Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[X] A elegant, high necked vase, painted with splotchy white glaze. The sound of clinking chains echoed from within.
[X] A elegant, high necked vase, painted with splotchy white glaze. The sound of clinking chains echoed from within.
- Location
- Staring into the void
Lena27 with the effort post swinging the vote.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Both seem good.
[X] An inkpot, fully cracked up one side, and missing its stopper, it smelled of coin and tears.
[X] A elegant, high necked vase, painted with splotchy white glaze. The sound of clinking chains echoed from within.
[X] An inkpot, fully cracked up one side, and missing its stopper, it smelled of coin and tears.
[X] A elegant, high necked vase, painted with splotchy white glaze. The sound of clinking chains echoed from within.
[X] A elegant, high necked vase, painted with splotchy white glaze. The sound of clinking chains echoed from within.
[x] A elegant, high necked vase, painted with splotchy white glaze. The sound of clinking chains echoed from within.
[X] An inkpot, fully cracked up one side, and missing its stopper, it smelled of coin and tears.
At first I was going to vote for Vase, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I want to hear a story about the clerks who did horrible crimes just by filling out paperwork. Shuffling lives and torment across their desks, leaving ruin and tears like coffee stains.
At first I was going to vote for Vase, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I want to hear a story about the clerks who did horrible crimes just by filling out paperwork. Shuffling lives and torment across their desks, leaving ruin and tears like coffee stains.
Sands of Destiny 3
New
It did not even feel like stepping back into the material world, stepping from the Godpaths into the lands around fallen Tephren. Once the first city, the land where the young gods had gathered around their father, Firstborn and incarnation of the Sun, to fight back the black chaos of the stars. It was a monument to humanity, and the triumph over Chaos, the throne of the first Pharaoh.
The waters of the great river had long left this place, its flow having changed long ago, not the slow natural meander that took centuries, but in a single moment of cataclysmic shift into a new bed. Yet the soil had not returned to sand here. It was black and lush all along the old rivercourse, and the wheat grew up from it in tall waving fields. But its gold was tinted a sickly and shimmering green. The ghostly echo of the river flowed within the dry banks, ephemeral and whispering. Looking down on its surface from the hill they stood upon, he could glimpse the silent faces of the dead in the flow. But even here he knew there was disturbance, too many faces twisted in rictus, too many hands scrabbling to pull themselves free.
The river of the dead was a serene thing, when its King was sleeping well, only those who had lived twisted enough lives to fear their judgment should be in such a state.
"Well, either the sleepers have gone bad again, or something else is amiss," Dendera spoke his thoughts aloud. "And my Goddess has not stirred in her tomb, so 'something else' it is."
Lapis bowed their head in silence. "It is so. Come. This one knows the method to cross and reach the gate."
Their wing pointed out, to the crumbling shadow of stone beyond the deathly fields and whispering river. Like the fields, much of the crumbled walls, the city beyond was more the stuff of spirit than stone, glowing faintly against the backdrop of a sky locked eternally in dusk. But the great black stone gates that stood in their center were heavy and physical and real in a way that nothing else in his vision was.
They descended the hill in silence, his contemplative, and Dendera's wary, only the animalistic panting and thump of his porter's heavy footfalls broke it. They passed through the fields of waving wheat, so cold to the touch that it seared his flesh black where a stalk brushed against his body.
Drawing the dead flesh back in and generating a new more resistant epidermis from his study of the necrotized cells was enough to keep his mind occupied through the walk. As they approached the riverbank, Lapis spread their wings, halting the group as they made some sign that he could not perceive. A low bridge of white stone faded into existence, coalescing from the mist given off by the river of the dead.
"There will be no cost. As guests, you are welcomed without tolls," Lapis said softly.
He nodded as they began to cross, peering over the side of the bridge for a closer look, absently batting aside the dripping ichorous claw of an old man dressed in tattered sleeper finery, bangles of gold and ivory still about his neck. The brush of his hand was enough to send the weeping thing back into the river course from which it had leaped.
"Fascinating, to be able to exist beyond the river at all, there is a great deal more energy flowing through the course than there should be."
"It is so. The wardings are straining, the river may burst its banks within a decade or two, should the King remain so unsettled," Lapis agreed.
"The dead should not be so wild. The mad scrabbling bottomless hunger of life should be past for them," Dendera rumbled. Heat poured off of her, distorting the air. Oppressive and hot, it quelled the slopping grasping hands that reached for them from the sides of the span, boiling away ghostly flesh and bone until the spirits fell squirming back into the 'water' below. "What exactly must we do here? You have been vague. Stop being vague."
Lapis paused, they were only a short way from the Gate now. "You must deliver this one to the foot of the King's throne, so that I may allow my Goddess to soothe his dreams."
Hori's eyes left the intricate carvings, depicting the strife over the Throne of the Firstborn, when He rejoined the Greater Sun, and his chosen heir was challenged. "You are barely of greater godsblood than us, unless you hide very well. Will this not…"
"I will do my duty. You will do yours. Deliver me unto the throne. I will require all of my vitality for the task."
Dendera snorted. "Hah, I see now. We are all walking happy into the underworld, I suppose."
Lapis' wing brushed over black stone, awakening glittering glyphs in meticulous order. They lowered their head, the braids of their hair shadowing their eyes. "... I would like to live. Thus I ask you both to do your duties well. To navigate, to fight, that I need not exert myself on the journey."
Hori grimaced. No pressure of course. He reached back, idly lifting the stone cabinet from his now ragged and crumbling porters back. Unlike them the journey had not been kind to the dreg flesh, now withered and blackened, rotted by the air here, baked by Dendera's heat, half dissolved from the journey through the Godpath. Setting it down by the gate as Lapis enacted the gate opening, he swung the cabinet doors wide.
…Which of his life flasks would be best for battling the unquiet dreams of Death?
"Ugh, you still haven't fixed that smell, Hori?"
"It is still the best fertilizing brine. The smell can't be changed without losing the properties." Two flasks full of squirming, pulsating liquid gold, grown from cultures of beasts which lived under the harshest rays, attuned to the burning red wastes. Distilled down, this should give him an edge. He sank the glass flask into his chest, and crushed the container with a flex of muscle, taking in a sharp breath as what felt like a bolt of lightning radiated up his spine. Nerves reformatted, muscles attuning to the temporary rush of power and change
He exhaled, and golden sparks of sunlight drifted out from his warping, sharpening mouth, glittering feathers rippled out from his skin as bones hollowed. His vision sharpened and as an eye of liquid gold opened on his brow. He left the earth on shimmering wings, the cry of ibis bouncing from the stones of the underworld
The gates began to grind open, and Dendera snorted, the sound distorted by the increasingly leonine cast of her face, and the whipping hot winds beginning to whirl around her feet.
But he recognized the shapes arrayed around them in horror. The houses of the dead bulged with spirits, hidden behind doors of gold and basalt, but his eyes could see the weakening of the wardings. If this stood, if these nightmarish things continued to claw and gnaw and dissolve, there would be so much lost.
…He remembered why he had been drawn to Dendera once. She was death, a reaping lion, untouchable and unshakeable. She stalked the broad boulevard, the wild red flames of her hair like a banner, the face of a lioness, a roof topping titan of bronze and fire as she strode into the squirming mass of nightmares on footsteps that made the earth tremble.
Her breath was killing pestilence, the red wind which punished the wicked. Where it blew, damp rubbery bodies twisted and bucked, veins bulging under flesh, inflamed, sores opened, weeping blood and fouler things. Lesser nightmares collapsed, retching blood as pink foam formed over fluttering gills. He could see, with his sharp eyes, the countless ways in which blood and flesh was twisted against itself.
And those which still stood in the wake of that met burning claws which rent apart flesh like thin cloth.
But the brute might of Sahkmat was not enough alone. The things in the streets were endless. Dendera could slay until the sun burned out, and they would come still. This too he could see, watching them with far seeing eyes as fresh nightmares recombined from drifting soul matter, observing their construction from the leaking emotional background of the realm of the Dead. The very fear of the ghosts huddled in their houses were the particulates upon which new pearls of horror formed.
…And the city itself was against them. No, that was too strong. The Dreams of the King were not malice, but they twisted the streets all the same, pushed them away all the same.
It twisted in more than physical directions. His wings beat and the golden thread which spun out, connecting his claw to the rampaging lioness pulled taught as he dragged them through bent dimensions, navigating a maze which adjusted its halls with every beat of his wings.
Were the dusk not eternal here, the sun would already have risen in glory.
Nit, Lapis remained silent, curled into their own wings, untouched upon Dendera's shoulder.
And the great Mausoleum Palace of the King of the Dead was close now, he could feel.
There, there was the key, a crouching squalid thing of eyes and tendrils, as large as a house, toothless mouths open in wailing song that itched at his mind
There! That guards the stair, one last blockage!
Dendera roared, nightmares died around her feet as the rip and sizzle of flesh being torn apart sounded.
They would descend the great stair soon. He hoped they would learn just what had awakened such nightmares in a god there.
The waters of the great river had long left this place, its flow having changed long ago, not the slow natural meander that took centuries, but in a single moment of cataclysmic shift into a new bed. Yet the soil had not returned to sand here. It was black and lush all along the old rivercourse, and the wheat grew up from it in tall waving fields. But its gold was tinted a sickly and shimmering green. The ghostly echo of the river flowed within the dry banks, ephemeral and whispering. Looking down on its surface from the hill they stood upon, he could glimpse the silent faces of the dead in the flow. But even here he knew there was disturbance, too many faces twisted in rictus, too many hands scrabbling to pull themselves free.
The river of the dead was a serene thing, when its King was sleeping well, only those who had lived twisted enough lives to fear their judgment should be in such a state.
"Well, either the sleepers have gone bad again, or something else is amiss," Dendera spoke his thoughts aloud. "And my Goddess has not stirred in her tomb, so 'something else' it is."
Lapis bowed their head in silence. "It is so. Come. This one knows the method to cross and reach the gate."
Their wing pointed out, to the crumbling shadow of stone beyond the deathly fields and whispering river. Like the fields, much of the crumbled walls, the city beyond was more the stuff of spirit than stone, glowing faintly against the backdrop of a sky locked eternally in dusk. But the great black stone gates that stood in their center were heavy and physical and real in a way that nothing else in his vision was.
They descended the hill in silence, his contemplative, and Dendera's wary, only the animalistic panting and thump of his porter's heavy footfalls broke it. They passed through the fields of waving wheat, so cold to the touch that it seared his flesh black where a stalk brushed against his body.
Drawing the dead flesh back in and generating a new more resistant epidermis from his study of the necrotized cells was enough to keep his mind occupied through the walk. As they approached the riverbank, Lapis spread their wings, halting the group as they made some sign that he could not perceive. A low bridge of white stone faded into existence, coalescing from the mist given off by the river of the dead.
"There will be no cost. As guests, you are welcomed without tolls," Lapis said softly.
He nodded as they began to cross, peering over the side of the bridge for a closer look, absently batting aside the dripping ichorous claw of an old man dressed in tattered sleeper finery, bangles of gold and ivory still about his neck. The brush of his hand was enough to send the weeping thing back into the river course from which it had leaped.
"Fascinating, to be able to exist beyond the river at all, there is a great deal more energy flowing through the course than there should be."
"It is so. The wardings are straining, the river may burst its banks within a decade or two, should the King remain so unsettled," Lapis agreed.
"The dead should not be so wild. The mad scrabbling bottomless hunger of life should be past for them," Dendera rumbled. Heat poured off of her, distorting the air. Oppressive and hot, it quelled the slopping grasping hands that reached for them from the sides of the span, boiling away ghostly flesh and bone until the spirits fell squirming back into the 'water' below. "What exactly must we do here? You have been vague. Stop being vague."
Lapis paused, they were only a short way from the Gate now. "You must deliver this one to the foot of the King's throne, so that I may allow my Goddess to soothe his dreams."
Hori's eyes left the intricate carvings, depicting the strife over the Throne of the Firstborn, when He rejoined the Greater Sun, and his chosen heir was challenged. "You are barely of greater godsblood than us, unless you hide very well. Will this not…"
"I will do my duty. You will do yours. Deliver me unto the throne. I will require all of my vitality for the task."
Dendera snorted. "Hah, I see now. We are all walking happy into the underworld, I suppose."
Lapis' wing brushed over black stone, awakening glittering glyphs in meticulous order. They lowered their head, the braids of their hair shadowing their eyes. "... I would like to live. Thus I ask you both to do your duties well. To navigate, to fight, that I need not exert myself on the journey."
Hori grimaced. No pressure of course. He reached back, idly lifting the stone cabinet from his now ragged and crumbling porters back. Unlike them the journey had not been kind to the dreg flesh, now withered and blackened, rotted by the air here, baked by Dendera's heat, half dissolved from the journey through the Godpath. Setting it down by the gate as Lapis enacted the gate opening, he swung the cabinet doors wide.
…Which of his life flasks would be best for battling the unquiet dreams of Death?
"Ugh, you still haven't fixed that smell, Hori?"
"It is still the best fertilizing brine. The smell can't be changed without losing the properties." Two flasks full of squirming, pulsating liquid gold, grown from cultures of beasts which lived under the harshest rays, attuned to the burning red wastes. Distilled down, this should give him an edge. He sank the glass flask into his chest, and crushed the container with a flex of muscle, taking in a sharp breath as what felt like a bolt of lightning radiated up his spine. Nerves reformatted, muscles attuning to the temporary rush of power and change
He exhaled, and golden sparks of sunlight drifted out from his warping, sharpening mouth, glittering feathers rippled out from his skin as bones hollowed. His vision sharpened and as an eye of liquid gold opened on his brow. He left the earth on shimmering wings, the cry of ibis bouncing from the stones of the underworld
The gates began to grind open, and Dendera snorted, the sound distorted by the increasingly leonine cast of her face, and the whipping hot winds beginning to whirl around her feet.
***
Chaos awaited them in the streets of the Tephren. Where the dead should have wandered in serene contemplation, ere their descent to the King's halls, instead piscine nightmares thronged, flopping, crawling, squirming down narrow alleys and wide boulevards alike. Hori had only seen the sea a few times, the study of the abyss of waters, the primal realm from which the lands were called, was not his.But he recognized the shapes arrayed around them in horror. The houses of the dead bulged with spirits, hidden behind doors of gold and basalt, but his eyes could see the weakening of the wardings. If this stood, if these nightmarish things continued to claw and gnaw and dissolve, there would be so much lost.
…He remembered why he had been drawn to Dendera once. She was death, a reaping lion, untouchable and unshakeable. She stalked the broad boulevard, the wild red flames of her hair like a banner, the face of a lioness, a roof topping titan of bronze and fire as she strode into the squirming mass of nightmares on footsteps that made the earth tremble.
Her breath was killing pestilence, the red wind which punished the wicked. Where it blew, damp rubbery bodies twisted and bucked, veins bulging under flesh, inflamed, sores opened, weeping blood and fouler things. Lesser nightmares collapsed, retching blood as pink foam formed over fluttering gills. He could see, with his sharp eyes, the countless ways in which blood and flesh was twisted against itself.
And those which still stood in the wake of that met burning claws which rent apart flesh like thin cloth.
But the brute might of Sahkmat was not enough alone. The things in the streets were endless. Dendera could slay until the sun burned out, and they would come still. This too he could see, watching them with far seeing eyes as fresh nightmares recombined from drifting soul matter, observing their construction from the leaking emotional background of the realm of the Dead. The very fear of the ghosts huddled in their houses were the particulates upon which new pearls of horror formed.
…And the city itself was against them. No, that was too strong. The Dreams of the King were not malice, but they twisted the streets all the same, pushed them away all the same.
It twisted in more than physical directions. His wings beat and the golden thread which spun out, connecting his claw to the rampaging lioness pulled taught as he dragged them through bent dimensions, navigating a maze which adjusted its halls with every beat of his wings.
Were the dusk not eternal here, the sun would already have risen in glory.
Nit, Lapis remained silent, curled into their own wings, untouched upon Dendera's shoulder.
And the great Mausoleum Palace of the King of the Dead was close now, he could feel.
There, there was the key, a crouching squalid thing of eyes and tendrils, as large as a house, toothless mouths open in wailing song that itched at his mind
There! That guards the stair, one last blockage!
Dendera roared, nightmares died around her feet as the rip and sizzle of flesh being torn apart sounded.
They would descend the great stair soon. He hoped they would learn just what had awakened such nightmares in a god there.
Not sure what Nit means here.
Great chapter, li Suyin would be so pumped to see this
Grosstoad
Birdbrain - Dick - Rules-Lawyer - Creeper
+checks keyboard+ Probably 'but'.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
[X] A elegant, high necked vase, painted with splotchy white glaze. The sound of clinking chains echoed from within.
I see people theorizing that the vase will cause Ling Qi to get over any further hangups she has about sex and intercourse.
Would be interesting if the opposite happens and witnessing the true horrors of things being far worse than anything she ever witnessed caused her to instead backslide and withdraw once again.
Would be interesting if the opposite happens and witnessing the true horrors of things being far worse than anything she ever witnessed caused her to instead backslide and withdraw once again.
She's already faced it in a tribulation designed by the Emerald Mourner. I can't imagine anything short of grimdark stuff happening to her (that I can't ever see yrs wanting to write about or the readers wanting to read) would cause a significant backslide after her tribulation and advanced insight.
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- They/Them