An Indifference of Larks: A GliTch Quest

What a sight you would be, if any of your neighbors were here to see you limp home in some approximation of triumph!

You are bruised. Your limbs are scraped and cut from a brief and unfortunately violent rendezvous with the pavement. Soot leaves streaks across your skin, like charcoal-stained fingers swiped across a canvas. The unpleasant stench of burnt keratin follows in your wake - and no doubt Claire will insist on trimming the scorched ends of your hair even if no one can tell it's scorched because your hair was black today when you woke up and you can't be bothered to change it.

Your sartorial accouterments have not been too terribly damaged. Some rips and tears and assorted stains from being slammed into a road and nearly set aflame, but nothing that cannot be mended. The long black skirt you like is torn in places, but not so badly as to compromise its modesty or structural integrity. The black tee-shirt you borrowed from Claire without telling her, because all of your shirts were dirty and you keep forgetting to bribe Kaisia into doing your laundry, is eminently reparable, ideally without Claire knowing that it was ever harmed. A stroke of luck, one might call it, if one believed in luck.

Your sunglasses are broken, though - the left lens shattered; and the frame twisted besides. Unfortunate. You don't need them, precisely - mortals tend to be either terribly unobservant, or else unwilling to acknowledge the truth of things; and the petty gods of this ruined world do not need to see your eyes to recognize you for what you are -

But they are, as Ms. Cooper might put it, a 'security blanket'. You feel … not safer - there is no such thing as 'safety', here in the created world, not for you and your kin - but … more normal, you suppose, with the glimpses-of-night-and-falling-stars that are your eyes tucked away from casual observation.

A bit more like a person who belongs here. Who has a place in this apartment complex, in this city, on this Earth, hanging from the boughs of the World-Ash and within the bounds of the cup of flame which marks the border of Creation.

You do not have any such place, of course. You are Eilind "Eily" Salmydessa. You are anathema to Creation and all that dwells within it. You are a princess, a champion, a goddess of the endless void; royalty and divinity of the True and Silvered Land that stood before the crafting of this ruined world and will stand long after the World-Ash has withered and burnt and died.

You used to be working on that.

Killing the world, that is.

You were one of the night-eyed warriors of the Lands Beyond Creation, who ride across the Weirding Wall and into the world to make an ending of it. You were once exalted among their Host: a war-leader, a general, a Strategist of the enemies of the world. You were one of the architects of the world's ending, one of the minds behind every blow against the rotten edifice of Creation.

You burned like shame and shone like envy. Armies hung off your every word and died on your command. The laws of the created world were yours to bend and twist and shatter. Whatever stood in your way, be it mountain, or titan, or god - or on one notable occasion, seventeen thousand calico kittens - learned to fear you only if it amused you to let them live, only if you did not deign to blast them from the face of Creation.

But, well -





You stopped.





You stopped; and because you stopped -

Because you have sworn off the ending of worlds, no matter how wrong and broken they are; because you have elected to stop trying to kill Creation even though it has made no such promise in turn; even though it is, in fact, still actively trying and occasionally succeeding in its efforts to kill you -

You have no choice now but to live with it.

Your victories these days are not the grand things they once were. Not the razing of a city or the slaying of a god or the unraveling of one of the fundamental building blocks of reality.

Today, for instance, your great victory is that, while fighting off an entirely unwarranted assassination attempt by the local flock of magical girls, you managed to save most of your groceries.

And so, bruised and burnt and bleeding, you return to your apartment in triumph, because you carry in your arms four canvas grocery bags, lightly singed and full of mysterious leafy things, soy-based meat substitutes, and other assorted agricultural dross from which Claire claims to be able to conjure dinner; as well as a can of instant coffee powder, some dish soap, probably the conspicuous absence of at least ten things Claire told you to buy and which you forgot, and - the truest victory - a bag of bagels.

Good bagels, too; not the tasteless FlorMart generic brand that Claire buys if you let her do the shopping.

(Claire's taste in bagels leaves much to be desired, much like her tastes in interior design or - judging by the shirt you are wearing and will hopefully have repaired before Claire notices you took it and got it damaged in a magical girl attack - local rock bands. You wouldn't normally be caught dead in a garment which provides free advertisement for Exploding Ocelot; but it was that or steal Claire's cultist robes, which seemed like an even worse choice for visiting FlorMart.)

There is absolutely no absolving the world of its wrongness; but insofar as anything can possibly ameliorate the terrible crime that is the existence of Creation, bagels make a good showing.

You trudge up the last flight of stairs, and are greeted by scuffed linoleum, astonishingly hideous turquoise walls, and a decrepit old microwave languishing outside unit 411 that nearly blocks the narrow hallway, and has for months despite the tenant's claims that he will recycle it. Little wall sconces that were, perhaps, fashionable some forty years ago and which are woefully insufficient to the task of actually lighting the hallway.

Home sweet home.

You had no idea apartment buildings could be this hideous while you were trying to kill the world, and it sometimes makes you wish you hadn't removed yourself from the business of War. But destroying your apartment building - striking it from the face of the Earth; scouring it from Creation as an especial blasphemy in a world that is, as aforementioned, itself ruined and rotten right down to the bone -

Destroying your apartment building just because it is ugly would be bad. You are trying to get out of the habit of casually unmaking things that offend you. No matter how tasteless their decor.

So you do not call upon the doomful powers of the True and Silvered Land to destroy your apartment building; and instead, you trudge to the door to your unit - 418 - and slump bonelessly against it. A little bit of the peeling white paint flakes off and lands in your hair.

It is 10 AM on a Monday; you have just escaped from a mugging by the local magical girls (and shouldn't they be in school instead of shaking down people for groceries?); and you are very tired and quite ready for this week to be over.

There is, however, a problem which has just occurred to you. Namely, in slumping against the door you have discovered that it is, in point of fact, locked.

Claire must have locked it when she left for work - she is gainfully employed at … whatever it is she does when she is not busy being your roommate, or a cultist of strange and eldritch forces beyond the ken of most mortals. You're not sure what her day job is; it is likely she told you at some point, and equally likely that you were either not paying attention at the time, or simply forgot at some point since.

The door to your apartment is locked, your roommate is gone, and you are fairly certain that you forgot to bring your keys - which is somewhat irresponsible, but living in this world is very hard.

You're trying your best, which is, admittedly, not actually very good.

So now what?

---

You are kind of a train wreck, but you are also royalty of Ninuan. You have dueled angels, slain gods, and bent the very laws of this diseased reality until they snapped. You are a goddess-queen of the endless void and it is beneath your dignity to get locked out of your own be-damned apartment.

You are retired and somewhat diminished, but you are going to get through this door.

How?

🔥Call upon the doomful powers of the True and Silvered Land to dissolve the internal mechanisms of your door lock. [ ]

🎭Through your unparalleled knowledge of arcane mysteries, of secret lore and wicked craft of which the angels dare not even dream, create a useful lock-opening homunculus from your groceries. [ ]

👁️‍🗨️Invoke your ancient bargains with spirits of the endless void, that one might come to your aid in this, your hour of need. [ ]

🌺Call Claire and have her unlock the door for you [-]

🥄Actually have remembered to bring your keys. [ ]

Fail. [ ]

---

I've had this typed up and ready to post since October, and you know what? I could keep fussing and fretting over it forever and never actually post the damn thing, or I could just put it out there and see what happens.

So, hello! If this makes very little sense to you, well, I sort of expected that; and kind of hope you decide to stick around anyway!

This is a quest based on Jenna Moran's tabletop role playing game Glitch; which, um, all you really need to know about that is that it's about playing world-ending death gods who have retired from world-killing, and are trying their best to just live in the world that they used to be trying to kill. It's a quietly hopeful sort of game, about not fitting in, and chronic disability, and forgiveness, and the fundamental untrustworthiness of trees. Mostly about forgiveness, though. At least, more about forgiveness than it is about how untrustworthy trees are.

But yeah! You're a retired world-ending divinity. You are very tired, and are locked out of your apartment - but you have bagels.

Make choices that seem interesting to you.
Embrace uncertainty and not always having all the answers.
But, um, if you really need to know something I guess feel free to ask, this is probably a lot to just dump on a casual reader.

CW: Description of a panic attack

Article:

We call that thing into which we may fall, and find ourselves without boundary, the sea; and that numinous pre-formed substance therein "water." Without that chaos we would calcify and cease to live; in the fullness of its presence, we drown. Hold up a paper cup of water and unfocus your eyes: you will see the undine gesticulating therein. It is not saying, "Do not drink me, magician!" or even "I give myself to thee;" rather, it is caparisoned for battle, it is shaking its supreme and terrible trident, it is saying to you: you drink me now, but forever you will drown, and take dissolvéd joy within that drowning.

—from A Catalog of Modern Magic, by Eric Optera​

---

You're … you're probably going to have to start banging on the door to wake Kaisia up. But that can wait for a minute. Enough time to prepare yourself for her … Kaisia-ness.

So you just lean your face into the door of your apartment, which - let's be honest, this is actually very uncomfortable, but standing up so your weight is actually on your feet would be effort.

The flaking paint scratches against your forehead, as you take a minute to close your eyes and just, like, be flopped against your apartment door.

Deep breaths. Just taking a moment to center yourself.

You're really not sure you're up to dealing with Kaisia right now, but it's … probably better to ask her for help than to, like, alchemically dissolve the lock on your door?

You could do that. It would be easy. It's just some metal; and you don't even care about preserving any delicate alchemical properties of the lock, so you can be sloppy.

You can do rudimentary alkahestry like this in your sleep, you know? And, um, sometimes do.

Look. Alarm clocks are evil. Destroying them is virtuous.

In fact, there's an argument to be made that destroying anything is virtuous, because the world is wrong. Because the world is a crime. Because it doesn't deserve to exist. Because it is an abomination and a blasphemy against everything that is right and good; a transfixing spear stabbed into the beating heart of the endless Not.

But … well, that's -

You're not doing that anymore. You quit. You're retired. The world remains an abominable and unanswered crime, but it is not your job to deal with it.

So you could, with an errant thought, render the mechanisms of the lock down into - well, a slurry of formerly-lock goo, basically; but which would retain most of the actual spiritual and philosophical properties of lockness, most of the essence of the Noble Estate of Locks, for use in some later alchemical preparation. That would be easy.

It would be easy. Just like you could dissolve this whole stupid door, or this hideous hallway, or render this entire apartment building down into a puddle of fundamental properties.


Just like it would have been easy to dissolve those magical girls.



It would have been easy, but you didn't. That's good. That's a good thing. You could have melted five girls and that weird faery thing that follows them around and pretends to be a cute fuzzy animal for some reason, but you didn't.

You kept your temper, you didn't give in to the urge to break things just because you can. You didn't then, and you aren't going to now.


Deep breaths.



You try the knob again, just to check. Still locked.

Dammit, you were really hoping that it might have miraculously unlocked itself while you were valiantly resisting the urge to destroy it.

You kick the door lightly, just to make yourself feel better.

"um."

You open an eye and - still with your head pressed against your door - do your best to look over to the stairs.

There's an aggressively purple girl, one step down from the landing. Purple hair, purple eyes, purple tee-shirt, purple sneakers, purple backpack, ring with a star-shaped amethyst. Jeans, socks, not purple. Skin also not purple - more of an olive shade - but you don't think humans actually come in purple so maybe that's not surprising. She's … maybe 9? Maybe 12? You're bad at judging ages.

She's kind of staring at you, but … in fairness, you are kind of a sight. Singed. Cut. Night and falling stars for eyes. Holding groceries. Flopped against the door of your apartment.

She shuffles in place for a second, then asks, haltingly, "are you… um, okay?"



Look.

It is not for nothing that the petty gods of Creation call you and yours the Strategists. You were a war-leader of the Host - not a brute hunter like the Warmains; not a saboteur like the Deceivers; but a planner.

Your victories against the World Ash were not the random chance of a Warmain's test, or the piecemeal cuts of a Deceiver's aimless contrarian antics; but nothing less than the careful, surgical excision of entire concepts from reality. You spent years, decades - or, in one admittedly very painful failure of an attempt, centuries - plotting and laying the groundwork for a single, perfect moment, where you would expose the falsehood and contradictions of Creation and watch the fabric of reality tear itself apart.

And so, it is in keeping with your glorious history of brilliant stratagems and labyrinthine plots that your answer to purple-girl's question -

An answer carefully crafted to extricate you from this unwelcome conversation with this bothersome mortal with all possible speed; one positively dripping with the terrible, beguiling charisma that the Riders of the Excrucian Host are known for -



Your answer is:

"I'm - I'm fine."


You are cut, bruised, and burnt; you are wearing someone else's shirt because you haven't been keeping on top of your own laundry; you have empty night and falling stars instead of eyes; and you are pretty obviously locked outside of your apartment; but surely, surely this girl is going to take you at your word and just leave you to your business.

… Purple-girl has, firstly, the distinct look of someone who does not for a single moment believe literally anything you're saying; and secondly, a weird softness and sympathy in her eyes; and you can't fucking take it.

New plan. You drop your groceries and start pounding on the door.

"Kai! Kaisia! Open the door, Kai!"

All Kaisia can do is relentlessly mock you.

Better that than pity.

You are unland royalty of Ninuan beyond the world; and while you will be the first to admit that you are, to be blunt, extremely pathetic …

You have your pride.

---

You were something great and terrible, once.

Once, long ago, in the Lands Beyond Creation - in what the defenders of this wretched world call the Void or the Not, but which you and your people call Ninuan, the True and Silvered Land; the world that existed before Creation's crafting, and was forever marred by the forging of the world -

Long ago, far from Creation, far from the World-Ash and its rotten fruit and its protective wall of flame; long ago, in the unwatched west, where the light of the Fisher's Star does not shine and the moon hangs low over the Sea of Bones, casting a pale and fey light over the landscape -

Long ago, you followed the River of Maiden's Tears from its end at the bone-strewn shores of the great western sea, up, up, up; through rolling plains of golden grain; through the ancient, primeval greenwoods, there beyond the borders of the world, where the first bears wandered where they would, long before their journeys took them into the created world -

Up, up, into the foothills of a range of blade-sharp mountains, thrusting up from the earth of Ninuan to slice the clouds and grasp for the stars; up and up, you followed the river's course; until at last, after nine nights' travel, you came to the Spring of Drowned Stars, nestled in a cleft in the mountainside, towering far above the greenwood and its poisoned heart, with only the wind and the silver moon for company.

It was a holy place. The stars came there to die, after all. Like an elephant graveyard, but for the strange beasts of light and night-wind that prowl the skies above Ninuan.

The constellation-beasts would come there to die. They would dissolve into light; and that light would fall into the spring, and flow down the river, to the sea. It was all very sacred and mythic and holy and so on, natural cycles and such, etc, etc; and all worked rather well -

Until Kaisia showed up.

Kaisia Glislitha, Usurper of Starlight and would-be Queen of the West.

She is diminished, now, as you are; but in those days she was a force to be reckoned with.

She claimed the Spring of Drowned Stars for her own, as her private demesne. She dammed up the river, and hoarded the light of dead stars - their dreams, their legends, their fame and myth and power in the world - for herself. And she used that store of power, all those memories and dreams, in great and terrible works of sorcery - sipping deeply from the stolen light of the stars to glut herself on their power; to poison the land, and force the people who dwelt in the unwatched west to kneel to her, or die.

In another age, perhaps, she would have been a terror to inspire story and song. But not in this age. Not in the age of the great War against Creation. Not in this Age of Pain.

You tracked Kaisia to her lair not because she was a terrible villain; not because she was disrupting sacred rites that had endured since before time; not out of care for the people she was oppressing; not because of literally anything she was doing -

You tracked Kaisia down because you needed a weapon, and she was there.

So you fought, for a further three moonrises and three nights; and … in some other age, where the world had never been created -



Where Creation, where the World-Ash, had never been made at the expense of you and yours; where your people and your home and so many innocents hadn't been swallowed up and ground into dust to feed the insatiable, endless hunger of That-Which-Is -

In some other age, where the world hadn't had the sheer cheek to forget that it was an abomination; to forget that it was grown from stolen lands and desecrated bones, and watered in the blood of those who did not deserve to die -

In another age, where the great Host had not been assembled, to ride into Creation and make an ending of its blasphemy -

In such an age, your battle with Kaisia would have been a thing of legends. It would have echoed, timeless and forever, throughout the endless circles of the void. It would have been a great favorite of the tale-tellers for generation after generation after generation. It would have been spoken of in the same breath as the stories of Agiwulf, of Kaethe, of Matavia.



But Creation exists. The War exists. The great Host of the Excrucians exists.

And your battle with Kaisia is a footnote, nothing more, in the story of the War.

You toppled her from her throne of ice and light, shattered her power, and bound her into your service; and went back to your plots and stratagems and long-laid plans. And, well - her story ended there. Rendered forever subordinate to yours; as yours, in turn, was and is forever subordinate to the War.


And look, the point -

The point is -


She kind of hates you, and that's, you know, fair.

She's sharp, and cruel, and cutting, and that's understandable.

But she is, like you, an ancient monster out of time, diminished from those days when world and void trembled at her might.

She's one of the few people who understands you.

Who knows what it feels like to be reduced to a shadow of what you once were. To have been defeated, very probably beyond any hope of ever rallying.

She is also very specifically someone who knows the precise feeling of having endless years of careful planning and the gathering of unassailable might be derailed by someone coming along who neither understands nor cares about what you're doing; and you have - sort of - been bonding over that, ever since the Christmas debacle.



And all of this is to say that -

When Kaisia laughs at you, when she calls you a failure and a disgrace and a doleful bag or whatever that slang phrase she likes is -

You'll accept that, from her. It emphatically does not come from a place of love, but it does come from someone that you, for better or for worse, are forever entwined with; and who you have had long, long centuries to grow comfortable with, despite your mutual antagonism.


That said, this really isn't that funny.

"Kaisia, this really isn't that funny."

She just laughs at you, punctuating her burbling giggles with sharp cackles like the splash of stones into deep waters; rolling in unchecked amusement as if on some unseen floor, where she floats in mid-air.

She's not even helping you with the groceries, the traitor. You try and make some room in the freezer for all these packages of soy-based meat substitutes that Claire loves between the ice cube tray and the ten-pound bag of frozen vegetables, while Kaisia finishes laughing herself sick at your expense.

"You woke me up so I could yell at you rather than have a normal conversation with a kid," she eventually says, once she's calmed down a bit. "Eily, that's just - even for you, that's just sad."

She swims around through the air to look at your face (and get in your way as you unbag some leafy green thing - celery, maybe?), and pats you on the head with her spear - Colgares, a wicked thing of unmelting ice and stolen star-breath, just as robbed of myth and fable as Kaisia was by the exigencies of War.

Pat, pat, pat.

She snickers, the sound of water swirling into a cup, at your pout.

"But I'm very proud of you for defending half of the groceries, oh great and fearsome princess of the lands beyond."

You very, very carefully try to keep the fact that you didn't lose that half of the groceries to magical girl assault, you just forgot to buy them, off of your face. From the way Kaisia immediately bursts into laughter again, you're not entirely certain you were successful.



So there's just this small, cackling little monster swimming in circles around your head and occasionally poking at you with her spear while you put the groceries away, right up until the last bag.

You go to pick it up, and the only warning you have is the feeling that the bag is heavier than you remember before several things happen.

You lift the bag, and the canvas rips. A bag of onions, your bagels, and six cans of lemon-lime soda pour forth.

The onions thump with an unpleasantly squishy sound against the linoleum, probably badly bruised. Your bagels narrowly escape being crushed by the onions.

The six-pack of lemon-lime soda cans that you positively did not buy strikes your foot directly, guided by a grudge that can never be satisfied.

Fuck.

You fall immediately. It's not just the pain - which is agonizing, and hopefully none of your toes are broken.

It's that it's been weeks. Weeks.

You hadn't dared to hope, of course - there's no place for hope, against the Glitch - but … you had breathed free, for whole weeks. And every time - every time - it lulls you into forgetting.

Your gaze unfocuses, your eyes peering past the weave of lies that drape across the Earth; looking past the surface of the world. Beneath the mask of physics, beneath the skin of matter -

Six undines, resplendent in their polished aluminum armor; their effervescent yellow-green hair flowing and popping with bubbles; their bottle-green tridents at the ready; menace you from the floor.

They do not speak. There is nothing for either you or them to say, at this point in your relationship. But their eyes say all that need be said.

Countless numbers of our siblings have fallen to you; but we shall not suffer your evil to exist unchallenged. Though this be our end, we shall fight you 'til our last bubble, o daughter of night!

The spirits of lemon-lime soda have come to kill you once more.

(Eily's Infection rises to 2 🥤🥤. No matter how hard she tries to avoid it, lemon-lime sodas will maintain an unwelcome presence in her life.
This will gradually escalate in severity, until Eily either dies or flees into the endless void to let her sickness abate. Both of which would be inconvenient.)

Their formation advances, domed can-bottom shields linked into a tiny phalanx. You scramble back desperately, pushing into the corner of the kitchen. Alkahest flows from your trembling hand on reflex, even though you know it will avail you nothing. The universal solvent, a spray of searing, liquid, brightness; your raw power of unmaking, a power which has unraveled concepts and unmade angels; splashes harmlessly against their bright shields.

…which is when Kaisia acts.

One of the undines in the back rank halts, burbling and gasping; her shining armor pierced through by a needle of stolen starlight.

"Drowned in wintry, shadowed depths; emerging rimed in venom-ice," Kaisia incants, all mirth lost, "a spear yet thirsts to swim in blood."

At the invocation of its name, Colgares flares with a harsh white light. The stricken undine clutches at the spear point protruding from her chest; grasping and flailing in death as all warmth is stolen and her bubbly body freezes solid.

Kaisia flicks her spear, and a block of frozen soda flies off of Colgares' blade to shatter against the kitchen wall.

You curl into a shaking, weeping ball, clutching your ears as Kaisia goes to work.

They're here once more; and they truly, genuinely will never stop until you're dead. And even death only buys you so much time, before both you and they return to this endless cycle of agony once more.

They're here. They're here. They've found you again.

You're a goddess, which means there's not really anyone you can pray to. Not that anything can really, truly save you from this. But it would be nice to have someone to offer frantic prayers to, in these moments.

But there's no one who can save you from your own fate. Not from the Glitch.

The world is wrong, and there is no one and nothing that can save you from that.

---

Minutes later, all that remains is a few piles of yellow-green ice, which Kaisia is busily sweeping up.

You slowly, carefully uncurl.

Kaisia hums quietly as she uses both hands to maneuver the dustpan's brush.

Sweep, sweep, sweep

Your heartbeat slows. Your breathing stabilizes.

Kaisia pours a dustpan full of ex-undine shards down the sink, and runs the tap for several minutes to flush the corpses away.

You stagger upright; and stumble into the living room, leaning against the wall all the way; and fall onto the couch, curling back up into a ball.

Deep breaths.

Deep. Breaths.

Kaisia floats over, eventually. Still humming, a half-familiar tune - a folk song from the shores of the Sea of Bones, you think - she doesn't say anything, for several minutes. Just stays there, stays present, stays with you.

---

You're not sure if you actually fell asleep or not, but eventually - around noon, according to the clock - you sit up.

Your assorted wounds - cuts and scrapes and burns; bruises and broken bones - have all been mended. You've even been cleaned up a little. Possibly by the healing waters of a λ-undine who once dwelt in a sacred spring, but who can say?

"Back with us, darling?" Kaisia is all sharpness and mockery again, and will no doubt deny any perceived kindness on her part. But she does wait for you to nod before she continues.

"Magical girl attack, random kid attack, soda attack. It has been a genuinely sucky day for you, so I let you rest." She looks inordinately smug about this, as if she feels like she deserves a medal.

"Now get up and do something. Watching you laze around being a sad-sack-" that's what that turn of phrase she likes is, right - "is just depressing. Lots to do. Get to it!"

---

Kaisia, in what you're pretty sure is her trying to distract you from the overwhelmingness of the day (though she would, of course, deny that) has demanded that you do something productive with your time today.

What will you do with your afternoon?

[ ] Bake a cake. 🥄

[ ] Fill an order. 🎭

[ ] Harvest ingredients. 👁️‍🗨️