hanzo
Fetzen
Divorarel
Taramafor
Kuro
Izurich
odiumYou needed more cats and now you have more cats.
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"You know why they built the roads in this town the way they did? It's a spell."
The Yellow's voice came from the front of the cab, up past the loose black partition curtain. It sounded like it was from somewhere you'd heard of but had never been. A way of speaking that sounded maybe a little old, a little gruff, but one that made you bone-deep certain you'd get where you needed to be, safe and in good time.
"It all twists like a snake, and every time you ride the loop, it's like you're doing a prayer. But it's one of those prayers that nobody knows the words to anymore, just the motions to do it right."
The back of the cabin was plush, but in a way that felt twenty years out of style. Clean, too. He occupied the back passenger seat, while his package leaned up against the space behind the Yellow, stretching from floor to ceiling. It made the air dimmer, that thing: like it sucked up the light from the flares of hellfire that made it through the taxi's smoked glass. Nobody liked being around it, not even back home.
"So who's the prayer to," he asked, shifting in his seat to try and peer through the slit in the fabric, "why would the damned pray for anything? Nobody goes below because they made friends up top."
"My opinion?" said the Yellow in a way that suggested it was gospel, "it's the True King of High Hell. Though I don't know why you'd bother praying to the dead instead of for them."
He didn't reply, and the cabin lapsed into silence. Neon burned the sky to ashes outside, outshining the magma below. Living billboards promised the spark of the divine, the grace of Eden for the lowest price in town, guaranteed.
He'd ridden along with it (or maybe within, he was never quite sure if it was the person in the front or the vehicle itself) five times. Five different jobs, and there was no discretion like that of the Yellow. It was fine for a driver to talk while he was on the clock, but if he was still talking when the meter stopped, that was a problem.
He leaned against the glass and drifted. The same transient world, no matter where you go. Everybody on their way to somewhere else, even if they don't know it yet.
"Almost there," the driver warned.
"You need help with your baggage, sir?"
He ran a claw across the hilt and then down, letting it tease the edges of the white ribbons that crisscrossed the sheath. There was the faintest shimmer of something where he made contact with it.
"No, I'll manage," he answered, "you don't want to touch this."
-----
The door to the Yellow clicked shut behind him, and by the time Meowlexander Paralabane could turn, the cab had vanished. You never saw it arrive or leave; it was there exactly when you needed it and gone the moment you no longer did. Still, it didn't stop him from trying to catch it in the act. He knew he'd manage it one day: he was faster than he looked, and getting quicker all the time.
The Pleiades was pretty in an old school kind of way, like the promise of a grandeur that would become in part your own just by walking through the doors. He wondered if it had been designed to mirror the worlds above, or if architects had dreamed of a stately hell which contained it. Maybe neither, maybe both, it didn't matter so much in the end.
He made sure that the package was strapped securely to his back by its ribbons before joining the river of the damned and stepping inside. The entrance hall was lavish in a way that only money could buy, and his ears flattened back at the cascade of shouts, screams, wails and cries that burst from every direction. It was premium pandemonium, a taste of the chaos of the pit before you descended to gamble away your forever.
His whiskers drooped and he idly licked his paw, running it over his tortishell fur. There were too many people in here to spot her easily, he supposed. There were probably too many people to spot her even if they gave him control of all the cameras. But he had to start somewhere, so paws on the ground...so to speak.
He approached the nearest service desk - a rare island of calm in the churning broil of the eager fallen - and cleared his throat. His bushy tail flipped back and forth as the employee turned to face him - a three-faced deva with as many winning smiles and carefully-folded wings of infested spider webs behind her back. Meowlexander narrowed his lone eye, unsure of which of hers to look into, and spoke:
"Excuse me, I'm looking for a friend. Who do I need to talk to about finding a missing purrson?"
The Yellow's voice came from the front of the cab, up past the loose black partition curtain. It sounded like it was from somewhere you'd heard of but had never been. A way of speaking that sounded maybe a little old, a little gruff, but one that made you bone-deep certain you'd get where you needed to be, safe and in good time.
"It all twists like a snake, and every time you ride the loop, it's like you're doing a prayer. But it's one of those prayers that nobody knows the words to anymore, just the motions to do it right."
The back of the cabin was plush, but in a way that felt twenty years out of style. Clean, too. He occupied the back passenger seat, while his package leaned up against the space behind the Yellow, stretching from floor to ceiling. It made the air dimmer, that thing: like it sucked up the light from the flares of hellfire that made it through the taxi's smoked glass. Nobody liked being around it, not even back home.
"So who's the prayer to," he asked, shifting in his seat to try and peer through the slit in the fabric, "why would the damned pray for anything? Nobody goes below because they made friends up top."
"My opinion?" said the Yellow in a way that suggested it was gospel, "it's the True King of High Hell. Though I don't know why you'd bother praying to the dead instead of for them."
He didn't reply, and the cabin lapsed into silence. Neon burned the sky to ashes outside, outshining the magma below. Living billboards promised the spark of the divine, the grace of Eden for the lowest price in town, guaranteed.
He'd ridden along with it (or maybe within, he was never quite sure if it was the person in the front or the vehicle itself) five times. Five different jobs, and there was no discretion like that of the Yellow. It was fine for a driver to talk while he was on the clock, but if he was still talking when the meter stopped, that was a problem.
He leaned against the glass and drifted. The same transient world, no matter where you go. Everybody on their way to somewhere else, even if they don't know it yet.
"Almost there," the driver warned.
"You need help with your baggage, sir?"
He ran a claw across the hilt and then down, letting it tease the edges of the white ribbons that crisscrossed the sheath. There was the faintest shimmer of something where he made contact with it.
"No, I'll manage," he answered, "you don't want to touch this."
-----
The door to the Yellow clicked shut behind him, and by the time Meowlexander Paralabane could turn, the cab had vanished. You never saw it arrive or leave; it was there exactly when you needed it and gone the moment you no longer did. Still, it didn't stop him from trying to catch it in the act. He knew he'd manage it one day: he was faster than he looked, and getting quicker all the time.
The Pleiades was pretty in an old school kind of way, like the promise of a grandeur that would become in part your own just by walking through the doors. He wondered if it had been designed to mirror the worlds above, or if architects had dreamed of a stately hell which contained it. Maybe neither, maybe both, it didn't matter so much in the end.
He made sure that the package was strapped securely to his back by its ribbons before joining the river of the damned and stepping inside. The entrance hall was lavish in a way that only money could buy, and his ears flattened back at the cascade of shouts, screams, wails and cries that burst from every direction. It was premium pandemonium, a taste of the chaos of the pit before you descended to gamble away your forever.
His whiskers drooped and he idly licked his paw, running it over his tortishell fur. There were too many people in here to spot her easily, he supposed. There were probably too many people to spot her even if they gave him control of all the cameras. But he had to start somewhere, so paws on the ground...so to speak.
He approached the nearest service desk - a rare island of calm in the churning broil of the eager fallen - and cleared his throat. His bushy tail flipped back and forth as the employee turned to face him - a three-faced deva with as many winning smiles and carefully-folded wings of infested spider webs behind her back. Meowlexander narrowed his lone eye, unsure of which of hers to look into, and spoke:
"Excuse me, I'm looking for a friend. Who do I need to talk to about finding a missing purrson?"
There is a door.
It stands alone, without any walls to support it, without any rooms to divide from one another. Its frame is made of ragged petrified wood, and the rest of stone so perfectly polished, so delicately and finely carved as to be a work of art. Its handles are two palm-sized diamonds that catch the pallid light of the suns in a soft kaleidoscope amidst the ceaseless dawn and dusk.
There is a door.
It is not far from the only building within a hundred miles, or perhaps in the entire world. It resembles a ziggurat, with its flat, narrowing terraces and climbing steep stairways. In place of greenery, however, there are only carefully-tended sand gardens; instead of trailing vines, strands of rough-cut gemstones that sparkle but dimly. No light comes from within, and seldom any sound, for its master knows his own voice well enough, and this land knows no other.
There is a door.
It is on a beach of the finest white, although the word lost its meaning around the time that the last of the ocean disappeared. Dunes stretch almost as far as the eye can see, broken only by the distant mountains, their shadows blacker than black, their peaks like the weathered ribs of the world poking at the heavens, their immensity, their weight so very real as to anchor everything else in place.
There is a door, and A GRACEFUL HAND has opened it, just enough.
It is the threshold from lands unknown unto ruination. It is the gate to a place bathed in the soft light of cooling stars, beautiful in its almost flawless desolation, terminus absolute. And, when seen in reverse, the entry to a high-fated city under the watch of merciless stars; it is the perfect place, and the only place, to best augur what will come next.
So through the door, the lonely path, not out of mind but out of sight...at least for the time being.
A HAND pulls upon the handle, just a little, and there is a satisfying click.
There is no door.
---
Gregor gasped, and it was the most wonderful breath he'd had in years.
The air tasted nothing of disuse, of decay, of a wasteland so complete as to reach down to the atomic level. It was damp - damp! - and alive with a hundred different scents. And the sounds! The roar of the ocean, so close that he wondered when it might start to wash up against his shell. The mutter of living, breathing bodies gathering closer to where he lay; not running and screaming, not gasping out their last, but persisting.
And the moon above...shattered, but so luminous as to almost blind (though that could have been something else, perhaps?)
He rose to his feet slowly, towering over the assembled wharf rats like a doomsday monolith: an impossible presence of slowly-shifting rock in the shape of a man. A trickle of white mist seeped from the gaping, lightless hole in its face, and but for that and a sniffle, nobody would have known about the tears streaming down his cheeks.
It was so beautiful, and none of it was dead. He was reduced.
He held up his palm at arm's length toward the leader, a slab of gray around the size of the man's chest. Strange symbols crawled across the skin, never staying the same for very long, never wanting the eye to sit upon them, never quite forming a recognizable pattern. There needn't be any killing today, he wanted to say, why not meet as friends, brothers and sisters?
And with a voice like an old radio playing down a long, dark tunnel he spoke:
"My friend, I have good news: your deaths are not guaranteed today! Come closer, let me see you, let's talk, let's eat! I stand here and everyone still lives, and we have to celebrate!"
It stands alone, without any walls to support it, without any rooms to divide from one another. Its frame is made of ragged petrified wood, and the rest of stone so perfectly polished, so delicately and finely carved as to be a work of art. Its handles are two palm-sized diamonds that catch the pallid light of the suns in a soft kaleidoscope amidst the ceaseless dawn and dusk.
There is a door.
It is not far from the only building within a hundred miles, or perhaps in the entire world. It resembles a ziggurat, with its flat, narrowing terraces and climbing steep stairways. In place of greenery, however, there are only carefully-tended sand gardens; instead of trailing vines, strands of rough-cut gemstones that sparkle but dimly. No light comes from within, and seldom any sound, for its master knows his own voice well enough, and this land knows no other.
There is a door.
It is on a beach of the finest white, although the word lost its meaning around the time that the last of the ocean disappeared. Dunes stretch almost as far as the eye can see, broken only by the distant mountains, their shadows blacker than black, their peaks like the weathered ribs of the world poking at the heavens, their immensity, their weight so very real as to anchor everything else in place.
There is a door, and A GRACEFUL HAND has opened it, just enough.
It is the threshold from lands unknown unto ruination. It is the gate to a place bathed in the soft light of cooling stars, beautiful in its almost flawless desolation, terminus absolute. And, when seen in reverse, the entry to a high-fated city under the watch of merciless stars; it is the perfect place, and the only place, to best augur what will come next.
So through the door, the lonely path, not out of mind but out of sight...at least for the time being.
A HAND pulls upon the handle, just a little, and there is a satisfying click.
There is no door.
---
Gregor gasped, and it was the most wonderful breath he'd had in years.
The air tasted nothing of disuse, of decay, of a wasteland so complete as to reach down to the atomic level. It was damp - damp! - and alive with a hundred different scents. And the sounds! The roar of the ocean, so close that he wondered when it might start to wash up against his shell. The mutter of living, breathing bodies gathering closer to where he lay; not running and screaming, not gasping out their last, but persisting.
And the moon above...shattered, but so luminous as to almost blind (though that could have been something else, perhaps?)
He rose to his feet slowly, towering over the assembled wharf rats like a doomsday monolith: an impossible presence of slowly-shifting rock in the shape of a man. A trickle of white mist seeped from the gaping, lightless hole in its face, and but for that and a sniffle, nobody would have known about the tears streaming down his cheeks.
It was so beautiful, and none of it was dead. He was reduced.
He held up his palm at arm's length toward the leader, a slab of gray around the size of the man's chest. Strange symbols crawled across the skin, never staying the same for very long, never wanting the eye to sit upon them, never quite forming a recognizable pattern. There needn't be any killing today, he wanted to say, why not meet as friends, brothers and sisters?
And with a voice like an old radio playing down a long, dark tunnel he spoke:
"My friend, I have good news: your deaths are not guaranteed today! Come closer, let me see you, let's talk, let's eat! I stand here and everyone still lives, and we have to celebrate!"
NAME: GREGOR BARISH
ALIASES/NICKNAMES:
AGE & APPEARANCE: Age is no longer easy to determine or apply to a man who has devoured eternity. How old is forever? His body, when around others, is always encased in a seven foot tall suit of living stone that looks like a cross between an old astronaut's outfit and the vanguard of an eternal war. Sigils are branded into the rock that defy the gaze of any but the most practiced enchanter, though some have been partially obscured with stupid-looking stickers. The visor to the suit swirls with unearthly mist, hiding any peek at the man inside, and the voice that comes from within is heavily distorted, though not exactly unpleasant
PERSONALITY & HISTORY: To understand who he is, you should understand that he is functionally two people at once, intertwined. The first was a relatively normal man of middling ambitions who liked to spend time with his family on the weekends and thought of himself as a bit of a talented amateur artist; the second was an eternal hydra, unknowable in its multitudes, ceaseless, endless. Where does one end and the other begin? Should his coworkers have been churned beneath the edges of his scales for forgetting his birthday? Should that vile dragon of eternal cold - colder than the black between stars, colder than the worlds beyond nothingness - have faced censure by their peers for not attending his neighborhood barbecue?
He was a man who caught the attention of A WONDEROUS GAZE; he was a poison, eternal in his multitudes, who was pinned by that same eye. He is both now, and maybe he always was both. He was one - the one who became both - through centuries of endless hunger, of conscripted need, devouring the flesh that will not rot and will not end but will always rot and which will always be the end of that which it touches. Until one day there was nothing left to devour; nothing left to become. And from then, waiting until A GRACEFUL HAND reached down from above, tore the GAZE from its hideous perch, and rescued the man, the endless wyrm, from his shackles.
POSSESSIONS: An empowered sealing suit made of living, endlessly growing stone. Various tools related to the sculpting of statues and the painting of paintings. A ready supply of priceless metals. A door to uncertain and desolate vistas.
ABILITIES/CONCEPTUAL STUFF: The hydra which, over the course of several centuries of relative time, he devoured in full, was the conceptual embodiment of eternity and of poison; to always be and to always grow, and to forever taint that upon which its venom fell. These concepts have become a part of him on both a physical and a metaphysical level; for him to walk uncovered upon a world is to doom it. The strange resonances of Neo-Babylon have reduced him considerably - much to his delight - but they cannot chance what he is at a fundamental level. Unless he mitigates himself, unless he seals away the truth of what he is, he will degrade the laws of where he stands, forever taint that point in time and space, reduce it to hideous turmoil for as long as time persists...at least on a long enough timeline.
LAST MEMORY: A GRACIOUS HAND peeling aside the curtains of reality to usher him to a distant world.
ADDITIONAL PLOT HOOKS: What other GAZES, what other HANDS might sense him? What does a sign of ill-omen mean for a high-fated world?
ALIASES/NICKNAMES:
AGE & APPEARANCE: Age is no longer easy to determine or apply to a man who has devoured eternity. How old is forever? His body, when around others, is always encased in a seven foot tall suit of living stone that looks like a cross between an old astronaut's outfit and the vanguard of an eternal war. Sigils are branded into the rock that defy the gaze of any but the most practiced enchanter, though some have been partially obscured with stupid-looking stickers. The visor to the suit swirls with unearthly mist, hiding any peek at the man inside, and the voice that comes from within is heavily distorted, though not exactly unpleasant
PERSONALITY & HISTORY: To understand who he is, you should understand that he is functionally two people at once, intertwined. The first was a relatively normal man of middling ambitions who liked to spend time with his family on the weekends and thought of himself as a bit of a talented amateur artist; the second was an eternal hydra, unknowable in its multitudes, ceaseless, endless. Where does one end and the other begin? Should his coworkers have been churned beneath the edges of his scales for forgetting his birthday? Should that vile dragon of eternal cold - colder than the black between stars, colder than the worlds beyond nothingness - have faced censure by their peers for not attending his neighborhood barbecue?
He was a man who caught the attention of A WONDEROUS GAZE; he was a poison, eternal in his multitudes, who was pinned by that same eye. He is both now, and maybe he always was both. He was one - the one who became both - through centuries of endless hunger, of conscripted need, devouring the flesh that will not rot and will not end but will always rot and which will always be the end of that which it touches. Until one day there was nothing left to devour; nothing left to become. And from then, waiting until A GRACEFUL HAND reached down from above, tore the GAZE from its hideous perch, and rescued the man, the endless wyrm, from his shackles.
POSSESSIONS: An empowered sealing suit made of living, endlessly growing stone. Various tools related to the sculpting of statues and the painting of paintings. A ready supply of priceless metals. A door to uncertain and desolate vistas.
ABILITIES/CONCEPTUAL STUFF: The hydra which, over the course of several centuries of relative time, he devoured in full, was the conceptual embodiment of eternity and of poison; to always be and to always grow, and to forever taint that upon which its venom fell. These concepts have become a part of him on both a physical and a metaphysical level; for him to walk uncovered upon a world is to doom it. The strange resonances of Neo-Babylon have reduced him considerably - much to his delight - but they cannot chance what he is at a fundamental level. Unless he mitigates himself, unless he seals away the truth of what he is, he will degrade the laws of where he stands, forever taint that point in time and space, reduce it to hideous turmoil for as long as time persists...at least on a long enough timeline.
LAST MEMORY: A GRACIOUS HAND peeling aside the curtains of reality to usher him to a distant world.
ADDITIONAL PLOT HOOKS: What other GAZES, what other HANDS might sense him? What does a sign of ill-omen mean for a high-fated world?
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