Mare Internum: An Exalted Quest
- Thread starter Crumplepunch
- Start date
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
[J] Ask a question.
-[J] For the QM, specifically.
-[J] What do you think are the secrets to your successful career as a QM and a writer?
-[J] You've done impressive work on the quest in the internal sea - do you have any plans for an outer sequel?
-[J] The fans want to know - how far do you plan on taking Mare Internum?
-[J] For the QM, specifically.
-[J] What do you think are the secrets to your successful career as a QM and a writer?
-[J] You've done impressive work on the quest in the internal sea - do you have any plans for an outer sequel?
-[J] The fans want to know - how far do you plan on taking Mare Internum?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It was more 'reinforced emphasis' sort of vote, not something I expected to matter. Faced with an offer of service to a (likely) Deathlord, what would we do but ask a question. I hope we get to vote on it, and whoever gets that first chance to write it makes it utterly banal and a complete non-sequiteur.
- Location
- ?
The premise of your question is flawed, my career as a writer is not successful.
There might be room for a sequel depending on how it ends and how I feel about it at that point, but I will just as likely want to work on some original fiction.
I have vague plans to rebuild MI as a visual novel but obviously that would be a huge project.
I have an intentionally flexible plan for where I want to take Mare Internum, I judge we are maybe a quarter to a third of the way through the story, depending on how we speedrun things.
For A Better World 46
- Location
- ?
"If I accept, will I have to keep killing?"
THE HUNTER: "Oh yes."
He reaches his hand down to your shoulder, rain hissing as it drips from his charred flesh. You feel a shiver ripple across your skin. The sword is in your hand.
THE HUNTER: "We are what we are made. We will kill until the islands sink beneath the waves. Until all is quiet, until the ashes choke the sun and the stars die in their heaven."
The voices in your head are silent, replaced by a tinnitus whine that grows louder in your ears by the moment. You feel your blood rush through your veins like a river threatening to break its banks.
THE HUNTER: "It would not be as before, propping up a corrupt empire to secure the petty profits of those that disdain us. All this, we will do with pride, with purity of vision. That is our lord's gift. You have bathed in more blood than any of us. Embrace it. It could be strength."
Elsewhere, the sounds of battle and the crackle of burning trees have grown quiet. Only the patter of rain and your thundering heartbeat can be heard over the whine in your head.
"I have enough."
He reacts to your first strike a little too late, the horizontal slice of your draw cuts a furrow into the dry flesh of his brow and deflects from the skull's frontal bone in a shower of sparks.
Hardened skeleton. Aim for joints.
You reverse your grip to third meridian and strike for the neck, but he parries, chain hissing as it flows into motion. Simultaneously you strike an extended second meridian at his exposed knee. Again, your weapon rebounds, this time from a hardened surface around the kneecap.
He rallies, whirling his weapon with arcs of ember-flame. In the space of a heartbeat you clash, exchange and counter sixteen times, from which you land nine debilitating or fatal attacks. Consistantly, you pierce his dead flesh but are unable to follow through.
Your anima is boiling now. You feel it tighten around your heart. You see it lim your hand in streamers of dark Essence. It erupts outwards, the liquid obsidian of deep water, rippling with ribbons and wisps of teal and indigo and the white caps of cresting waves.
For a moment your grip falters as you are are overwhelmed by the experience. The hunter's chain hisses and encircles your sword, wrenching it from your grip. It tumbles into the air, buzzing as it spins rapidly end over end.
With a roar you leap forward and catch it by the blade before it leaves your reach. You bring the pommel crashing down on the hunter's shoulder like a hammer. The impact drives him to one knee and you follow through with a rising knee to the jaw that sends him sprawling.
You toss the blade in the air and grab it by the hilt again, ignoring the blood streaming from the cut across your hand. Your anima bellows like the crashing of a typhoon. The world is lit only by the red and blues of your clashing Essences, richer than any color you can remember.
Before you can close the distance, the chainblade swings out to intercept you. You duck under it, but it ensnares a burning tree. Bracing himself against the ashen earth, he uproots it and swings it towards you like a bludgeon. You brace yourself to minimize the impact, but it nonetheless sends you tumbling away into the darkness.
You lie there, panting, trying to focus, trying to think. His voice emanates from the smoke.
THE HUNTER: "I was once like you. Blind, directionless, in turmoil. Now, I am whole. You will see the wisdom of our way."
???: You are so close...
You exhale. Your perception broadens. The smoke shivers and recedes from you. Essence pours from you like water, rising in a standing wave, tall as the sky. It shimmers with the many colors of water, teal and navy, cerulean, indigo, the rose of the tropical sea at sunset, the prismatic shimmer of the salt spray. It courses through your veins, invigorating, exultant.
The power remains, even when you have nothing else.
"Your way..." you cough, your voice dry, pained. "You think I'm going to just sign off on killing everyone just because that's what your lord wants? You're worse than the Dynasts. You got handed a way to feel better, and you just took it without even caring about the consequences for anyone else. You're a worse addict than I am. I refuse."
There is a pause. A hiss from the darkness.
THE HUNTER: "My task is the return of your corpse. Your unwillingness is not an obstacle."
You see a flicker of movement and turn to see him charging towards you. The flames surrounding him seem so dim, the smoke less shadowy and intimidating.
As he enters range he slices horizontally with his chain-blade. You duck, then roll under the followup coil of chain intended to tangle your swordarm. You rise into the stance of the first meridian reversal, an overhead stab from a reversed grip. Essence floods your muscles and amplifies your strength and focus. You feel his returning blade bite into your side under your splinted right arm at the same instant that your saber plunges into his throat and pierces the minute gap between his five and sixth cervical vertabrae.
He grits his teeth and growls worldlessly as his chain-weapon encircles your waist and draws you closer. The same motion forces the sword deep, jamming it between the reinforced bones with a squeal of steel scraping against steel. He releases his weapon and struggles to grasp the blade piercing his throat. You release the grip on your sword and draw the mason hammer.
He opens his mouth to say something. You're not sure if he still can. You don't find out. With one strike of the hammer on the pommel, you drive the sword directly through his neck. He tries to throttle you, but succeeds only in clawing at your face. Your second hammer blow, delivered to the false edge of the sword, twists it sideways, severing the vertabrae with a hard pop.
You close for the third blow, ignoring his flailing. You strike against the side of his hardened skull, wrenching free the remains of dead flesh connecting the neck to the body.
The head falls free and your sword clatters to the ground. Smoke bubbles from the neck stump as the corpse too collapses.
You stumble away and fall to your knees, gasping for air. Your body feels wet, you aren't sure if it's rain, sweat or blood.
The anima is brighter now. Its colors are unlike anything you have seen. They are reflected too in the raindrops and the embers of the burning forest. You feel like your vision is expanding outwards. Is this blood loss?
No, blood loss does not make you see shapes like this. The colors converge, petals of an expanding flower, layer on irridescent layer, like a crysanthemum blossom made of liquid diamond. You know instinctively that it is a door.
You cannot help but reach for it. At your touch, it opens.
What is beyond cannot be described. You feel your faculty to form language warp with the same overwhelming experience that floods your senses. Any words you can grasp at fail to convey the magnitude of what you are seeing in anything but the most oblique terms.
There are shapes here, and the shapes live. Uncountable geometries of contiguous shapes that cannot coexist in impossible symmeries. There are kind people made of jewels, and they sing for you in voices you cannot hear. There are lands here beyond any you have experienced, and those that are familiar, but changed.
???: You have arrived.
You can almost see her face.
[ ] Am I dead?
[ ] Are you that man's lord?
[ ] Where am I?
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- Location
- England
Fantastic fight scene. The 'now, I whole' was probably a typo, but very cinematic combat and visceral descriptions otherwise.
thelordofmango
may be stupid
- Location
- under a rock
could someone who knows exalted explain this to me?
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think the drugs just kicked in.
For A Better World 47
- Location
- ?
"Am I dead?"
Crystalline orbs invert themselves into spirals of glittering, phosphorescent matter. They smile.
???: No. You are as alive as you have ever been.
"I don't understand. I don't... I..."
???: Your mind is closed to itself. It casts shadows that cloud its own workings. But here, everything exists.
"Everything?"
Winking clouds of gas ignite into singing pinpoints of light, the birth of stars.
???: Everything. Everything that ever was, or was not, or will be, or will not be. The totality of existence spins on my axis.
"If that's true, isn't there someone more important you should be talking to?"
You feel as though you are rushing through a tunnel. Insects fly past in their teeming billions, birds to fill skies, animals and fish and humans, humans forever, more than you have ever seen or known or thought could exist. They are all staring at you.
???: No. This is what you must understand. All of my children are dear to me.
You feel it. Her love fills this place, absolute and abiding. Guilt wracks you. You feel tears streaming down your face.
"I... I'm so sorry."
The images stop. There is darkness.
???: Why?
"I killed... I've hurt so many of them. I don't remember all of it, but I saw..."
???: What you did is not what you will do. You are blessed with a long life. You might not even have seen half of it. You will have another life in time; all things reincarnate. But it is not too late for you to live this one.
The teal of light piercing deep water surrounds you. You are raised above the waves, water streaming in impossible patterns.
"I don't understand. How can I continue?"
???: You must. Your regret is a cause to continue as much as your fulfilment. Never submit to despair. Go on with the hope that you can make things better.
"But I don't feel hope."
At the center of the water-place, in a cathedral of spouts and waves and torrents, a heart made of rainbows beats slowly. It reaches out to touch you.
???: Hope is not only a feeling, but a virtue. Bear it always. This is the duty I charge you with.
The image is receding, disintegrating. The kindly jewel people wave farewell to you, without limbs.
???: What you were is not what you will be. If you feel regret, spread hope. If you feel love, let them know. Your world is as bright as you make it.
"I have so many questions to ask you. There's so much I could learn."
???: There is no time. That dead man is still trying to kill you. He is suffering. He has been led astray. You must give him the rest he has earned.
You can't think what to say. You have only moments, though it stretches forever. You look upon her face.
"Thank you. Goodbye."
(XXVII) CREATION: There is no goodbye. I will always be with you. Don't forget to take care of yourself, and my other children too.
She fades away into darkness, but her voice lingers, whispering bell-like in your ear.
(XXVII) CREATION: Never forget that I love you.
The diamond crysanthemum shatters. Beyond, rain falls on a burning forest, and a headless man is pulling himself to his feet to fulfil his last command.
You stand.
You see the infinitesimal firings of Essence coursing through his body. The black of necrotic magic sparking against the crimson fire that lingers in his hungry ghost. You see the outline of a howling face made of smoke forming like a mask, a horror beyond death.
You see further. You see a child coming into miraculous power. You see him accept his mantle of destiny as a future hero. You see him torn from his parents. You see him weeping on a distant battlefield that nobody else will mourn. You see him light the pyre of the woman he loved. You see his hope fade. You see him die alone.
His dives at you, claws sharpened to points as the bestial core of his ghost surges forth. Your left arm raises to block his right. You feel the shiver of pain as your forearm stress fractures at the impact. His left claw descends to tear out your throat.
"I'm sorry."
The cast surrounding your right arm peels away with a pulse of Essence. Your body rides the power like a wave, realigning the inflamed muscular tissue surrounding the broken bone. Your anima courses through the arm, driving it forth like a battering ram.
Your palm hits his breastplate. You see the metal ripple outwards like a disturbed pond an instant before it shatters under the tension. You feel his reinforced sternum split and his spine dislocate before he is thrown backwards as though hurled from a catapult.
Shards of metal shrapnel pepper the ground like arrows. The hunter plows a trench thirty paces across the ground before slamming into a burning tree, cracking the trunk. Wisps of steam rise from your hand.
You see now what has been done to his body. Extensive surgeries, hidden by his burned flesh, have reinforced his bones with a network of pins, plates and articulated joints. His corpse has literally been remade into a weapon.
We are what we are made.
You pick up your sword, testing it in your grip. He struggles to stand.
"I'm sorry for everything you went through. I will try to make it right. I know it was hard, but it's over now."
His spine cracks and displaces as he pulls himself to his feet once more. He strains, pulling against his own body. From his right arm, and then from his left, he wrenches out a second limb, pitch black, shadow and smoke. The hungry ghost within beginning to take form outside its damaged vessel.
He clasps his four clawed hands together and forms a complex mudra. You see the conflicting essences roil within him, building to a terrible reaction. Though he no longer has a throat, his body language screams his defiance.
I will fulfil my purpose.
Clusters of red lightning like spider lillies sprout from the ground as fiery Essence surges outwards, growing by the moment. He will scour this whole region with his final attack if he is not stopped.
You reach outwards, feeling the falling rain. Untold drops of water, chorusing together. In them you see the impossible array of human faces you witnessed, already fading like a dream in the light of morning.
You are ten paces distant. You raise your sword as you charge. The clouds part.
You swing your sword, first meridian, the overhead killing strike. The hunter raises his arms. His flames intensify, threatening to overwhelm you, before they suddenly gutter and recede. A torrent of water screams from the sky, descending with your sword.
The rain forms a weapon fit to slay a giant, a vastly oversized version of your saber. You aim it where you see the weld points in his reinforced skeleton.
There is a buzzing sound of splitting metal, and then nothing. The flames vanish like snuffed candles. The corpse, split from collar to hip, falls in two parts. The smoke struggles to escape, only to evaporate in the morning sun.
The tree behind him also falls in two.
You look up to the sky. You haven't seen it since you came to this island. Your attack opened a brief window of pale blue through the otherwise omnipresent cloud cover of Hoxiahn.
For a minute, you just stand and enjoy it. That's probably a good start.
Now, what to do next?
[ ] Take the hunter's head.
[ ] Take the hunter's whole body.
[ ] Leave it be.
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- Location
- florida
You know. Physically This sounds an awful fucking lot like She Who Lives In Her Name.
Which is... that sure would be a fucking thing.
Cant say who it would be that would tell her things like that. Definetly not a Yozi.
He deserves some respect, even if only the last. Also to be pat down for pocket change.
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- Location
- Spain
Gaia, or Danaa, or maybe it's just a drug induced hallucination.