacle of light and colour that threatened to draw the wine god’s tears. “What myconous maniac could even begin to measure up to you, O Gway of Joe?”
As Jiugui looked closer at the mushroom, which now had descended to one knee, music began to play, and the melody of existence carried the pair through a forest of bright lights and cicada songs. Jiugui sipped another lakeful of wine from his cup, but found as he drank that his mouth did not fill at all; then it filled way too much and an ocean flushed the pair away from the forest, but his friend the mushroom only laughed heartily as he was swept along with the tide.
“What a show, my friend!” the mushroom clapped. A great beam of moonlight came down to illuminate the pair and they were in the middle of the ocean, aboard a giant flask of… Mushrooms? The mushroom, or possibly several, each took a cup of their own and passed around a flagon of what Jiugui could only presume was more of that moonshine stuff. When the flagon reached him, the wine demon, ever the gracious, gregarious guest, poured the contents straight into his mouth. The flavour was odd -- something fiercely earthy -- but oh well. By now the other mushrooms danced around the central one - they had taken on many different shapes and colours now, so it was at least somewhat easier to differentiate them. They sang and danced as much as their limbless bodies allowed them to and proclaimed the central mushroom the Fungal Pharaoh, the Mushroom Maharaja.
Jiugui couldn’t help but grin and giggle, and it didn’t take long for him to join in on the jig, skipping around in a circle along with the mushroom minions and lauding his host, the Spongey Saoshyant. The Myconous Monarch clapped at the performance with its eighteen arms and blinked a singular eye.
“What a show, my friend!” it repeated. Jiugui, suddenly so certain that he had caught his companion off guard, pointed a finger so hard in its direction that the seas all blew away and left them in an empty desert.
“You have already said that, dear friend.”
The Portobello Prince shrugged innocently, its ten pectoral muscles flexing without a hint of guilt or shame. “Why, I thought you liked repetitive humour?” claimed the mushroom, and for some reason, this claim - nay, accusation - infuriated Jiugui. The sound of those words tasted too sour! Even now, the sight of that mushroom smelled foul! So Jiugui stood up and smashed his cup to the ground, pointing a raging finger at the mushroom; however, when he finally spoke, his voice was soft as cotton dow.
“You should know what I find amusing. If you cannot even do that, then how can you call yourself a fun… person?”
The mushroom shrugged again and pointed up. There, the moon was back, and it shone its fractal lights down at Jiugui again, an oppressively vibrant kaleidoscope of azure rays that may as well have been a lance of fire. Jiugui succumbed - it was too strong; his soul, his form - neither could bear it any longer. The god collapsed under the glare of the sky, heaving while foam and spittle left his mouth as he writhed upon the rough and ever-shifting ground of the sand dune beneath him. This soon reached a crescendo when he felt himself near death, dead, and alive all at once. He screamed from the top of his lungs like a speared boar, and the echoes of his bellowing rocked him harder than any of the ocean’s waves. Around him, darkness clouded his surroundings, and the fractals disappeared a little by little.
A voice like the growl of tectonic plates, like the clash of thunderclouds, erupted from between his legs, entering his body through the million ears of the mycelium network touching his body now that it laid against the ground. “But I am not a person,” the earthquake proclaimed, “I am a mushroom…”
”...I̡̢̯̥̞̼̣̤̤͔̻͙̹̦̊̿̊̑̀͋͋̀͌̃̽̓͋͌͟͝ A̢̨̙̳̲̟͚̺̻̻̻̙̤̺̬̔̽͒͋̒̃̿̇̆̌̂̋́̚͡M̲̫̈͠ A͙̰͙͑̈́͌ G̢̢̗̹̮̟͇̻͚̥̹̯̐̅͒͂͊͊̃̃̄͗̿͌̔̕͢͟O̦̱̦̯̝̯̠͌̊̾́̀̚͘D̨͉̲͙̙̖̬̞̮̪̘̭͉̙̈͐̃̊̅̔̿́̄̂̂̑̚͝!̢̡̹̗̫͕̻̖͖̄̃̍̔̓́͌̔̑͘̚͢͟”
And then the mushroom burst into a million-million spores that took the wind and spread across all corners of the Galbar, that fell in great clouds and greatly outnumbered even the raindrops. Everything faded to black.
In the pitch-black crepuscule, he could finally see just what had impaled him. He beheld the ghostly javelin for just a moment as it glowed in the gloom. He also saw the bloodless wound where it had pierced his gut and thrust all the way through him, down into the sand, into the roots of some queer tree that grew here on the dune. Still, the lance twisted in him as it seemed to sink deeper into the sand. But then the barbed tips of this javelin-that-was-a-harpoon suddenly wrenched at his very being as it was torn out and free, eviscerating his soul.
The smothering darkness was suddenly ruptured by a single pinpoint of brilliance, a purifying spark. The luminous dot -- which was quite like a distant star in its twinkling, and yet different for the pyretic and all too real warmth that it exuded in contrast to that cool and otherwordly glow of stars -- seemed only to grow in its ardent intensity. What had been a mere speck had in moments grown like an unquenchable flame, consuming almost all of the endless and infinite dark void. And it flickered, faster and faster, sending waves that rippled through space, that churned and tossed about his consciousness like driftwood in the sea. The pulses of blinding radiance and scorching heat came faster than he could even process or perceive, such that the void seemed both entirely black and entirely white, frigid and infernal, at the same time. His mind and body, unable to cope or comprehend, were overpowered by nausea, dizziness, and disorientation, but he didn’t stagger or vomit; disembodied spirits just floated and flew, after all.
In that place, Jiugui lost himself. The god was so swept up and consumed by the light and warmth and chaos that flooded his senses that he forgot who he was, what he had been, what had happened, and all the other things that he knew; like a nascent child, he could only feel and experience.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jiugui was spirited somewhere even farther away, disentangled completely from life and limb and flesh, and incomprehensibly far from mortality. He found himself as a self, once more, though perhaps he was not the right self, his real self. Perhaps he was somebody entirely new now. He mulled over that, ruminating the concept of what such a distinction would imply, and thinking also over what the abstract idea of a ‘person’ even meant.
Those thoughts still in mind, he became oriented once more and perceived himself to be floating in the air of the Galbar’s atmosphere, drifting towards the watchful moon. He beheld his own statuesque body below, his closed eyes like candles as they lit his whole face in somber light. But in just a moment those candles had burnt out, his motionless and anemic corpse reeking of alcohol even as it decayed and fermented like a ripened fruit left on the ground. He left that husk behind and found that he was above the clouds now, but he could See better than any eagle! He saw each and every little blade of grass that sprung up to grow between his toes and upon his feet. Why, atop that lonely dune under the tree, he was a splotch of green, an oasis of color in that dreadfully dry desert! Being a ghost could be ever so parching, yet his chalice was gone.
He was higher up now, and a great wind caught him up and dragged him along, spiriting him far away from that desert and that dead sea and his abandoned body. It was night now! The stars above were so beautiful, but also so alien from where he flew. They looked like milky streaks of paint, twisting aurorae that coiled and overlapped and ate on another, bands of every color that existed and even a few that didn’t. One band noticed him and slithered closer; Jiugui saluted it by raising the chalice that had never left his hand.
The Rainbow Serpent echoed back his cheers. Ah, this was a great drinking partner! It even offered Jiugui a poem:
What is a dream, I ask thee?
Mere color, the product of fatigue, a reverie,
some would say. When another world we See
while resting beneath a shaded tree!
Mere color, the product of fatigue, a reverie,
some would say. When another world we See
while resting beneath a shaded tree!
Freed now from the poison of his aspect that had perpetually clouded his senses in life, Jiugui’s brilliant mind could soar. Suddenly struck by a whimsy to be philosophical, the wisest of all the gods chuckled slightly, offering the variegated dragon a sip from his cup, just a splash of the Wine of Truth. The Rainbow Serpent eagerly accepted for it long had been curious about such power. Its pupils dilated as it suddenly found itself able to See. But fear crept into the serpent’s visage; it could not stomach the wildness and chaos of the real world, could not digest what it Saw. Madness began creeping into those gigantic pupils of the dragon, and soon it might have lost itself forevermore, and the stars and heavens would have grown that much duller without its presence. Fortunately, Jiugui was there.
“Let me guide you through the desert,” the wine demon smiled. And then he offered his listener an answer:
In sleep one sees reflections in a mirror,
the surface of a still pond with water clear.
Awake or asleep, things are just as they seem.
In death we find truth; all of life is a dream!
the surface of a still pond with water clear.
Awake or asleep, things are just as they seem.
In death we find truth; all of life is a dream!
The Rainbow Serpent accepted this gospel and nodded gratefully to the sage for the wisdom that he had imparted. “Aeons ago, I dreamt and breathed, and the Cosmos was formed. Still, from you I have learned. Allow me to repay this kindness,” the Celestial whispered, whole galaxies like mere specks upon his cosmic visage, “and usher you to the realm Beyond.”
“It would be my pleasure,” Jiugui soberly and politely answered. The god gracefully climbed atop the dragon and took his place behind its head, and he rode the majestic serpent as it raced through the heavens, through worlds, and even through time. Borne on its back, Jiugui circled a weeping moon, a troubled sun, and then found himself conveyed through the black-velvet expanse beyond. Erelong they came across the curious spectacle of a great cyclopean being that toiled away to chisel and sculpt a whole world from a stone that He had conjured, and Jiugui curiously watched, but they were harried and chased by some snarling, four-eyed beast that ensured their racing through the stars did not come to a slow.
They were going the wrong way, weren’t they? The dragon did at least seem to be slowing down, and Jiugui realized that it was gradually turning about. Of course, flying was hard when the drag of so many stars held back your dragon and threatened to dismount you! Jiugui could only hold on tighter as they raced past a strangely distorted image of a world that bore an uncanny likeness and shared the name (Jiugui just instinctively knew!) of Galbar, though this was a queer and broken world, only a Shard that floated in a great sea of nothingness, like a bloody wound in the breast of Creation itself.
Moments passed, as did that world. There was another Galbar now, one that likewise floated in a great sea, but of blood rather than nothingness. The blood roiled, for it was alive, and like fireflies there hovered a swarm of divine beings all about the periphery of the blood. All looked through the arteries and veins, towards the beating heart that was Galbar. So focused were they upon it that none noticed Jiugui and the Rainbow Dragon as they slithered past.
Another Galbar appeared, though this one was shielded from view by a great spherical wall. Still, as a higher dimensional being, the Rainbow Serpent slithered right through that Barrier; it was as ineffective an obstacle to him as were lines drawn on the ground to anything with the legs to hop over them. Within that sphere were dozens of more spheres though -- it was an entire world, orderly and precise in its mechanisms, assembled from concentric spheres. As they passed through, violin music could be heard harmonising with the strings of a harp. Looking outward towards the source of the music, the pair witnessed an indescribable paradise crested with a tall disorienting palace. Atop the roof of the strange building stood a gentleman holding a silver violin, and as Jiugui and the Rainbow Dragon passed by, the strange man flashed them a Cheshire grin and a knowing wink. The Rainbow Serpent paid the enigmatic man little heed as it breached back through the outermost sphere, the Barrier, just as easily as it’d entered on the other end.
Their journey went on. They saw another Galbar, floating out in the vast sea of a whole universe, though in this universe it seemed that the stone and stars and matter itself were all alive, animated not by souls persay but rather some flickers of will. They came across another Galbar, one defined by a great tree more than anything else; that tree was half red with branches set aflame by some terrible dragon, and half black with branches burnt and dead. Yet somehow the tree was also alive -- between the blackened half and the burning half erupted a third half, one that sprouted still and was verdant with emerald leaves. The proportions defied reason, but perhaps reason was not so constant a thing after all.
Sanity returned as they left, and came to pass another Galbar. And then there was what looked like it could be another, and then another… finally, they’d turned around! Faster than light or the mind or anything else, they raced back through space and dimensions and the wine demon found himself deposited at the gates of the afterlife of his Galbar.
“The stars have foretold that we shall meet again,” the snake promised, before slithering away into the sky.
Jiugui bid his friend farewell and turned his head away from the sky to observe his surroundings. The Elysian Plains sprawled out before him. Everything here was green and flowering, except for that which was instead gilded. Things were peaceful and joyous here. Nature blended seamlessly together with the decadence of civilization: here was a serene but untamed forest, and right there was a nicely pruned and expertly cultivated apple tree, and then right on the other side of that was a warm and spacious dam that some bjorks called home.
“The Singing Maker!” one called out, and half a clan suddenly surrounded Jiugui. They cheered, then praised and worshiped him. One young kit held back a tear in his eye though, even as he rested in paradise.
“Singing Master, where is my pa?” the youth asked. “His name was Bish.”
A larger one stepped forth, the kit’s mother. “Bishadnik,” she elaborated, tears threatening to well up in her eyes too. “He was a tall and mighty bjork, my husband. A good bjork. The God of Souls told us that the good end up here, so where is he? Surely he deserves to be with us now?”
Jiugui chuckled at the attention and smiled warmly from ear to ear. He clapped the kit on the shoulder and said softly, “Your father, your husband, the one you call Bishadnik…” A hand combed through his beard, which had grown white with sagely wisdom obtainable only through death. “Your husband, your father, he lives still, yes. I have seen him, heard him, felt him - even now, his vow to avenge your deaths rings as clear in my head as your voices.” He nodded slowly and chuckled again. “A tragic event, yet one that so humorously demonstrates the truth of the universe: The beauty in the world is inadequate; the good is always accompanied by the evil - the bright and the dark are so closely related. In a flash, great happiness turns into deep sorrow, and people and things are no more as they were before. After all, it will be a dream in the end, and all realms, such as this one, are empty. One may think there is no use in living on as your husband has. Why act if you will eventually awaken from the dream?”
As morale among the bjorks faltered, the sober god chuckled again and sat down in the centre of the circle. “But then again, if life is a dream, why have it be a nightmare? Your father, your husband Bishadnik, and everyone else who have yet to awaken as we have the choice to make the most out of the dream, and as I see and hear and feel them do so, I realise that fate itself becomes an oxymoron.”
The little kit sniffed somberly. “I miss my pa…” But his mother and the rest of the tribe seemed at least somewhat happy again. “So he’s alive then… But if he chases after our killers, he will surely die, will he not?” asked the mother.
Jiugui nodded. “Oh, most assuredly, but change, no matter how dire, is a necessary part of all life. Bishadnik will awaken from the dream and come here to walk the path of his second life, just as you do now. Then with time, surely will he awaken from this dream, too, and move into the next realm, and the despair following his death will repeat itself - but so will the joys of his life and the joys of your lives.” He folded his hands in his lap and had the bjorks gather before him in a cone. “Do not let yourselves be ensnared by the chains of anxiety and fear change - life is all about changes. To avoid them is to welcome sorrow and dismay. Let reality be reality, and let things flow naturally from one movement to the next. Life, reality, is nothing but a network, and once you see how the tiniest vibration in one end ripples across to the other, you will begin to understand that all things change, and all change is caused by another change. Your father, your husband Bishadnik has chosen to become reality - Bishadnik has become the change, and all the world will change at his whim.”
The bjorks blinked as one and exchanged small nods. The little kit raised a paw again and Jiugui nodded at him smilingly. “But when will I see him again?” asked the little one. Jiugui let out a gentle sigh and looked up into the cyan void-like sky of the Elysian Fields.
”The loss of loved ones, naught can match;
The feelings which to us attach
A beating heart for someone else.
Emotions test the shackling belts
Of reason in one’s mind and soul,
But this is not a detriment!
No, my friends, nor decadent!
In fact, it shows good temperament
To have love as one’s goal.”
The feelings which to us attach
A beating heart for someone else.
Emotions test the shackling belts
Of reason in one’s mind and soul,
But this is not a detriment!
No, my friends, nor decadent!
In fact, it shows good temperament
To have love as one’s goal.”
Again, the meaning seemed to pass over many heads, but before anyone could ask him to elaborate, Jiugui looked to the horizon. There, his good friends the Rainbow Serpent (who were both many and yet was also just one) awaited him, and the sober god combed his white beard with his hand again. “Alas, it may seem that my time has come. I must return now so that I can share with the world its truths and reality, and help all see how to best live their lives.” He stood up again and walked with his hands collected neatly behind his back. The gentle breeze of Elysium sent the straps of his bandana dancing to the rhythm of the bowing grain around the bjork dam. He did not turn back to the bjorks, but the afterlife opened many eyes within Jiugui, and now he had arrived at the truth of the universe, of creation itself. The key to everything rested within him, and now he would return to the land of the living once again to share it with everyone else. He approached the Serpent and smiled.
“Dear friend, what say you? Shall we return to the other side?”
The constellations slithered down from above while the awestruck souls of the dead could only look on in wonder and confusion; no doubt each one saw something different. As for Jiugui, what he saw was just a great stream of color, like a river of hazy paint, though something was wrong! There were only a few score different pigments; the Rainbow Dragon of before had been emblazoned with more hues than one could count, could see, or could even imagine!
“Hurry…” the river of paint whispered as it rushed between the stars and down the sky; the wispy clouds above were the white foam of its rapids. Jiugui crouched down, like a bullfrog. Suddenly the world flashed and pulsated, and he saw great squares, as though everything were just a series of shifted planes, turning pages in a grand book. The world still breathed -- but slowly! -- and all the vivid motion that had animated all things was beginning to cease. His hypersensitivity likewise was now just an afterglow of what he had first felt; he sensed soon his mind would diminish, and the mysteries of the world would be closed to him once more.
So without waiting another beat, the crouched bullfrog that was Jiugui leaped up into the sky, landing within the turbulence of the Rainbow River. Lethargically, it ferried him away, but winds grasped at him and tries to wrest him free of the stream, tried to yank him out of that river through the heavens and to its banks, the shores of nothingness, that he would fall back down and be swept forevermore into the realm of the dead. But Jiugui loved life too much, so he struggled against the flaying winds, and he swam downstream, ever keeping near the center of the stream! He swam more desperately than he would have if there was some kraken behind him drinking the sea. What a whimsical thought!
The dream of his journey and his life was ending. He grew wearier with every stroke that he swam, and with each blink his eyes remained closer for longer than they ought to. The fatigue was setting in, calling on him to succumb to sleep, to move on into the next dream… but then he remembered his thirst, his parched throat. Even if he had been willing to drink paint, this river of dyes was not something tangible enough to consume, so his thirst remained, biting at him. Delirious from exhaustion and thirst, he mumbled to the Rainbow Serpent, “Will you guide me through the desert?”
There was no answer save for the soft murmuring of the river, and the fading music of the dreamtime. Jiugui sighed, and finally let go.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
But then, at the last moment, a single drop of water fell upon his tongue; that lone droplet coaxed his pruned body back to life. It was the purest and sweetest thing that he had ever tasted.
Jiugui found himself somewhere else, in the shade of an odd tree. He was laying upon a patch of grass that had sprouted up to crown some lonely sand dune, and he felt so terribly stiff. Another drop of water fell, this time upon his forehead. He looked up and beheld the sunset; it was dusk now. Another drop rolled off the leaves of that tree above him, and the dew of the cool desert night fell once more upon his chapped lips. But Jiugui, dangerously dehydrated as he was, needed more than a few drops! He had a craving for the good stuff, but he was so lightheaded that he couldn’t even bear to look for his chalice… instead, he cupped his hands together and let the dewdrops rolling off a leaf fill them, and then he brought them up to his mouth and drank deeply.
“Uh-uhm… Are you awake, Magnificent Sleeper?”
Jiugui stopped mid-glug and peered through the gaps between his fingers. There, a large group of small, pale-furred rodents stood in a circle around him. They were marmots, but like the bjorks, they also spoke and looked to be sapient overall. Jiugui squinted at the all-too-familiar sight. His cupped hands filled once more, not from dew but from his own power, and he had a much stronger drink. And then he took another one, and another! The creatures assembled before him didn’t disappear with the alcohol, unfortunately.
“Let me guesh,” he mumbled at last, wiping the leftover death foam from his lips even as the rest of the moonshine that had been in his hands rolled down his chin. “You’re the maramoda or somethin’?”
The creatures, now christened the maramoda, gasped as one. Jiugui’s mouth formed a flat line and the drinking god groaned. Would this happen every time he'd wake up from a bender?
He needed a hangover cure, so he fumbled about until he found his chalice where it had been set down by his side. It still was filled to the brim with some odd glowing concoction that most certainly did not seem like what he needed right then. Strange smells wafted up from the elixir, so Jiugui poured it out and allowed the tree’s roots to drink their fill. He refilled his chalice with a sweet red wine -- that syrupy stuff was always good for hangovers -- and then he drank.
