Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
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[x] Where had Kohatu and Atamai come from?
- Location
- E
[X] How had Kohatu and Atamai come to be beneath the mountain?
- Location
- Staring into the void
Kek, Yrs shared some good stuff about He the Glorious. The guy had a praise kink, and because he had Truth/Perception stuff in his Way he could tell when people were bullshitting him, so he built an awesome civilization in order to get all-natural praise highs on a regular basis.
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Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] How had Kohatu and Atamai come to be beneath the mountain?
Year 45 Month 11 Arc 3-4
"Where did the Kohatu and Atamai come from?" Gui asked curiously. "Gui does not smell lands like these mountains hills and woods in your spirit. The mud and roots are wet and hot, and scented of salt."
Kohatu's eyelids blinked slowly, the black fire simmering lowering still, gray dust flaked and fell, and Ling Qi observed another stronger pulse of glowing verdant green, the scent of exotic plants and the harsh glare of sunlight off of a beach of glittering black sand.
"Yes. Far fAr from here we were born. North. North. North. Beyond the girdling cuRrent, in the shadow of the Everstorm," Kohatu began, sounding almost entranced, digging down and down into half remembered things. "Where mountains belch fire, and ravenous green sweeps out in fires wake, new shoots growing up before ash has even cooled."
"Warm. WaRm. Bright Sun. Black Sand. Where men are few and tread most beneath the waves off of shore."
As Ling Qi had suspected, when first taking care of Zhengui's egg, she had looked into bestiaries and found some mention of the Volcanic Tyrant Tortoise, inhabitant of islands far out in the northern sea. But she remained silent, not wishing to interrupt. The Shade, she could see was drawing… stability from her recall, and she did not want disrupt that.
"I, Zhen, never liked waters until miss Snowblossom, too cold and heavy, drowning fire, but, I scent the warm water in your words, the brightness, the falling ash and blooming shoots. What is the Everstorm, which breathes so hungrily, casting its rains over all?" Zhen asked instead of her.
"The wound in the world, the fallen piLLar," Kohatu said. "Raining, ever raining, cracking the firmament to release the blood that makes our isles of fire and green. Child you should see it, O ruin in purest form. But such is the world that even it blooms new life," Kohatu said reverently.
Ling Qi was slightly aware from her reading and conversations with Xuan Shi, of the permanent storm which churned the oceans north of the boiling seas which had been created by the death of the Sun. But only as a passing detail of geography, and a note that voyages to east of the empire were functionally impossible.
"Oh. Oh. It is the hole, Zhengui can feel, far far away, when he stretches his roots out as far as they can go, and becomes the land," her little brother said, both voices weaving in and out of the words spoken, one going smooth into the other.
"It is that. A great wound. But few things are one thing alone. Atamai and our master, they would meditate on this." the strange rising and falling and sudden changes of the spirits tone were fading, along with the spasmodic twitches of her claws and flicking of her tail. She was growing more still, and yet the grey blight on her scales was not… taking her, mote by mote as it had been when they approached.
There were many kinds of motion, Ling Qi supposed. Many ways to fight killing stillness. To speak, to teach, to be reinvigorated through others and the reminder that ones own existence could extend beyond their own flesh and spirit.
"Ah, you're Master, you had a human too?" Gui wondered
"Yes," Kohatu replied, her scales shook and dust sloughed off… but something dark crackled and popped like rotting static through fields of verdant green. "He was. Master was… He was of the sea, but preferred the shore. Outcast of shoal, not hated but unwanted. I do not understand the ways of humans. Above or below wave. But Master was good. Devotee of Storm and surf, blade of waters…."
Her claws dug into the packed and fossilized ruin.
"Ships came then, the great mistake…"
"No. nO, no. Was nOt mistake, not YEt later. Years and years under bright sun and verdant leaf remEmBer reMemEr, emptiness cannot HaVe IT!"
The last word was a bellow that left Ling Qi clinging to Zhengui's shell and him bobbing downward under the force of the wind.
"Ask. AsK. Ask cHIlD. I must rEmeMbeR…."
Zhen let out a worried hiss, peering at her nervously, but she nodded to him. It was fine, they were fine, she was ready to drop them out of here if it came down to it.
"Will you tell Gui about the Green under ash? The leaves that grow from fire? My land is different, my ash makes it strong, but I wonder if I am doing wrong, bringing fire here. Gui worries, he only knows what is in his blood and little things from scholar friends…."
Kohatu's immense body shuddered, clouded eyes rolling the cataracts that had begun to bloom in them shrinking back down.
"GreEn. GReeN. YessSss. Green, cOld lands, stoNe lands. NOT islEs of gRAss and fIre," Kohatu exhaled, and Ling Qi could feel all the clearer now the multitude of cracks running through the shades very existence, barely held together by the echo of the once living beasts will.
"Green is rIch, grEEn is hungry, bUT ash, Atamai's fire, destroys with destruction. Watch. Watch the earth, it shoots, it sprouts, life ever blooming, your fires cannot make the earth cHoking dust, watch, spread, burn and grow, if you are in bAlance with yourself, as he and I were in balance, you will not blight any earth. But. I do not. Know. Interference. Cold. Ones, Enemies. I cannot know."
"Gui understands, and is happy he can make things keep growing without worry. He will just keep working hard." her little brother said, having taken a long moment to parse the rush of tangled words. Their rapidly changing cadence, halting here and blurring together there lent a melancholy to all of this. Like talking to someone so old they were beginning to forget themself.
Zhengui's jetting fires roared a little louder as he carried himself higher, out of the gusting wind which blew from Kohatu's erratic breaths.
"Persist. Yes , pErsist. This is, the essence of. Green. My essence. Your half essence. Not invulnerable, not immortal, enduring invincible, but ever, ever growing. Grow when you live, grow when you are dead. NeVer stop. The. Isles live in the shadow of catastrophe. Great. Greatest Catastrophe, heaven falls sky falls, goDs War, but LiFe persists. Seeds torn away from the One Land, to float for eon on ocean wave, sleeping, not dead. Eking life from razor sand and boiling rOck. Roots stretching stretching under ashen earth, safe and ready to grow, stems burning black, but with cORe of blazing GReen." Kohatu rambled on, eyes on something distant, but every few words, twitching, turning back to focus on them, on Zhengui.
"My roots so farrrrR so faaarrrrr, cannot live, but cannot die. Should. Not. Shouldnot have come. But could not stay behind," the lizard rumbled and rambled. "Child, not born from the roots but His hope, Atamai, my Atamai. Grow your roots deep, deepdeep, and StaY and you will never die, never bReaK like I. If your GreEn persists."
"...Ah." Zhen stilled, his eyes distant, as if seeming to realize something. "I, Zhen, understand… I could not grow before, because there was no room, not just…"
"Because the land was not mine. Because Gui was not the Garden King, but… because there was no room for roots, the Sect trees did not want me, Sisters sibling disciples did not grow things, or… when they did they were not in the land…Gui knew this but…"
"Seed of Green, like first seeds lOng ago, must be your oWn burning. Lonely, but…"
"Gui has never been lonely."
"I, Zhen have never been lonely."
Kohatu paused and focused, looking at them hard. And it was them, not just Zhengui this time.
"He is not alone, no, and never has been. That much at least, I have been able to accomplish," Ling Qi said evenly, tilting her chin up to meet the massive beasts gaze.
Not. Lonely." Kohatu's voice rumbled like the falling of a great tree. "...Not. Lie. I see. You are whole."
"I, Zhen, I am the proud young King of the lands beside Snowblossom lake, of course I am whole."
"But, That does not mean Gui cannot strive to be more," her little brother said. "Kohatu, who is the Green Shoot of Boiling Sea… I do not want to make you sad, but, you say Gui should set roots and never go. SO why did you go so far from where Kohatu's roots ran deep?"
"Love, I loved my Master, and curious Atamai. So. I went. When the ships came." The same distortion welled up, but the words they had shared, speaking on Kohatu's core, binding her closer to the present and Zhengui, seemed enough to prevent the near loss of self from before.
"Men. Land men, not blood of sea. Hunting. Playing in waves. Killing. Being Killed, joining the Green. The Horizon Blade met my Master. Their. Weapons SanG. Found HarmonY. Sword Song bent, the Horizon Blade chipped. Became. Man."
Ling Qi frowned to herself. The chained tortoise had said…. They were betrayed a hundred years ago. But… Horizon Blade? That could only be the Elder of the old Argent Sect, whose blade hse had spoken to at its grave. And he had died to Ogodei far more than a hundred years ago. Was the tortoise, Atamai's sense of time just twisted by endless solitude and confinement?
"Ships. Lost. Land Men grew bored. Green Hell. Not what they sought. Called back, Horizon Blade. Horizon Blade said, taking Master. Master went themself, Atamai went, I would not stay behind. Went away to strange white sand. Tricks… thing's I do not understand. A guise was made. Went to this land, land of twisted dreams, where all eyes fogged. To be forgotten."
"Not. Not. NoooOT Mistake. NoOt Yet.
"Mistake. Later."
AN: And splitting for length here.
Kohatu's eyelids blinked slowly, the black fire simmering lowering still, gray dust flaked and fell, and Ling Qi observed another stronger pulse of glowing verdant green, the scent of exotic plants and the harsh glare of sunlight off of a beach of glittering black sand.
"Yes. Far fAr from here we were born. North. North. North. Beyond the girdling cuRrent, in the shadow of the Everstorm," Kohatu began, sounding almost entranced, digging down and down into half remembered things. "Where mountains belch fire, and ravenous green sweeps out in fires wake, new shoots growing up before ash has even cooled."
"Warm. WaRm. Bright Sun. Black Sand. Where men are few and tread most beneath the waves off of shore."
As Ling Qi had suspected, when first taking care of Zhengui's egg, she had looked into bestiaries and found some mention of the Volcanic Tyrant Tortoise, inhabitant of islands far out in the northern sea. But she remained silent, not wishing to interrupt. The Shade, she could see was drawing… stability from her recall, and she did not want disrupt that.
"I, Zhen, never liked waters until miss Snowblossom, too cold and heavy, drowning fire, but, I scent the warm water in your words, the brightness, the falling ash and blooming shoots. What is the Everstorm, which breathes so hungrily, casting its rains over all?" Zhen asked instead of her.
"The wound in the world, the fallen piLLar," Kohatu said. "Raining, ever raining, cracking the firmament to release the blood that makes our isles of fire and green. Child you should see it, O ruin in purest form. But such is the world that even it blooms new life," Kohatu said reverently.
Ling Qi was slightly aware from her reading and conversations with Xuan Shi, of the permanent storm which churned the oceans north of the boiling seas which had been created by the death of the Sun. But only as a passing detail of geography, and a note that voyages to east of the empire were functionally impossible.
"Oh. Oh. It is the hole, Zhengui can feel, far far away, when he stretches his roots out as far as they can go, and becomes the land," her little brother said, both voices weaving in and out of the words spoken, one going smooth into the other.
"It is that. A great wound. But few things are one thing alone. Atamai and our master, they would meditate on this." the strange rising and falling and sudden changes of the spirits tone were fading, along with the spasmodic twitches of her claws and flicking of her tail. She was growing more still, and yet the grey blight on her scales was not… taking her, mote by mote as it had been when they approached.
There were many kinds of motion, Ling Qi supposed. Many ways to fight killing stillness. To speak, to teach, to be reinvigorated through others and the reminder that ones own existence could extend beyond their own flesh and spirit.
"Ah, you're Master, you had a human too?" Gui wondered
"Yes," Kohatu replied, her scales shook and dust sloughed off… but something dark crackled and popped like rotting static through fields of verdant green. "He was. Master was… He was of the sea, but preferred the shore. Outcast of shoal, not hated but unwanted. I do not understand the ways of humans. Above or below wave. But Master was good. Devotee of Storm and surf, blade of waters…."
Her claws dug into the packed and fossilized ruin.
"Ships came then, the great mistake…"
"No. nO, no. Was nOt mistake, not YEt later. Years and years under bright sun and verdant leaf remEmBer reMemEr, emptiness cannot HaVe IT!"
The last word was a bellow that left Ling Qi clinging to Zhengui's shell and him bobbing downward under the force of the wind.
"Ask. AsK. Ask cHIlD. I must rEmeMbeR…."
Zhen let out a worried hiss, peering at her nervously, but she nodded to him. It was fine, they were fine, she was ready to drop them out of here if it came down to it.
"Will you tell Gui about the Green under ash? The leaves that grow from fire? My land is different, my ash makes it strong, but I wonder if I am doing wrong, bringing fire here. Gui worries, he only knows what is in his blood and little things from scholar friends…."
Kohatu's immense body shuddered, clouded eyes rolling the cataracts that had begun to bloom in them shrinking back down.
"GreEn. GReeN. YessSss. Green, cOld lands, stoNe lands. NOT islEs of gRAss and fIre," Kohatu exhaled, and Ling Qi could feel all the clearer now the multitude of cracks running through the shades very existence, barely held together by the echo of the once living beasts will.
"Green is rIch, grEEn is hungry, bUT ash, Atamai's fire, destroys with destruction. Watch. Watch the earth, it shoots, it sprouts, life ever blooming, your fires cannot make the earth cHoking dust, watch, spread, burn and grow, if you are in bAlance with yourself, as he and I were in balance, you will not blight any earth. But. I do not. Know. Interference. Cold. Ones, Enemies. I cannot know."
"Gui understands, and is happy he can make things keep growing without worry. He will just keep working hard." her little brother said, having taken a long moment to parse the rush of tangled words. Their rapidly changing cadence, halting here and blurring together there lent a melancholy to all of this. Like talking to someone so old they were beginning to forget themself.
Zhengui's jetting fires roared a little louder as he carried himself higher, out of the gusting wind which blew from Kohatu's erratic breaths.
"Persist. Yes , pErsist. This is, the essence of. Green. My essence. Your half essence. Not invulnerable, not immortal, enduring invincible, but ever, ever growing. Grow when you live, grow when you are dead. NeVer stop. The. Isles live in the shadow of catastrophe. Great. Greatest Catastrophe, heaven falls sky falls, goDs War, but LiFe persists. Seeds torn away from the One Land, to float for eon on ocean wave, sleeping, not dead. Eking life from razor sand and boiling rOck. Roots stretching stretching under ashen earth, safe and ready to grow, stems burning black, but with cORe of blazing GReen." Kohatu rambled on, eyes on something distant, but every few words, twitching, turning back to focus on them, on Zhengui.
"My roots so farrrrR so faaarrrrr, cannot live, but cannot die. Should. Not. Shouldnot have come. But could not stay behind," the lizard rumbled and rambled. "Child, not born from the roots but His hope, Atamai, my Atamai. Grow your roots deep, deepdeep, and StaY and you will never die, never bReaK like I. If your GreEn persists."
"...Ah." Zhen stilled, his eyes distant, as if seeming to realize something. "I, Zhen, understand… I could not grow before, because there was no room, not just…"
"Because the land was not mine. Because Gui was not the Garden King, but… because there was no room for roots, the Sect trees did not want me, Sisters sibling disciples did not grow things, or… when they did they were not in the land…Gui knew this but…"
"Seed of Green, like first seeds lOng ago, must be your oWn burning. Lonely, but…"
"Gui has never been lonely."
"I, Zhen have never been lonely."
Kohatu paused and focused, looking at them hard. And it was them, not just Zhengui this time.
"He is not alone, no, and never has been. That much at least, I have been able to accomplish," Ling Qi said evenly, tilting her chin up to meet the massive beasts gaze.
Not. Lonely." Kohatu's voice rumbled like the falling of a great tree. "...Not. Lie. I see. You are whole."
"I, Zhen, I am the proud young King of the lands beside Snowblossom lake, of course I am whole."
"But, That does not mean Gui cannot strive to be more," her little brother said. "Kohatu, who is the Green Shoot of Boiling Sea… I do not want to make you sad, but, you say Gui should set roots and never go. SO why did you go so far from where Kohatu's roots ran deep?"
"Love, I loved my Master, and curious Atamai. So. I went. When the ships came." The same distortion welled up, but the words they had shared, speaking on Kohatu's core, binding her closer to the present and Zhengui, seemed enough to prevent the near loss of self from before.
"Men. Land men, not blood of sea. Hunting. Playing in waves. Killing. Being Killed, joining the Green. The Horizon Blade met my Master. Their. Weapons SanG. Found HarmonY. Sword Song bent, the Horizon Blade chipped. Became. Man."
Ling Qi frowned to herself. The chained tortoise had said…. They were betrayed a hundred years ago. But… Horizon Blade? That could only be the Elder of the old Argent Sect, whose blade hse had spoken to at its grave. And he had died to Ogodei far more than a hundred years ago. Was the tortoise, Atamai's sense of time just twisted by endless solitude and confinement?
"Ships. Lost. Land Men grew bored. Green Hell. Not what they sought. Called back, Horizon Blade. Horizon Blade said, taking Master. Master went themself, Atamai went, I would not stay behind. Went away to strange white sand. Tricks… thing's I do not understand. A guise was made. Went to this land, land of twisted dreams, where all eyes fogged. To be forgotten."
"Not. Not. NoooOT Mistake. NoOt Yet.
"Mistake. Later."
AN: And splitting for length here.