anyway, here's
wonderwall
(thanks to
@Revlid for the help. and the ideas i stole. y'know, like a thief.
)
Mazscyllic, Archoness of the Abyss, the Cold Ocean Womb, Our Lady of Rapture
First and Fetich Soul of the Sea that Marched Against the Flame
Demon of the Third Circle
Mazscyllic, Mazscyllic, listen close and in the lull the waves will whisper her name. Murmuring it as they grind black basalt and burning brass to tainted sand, scraping the Demon City raw layer by infinitesimal layer. Mazscyllic, who works the world as she walks, twisting the great Dragon-lines of Creation as a cat toys with string. Mazscyllic, who shapes the black dreams of the deep into life and land. Mazscyllic, our beautiful, burning lady; that freezing womb of the deepest ocean, that narcosis angel....Things didn't have to be this way. She knows she could have been something else, been some
one else. But when? When was the turning point, the tipping point, that moment when her last hope slipped through her numb fingers? Was it during the War? When there was camaraderie and care left and they still bore the grace of the Primordial mantle. Or was it earlier? When the Poles were speared through the protean depths of the Wyld and the course set. When Zen-Mu was abandoned and the great boulevards of Yu-Shan lay empty and cool in the light of that first morning? Or was it before even that? When they lay dreaming in the depths of the formless nothing. Waiting for the burning touch of mother to wake them from their blissful sleep.
Sometimes she fears that it has always been too late. That there was never a chance for them, for any of them, those portions of the Demon Sea that live within their greater self. Those tangled knots of caustic, chemical, recrimination and seething, salt-flecked, hate. That they were always doomed to be the beasts they became. She often worries about such things. It is said that she is the kindest of all the Great Mother's souls and thinks always of others.
It is a kind of truth.
The stories are everywhere: shared on the slopes of acid-pitted skyscrapers, beneath the synesthesiac skies of Hegra, in the brothels and bars of Malfean ports. Every traveler has a friend of a friend, some kin of kin, who was wrecked on the Demon Sea. Stranded on the verdant waves, or marooned on some bleak spur without hope of rescue. Ready to slay themselves until they saw a single, slender, tower of burning black stone perched above the waters. Until they heard a song, a gentle lullaby from Kimbery's lightless depths, beckoning them below. Desperate and despairing they cast themselves in, only to gasp in wonder as the music wrought changes within them. Such is the grace of Mazscyllic, she who may let an agata breathe toxic waters as if they were air. Who may let even a fair neomah's flesh endure the rigors of the Sea that Marched Against the Flame. Entranced and intoxicated these lucky serfs descended into the darkness, into the great wounds Kimbery wore into the foundations of Malfeas. Down, down, down, until Green Sun and bruised skies were but a memory.
And in that stygian black they saw another light. Light burning from the tips of a hundred spires and razor-sided mountains. Light trickling down craggy slopes in rivers of steaming, smoking gold and red. And above all these glowing, magma gilded peaks she sat: ruling from a throne of fired mud and volcanic rock. Vast as a mountain, her face cast in shadow; her form lit by the infernal radiance all about her, by the celestial brands that shone beneath the cracked stone of her chest. In this cyclopean grotto dwelled such life! Creatures of all castes and clades, blessed just like them. Other things, stranger things, that nested in her molten train. Here, they knew, they could rest until they were strong enough to leave. Here, they knew, they could find peace and protection from the cruel ravages of a Tyrant gone mad.
It is a kind of truth.
Beneath Kimbery there is an abyss and in that abyss there is a realm of a hundred smoking spires, their blood boiling the waters and casting heat and light in the endless dark. And above that molten metropolis sits she, heart of the Great Mother, her great stone robes aglow and her face in shadow. When lesser demons run around above she sings them to her side so that they might find succor. And yet...and yet. No one who comes to the Archoness's domain in such a way ever leaves. Her presence protects, her song blesses, but leave her? You will find that the surface cannot sustain you and the depths will no longer shelter you and betwixt the two worlds you will wither and die. You may only live upon her spires, upon her feet, and upon her hem. Suckling on the tainted broth that issues from her hellish vents. The soup of salts and rich brine that forms the foundation of this twisted oasis and changes all who drink of it into creatures of the lightless depths.
They are pallid, glassy things, things that crawl and scuttle over her stone robes, softly crying in sympathy and shame. Whispering to her of the ugly world beyond: of all the insults she has suffered, the persecution she has borne. How she, poor, pretty thing was broken and branded by her mother's hand so that the Demon Sea might know its duty, so that she might bring forth life and land. Those possessed of a particular devotion shrink and shrivel away entirely. Becoming little but corpse-white, wormlike beasts; their folded red mouths endlessly murmuring their mother-serving lies. Tens of thousands of such beings cling to her wrists and ankles like floral garlands. The largest and oldest slither beneath her hood, fused to her face. To her ears, her tongue, her eyes. Filtering every second of the world beyond.
She is Mazscyllic. In the darkness she sits, dragon's tail curled about the base of her cyclopean throne. Black jade nails digging into the rests of her chair. Hooded head rife with lying worms. She is the greatest of all the Demon Sea's souls, ruler of all she surveys, and she wonders how things might have been different.
Notes and Abilities: She was one of Creation's great architects. A weaver of ash-soaked skies, a sculptor of the primordial seas. One who realizes the actual from the primeval potential. Oceans and volcanoes rise at her command while dragon-lines warp and torque to conform to her design. It is said that she knows secrets of Creation and Hell that even Ligier has forgotten and that all lands drowned by waves have found a home in her. She herself claims an almost sisterly relationship with the Elemental Dragon Danaa'd and says that from their collaboration many of the great terrors of the deep were born.
She exists in two other places in hell: the first is a miniature effigy that travels aboard a palatial treasure barge. The vast craft drawn by seven eyeless leviathans, their backs layered in volcanic scutes and snouts overgrown with black sargassum weed. In this form she tours all the currents and shores of the Demon Sea, wrapped in a vast cascade and escorted by an armada of the fervent. In her other she is a beast of breathtaking size, progenitor to the creatures that pull her pleasure-craft. She swims the freezing reaches of the Great Mother alone; drifting in a sullen doze, only to awake, thrashing, with ruinous rage.
Mazscyllic and the Althing: Her reluctance to directly involve herself in the Reclamation is viewed as a miscalculation by many of her siblings. The Archoness of the Abyss was critical to conveying the stolen Exaltations to Ligier's seat and yet, rather than definitely emerge from her repose she only returned to her rest. Such action breeds rumors of weakness and such rumors may prompt a corrective course if and when they reach her ears. The Cold Ocean Womb always relishes the chance for righteous wrath and nurtures, in her burning heart, a particular loathing of her ambitious blood-red sister.
Kairibus, the Enfant Pearl
Expressive Soul of the Archoness of the Abyss
Demon of the Second Circle
Innocence is only another word for inexperience, an indication that one has been insulated from the ugly, unsettling, truths of the world. The hand that clasps the sword-hilt or the sud-soaked brush become calloused and rough. The mind that plies the treacherous waters of court becomes sharp and shrewd. It is, at its core, a shriving of softness and the meticulous erosion of comfortable myths: my leaders are wise, the world is just, I am loved. Once lost such ideals can never be reclaimed and, perhaps, ought not be. Denial does not dilute the truth. Rejection does not make the world any less real.
And yet she denies. And yet she rejects. She was so young then when she was bent to suit Cytherea's purpose, broken and branded so that she might unlock her full potential. So that she might become the divine engine the Ignition required. She does not truly remember what it was like to live careless and free. In her endless yearning she sought to recreate a dream of a past that never was and to that end she has engineered Kairibus. A synthetic Soul crafted from the bones of her devoured Defining. That burning, nettling, parasite-scar swallowed whole and spit out. His ugly, irritating core wrapped in smooth, cold, pearl.
Kairibus takes the form of an infant that size of a Yeddim calf seated upon a nacre bed, his body fashioned entirely from the precious, lustrous material. He is plump and healthy and his eyes (if they were to ever open) would shine with the gilded, magma-glow of his mother's spires. Yet he is helpless and hopeless, utterly without skill or worth or desire. In all things he relies upon his mother: she feeds him, she soothes him, she sets his siblings to conquer territory in his name and heaps praise upon his head for his bravery, wisdom, and will. He tours his many holdings from the depths of her pleasure barge, curled up and sleeping on beds of spun silk; waking only to demand food and care. Without her he would die in days, blind and helpless and adrift in Kimbery's depths. She knows this and it is for this reason he is her favorite. And it is for this reason that, when the smouldering bones of his dead brother burn through his flesh, she only sings him to sleep with a restful lullaby and smooths his skin to cover the wounds.
Notes and Abilities: Kairibus is theoretically possessed of an enormous amount of potential. The world knows him as the heir to the regal heart of the Demon Sea. When he cries the waves leap to wash his burning tears and soothe him. When he squalls the arch-predators of the deep belly up to him like friendly pets to please. Were he to grow and develop he could perhaps be a demon-knight clad all in pearl-plate, lancing down enemies with his spear and battering them with his shield. He could be an artist-sage in a tower of nacre crowned in flame and hurl hurricanes down upon the world. He could even be a debonair assassin, knifing through the toxic waters of the Great Mother like a nightmare shark, patiently, unerringly hunting down his prey.
Yet practically he is weak and useless and therefore without direct value. Our Lady of Rapture has no interest in cultivating his talents and, indeed, has gone to great pains to eradicate all the formulae for his summoning she can. He does not know himself, he barely knows his name. All he knows, indeed all that he truly
understands is that she is his mother and she loves him with all her heart. That he must dismiss those slow-chewing dreams as the worthless figments they are.
He is her greatest treasure. No others may have him and the world will not sully him. He is her innocence, her engineered dream, unchanging and uncaring, and to lose him would surely drive her mad. Yet if one were to summon the Enfant Pearl they would exert enormous leverage on his Mother for as long as they possessed him. Or, perhaps merely spiriting him beyond her reach would suffice: there are no few Unquestionable who would prefer the Archoness of the Abyss to expend her energies on crazed, paranoid, rampages about the Demon Sea.
