Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
They do although neither of them are very profound and one mostly just says a lot about what their parent equivalent thought was appropriate names.
Onward to Providence: Alien Trucker with Goldfish Stowaways [Original Fiction]
- Thread starter Nighzmarquls
- Start date
- Original
The other ports didn't have anything big or tasty flying out to meet Tunie.
Tradition 0.0
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.0
Dodoreimei gripped his perch and the haft of his Songcaster just so.
His voice joining the private choir within its hollowed core and echoing back through his fingers. He could feel the public songs as transmitted by the art of wide and sheared light that was repeated and shaped in a round through the throngs of the people.
The songs of the far hunters and traders. The Vykerlinfri as some of the Deepsmiths of the Exalted Order of Weavers and Smelters called them. Or the greater and lesser sisters as he heard the strange and tumultuous Concordancey of Bakers Yeofolk and Butchers.
His own country and clanfolk among the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers simply referred to them as the names.
Littlest Singer and Gatebearer.
For reasons known to non but perhaps the eldest of the people the names were a reversal of expectations. The great beast was the Littlest Singer.
Even though she was vast enough to see the glint of her individual eyes at this distance without the aid of a tracking glass!
Any less holy creature of that scale would have been a very dangerous interlocutor indeed to try to hunt.
It would have called down the wrath of the wood as well.
And that was before you learned of the terrible magics and power that she was bestowed with.
If legends were even half true a single tine of those feathers would strain a hundred of the strongest beasts of burden to either shift or slow in its course.
And while the Gatebearer was in comparison practically insignificant she was by no means a creature to be trifled with. Laced with deep cunning.
A primal and ancient example of the near myths of a sisterhood of outsider monsters.
Visitors wondrous and terrible that came to the woods along many ways and conveyances bearing ancient forbidden relics and burning wounding promises in even the might of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council.
The Gatebearer was one of these ephemeral foreign forces. A creature whose song could reach into every secret place inside and curdle it. Who it was said were the progeny of a great mother tree with branches that could encircle the sky.
That could stride into the dens of the fiercest and most untamable of beasts and breath charms and sweet chains with but their ethereal and intangible voices.
It was these stories and more that he sang both into is Songcaster in the deep secret privacy of his own voice and the outer voices of the choir.
It was said that the Gatebearer would hear every song sang in the procession no matter how it was given. And that upon her arrival the songs were to be sung.
To the great wood wrath to beg for the passage of their holy guests.
To each other to celebrate and praise the fortune that this generation would be the golden and blessed ones that could witness the great feasts and festivals that turned forth a new age.
To themselves all that they had been told and knew and dutifully learned about the sisters. Every story, every fanciful tale, every musing and imagination and joke.
There were bards who spun and recited ballads in preparation of this momentous occasion for generations never to see their songs told.
And also too in the secret and quiet depths of one's own Songcaster one was to sing a personal and quiet and solemn song of welcome earnestly between only you and the fae creature that even now rode into your ancestral home bringing magic and wonder and the deep otherness of the great outside.
He took his time in the song with the stoic endurance he had trained for long perilous hunts. Drink and fresh breath and food and mind heightening spices and vapor mingled and sizzled everywhere.
Children far too young for the perils of being out of a creche had been brought in clear bottles to witness this moment nevermind how the light outside of a warm parent stung their eyes and almost certainly would hinder their training as adults.
Dodoreimei could not muster affront to the callous care of their parents though.
Even though his seniority as a Grand Novice should have forced him to scowl.
He and all of them knew the feverish excitement of this time!
The Pact was going to be renewed!
He had never thought he would live to see the day of a coming of the living myths and legends.
He knew only a few individuals in the other nations that all had their finest prepared around in the welcoming rings for the arrival.
But he could feel a deeper kinship now with all of the people then he ever could have imagined before.
In this heavy joy what difference was it if you were an Esteemed Mason and Joinery Exalted Triumphant or a Tooth borer Supreme in the Bright Sky Scourer Wings?
The old feud between the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers and the Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh seemed at least right in this moment petty.
After all were they not all of them the people?
The stories that had raised him in the right and proper way of living was shared between them was it not?
Perhaps changed and honed by the elders and masters of each craft and way but still rooted in the same holy thing.
The lullabies that had brought him rest and comfort in his parents throats as a naked and fragile wriggler had been sung much by the parents of those around him.
It was a kinship with all folk that filled him now and a realization of just how much had been feeding into this.
He had grown knowing vaguely it was part of the wording the hunting parties always sang when handing off the fruit of their wanderings to the relevant nations and clans.
It was part of the whispered rhyme that you sang before heading out into the perils of the far canopies.
In their dozens and dozens of names known publicly and the thousands of secret guild monikers beneath.
These two beings were there in every word of every act of every life.
And now they were here!
For all of the people they had arrived for this generation!
They two were here and he had lived to see it!
If he had young who were yet not ready to be long under the light outside his brooding pouch he would probably have bottled them and held them aloft to see too.
His children and their own down generations would speak in awe of this day. A day of legends made real again!
So for them and all those before him that had never lived to see this.
And perhaps for this procession he could forgive the old slights and betrayals of the shifty Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh and their unseemly ways.
For all those after that would only have the warm glow of this moment passed on to them.
They were right now a united and undivided people.
With an exaltation together united and joyous in a great song.
And so Dodoreimei poured his voice into the voices of the people all around him.
He sang.
Into himself and out into all the millions of voices of the cheering clouds of the People who stood the vigil of the welcoming procession even though it would be several shifts before the great duo properly arrived.
And then the real celebrations and procession would come and the Grand Middle Apprentices would come out from their hidden councils and trade crafts to honor the arrival.
Then up through the skilled hierarchy the procession would grow.
Almost as exciting as the arrival was that he would even get to witness the songs of the illusive and nearly legendary Lower Experts!
Not even of his own nation had he met a Lower Expert, and it would not end there!
Dodoreimei was a Grand Novice and as such he had been able to claim this shift of singing, giving him enough time to rest and recoup and return for another round.
In time for the Lower Experts, and then recoup and attend his duties.
Rest and recover again and if he strained the procession of Least Masters!
That would however be too much and he would have to rest deeply.
But if the procession was as it was written and had been proclaimed to every single person among the people of every clan, order and nation he would have time.
Time to witness the last stage of the procession.
When the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council would receive the arrival and sanctify the renewal of the pact in person.
He would get to hear their voices, a thing it was said only masters ever experienced outside of these miraculous times.
He sang strong and with all of his heart all through his shift.
And then when the time came he retired his place to rest and recover in time to meet his schedule.
This was a moment only once in a hundred generations.
He would not shame all who came before or after in missing the peak of it because he was over eager at the start!
0.0
Dodoreimei gripped his perch and the haft of his Songcaster just so.
His voice joining the private choir within its hollowed core and echoing back through his fingers. He could feel the public songs as transmitted by the art of wide and sheared light that was repeated and shaped in a round through the throngs of the people.
The songs of the far hunters and traders. The Vykerlinfri as some of the Deepsmiths of the Exalted Order of Weavers and Smelters called them. Or the greater and lesser sisters as he heard the strange and tumultuous Concordancey of Bakers Yeofolk and Butchers.
His own country and clanfolk among the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers simply referred to them as the names.
Littlest Singer and Gatebearer.
For reasons known to non but perhaps the eldest of the people the names were a reversal of expectations. The great beast was the Littlest Singer.
Even though she was vast enough to see the glint of her individual eyes at this distance without the aid of a tracking glass!
Any less holy creature of that scale would have been a very dangerous interlocutor indeed to try to hunt.
It would have called down the wrath of the wood as well.
And that was before you learned of the terrible magics and power that she was bestowed with.
If legends were even half true a single tine of those feathers would strain a hundred of the strongest beasts of burden to either shift or slow in its course.
And while the Gatebearer was in comparison practically insignificant she was by no means a creature to be trifled with. Laced with deep cunning.
A primal and ancient example of the near myths of a sisterhood of outsider monsters.
Visitors wondrous and terrible that came to the woods along many ways and conveyances bearing ancient forbidden relics and burning wounding promises in even the might of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council.
The Gatebearer was one of these ephemeral foreign forces. A creature whose song could reach into every secret place inside and curdle it. Who it was said were the progeny of a great mother tree with branches that could encircle the sky.
That could stride into the dens of the fiercest and most untamable of beasts and breath charms and sweet chains with but their ethereal and intangible voices.
It was these stories and more that he sang both into is Songcaster in the deep secret privacy of his own voice and the outer voices of the choir.
It was said that the Gatebearer would hear every song sang in the procession no matter how it was given. And that upon her arrival the songs were to be sung.
To the great wood wrath to beg for the passage of their holy guests.
To each other to celebrate and praise the fortune that this generation would be the golden and blessed ones that could witness the great feasts and festivals that turned forth a new age.
To themselves all that they had been told and knew and dutifully learned about the sisters. Every story, every fanciful tale, every musing and imagination and joke.
There were bards who spun and recited ballads in preparation of this momentous occasion for generations never to see their songs told.
And also too in the secret and quiet depths of one's own Songcaster one was to sing a personal and quiet and solemn song of welcome earnestly between only you and the fae creature that even now rode into your ancestral home bringing magic and wonder and the deep otherness of the great outside.
He took his time in the song with the stoic endurance he had trained for long perilous hunts. Drink and fresh breath and food and mind heightening spices and vapor mingled and sizzled everywhere.
Children far too young for the perils of being out of a creche had been brought in clear bottles to witness this moment nevermind how the light outside of a warm parent stung their eyes and almost certainly would hinder their training as adults.
Dodoreimei could not muster affront to the callous care of their parents though.
Even though his seniority as a Grand Novice should have forced him to scowl.
He and all of them knew the feverish excitement of this time!
The Pact was going to be renewed!
He had never thought he would live to see the day of a coming of the living myths and legends.
He knew only a few individuals in the other nations that all had their finest prepared around in the welcoming rings for the arrival.
But he could feel a deeper kinship now with all of the people then he ever could have imagined before.
In this heavy joy what difference was it if you were an Esteemed Mason and Joinery Exalted Triumphant or a Tooth borer Supreme in the Bright Sky Scourer Wings?
The old feud between the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers and the Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh seemed at least right in this moment petty.
After all were they not all of them the people?
The stories that had raised him in the right and proper way of living was shared between them was it not?
Perhaps changed and honed by the elders and masters of each craft and way but still rooted in the same holy thing.
The lullabies that had brought him rest and comfort in his parents throats as a naked and fragile wriggler had been sung much by the parents of those around him.
It was a kinship with all folk that filled him now and a realization of just how much had been feeding into this.
He had grown knowing vaguely it was part of the wording the hunting parties always sang when handing off the fruit of their wanderings to the relevant nations and clans.
It was part of the whispered rhyme that you sang before heading out into the perils of the far canopies.
In their dozens and dozens of names known publicly and the thousands of secret guild monikers beneath.
These two beings were there in every word of every act of every life.
And now they were here!
For all of the people they had arrived for this generation!
They two were here and he had lived to see it!
If he had young who were yet not ready to be long under the light outside his brooding pouch he would probably have bottled them and held them aloft to see too.
His children and their own down generations would speak in awe of this day. A day of legends made real again!
So for them and all those before him that had never lived to see this.
And perhaps for this procession he could forgive the old slights and betrayals of the shifty Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh and their unseemly ways.
For all those after that would only have the warm glow of this moment passed on to them.
They were right now a united and undivided people.
With an exaltation together united and joyous in a great song.
And so Dodoreimei poured his voice into the voices of the people all around him.
He sang.
Into himself and out into all the millions of voices of the cheering clouds of the People who stood the vigil of the welcoming procession even though it would be several shifts before the great duo properly arrived.
And then the real celebrations and procession would come and the Grand Middle Apprentices would come out from their hidden councils and trade crafts to honor the arrival.
Then up through the skilled hierarchy the procession would grow.
Almost as exciting as the arrival was that he would even get to witness the songs of the illusive and nearly legendary Lower Experts!
Not even of his own nation had he met a Lower Expert, and it would not end there!
Dodoreimei was a Grand Novice and as such he had been able to claim this shift of singing, giving him enough time to rest and recoup and return for another round.
In time for the Lower Experts, and then recoup and attend his duties.
Rest and recover again and if he strained the procession of Least Masters!
That would however be too much and he would have to rest deeply.
But if the procession was as it was written and had been proclaimed to every single person among the people of every clan, order and nation he would have time.
Time to witness the last stage of the procession.
When the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council would receive the arrival and sanctify the renewal of the pact in person.
He would get to hear their voices, a thing it was said only masters ever experienced outside of these miraculous times.
He sang strong and with all of his heart all through his shift.
And then when the time came he retired his place to rest and recover in time to meet his schedule.
This was a moment only once in a hundred generations.
He would not shame all who came before or after in missing the peak of it because he was over eager at the start!
Sorry for the wait there folks, was writing other things, working, making game stuff for a side project. Trying to finish up Terror and Peace Among the Stars (but that one is just taking time to get out).
I think I've let this stew behind the scenes enough the pressure will just carry me along and get most of this episode out pretty quickly.
Enjoy!
And let me know what ya think!
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
I think I've let this stew behind the scenes enough the pressure will just carry me along and get most of this episode out pretty quickly.
Enjoy!
And let me know what ya think!
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Last edited:
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Um I thought Tunie and pilo came every 600 years or so. Either these people are awfully shortlived or he's taking artistic liscence
- Location
- 75 meters over sea level
Ooo! I had looked to see if you had other work, but somehow missed your WH40K stuff! (I just finished reading the first one, very good, I liked the songs)
Its also technically possible that someone else discovered the trade route since they last visited, maybe? (Seems theyre still super-dedicated to them tho, so prob not)
Kind of spooky how much of their culture is based around Pylo and Tunie
"He would get to hear their voices, a thing it was said only masters ever experienced outside of these miraculous times." - Are the masters lying? Or is pylo in some sort of long-distance contact?
Its also technically possible that someone else discovered the trade route since they last visited, maybe? (Seems theyre still super-dedicated to them tho, so prob not)
Kind of spooky how much of their culture is based around Pylo and Tunie
"He would get to hear their voices, a thing it was said only masters ever experienced outside of these miraculous times." - Are the masters lying? Or is pylo in some sort of long-distance contact?
Tradition 0.1
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.1
Aleph buzzed with anticipation.
They were finally here, it had taken Six hundred and Nine-teen hours to finish slowing to a stop in the thicket of the tree branches.
She had been pouring over every detail of the procession every moment she had free.
Which was surprisingly little between sleeping, working, eating, formatting questions for tunie, maintenance and of course listening to Pylo sing her 'translation' of the musical chorus that surrounded them.
She was familiar with the awkward wording that happened with trying to turn a childhood chant in Aorian to one of the dominant trade languages like Kopek or Ulsav.
It was such that most people did not bother and just nodded along to whatever language was native to a song.
Well besides some of the ones for children but even she could kind of tell when something was off.
And of course almost everything was in either Kopek or Ulsav.
Mostly Kopek.
Ugh.
She had traveled through three star systems to get here and she was still annoyed that her mother tongue was barely spoken outside of the hills, cliffs and valleys of her home.
Still Aleph had talked with Quarti about it too and the accomplishment that Pylo was doing apparently nearly simultaneously in real time was really driving home just how impressive Sirens really were.
The music was good, it was not only good the plots were concise and clear, the repetition was minimal except for a few of the recurring statements and oftentimes even those would be subtly developed and change from one chorus to the next.
And this was from literal aliens, not just aliens but alien frogs!
Oh yes, that was the other thing she had been completely surprised by.
Thanks to the window it had not taken long to get a clear close up of one of the people chanting at them for literally thousands of kilometers.
And she understood that they were definitely aliens and totally different from anything and probably descended from something she never even heard of.
Maybe they were even spiders.
But honestly Aleph could not help thinking they were what they looked like.
Which was frogs.
Weird frogs with things she could not decide looked more like scales, dreadlocks or woven braids.
Wielding strange metal spear things and flags and other pole-shaped oddities.
Which had been perched for hours and hours on end singing to the point of exhaustion.
Aleph tried to get her mind into what this all was like for them. The visitors to Terra had been a constant occurrence every few years since before she was born. There had been stories from before. Things that hinted at strange beings coming to Terra which only recently she had gotten any kind of corroboration of via Quarti's own memory.
But Tunie and Pylo had been known to these people for generations, had been a story and a legend and a myth repeated like bedtime stories.
The chants as translated by Pylo were old, deep stories. The kind that told you how to behave.
Silly sometimes, confusing others.
Foreign and alien in places but also incredibly familiar in others.
Take care of your family, look out for strangers, don't wander alone. Betrayers will be punished, the good will be protected and succeed.
Sometimes arbitrary and terrible things would happen.
Sometimes you would be foolish.
Forgive, remember, move on.
Stories for life and living.
They had a shape to them she knew from her own homeland and their own stories she grew up hearing from her mother and later Omega.
The sorts of things that delight as a child but you could reflect on later as an adult and find some suddenly obvious meaning that had been missed in the wonder or humor of it all.
It gave her a sudden and surprising heart ache to hear those kinds of stories again even after the years living aboard tunie traveling between stars and the training with Omega before that.
She was feeling a bitter homesickness from a song performed by alien frogs conveyed in the voice of an alien.
Frogs with matted braids and short little knotty gnobs of bristly fur.
It was so bizzare a coincidence she had to double check with Elsie after staring for a while.
And it turned out they were actually Frogs.
As distantly related to such as the pink fluffy giant thing had been to a Human. But likewise close enough to not matter.
A distant branch with the same root as the same frogs she was familiar with from Aoria's seasonal pools.
And now they were going to get to meet them face to face.
Omega was attentive, ready with a notebook and a pencil.
Quarti was poised with muscles tense at the helm of the pink cradle of cushioning.
Squidgie had even decided to join them in the bubble of the walker even though she apparently could survive for quite a while in a vacuum this would be more sustainable.
Beyond the slight rainbow film of the bubble was Elsie, clambering in a more symmetrical arrangement then Aleph had ever seen them in before.
All of them were gathered together with Pylo at one of Tunie's hatches.
In fact if Aleph had her markers right this was one of the ones she used to take when she wanted to be alone and appreciate the expanse of the reef alone with Tunie.
"So this is like a super official diplomatic delegation thing to escort us to the ancient leaders right?"
Omega's tone was casual but she had some tension in her neck. A clenching in her wrist and fingers. She was bracingin a way Aleph had seen her before when they were going to talk down the village elders back home.
Pylo's voice was soft and there was a hint of brittleness that Aleph always found strange. It was the expression of nervousness. As much as the fidgeting and other little nuances.
"It's going to be a delegate of the least of masters of the most prominent and integral orders, guilds, clans and dynastic nations. They will travel with us for a time and to handle the first initial greetings. You really did not need to dress up like that they would not be able to tell the difference."
But Pylo could literally sound like or posture however she wanted.
Yes she chose to do what from what Aleph could determine was practically shouting her discomfort.
Omega laughed and glanced at Aleph.
"Eh, it's a big fancy parade, it can be fun to dress up and what better excuse is there then this?"
Pylo sighed and shrugged.
Aleph was a bit torn on it, she had sort of started knitting her own 'gown' for this idly as something to do but then Quarti had noticed and realized what she was making and now all of them were wrapped in what was kind of a tasteless stereotype of three entirely incongruent Terran cultures.
Aleph's was an Aorian Weather praising Shawl.
Omega had gone for something she guessed was from the academy all tight clean slacks, it looked like a joke of a middlelander.
And Quarti...
Aleph was pretty sure that was just a thermal blanket but she had folded it around and over herself with some spare piping for rope that made the whole thing just work.
It made her look regal and imperious despite the way they all were floating.
Honestly she was a bit embarrassed by the ensemble of them but at the same time it's not like there had been much of an allotment for costumes or finery.
The Siren continued in that same feintly uncomfortable tone.
"Well fine, but yes to reiterate first will be the least masters then they will announce and present us to the the lesser masters. They will in turn take us a way and then present to the least minor masters, and then the lesser minor, the minor, the least medial, the lesser medial, etc, etc, etc, It's going to take forever."
Quarti huffed.
"What with all this drug-scruggle-butt scraping flak catching?"
Aleph had gone over the list with Squidgie but it did seem like an enormous number of officials were being involved. Pylo had just said it was important that every one of them get a chance to attempt to leave a good impression for Pylo and every one of their superiors to show them up and prove a failure.
"Wait hold up wouldn't the dress and manners and everything matter after all, because of it being translated? I've gotten enough implication and example to know at least that about sirens."
Pylo looked over at Aleph and sighed heavily and bit her lip before turning back towards the closed off passage that would open when they were ready to depart.
"The fact you are coming with me overshadows literally anything you could possibly do. They would feed you their own babies if you asked and cheer you on while the children screamed."
Omega got that look on her face where she lost track of whatever soul juggling she had taken up and had to give herself a shake, voice incredulous.
"... literally or figuratively?"
Pylo turned back to scowl at them her voice sounding deeply ashamed.
"Absolutely literally. Do not even jokingly ask for that."
Aleph honestly did not even know where to begin with that.
The Siren continued with a more sombre tone.
"Finally after the thousand and thirteen shells of mastery have had their chance to politik around us and put themselves in the records of ancestors for future generations we will finally get to be received by the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council."
She huffed again.
"At that point I'll be able to make the official opening of negotiations. We will pretend to engage one another for the populace in the current flavor of discourse. It sounds like it will mostly be a show of word play this time."
Aleph shook her head at the thought of accidentally becoming this world's version of a horrible baby eating alien monster from beyond the stars.
"Wait, what do you mean pretend?"
Pylo huffed a bit and looked up.
"Almost no one but the highest of masters have ever even seen the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council. They are as much a piece of legend and myth as I am. So this is a chance for them to safely show off how amazing they are to absolutely everyone of importance."
Aleph blinked.
"So it's a lie?"
Pylo laughed.
"Ah... no, It's a prearranged exercise for each of us meant to be as impressive as possible to whatever the customs of the time are. One time it was a game of riddles, a few times it was a 'trial of combat' This time... ah pretty much It's a Rap Battle."
Quarti laughed then immediately was pressed flat against the inside of the bubble smearing saliva along it with her tongue before she asked in a jovial tone.
"Can I mayhap be throwing a bar or five wit ya miss pylo? Izamuch be finely thrown as can be promise!"
Pylo eyed Quarti in a way that Aleph had never seen the siren take before. It actually was the closest to how her and Omega looked at the Mad Prophet in a regular basis. But actually seeing that even Pylo and whatever deep understanding she gleaned from the tangle of multilayered panlingual puns that Quarti threshed her speech through could still be suspicious and befuddled warmed her heart a bit.
Finally she huffed and turned to the passage with a flippant tone.
"You can try it out with the least masters and work your way up. If you can't keep up that will keep you from embarrassing yourself"
"Right so slick slide me with a cheating cheatery for much profit?"
Aleph scowled a bit but when she glanced at Squidgie all she got was a delighted and excited smile and Omega had a weak smirk and a helpless shrug.
Fine she guessed that Quarti was going to introduce these people to humanity as a liar and a chea-
"No cheating. Would insult them but here is the digest I'm going to be using."
And then Quarti had a feverish seizure and made several noises that Aleph wished she didn't have to hear again.
Omega shrieked and shoved off to the opposite side of the bubble from quarti but thankfully it had not been necessary this time.
"HEY! Pylo! You promised you would not do that again with her in the same airspace as us! She pissed herself last time!"
Pylo huffed and Tunie finally parted herself, the slabs of meat pulling apart to reveal the riot of colors beyond.
"I held it in for her this time. Totally different thing."
And with that they were gently pulled along by the Siren to go out and meet their first set of escorts.
Aleph honestly thought it all had sort of spoiled the mood.
0.1
Aleph buzzed with anticipation.
They were finally here, it had taken Six hundred and Nine-teen hours to finish slowing to a stop in the thicket of the tree branches.
She had been pouring over every detail of the procession every moment she had free.
Which was surprisingly little between sleeping, working, eating, formatting questions for tunie, maintenance and of course listening to Pylo sing her 'translation' of the musical chorus that surrounded them.
She was familiar with the awkward wording that happened with trying to turn a childhood chant in Aorian to one of the dominant trade languages like Kopek or Ulsav.
It was such that most people did not bother and just nodded along to whatever language was native to a song.
Well besides some of the ones for children but even she could kind of tell when something was off.
And of course almost everything was in either Kopek or Ulsav.
Mostly Kopek.
Ugh.
She had traveled through three star systems to get here and she was still annoyed that her mother tongue was barely spoken outside of the hills, cliffs and valleys of her home.
Still Aleph had talked with Quarti about it too and the accomplishment that Pylo was doing apparently nearly simultaneously in real time was really driving home just how impressive Sirens really were.
The music was good, it was not only good the plots were concise and clear, the repetition was minimal except for a few of the recurring statements and oftentimes even those would be subtly developed and change from one chorus to the next.
And this was from literal aliens, not just aliens but alien frogs!
Oh yes, that was the other thing she had been completely surprised by.
Thanks to the window it had not taken long to get a clear close up of one of the people chanting at them for literally thousands of kilometers.
And she understood that they were definitely aliens and totally different from anything and probably descended from something she never even heard of.
Maybe they were even spiders.
But honestly Aleph could not help thinking they were what they looked like.
Which was frogs.
Weird frogs with things she could not decide looked more like scales, dreadlocks or woven braids.
Wielding strange metal spear things and flags and other pole-shaped oddities.
Which had been perched for hours and hours on end singing to the point of exhaustion.
Aleph tried to get her mind into what this all was like for them. The visitors to Terra had been a constant occurrence every few years since before she was born. There had been stories from before. Things that hinted at strange beings coming to Terra which only recently she had gotten any kind of corroboration of via Quarti's own memory.
But Tunie and Pylo had been known to these people for generations, had been a story and a legend and a myth repeated like bedtime stories.
The chants as translated by Pylo were old, deep stories. The kind that told you how to behave.
Silly sometimes, confusing others.
Foreign and alien in places but also incredibly familiar in others.
Take care of your family, look out for strangers, don't wander alone. Betrayers will be punished, the good will be protected and succeed.
Sometimes arbitrary and terrible things would happen.
Sometimes you would be foolish.
Forgive, remember, move on.
Stories for life and living.
They had a shape to them she knew from her own homeland and their own stories she grew up hearing from her mother and later Omega.
The sorts of things that delight as a child but you could reflect on later as an adult and find some suddenly obvious meaning that had been missed in the wonder or humor of it all.
It gave her a sudden and surprising heart ache to hear those kinds of stories again even after the years living aboard tunie traveling between stars and the training with Omega before that.
She was feeling a bitter homesickness from a song performed by alien frogs conveyed in the voice of an alien.
Frogs with matted braids and short little knotty gnobs of bristly fur.
It was so bizzare a coincidence she had to double check with Elsie after staring for a while.
And it turned out they were actually Frogs.
As distantly related to such as the pink fluffy giant thing had been to a Human. But likewise close enough to not matter.
A distant branch with the same root as the same frogs she was familiar with from Aoria's seasonal pools.
And now they were going to get to meet them face to face.
Omega was attentive, ready with a notebook and a pencil.
Quarti was poised with muscles tense at the helm of the pink cradle of cushioning.
Squidgie had even decided to join them in the bubble of the walker even though she apparently could survive for quite a while in a vacuum this would be more sustainable.
Beyond the slight rainbow film of the bubble was Elsie, clambering in a more symmetrical arrangement then Aleph had ever seen them in before.
All of them were gathered together with Pylo at one of Tunie's hatches.
In fact if Aleph had her markers right this was one of the ones she used to take when she wanted to be alone and appreciate the expanse of the reef alone with Tunie.
"So this is like a super official diplomatic delegation thing to escort us to the ancient leaders right?"
Omega's tone was casual but she had some tension in her neck. A clenching in her wrist and fingers. She was bracingin a way Aleph had seen her before when they were going to talk down the village elders back home.
Pylo's voice was soft and there was a hint of brittleness that Aleph always found strange. It was the expression of nervousness. As much as the fidgeting and other little nuances.
"It's going to be a delegate of the least of masters of the most prominent and integral orders, guilds, clans and dynastic nations. They will travel with us for a time and to handle the first initial greetings. You really did not need to dress up like that they would not be able to tell the difference."
But Pylo could literally sound like or posture however she wanted.
Yes she chose to do what from what Aleph could determine was practically shouting her discomfort.
Omega laughed and glanced at Aleph.
"Eh, it's a big fancy parade, it can be fun to dress up and what better excuse is there then this?"
Pylo sighed and shrugged.
Aleph was a bit torn on it, she had sort of started knitting her own 'gown' for this idly as something to do but then Quarti had noticed and realized what she was making and now all of them were wrapped in what was kind of a tasteless stereotype of three entirely incongruent Terran cultures.
Aleph's was an Aorian Weather praising Shawl.
Omega had gone for something she guessed was from the academy all tight clean slacks, it looked like a joke of a middlelander.
And Quarti...
Aleph was pretty sure that was just a thermal blanket but she had folded it around and over herself with some spare piping for rope that made the whole thing just work.
It made her look regal and imperious despite the way they all were floating.
Honestly she was a bit embarrassed by the ensemble of them but at the same time it's not like there had been much of an allotment for costumes or finery.
The Siren continued in that same feintly uncomfortable tone.
"Well fine, but yes to reiterate first will be the least masters then they will announce and present us to the the lesser masters. They will in turn take us a way and then present to the least minor masters, and then the lesser minor, the minor, the least medial, the lesser medial, etc, etc, etc, It's going to take forever."
Quarti huffed.
"What with all this drug-scruggle-butt scraping flak catching?"
Aleph had gone over the list with Squidgie but it did seem like an enormous number of officials were being involved. Pylo had just said it was important that every one of them get a chance to attempt to leave a good impression for Pylo and every one of their superiors to show them up and prove a failure.
"Wait hold up wouldn't the dress and manners and everything matter after all, because of it being translated? I've gotten enough implication and example to know at least that about sirens."
Pylo looked over at Aleph and sighed heavily and bit her lip before turning back towards the closed off passage that would open when they were ready to depart.
"The fact you are coming with me overshadows literally anything you could possibly do. They would feed you their own babies if you asked and cheer you on while the children screamed."
Omega got that look on her face where she lost track of whatever soul juggling she had taken up and had to give herself a shake, voice incredulous.
"... literally or figuratively?"
Pylo turned back to scowl at them her voice sounding deeply ashamed.
"Absolutely literally. Do not even jokingly ask for that."
Aleph honestly did not even know where to begin with that.
The Siren continued with a more sombre tone.
"Finally after the thousand and thirteen shells of mastery have had their chance to politik around us and put themselves in the records of ancestors for future generations we will finally get to be received by the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council."
She huffed again.
"At that point I'll be able to make the official opening of negotiations. We will pretend to engage one another for the populace in the current flavor of discourse. It sounds like it will mostly be a show of word play this time."
Aleph shook her head at the thought of accidentally becoming this world's version of a horrible baby eating alien monster from beyond the stars.
"Wait, what do you mean pretend?"
Pylo huffed a bit and looked up.
"Almost no one but the highest of masters have ever even seen the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council. They are as much a piece of legend and myth as I am. So this is a chance for them to safely show off how amazing they are to absolutely everyone of importance."
Aleph blinked.
"So it's a lie?"
Pylo laughed.
"Ah... no, It's a prearranged exercise for each of us meant to be as impressive as possible to whatever the customs of the time are. One time it was a game of riddles, a few times it was a 'trial of combat' This time... ah pretty much It's a Rap Battle."
Quarti laughed then immediately was pressed flat against the inside of the bubble smearing saliva along it with her tongue before she asked in a jovial tone.
"Can I mayhap be throwing a bar or five wit ya miss pylo? Izamuch be finely thrown as can be promise!"
Pylo eyed Quarti in a way that Aleph had never seen the siren take before. It actually was the closest to how her and Omega looked at the Mad Prophet in a regular basis. But actually seeing that even Pylo and whatever deep understanding she gleaned from the tangle of multilayered panlingual puns that Quarti threshed her speech through could still be suspicious and befuddled warmed her heart a bit.
Finally she huffed and turned to the passage with a flippant tone.
"You can try it out with the least masters and work your way up. If you can't keep up that will keep you from embarrassing yourself"
"Right so slick slide me with a cheating cheatery for much profit?"
Aleph scowled a bit but when she glanced at Squidgie all she got was a delighted and excited smile and Omega had a weak smirk and a helpless shrug.
Fine she guessed that Quarti was going to introduce these people to humanity as a liar and a chea-
"No cheating. Would insult them but here is the digest I'm going to be using."
And then Quarti had a feverish seizure and made several noises that Aleph wished she didn't have to hear again.
Omega shrieked and shoved off to the opposite side of the bubble from quarti but thankfully it had not been necessary this time.
"HEY! Pylo! You promised you would not do that again with her in the same airspace as us! She pissed herself last time!"
Pylo huffed and Tunie finally parted herself, the slabs of meat pulling apart to reveal the riot of colors beyond.
"I held it in for her this time. Totally different thing."
And with that they were gently pulled along by the Siren to go out and meet their first set of escorts.
Aleph honestly thought it all had sort of spoiled the mood.
It is so nice to be back at this. But oh my god the drawing!
This image was a beast to work through.
Got to practice a bunch of stuff on it. I'm super proud of the results.
Also I am a huge fan of visual world building, so there is often a lot you can learn about the story from seeing things.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
This image was a beast to work through.
Got to practice a bunch of stuff on it. I'm super proud of the results.
Also I am a huge fan of visual world building, so there is often a lot you can learn about the story from seeing things.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Last edited:
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
The spikes are literally in the first picture of her.
But ya she's been getting more purple over time.
Retsof
I will keep you safe.
well... shows how observant I am
Tradition 0.2
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.2
Dodoreimei rode the spiral current upon his song caster. Letting his voice ride in and out of the finely wrought haft and pull him along in the twining coils of unrooted lightning that hung in the sparse attenuation of vapors and plasma which suffused the great path of the procession.
He and thirteen other Grand Novice from the breadth of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers pulled the expanse of treated cloth.
This craft was a treasured relic, cut from bolts of the Nation's slowly dwindling stock from the Dead Clan of Sheltered Weavers Memory and song preserve them.
The hands that had forged this cloth that he pulled taught as one of two dozen others and more had no surviving descendants.
A memento and honoring of their sacrifice which none of their families would see the final reward of.
Treasured allies of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers which Dodoreimei had never met but knew there were Supreme Experts of his nation that had.
So the service and loss would be remembered here and now.
The Dead Clan of Sheltered Weavers were not the only nation of that vocation among the People. Other weaver clans of a similar size and a similar nuance of craft yet existed.
But that order by Tradition had lived solely upon and within the protection of the Spiral Redoubt. There was a pattern and subtle uniqueness to their wefts and weaves that was distinct wholey from every other.
And twenty-two generations ago above the very place that he now held the relic aloft with other Grand Novice the Attack of the Star Tooth Gregori Malefic had come to their home.
Too small to concern great and terrible Augurotherindil and its hundred thousand branches of secret hate.
But it had leaped through the flights of the fiercest Wing Riders as they were dust to its might.
It had ploughed through the Watchers and Long Snipers before them too.
And so it came to the Spiral Redoubt and lay in the doom of its fiery teeth into the land.
The experts of all nations, guilds and orders of Spiral Tenders had fought and it was said that the light of the might speared the beast so brightly that all of the Novice rank who had not taken shelter were struck blind and sterile by the fury.
But the Star Tooth Gregori Malefic was unconcerned by this as they were but trifles to the beast.
And even while they scoured and speared it with all the skill and might of their skill it took a great life scouring bite from the cladding.
In that battle legend told that a hoard of least and lesser masters of war and fire then struck and no witness below the supreme expert survived what occurred. Yet even still one in twelve of the last master's number perished.
After the Star Tooth was slain had been the great campaign against its carcass and the heaving flesh as armies which broke and battered the nations still held within its jaws.
It was then that the hated and where the most known tales to Dodoreimei were sung.
The Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh were implicated in many tribulation and sabotage of the efforts to dig through the cavernous flesh of Gregori Malefic.
The cowards claimed that the meat armies of the carcass were a world apart from their own mastery of Dergothresh and the secrets of its wood.
Whether lies or truth mattered not, for Dodoreimei had been drilled in the failures of his own nation and the loss of their allies. To have not seen the secret of the beast's intentions was a fault of scouts and sky hunters.
In the end when all the fighting was over Two Guilds One Order and a Fraternity of the people were lost entirely in that incursion directly and a dozen more lost the vital cores of experts and master and had to be dissolved and their survivors integrated under new leadership and professions.
The names of these and other lost families, lineages, great elders and masters were held aloft in the lettering of the great banners all around the procession of The Gatebearer.
The esteemed traveler was joined by a trinket of transparency which she introduced as the conveyance of a trio of infantile beings. So frail, tender of flesh and uncoated to the elemental void that they had to be coddled like children from the bite of nothingness.
She was also followed by a strange beast of burden who folded and unfolded like a puzzle box toy. Sliding and flowing over itself in a way that would marvel and delight any child.
Dodoreimei could already hear the stirring murmurs in the long light casters of the crowd dealings and plans among many crafters of such hand trainers and expected that for generations to come there would be toys fashioned for the unpledged infants of The People in likeness to The Gatebearer's animal.
And then at last the Song-Duel began.
The wing riders called forth the fiery spray of their mounts. Color and light exploded in profusions of skin tingling light all around the exterior of the spire. Faces had to turn away from the brightness for those without the blessings against glare grown in their eyes.
The roar of the people chanting for their least master or allies of such providing the undercurrent of the duel.
Dodoreimei himself sent his voice into the rhythm of the long light through his caster.
There was not a Least Master of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers. But The pair of Least Masters Reimeidoe and Domeirei of the Spearing Strike of Open Sky Snipers were everything but masters of the nation and mentored directly the supreme experts of Middle, Open and Close Sky Trackers all.
So it was the spirit of Dodoreimei that was with them as the opening chants were joined. Spun from the throats of masters as each spoke the breadth and depth of their righteous mastery.
The people gathered closer, the weaving banners of the fallen closing with one another Dodoreimei sang his choral tones but most of his attention was in holding position with his neighbors. Drawing in the fabric of the banners.
When the first duel was concluded the seal needed to be ready.
However he could spare a moment for the pair of least masters closest aligned to his nation.
Their voices weaving in and out of each other, claiming meaning where each left off, bodies moving in poised practices and whispering secrets of tension and focus that even now Dodoreimei could sense would make his eyes sharper.
"Paired for life to serve eternal
A dedicated hunt we know our struggle.
You would come to take the fruits of our game
But what right do you have to make that claim?!"
The light of the wings' breath and exaltations seared harsher and brighter, enough to illuminate the fabrics that were closing ever tighter to the procession.
"We've cloaked ourselves starving in the blight of open sky
Where beasts of terror and vengeance swoop and fly
Every hunt of ours risks a hundred people gone.
To tooth, claw, starvation, radiation, and frost!
We bleed, die and strive for the treasures that we've wrought
Tell us gate bearer what people you've lost?!"
The last of the least masters joined on as was the tradition. Adding the necessary challenge of authority to one who dared to claim the gift.
The pact was sacred and earned after all, not simply given.
And then the voice of the gate bearer rang out, it was not among the long light. It did not come from the caster.
It was the feeling of hearing a voice in the proper air of a creche or training tent, or direct from one's mother around them.
Of air conveying intimate knowledge.
Of a song directly from skin to skin.
Even though the procession was not yet enclosed and the festive pressurization was not even begun that voice was there inside Dodoreimei.
And as if the voice of the Gatebearer was the grandest master of all he felt his own voice rising to support and reinforce her rhythm as she sang her defense.
"Pain rising,
Despising,
all the trials that could be shown.
World weary
Dreary
A wretched effort I have known.
For in my soul I carry such a heavy load.
Here again on your people's road."
It was soft and gentle and not at all the way Dodoreimei expected to see such a great personage of legend to react to the challenge presented to them.
"You've known me
Truely?
All the fiction I've been shown.
Your daemon's
Fury.
Laid upon only me alone?
You tell your tales and demand that It is for me to atone.
But it's not by me this pain is sown."
Her pose was despite her alien form hauntingly familiar, striking clearly the impression of the gray and worn coat of an elderly traveler and hermit. An image etched into his minds from many a tale, the pattern only now becoming apparent.
Emerging from the depths of the endless stories and tales and now obviously crude inventions.
There was a shifting in the pose of the least masters at this but although he felt himself shaken they seemed yet resolute.
The Gatebearer stilled the call on all their voices, a silence fell even as the work of building the great chamber of congress continued to slowly come together. Weaving clans, guilds and great orders moving between the fabric of the banners, sealing them together so they would contain the great force of the air that would come to fill the space.
As the silence that made all of their own hearts feel loud and deafening continue finally a single voice keened out softly, and with it pulling at all of them to softly trill and whistle in their casters to complement.
All the people wrapped and circled around them and yet united and pulled by one single voice.
Dodoreimei had never imagined such a thing to ever be possible.
Even the voices of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council were never attributed such a power. To both silence and guide the voice of all but the entirety of the people in the spiral?
To hold them upon the every tone of her voice and song?
To play their hearts like a song caster she had herself honed from the woven steel?
"When the last wing should fly
Past the last crumbling spires
And the last Anathema roars
Among the last dying Embers"
The voice carried ruin, cold, pain and empty despair, the voice that had seen worlds die and perish. Had seen a desolation that even these words failed to fully contain despite the unfathomable totality of their meaning.
"In the ghost of this forest
Though I may be changed and worn
Your descendents will still know me
As Pylo Courtesan"
She turned to look to the far distant triumvirate that rooted the spiral to the boughs of the tree. And the voice turned wistful and nostalgic, touching upon soft tender youth pained but also warm.
"When the first thread of bone
In those pillars were woven
When your eldest were unborn
And the ancient orders unrisen."
The tales had said as much before, they had said so many things, and yet here and now Dodoreimei could hear the foundations for stories that would be told for a hundred generations more. Retold and grow dim and pale to the moment of now when it was sung fresh and true into his spines.
"When your ancestors were dying
And would pass away unknown
I came here to unite you
As Pylo Courtesan"
Pity, pain, worry and a deep reaching charity. Extended to struggling infants starving and lost in the fury and terror of the forest.
The echo of a memory of a moment of reality struck then. And all of them could not help but to cry and sing with that moment. Relief to exist, to live, to have been saved.
After the crescendo of voices stilled again she sang into the emptiness with a deep and sombre finality.
"When your star has collapsed
And you sing in its mourning.
And the future has passed without
Even a last desperate warning"
He could feel in his belly a quivering terror, he would not live to see such a thing to pass. Not even the most esteemed of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council could hope to live such an eternity. But here was a being that expected to be there for it.
To comfort them in that time of ultimate loss.
"Then look into the sky where through
The debris a path is torn.
Look and see The People's Sister.
Is Pylo Courtesan"
And again they all of them knew they had to strive for that far flung impossible future, to persevere and reinforce one another. To be as one and unified despite the trials and trivialities of their individual nation or guild or creed or any such absurd divisions.
To be there to welcome her in that dire time as family.
As more than family.
Dodoreimei was still ringing with her counter song and the least masters seemed mollified.
And then in that sacred stillness that filled all the people a new voice joined in. Harsh and brash and bizzare.
It felt all but profane in the ringing chords of the moment.
"Oiy yo! Yo! Dour be the rythm but are we not here to party?! I am the Fourth of fourths Quarti!"
The silence of utter shock was almost more profound then the one bestowed by the great Gatebearer, the sister, the sovereign guardian.
"So Let me tell ya Frogbits about Pylo!"
And a tumult of insanity proceeded to pour forth.
0.2
Dodoreimei rode the spiral current upon his song caster. Letting his voice ride in and out of the finely wrought haft and pull him along in the twining coils of unrooted lightning that hung in the sparse attenuation of vapors and plasma which suffused the great path of the procession.
He and thirteen other Grand Novice from the breadth of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers pulled the expanse of treated cloth.
This craft was a treasured relic, cut from bolts of the Nation's slowly dwindling stock from the Dead Clan of Sheltered Weavers Memory and song preserve them.
The hands that had forged this cloth that he pulled taught as one of two dozen others and more had no surviving descendants.
A memento and honoring of their sacrifice which none of their families would see the final reward of.
Treasured allies of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers which Dodoreimei had never met but knew there were Supreme Experts of his nation that had.
So the service and loss would be remembered here and now.
The Dead Clan of Sheltered Weavers were not the only nation of that vocation among the People. Other weaver clans of a similar size and a similar nuance of craft yet existed.
But that order by Tradition had lived solely upon and within the protection of the Spiral Redoubt. There was a pattern and subtle uniqueness to their wefts and weaves that was distinct wholey from every other.
And twenty-two generations ago above the very place that he now held the relic aloft with other Grand Novice the Attack of the Star Tooth Gregori Malefic had come to their home.
Too small to concern great and terrible Augurotherindil and its hundred thousand branches of secret hate.
But it had leaped through the flights of the fiercest Wing Riders as they were dust to its might.
It had ploughed through the Watchers and Long Snipers before them too.
And so it came to the Spiral Redoubt and lay in the doom of its fiery teeth into the land.
The experts of all nations, guilds and orders of Spiral Tenders had fought and it was said that the light of the might speared the beast so brightly that all of the Novice rank who had not taken shelter were struck blind and sterile by the fury.
But the Star Tooth Gregori Malefic was unconcerned by this as they were but trifles to the beast.
And even while they scoured and speared it with all the skill and might of their skill it took a great life scouring bite from the cladding.
In that battle legend told that a hoard of least and lesser masters of war and fire then struck and no witness below the supreme expert survived what occurred. Yet even still one in twelve of the last master's number perished.
After the Star Tooth was slain had been the great campaign against its carcass and the heaving flesh as armies which broke and battered the nations still held within its jaws.
It was then that the hated and where the most known tales to Dodoreimei were sung.
The Wisdom Drinking Middle Trunk Plains Hunters of the Dergothresh were implicated in many tribulation and sabotage of the efforts to dig through the cavernous flesh of Gregori Malefic.
The cowards claimed that the meat armies of the carcass were a world apart from their own mastery of Dergothresh and the secrets of its wood.
Whether lies or truth mattered not, for Dodoreimei had been drilled in the failures of his own nation and the loss of their allies. To have not seen the secret of the beast's intentions was a fault of scouts and sky hunters.
In the end when all the fighting was over Two Guilds One Order and a Fraternity of the people were lost entirely in that incursion directly and a dozen more lost the vital cores of experts and master and had to be dissolved and their survivors integrated under new leadership and professions.
The names of these and other lost families, lineages, great elders and masters were held aloft in the lettering of the great banners all around the procession of The Gatebearer.
The esteemed traveler was joined by a trinket of transparency which she introduced as the conveyance of a trio of infantile beings. So frail, tender of flesh and uncoated to the elemental void that they had to be coddled like children from the bite of nothingness.
She was also followed by a strange beast of burden who folded and unfolded like a puzzle box toy. Sliding and flowing over itself in a way that would marvel and delight any child.
Dodoreimei could already hear the stirring murmurs in the long light casters of the crowd dealings and plans among many crafters of such hand trainers and expected that for generations to come there would be toys fashioned for the unpledged infants of The People in likeness to The Gatebearer's animal.
And then at last the Song-Duel began.
The wing riders called forth the fiery spray of their mounts. Color and light exploded in profusions of skin tingling light all around the exterior of the spire. Faces had to turn away from the brightness for those without the blessings against glare grown in their eyes.
The roar of the people chanting for their least master or allies of such providing the undercurrent of the duel.
Dodoreimei himself sent his voice into the rhythm of the long light through his caster.
There was not a Least Master of the Righteous Gallants of Lower Middle Sky Trackers. But The pair of Least Masters Reimeidoe and Domeirei of the Spearing Strike of Open Sky Snipers were everything but masters of the nation and mentored directly the supreme experts of Middle, Open and Close Sky Trackers all.
So it was the spirit of Dodoreimei that was with them as the opening chants were joined. Spun from the throats of masters as each spoke the breadth and depth of their righteous mastery.
The people gathered closer, the weaving banners of the fallen closing with one another Dodoreimei sang his choral tones but most of his attention was in holding position with his neighbors. Drawing in the fabric of the banners.
When the first duel was concluded the seal needed to be ready.
However he could spare a moment for the pair of least masters closest aligned to his nation.
Their voices weaving in and out of each other, claiming meaning where each left off, bodies moving in poised practices and whispering secrets of tension and focus that even now Dodoreimei could sense would make his eyes sharper.
"Paired for life to serve eternal
A dedicated hunt we know our struggle.
You would come to take the fruits of our game
But what right do you have to make that claim?!"
The light of the wings' breath and exaltations seared harsher and brighter, enough to illuminate the fabrics that were closing ever tighter to the procession.
"We've cloaked ourselves starving in the blight of open sky
Where beasts of terror and vengeance swoop and fly
Every hunt of ours risks a hundred people gone.
To tooth, claw, starvation, radiation, and frost!
We bleed, die and strive for the treasures that we've wrought
Tell us gate bearer what people you've lost?!"
The last of the least masters joined on as was the tradition. Adding the necessary challenge of authority to one who dared to claim the gift.
The pact was sacred and earned after all, not simply given.
And then the voice of the gate bearer rang out, it was not among the long light. It did not come from the caster.
It was the feeling of hearing a voice in the proper air of a creche or training tent, or direct from one's mother around them.
Of air conveying intimate knowledge.
Of a song directly from skin to skin.
Even though the procession was not yet enclosed and the festive pressurization was not even begun that voice was there inside Dodoreimei.
And as if the voice of the Gatebearer was the grandest master of all he felt his own voice rising to support and reinforce her rhythm as she sang her defense.
"Pain rising,
Despising,
all the trials that could be shown.
World weary
Dreary
A wretched effort I have known.
For in my soul I carry such a heavy load.
Here again on your people's road."
It was soft and gentle and not at all the way Dodoreimei expected to see such a great personage of legend to react to the challenge presented to them.
"You've known me
Truely?
All the fiction I've been shown.
Your daemon's
Fury.
Laid upon only me alone?
You tell your tales and demand that It is for me to atone.
But it's not by me this pain is sown."
Her pose was despite her alien form hauntingly familiar, striking clearly the impression of the gray and worn coat of an elderly traveler and hermit. An image etched into his minds from many a tale, the pattern only now becoming apparent.
Emerging from the depths of the endless stories and tales and now obviously crude inventions.
There was a shifting in the pose of the least masters at this but although he felt himself shaken they seemed yet resolute.
The Gatebearer stilled the call on all their voices, a silence fell even as the work of building the great chamber of congress continued to slowly come together. Weaving clans, guilds and great orders moving between the fabric of the banners, sealing them together so they would contain the great force of the air that would come to fill the space.
As the silence that made all of their own hearts feel loud and deafening continue finally a single voice keened out softly, and with it pulling at all of them to softly trill and whistle in their casters to complement.
All the people wrapped and circled around them and yet united and pulled by one single voice.
Dodoreimei had never imagined such a thing to ever be possible.
Even the voices of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council were never attributed such a power. To both silence and guide the voice of all but the entirety of the people in the spiral?
To hold them upon the every tone of her voice and song?
To play their hearts like a song caster she had herself honed from the woven steel?
"When the last wing should fly
Past the last crumbling spires
And the last Anathema roars
Among the last dying Embers"
The voice carried ruin, cold, pain and empty despair, the voice that had seen worlds die and perish. Had seen a desolation that even these words failed to fully contain despite the unfathomable totality of their meaning.
"In the ghost of this forest
Though I may be changed and worn
Your descendents will still know me
As Pylo Courtesan"
She turned to look to the far distant triumvirate that rooted the spiral to the boughs of the tree. And the voice turned wistful and nostalgic, touching upon soft tender youth pained but also warm.
"When the first thread of bone
In those pillars were woven
When your eldest were unborn
And the ancient orders unrisen."
The tales had said as much before, they had said so many things, and yet here and now Dodoreimei could hear the foundations for stories that would be told for a hundred generations more. Retold and grow dim and pale to the moment of now when it was sung fresh and true into his spines.
"When your ancestors were dying
And would pass away unknown
I came here to unite you
As Pylo Courtesan"
Pity, pain, worry and a deep reaching charity. Extended to struggling infants starving and lost in the fury and terror of the forest.
The echo of a memory of a moment of reality struck then. And all of them could not help but to cry and sing with that moment. Relief to exist, to live, to have been saved.
After the crescendo of voices stilled again she sang into the emptiness with a deep and sombre finality.
"When your star has collapsed
And you sing in its mourning.
And the future has passed without
Even a last desperate warning"
He could feel in his belly a quivering terror, he would not live to see such a thing to pass. Not even the most esteemed of the Honorable and Grandest Deep knowers of the Eldest Council could hope to live such an eternity. But here was a being that expected to be there for it.
To comfort them in that time of ultimate loss.
"Then look into the sky where through
The debris a path is torn.
Look and see The People's Sister.
Is Pylo Courtesan"
And again they all of them knew they had to strive for that far flung impossible future, to persevere and reinforce one another. To be as one and unified despite the trials and trivialities of their individual nation or guild or creed or any such absurd divisions.
To be there to welcome her in that dire time as family.
As more than family.
Dodoreimei was still ringing with her counter song and the least masters seemed mollified.
And then in that sacred stillness that filled all the people a new voice joined in. Harsh and brash and bizzare.
It felt all but profane in the ringing chords of the moment.
"Oiy yo! Yo! Dour be the rythm but are we not here to party?! I am the Fourth of fourths Quarti!"
The silence of utter shock was almost more profound then the one bestowed by the great Gatebearer, the sister, the sovereign guardian.
"So Let me tell ya Frogbits about Pylo!"
And a tumult of insanity proceeded to pour forth.
I thought I did a decent job trying to get across this stuff, but music and lyrics are really hard folks.
I expect a few of you have an idea of what melodies I was writing too for these.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
I expect a few of you have an idea of what melodies I was writing too for these.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Mr. Mica
Capitalism cannot fix Global Warming.
- Location
- Earth
I am doing a hiatus reading this through. So I'll just leave my preliminary thoughts so my promise won't clutter up in my head.
First, an explanation on the why of the hiatus. The scenery change from ship-board to station hit me a little abruptly, and felt a little fast/soon, since it seemed like I just started to understand what was going on ship-wise. So that combined with the start of a new semester meant I had something more pressing to use brain-meats on.
The characters. Pylo is fun, absolutely amazing. I really like how you manage to convey just how alien she is, while still making her likeable and interesting. Pylo is also my shared favourite character, along with Tunie.
Speaking of which, Tunie, again with the alien mindset, priorities, but what I think of the most, is how the history between Tunie and Pylo is drawn. Which gives the both of them dept, and makes them me care for them. Which is pretty great.
Aleph, Omega and Quarti. I have admit. To start with, meeting any of them, I did not like them. I cannot really put my finger on it, but their introduction felt like it came from left field and just ran right onto scene and grabbed the spotlight. That said, each of them is actually both likeable and interesting, but as a result of the perspective shifts that shows their own view and presents their own opinion of the situation to the reader.
The setting. Hum, I don't really, I preliminary like it.
Trailblazing 0.3
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.3
It was a parade, it was a firework show, it was a musical operatic with the largest number of voices Omega had ever heard.
There were stories of old empires where entire nations had sung in spirit single prayers to call on divine creatures.
There were stories of people calling on Terra herself to rescue them in times of strife.
Most of those she was almost entirely sure were fictional.
Nevermind that most of those voices in their full audible timbre and character were being conveyed directly to her brain via Pylo. With an added choir character carrying over the melody and spiritual nuances that would normally be present in a Human performance via Quarti.
She could tell, she could practically hear the voices flowing over her in a flooding wave of sound that if she had actually heard it she was sure would have deafened her.
Voices surrounded them.
Among the streamers and strange glyphs of bright colored fabrics.
Circling closer and closer around them in spiraling dances like water going down a drain.
But big as the sky, and made of a eye searing expanse of color.
Strobing in time with the music in its own prismatic intricate whorls and sparks of color.
Searing bright lines spinning, splitting, then bursting with secondary flashes of lightning hued throughout in every color.
Accentuating and emphasising the streamers. Casting them into black shadow in contrast.
There were times when the bubble blacked out suddenly around blinding white coronas of light.
Only fading back to transparency several seconds later.
All of this had happened as they exited and she was going to run out of notebook at this rate.
And then the trial started.
It was the only way she could describe it, the words flowed rapidly and in rhythms that barely left her time to catch what each meant.
But the welcoming party berated, challenged, insulted, insinuated so many things on the low character of Pylo.
They greeted her like a tyrant throwing misery and spite in every word.
They downplayed Pylo in a manner that Omega could only just barely grasp was call outs and references to the stories already told to them of what was sang about Pylo and Tunie.
Each took their turn, some interrupted or cut in but were then overturned in rythm by the others.
They move amongst and around each other on those various wierd spear, stick, pillar things.
She was not sure exactly what they were.
Maces?
Weapons?
Vehicles?
It was difficult to tell most of the time precisely who or what was moving whom. It seemed like they were wielded and thrown about as much as they were used to brace, to be pulled and so many more things.
There was a way that both of them moved.
And then finally the last pair had their time to lay into Pylo and honestly Omega had no idea how to take this. She had been expecting formal songs or something dirge like.
But these were vital and violent the impression in the rapid fire lines almost seemed obscene.
It was hard to say if the group had choreographed everything or were performing all of this on demand in the moment intuitively. Either would have been impressive far as Omega was concerned.
And then Pylo started singing.
Omega had tears welling up to distort her view of things.
She had to shake them loose and wipe with her sleeve.
It turned every barb and lancing lyric back on the lot of them. It made every single aggression seem incredibly petty and childish.
It hurt to hear her singing those things.
Omega liked to think she knew Pylo, but she was suddenly thrown into doubt on all of that. Either there were depths to the frustrating buffoon she had never even expected or her ability to lie was frighteningly good.
Aleph's voice was a whispered gasp.
"Wow"
Honestly all she could do wa nod and snort up a glob of snot that had started bubbling up in her nose.
Ugh she missed gravity.
Her sinuses did unpleasant things without it.
"Yeah."
There was a silence then, a sacred kind of hallowed silence where before the world had been made of music.
Omega glanced around then gestured for aleph to hand over the telescope. It took a light tap and a short "hey!" to actually get it though.
Peering through the scope she confirmed what she had suspected.
The crowds had all stilled everywhere she cared to look in wake of that song.
She hummed and poked at the membrane of the bubble.
It refused to let her hand pass, so there must not be much atmosphere there.
Did Pylo do her little voice in the brain trick to all of them?
That was significantly more range then Omega thought she had.
How had she managed that?
The stillness went on.
And then suddenly Quarti belted out.
"Oiy yo! Yo! Dour be the rythm but are we not here to party?! I am the Fourth of fourths Quarti!"
"So Let me tell ya Frogbits about Pylo!"
The shock was obvious among those before them and then Pylo supplied rhythm and music.
"Eprik-oauwhp-barbles-ohv-istorieee!"
"So I'm Quarti Ten thousand years-young is me.
Mehbe bit shy but a quarter of ya whole poly see!
Now you might think that you itty lived lot are hot shit, but-I'm-gonna-give-ya-all a taste-of-my-flick."
Omega started choking! She didin't just say that! How would Pylo even translate that?!
Okay sure she was half sure something almost as vulgar was said to Pylo earlier but this was supposed to be some kind of diplomatic situation right?
And Quarti was not whatever psudo saintly god myth person that Pylo was.
"Pylo don-a-bunch-a-good-by-the-legends-she-say, but what-are-you to-only-listen-to-the-past-gone ey?"
The words came out so quick and fast Omega barely had time to even hold it before Quarti was on to the next.
"So she's done right in ancient past as a crafty lady sure.
But what about the times from MY before?"
"Whole Lotsa tales sung on our way ya see, but most of them fibs and halfwit and heresy"
"You-got-a-genuine-witness here to say, this is a fun hipsalicious lady hey!"
It took Omega a this long to realize Pylo was almost certainly on board with this, after all she was providing musical accompaniment and glancing in the telescope she saw that the various crowds were moving to that rythm more or less.
The figures before them had settled into a dance of their own.
"She picked-us-up-as-a-trio of inexperienced scrubs, laid us out-a-bit there-but-then-it-was-just all for the love!"
"She-whipped-em-good when-we-partied-too-hard. Flung the sneaks and the sleazers and made their schemes pay par!"
Omega could not keep up with the pace that Quarti was singing, the way she was moving, sweeping and flipping and bouncing around the bubble, hair fanning about, Her and Aleph could only barely sway a bit in the rythm to try and not wreck whatever this was.
"So-where-you-floppy-frogs getting-off-to-this? Tryina even pretend you'd make pylo-out-like-bitch? I'm gonna have you know the bite of this-witch. Feel the sting of my words take your lashing now! Switch!"
It would have helped if someone had informed them she was going to do anything like this sooner then the very last minute!
There was a sweep from one of the frogish aliens, the one that either had two beards, or two sets of braids.
Honestly they seemed to flip and move as if there was no right side up.
Quarti bounced with the beat and Pylo continued to provide
"Reimeireimeirei! I am as I said before! You speaking like you matter you animal whore! You come in and bluster like your meat's worth my spit! You've challenged the least masters in a battle of wit!"
There was a flurry and then the smaller one that rode their metal pole thing a bit like a bike nodded.
"You sing fast, spin like a bore, a bauble and a toy for your betters? A chore? We will take up your challenge mere beast though you are. But I expect you will not last very far!"
The two nearly black big goggle eyed ones with a massive pillar of dark metal between them swooped and 'walked' the ungainly thing in a way that made Omega uneasy. Speaking up in support of the
opener they had given.
"A Quarter is the name of the thing from the blue?
They sang in turns, bouncing together and dancing. Flipping around the pole of their strange conveyance as much as spinning it around.
"You're a fourth of something, Yes that sure is true."
One of their voices was deeper than the other, exotic. Similar to the guttural growl of the first one.
"Spitting such bars so fast that's you! But maybe you can help and give us a clue?"
The second had a more natural and soft tone. But there was a sneering to it in Pylo's translation.
"Only fools think fast is the only way through. So tell us, does that name speak of your loving's brevity too?"
Quarti's grin widened at that as they continued on, pouring derision, trying to find hints of her character to lash out and attack.
But Omega recognized that posture, she was coiling to strike.
And as she turned to look at the aliens she could see the same eager tension in all of them.
Aleph kept up her embarrassed kind of swaying to the music, but honestly that was about all the two of them could hope to contribute here.
Although she had a bit of a worried look to her eyes as she pinged over the choir.
"Omega, please tell me we did not just meet an entire species like Quarti... I don't know if I can handle this many of them."
Honestly she was not sure, she looked at the closing in curtains and loops and the crowds of dancing, swaying and now that she was listening to it singing creatures.
"I am not sure if I can say we haven't"
And then it was Quarti's turn and she proceeded to lay into the least masters with everything she had.
0.3
It was a parade, it was a firework show, it was a musical operatic with the largest number of voices Omega had ever heard.
There were stories of old empires where entire nations had sung in spirit single prayers to call on divine creatures.
There were stories of people calling on Terra herself to rescue them in times of strife.
Most of those she was almost entirely sure were fictional.
Nevermind that most of those voices in their full audible timbre and character were being conveyed directly to her brain via Pylo. With an added choir character carrying over the melody and spiritual nuances that would normally be present in a Human performance via Quarti.
She could tell, she could practically hear the voices flowing over her in a flooding wave of sound that if she had actually heard it she was sure would have deafened her.
Voices surrounded them.
Among the streamers and strange glyphs of bright colored fabrics.
Circling closer and closer around them in spiraling dances like water going down a drain.
But big as the sky, and made of a eye searing expanse of color.
Strobing in time with the music in its own prismatic intricate whorls and sparks of color.
Searing bright lines spinning, splitting, then bursting with secondary flashes of lightning hued throughout in every color.
Accentuating and emphasising the streamers. Casting them into black shadow in contrast.
There were times when the bubble blacked out suddenly around blinding white coronas of light.
Only fading back to transparency several seconds later.
All of this had happened as they exited and she was going to run out of notebook at this rate.
And then the trial started.
It was the only way she could describe it, the words flowed rapidly and in rhythms that barely left her time to catch what each meant.
But the welcoming party berated, challenged, insulted, insinuated so many things on the low character of Pylo.
They greeted her like a tyrant throwing misery and spite in every word.
They downplayed Pylo in a manner that Omega could only just barely grasp was call outs and references to the stories already told to them of what was sang about Pylo and Tunie.
Each took their turn, some interrupted or cut in but were then overturned in rythm by the others.
They move amongst and around each other on those various wierd spear, stick, pillar things.
She was not sure exactly what they were.
Maces?
Weapons?
Vehicles?
It was difficult to tell most of the time precisely who or what was moving whom. It seemed like they were wielded and thrown about as much as they were used to brace, to be pulled and so many more things.
There was a way that both of them moved.
And then finally the last pair had their time to lay into Pylo and honestly Omega had no idea how to take this. She had been expecting formal songs or something dirge like.
But these were vital and violent the impression in the rapid fire lines almost seemed obscene.
It was hard to say if the group had choreographed everything or were performing all of this on demand in the moment intuitively. Either would have been impressive far as Omega was concerned.
And then Pylo started singing.
Omega had tears welling up to distort her view of things.
She had to shake them loose and wipe with her sleeve.
It turned every barb and lancing lyric back on the lot of them. It made every single aggression seem incredibly petty and childish.
It hurt to hear her singing those things.
Omega liked to think she knew Pylo, but she was suddenly thrown into doubt on all of that. Either there were depths to the frustrating buffoon she had never even expected or her ability to lie was frighteningly good.
Aleph's voice was a whispered gasp.
"Wow"
Honestly all she could do wa nod and snort up a glob of snot that had started bubbling up in her nose.
Ugh she missed gravity.
Her sinuses did unpleasant things without it.
"Yeah."
There was a silence then, a sacred kind of hallowed silence where before the world had been made of music.
Omega glanced around then gestured for aleph to hand over the telescope. It took a light tap and a short "hey!" to actually get it though.
Peering through the scope she confirmed what she had suspected.
The crowds had all stilled everywhere she cared to look in wake of that song.
She hummed and poked at the membrane of the bubble.
It refused to let her hand pass, so there must not be much atmosphere there.
Did Pylo do her little voice in the brain trick to all of them?
That was significantly more range then Omega thought she had.
How had she managed that?
The stillness went on.
And then suddenly Quarti belted out.
"Oiy yo! Yo! Dour be the rythm but are we not here to party?! I am the Fourth of fourths Quarti!"
"So Let me tell ya Frogbits about Pylo!"
The shock was obvious among those before them and then Pylo supplied rhythm and music.
"Eprik-oauwhp-barbles-ohv-istorieee!"
"So I'm Quarti Ten thousand years-young is me.
Mehbe bit shy but a quarter of ya whole poly see!
Now you might think that you itty lived lot are hot shit, but-I'm-gonna-give-ya-all a taste-of-my-flick."
Omega started choking! She didin't just say that! How would Pylo even translate that?!
Okay sure she was half sure something almost as vulgar was said to Pylo earlier but this was supposed to be some kind of diplomatic situation right?
And Quarti was not whatever psudo saintly god myth person that Pylo was.
"Pylo don-a-bunch-a-good-by-the-legends-she-say, but what-are-you to-only-listen-to-the-past-gone ey?"
The words came out so quick and fast Omega barely had time to even hold it before Quarti was on to the next.
"So she's done right in ancient past as a crafty lady sure.
But what about the times from MY before?"
"Whole Lotsa tales sung on our way ya see, but most of them fibs and halfwit and heresy"
"You-got-a-genuine-witness here to say, this is a fun hipsalicious lady hey!"
It took Omega a this long to realize Pylo was almost certainly on board with this, after all she was providing musical accompaniment and glancing in the telescope she saw that the various crowds were moving to that rythm more or less.
The figures before them had settled into a dance of their own.
"She picked-us-up-as-a-trio of inexperienced scrubs, laid us out-a-bit there-but-then-it-was-just all for the love!"
"She-whipped-em-good when-we-partied-too-hard. Flung the sneaks and the sleazers and made their schemes pay par!"
Omega could not keep up with the pace that Quarti was singing, the way she was moving, sweeping and flipping and bouncing around the bubble, hair fanning about, Her and Aleph could only barely sway a bit in the rythm to try and not wreck whatever this was.
"So-where-you-floppy-frogs getting-off-to-this? Tryina even pretend you'd make pylo-out-like-bitch? I'm gonna have you know the bite of this-witch. Feel the sting of my words take your lashing now! Switch!"
It would have helped if someone had informed them she was going to do anything like this sooner then the very last minute!
There was a sweep from one of the frogish aliens, the one that either had two beards, or two sets of braids.
Honestly they seemed to flip and move as if there was no right side up.
Quarti bounced with the beat and Pylo continued to provide
"Reimeireimeirei! I am as I said before! You speaking like you matter you animal whore! You come in and bluster like your meat's worth my spit! You've challenged the least masters in a battle of wit!"
There was a flurry and then the smaller one that rode their metal pole thing a bit like a bike nodded.
"You sing fast, spin like a bore, a bauble and a toy for your betters? A chore? We will take up your challenge mere beast though you are. But I expect you will not last very far!"
The two nearly black big goggle eyed ones with a massive pillar of dark metal between them swooped and 'walked' the ungainly thing in a way that made Omega uneasy. Speaking up in support of the
opener they had given.
"A Quarter is the name of the thing from the blue?
They sang in turns, bouncing together and dancing. Flipping around the pole of their strange conveyance as much as spinning it around.
"You're a fourth of something, Yes that sure is true."
One of their voices was deeper than the other, exotic. Similar to the guttural growl of the first one.
"Spitting such bars so fast that's you! But maybe you can help and give us a clue?"
The second had a more natural and soft tone. But there was a sneering to it in Pylo's translation.
"Only fools think fast is the only way through. So tell us, does that name speak of your loving's brevity too?"
Quarti's grin widened at that as they continued on, pouring derision, trying to find hints of her character to lash out and attack.
But Omega recognized that posture, she was coiling to strike.
And as she turned to look at the aliens she could see the same eager tension in all of them.
Aleph kept up her embarrassed kind of swaying to the music, but honestly that was about all the two of them could hope to contribute here.
Although she had a bit of a worried look to her eyes as she pinged over the choir.
"Omega, please tell me we did not just meet an entire species like Quarti... I don't know if I can handle this many of them."
Honestly she was not sure, she looked at the closing in curtains and loops and the crowds of dancing, swaying and now that she was listening to it singing creatures.
"I am not sure if I can say we haven't"
And then it was Quarti's turn and she proceeded to lay into the least masters with everything she had.
Shoutout to @Mr. Mica for commenting even though they only got so far. Look forward to seeing you back with us when things are less crazy. There are a few rough transitions in the story early on. I found some better footing and ways to stitch things together and in review I think some of the chapters would do for a reordering if I ever get a editor in here and make a solid publish version. (Also there would be so many typos to fix).
On Today's updates now:
There is no specific music that is meant to be sung too, I was thinking a bit of Beastie Boys and Eminem for some of Quarti, but also the faster style given to Shakespear in this video.
I don't consider myself much of a lyricist so I blame anything that does not work on this particular chapter on bad translation awkwardness.
Yep that's the story I'm going with.
If you like it however Totally intentional and I meant to do that!
I've also been splitting some of my free time doing game dev stuff.
You can follow that and try the latest build here.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
On Today's updates now:
There is no specific music that is meant to be sung too, I was thinking a bit of Beastie Boys and Eminem for some of Quarti, but also the faster style given to Shakespear in this video.
I don't consider myself much of a lyricist so I blame anything that does not work on this particular chapter on bad translation awkwardness.
Yep that's the story I'm going with.
If you like it however Totally intentional and I meant to do that!
I've also been splitting some of my free time doing game dev stuff.
You can follow that and try the latest build here.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Tradition 0.4
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.4
Pylo was terribly bored.
It was an unfortunate fact of trade that every port ultimately had a collection of drudgery required to do business. Sometimes during uplifts Pylo tried to lay the groundwork for something different to surprise or at least distract her next time she came around.
But the needs of managing and reinforcing obligations, discussing exchanges and so much more were often shrouded in layers of bureaucracy and tedium.
The time for fun and interesting new stories and interpretations was over. Now it was the cortex ossifying labor of navigating the obligatory trials and challenges to her position.
It was not always so bad to visit this particular port. Sometimes there was a trial of physical prowess that really strained and challenged her to find a way to resolve it using clever applications of talking.
But by some idiosyncrasy they as often as not would settle into these laborious and completely unstimulating 'challenges' as the pattern of the procession.
It was a bit refreshing to let Quarti take up the tedium herself. Although not being all that adapted to talking as a siren, Pylo had to lay the groundwork and keep a fraction of her attention on making sure things did not go completely out of control.
The first few times visiting this port she had at least been entertained by the challenge of getting the audience to hear her better.
They were in their teeming billions far outside her actual range. But she had seen plenty of examples of their neuroanatomy for generations. In addition she had already finished digesting all their present languages.
Well except a few of the secret ones, known only to the higher ups of one specific Order, that had not yet passed in range, but anyone who knew one of those would use one of the more common ones as well.
Which made the application of this little trick comparative to child's play.
Well at least adolescent sport anyway.
It had been quite difficult the first time she tried to do it and the less said about how badly she had failed then the better.
First you had to appreciate that for all their individualism and variety across the many clans, guilds, 'nations' , kindred, brotherhoods, sisterhoods, orders, associations, companies, leagues, convents and such there was a standard of material manufacture to every one of the people's song casters.
Maybe not in shape, not in fine detailing of the barrels, nor even in the traces of impurities that would be impregnated through the solid hulls for any number of applications.
But the crystalline lattice of every single song caster shared a uniformity across them that absolutely sang in resonance even to an amateur in the physics such as Pylo.
There was still the standard proximity variance which would eventually overwhelm any coherence.
But the degree that one song caster would deviate from that was knowable.
Not only knowable but with a clever application of the middle-long light that the casters could be recohered with one another. Using the mechanisms they themselves used to alternatively transmit and receive their language and also align and propel themselves against the greater background field of the spires.
So it was that a much younger pylo had come upon the idea of rhyming the light interaction of an inreach song caster with that of all the song casters that received a reinforcing rhythm.
Then using that to blur the resonance a little bit stronger with all the others, and from that emulate a fraction of a further vibration to carry the subtle tones into the bodies of those hands that touched and grasped them.
Carrying vibrations through chains of well known chemical cues and then converging and reinforcing again as words, meanings, knowledge.
It let her bring her voice within a decent approximation of her intent to every single listener attending the parade.
But the issue came that once you knew the trick and had ground its execution by rote into every single fiber of your cortices the entertainment value was lost.
What's more there had not been any notable shift in the crystal composition of the bulk metal of song casters since she first figured the trick out.
So Pylo was long since bored, practically in a total fugue performing her role.
Always be slightly that much more competent seeming then the challengers brought before her. Essay their subtle insecurities and strengths and maneuver and redress them to prove her worth.
Quarti was doing alright for the first few layers of the hierarchy of whatever master competents.
But Pylo needed to step in and bail her out more and more often. The toil seemed to be straining even that absurd Terran endurance as they moved through the procession.
Sure Quarti had not even spent the energy reserves that Pylo drew to rattle the song casters for her opening stanza.
But for a mostly pure eukaryote it was a substantial expenditure.
Poor Quarti. The effort was great for a non-siren but it was inevitable how this would end.
The masters were going to get better and cleverer and stronger and fresher then her friend as they kept going.
The dialogues ever more complex, interwoven and nuanced.
They were about a third of the way through the trials that Pylo decided she needed to let the Quarti suffer a defeat and bow out. She had done extremely well for her niche and saved Pylo an enormous amount of tedium, if not strictly speaking the energy expenditure to broadcast the performance.
She gave the old terran a gentle whisper of a cue to let her know the defeat was coming, to understand her role in it and that she needed to stop and rest with the rest of them after this.
Then she let the defeat unfold, the masters have their victory at last.
There was a quiet.
An appropriate pause.
Pylo internally counted the divergences and genetic lineages of those present. She was still too low in the hierarchy to personally know anyone here, but there were hints some of those that she had challenged were descendants of a few she had met before.
She assessed her coolant, noting her capacity and checking it against the scheduled atmospheric soaking that was due to occur when they reached the halfway point.
The Meeting Chamber enfolding all around them was now closed and the traditional sealant checks were underway.
Obscuring her friend and vessel from view to their aft.
Wrapping the procession of 'defeated' leaders of the clans, Pylo and the Terrans in a cocoon of fabric big enough to fit Tunie several time over.
Shading and diffusing the flaring light of the repurposed mating displays from the dragons to shine through in colorful translucency.
Well it had been refreshing to not have to do all of the trials entirely by herself but it was time to put her attention back fully to the doldrum task.
She sang a barely modified stanza uplift cache variant with proper timing adjusted and contextual associates to claim her 'victory' in an appropriately awe inspiring manner.
Then with this batch of 'masters' properly cowed the procession moved on to the next and the losers moved to take their place in the procession.
Pylo was so utterly bored.
0.4
Pylo was terribly bored.
It was an unfortunate fact of trade that every port ultimately had a collection of drudgery required to do business. Sometimes during uplifts Pylo tried to lay the groundwork for something different to surprise or at least distract her next time she came around.
But the needs of managing and reinforcing obligations, discussing exchanges and so much more were often shrouded in layers of bureaucracy and tedium.
The time for fun and interesting new stories and interpretations was over. Now it was the cortex ossifying labor of navigating the obligatory trials and challenges to her position.
It was not always so bad to visit this particular port. Sometimes there was a trial of physical prowess that really strained and challenged her to find a way to resolve it using clever applications of talking.
But by some idiosyncrasy they as often as not would settle into these laborious and completely unstimulating 'challenges' as the pattern of the procession.
It was a bit refreshing to let Quarti take up the tedium herself. Although not being all that adapted to talking as a siren, Pylo had to lay the groundwork and keep a fraction of her attention on making sure things did not go completely out of control.
The first few times visiting this port she had at least been entertained by the challenge of getting the audience to hear her better.
They were in their teeming billions far outside her actual range. But she had seen plenty of examples of their neuroanatomy for generations. In addition she had already finished digesting all their present languages.
Well except a few of the secret ones, known only to the higher ups of one specific Order, that had not yet passed in range, but anyone who knew one of those would use one of the more common ones as well.
Which made the application of this little trick comparative to child's play.
Well at least adolescent sport anyway.
It had been quite difficult the first time she tried to do it and the less said about how badly she had failed then the better.
First you had to appreciate that for all their individualism and variety across the many clans, guilds, 'nations' , kindred, brotherhoods, sisterhoods, orders, associations, companies, leagues, convents and such there was a standard of material manufacture to every one of the people's song casters.
Maybe not in shape, not in fine detailing of the barrels, nor even in the traces of impurities that would be impregnated through the solid hulls for any number of applications.
But the crystalline lattice of every single song caster shared a uniformity across them that absolutely sang in resonance even to an amateur in the physics such as Pylo.
There was still the standard proximity variance which would eventually overwhelm any coherence.
But the degree that one song caster would deviate from that was knowable.
Not only knowable but with a clever application of the middle-long light that the casters could be recohered with one another. Using the mechanisms they themselves used to alternatively transmit and receive their language and also align and propel themselves against the greater background field of the spires.
So it was that a much younger pylo had come upon the idea of rhyming the light interaction of an inreach song caster with that of all the song casters that received a reinforcing rhythm.
Then using that to blur the resonance a little bit stronger with all the others, and from that emulate a fraction of a further vibration to carry the subtle tones into the bodies of those hands that touched and grasped them.
Carrying vibrations through chains of well known chemical cues and then converging and reinforcing again as words, meanings, knowledge.
It let her bring her voice within a decent approximation of her intent to every single listener attending the parade.
But the issue came that once you knew the trick and had ground its execution by rote into every single fiber of your cortices the entertainment value was lost.
What's more there had not been any notable shift in the crystal composition of the bulk metal of song casters since she first figured the trick out.
So Pylo was long since bored, practically in a total fugue performing her role.
Always be slightly that much more competent seeming then the challengers brought before her. Essay their subtle insecurities and strengths and maneuver and redress them to prove her worth.
Quarti was doing alright for the first few layers of the hierarchy of whatever master competents.
But Pylo needed to step in and bail her out more and more often. The toil seemed to be straining even that absurd Terran endurance as they moved through the procession.
Sure Quarti had not even spent the energy reserves that Pylo drew to rattle the song casters for her opening stanza.
But for a mostly pure eukaryote it was a substantial expenditure.
Poor Quarti. The effort was great for a non-siren but it was inevitable how this would end.
The masters were going to get better and cleverer and stronger and fresher then her friend as they kept going.
The dialogues ever more complex, interwoven and nuanced.
They were about a third of the way through the trials that Pylo decided she needed to let the Quarti suffer a defeat and bow out. She had done extremely well for her niche and saved Pylo an enormous amount of tedium, if not strictly speaking the energy expenditure to broadcast the performance.
She gave the old terran a gentle whisper of a cue to let her know the defeat was coming, to understand her role in it and that she needed to stop and rest with the rest of them after this.
Then she let the defeat unfold, the masters have their victory at last.
There was a quiet.
An appropriate pause.
Pylo internally counted the divergences and genetic lineages of those present. She was still too low in the hierarchy to personally know anyone here, but there were hints some of those that she had challenged were descendants of a few she had met before.
She assessed her coolant, noting her capacity and checking it against the scheduled atmospheric soaking that was due to occur when they reached the halfway point.
The Meeting Chamber enfolding all around them was now closed and the traditional sealant checks were underway.
Obscuring her friend and vessel from view to their aft.
Wrapping the procession of 'defeated' leaders of the clans, Pylo and the Terrans in a cocoon of fabric big enough to fit Tunie several time over.
Shading and diffusing the flaring light of the repurposed mating displays from the dragons to shine through in colorful translucency.
Well it had been refreshing to not have to do all of the trials entirely by herself but it was time to put her attention back fully to the doldrum task.
She sang a barely modified stanza uplift cache variant with proper timing adjusted and contextual associates to claim her 'victory' in an appropriately awe inspiring manner.
Then with this batch of 'masters' properly cowed the procession moved on to the next and the losers moved to take their place in the procession.
Pylo was so utterly bored.
And this is why every chapter is not from the perspective of Pylo.
Because sometimes things are so dull for a Siren that whole swaths of this story would be written in a few sentences if I did.
If you like weirdo life sim games by the way I have been slowly making one.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Because sometimes things are so dull for a Siren that whole swaths of this story would be written in a few sentences if I did.
If you like weirdo life sim games by the way I have been slowly making one.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Last edited:
Tradition 0.5
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.5
Aleph watched Quarti belt out and sing and dance in the free floating drift of their journey for hours.
She 'heard' the song around her as conveyed by Pylo and the other terran washing over her minute after minute, hour after hour.
The music rose in waves, there were choruses together and a deep timbre to it all. They crashed over her and swept her up.
Every performance was new, fresh, unique and the duets, quartets, counter songs and reprisals echoed and mingled and changed with every single one.
She found herself moving whenever she stopped paying attention more than once. She caught herself and Squidgie and Omega swaying and wiggling in the floating freedom of the bubble.
And every stanza, every moment, every exchange was a story, words and vocal cries telling tales and challenges, dueling with Pylo in a debate or somehow testing her with riddles. But more than that were the voices and sounds around them, flowing with and joining behind every piece.
Haunting sailing tones would pierce through for her. Suddenly silencing the rest, or just making the contrast so sharp she lost focus of everything else, going on to serenade in a metallic wail that would soften and blur back into the background only to emerge again like it was emerging from behind a veil.
Deep bass that rumbled like thunder through her chest.
Shrieking discordant screams that hissed into and out of harmony with one another.
Aleph could occasionally turn and spot where an instrument was coming from, sometimes she was certain she could spot them and knew that the moving things so far away she could not even see the players that were the source of the noise.
Other Times she was at a loss to tell whether the sounds were coming from one source or somehow emerging from ones in opposite directions meeting inside her.
There were voices singing in aorian and almost familiar. So perfect it she mostly forgot they were translated by Pylo, but others that were guttural, sharp animal cries in the very same voices that were none the less part of the songs and chants all the same.
Sometimes there were lulls or moments where she was not even sure that the sounds she was hearing was music at all, sometimes she was sure it was interference or indistinct murmuring and then suddenly it would crystalize and she would realize the rhythm had been there, building, waiting to reveal itself.
Occasionally everything would twist around, change tempo, snap into an entirely different rhythm. In concert, in unison, like a wave of motion through all of the teeming froth of indistinct crowd all around them.
Percussive cracks and sharp twangs followed with the flash and spark of light spiraling in unison around them. Were those actual canons?
It was a spectacle constantly new and unfolding.
Too many stories to follow every word, every lyric. It was like being in the middle of a murmuring crowd in a valley, but every murmur sang alongside and in wythm with each other. It was piercing, it was beautiful. It was like a musical expression of what her teachers and lecturers tried to sensationalize the great choral network of Terra as.
It made her feel almost like maybe she could understand the endless poetic nonsense that passed for sensible communication about the afterlife between Quarti and Omega.
But it also just kept going on.
She had actually fallen asleep after Quarti finally had to admit defeat and give up.
It is just for all the endless beauty of every intricate melody an endless concert was just too much for her to keep attention on.
When she woke up it was the music. She felt refreshed but also a bit deeply uncomfortable.
The droning, rising emotion was just as beautiful and haunting and new. It was a chant of lives, of living, of celebration. She could put attention on those voices in the background, pick out their individual stories if she wanted.
But there were some rather desperate needs that were becoming very prominent. And having those issues come up once in the bubble way back in Redweed was enough for a lifetime.
Which is why Squidgie was a wonder and a blessing and she was really even more guilty for giving her ward such a silly name.
But Squidgie did not mind and was wonderful in spite of it.
"I figured you would want a partition tent and proper facilities Ma'am."
It had taken her several more hours to be able to actually admit she had to use the thing. Especially with the intense gaze of so many upon them.
But eventually she was fit to burst!
She was not going to think about it. The partition had not felt very thick against the weight of so much attention. Lead lining and faraday-cage-layer notwithstanding.
The entire population of Terra in curious aliens had been staring at her little tent in her little bubble while she used the facilities.
Quarti and Omega seemed a lot less shy about it.
At least the smell was somehow taken care of and Squidgie seemed completely nonchalant about stepping through the membrane of the bubble after folding up the little tent and then waving to one of the 'lesser masters' that was trailing behind them and making gestures and various motions that were not translated or provided to her by Pylo or the little box embedded in the bubble.
She watched anyway, because she could only gawk at the slowly enveloping 'sheets' wrapping around them for so long.
And honestly after the twenty-fifth epic battle of ballads she was getting a bit numb to Pylo's perfectly precise take downs.
Omega was filling two notebooks at once with a vaguely distant look in her eyes still though, so at least someone was entertained.
A big shimmering clear off white orb was produced from the little bag, and the 'lesser master' hefted it from hand to hand with some kind of expression. it might be discerning, or she might just be projecting human mannerisms to the way the eyes closed slightly and seemed intent to focus on the sealed orb.
It could be disgust considering the undeniable nature of what he was handling.
However after a slow blink of all four eyes staring directly at Squidgie and some bob of the remodeled clerk's own head Squidgie came back into the bubble with a wide grin on her screen and the folded up 'facilities'.
Aleph leaned a little over to spot the lesser master stowing the orb in a sleeve, which gave her enough pause that before she could ask Squidgie about what all of that was about the clerk was already gushing in a stream of delighted words!
"Oh splendid news ma'am! It turns out that you have several much sought after enzymes released by and molecular transformations performed in your digestive and circulatory filtration processes!"
Quarti nearly choked on her own tongue smothering her laughter.
"I will need to confer with Elsie and the gastronomicist's profiles but it is likely that we can pay for quite a number of local goods in exchange for you eating some specified prepared materials."
Aleph blinked a bit and opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by her exuberant ward.
"Oh and don't worry, I checked already, and they are both commonly practiced as and projected-to-be delicious delicacies. We just need to make sure there are not any long term health impacts my own data processing would miss."
She paused long enough for it to get awkward, but also just in case Squidgie had anymore to say.
Then she cleared her throat and spoke up over the choking gasps of Quarti.
"They want to pay us"
Squidgie nodded.
"To eat food they prepare that you say will be delicious?"
Squidgie nodded.
"So they can keep the... result?"
Squidgie nodded again then made a face of wonder and realization.
"Oh of course! Terra is still a monoculture! I apologize that this must be very confusing for you! It is extremely common across the reef for many cycles of high grade processing to be performed in this manner. There is naturally usually mostly closed loops as very few organisms can survive without their precise biome's chemical balances and trace elements or lack of less common ones to their niche for that matter."
Squidhie nodded and their screen showed an image of arrows moving from one person to another.
"But of course, Naturally in monocultures waste is waste for all involved and best to be removed and dealt with, but in poly-cultures as is common throughout the reef even the byproducts toxic to entire ecosystems can often be cycled, filtered or accumulated in another and these can nest between well... everyone"
Aleph blinked a bit and considered that.
Quarti finally catching her breath gasped a bit.
"Wait-wait-waita so you be saying is like we shit bricks o gold?"
Squidgie smiled happily.
"Oh certainly not, no one would expect anyone but star corpse scavengers to have such heavy metals as a waste byproduct. It is closer to say you expel several useful pharmacological compounds for further refining"
Aleph furrowed her brow.
"So drugs?"
Squidgie turned back to the lesser master that she had been 'haggling' with and something apparently passed between them before turning back.
"I believe in this case they say that there was a very good compound for dye fixatives and a potent precursor to a um... It is inaccurate to call it such but I believe the equivalent is a Draconic painkiller and neurotoxin. You will have to ask Ship Mistress Pylo when she is less busy to clarify."
Aleph looked over at Quarti, then out to the vast billowing folds of a tent filled with as many people as lived on all of Terra when they left.
She wondered how many lived there now. Did they already begin a new batch of colony deals?
Were there more charity cases like them?
Was Terra already starting to turn a profit for traders now with some random thing?
Were they one day going to be much like these people here?
All of them singing for sparse reoccuring visitors.
Her thoughts were broken by a sudden and great haunting deep tone joining the songs as the envelope drew ever closer together. Like the petals of a vast flower.
The 'sound' was too big for her.
It was something that felt like it should make her bones tremble.
It blasted all thought and musing for a moment from her mind.
Then in the quiet Aleph could not help herself and just murmured in baffled confusion.
"We poop dragon painkillers?"
Of course Quarti could not stop laughing for almost thirty minutes after she finally said it. And Aleph was pretty sure she only did that because she couldn't properly breath and laugh at the same time.
0.5
Aleph watched Quarti belt out and sing and dance in the free floating drift of their journey for hours.
She 'heard' the song around her as conveyed by Pylo and the other terran washing over her minute after minute, hour after hour.
The music rose in waves, there were choruses together and a deep timbre to it all. They crashed over her and swept her up.
Every performance was new, fresh, unique and the duets, quartets, counter songs and reprisals echoed and mingled and changed with every single one.
She found herself moving whenever she stopped paying attention more than once. She caught herself and Squidgie and Omega swaying and wiggling in the floating freedom of the bubble.
And every stanza, every moment, every exchange was a story, words and vocal cries telling tales and challenges, dueling with Pylo in a debate or somehow testing her with riddles. But more than that were the voices and sounds around them, flowing with and joining behind every piece.
Haunting sailing tones would pierce through for her. Suddenly silencing the rest, or just making the contrast so sharp she lost focus of everything else, going on to serenade in a metallic wail that would soften and blur back into the background only to emerge again like it was emerging from behind a veil.
Deep bass that rumbled like thunder through her chest.
Shrieking discordant screams that hissed into and out of harmony with one another.
Aleph could occasionally turn and spot where an instrument was coming from, sometimes she was certain she could spot them and knew that the moving things so far away she could not even see the players that were the source of the noise.
Other Times she was at a loss to tell whether the sounds were coming from one source or somehow emerging from ones in opposite directions meeting inside her.
There were voices singing in aorian and almost familiar. So perfect it she mostly forgot they were translated by Pylo, but others that were guttural, sharp animal cries in the very same voices that were none the less part of the songs and chants all the same.
Sometimes there were lulls or moments where she was not even sure that the sounds she was hearing was music at all, sometimes she was sure it was interference or indistinct murmuring and then suddenly it would crystalize and she would realize the rhythm had been there, building, waiting to reveal itself.
Occasionally everything would twist around, change tempo, snap into an entirely different rhythm. In concert, in unison, like a wave of motion through all of the teeming froth of indistinct crowd all around them.
Percussive cracks and sharp twangs followed with the flash and spark of light spiraling in unison around them. Were those actual canons?
It was a spectacle constantly new and unfolding.
Too many stories to follow every word, every lyric. It was like being in the middle of a murmuring crowd in a valley, but every murmur sang alongside and in wythm with each other. It was piercing, it was beautiful. It was like a musical expression of what her teachers and lecturers tried to sensationalize the great choral network of Terra as.
It made her feel almost like maybe she could understand the endless poetic nonsense that passed for sensible communication about the afterlife between Quarti and Omega.
But it also just kept going on.
She had actually fallen asleep after Quarti finally had to admit defeat and give up.
It is just for all the endless beauty of every intricate melody an endless concert was just too much for her to keep attention on.
When she woke up it was the music. She felt refreshed but also a bit deeply uncomfortable.
The droning, rising emotion was just as beautiful and haunting and new. It was a chant of lives, of living, of celebration. She could put attention on those voices in the background, pick out their individual stories if she wanted.
But there were some rather desperate needs that were becoming very prominent. And having those issues come up once in the bubble way back in Redweed was enough for a lifetime.
Which is why Squidgie was a wonder and a blessing and she was really even more guilty for giving her ward such a silly name.
But Squidgie did not mind and was wonderful in spite of it.
"I figured you would want a partition tent and proper facilities Ma'am."
It had taken her several more hours to be able to actually admit she had to use the thing. Especially with the intense gaze of so many upon them.
But eventually she was fit to burst!
She was not going to think about it. The partition had not felt very thick against the weight of so much attention. Lead lining and faraday-cage-layer notwithstanding.
The entire population of Terra in curious aliens had been staring at her little tent in her little bubble while she used the facilities.
Quarti and Omega seemed a lot less shy about it.
At least the smell was somehow taken care of and Squidgie seemed completely nonchalant about stepping through the membrane of the bubble after folding up the little tent and then waving to one of the 'lesser masters' that was trailing behind them and making gestures and various motions that were not translated or provided to her by Pylo or the little box embedded in the bubble.
She watched anyway, because she could only gawk at the slowly enveloping 'sheets' wrapping around them for so long.
And honestly after the twenty-fifth epic battle of ballads she was getting a bit numb to Pylo's perfectly precise take downs.
Omega was filling two notebooks at once with a vaguely distant look in her eyes still though, so at least someone was entertained.
A big shimmering clear off white orb was produced from the little bag, and the 'lesser master' hefted it from hand to hand with some kind of expression. it might be discerning, or she might just be projecting human mannerisms to the way the eyes closed slightly and seemed intent to focus on the sealed orb.
It could be disgust considering the undeniable nature of what he was handling.
However after a slow blink of all four eyes staring directly at Squidgie and some bob of the remodeled clerk's own head Squidgie came back into the bubble with a wide grin on her screen and the folded up 'facilities'.
Aleph leaned a little over to spot the lesser master stowing the orb in a sleeve, which gave her enough pause that before she could ask Squidgie about what all of that was about the clerk was already gushing in a stream of delighted words!
"Oh splendid news ma'am! It turns out that you have several much sought after enzymes released by and molecular transformations performed in your digestive and circulatory filtration processes!"
Quarti nearly choked on her own tongue smothering her laughter.
"I will need to confer with Elsie and the gastronomicist's profiles but it is likely that we can pay for quite a number of local goods in exchange for you eating some specified prepared materials."
Aleph blinked a bit and opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by her exuberant ward.
"Oh and don't worry, I checked already, and they are both commonly practiced as and projected-to-be delicious delicacies. We just need to make sure there are not any long term health impacts my own data processing would miss."
She paused long enough for it to get awkward, but also just in case Squidgie had anymore to say.
Then she cleared her throat and spoke up over the choking gasps of Quarti.
"They want to pay us"
Squidgie nodded.
"To eat food they prepare that you say will be delicious?"
Squidgie nodded.
"So they can keep the... result?"
Squidgie nodded again then made a face of wonder and realization.
"Oh of course! Terra is still a monoculture! I apologize that this must be very confusing for you! It is extremely common across the reef for many cycles of high grade processing to be performed in this manner. There is naturally usually mostly closed loops as very few organisms can survive without their precise biome's chemical balances and trace elements or lack of less common ones to their niche for that matter."
Squidhie nodded and their screen showed an image of arrows moving from one person to another.
"But of course, Naturally in monocultures waste is waste for all involved and best to be removed and dealt with, but in poly-cultures as is common throughout the reef even the byproducts toxic to entire ecosystems can often be cycled, filtered or accumulated in another and these can nest between well... everyone"
Aleph blinked a bit and considered that.
Quarti finally catching her breath gasped a bit.
"Wait-wait-waita so you be saying is like we shit bricks o gold?"
Squidgie smiled happily.
"Oh certainly not, no one would expect anyone but star corpse scavengers to have such heavy metals as a waste byproduct. It is closer to say you expel several useful pharmacological compounds for further refining"
Aleph furrowed her brow.
"So drugs?"
Squidgie turned back to the lesser master that she had been 'haggling' with and something apparently passed between them before turning back.
"I believe in this case they say that there was a very good compound for dye fixatives and a potent precursor to a um... It is inaccurate to call it such but I believe the equivalent is a Draconic painkiller and neurotoxin. You will have to ask Ship Mistress Pylo when she is less busy to clarify."
Aleph looked over at Quarti, then out to the vast billowing folds of a tent filled with as many people as lived on all of Terra when they left.
She wondered how many lived there now. Did they already begin a new batch of colony deals?
Were there more charity cases like them?
Was Terra already starting to turn a profit for traders now with some random thing?
Were they one day going to be much like these people here?
All of them singing for sparse reoccuring visitors.
Her thoughts were broken by a sudden and great haunting deep tone joining the songs as the envelope drew ever closer together. Like the petals of a vast flower.
The 'sound' was too big for her.
It was something that felt like it should make her bones tremble.
It blasted all thought and musing for a moment from her mind.
Then in the quiet Aleph could not help herself and just murmured in baffled confusion.
"We poop dragon painkillers?"
Of course Quarti could not stop laughing for almost thirty minutes after she finally said it. And Aleph was pretty sure she only did that because she couldn't properly breath and laugh at the same time.
If you like weirdo life sim games by the way I have been slowly working on one, it's super alpha though right now.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
- Location
- USA
That last part reminded me of all of the jokes about how cats and dogs probably wonder why we keep collecting their poop.
Also, I hope you don't get bogged down trying to show us every little detail of the rap battle. I'd be perfectly happy if we just got the highlights and skipped to the less formal interactions.
Of course, this is your story, so feel free to ignore me, but I'm missing the more frequent updates, and i feel like I'm starting to forget some of the important parts, and I don't want to burn myself out on the setting by rereading for the 3rd time.
I think a big part of Topwebfictions ratings can be attributed to update frequency as well, as i hardly remember to vote for you unless there's been an update recently
Also, I hope you don't get bogged down trying to show us every little detail of the rap battle. I'd be perfectly happy if we just got the highlights and skipped to the less formal interactions.
Of course, this is your story, so feel free to ignore me, but I'm missing the more frequent updates, and i feel like I'm starting to forget some of the important parts, and I don't want to burn myself out on the setting by rereading for the 3rd time.
I think a big part of Topwebfictions ratings can be attributed to update frequency as well, as i hardly remember to vote for you unless there's been an update recently
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Actually the content of this update has not been so much that has been impacting the update frequency. It's been more about trying to clear my other story out of the way and then the whole hectic mess that is real life right now. I am fortunately one of the people who can do their job from home but the work life balance on that is still a little screwy.
There is not going to be much more of the explicitly written rap battles. And stuff should be closing up for Tradition in another four or five-ish updates.
Then there is gonna be something a lot more character-ful and slice of life, and then a few secrets and past things being shown and then a pretty big perspective shift.
Also on rereading things I occasionally read along whenever a new person jumps onto this and starts like bombing and as far as I can tell as long as it's not TOO often the story is quite entertaining to go over at least a dozen times.
A lot of variety and stuff is more apparent when you are not stuck to the slower pace that writing necessitates.
Tradition 0.6
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.6
Omega thanked Squidgie for another set of notebooks.
"Of course Ma'am! If you run out I can also memorize them and clean the current sets as well."
There had just been too much to go over and it continued to unfold all around her.
It had started as a procession through open sky.
Surrounded by thronging crowds of people above, below and to every side. So distant that they were like specks of multi-colored dust and glitter yet so numerous that they flowed like clouds of cheering motion.
With the landscape coiled around them in a spiraling hoop of cliffs, mountains, stones, landscape lashed and engraved in hauntingly familiar greens and browns of the foothills and valleys of home.
There was some disorientation of course, reminders of just how far from terra they really were. The expanses of white flowing structures, sprawlings cities, little forests and isolated towers, farms, fields and everything else was looped around them.
It was like someone had skinned terra and spun the lands of the plate all around her.
And then as the procession continued, moving ahead to the triplet of still yet distant towers, like three white skewers just barely 'not' meeting together she watched the skittering envelopes and shapes and streamers and so many others weave together. Brought upon the effort of the crowds, closing ever tighter together. Slowly knitting and weaving and fusing together into ever more complete multi-hued sheets.
It was enclosing them, sealing on all sides, filled with the lights too distant to distinguish what they were. Backlit by the bursting lights of celebrations.
She knew she was going to suffer for lack of sleep from all of this, but who could sleep in the midst of all this music? All these sights? Everywhere she looked another soul in her share strained to share her wonder.
Structural engineers, weavers, musicians, artists, pyrotechnicians, crystal weavers, dancers, metal workers.
The souls of the dead were almost as eager to share in her senses and mingle their knowledge with hers as she was to call them up.
But as they traveled the reach became more tenuous.
The crystals were going more and more distant.
It strained her until she had to give up on her newest method and instead choose a mere three to carry with her beyond the reach of Tunie and the store of souls in her berth.
That had been expected but she had tried to keep the flow of them going as long as possible.
But as the distance mounted and the connection grew difficult to keep clear and coherent she finally had to choose who would join her.
In the end she had settled for a Chronicler, a Naturalist and an Anthropologist. Settling them alongside her own soul and nestled in a store of a few storage crystals.
She had not been able to get consent from most of her favorites. But these three had been of an adventurous sort. And eager enough to risk themselves to fates worse than death.
Omega could not blame the others though.
It was one thing to ride a shaman while your soul was mostly secure behind lead, gold and insulation in a solid crystal matrix.
It was another to actually join her on an adventure riding in a knapsack with a significantly smaller crystal or if worse came to worse directly in her spine and pelvic symbiote stores.
Most terrans didn't even use the hollows stores beyond those in their face and spine!
But these three? They took it.
She felt the trembling whispers of awestruck wonder at Quarti, the endless teller of tales.
In some circles of the afterlife's whirling pandemonium she was even called the Dream Empress.
Omega had honestly thought the souls that took to that particular degree of hero worship were a bit creepy. And she had tried to filter against anyone being that obsessive. But beggers can't be choosers.
This soul was not even fully conscious really, not yet anyway. It would take a while for them to build up the store of prayer needed to be that involved.
But even in the half asleep semi-stasis of the crystals one of the souls reached out in trembling wonder at the blazing fire of Quarti's Spirit. She could feel the little flickering chords of meaning that would in the following days build into a coherent soul.
Ugh she was going to have a devotee riding her and gawking and fawning over every word Quarti said. You'd think anyone who dealt with Quarti would know better.
But then again so it was with the afterlife, if there was something that could be taken to extremely disturbing extremes, well there was always a soul that was pushing well past any point of sanity that.
Omega shuddered and focused on something else.
As a shaman she was well acquainted with such strange and twisted parts of the choir. And plenty of souls she rode through herself carried baggage of all manner of deviant obsession and fetish.
That Quarti was not even stranger and more bizzarre was a blessing she suspected Aleph would never realize.
Not with them being off and alone separated from the heritage of Terra's dead.
Well except for the strange little nuggets of those old forums that they brought with them among the dead.
And Quarti herself.
She mused as her fingers flickered through the notebooks like her words were fire burning through the pages.
This was an alien culture, it was as many individuals if Pylo and Elsie could be believed as all of Terra combined!
Nations worth of people pulling together an artifact bigger then every work of Humankind. Unified in a way that even the arrival of literal aliens had failed to bring her people together.
All of this effort for this moment.
A structure that she was almost certain was being purpose-built for Pylo's arrival.
She could not conceive that they had some how kept it simply laying around for millenia. But then again maybe they had? Which was more likely? Which would baffle and amaze her more?
All around them this teeming throng of people was singing and performing for her, playing music for her. In instruments that reached in and out of the familiar, tones and sounds and roaring crashing waves of motion as phantasms of sensation.
She knew that Pylo was mediating the experience, mediating the roar, the waves of music rolling over and over her from all around.
Quarti was there too in the music, facilitating in her own soul's voice layers and meanings and tones that would have been lacking if the Siren alone was merely tweaking and twisting and expressing to her nervous system directly.
It was a torrent of information and yet it also faded into murmuring background whenever she turned her attention away from some facet.
It should have been louder than loud! An overwhelming garbled mess of sheer torrential noise.
But it was mediated by her focus, by what was important by so many other things that she could not even guess at.
The Naturalist with her had once tried to be a musician, had failed out of joining the great choirs and orchestras. Had found a new love in the study of Terra's many insects and plants and smaller creatures.
In death they had woven memories of music and insect song and whispered them through the valleys and rode the communal songs and lullabies of Aoria for sustenance and prayer.
Finding music after death in the way creatures lived and integrated and symbiotically thrived through Terra's tissues.
And now here so far from home the lessons in music lingered and now were at the forefront of Omega's mind. They could recognize the sensation as one they were familiar with. And Omega too felt an echo of her own methods in shamanism.
They were not just being brute translated into this music.
They were being translated into a deeper context, not just the language but the attention as well.
It was dynamic, it was fluid, it had to be constantly operating on her own thoughts, attention and senses to properly convey for her everything that she would need to know.
Elsie had said that a Siren was worth thousands of humans in what she could do.
And in this moment she felt she could just about grasp it. Having every single voice of literally uncountable singers open to her comprehension if she just turned her attention to them effortlessly?
This was what a Siren was.
"That's amazing."
She caught herself murmuring it and Pylo's voice rode along with the music soft and gentle as can be, almost fitting into voids within the song rather than fighting to be heard.
"Thank you I guess? It's not really all that hard, I figured out how to listen to them after the third visit. And you have a pretty similar aesthetics. Glad you like it though Omega."
The tone of voice seemed a little bit, annoyed which considering how much she was working to funnel all this along? Omega looked out the bubble to where Pylo was still verbally sparring with the Frog People Aliens.
She held herself differently here, Splayed out and wider, limbs rolling about. It was uncanny how much she changed. How she flowed out of the familiar Terran cues into an entirely different set, but still suggested them anyway.
Omega could still hear Pylo's jabs and verbal word play in the rhythm even as she had spoken to her.
"Oh! I'm sorry to distract you, that must be very complicated."
That led to a soft unintrusive laugh. A subtle shift of shoulders and a motion of the head in time with it even as it was also in time with the performance. Keeping the two contexts straight was dizzying.
"Oh don't worry Omega, You're not distracting anything like most of me, in fact this is rather nice."
"It will help distract a few threads and keep them fresh and a bit more engaged. Honestly most of me is getting terribly bored with doing all of this. We figured it all out 'FOREVER' ago."
The exasperated agitation came a lot more clear. Pylo was bored? Annoyed? Agitated? With handling a literal billion strong orchestra of song and musical instruments?!
"Any siren could hold a thousand unrelated conversations like the one I'm having with you right now simultaneously. She would not even notice if there was nothing particularly surprising or requiring much decision making. In fact I'm not even conscious of this one yet."
Omega stopped writing and boggled a bit.
Aleph leaned to look over her shoulder from her discussion with Squidgie then leaned back over with the modified Clerk and filled the bubble with a more fervent whispered discussion.
In the stillness that followed she felt a clenching pain in her palms.
Her hands were cramping, she had been trying to keep the grip loose, the muscles relaxed, as soft and gentle an effort as she could. But a day of writing notes was too much.
"That looks like it's going to hurt, what is with Terrans and pushing themselves to failure like this? Quarti is atrocious at setting proper bandwidth limits, Aleph literally won't sleep until she can't see straight. And look at you."
Her symbiotes were exhausting themselves. Well beyond the heat of over-exerting too fast this was the dulling, painful ache and sting of actual borderline starvation.
Her head was going to be a foggy mess.
Her resonance and voice with the souls a tired slog as she tried to rebuild her reso-enhancing stores of bacteria.
How long had it been?
"Uh, I guess, we are just kinda... stubborn like that?"
She stilled her fingers again and yet even though there was relief stopping the motion seemed almost more exhausting and painful then continuing.
There was an 'audible' huff of exasperation from the siren, or some shard thereof. How did that work? Elsie said something about siren neurology. Something Paralleled.
Her thoughts felt like they raced but she was sluggish and frustrated.
She was not going to be any good to anyone if this kept up.
Her eyes hurt, her jaw was over clenched.
She forced joints to relax, unfurl, her muscles to still. Her breathing to be even.
Omega was drowning in wonders and they still had not even finished arriving!
"Hey, Pylo... could you tone all of this down a bit? Or something? I think I should sleep."
They were still being welcomed and going through the motions of politeness!
She needed to rest, to stop despite all the tantalizing vistas and new secrets on display.
All the strange alien things.
She had to sleep or she would not be ready for the next disaster, the next surprise, the next moment when her focus would be required.
Omega breathed deep and steady, she let every motion still, she relaxed the communion with the souls and had them rest back in her satchel asleep and dead in crystal.
She turned attention inward from the sensations and the music faded to just an impression.
"Sure I'll just shift the excitement and frisson down to something more in line with your sleep rhythms."
Just the subtle swell and drop of an idea.
Rhythm alien but soothing. Like rain now, like the wind in the mountains howling, like the call of animals freshly risen by the waters, briefly flowing in brooks and ponds and puddles through the valleys.
She breathed and let nothing but the ebb and flow of her breath, the blood in her veins the feelings of her soul cycle through her attention.
She let her symbiotes settle at last.
She would be starving when she woke, having pushed them far too long for far too hard.
"Could you like, I dunno record it or something for me later, Want to go over these later..."
But now it was rest, it was peace, it was the rhythm of quiet things.
How the same music could be both the most soothing lullaby and the most raucous celebration she briefly wondered.
Pylo was so soft spoken, so soothing, so gentle.
"Alright Omega, sleep well, I'll pass the translation to Squidgie for you to listen to later."
And then Omega settled and she was at last asleep.
0.6
Omega thanked Squidgie for another set of notebooks.
"Of course Ma'am! If you run out I can also memorize them and clean the current sets as well."
There had just been too much to go over and it continued to unfold all around her.
It had started as a procession through open sky.
Surrounded by thronging crowds of people above, below and to every side. So distant that they were like specks of multi-colored dust and glitter yet so numerous that they flowed like clouds of cheering motion.
With the landscape coiled around them in a spiraling hoop of cliffs, mountains, stones, landscape lashed and engraved in hauntingly familiar greens and browns of the foothills and valleys of home.
There was some disorientation of course, reminders of just how far from terra they really were. The expanses of white flowing structures, sprawlings cities, little forests and isolated towers, farms, fields and everything else was looped around them.
It was like someone had skinned terra and spun the lands of the plate all around her.
And then as the procession continued, moving ahead to the triplet of still yet distant towers, like three white skewers just barely 'not' meeting together she watched the skittering envelopes and shapes and streamers and so many others weave together. Brought upon the effort of the crowds, closing ever tighter together. Slowly knitting and weaving and fusing together into ever more complete multi-hued sheets.
It was enclosing them, sealing on all sides, filled with the lights too distant to distinguish what they were. Backlit by the bursting lights of celebrations.
She knew she was going to suffer for lack of sleep from all of this, but who could sleep in the midst of all this music? All these sights? Everywhere she looked another soul in her share strained to share her wonder.
Structural engineers, weavers, musicians, artists, pyrotechnicians, crystal weavers, dancers, metal workers.
The souls of the dead were almost as eager to share in her senses and mingle their knowledge with hers as she was to call them up.
But as they traveled the reach became more tenuous.
The crystals were going more and more distant.
It strained her until she had to give up on her newest method and instead choose a mere three to carry with her beyond the reach of Tunie and the store of souls in her berth.
That had been expected but she had tried to keep the flow of them going as long as possible.
But as the distance mounted and the connection grew difficult to keep clear and coherent she finally had to choose who would join her.
In the end she had settled for a Chronicler, a Naturalist and an Anthropologist. Settling them alongside her own soul and nestled in a store of a few storage crystals.
She had not been able to get consent from most of her favorites. But these three had been of an adventurous sort. And eager enough to risk themselves to fates worse than death.
Omega could not blame the others though.
It was one thing to ride a shaman while your soul was mostly secure behind lead, gold and insulation in a solid crystal matrix.
It was another to actually join her on an adventure riding in a knapsack with a significantly smaller crystal or if worse came to worse directly in her spine and pelvic symbiote stores.
Most terrans didn't even use the hollows stores beyond those in their face and spine!
But these three? They took it.
She felt the trembling whispers of awestruck wonder at Quarti, the endless teller of tales.
In some circles of the afterlife's whirling pandemonium she was even called the Dream Empress.
Omega had honestly thought the souls that took to that particular degree of hero worship were a bit creepy. And she had tried to filter against anyone being that obsessive. But beggers can't be choosers.
This soul was not even fully conscious really, not yet anyway. It would take a while for them to build up the store of prayer needed to be that involved.
But even in the half asleep semi-stasis of the crystals one of the souls reached out in trembling wonder at the blazing fire of Quarti's Spirit. She could feel the little flickering chords of meaning that would in the following days build into a coherent soul.
Ugh she was going to have a devotee riding her and gawking and fawning over every word Quarti said. You'd think anyone who dealt with Quarti would know better.
But then again so it was with the afterlife, if there was something that could be taken to extremely disturbing extremes, well there was always a soul that was pushing well past any point of sanity that.
Omega shuddered and focused on something else.
As a shaman she was well acquainted with such strange and twisted parts of the choir. And plenty of souls she rode through herself carried baggage of all manner of deviant obsession and fetish.
That Quarti was not even stranger and more bizzarre was a blessing she suspected Aleph would never realize.
Not with them being off and alone separated from the heritage of Terra's dead.
Well except for the strange little nuggets of those old forums that they brought with them among the dead.
And Quarti herself.
She mused as her fingers flickered through the notebooks like her words were fire burning through the pages.
This was an alien culture, it was as many individuals if Pylo and Elsie could be believed as all of Terra combined!
Nations worth of people pulling together an artifact bigger then every work of Humankind. Unified in a way that even the arrival of literal aliens had failed to bring her people together.
All of this effort for this moment.
A structure that she was almost certain was being purpose-built for Pylo's arrival.
She could not conceive that they had some how kept it simply laying around for millenia. But then again maybe they had? Which was more likely? Which would baffle and amaze her more?
All around them this teeming throng of people was singing and performing for her, playing music for her. In instruments that reached in and out of the familiar, tones and sounds and roaring crashing waves of motion as phantasms of sensation.
She knew that Pylo was mediating the experience, mediating the roar, the waves of music rolling over and over her from all around.
Quarti was there too in the music, facilitating in her own soul's voice layers and meanings and tones that would have been lacking if the Siren alone was merely tweaking and twisting and expressing to her nervous system directly.
It was a torrent of information and yet it also faded into murmuring background whenever she turned her attention away from some facet.
It should have been louder than loud! An overwhelming garbled mess of sheer torrential noise.
But it was mediated by her focus, by what was important by so many other things that she could not even guess at.
The Naturalist with her had once tried to be a musician, had failed out of joining the great choirs and orchestras. Had found a new love in the study of Terra's many insects and plants and smaller creatures.
In death they had woven memories of music and insect song and whispered them through the valleys and rode the communal songs and lullabies of Aoria for sustenance and prayer.
Finding music after death in the way creatures lived and integrated and symbiotically thrived through Terra's tissues.
And now here so far from home the lessons in music lingered and now were at the forefront of Omega's mind. They could recognize the sensation as one they were familiar with. And Omega too felt an echo of her own methods in shamanism.
They were not just being brute translated into this music.
They were being translated into a deeper context, not just the language but the attention as well.
It was dynamic, it was fluid, it had to be constantly operating on her own thoughts, attention and senses to properly convey for her everything that she would need to know.
Elsie had said that a Siren was worth thousands of humans in what she could do.
And in this moment she felt she could just about grasp it. Having every single voice of literally uncountable singers open to her comprehension if she just turned her attention to them effortlessly?
This was what a Siren was.
"That's amazing."
She caught herself murmuring it and Pylo's voice rode along with the music soft and gentle as can be, almost fitting into voids within the song rather than fighting to be heard.
"Thank you I guess? It's not really all that hard, I figured out how to listen to them after the third visit. And you have a pretty similar aesthetics. Glad you like it though Omega."
The tone of voice seemed a little bit, annoyed which considering how much she was working to funnel all this along? Omega looked out the bubble to where Pylo was still verbally sparring with the Frog People Aliens.
She held herself differently here, Splayed out and wider, limbs rolling about. It was uncanny how much she changed. How she flowed out of the familiar Terran cues into an entirely different set, but still suggested them anyway.
Omega could still hear Pylo's jabs and verbal word play in the rhythm even as she had spoken to her.
"Oh! I'm sorry to distract you, that must be very complicated."
That led to a soft unintrusive laugh. A subtle shift of shoulders and a motion of the head in time with it even as it was also in time with the performance. Keeping the two contexts straight was dizzying.
"Oh don't worry Omega, You're not distracting anything like most of me, in fact this is rather nice."
"It will help distract a few threads and keep them fresh and a bit more engaged. Honestly most of me is getting terribly bored with doing all of this. We figured it all out 'FOREVER' ago."
The exasperated agitation came a lot more clear. Pylo was bored? Annoyed? Agitated? With handling a literal billion strong orchestra of song and musical instruments?!
"Any siren could hold a thousand unrelated conversations like the one I'm having with you right now simultaneously. She would not even notice if there was nothing particularly surprising or requiring much decision making. In fact I'm not even conscious of this one yet."
Omega stopped writing and boggled a bit.
Aleph leaned to look over her shoulder from her discussion with Squidgie then leaned back over with the modified Clerk and filled the bubble with a more fervent whispered discussion.
In the stillness that followed she felt a clenching pain in her palms.
Her hands were cramping, she had been trying to keep the grip loose, the muscles relaxed, as soft and gentle an effort as she could. But a day of writing notes was too much.
"That looks like it's going to hurt, what is with Terrans and pushing themselves to failure like this? Quarti is atrocious at setting proper bandwidth limits, Aleph literally won't sleep until she can't see straight. And look at you."
Her symbiotes were exhausting themselves. Well beyond the heat of over-exerting too fast this was the dulling, painful ache and sting of actual borderline starvation.
Her head was going to be a foggy mess.
Her resonance and voice with the souls a tired slog as she tried to rebuild her reso-enhancing stores of bacteria.
How long had it been?
"Uh, I guess, we are just kinda... stubborn like that?"
She stilled her fingers again and yet even though there was relief stopping the motion seemed almost more exhausting and painful then continuing.
There was an 'audible' huff of exasperation from the siren, or some shard thereof. How did that work? Elsie said something about siren neurology. Something Paralleled.
Her thoughts felt like they raced but she was sluggish and frustrated.
She was not going to be any good to anyone if this kept up.
Her eyes hurt, her jaw was over clenched.
She forced joints to relax, unfurl, her muscles to still. Her breathing to be even.
Omega was drowning in wonders and they still had not even finished arriving!
"Hey, Pylo... could you tone all of this down a bit? Or something? I think I should sleep."
They were still being welcomed and going through the motions of politeness!
She needed to rest, to stop despite all the tantalizing vistas and new secrets on display.
All the strange alien things.
She had to sleep or she would not be ready for the next disaster, the next surprise, the next moment when her focus would be required.
Omega breathed deep and steady, she let every motion still, she relaxed the communion with the souls and had them rest back in her satchel asleep and dead in crystal.
She turned attention inward from the sensations and the music faded to just an impression.
"Sure I'll just shift the excitement and frisson down to something more in line with your sleep rhythms."
Just the subtle swell and drop of an idea.
Rhythm alien but soothing. Like rain now, like the wind in the mountains howling, like the call of animals freshly risen by the waters, briefly flowing in brooks and ponds and puddles through the valleys.
She breathed and let nothing but the ebb and flow of her breath, the blood in her veins the feelings of her soul cycle through her attention.
She let her symbiotes settle at last.
She would be starving when she woke, having pushed them far too long for far too hard.
"Could you like, I dunno record it or something for me later, Want to go over these later..."
But now it was rest, it was peace, it was the rhythm of quiet things.
How the same music could be both the most soothing lullaby and the most raucous celebration she briefly wondered.
Pylo was so soft spoken, so soothing, so gentle.
"Alright Omega, sleep well, I'll pass the translation to Squidgie for you to listen to later."
And then Omega settled and she was at last asleep.
Ah it's good to be getting back into this. Been experimenting with a lot of stuff behind the scenes. Tried out what commissioning another artist is like (A really enlightening experience but also helped show me just how complex it is to get across some of the stuff I now routinely do for the Reef is).
One of the projects I was working on professionally has finally been released so I get to tell y'all about it.
I was one of the Main Programmers implementing and optimizing on the PSVR port for Walking Dead Saints & Sinners.
Super proud of that getting out the door.
I'm also continuing work on that personal game project I mentioned.
Also Obligatory plug.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
On that note I've been hearing that Top Web Fiction is starting to falter, I might need a new space to promote Onward to Providence, anyone have suggestions? I'd like to avoid adding another place to mirror/cross post it if I can help it but getting more eyeballs would be nice, if only to get those few that really could use more xenofiction in their lives.
Anyway Stay safe Everyone
One of the projects I was working on professionally has finally been released so I get to tell y'all about it.
I was one of the Main Programmers implementing and optimizing on the PSVR port for Walking Dead Saints & Sinners.
Super proud of that getting out the door.
I'm also continuing work on that personal game project I mentioned.
Also Obligatory plug.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
On that note I've been hearing that Top Web Fiction is starting to falter, I might need a new space to promote Onward to Providence, anyone have suggestions? I'd like to avoid adding another place to mirror/cross post it if I can help it but getting more eyeballs would be nice, if only to get those few that really could use more xenofiction in their lives.
Anyway Stay safe Everyone
Last edited:
Tradition 0.7
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.7
Finally!
Pylo was so tired of going through one step of drudgery after another.
But the initial rigmarole was finished. Now came the final step before the proper opening ceremony would be engaged and she could finish sculpting the payload for The People's Tradition.
She was skewing herself a bit with it all, the opening greeting was barely begun and yet she had been grinding through the repetitious terminally boring status displays and little posturings and tunings. If they were not actually people she could have drifted serenely through the whole exchange completely unaware.
Just executing a simple and elegant little perturbation of the cultural experience and then inoculating and correcting a few drifts. Basic hygiene for the people and everything would be simple.
But that was a paradoxical absurdity and vapidly empty.
The People's Tradition could not exist without the people. And Pylo could not engage with it without honestly and directly engaging with them. Individually and in their multitudes.
As a figure and person herself.
As both a stimulus vector, an intrusive memetic payload and in her workings minute and broad a comparable structure as well.
It felt boring to be so slow and grating on and on as they approached.
It was barely an instant to be on the brink of a whispered friendly greeting.
All of it was skewing her as the necessary temporal textures filled into each other and built off of each other.
And then there was the periodic punctuation of the discussions she was having with the Terrans. The ongoing thread of back translating near thoughtlessly the results of the ceremonies so far.
So many things though were culminating here and now at this moment though.
The reveal!
The smothering pooling fluids and the trembling vibrations of actual auditory language and music.
It was slow going but the seals had been finished, the great cocoon was finished and as she engaged now with the elders, the core that stood as a pivot and focus to reflect and reveal their nature in all the people.
The thick hugging smothering pressure would finish saturating her every crevice. Honestly if not for the Terran's habitat this would be the first time she got this squeezed and scummy with the sizzle of oxygen since the stop at their home polity.
But here it was, the contests were over.
The music died down.
"Ho-eh Elders, Long since we spoke. I am gladened that I see no new faces and no missing amongst you since last. It is good you have fared well between since our parting."
In stages they moved. It was as they always had moved and also was a cover for preparations performed by the people.
A cover for the transition from one set of instruments tuned to long light and the languages of void to another that would carry in the fluid of the arrival tent's newly built atmosphere.
The Elders acknowledged her and took up their preordained places.
Doreidorefa was the veteran of the elders of this council in experience with Pylo and age. Having been there for seven of Pylo's visits.
Although this would be the third consecutive time she had been awake for the exchange.
The keepers of the deepest wisdom of the order of pathwrights. Those that reinforced tradition's foundations.
A counter part of the significantly younger Feireilatala, Elder of Sacred Heretics, those that thought what others were forbidden and shaped new orders into being.
There had been two who held her position before Doreidorefa ascended to it. One lost to plague and another to a misstep with the alliance to their host tree.
Then there was Lafasoreitirei who was something of an anomaly, there were hardly enough disciples of this elder to warrant the naming of an order. Yet they had a seat in this council.
Their work was a paradox of being far too rarely applicable and yet too important and vital to set aside in storage. They spoke to those beasts which could speak, those wanderers that were from beyond the hollow, the trees which thought in ages to life times and the tidings and messages of long past missives from afar.
The small knit band of students and apprentices was tiny as a result, pulled from likely candidates in all the others and nominally unimportant and un-needed in the lives of the people or the functioning of most of the orders.
But either Lafasoreitirei or one holding her place in the council was always here to greet Pylo and arrange the ritual of Exchange.
To speak for the people and the Council.
Lafasoreitirei extended a hand to Doreidorefa and Pylo watched the passing of and confirming of the limb song between them. The encapsulating and reaffirming of the old ways via the Veteran to the speaker.
"Pylo Daughter of the Mother Courtesan. Kin to she now unknown who did bring us the first rights of our order and gave us the seed of the Mother Courtesan."
Pylo was very tempted to omit most of this from the terrans but that would be wrong on so many levels and it's not like she could avoid revealing her family's esteem here for the whole trip.
Oh she also probably already messed up any of that anyway when she was doing the requisite dueling.
Yeah she probably had.
She watched how Lafasoreitirei performed the role of a siren admirably in conveying the essence of the preserved passages of greeting.
"Who forged the compact of the people here amidst the boughs of the Doreimeefasolati. Securing us with its own alliance that it may punish and protect us all."
Pylo gaped in agreement, a bit of a reaffirming of their own stakes in the hidden origins and knowledge of the people, clarifying and reinforcing the truth that Pylo had hinted and suggested on her approach to quell and overwhelm her 'adversaries'.
"We welcome you back to our place, the home of the people and declare the great exchange begun."
The other elders, many of them that Pylo had never seen but once before, and a few of those several visits earlier than her last took up their posture. They did not wield the metal peripherals of most of the people. They used other artifice to move in the weft of the cocoon. Later they would be swimming through the comparatively thick fluid that was filling up the space.
But for now it was a magic of a primitive sort. All played into cementing their mastery of hidden arts beyond the ken of their lessers.
"So we do come together to trade and grow. To enrich and know, To become and prosper!"
Ah at last!
Now it was Pylo's turn, she mustered the packet, and spread her voice out, it echoed and flowed to every single being in attendance. Ringing her message and dealings to all so that Tradition could fully know her.
"First of trade is this!"
She sang the words among their languages, in the limb song of closest contact, in the open song as cast by void, in the fluid song of creches and youngling teachings.
In the song and words of lovers nestled together in a cocoon of air and of parents humming to the children nestled in their throats.
In every language of the People she spoke.
"I bring you fine and fresh new magic, extract of an ancient beast afar. honed for the storage of knowledge and spirits."
Schemata were provided to the Elders most closely tied to manufacturing but the deepest specifications were for Feireilatala so that the necessary work of divining a fresh tradition to work the raw material could be done.
"Carved and used crudely by those that harvested it before."
A few inclinations to draw attention to the terrans to indicate.
"Potential for the working innumerable, a wonder for the people to know. Seeds of an entire minor order, For mastery I am confident you will sow."
The terrans (Quarti and Omega in Particular) made a lot of noise about that but Pylo huffed several assurances more privately to them so.
She was well aware of which stores she had acquired for her own trade and which were marked for delivery to their destination. Really she was a trader of nominally good standing with her peers!
That drew several of the Elder's interest but they did not inquire to Pylo on that yet.
A gesture from The Eldest of Sacred Heretics brushed against the Speaker and Lafasoreitirei intoned.
"Just so? Just so. New magic is welcome among the people, for you can never know when a fresh spear or wonder will serve to counter or calm the beasts and trees. The Elder Feireilatala accepts the challenge of this new magic. On your next visit we will discuss whether it forged wonders worthy of us."
The jab was friendly and Pylo replied with a sharp bark of laughter. It was interesting how there was such a close expression for Terran and the words of the People.
"I expect then that Feireilatala will be long since asleep by then, having mastered the newest traditions. Such is the skill of the Sacred Heretics."
There was noncommittal eye contact from the elders before as a unified front every elder withdrew and contracted their necks and limbs to show they were ready to lunge into the next item.
"I have also procured the words, songs and stories of all in my travels."
The highest ranking orders of the council showed only the minimum required interest for decorem. But Pylo could feel the boring interest from those that had followed her in the procession at her dorsal sides.
"To be sung to the relevant orders at your direction. Tales of beasts, tales of love, tales of craft and tales of woe."
Waves of more interest of all kinds flowing and bubbling in the lesser Elders and masters.
"I promise and swear as in the past I have sifted and supped every curse and vengeful spirit from these words and they are clean and safe for your knowing."
That brought eager looking gapes of ascent from the elders. Eyes opening wide in covetous want and then closing in serenity and comfort. Calm and assurance that they trusted her ascent. However Pylo knew that was all for show to those watching and to no belittle the efforts and needs of the less central orders.
Pylo too mirrored them, friendly gape and then gentle measures of expressing her comfort and assurance that they were not foe or predator.
There would likely be among them those that she would never see again, and others she would meet with or at least be passed on as a tale to their replacements.
Lafasoreitirei spoke up, her words and the expansively coiling braids behind each eye looping and coiling in a manner that Pylo had noticed seemed vaguely inspired by her own posturing many visits past.
The lineage of the practice mirroring her.
Tradition was being coy and silly again.
"Are there new items of trade for the People unknown and unspoken of before in any legend or lore?"
Pylo swayed her head in the officious partial commitment of truth on t echnicallity.
"It is such that there are no further goods unknown, but there are yet matters of exchange after."
The speaker gaped ascent and agreement and curiosity and consideration flowed in the people and the elders all. She had not had unprecedented business of this nature with them before.
"So we move on to the matters known and solid."
The elders all shifted and arranged themselves, brushing fingers and hands against Lafasoreitirei to speak their measure and position.
It was mostly for show, the Council had discussed this at length consistently and were ever hearing complaints and open quests and statements of loss from all the other orders.
But to show that even here and now the council convened for the sake of the people was necessary. A punctuation of tradition showing that the ways of the people were always followed by those at its heart.
"you have the sacred metals? Which are sparse and empty of all but the most terribly guarded hearts of the beasts of the forest? Or the forbidden cores of the trees? To what degree have you brought us such precious gifts?"
Pylo gaped ascent, it was not strictly speaking the best mass to profit ratio cargo, as there were only a few ports like this one that the dross was worth anything close to Interstellar rates.
But the local ecology around here sucked up and guarded every scrap of the elements involved for use in their own metabolisms.
Which meant that beyond risking terrible retaliation it was all but impossible to get anything but specks of the stuff locally.
The people actually referred to almost a dozen different elements as Sacred metals, but in the latest haul she only had three of them in any bulk and most of that was alloyed or aggregated with less valuable things.
But still in a form that the people could use their own means to extract and refine it to what they needed.
Equally the metal was a vital ingredient in many of the very same crafts she was going to be procuring here.
So it was not strictly speaking unprofitable either, and they always threw the necessary feeding to absolve Tunie's expenses in sweeping through here.
Which helped considerably.
"I have filled a store of Tunie's hold with the sacred metals, they are in many raw forms diverse but hold all the forbidden forms and will forge well if purified."
Lafasoreitirei whose path and mastery was that of dealings between the caravans and great hunting flights that sometimes entered from beyond the local hollow gaped ascent and agreement.
"And of the knowing stones? The deep magics which even strain your great mastery and riddles? We are running sparse on all of them, but most deeply do the orders of Boring of the far tree of Kahrkauloindi wish for the stones of Igni, Soli, and Veritanin."
Pylo slapped her maw apart and flapped her tongue once sharply. Negation and then a solemn apologetic clench down her body.
The flap of understood and acknowledged negation mirrored her.
"While I have some of many. But not all, with remorse I say that I lack any known to the people as Igni, Soli or Veritanin."
A brushing of hands across all the elders, sending words of the limb song in cycles and loops through the entire council. This was not for show, a disruption from hoped for prediction.
After the flurry of motion Lafasoreitirei took position again.
The speaker intoned with the grave proclamation.
"It is with Remorse then that all people and masters who work Kahrkauloindi will be recalled and retired until such time as you can bring the stones. We must set what remains of the magics into reserve and have their elders entombed to secure the knowledge of their working for the future."
Then the call went out and other speakers echoed the tone. The message was carried out beyond the tent to those that could not attend.
"The Borers, Canopy Hunters, Delvers, Bark Cleavers, Trackers, Wood Forgers and Watchers of the star who lived by the Leaf of Kahrkauloindi shall halt all training. Shall cease all breeding and call their kin and kind home for the feasts of mourning and remembrance."
There was pain and a sense of betrayal and despair among the announced lesser orders. There were waves of dismay in the people of those groups. The livelihoods and futures snuffed out.
Pylo focused on the dealings before her and tried to ignore the whispering words. She knew they would not unduly suffer.
Those that could be apprenticed in other paths would be reduced.
Those that were learned enough to hold secret knowledge would be sent to the tombs.
Those that could not serve as either were to diminish in serviceless obscurity until natural death.
The meetings continued
"Do you have the seeds to enrich our beasts? The far distant and foreign stock to bring them great resilience to our devourers? Our wyrms? Our threshers and carvers?"
Pylo gaped ascent and flexed in delight. This was always an easy deal, practically free clout with the People.
"I have tasted the variance of many beasts and know their flesh. I will be able to enrich and foster fresher and better lines in your stocks. As it has been."
The speaker bowed and intoned.
"So it shall be."
It was a given she could always trade this, Pylo was a Siren after all.
But still needed to be said, it helped the drift of genetic lines in the people's various animals. And it always boosted things nicely whenever she could not get a port to manufacture the necessary trinkets for the People in her route.
Lafasoreitirei considered carefully then drew back into the furled spiraling nest of her own braids.
Forward came an eldest of war and the grandest of hunts, who saw to the guardianship against the beasts and the awakening of flights and great motions against the enemies and parasites of themselves and the grove that only tolerated the people's presence for their compliance in such.
Again Pylo had only ever seen this elder once before. But that had been several visits ago.
There was a single slap against the cheek of the speakers's cheek. A sharp curt and compact digest that they nodded and then sang forth. The words were now flowing lightly in the tinny rarified fluids of the inner atmosphere.
"Now it is time for you to tell us of the curses you have learned oh Pylo, Daughter of the Mother Courtesan, Legend and terrible slayer with words. Who once was called the foulest of beings among the people. Terrible and Beautiful as the branches of Doreimeefasolati itself."
That was one of the issues with Tradition always tweaking the narrative of how Pylo would be received. Sometimes it swayed an elder here or there to a particular mindset.
Then again that was kind of the point.
"Tell us what curses of slaying you have brought in word and thought, what weapons of flesh and plagues of malice you burden your mouth full with the terrible spawn of war with? What enemies can you slay with the diseases of your breath?"
The Eldest of war snapped sharply without the softness of ascent. But the speaker softened it to something more beseeching.
"What fruits of doom do you bring us?"
Pylo spoke only to the speaker, her voice muffled and silent, she even held back from the words even reaching the terrans. The silence was stifling.
She told them of the many ways she had learned to kill a polity and a people with rumor and thought alone. How to wound the fabric of tradition, how to lacerate the bonds of the people.
And even then she held back from all the secrets, she left metaphor and placeholder for even more terrible dangers that only the most tightly trained minds of a specialist guild or sisterhood could ever hope to contain without becoming the very poison they sought to understand.
There would be another longer council with specific and selected orders to finish bestowing these payloads.
Held in a place secure from the eyes of the people.
"Truly you are the bringer of terrible wroth and madness oh Pylo daughter of Courtesan."
There was a solemn silence for all to consider which the Terrans asked questions in but no one paid them attention so it was not insulting. Much.
Then after that pause they continued.
"Do you bring with you the cargo of shimmer spore and hold room for the matured adults ready and waiting?"
Pylo gaped happily and waggled her head as if eager to snap up more morsels.
"Yes! And ready to take on a full harvest, how many have come to the people ripe and ready to be ferried?"
The speaker bowed and disappointingly informed Pylo that only half of the better yields seemed to be forthcoming this visit.
A pity but the payout to the right buyer was well worth the mass. Even if she had to haul the adult's spores all the way back to the People to keep the exchanges going.
And so it continued, each of the eldest brushing, slapping or gently pressing their own concerns to the speaker.
Lafasoreitirei honed and softened the words even though Pylo knew the eldest knew she could read every one of their requests made before her. It was a kind of theater for them all. A performance for the betterment of the audience.
The deals could have all been exchanged before she arrived.
Technically quite a few of them already had.
But the Festival and via it Tradition needed this.
Pylo dealt and parceled the favor of the people and the fruits of their labor for all to see. The treats and tricks and little wonders that were mere trash elsewhere and were priceless treasures here.
The equally mundane to them crafts of the people that when handed off to even the most esteemed of urban polity would be all but priceless raw materials or art-matter.
And then as they finished treading over the familiar and expected Pylo came to the last item of discussion for the Exchange before they could finally be done with this step of the whole process.
"And there is one other matter that I can offer the People, though it is of no obligation to them to take on this exchange. It is of no mere good or matter to be parceled like metal or seed."
Lafasoreitirei took the position and gaped ascent for Pylo to continue. The rest of the council prepared to engage her if it was involved in their own masteries.
"Tunie now carries a hold of living people from beyond the forest, who seek asylum and lives among those along my journeys. If the people so wish to take them on they are clever in mind and thought and well ordered to deep wisdom and memory."
The council considered that striking one another, running grazing digits along each other's flanks and limbs. Wrestling the discussion between them.
At last a consensus of sorts was made.
Lafasoreitirei closed all four eyes before speaking, a position of vulnerability, trust and submission.
"That is a matter that will require a more detailed convening and deeper dealings than is the matter of the Exchange. If it does not insult you Daughter of Courtesan, could we hold a council on this business after the feast?"
Well it was not a negation but Pylo supposed trying to inject an entirely new kind of person into a monoculture was probably going to be trickier than she could swing in the traditional venue.
"I give consent to you Lafasoreitirei and the Council. Let this Exchange be closed and move on to the Feast! I am sure all the people look forward to that."
There was cheering then filling the cocoon, the teeming multitude of the people laying into the prepared atmospheric instruments. Filling the volume with trembling vibrations and noise.
Oh that reminded her!
Pylo directed the attention of Feidoreila the eldest master of the order of hospitalitors, marketeers and smiths to the Terrans, Their pet clerk and ▙◀.
"Now that it is settled. I have brought guests! They will require more restricted diets and accommodations from the People in their own feasting than I."
The eldest hospitalitor gave them a considering eye then gaped and threw their head to direct the attention of Reilafeifei most esteemed master of the care and rearing of all beasts amongst the people.
The two shared a glance with Pylo and she spoke the words of training that they would know what she did of the Terrans.
The two masters gaped in thanks to her and then Reilafeifei after consideration rumbled.
"I can manage them for the feast but send for the masters of the Apeshearers to be pulled from their crypts. We will need their nuance and insight afterwards I expect."
Pylo supposed that sounded well. It was nice the People had something in their labyrinthine hierarchy to handle the terrans!
0.7
Finally!
Pylo was so tired of going through one step of drudgery after another.
But the initial rigmarole was finished. Now came the final step before the proper opening ceremony would be engaged and she could finish sculpting the payload for The People's Tradition.
She was skewing herself a bit with it all, the opening greeting was barely begun and yet she had been grinding through the repetitious terminally boring status displays and little posturings and tunings. If they were not actually people she could have drifted serenely through the whole exchange completely unaware.
Just executing a simple and elegant little perturbation of the cultural experience and then inoculating and correcting a few drifts. Basic hygiene for the people and everything would be simple.
But that was a paradoxical absurdity and vapidly empty.
The People's Tradition could not exist without the people. And Pylo could not engage with it without honestly and directly engaging with them. Individually and in their multitudes.
As a figure and person herself.
As both a stimulus vector, an intrusive memetic payload and in her workings minute and broad a comparable structure as well.
It felt boring to be so slow and grating on and on as they approached.
It was barely an instant to be on the brink of a whispered friendly greeting.
All of it was skewing her as the necessary temporal textures filled into each other and built off of each other.
And then there was the periodic punctuation of the discussions she was having with the Terrans. The ongoing thread of back translating near thoughtlessly the results of the ceremonies so far.
So many things though were culminating here and now at this moment though.
The reveal!
The smothering pooling fluids and the trembling vibrations of actual auditory language and music.
It was slow going but the seals had been finished, the great cocoon was finished and as she engaged now with the elders, the core that stood as a pivot and focus to reflect and reveal their nature in all the people.
The thick hugging smothering pressure would finish saturating her every crevice. Honestly if not for the Terran's habitat this would be the first time she got this squeezed and scummy with the sizzle of oxygen since the stop at their home polity.
But here it was, the contests were over.
The music died down.
"Ho-eh Elders, Long since we spoke. I am gladened that I see no new faces and no missing amongst you since last. It is good you have fared well between since our parting."
In stages they moved. It was as they always had moved and also was a cover for preparations performed by the people.
A cover for the transition from one set of instruments tuned to long light and the languages of void to another that would carry in the fluid of the arrival tent's newly built atmosphere.
The Elders acknowledged her and took up their preordained places.
Doreidorefa was the veteran of the elders of this council in experience with Pylo and age. Having been there for seven of Pylo's visits.
Although this would be the third consecutive time she had been awake for the exchange.
The keepers of the deepest wisdom of the order of pathwrights. Those that reinforced tradition's foundations.
A counter part of the significantly younger Feireilatala, Elder of Sacred Heretics, those that thought what others were forbidden and shaped new orders into being.
There had been two who held her position before Doreidorefa ascended to it. One lost to plague and another to a misstep with the alliance to their host tree.
Then there was Lafasoreitirei who was something of an anomaly, there were hardly enough disciples of this elder to warrant the naming of an order. Yet they had a seat in this council.
Their work was a paradox of being far too rarely applicable and yet too important and vital to set aside in storage. They spoke to those beasts which could speak, those wanderers that were from beyond the hollow, the trees which thought in ages to life times and the tidings and messages of long past missives from afar.
The small knit band of students and apprentices was tiny as a result, pulled from likely candidates in all the others and nominally unimportant and un-needed in the lives of the people or the functioning of most of the orders.
But either Lafasoreitirei or one holding her place in the council was always here to greet Pylo and arrange the ritual of Exchange.
To speak for the people and the Council.
Lafasoreitirei extended a hand to Doreidorefa and Pylo watched the passing of and confirming of the limb song between them. The encapsulating and reaffirming of the old ways via the Veteran to the speaker.
"Pylo Daughter of the Mother Courtesan. Kin to she now unknown who did bring us the first rights of our order and gave us the seed of the Mother Courtesan."
Pylo was very tempted to omit most of this from the terrans but that would be wrong on so many levels and it's not like she could avoid revealing her family's esteem here for the whole trip.
Oh she also probably already messed up any of that anyway when she was doing the requisite dueling.
Yeah she probably had.
She watched how Lafasoreitirei performed the role of a siren admirably in conveying the essence of the preserved passages of greeting.
"Who forged the compact of the people here amidst the boughs of the Doreimeefasolati. Securing us with its own alliance that it may punish and protect us all."
Pylo gaped in agreement, a bit of a reaffirming of their own stakes in the hidden origins and knowledge of the people, clarifying and reinforcing the truth that Pylo had hinted and suggested on her approach to quell and overwhelm her 'adversaries'.
"We welcome you back to our place, the home of the people and declare the great exchange begun."
The other elders, many of them that Pylo had never seen but once before, and a few of those several visits earlier than her last took up their posture. They did not wield the metal peripherals of most of the people. They used other artifice to move in the weft of the cocoon. Later they would be swimming through the comparatively thick fluid that was filling up the space.
But for now it was a magic of a primitive sort. All played into cementing their mastery of hidden arts beyond the ken of their lessers.
"So we do come together to trade and grow. To enrich and know, To become and prosper!"
Ah at last!
Now it was Pylo's turn, she mustered the packet, and spread her voice out, it echoed and flowed to every single being in attendance. Ringing her message and dealings to all so that Tradition could fully know her.
"First of trade is this!"
She sang the words among their languages, in the limb song of closest contact, in the open song as cast by void, in the fluid song of creches and youngling teachings.
In the song and words of lovers nestled together in a cocoon of air and of parents humming to the children nestled in their throats.
In every language of the People she spoke.
"I bring you fine and fresh new magic, extract of an ancient beast afar. honed for the storage of knowledge and spirits."
Schemata were provided to the Elders most closely tied to manufacturing but the deepest specifications were for Feireilatala so that the necessary work of divining a fresh tradition to work the raw material could be done.
"Carved and used crudely by those that harvested it before."
A few inclinations to draw attention to the terrans to indicate.
"Potential for the working innumerable, a wonder for the people to know. Seeds of an entire minor order, For mastery I am confident you will sow."
The terrans (Quarti and Omega in Particular) made a lot of noise about that but Pylo huffed several assurances more privately to them so.
She was well aware of which stores she had acquired for her own trade and which were marked for delivery to their destination. Really she was a trader of nominally good standing with her peers!
That drew several of the Elder's interest but they did not inquire to Pylo on that yet.
A gesture from The Eldest of Sacred Heretics brushed against the Speaker and Lafasoreitirei intoned.
"Just so? Just so. New magic is welcome among the people, for you can never know when a fresh spear or wonder will serve to counter or calm the beasts and trees. The Elder Feireilatala accepts the challenge of this new magic. On your next visit we will discuss whether it forged wonders worthy of us."
The jab was friendly and Pylo replied with a sharp bark of laughter. It was interesting how there was such a close expression for Terran and the words of the People.
"I expect then that Feireilatala will be long since asleep by then, having mastered the newest traditions. Such is the skill of the Sacred Heretics."
There was noncommittal eye contact from the elders before as a unified front every elder withdrew and contracted their necks and limbs to show they were ready to lunge into the next item.
"I have also procured the words, songs and stories of all in my travels."
The highest ranking orders of the council showed only the minimum required interest for decorem. But Pylo could feel the boring interest from those that had followed her in the procession at her dorsal sides.
"To be sung to the relevant orders at your direction. Tales of beasts, tales of love, tales of craft and tales of woe."
Waves of more interest of all kinds flowing and bubbling in the lesser Elders and masters.
"I promise and swear as in the past I have sifted and supped every curse and vengeful spirit from these words and they are clean and safe for your knowing."
That brought eager looking gapes of ascent from the elders. Eyes opening wide in covetous want and then closing in serenity and comfort. Calm and assurance that they trusted her ascent. However Pylo knew that was all for show to those watching and to no belittle the efforts and needs of the less central orders.
Pylo too mirrored them, friendly gape and then gentle measures of expressing her comfort and assurance that they were not foe or predator.
There would likely be among them those that she would never see again, and others she would meet with or at least be passed on as a tale to their replacements.
Lafasoreitirei spoke up, her words and the expansively coiling braids behind each eye looping and coiling in a manner that Pylo had noticed seemed vaguely inspired by her own posturing many visits past.
The lineage of the practice mirroring her.
Tradition was being coy and silly again.
"Are there new items of trade for the People unknown and unspoken of before in any legend or lore?"
Pylo swayed her head in the officious partial commitment of truth on t echnicallity.
"It is such that there are no further goods unknown, but there are yet matters of exchange after."
The speaker gaped ascent and agreement and curiosity and consideration flowed in the people and the elders all. She had not had unprecedented business of this nature with them before.
"So we move on to the matters known and solid."
The elders all shifted and arranged themselves, brushing fingers and hands against Lafasoreitirei to speak their measure and position.
It was mostly for show, the Council had discussed this at length consistently and were ever hearing complaints and open quests and statements of loss from all the other orders.
But to show that even here and now the council convened for the sake of the people was necessary. A punctuation of tradition showing that the ways of the people were always followed by those at its heart.
"you have the sacred metals? Which are sparse and empty of all but the most terribly guarded hearts of the beasts of the forest? Or the forbidden cores of the trees? To what degree have you brought us such precious gifts?"
Pylo gaped ascent, it was not strictly speaking the best mass to profit ratio cargo, as there were only a few ports like this one that the dross was worth anything close to Interstellar rates.
But the local ecology around here sucked up and guarded every scrap of the elements involved for use in their own metabolisms.
Which meant that beyond risking terrible retaliation it was all but impossible to get anything but specks of the stuff locally.
The people actually referred to almost a dozen different elements as Sacred metals, but in the latest haul she only had three of them in any bulk and most of that was alloyed or aggregated with less valuable things.
But still in a form that the people could use their own means to extract and refine it to what they needed.
Equally the metal was a vital ingredient in many of the very same crafts she was going to be procuring here.
So it was not strictly speaking unprofitable either, and they always threw the necessary feeding to absolve Tunie's expenses in sweeping through here.
Which helped considerably.
"I have filled a store of Tunie's hold with the sacred metals, they are in many raw forms diverse but hold all the forbidden forms and will forge well if purified."
Lafasoreitirei whose path and mastery was that of dealings between the caravans and great hunting flights that sometimes entered from beyond the local hollow gaped ascent and agreement.
"And of the knowing stones? The deep magics which even strain your great mastery and riddles? We are running sparse on all of them, but most deeply do the orders of Boring of the far tree of Kahrkauloindi wish for the stones of Igni, Soli, and Veritanin."
Pylo slapped her maw apart and flapped her tongue once sharply. Negation and then a solemn apologetic clench down her body.
The flap of understood and acknowledged negation mirrored her.
"While I have some of many. But not all, with remorse I say that I lack any known to the people as Igni, Soli or Veritanin."
A brushing of hands across all the elders, sending words of the limb song in cycles and loops through the entire council. This was not for show, a disruption from hoped for prediction.
After the flurry of motion Lafasoreitirei took position again.
The speaker intoned with the grave proclamation.
"It is with Remorse then that all people and masters who work Kahrkauloindi will be recalled and retired until such time as you can bring the stones. We must set what remains of the magics into reserve and have their elders entombed to secure the knowledge of their working for the future."
Then the call went out and other speakers echoed the tone. The message was carried out beyond the tent to those that could not attend.
"The Borers, Canopy Hunters, Delvers, Bark Cleavers, Trackers, Wood Forgers and Watchers of the star who lived by the Leaf of Kahrkauloindi shall halt all training. Shall cease all breeding and call their kin and kind home for the feasts of mourning and remembrance."
There was pain and a sense of betrayal and despair among the announced lesser orders. There were waves of dismay in the people of those groups. The livelihoods and futures snuffed out.
Pylo focused on the dealings before her and tried to ignore the whispering words. She knew they would not unduly suffer.
Those that could be apprenticed in other paths would be reduced.
Those that were learned enough to hold secret knowledge would be sent to the tombs.
Those that could not serve as either were to diminish in serviceless obscurity until natural death.
The meetings continued
"Do you have the seeds to enrich our beasts? The far distant and foreign stock to bring them great resilience to our devourers? Our wyrms? Our threshers and carvers?"
Pylo gaped ascent and flexed in delight. This was always an easy deal, practically free clout with the People.
"I have tasted the variance of many beasts and know their flesh. I will be able to enrich and foster fresher and better lines in your stocks. As it has been."
The speaker bowed and intoned.
"So it shall be."
It was a given she could always trade this, Pylo was a Siren after all.
But still needed to be said, it helped the drift of genetic lines in the people's various animals. And it always boosted things nicely whenever she could not get a port to manufacture the necessary trinkets for the People in her route.
Lafasoreitirei considered carefully then drew back into the furled spiraling nest of her own braids.
Forward came an eldest of war and the grandest of hunts, who saw to the guardianship against the beasts and the awakening of flights and great motions against the enemies and parasites of themselves and the grove that only tolerated the people's presence for their compliance in such.
Again Pylo had only ever seen this elder once before. But that had been several visits ago.
There was a single slap against the cheek of the speakers's cheek. A sharp curt and compact digest that they nodded and then sang forth. The words were now flowing lightly in the tinny rarified fluids of the inner atmosphere.
"Now it is time for you to tell us of the curses you have learned oh Pylo, Daughter of the Mother Courtesan, Legend and terrible slayer with words. Who once was called the foulest of beings among the people. Terrible and Beautiful as the branches of Doreimeefasolati itself."
That was one of the issues with Tradition always tweaking the narrative of how Pylo would be received. Sometimes it swayed an elder here or there to a particular mindset.
Then again that was kind of the point.
"Tell us what curses of slaying you have brought in word and thought, what weapons of flesh and plagues of malice you burden your mouth full with the terrible spawn of war with? What enemies can you slay with the diseases of your breath?"
The Eldest of war snapped sharply without the softness of ascent. But the speaker softened it to something more beseeching.
"What fruits of doom do you bring us?"
Pylo spoke only to the speaker, her voice muffled and silent, she even held back from the words even reaching the terrans. The silence was stifling.
She told them of the many ways she had learned to kill a polity and a people with rumor and thought alone. How to wound the fabric of tradition, how to lacerate the bonds of the people.
And even then she held back from all the secrets, she left metaphor and placeholder for even more terrible dangers that only the most tightly trained minds of a specialist guild or sisterhood could ever hope to contain without becoming the very poison they sought to understand.
There would be another longer council with specific and selected orders to finish bestowing these payloads.
Held in a place secure from the eyes of the people.
"Truly you are the bringer of terrible wroth and madness oh Pylo daughter of Courtesan."
There was a solemn silence for all to consider which the Terrans asked questions in but no one paid them attention so it was not insulting. Much.
Then after that pause they continued.
"Do you bring with you the cargo of shimmer spore and hold room for the matured adults ready and waiting?"
Pylo gaped happily and waggled her head as if eager to snap up more morsels.
"Yes! And ready to take on a full harvest, how many have come to the people ripe and ready to be ferried?"
The speaker bowed and disappointingly informed Pylo that only half of the better yields seemed to be forthcoming this visit.
A pity but the payout to the right buyer was well worth the mass. Even if she had to haul the adult's spores all the way back to the People to keep the exchanges going.
And so it continued, each of the eldest brushing, slapping or gently pressing their own concerns to the speaker.
Lafasoreitirei honed and softened the words even though Pylo knew the eldest knew she could read every one of their requests made before her. It was a kind of theater for them all. A performance for the betterment of the audience.
The deals could have all been exchanged before she arrived.
Technically quite a few of them already had.
But the Festival and via it Tradition needed this.
Pylo dealt and parceled the favor of the people and the fruits of their labor for all to see. The treats and tricks and little wonders that were mere trash elsewhere and were priceless treasures here.
The equally mundane to them crafts of the people that when handed off to even the most esteemed of urban polity would be all but priceless raw materials or art-matter.
And then as they finished treading over the familiar and expected Pylo came to the last item of discussion for the Exchange before they could finally be done with this step of the whole process.
"And there is one other matter that I can offer the People, though it is of no obligation to them to take on this exchange. It is of no mere good or matter to be parceled like metal or seed."
Lafasoreitirei took the position and gaped ascent for Pylo to continue. The rest of the council prepared to engage her if it was involved in their own masteries.
"Tunie now carries a hold of living people from beyond the forest, who seek asylum and lives among those along my journeys. If the people so wish to take them on they are clever in mind and thought and well ordered to deep wisdom and memory."
The council considered that striking one another, running grazing digits along each other's flanks and limbs. Wrestling the discussion between them.
At last a consensus of sorts was made.
Lafasoreitirei closed all four eyes before speaking, a position of vulnerability, trust and submission.
"That is a matter that will require a more detailed convening and deeper dealings than is the matter of the Exchange. If it does not insult you Daughter of Courtesan, could we hold a council on this business after the feast?"
Well it was not a negation but Pylo supposed trying to inject an entirely new kind of person into a monoculture was probably going to be trickier than she could swing in the traditional venue.
"I give consent to you Lafasoreitirei and the Council. Let this Exchange be closed and move on to the Feast! I am sure all the people look forward to that."
There was cheering then filling the cocoon, the teeming multitude of the people laying into the prepared atmospheric instruments. Filling the volume with trembling vibrations and noise.
Oh that reminded her!
Pylo directed the attention of Feidoreila the eldest master of the order of hospitalitors, marketeers and smiths to the Terrans, Their pet clerk and ▙◀.
"Now that it is settled. I have brought guests! They will require more restricted diets and accommodations from the People in their own feasting than I."
The eldest hospitalitor gave them a considering eye then gaped and threw their head to direct the attention of Reilafeifei most esteemed master of the care and rearing of all beasts amongst the people.
The two shared a glance with Pylo and she spoke the words of training that they would know what she did of the Terrans.
The two masters gaped in thanks to her and then Reilafeifei after consideration rumbled.
"I can manage them for the feast but send for the masters of the Apeshearers to be pulled from their crypts. We will need their nuance and insight afterwards I expect."
Pylo supposed that sounded well. It was nice the People had something in their labyrinthine hierarchy to handle the terrans!
And very nearly the last chapter for Tradition.
This one got REALLY big compared to my usual but should hopefully flow well.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
This one got REALLY big compared to my usual but should hopefully flow well.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
- Location
- England
Bring on the Apeshearers! Let haircuts(?) abound. I wonder if they are ready for Quarti, though.
Cross-Post Fanwork
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Just wanted to share with folks that some one made some fanart in the Space Battles Thread.
There is also plushie of Tunie that was made as well.
Just in case you don't check on both threads and would enjoy that.
There is also plushie of Tunie that was made as well.
Just in case you don't check on both threads and would enjoy that.
Evonix
Aspiring Lovecraft antagonist.
- Location
- Canada to 2 sigmas
"This one seems to have gone rancid with age, we may need to call on hazardous waste management."
Is anyone ever really ready for Quarti?
Tradition 0.8
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Tradition
0.8
Aleph shook her head.
"I don't get it Squidgie. They are pulling this stuff together with their muscles. I've seen more advanced technology back at home in Aoria!"
The Clerk made a puzzled face, supremely puzzled, it was like every possible nuance of confusion and puzzlement and good nature was distilled down into the glyphs of the expression.
If you could make letters out of faces this is what it would look like.
"That cannot be right ma'am. Granted I've not seen your own home but I did extensive reading and I've looked over the materials that you admit were far in advance of your own country in the Terran Polity. The People have shown nothing but superb skill and mastery in everything they have brought anywhere near us."
Aleph gestured at one of the wobbly limbed frogs outside the bubble who met her gaze flatly and parted its lips to reveal the feint shine of minute teeth and steam hissing from their throat.
Averting her gaze with a flushed expression she turned back to Squidgie.
"But... that one is wearing animal skins! I can see the fur!"
Squidgie leaned openly to stare at the figure then did something complicated and odd with their screen. Aleph glanced back to the alien in the 'primitive' getup to see what came of it and saw them tilting their head at her before closing all four of their eyes slowly and sticking out their tongue a bit.
She had no idea what that meant.
Which felt a little odd in her head because she vaguely remembered understanding it perfectly during the performances.
Huh.
Pylo must have not been translating right then.
Her ward finally spoke after the silence had drifted well into awkwardness.
"Ah I thought not... No, that is not the same thing as your 'fur' at alll. Honestly that is an expectation you really should avoid having if you can Ma'am. Mammals are more commonly seen as-"
Aleph huffed and nodded.
"Parasites, Infectious diseases, blights and plagues outside of what apparently is the super rare ecology of Terra. Yes I remember, but then what are all of these... people? They look plenty furry to me"
Squidgie took on that tone which generally meant that they were quoting Elsie on something. It was quite distinctive.
"That is ALSO an unfortunate but equally inaccurate stereotype. But most of the organisms that are horriblomorbus but don't exhibit obvious sporing fronds are not commonly grouped as being mammalia around the reef. The distinction is very inaccurate honestly. Poor Taxonomy."
Aleph gave Squidgie a raised brow. Which prompted a bit of that iconic blush before there was a quick head bob. But before they could continue Plyo's voice murmured over them in an absent minded tone that she had taken on for these little interruptions.
"Actually, Aleph is right, the Aorian word Fur fits properly to the convergently evolved surface extrusions of many different clades rather than the Horriblomorbus sporing threads specifically. Classic case of prioritizing homologous or analogous structures in different dialects. You could even argue that in many many common cases the sporing threads DON'T count as fur, due to being too sparse, stiff, and or thick."
Squidgie made a face scrunching emote of frustration.
"That... definitional distinction was not present on Redweed, especially not in Tincture Hegalexic. I apologize Ma'am did not realize I'd let the bias slip through in my use of Aorian from my mother tongue."
Aleph huffed and rolled her eyes.
"Honestly was not trying to win that argument either way. But okay that's not mammal-skin and it's not mammal-fur. And they out there are not mammals. But they still skinned something and are wearing it like a cave-woman!"
Which brought a long stare of deeper befuddlement then before.
"What? ... But what does that have to do with the technological skill or masteries of society? I'm sorry Ma'am I don't quite understand."
She stared at the augmented clerk, then out at the massive tent, and the use of ropes, and skins, and kites and animals and all the tools and things that honestly would barely be out of place in some kind of pastiche of ancient aorian culture.
A really bad and racist one at that.
"It's primitive?"
Squidgie blinked the representation of their eye a few times then turned over to the skin wearing frog person and waved for them to come closer.
Which somewhat terrified Alephs sense of propriety but she tried to wrestle that down.
The figure peered at the bubble. Then gently poked it with a stick, what honestly looked like a wooden stick.
Slightly crooked and twisted wood. But recognizably wood if a little bit darker and grayer then any tree on Terra she had seen.
After it pushed through with no resistance the frog popped the end into their mouth and puffed out their cheeks a few times before smacking their lips and then looking at her and slowly closing all four eyes and parting their mouth in a-
For some reason Aleph got the dizzying sense that they were nodding at her.
Even though her eyes clearly showed they were not in fact doing anything of the sort.
Oh.
Thanks Pylo.
"You're welcome."
She glanced at Squidgie who actually nodded and smiled brightly.
And then the frog person was pushing their face through the wall of the bubble. She glanced around for backup but Quarti was meditating or napping, Omega was definitely asleep because she was snoring, Elsie was outside the bubble discussing something with part of their entourage and Squidgie had invited the bulky thing with a mouth wide enough to make a good effort of swallowing Aleph whole into the bubble.
Or at least biting her in half at the waist.
She was surprised that the smell was dusty. Slowly prickling towards slightly smokey.
Possibly because something in the figure's furry face was faintly smoking.
There were even hints of sparse embers now amongst the dense little bushy clumps.
"Hello! Sorry to request your presence but Miss Aleph here is a bit confused and I was wondering if you could help clarify some things for her?"
Each of the four eyes closed in turn and opened in a circle around it's face. Which Aleph was reading thanks to pylo as something like an amused smile.
Then the lips parted slightly before the throat (Or was it the back of the neck?) pulsed and rippled.
Making for a surprisingly soft throaty rumble that was by the miracle of Siren magic perfectly legible and somehow seemed like a deep and very old kind of voice, bizarrely bass in timbre.
"I would be honored to aid the guests of the Daughter of Courtesan the eternal bride mother."
Aleph honestly could not keep track of all the titles that had passed her by assigned to Pylo's mom. But she thought that might be a new one? Either that or she slept through the part where someone used it.
"Uh... okay. I don't actually know why Squidgie called you over here."
To which her ward bobbed her head to the alien and spoke cheerily.
"To be precise Miss Aleph is perplexed by the material of your garb, could you tell us some of how it is made and what its properties are? I feel I could only do a great disservice to the craft and wonder of it trying to paraphrase."
The creature with its head jammed into a bubble looked down and out to the wrap of fur leather that Aleph was trying to not think of as a loincloth. But honestly looked like a fancy loin cloth.
Fingers brushed over the texture of it with a fondness and care that was totally not obvious to her actual eyes but seemed to be something Pylo though she should understand.
"This is the skin of my great, great grandsire. He had reached the end of his time and rose only to the rank of a minor Apprentice. But he had the... gift that no longer lives in his line with me and guardian blessings besides in the skin."
Aleph would have pulled a face but she was a bit too surprised.
"So he ate the fruits of the Vergul and ran the blood and oils of the Far-toothed dragons who we do not tame into his own skin. He did this until the fire and hate of the far-toothed fought and wrestled with the blessing of his guardians and was then gentled and frozen in the poison of the Vergul."
The voice was a lot like quarti, but so deep, so rich and soft and reverent. It was also trill and simultaneously rattling her bones and spine a little as it echoed through the bubble.
"He did this until his hearts gave out and the healers had to spear him with the pain of Oki thorn tinctures to stave off death seven and ten times. And then he went and starved himself of water in the sun above the canopy and returned to do it all again thrice more."
There was another one of those not-nods that were nods. A motion with the mouth opening and then eyes closing.
"He suffered greatly for his last rites, he died three times so that the shaping of his blessing could take root and flourish. And when it was done he perished a final and fourth and his hide was treated and kneaded. The songs were sung until his skin and fur would turn the sharpest of needles from the least drake in the boughs of -"
A rising crescendo of sound going from deep to sharp piercing filled the bubble and jolted Omega momentarily before the shaman snorted and fell back asleep.
"And hold safe my great, great grandsire's most experienced and masterful children among the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers no matter the heat of the forges or the burn of the acids. It was by the blessings of his last gift that my great grandmother rose above the station that he had attained and mastered the sacred oils of the tree scourer flesh. And from her to my Grandsire who rose even further. And at last to me as I attained mastery of the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers to be here before you in the great arrival."
Squidgie nodded and turned to Aleph expectantly.
She looked down at the loincloth that was apparently an ancient artifact made out of an ancestor, treated by a harrowing, torturous multiple near death experiences.
"And... That means?"
Squidgie winced and looked back to the apparent Master of the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers.
"It means that this cloth would turn metal tines as long as my finger traveled hard enough to liquefy you from head to toe in their passing little ape-ling. And if my taste of you is correct, protect from heat directly against which would crisp you black and boiled. That would be unspoiled by acid that would first sear and smoke your flesh and then more than likely leave your bones festering and jelly."
There was no translated tone of admonishment, just a calm almost gentle patience. It was the voice that Aleph recognized Omega had often taken with her when she was young and more stupid.
"I have seen it protect from all of these things. And seen the same injure or kill apprentices who lacked its protection."
The sombre note to that declaration dried up Aleph's rebuttal about it being superstitious nonsense.
"It is a vital and important tool which I honor with every work I distil for my order and the students I raise in my profession. Which I earned by rising as one much like those self same students from a life of service."
Then there was a slow near closing of all four eyes. That pylo apparently thought would be best known as a smile.
"And my wife thinks it is very fetching."
Squidgie bobbed her head and thanked the big frog who 'nodded' with that parting of lips and revealing of tiny little needle teeth.
Thinner then Aleph's fingers and yet shining so brightly.
And then they had thrown themselves back and then arrested their momentum with that strange metal staff that nearly all of the ones that followed in their entourage held.
Like absurd fantasy steeds from legends. Like the magical bowls and spoons from fairy tales of Aoria that the star witches supposedly rode.
Squidgie had a hopeful look in her emote of an eye.
"So Ma'am does that clarify the confusion on them being primitive?"
Aleph huffed and looked out over the teeming crowds and honestly could not say.
It all unnerved her somehow. It was all backwards in a way she had never expected things to be.
Redweed had not been like this, It had seemed very much like a city.
Elsie was not really like this either.
Or Squidgie.
Or Tunie.
Or even Pylo.
All of them were somehow familiar or alien enough to not feel like this.
But here it was all stomach churning and head achingly wrong.
They looked like the kind of backwards awfulness everyone though that Aoria was full of.
The thing that she had worked very hard to distance herself from entirely.
The things that if she was being honest had soured her impressions of Quarti on their first meeting a lot more than they probably should have.
But no terran could have made anything that did half of what that loincloth skin could do.
But even the way that it was constructed felt so backwards and wrong.
Her ward chirped up with a worried tone.
"Ma'am?"
But Aleph could only say.
"I honestly don't know Squidgie."
0.8
Aleph shook her head.
"I don't get it Squidgie. They are pulling this stuff together with their muscles. I've seen more advanced technology back at home in Aoria!"
The Clerk made a puzzled face, supremely puzzled, it was like every possible nuance of confusion and puzzlement and good nature was distilled down into the glyphs of the expression.
If you could make letters out of faces this is what it would look like.
"That cannot be right ma'am. Granted I've not seen your own home but I did extensive reading and I've looked over the materials that you admit were far in advance of your own country in the Terran Polity. The People have shown nothing but superb skill and mastery in everything they have brought anywhere near us."
Aleph gestured at one of the wobbly limbed frogs outside the bubble who met her gaze flatly and parted its lips to reveal the feint shine of minute teeth and steam hissing from their throat.
Averting her gaze with a flushed expression she turned back to Squidgie.
"But... that one is wearing animal skins! I can see the fur!"
Squidgie leaned openly to stare at the figure then did something complicated and odd with their screen. Aleph glanced back to the alien in the 'primitive' getup to see what came of it and saw them tilting their head at her before closing all four of their eyes slowly and sticking out their tongue a bit.
She had no idea what that meant.
Which felt a little odd in her head because she vaguely remembered understanding it perfectly during the performances.
Huh.
Pylo must have not been translating right then.
Her ward finally spoke after the silence had drifted well into awkwardness.
"Ah I thought not... No, that is not the same thing as your 'fur' at alll. Honestly that is an expectation you really should avoid having if you can Ma'am. Mammals are more commonly seen as-"
Aleph huffed and nodded.
"Parasites, Infectious diseases, blights and plagues outside of what apparently is the super rare ecology of Terra. Yes I remember, but then what are all of these... people? They look plenty furry to me"
Squidgie took on that tone which generally meant that they were quoting Elsie on something. It was quite distinctive.
"That is ALSO an unfortunate but equally inaccurate stereotype. But most of the organisms that are horriblomorbus but don't exhibit obvious sporing fronds are not commonly grouped as being mammalia around the reef. The distinction is very inaccurate honestly. Poor Taxonomy."
Aleph gave Squidgie a raised brow. Which prompted a bit of that iconic blush before there was a quick head bob. But before they could continue Plyo's voice murmured over them in an absent minded tone that she had taken on for these little interruptions.
"Actually, Aleph is right, the Aorian word Fur fits properly to the convergently evolved surface extrusions of many different clades rather than the Horriblomorbus sporing threads specifically. Classic case of prioritizing homologous or analogous structures in different dialects. You could even argue that in many many common cases the sporing threads DON'T count as fur, due to being too sparse, stiff, and or thick."
Squidgie made a face scrunching emote of frustration.
"That... definitional distinction was not present on Redweed, especially not in Tincture Hegalexic. I apologize Ma'am did not realize I'd let the bias slip through in my use of Aorian from my mother tongue."
Aleph huffed and rolled her eyes.
"Honestly was not trying to win that argument either way. But okay that's not mammal-skin and it's not mammal-fur. And they out there are not mammals. But they still skinned something and are wearing it like a cave-woman!"
Which brought a long stare of deeper befuddlement then before.
"What? ... But what does that have to do with the technological skill or masteries of society? I'm sorry Ma'am I don't quite understand."
She stared at the augmented clerk, then out at the massive tent, and the use of ropes, and skins, and kites and animals and all the tools and things that honestly would barely be out of place in some kind of pastiche of ancient aorian culture.
A really bad and racist one at that.
"It's primitive?"
Squidgie blinked the representation of their eye a few times then turned over to the skin wearing frog person and waved for them to come closer.
Which somewhat terrified Alephs sense of propriety but she tried to wrestle that down.
The figure peered at the bubble. Then gently poked it with a stick, what honestly looked like a wooden stick.
Slightly crooked and twisted wood. But recognizably wood if a little bit darker and grayer then any tree on Terra she had seen.
After it pushed through with no resistance the frog popped the end into their mouth and puffed out their cheeks a few times before smacking their lips and then looking at her and slowly closing all four eyes and parting their mouth in a-
For some reason Aleph got the dizzying sense that they were nodding at her.
Even though her eyes clearly showed they were not in fact doing anything of the sort.
Oh.
Thanks Pylo.
"You're welcome."
She glanced at Squidgie who actually nodded and smiled brightly.
And then the frog person was pushing their face through the wall of the bubble. She glanced around for backup but Quarti was meditating or napping, Omega was definitely asleep because she was snoring, Elsie was outside the bubble discussing something with part of their entourage and Squidgie had invited the bulky thing with a mouth wide enough to make a good effort of swallowing Aleph whole into the bubble.
Or at least biting her in half at the waist.
She was surprised that the smell was dusty. Slowly prickling towards slightly smokey.
Possibly because something in the figure's furry face was faintly smoking.
There were even hints of sparse embers now amongst the dense little bushy clumps.
"Hello! Sorry to request your presence but Miss Aleph here is a bit confused and I was wondering if you could help clarify some things for her?"
Each of the four eyes closed in turn and opened in a circle around it's face. Which Aleph was reading thanks to pylo as something like an amused smile.
Then the lips parted slightly before the throat (Or was it the back of the neck?) pulsed and rippled.
Making for a surprisingly soft throaty rumble that was by the miracle of Siren magic perfectly legible and somehow seemed like a deep and very old kind of voice, bizarrely bass in timbre.
"I would be honored to aid the guests of the Daughter of Courtesan the eternal bride mother."
Aleph honestly could not keep track of all the titles that had passed her by assigned to Pylo's mom. But she thought that might be a new one? Either that or she slept through the part where someone used it.
"Uh... okay. I don't actually know why Squidgie called you over here."
To which her ward bobbed her head to the alien and spoke cheerily.
"To be precise Miss Aleph is perplexed by the material of your garb, could you tell us some of how it is made and what its properties are? I feel I could only do a great disservice to the craft and wonder of it trying to paraphrase."
The creature with its head jammed into a bubble looked down and out to the wrap of fur leather that Aleph was trying to not think of as a loincloth. But honestly looked like a fancy loin cloth.
Fingers brushed over the texture of it with a fondness and care that was totally not obvious to her actual eyes but seemed to be something Pylo though she should understand.
"This is the skin of my great, great grandsire. He had reached the end of his time and rose only to the rank of a minor Apprentice. But he had the... gift that no longer lives in his line with me and guardian blessings besides in the skin."
Aleph would have pulled a face but she was a bit too surprised.
"So he ate the fruits of the Vergul and ran the blood and oils of the Far-toothed dragons who we do not tame into his own skin. He did this until the fire and hate of the far-toothed fought and wrestled with the blessing of his guardians and was then gentled and frozen in the poison of the Vergul."
The voice was a lot like quarti, but so deep, so rich and soft and reverent. It was also trill and simultaneously rattling her bones and spine a little as it echoed through the bubble.
"He did this until his hearts gave out and the healers had to spear him with the pain of Oki thorn tinctures to stave off death seven and ten times. And then he went and starved himself of water in the sun above the canopy and returned to do it all again thrice more."
There was another one of those not-nods that were nods. A motion with the mouth opening and then eyes closing.
"He suffered greatly for his last rites, he died three times so that the shaping of his blessing could take root and flourish. And when it was done he perished a final and fourth and his hide was treated and kneaded. The songs were sung until his skin and fur would turn the sharpest of needles from the least drake in the boughs of -"
A rising crescendo of sound going from deep to sharp piercing filled the bubble and jolted Omega momentarily before the shaman snorted and fell back asleep.
"And hold safe my great, great grandsire's most experienced and masterful children among the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers no matter the heat of the forges or the burn of the acids. It was by the blessings of his last gift that my great grandmother rose above the station that he had attained and mastered the sacred oils of the tree scourer flesh. And from her to my Grandsire who rose even further. And at last to me as I attained mastery of the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers to be here before you in the great arrival."
Squidgie nodded and turned to Aleph expectantly.
She looked down at the loincloth that was apparently an ancient artifact made out of an ancestor, treated by a harrowing, torturous multiple near death experiences.
"And... That means?"
Squidgie winced and looked back to the apparent Master of the Order of Holy Tanners and Fat Renderers.
"It means that this cloth would turn metal tines as long as my finger traveled hard enough to liquefy you from head to toe in their passing little ape-ling. And if my taste of you is correct, protect from heat directly against which would crisp you black and boiled. That would be unspoiled by acid that would first sear and smoke your flesh and then more than likely leave your bones festering and jelly."
There was no translated tone of admonishment, just a calm almost gentle patience. It was the voice that Aleph recognized Omega had often taken with her when she was young and more stupid.
"I have seen it protect from all of these things. And seen the same injure or kill apprentices who lacked its protection."
The sombre note to that declaration dried up Aleph's rebuttal about it being superstitious nonsense.
"It is a vital and important tool which I honor with every work I distil for my order and the students I raise in my profession. Which I earned by rising as one much like those self same students from a life of service."
Then there was a slow near closing of all four eyes. That pylo apparently thought would be best known as a smile.
"And my wife thinks it is very fetching."
Squidgie bobbed her head and thanked the big frog who 'nodded' with that parting of lips and revealing of tiny little needle teeth.
Thinner then Aleph's fingers and yet shining so brightly.
And then they had thrown themselves back and then arrested their momentum with that strange metal staff that nearly all of the ones that followed in their entourage held.
Like absurd fantasy steeds from legends. Like the magical bowls and spoons from fairy tales of Aoria that the star witches supposedly rode.
Squidgie had a hopeful look in her emote of an eye.
"So Ma'am does that clarify the confusion on them being primitive?"
Aleph huffed and looked out over the teeming crowds and honestly could not say.
It all unnerved her somehow. It was all backwards in a way she had never expected things to be.
Redweed had not been like this, It had seemed very much like a city.
Elsie was not really like this either.
Or Squidgie.
Or Tunie.
Or even Pylo.
All of them were somehow familiar or alien enough to not feel like this.
But here it was all stomach churning and head achingly wrong.
They looked like the kind of backwards awfulness everyone though that Aoria was full of.
The thing that she had worked very hard to distance herself from entirely.
The things that if she was being honest had soured her impressions of Quarti on their first meeting a lot more than they probably should have.
But no terran could have made anything that did half of what that loincloth skin could do.
But even the way that it was constructed felt so backwards and wrong.
Her ward chirped up with a worried tone.
"Ma'am?"
But Aleph could only say.
"I honestly don't know Squidgie."
Been waiting for an opportunity for this bit of Aleph's character to get front and center. Not a lot of opportunity for it til now.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Top Web Fiction needs more votes from you so more people can find out about this story. If you want to see where Onward to Providence Ranks click on the Science Fiction link in the upper right.
Last edited:
Typos?
I feel very much the same way. To protect against such things is an impressive feat, but does making a single powerful artifact at great cost really count? I think it depends on whether they understand the principles behind the construction, or if they are just ritually repeating something known to work in the past. I suspect the wilderness encourages the later by being too complicated, fast moving, and dangerous to analyze from first principles.