Exalted: Out Of The Eater
- Thread starter TenfoldShields
- Start date
- Location
- United States
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
Romv
A Memory of TREES
You're all so suspicious! It's not because our boyfriend is suspiciously handsome, suspiciously buff, suspiciously confident, and suspiciously well-informed, that he's some kind of evil infiltrator from the monstrously evil state - known to be bent on destroying all joy in our life - that seeks to kill all like us. For shame!
[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Ironically if he were a real helot these traits alone would be cause for abruptly murdering him.
Romv
A Memory of TREES
I guess that's why some totally unreasonable people would find those traits suspicious.
suspicious suspicious suspicious suspicious suspiciously suspicious; doesn't even sound like a word anymore.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
I feel like Thanking is even more cutting because there's this sort of implication of giving up. I love you feels more like a last grasping/need/etc. While Thank is more of a clear ending. Like "don't have any real expectation of escape, wanted to thank you before I die". Choosing to die calm because that's something most Helots don't even get.
That might just be me though.
That might just be me though.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Aaaaand it. Is. Tttiiiieeeed.
Alright!
I'll be closing the vote in a few hours to start work on the next update. If it's still tied then I'll just flip a coin or pick whatever.
Alright!
I'll be closing the vote in a few hours to start work on the next update. If it's still tied then I'll just flip a coin or pick whatever.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Calibration is, literally, calibrations. We take bits of the sky offline for a bit. It makes the world go a bit wonky. In canon it's not a days-long eclipse, it's just moonless, like a random New Moon in the middle of the lunar cycle. Most of the ominous nature of the period comes from the various supernatural events that occur at that time, the spirits slipping into Creation, reality glitching out, so on. It's pretty much Wayeb'. Making it a full-on sunless time is a fairly common setting tweak among Exalted fans, though, and it does look cool.
EDIT: No I'm dumb and wrong, there's no moon and no stars. So the day looks normal, but at night there is literally no source of light in the world except artificial ones.
Oh wait does it fall to me to decide between love and thanks, shit, I'm not ready for such responsibility nnnng
[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
i guess???
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Welp; there's a lot to unpack here.
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
Hmm... going to the sermon might be the only clearly 'Solar' choice so far - though confessing love or professing friendship both feel braver in a way.
- Location
- London, England
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Vote Closed.
"Thank you," wins. Update most likely tomorrow.
"Thank you," wins. Update most likely tomorrow.
Prologue Part Eight: The Fire Sermon
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Corpse-child, born of dust, born of filth, born of the unloved and the unwanted, torn from your mother, ripped from your father, your past obliterated and your future turned to ash, tell us all: how does it feel?
Scarecrow stuffed with straw, branches for bones and thread for nerves, garbage of Creation, open your mouth and say it, proclaim it with as much pride as you can because everyone wants to know: how does it feel?
Dead man walking, how does it feel?
Are you happy, carrion-thing? Are those tears of joy that trickle down your cheeks? The Sun is setting; the shadows stretch long and your liberation is at hand. Aren't you glad? Carcass, why do you cry? You're going to be set free, freed of each and every burden, every shackle shattered, every sin scourged clean in a single red instant. You're going to be reborn and no, birth is never clean but if you're lucky maybe it'll be quick. Lift your throat and be glad. Kneel and give praise. What did you have before you but another thirty, forty empty years? Everything good you've ever had is gone, gone so long that even the memories of happier times are lost, smeared across your subconscious into a bleary, blurry nothing. All you have left is the horror. All you have left are the ghosts that haunt you. Why fight on for the sake of such obscene things?
Just give up.
Just give in.
Just let them take you.
It's never fair.
It was never your fault.
Y-you are not...you are not sick. You are not sick, it's the world that's sick. You are not wrong, it's the City that's wrong. You are not unwanted, you are not unloved, because he's here and you feel like you're drowning, crushed by the oncoming wave, sucked down by the undertow, but you can still feel his hand in yours: calloused palm to calloused palm, your fingers folded around it, clasping it as if in prayer. Squeezes so tight you see his fingertips start to turn white. You cling to him as the crowd buffets you on every side. The soon-to-be slaughtered filtering past you, exhausted and weary and searching for a place to rest. Don't look at them, look at him.
You see his face, see his pretty grey eyes, and it hurts you to see him suffering. To see the pain, pulsing like exposed muscle, flayed veins, between the cracks of his composure. He's raw in a way you haven't seen him before, a thing eaten alive from the inside out and it's only the half-shattered shell that's keeping him together at all. But you can help can't you? He steadied you and you can steady him. He was there for you, he's been there for you every day since you met, you can be here for him.
"...Jason," your voice is thick and you have to swallow down the lump in your throat but your eyes are mostly dry now; he flinches, tendons in his throat standing taut and he can't meet your gaze but it's alright, it's alright, you understand, "I'm here. I'm here for you, because of you. I wouldn't- I don't know that I would've lasted this long without you looking out for me. You're my friend and I- just saying I'm grateful sounds like such trash. It's more than that and I- it doesn't matter, because I won't-"
You choke it down again and fuck you're about to start crying again but you smile anyway. It's weak and it feels like it takes every ounce of strength in your body to force those muscles up, every scrap of willpower you have not to let your focus slip behind him to the soldiers watching, the scarlet-coats bloody red, the chain shining. But you press on because you have to: because the way out is through, because the way through is with him and because you've struggled so long and so hard but you'll keep going anyway. Because you don't want to drag him down with you. Because he makes you want to be better than you are, more than you are, doesn't he?
It's a dazed, half-awed realization. A kind of awakening, the kind of thing you can't really process right now as you doggedly stumble on. But you clutch it close to your chest as you continue.
"-I won't let you fall. My life is all I have to give so I'll give that if I have to and I'll be brave, I'll be brave for you alright? So just tell me what to do and I'll do it."
He opens his mouth, he closes it. The sky is the color of peach-flesh and cataphract scale, all of heaven in that half-light, that flickering, washed out glow. You can see night falling on the horizon, darkness mantling the mountains. You can see the stars, the lesser gods and goddesses, twinkling bright in great technicolor bands, burning out in sectors and swathes; as well planned as any Imperial farm. He finally speaks, the words small and miserable and ashamed but he's pressing on too. He's trying to save you too. Despite the cost, despite his own fear, his own helpless, twisted up fury and you don't know what love is, but you think that...maybe one day you could love him.
"My commanding officer won't call off the attack. I'll have to claim you as a conscript, but they won't touch you as long as you're with me."
And for a second, for one, treasured second you don't understand.
You can feel it, feel it as the tension in your jaw and your teeth chains across your features. Grinding under the strain until something gives beneath the stress, until something snaps and your smile fractures, cracks shooting out; webbing your from ear to ear. His hand slips and you don't realize at first, you don't quite comprehend why or how until you look and see your own hanging heavy at your sides.
Take a step away.
Take another.
You back into someone and they half-heartedly snarl something unkind under their breath but you barely notice. All you see is...him, for the first time, all those little clues you didn't piece together, all those little tells that didn't quite make sense, the information you ignored. You see the way his own hand twitches, like he wants to reach out for you, to pull you closer, to take it back. You see the self-loathing, see the disgust, and he doesn't weep even though you know he wants to. Even though if he did you might cross over, walk back, if only to wipe them away. If only to hold him and be held.
Tell the world you shadow, you shade, how does it feel? How does it feel to realize that the one thing you hate more than yourself cares about you more than you ever could? That there isn't a trace of anger or clever, calculated, cunning on his face? Just agony for what he's done to you, regret and apologies and so, so much hate and none of it for you. All of it because of you.
You say nothing, you can't. You just turn, swaying, drunken and dazed and force yourself to put one foot in front of the other. And then another. You take a third and then tanned hand shoots out to catch your shoulder.
Turn your head to stare at him, spine all but creaking like ancient hinges and hundred year old wood. Vertebrae almost squealing as they slide across each other, something snapping wetly in your brain. You don't know what he sees on your face but Jason releases you, flinches back as if scalded. Arms raised as if to shield himself from you, to ward you away. Keep moving, another step, another two and then you're lost in the crowd. Melting away into the press, one helot among the masses, and you hear him swearing, moment of misery forgotten as instincts kick back in but by then it's too late.
"ALEXIUS!"
You're already gone.
"Alexius please don't-"
You don't look back.
"(-I'm sorry)."
Dead man walking, how does it feel?
The Sun is gone, the blackness above immutable and absolute. Spoilt, not broken, just mildly marred, by an ambient orange glow that filters from everywhere, from nowhere. All amber and honey and flickering, fatty hues, like there's some massive lantern hidden just below the horizon. You can hear the clink and jingle of soldiers as they move through the alleyways. Somewhere, on the other side of a row-house a woman barks terse orders. Hear the cries and confusion as the wooden door slams shut and is barred from without. Hear the frantic pounding, the muffled pleading.
You smell sickly-sweet fumes in the air. Across the quarter something searingly bright surges to life, raging and snarling and clawing at the desolate heaven. An echoing roar nearer, from just an alley over and half your body is bathed in the heat. You don't have to look behind you to see the columns of soldiers that pour into the district. You don't have to look past them to see the arc of steel and flesh and bared, blued blades that seals off the military barracks from the slave settlement. A low barrier of crumpled and blood-soaked bodies at their feet and churning water elementals at their backs. You already know. You already understand.
You thought...you thought you could warn someone, that you could save someone if you were fast enough, that maybe you could run or hide and wait it out. But walls of Ivory Bones hem you in. Past them? The fortifications you broke your backs raising, fully manned by an army thousands strong, encircling the settlement utterly; finally completed.
Skeins of dust and dirt whisper past your feet, the hems of your trousers snapping in the Summer breeze. There's screaming on the wind.
People sprint ahead of you, pulling each other by the hand, a young woman falls and a man, broad shouldered and bald, hauls her up. A woman pads past you, a boy who could be your younger brother beneath her arm. Her eyes wild, capturing the the blazes in miniature, the bonfires, your funeral pyres just sparks. Everyone scattering as if there was somewhere to go. Scrambling, crawling over each other. Crossbows sing, you see figures on the ramparts, covering the encampment's borders. Shooting those who try to scale the dry, dusty brickwork.
Ten feet away a woman crumples to the ground, hands twitching, coming up to her ruined throat. To the the steel-tipped quarrel buried in the cartilage and flesh. She looks up at you, mouthing a plea. You look away. Look up as she dies in the dirt.
...Huh. You're at the storehouse again.
You tilt your head back, half expecting to see Listener Karatzas there, impaled on the wall but no, no you suppose not. Even if she is an enemy agent, guilty of crimes against the City, she's still a holy woman. Summarily executing her would be no small thing. Do you blame her? For bringing this upon you?
No. No you don't.
Your fate was sealed the moment Triadic River Ministry fell. They were never going to let you go after that, she was never going to let you live: Aikaterine Sidonia, the woman who murdered you. You will never meet her, she will never know you, and by her hand you will be fed to the fire. By her will you are damned. The doors are open and you walk inside; it's almost as packed at that night you first heard Karatzas speak, people huddled together on every level. Did they come here thinking she would save them? Do they think they can hide too? Does it matter? This is as good a place to wait as any.
It doesn't take them long to find you.
A surge of helots shoved in, herded in like so much cattle, spilling through the entryway; stumbling and falling and caught and steadied by those still inside. A glimpse of soldiers with faces veiled in chain and grey helms dragging the doors shut.
You imagine you can hear the sloshing as they pour a trail around the sides of the structure. You imagine you can smell the oil as it seeps into the stripped, treated timbers, the dry lumber.
Dead man walking, are you afraid?
You hear the whumpf as it catches, you hear the crackling as it starts, rising fast a full-throated scream.
You don't die when the crowd surges out and crashes against the sides of its cage. The orphaned congregation is a rabid thing, blind in its panic. Howling, begging, hands hammering on unyielding walls, bodies hurling themselves against the barred gate. Pain blooms in your knees, your palms as you're thrown to the ground. As someone's foot catches your forearm, catches you in the ribs. You don't get back up because, let's be honest, what would be the point? You just kneel there, cradling your head, gripping fistfuls of your hair. Blinking away tears as you watch tendrils of fire slip through the seams, winding around seasoned wood. Weaving themselves into brilliant tapestries of gold and red and orange, burning their way to thatch.
You don't die when the smoke swallows you, tattered ribbons of steel grey and soot caressing your skin with a touch hot enough to blister. The choking black wrapping you up in its loving arms, gliding over your tongue and crawling up your nose, mingling joining together at the back to pour itself down your throat. Eyes streaming as it fills your lungs with sparks and embers, every breath coming back up in hacking, wrenching, cough. Brain throbbing, the feeling fading as your chest seizes and spasms. The beating of bloody hands is the beating of your heart is the steady drumming on the insides of your skull.
You don't die when the first flakes start to fall. The clouds ripped apart by the thermal surge, framing the roof as it ignites. The inferno rippling across layers of bone dry straw: an inverted sea, an ocean of flame above your head. It's ash at first, black scraps of still smoldering vegetation that cling to your clothes, charring fabric, scorching flesh. And then cinders, crimson and flaring to some kind of life. And then a rain of true flames. They strike you. They catch and they cling and the howling starts in earnest now and is that your voice added to the chorus as the flames start to chew through your clothes? Can you even tell? Would it make a difference?
Clutch your little red stone and press it to your chest. You're hunched in on yourself, hugging yourself, curled up around it and sobbing as the world dies screaming all around you. You hear it then: a shrieking, a torturing groaning as the waist-thick beams that held up the roof start to come unmoored. Start to twist out of their joints and anchors in showers of splinters and dust, already shattering even as they fall. As they plummet down through thin walkways, trailing streamers of smoke; crashing around you one by one like a giant's fingers. The ground shaking, bodies breaking.
Look up.
Slowly now, with your bloody eyes and seared nerves and the scent of your own roasting flesh filling your nose. Look up at the beam just above you as tendrils of fire lick away at its center. As it cracks and comes apart, sparks billowing out like a swarm of fireflies. As it starts to fall.
This one's for you.
This is how you die.
But take solace, as it hits and shatters you, darkness taking you with the sound of a hundred broken bones and pulped viscera and the sensation of your own spine snapping:
This is where you die.
This is not where you end.
You retch and blood and black saliva splatter the ground, staining the sand between your hands, flecking your fingers with ink-dark spots and red foam. It all comes up, a torrent of ichor and bile and filthy ash until you're just barely propped up on all fours. Shoulders hitching as you pull in deep, ragged breaths, too exhausted to reach up and wipe the strands of drool that hang from your lips. Hands and knees sinking an inch or two into the cool dunes as you shift your weight. Finally, finally straightening up and settling back on your haunches, palms resting atop your thighs.
Pink and purple fog swirls around you, sealing off the sky, shrouding everything past fifty feet in any direction. The mist stirred to eddies and whorls, a painter's oils brushed into the air. Foaming white breakers, waves the color of rust and metal rot, crash against the shore. Sheeting up the slope, fading, receding, inches from your knees. The sand's a pale lavender that gives way shades of deep scarlet as it approaches the rising tide; perfumed petals and exposed cardiac muscle in swirls and shaded gradients.
Somewhere thunder rumbles. A drop of rain patters to the ground, a tiny crater in the silicate grit. A small divot and a clot. You like this, you've always liked this; it's the kind of weather that makes a warm blanket and a bowl of hot food seem that much better. The kind of weather where you just want to sit inside, warm and dry, and listen to the storm as it passes. It's...nice, you decide. This is nice.
The tears come then, deep, wracking sobs as you press your palms to your face and bawl. As you give vent to everything, everything you bit back, everything you forced down, everything that's happened to you. Until you're slumped on that beach, chest spasming, breath hitching as you stare numbly up at the clouds. Waves crashing around you, cold water foaming around your hips, soaking you from the waist down before rushing back out.
There's a touch on your cheek, gentle and kind. A child's hand, you open your aching eyes in faint surprise to see a boy just...standing shin-deep in the surf. His skin grey, his throat banded by scales that might have been blue once upon a time. You can see the start of webbed spines at the back of his neck, fleshy, fanlike things along skinny arms. Ears pointed and feathering blue towards the tips, teeth sharp and sharklike. A young Dragon; with a crown hammered in the shape of a laurel wreath on his head, all but slipping down over his brow. The boy himself swallowed up by his vast, purple robes, gold trimmed and beautifully ornate. The hem floating in the water around you, billowing just beneath the surface.
He bunches up a sleeve and carefully wipes your eyes and your nose, cleaning the mess off your face.
"Where...am I?" You ask, exhausted, too worn out to be terrified. Too ground down to be surprised.
"Dead," he replies quietly, "you died when the roof collapsed. Your body is still there, or- what's left of it. I mean. This is just a place for choosing."
"If I'm dead why," he takes his hand away and your head sags, feathery hair hanging in front of your eyes, your voice a hoarse croak "why do I need to choose anything?"
"Because you don't have to stay dead."
You laugh a little at that, a wet, unhappy sound. "Why wouldn't I rather be dead? All I did when I was alive was h-hurt-" Mother, Father, friends, family, Jason gone all...gone, everything's gone. Everyone's gone. Even you're gone now. "-I'm so tired, I don't want to keep trying."
"If Aikaterine Sidonia was on her knees before you and you had a blade in your hand, what would you do?" The boy asks.
"(Kill her)," it comes out in a whisper, a rasp from a smoke-roughened throat, but there's no hesitation.
"And if Lookshy was on its knees before you and you had a blade in your hand, what would you do?"
You swallow, shoulders rising and falling as you draw in a breath. As you slowly exhale.
"I'd kill it."
"Why?"
[ ] Because it's not fair, because they killed you before you ever got a chance to live. Because they stole the future from you and took away your past and so if you could you would take everything from them.
[ ] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
[ ] Because it's the only way for this to end. Because the only freedom you or any helot could ever have would be on the backs of a million Lookshyan dead. Fine then. If you had a choice you'd buy it with their blood.
[ ] Because you don't know what love is but you know hate, you know anger and shame and loneliness and hunger. Because Lookshy made you something less than human. So let them see the fruit of their labor.
Scarecrow stuffed with straw, branches for bones and thread for nerves, garbage of Creation, open your mouth and say it, proclaim it with as much pride as you can because everyone wants to know: how does it feel?
Dead man walking, how does it feel?
Are you happy, carrion-thing? Are those tears of joy that trickle down your cheeks? The Sun is setting; the shadows stretch long and your liberation is at hand. Aren't you glad? Carcass, why do you cry? You're going to be set free, freed of each and every burden, every shackle shattered, every sin scourged clean in a single red instant. You're going to be reborn and no, birth is never clean but if you're lucky maybe it'll be quick. Lift your throat and be glad. Kneel and give praise. What did you have before you but another thirty, forty empty years? Everything good you've ever had is gone, gone so long that even the memories of happier times are lost, smeared across your subconscious into a bleary, blurry nothing. All you have left is the horror. All you have left are the ghosts that haunt you. Why fight on for the sake of such obscene things?
Just give up.
Just give in.
Just let them take you.
it's not fair
It's never fair.
it's not your fault
It was never your fault.
your only sin was being born
Y-you are not...you are not sick. You are not sick, it's the world that's sick. You are not wrong, it's the City that's wrong. You are not unwanted, you are not unloved, because he's here and you feel like you're drowning, crushed by the oncoming wave, sucked down by the undertow, but you can still feel his hand in yours: calloused palm to calloused palm, your fingers folded around it, clasping it as if in prayer. Squeezes so tight you see his fingertips start to turn white. You cling to him as the crowd buffets you on every side. The soon-to-be slaughtered filtering past you, exhausted and weary and searching for a place to rest. Don't look at them, look at him.
You see his face, see his pretty grey eyes, and it hurts you to see him suffering. To see the pain, pulsing like exposed muscle, flayed veins, between the cracks of his composure. He's raw in a way you haven't seen him before, a thing eaten alive from the inside out and it's only the half-shattered shell that's keeping him together at all. But you can help can't you? He steadied you and you can steady him. He was there for you, he's been there for you every day since you met, you can be here for him.
"...Jason," your voice is thick and you have to swallow down the lump in your throat but your eyes are mostly dry now; he flinches, tendons in his throat standing taut and he can't meet your gaze but it's alright, it's alright, you understand, "I'm here. I'm here for you, because of you. I wouldn't- I don't know that I would've lasted this long without you looking out for me. You're my friend and I- just saying I'm grateful sounds like such trash. It's more than that and I- it doesn't matter, because I won't-"
You choke it down again and fuck you're about to start crying again but you smile anyway. It's weak and it feels like it takes every ounce of strength in your body to force those muscles up, every scrap of willpower you have not to let your focus slip behind him to the soldiers watching, the scarlet-coats bloody red, the chain shining. But you press on because you have to: because the way out is through, because the way through is with him and because you've struggled so long and so hard but you'll keep going anyway. Because you don't want to drag him down with you. Because he makes you want to be better than you are, more than you are, doesn't he?
It's a dazed, half-awed realization. A kind of awakening, the kind of thing you can't really process right now as you doggedly stumble on. But you clutch it close to your chest as you continue.
"-I won't let you fall. My life is all I have to give so I'll give that if I have to and I'll be brave, I'll be brave for you alright? So just tell me what to do and I'll do it."
He opens his mouth, he closes it. The sky is the color of peach-flesh and cataphract scale, all of heaven in that half-light, that flickering, washed out glow. You can see night falling on the horizon, darkness mantling the mountains. You can see the stars, the lesser gods and goddesses, twinkling bright in great technicolor bands, burning out in sectors and swathes; as well planned as any Imperial farm. He finally speaks, the words small and miserable and ashamed but he's pressing on too. He's trying to save you too. Despite the cost, despite his own fear, his own helpless, twisted up fury and you don't know what love is, but you think that...maybe one day you could love him.
"My commanding officer won't call off the attack. I'll have to claim you as a conscript, but they won't touch you as long as you're with me."
And for a second, for one, treasured second you don't understand.
You can feel it, feel it as the tension in your jaw and your teeth chains across your features. Grinding under the strain until something gives beneath the stress, until something snaps and your smile fractures, cracks shooting out; webbing your from ear to ear. His hand slips and you don't realize at first, you don't quite comprehend why or how until you look and see your own hanging heavy at your sides.
Take a step away.
Take another.
You back into someone and they half-heartedly snarl something unkind under their breath but you barely notice. All you see is...him, for the first time, all those little clues you didn't piece together, all those little tells that didn't quite make sense, the information you ignored. You see the way his own hand twitches, like he wants to reach out for you, to pull you closer, to take it back. You see the self-loathing, see the disgust, and he doesn't weep even though you know he wants to. Even though if he did you might cross over, walk back, if only to wipe them away. If only to hold him and be held.
Tell the world you shadow, you shade, how does it feel? How does it feel to realize that the one thing you hate more than yourself cares about you more than you ever could? That there isn't a trace of anger or clever, calculated, cunning on his face? Just agony for what he's done to you, regret and apologies and so, so much hate and none of it for you. All of it because of you.
You say nothing, you can't. You just turn, swaying, drunken and dazed and force yourself to put one foot in front of the other. And then another. You take a third and then tanned hand shoots out to catch your shoulder.
Turn your head to stare at him, spine all but creaking like ancient hinges and hundred year old wood. Vertebrae almost squealing as they slide across each other, something snapping wetly in your brain. You don't know what he sees on your face but Jason releases you, flinches back as if scalded. Arms raised as if to shield himself from you, to ward you away. Keep moving, another step, another two and then you're lost in the crowd. Melting away into the press, one helot among the masses, and you hear him swearing, moment of misery forgotten as instincts kick back in but by then it's too late.
"ALEXIUS!"
You're already gone.
"Alexius please don't-"
You don't look back.
"(-I'm sorry)."
Dead man walking, how does it feel?
The Sun is gone, the blackness above immutable and absolute. Spoilt, not broken, just mildly marred, by an ambient orange glow that filters from everywhere, from nowhere. All amber and honey and flickering, fatty hues, like there's some massive lantern hidden just below the horizon. You can hear the clink and jingle of soldiers as they move through the alleyways. Somewhere, on the other side of a row-house a woman barks terse orders. Hear the cries and confusion as the wooden door slams shut and is barred from without. Hear the frantic pounding, the muffled pleading.
You smell sickly-sweet fumes in the air. Across the quarter something searingly bright surges to life, raging and snarling and clawing at the desolate heaven. An echoing roar nearer, from just an alley over and half your body is bathed in the heat. You don't have to look behind you to see the columns of soldiers that pour into the district. You don't have to look past them to see the arc of steel and flesh and bared, blued blades that seals off the military barracks from the slave settlement. A low barrier of crumpled and blood-soaked bodies at their feet and churning water elementals at their backs. You already know. You already understand.
You thought...you thought you could warn someone, that you could save someone if you were fast enough, that maybe you could run or hide and wait it out. But walls of Ivory Bones hem you in. Past them? The fortifications you broke your backs raising, fully manned by an army thousands strong, encircling the settlement utterly; finally completed.
Skeins of dust and dirt whisper past your feet, the hems of your trousers snapping in the Summer breeze. There's screaming on the wind.
People sprint ahead of you, pulling each other by the hand, a young woman falls and a man, broad shouldered and bald, hauls her up. A woman pads past you, a boy who could be your younger brother beneath her arm. Her eyes wild, capturing the the blazes in miniature, the bonfires, your funeral pyres just sparks. Everyone scattering as if there was somewhere to go. Scrambling, crawling over each other. Crossbows sing, you see figures on the ramparts, covering the encampment's borders. Shooting those who try to scale the dry, dusty brickwork.
Ten feet away a woman crumples to the ground, hands twitching, coming up to her ruined throat. To the the steel-tipped quarrel buried in the cartilage and flesh. She looks up at you, mouthing a plea. You look away. Look up as she dies in the dirt.
...Huh. You're at the storehouse again.
You tilt your head back, half expecting to see Listener Karatzas there, impaled on the wall but no, no you suppose not. Even if she is an enemy agent, guilty of crimes against the City, she's still a holy woman. Summarily executing her would be no small thing. Do you blame her? For bringing this upon you?
No. No you don't.
Your fate was sealed the moment Triadic River Ministry fell. They were never going to let you go after that, she was never going to let you live: Aikaterine Sidonia, the woman who murdered you. You will never meet her, she will never know you, and by her hand you will be fed to the fire. By her will you are damned. The doors are open and you walk inside; it's almost as packed at that night you first heard Karatzas speak, people huddled together on every level. Did they come here thinking she would save them? Do they think they can hide too? Does it matter? This is as good a place to wait as any.
It doesn't take them long to find you.
A surge of helots shoved in, herded in like so much cattle, spilling through the entryway; stumbling and falling and caught and steadied by those still inside. A glimpse of soldiers with faces veiled in chain and grey helms dragging the doors shut.
You imagine you can hear the sloshing as they pour a trail around the sides of the structure. You imagine you can smell the oil as it seeps into the stripped, treated timbers, the dry lumber.
Dead man walking, are you afraid?
your only sin was thinking you were worth anything at all
You hear the whumpf as it catches, you hear the crackling as it starts, rising fast a full-throated scream.
You don't die when the crowd surges out and crashes against the sides of its cage. The orphaned congregation is a rabid thing, blind in its panic. Howling, begging, hands hammering on unyielding walls, bodies hurling themselves against the barred gate. Pain blooms in your knees, your palms as you're thrown to the ground. As someone's foot catches your forearm, catches you in the ribs. You don't get back up because, let's be honest, what would be the point? You just kneel there, cradling your head, gripping fistfuls of your hair. Blinking away tears as you watch tendrils of fire slip through the seams, winding around seasoned wood. Weaving themselves into brilliant tapestries of gold and red and orange, burning their way to thatch.
You don't die when the smoke swallows you, tattered ribbons of steel grey and soot caressing your skin with a touch hot enough to blister. The choking black wrapping you up in its loving arms, gliding over your tongue and crawling up your nose, mingling joining together at the back to pour itself down your throat. Eyes streaming as it fills your lungs with sparks and embers, every breath coming back up in hacking, wrenching, cough. Brain throbbing, the feeling fading as your chest seizes and spasms. The beating of bloody hands is the beating of your heart is the steady drumming on the insides of your skull.
You don't die when the first flakes start to fall. The clouds ripped apart by the thermal surge, framing the roof as it ignites. The inferno rippling across layers of bone dry straw: an inverted sea, an ocean of flame above your head. It's ash at first, black scraps of still smoldering vegetation that cling to your clothes, charring fabric, scorching flesh. And then cinders, crimson and flaring to some kind of life. And then a rain of true flames. They strike you. They catch and they cling and the howling starts in earnest now and is that your voice added to the chorus as the flames start to chew through your clothes? Can you even tell? Would it make a difference?
Clutch your little red stone and press it to your chest. You're hunched in on yourself, hugging yourself, curled up around it and sobbing as the world dies screaming all around you. You hear it then: a shrieking, a torturing groaning as the waist-thick beams that held up the roof start to come unmoored. Start to twist out of their joints and anchors in showers of splinters and dust, already shattering even as they fall. As they plummet down through thin walkways, trailing streamers of smoke; crashing around you one by one like a giant's fingers. The ground shaking, bodies breaking.
Look up.
Slowly now, with your bloody eyes and seared nerves and the scent of your own roasting flesh filling your nose. Look up at the beam just above you as tendrils of fire lick away at its center. As it cracks and comes apart, sparks billowing out like a swarm of fireflies. As it starts to fall.
This one's for you.
This is how you die.
But take solace, as it hits and shatters you, darkness taking you with the sound of a hundred broken bones and pulped viscera and the sensation of your own spine snapping:
This is where you die.
This is not where you end.
how many times have you been here?
how many lives have you lived?
what a stupid question
why not ask how many tears the sea can hold?
because that's the joke, the distinction disappears as the two mingle
categorical cannibalism, a taxonomical taboo
infinity plus one
you have always been here
first they set forth Creation
and with their hands they raised Heaven
from the guts of their King they fashioned a Hell
this is what they made as they Fell
the stillborn world
the hollow world
the ruined world
witness: the worldmakers unmade
eternity divided by zero
how many lives have you lived?
what a stupid question
why not ask how many tears the sea can hold?
because that's the joke, the distinction disappears as the two mingle
categorical cannibalism, a taxonomical taboo
infinity plus one
you have always been here
first they set forth Creation
and with their hands they raised Heaven
from the guts of their King they fashioned a Hell
this is what they made as they Fell
the stillborn world
the hollow world
the ruined world
witness: the worldmakers unmade
eternity divided by zero
You retch and blood and black saliva splatter the ground, staining the sand between your hands, flecking your fingers with ink-dark spots and red foam. It all comes up, a torrent of ichor and bile and filthy ash until you're just barely propped up on all fours. Shoulders hitching as you pull in deep, ragged breaths, too exhausted to reach up and wipe the strands of drool that hang from your lips. Hands and knees sinking an inch or two into the cool dunes as you shift your weight. Finally, finally straightening up and settling back on your haunches, palms resting atop your thighs.
Pink and purple fog swirls around you, sealing off the sky, shrouding everything past fifty feet in any direction. The mist stirred to eddies and whorls, a painter's oils brushed into the air. Foaming white breakers, waves the color of rust and metal rot, crash against the shore. Sheeting up the slope, fading, receding, inches from your knees. The sand's a pale lavender that gives way shades of deep scarlet as it approaches the rising tide; perfumed petals and exposed cardiac muscle in swirls and shaded gradients.
Somewhere thunder rumbles. A drop of rain patters to the ground, a tiny crater in the silicate grit. A small divot and a clot. You like this, you've always liked this; it's the kind of weather that makes a warm blanket and a bowl of hot food seem that much better. The kind of weather where you just want to sit inside, warm and dry, and listen to the storm as it passes. It's...nice, you decide. This is nice.
The tears come then, deep, wracking sobs as you press your palms to your face and bawl. As you give vent to everything, everything you bit back, everything you forced down, everything that's happened to you. Until you're slumped on that beach, chest spasming, breath hitching as you stare numbly up at the clouds. Waves crashing around you, cold water foaming around your hips, soaking you from the waist down before rushing back out.
There's a touch on your cheek, gentle and kind. A child's hand, you open your aching eyes in faint surprise to see a boy just...standing shin-deep in the surf. His skin grey, his throat banded by scales that might have been blue once upon a time. You can see the start of webbed spines at the back of his neck, fleshy, fanlike things along skinny arms. Ears pointed and feathering blue towards the tips, teeth sharp and sharklike. A young Dragon; with a crown hammered in the shape of a laurel wreath on his head, all but slipping down over his brow. The boy himself swallowed up by his vast, purple robes, gold trimmed and beautifully ornate. The hem floating in the water around you, billowing just beneath the surface.
He bunches up a sleeve and carefully wipes your eyes and your nose, cleaning the mess off your face.
"Where...am I?" You ask, exhausted, too worn out to be terrified. Too ground down to be surprised.
"Dead," he replies quietly, "you died when the roof collapsed. Your body is still there, or- what's left of it. I mean. This is just a place for choosing."
"If I'm dead why," he takes his hand away and your head sags, feathery hair hanging in front of your eyes, your voice a hoarse croak "why do I need to choose anything?"
"Because you don't have to stay dead."
You laugh a little at that, a wet, unhappy sound. "Why wouldn't I rather be dead? All I did when I was alive was h-hurt-" Mother, Father, friends, family, Jason gone all...gone, everything's gone. Everyone's gone. Even you're gone now. "-I'm so tired, I don't want to keep trying."
"If Aikaterine Sidonia was on her knees before you and you had a blade in your hand, what would you do?" The boy asks.
"(Kill her)," it comes out in a whisper, a rasp from a smoke-roughened throat, but there's no hesitation.
"And if Lookshy was on its knees before you and you had a blade in your hand, what would you do?"
You swallow, shoulders rising and falling as you draw in a breath. As you slowly exhale.
"I'd kill it."
"Why?"
[ ] Because it's not fair, because they killed you before you ever got a chance to live. Because they stole the future from you and took away your past and so if you could you would take everything from them.
[ ] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
[ ] Because it's the only way for this to end. Because the only freedom you or any helot could ever have would be on the backs of a million Lookshyan dead. Fine then. If you had a choice you'd buy it with their blood.
[ ] Because you don't know what love is but you know hate, you know anger and shame and loneliness and hunger. Because Lookshy made you something less than human. So let them see the fruit of their labor.
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[X] Because you don't know what love is but you know hate, you know anger and shame and loneliness and hunger. Because Lookshy made you something less than human. So let them see the fruit of their labor.
As the poet once said, "Let the bodies hit the floor".
I can see Alexius's future:
As the poet once said, "Let the bodies hit the floor".
I can see Alexius's future:
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- Location
- boundless optimism
[X] Because you don't know what love is but you know hate, you know anger and shame and loneliness and hunger. Because Lookshy made you something less than human. So let them see the fruit of their labor.
I'm really liking this option. Imho, it seems the most personal of all of them? All of them except the first are pretty expansive in terms of scope, either focusing on Lookshy or Creation as a whole. That didn't seem like much of a priority with the previous posts.
I'm really liking this option. Imho, it seems the most personal of all of them? All of them except the first are pretty expansive in terms of scope, either focusing on Lookshy or Creation as a whole. That didn't seem like much of a priority with the previous posts.
LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
[X] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
I choose this because, while all of these options come from a place of pain, and loss, and suffering, this sentiment is one of change. To not be consumed but to consume your own tragedy, to make it work towards your goals as opposed to simply changing one cycle for another. Because there is good in this world, even if that good is stained with all the bad. The world deserves a chance to be corrected.
I choose this because, while all of these options come from a place of pain, and loss, and suffering, this sentiment is one of change. To not be consumed but to consume your own tragedy, to make it work towards your goals as opposed to simply changing one cycle for another. Because there is good in this world, even if that good is stained with all the bad. The world deserves a chance to be corrected.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
what an incredibly strong opening, I love it
I laugh because it's better than crying
Poor Alexius
[X] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
"I forgive you," Alexius says, watching the city burn, the dead roaming the streets, hearing the wails and lamentations as the fire drowns them out. "I forgive you. Let the healing begin."
WolfKit
Pay no attention to the fox behind the keyboard.
- Location
- [█████]
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Because it's not fair, because they killed you before you ever got a chance to live. Because they stole the future from you and took away your past and so if you could you would take everything from them.
QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
[X] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
[X] Because you don't know what love is but you know hate, you know anger and shame and loneliness and hunger. Because Lookshy made you something less than human. So let them see the fruit of their labor.
The only end to the torment of being a helot is death. But that will only be the start of the punishment Lookshy will undergo.
The only end to the torment of being a helot is death. But that will only be the start of the punishment Lookshy will undergo.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Because it's the only way for this to end. Because the only freedom you or any helot could ever have would be on the backs of a million Lookshyan dead. Fine then. If you had a choice you'd buy it with their blood.
There are excellent and eloquent options for hate and I regret not having anything equally drawn out for my justification. All I have to say, all I have to convince you, is this:
Let's burn this motherfucker to the ground.
There are excellent and eloquent options for hate and I regret not having anything equally drawn out for my justification. All I have to say, all I have to convince you, is this:
Let's burn this motherfucker to the ground.
QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
I can sympathise and agree - but let's sow something afterwards, yes? Ashes make for good soil, once the fire's burned out.