CLOSED SIGNUPS Celestia

[Reverie]

Rise of Gods—
Two years since the Behemoth's body fell from the sky, blotting out the sun, becoming a new mountain of flesh and blood. Two years since the sea rose around the corpse of Leviathan, swallowing islands and crashing shores with tidal waves. Two years since Goliath's eternal decay ceased, and its collapse in the underworld splintered chasms into the world above. Two years since young gods crumpled around their kin, bloodied and torn, bodies on either side of the battle. The remnants of those loyal to their deceased Gods slaughtered in spite of any plea. Two years cloaked in a mantle of chaos, of mortals and gods alike without guidance, as the world fell around them. Two years of anarchy and destruction. And yet, the indomitable world carried on, inhabitants struggling with grasped fingers against the chaos, clinging to remnants of an old world lost to them. Inheritors of turbulence, the young gods filled the void left by their slain parents, left to shape their domains and the mortal world, mortals who clamoured in the darkness for a touch of the divine.

Two years and a month prior, as the last snows melted onto the first flowers, the blood of battle dampened the soil. Old wounds lingered in the earth, but fresh flowers bloomed from them. Birds, and bees, and beetles all hosted themselves on the new flora, flowers unlike those which had ever grown before. Flowers with the blood of gods in them. Spring filled the world, and for all the horror and strife, it still blossomed, and mortals still celebrated the fragrances, flowers, and zephyrs. The sun blinked barely on the horizon in a moment of pre-dawn, as humanity stirred, preparing in the earliest hours for the equinox. Along with the dances and drinks, and all the other celebrations unique to locations, there would be prayers and offerings to the gods in plenty.

Where the seas met the mouth of a river, there once stood the grand and gallant city of Pendra, but when the earth splintered it crumpled in on itself, leaving little but a heap of rubble. Everywhere except the grand temple. A shrine to the Elder Gods — to Leviathan. People had congregated there, a small village around the outskirts of the ruins springing up. Many temples had been destroyed, and many altars desecrated. The people sought stability in trying times, they sought the guidance of absent Gods. And there was terror, even beneath the festivity which dawned.

Inside the temple, crooked on its slanted hill, were two siblings. They were no more than twenty each, with tanned skin and russet hair. They stood before the altar, offerings in their arms. Fresh flowers of all kinds surrounded the altar, as did small offerings. A goat bleated beside them. Nervous energy permeated them. And the girl of the two stepped forward, she placed upon the altar three things — a rich, rainbow stone which shimmered in the light; a bushel of dried grain, and a ribbon of brilliant blue. The boy coaxed the goat forward, and as it stood before the pedestal, he pulled his knife across its throat, whispering a prayer to anyone who could hear it. A prayer for aide and protection of his people. The goat stumbled as the blood spilled to the floor, and kicked, but soon went still as the flowers around it turned red. The girl twitched. She wrung her hands, and words seemed to hesitate on her lips. Both, however, remained perfectly silent as they waited, hopeful.

|| x ||​

 

[Lesbingus]

Rivers were odd things. And humanity's relationship with them even more-so.

They made the land fertile. Carrying vital nutrients that rendered the land flush with life. Yet so too did they often break their banks, washing it all away. A river's current would wash away the signs of one's passage, and carrying his goods, and drown him-- All at once, if the situation called for it. One would think that humans would be wary of them! Yet time and again they congregated near them, around them, on them.

Settlements of mud bricks and thatched roofs growing into towns of wood and stone. And then into cities of marble and metal. And still those rivers carried on, unbothered by it all. One would think they would be, given how crowded things could get...

Hagar was still trying to understand how everything worked, truthfully. Things that should not have bothered the denizens of the world did bother them; benign, passive things. The passage of time seemed to bother them the most, and they wasted their short lives fretting over expended seconds. Yet the destruction of a city, the voracity of beasts, the ceaseless trudge of nature around them, whittling them down one by one... They didn't seem so nearly as bothered. They did not fret, and pace, and worry as they did over the passage of the seasons. Instead, they came together.

Humans were so strange.

Why did they leave an offering to Leviathan, of all creatures? Gods did not always answer... But a dead one wouldn't. But in spite of that, here they all were. And their rituals were so... Odd. Seeking the end of famine, they gave up their food. Seeking comfort, they gave up their most treasured things. Seeking life, they took another. And it was the dichotomous nature of it all, the contradiction that none of them seemed to see, that attracted her attention.

In truth, Hagar had been here. Amongst the mortals, and had been for some time. Watching, and waiting, and learning. They paid her no mind, for she did not wish them to.

The goat shuddered, breathing its last through bubbling, bloody froth. The twitching leg hit the flagstones, hoof reporting off the marbled flooring with a sharp KRAK! The closest of the humans flinched, looking ill. Whether from the sight of the sacrifice, or from watching one of their precious few sources of milk and meat offered up to gods who may not even deign to answer, Hagar couldn't tell. Either way, she couldn't fault them.

The crowded supplicants shifted and jostled. Heads turning as a figure ambled through their midst.

An ancient crone, back stooped with age. Gnarled hands gripping a gnarled staff, each step laboured, each foot forward punctuated with a rattling gasp. She passed behind one of the few pillars still standing in this place, and did not emerge again. In her place strode a woman in her prime, back straight, posture prim. No one seemed to notice the change. They just noticed that someone had worked up the courage to move to the fore. Most didn't look her way.

None saw her disappear as she ducked down to avoid a half-collapsed pillar. And only kind murmurs and gentle, guiding hands met the young girl who skipped out in her place. Pushing all the way to the front, then past them all. From one pudgy hand dangled a stuffed bird, woven from sack cloth and packed with straw. She hummed the tune to a hymn none found familiar; which made sense. The people who had written that hymn had died several centuries ago. But she could still hear them singing, joining their voices with those present here, and those who would one day come here to do the same.

It was just the siblings and the girl this far ahead. The little girl's bare feet slapped against the marble, kicking aside pebbled rubble, then splashing in goat's blood. Leaving in her wake a grown woman's footprints, with a crone's shuffling gait. She scampered up, coming to a halt between the two. Looking first to the young man, bloody knife in hand, eyes downcast. Had he been fond of that goat? That was a shame. Why did humans get attached to the things they knew would one day be their food? Didn't they know it would hurt? Did they do it because it would? In spite of that?

And then there was the girl. Wringing her hands! That was good! Humans did that when they were nervous, and this definitely felt like a nervous kind of situation! This one did things that made sense! Her lips seemed reluctant to let whatever words she wanted to say come forth. Humans were odd like that; sometimes acting like a collection of disparate beings sewn together, each with its own motives and ideas. All her bits seemed to agree on staying quiet except for whatever made the voice-noises, and it seemed displeased with that vote. But quiet she remained, and the girl gazed up at her.

She couldn't have been older than four, yet her eyes were those of an octogenarian. Rheumy, growing cloudy with nascent cataracts. She blinked, and they returned to normal. The bright blue eyes of a hopeful youngster. With each blink those eyes seemed to cycle. The bright eyes of a child, the level gaze of a woman grown, the weakening glare of an elder. Her shadow stretched out behind her, like a cloak. For it was the silhouette of a matron, who could very well have been her mother. The young girl looked between the siblings again, then to the goat, its visible eye glassy and dull, staring off into something only it could see. It reminded her of an eye the size of eternity, devoid of life, breathing into existence something... new.

Something new, and something not. Something young, and something old. Something kind, and something stern. Who chose an Aspect of Kindness in this moment. Who decided upon Patience, upon Calm. And when the siblings felt a tiny hand reach up to take each of theirs, and heard a sack-cloth doll fall to the floor, the world changed. Perhaps it would be for the better, perhaps for the worse. Only one thing, one being, could truly say for certain.

Only Time could tell. And she held the hands of two desperate youths.

The young girl was gone. In her place stood a regal woman, skin the warm russet tan of equatorial lands unknown to the people of Pendra. A woman with angular, narrow features. Voluminous black-upon-silver hair cascading down her shoulders. And eyes like shadowed moons, fathomless and terrible. Eyes that reflected in them humanity's primordial terror; the eclipsing of the sun. Yet those dread eyes held within them such kindness. Gazing upon the young woman as if she had held her to her own bosom.

To the sister's eye, she was mantled by a hundred wings. Trailing in her wake a glimpse of Infinity. Yet to the brother, she possessed only a single wing, equally Infinite. To gaze upon that trailing haze of all that was left the eyes aching, and so their eyes were turned once more to the face of the woman.

Hagar, The First Eclipse, The Many-Minded One, The Stretch of Time, squeezed their hands gently. As a grandmother would to soothe the worried hearts of her grandchildren.

"ʜᴇʀᴇ ɴᴏᴡ, ᴏ' ᴄʜɪʟᴅʀᴇɴ... ᴡᴏʀʀʏ ɴᴏᴛ."
​

Spoke the goddess, her voice quiet, almost timid. Spoken with the authority of divinity, yet with the slightest uncertainty. It was impossible to keep out of her voice, in truth. For this was the first time Hagar had ever spoken. She had to concentrate. Forming the correct strings of tendon and muscle in the once-hollow of her throat. Then she had to focus to get them to pluck and vibrate the right way, and to get the wind to pass through her lips and over her tongue. Words were terribly complex for a first-timer.

Smiling down at them, Hagar breathed in.

"sᴘᴇᴀᴋ. ʙᴇ ʜᴇᴀʀᴅ. ᴀɴᴅ ɪ sʜᴀʟʟ ᴅᴏ ᴀʟʟ ɪ ᴄᴀɴ."​

 

[Asmodeus]

Location: Foot of Mount Pendra. | Tag: Gorhart
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Small amounts of methanol occur naturally in plants and animals.

Methanol flames are almost invisible.

Scurry scurry, fawns and fools,
Snatch up the child, put down your tools,
The forest burns yet makes no palls,
A flameless fire, it seems

Then screaming as you strike your flesh
Know well that you have suffered less
Than when the heavens were possessed
By sweet Iola's screams

Abandon friend and beast and crop
And even lovers where they drop
The fire spreads and will not stop
Till bested by the streams

But as your homes and livestock burn
And bones to blackened ashes turn
Give thanks that you will never learn
Of sweet Iola's screams

So dance and howl, in lightless blaze
While wolves upon the bodies graze
And all your bygone, unburned days
Are frail and fleeting dreams

For you were touched by tragedy
But by your fair mortality
Are spared that cruelest memory
Of sweet Iola's screams

Years from now, they would call it the Black Dance. And they would say it lasted thirteen moons. For what else should be thought, when a forest withers in front of you?

Fruit perished on the vine as the leaves turned to ashes. A brown ruin underfoot. And overhead, a steaming halo fed by pools and rivers, pouring upwards through the canopy.

Scorched trees would not lead this dance, though countless quivered here like actors on a stage. Instead it was the things that ran between them. People and animals. A whole cast summoned for an unruly encore. Limbs shook and wings fluttered as the survivors dropped and rolled and fretted and thrashed. In time, this menagerie grew alike. Matching costumes - hairless and unclothed. Perfume shared - of burning fur and birthing charcoal. Even their cries became one. A chittering chorus. A nightmare ode.

The methanol fires had razed a dozen lands that neighbored this one. God-fueled and corpse-stoked, the gasses breathed from the worst battlefields. What methanol the trees could not absorb - and what the sky could not embrace - lingered at the mercy of errand sparks and lightning strikes.

And when the fire came, it was invisible. Lightless heat and phantom burning. A death that permitted you to dance, as you struck and doused your own flesh in panic.

But these creatures were attended in their agonies. For among those blackened trees: one silhouette. Among the flaking and the fracturing: one figure.

"Forward!"

Gorhart roared.

Where no flame was seen nor blood was shed, she came to them in crimson. And at her side, wolves that once had burned. Now no fur upon their hides - only husk-dark skin, sealed like tectonic crusts. This barking, biting entourage ran ahead of the goddess, and roamed among the flailing host.

"Forward!"

Now terror found direction. Now terror found intent. The villagers, their livestock, and all the forest denizens were driven downhill, out of the ash piles and thickets, away from the falling bowers and steaming mounds. Even as they suffered they were coaxed to run. To crawl and converge.

Gorhart watched it all from the treeline. Man, woman, child and beast plunged into a river at the forest's edge. Fast-flowing in the mountain run-off, the stream knocked the first survivors sprawling, then slowed and scattered when clogged by the press of bodies. Rushing white became muddy black, as the people soaked their rags and spat the ashes from their lungs. Bird and game writhed together in the spray.

The char-fleshed wolves stood guard on the riverbank. They snarled at any who were not yet clean.

As it was now, so it was back then. When the blood of Behemoth soaked the land, Gorhart had lingered by his mountainous corpse. And there she had taken the people and the animals - the twitching and the sodden - and bade them lick. Make sweat and spittle on one another, to loosen dirt and cut through gore. A single roiling orgy on the mountainside. Predator and prey, herdsman and vermin - all creatures equal as they cleaned the blood from one another.

Sure, some were eaten; others crushed beneath the crowd. But when the delirium faded the greater rose to their feet: baptized and reborn.

How such horrors would be remembered. The time when they were beasts, and groomed a thousand fleshes.

Gorhart's Kiss. Mother's Embrace. These names she would have preferred. But mortals were imperfect.

Smoke curled through hollows of her skull; around the branches of her antlers. Gorhart raised her stare to the mountain beyond the madness. Mount Pendra, named for the city that once prevailed here. Now white-capped and pristine, it fed the river where the burning bathed. Like a celestial spire, looming over the damned.

The thought was not so foolish. There were gods up there, after all. And monsters down below.

Gorhart called her wolves away from the crowded river, and headed for the mountain.

credits

 

[wanderingcoder]

Location: near pendra. | Tag: aelvaris.
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Aelvaris paid no heed to the billy wine spilt at the great temple dedicated to the Leviathan. While she was aware of the misery, she believed there was no place for a being of conflict in the affairs of siblings. There was also no place for an eye to the past—the once great Leviathan brought the future to his followers. Other deities would be way more appropriate than a mischievous snake. She frowned at her attempt to self-deprecation. That was not like her, she thought. She remembered her actions in the past—her attempts to convince herself that she was a wonderful deity. She still was one, she reminded herself.

Nonetheless, Aelvaris felt content watching and interacting with the world around her. There was a village that built up around the ruins of a once prosperous city. The people there were quite lively. They had festivals, and celebrated loudly. Sometimes there were screams of terror, and sometimes there were screams of elation. Aelvaris waltzed through a small crowd that did not pay heed to her, humming softly.

There were small-time merchants, and the haggling would become loud as the day went. There was a young man who wanted to buy a necklace for the woman of his dreams, hesitating on whether he had the money needed for splurging on a gift. The vendor had told him that the necklace was unique, and that there were none like it. She sensed the hesitation, the need for a push as she watched him weigh the pouch at his hip.

'Let Aelvaris help you decide…' He may or may not have heard the alluring whisper in his ear, for it was fleeting. His pouch felt heavier—as if the earth itself became greedy and tugged at the prospect of currency. The man fought back the pull of gravity, and looked back at the necklace. There was another pull, and he saw that the rope binding the pouch had loosened. She saw him swallow, take a deep breath, and heard him confidently announce the purchase to the vendor. She hoped for the man to have enough spare currency to feed himself—though it was not her business. Sometimes, growth could be found by enticing a man to empty his wallet for a woman. May the buyer be blessed with the wife of his dreams.

The vendor, on the other hand, seemed quite happy about the transaction as he rubbed his hands. The greying man placed the coins in a small chest in the back and pulled another identical necklace from a nearby box. With a knowing grin, Aelvaris leisurely made her way through the crowd, leaving only the murmurs of a chuckle behind her. Mischief managed. May the vendor be blessed with suckers to rob in broad daylight.

She stopped, hands behind her back, and gazed upon the mortals as they lived their everyday lives around the desecrated temples. There was another mortal—a child. He seemed to be crying. She stared at him—she saw frustration, anger, and sadness. Her gaze went to where he was looking and saw two other boys that might have been a bit older. She saw bread and apples. Food. She went back to the crying child—it was his. They had robbed him, and he gave up as they were bigger than him. He wanted to defend himself, but couldn't muster the courage.

To that thought, Aelvaris brought a gift to the boy. She appeared from behind, and whispered some words of encouragement. 'Take it back…' He turned, and saw an unlit torch rolling at his feet. He did not catch a glimpse of the white dress that went past the corner. She didn't stay to watch the resolution, but she heard the sounds of fighting later on. May the child be blessed with the return of his food, or may he be blessed by one who will tend to his wounds.​

credits

 

[sele]

Hearth-warm fingers contentedly splayed against a door, painted in green-gray mehndi. Hers was of garden herbs and smoky soot. The fragrant patterns wove down each digit until tapering and fading at a feminine wrist. Early evening light pooled heavy and gold about the comfortably-robed woman. Beneath her other arm hung a basket draped over with a cloth, lumpy where the material lay across fresh rounds of bread.

Estenia pressed her palm into the door, letting in more light, while she showed herself out.

Crossing the threshold should have deposited the familial goddess onto the garden flagstones at Thistle Gate cottage – but her door parted into a new place entirely.

Wearing the aromatic comforts of hearth and home about herself, Estenia emerged into the street of a distant village; it was still bright with early morning light. A bandage slanted across both of her eyes, too, though she moved with seeing-certainty enough that people – busy about their days – wouldn't have undue attention brought to the accessory. They could not see Rosfyr's stars that glinted above the fabric.

In truth, to mortal eyes, she was just another passerby meant to be there amid their morning routines.

She walked her aspect of theoxenia – gods as strangers – that day. She'd been pulled toward these particular mortals by certain, ethereal threads that came with prayers and offerings. There were others here, too.

Their village lay in the shadow of devastation. How could others not manifest? Who'd come? And how would they serve their domains? Estenia hadn't entirely been sure of why she'd been summoned herself – a bewildering miasma sat in the ether here. Echoes of ruin hummed an incessant hymn.

A mortal with an unrealized heightened sense kindly nodded toward Estenia as they passed on that village path. She'd not seen the figure physically, but the welcoming intention amplified their distinguishing aura. Estenia eased a round of bread into the stranger's hands, who yieldingly accepted as though in a supple trance.

Estenia continued on that path beyond the heart of the village, where small buildings became more sparse. Soon, there were only the struggling signs of agricultural efforts. She felt cold through to her bones, though the warmth of the hearth remained ever-present about her. It'd been the embrittling haunt of memories – both her own and scarred into the land – that'd felt as though ice manifested within her marrow.

She approached a temple. Where so many other shrines had crumbled, this one remained. The lull of her summons murmured there, and so she'd follow. Gifts were brought into the house of the gods – rather, a defeated Elder, the Leviathan. The beast had failed them all in what they'd become – creatures with sentient spark. Though, Estenia still bore the ache of bringing down her own 'family.' This was the house built to horrors, but nonetheless a house she felt the pull to attend to that day by the nature of the offerings.

Who answered Hagar but Estenia rather than the mortals.

"Go with them to the coastline cliffs and guard them from errant gales." Her instruction broadened now to include all three.

"A white yew grows at the height. Pluck a sprig and burn it to the primordials. Pluck another and keep it. Hang it to dry over your hearth among herbs and garlic. Rebuild your house shrines with new purpose. Honor the traveler, the wilderness, and the sea."

Among the gods, Estenia's voice might have most closely resembled a mortal matron's to them. It bore the quality of the women they respected most within their families, different to each ear.

The world was changed, so the prayers of the mortals should become new, too.

Estenia would not accompany them to the yew, she'd come far enough. She ran her herb-painted fingers along the blue ribbon, pleased by its texture.

---

Back in the village, a woman with a round of bread passed by Aelvaris. She hesitated, then swiveled.

"A gift." was all the villager had managed to say. Her face paled while her eyes praised.

|| Tag: @Lesbingus 's Hagar, @wanderingcoder 's Aelvaris; mentions Rosfyr, references Gorhart, Nyka, and Sonder. || Location: Thistle Gate homestead > Village in the ruins of Pendra > the temple scene ||​

 

[sele]

Admittedly, the signs for more dangerous terrain had been there at lower elevation. The valley that that mortal band had chosen to pass through at the beginning of their trek upward was green, fed by the unfailing flow of mountain drainage through braided depressions in gravel. They'd thought themselves wise to avoid the unstable flood plain, even if the runoff was reduced to only a few meandering ribbons. They kept to the greener patches, picking blueberries and fireweed as they went. Some to eat, some to offer at the top of the mountain – their destination.

They'd seen the snow and the fog below it, too. Somewhere in that gray the treeline ended. They knew that patterns in weather seemed to do as it pleased up Mt. Pendra relative to what movement in cloud or wind existed anywhere else. They'd brought provisions, furs, and blankets. It wasn't an environment any of them were accustomed to up there, but their need was pressing.

Farther down, shadowed by Mt. Pendra's foothills, other pilgrims had made their desperate effort within the remains of a temple. The party weaving their way up the mountain had surmised that if they went to the highest point they knew, perhaps the gods might hear them – and answer – from there. Only one in their number had experience at higher elevation, and thus, he was their guide. Though truth told, he'd only ever ventured just beyond the valley, up to the edge of the snow one late spring. He was the best the party had, however. Their desperation – alike to the siblings in the temple – had become enough to push them into the lesser known risks. They rationalized that, maybe, the gods would honor their daring and take pity on them enough to speak again.

They were more familiar with the windward side of the mountain, where the sea warmed saline breezes up into the village. They were less so learned about the leeward - though that was where their guide had scouted what he'd declared as the best potential path. All they could do was follow. There were signs for more dangerous terrain to come - where warmer wind and sun spend less time on a mountain so often crowned in white. But they didn't know. They hadn't learned the secrets of Pendra's heights yet. They laid offerings to the spirit of the mountain, though would their ignorance nonetheless offend her toward savagery? Maybe nothing they did would matter - the gods were silent and the mountain existed in her way regardless of man. They had to try.

Rime crusted the sparse trees, rocks, and grass at the height of the valley. Freezing fog sapped the color from this place - it caught strange in their lungs, too. Just over the rise, they'd been told - just make it over the rocks ahead. Here, they left their offerings to Nyka and to Gorhart. They hoped for Nyka's blessing, and to appease Gorhart's wolves. Amidst the frost-white flora, they lit a candle, then wrapped its base in red-dyed strips of fabric. At the base, they left a piece of venison jerky, too. They'd asked for blessings. They'd made preparations. When they pressed on, it wasn't long before that small flicker was blurred away to fog.

The villagers had never walked on a glacier. Nor had they fallen through hidden crevasses until that trek. Their valley had been so green beside the runoff channel; they'd made preparations, offerings, and their will was forged firm through desperation. The mountain ate three of them that morning regardless. There'd been wails and mourning around the first, though by the third, those who remained became all the more grim, but they'd pressed onward.

They'd become familiar with the more visible abysses - drainage moulins where they could hear running water somewhere. Those who'd survived thus far were learning, though these gains were far from anything triumphant in their minds. They'd managed not to fall into the underworld - they'd used these punishing lessons to continue forward, and all they could do beyond that was to hope that the snow-veiled crevasses wouldn't open their maws from beneath farther along.

Then the wind came.

It blinded, burned, froze, and stung. Another of their party became lost when they'd slowed just a little too much and lost sight of the remaining ten ahead. Whatever became of that one was unknown to the rest, but they determined they couldn't turn back or search, or they'd all risk becoming lost and fail their pilgrimage altogether. They couldn't fail - for themselves, and for their families and neighbors.

They'd made camp in the shadow of three massive boulders. They made fire, collapsed to rest, breathe, and collect their wits. Elevation began to take its toll on them regardless of attempts to recuperate. Somehow, most of them had survived the night.

Nine woke to a calm in the wind. They hoped to press to the summit before dark.

~~

The frozen air nearer to the peak played strange games with the blaring, cold sunlight. From a parhelion vantage, Hupomone observed the pilgrims. The goddess anticipated Nyka's presence, as the two often found themselves engaged in competitive pull over travelers' safety and success. Why hadn't she foreseen the other there, too? The wind had become ominous, predatory wolf-howls where it passed across the sloping snow crust. Gorhart.

["They should summit. They should return to their village alive, too. Feel their determination. It isn't mere survival that drives them. They're looking for us - or an aspect of ourselves. They bring offerings, too."]

She pressed the consideration outward into the ether, sending her sentiment as messenger birds for Nyka and Gorhart to capture.

But the horizon was stormy, consuming the sunlight around it. She felt a bitterness toward Nyka, presuming the threat of violent weather to have arisen from his influence. It sat dark and low in the distance, but she did not trust that it'd stay far for long, not with him here.

|| Tag: @Reverie 's Nyka, @Asmodeus 's Gorhart || Location: at elevation on Mt. Pendra || Music: Kyrr ||​

 

[Asmodeus]

| | Location: Peak of Mount Pendra. | |
| | Tag: Gorhart, @sele's Hupomone, @Reverie's Nyka | |
| | Music: Yabba Dabba Doo (The King is Gone) | |

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Woooooo

Woom

Vrrhu​

Vruu​

The mountain changed its tune. What once were wolf-howls, cutting at the peak, softened into whistles and wheezes. Something drew close: one sun from the parhelion converging with the others.

First there was a silhouette. A peryton suggested: its outline joining bird to stag and stag to corpse.

Then Gorhart dispelled the myth. She arrived on all-fours, stabbing coal-black hooves through the snow. Rear legs bent backwards, supporting a frame both gaunt and slate-furred. Atop the goddess's skull, a mountain pigeon sang: a song of wooms and vrrhus as it pecked at blueberries hanging from Gorhart's antlers.

Hupomone's messenger bird - white-breasted and gray-winged - had returned with its belly full. As do all who go to Gorhart.

But the pigeon was not her only passenger. For like a queen outpacing her own red carpet, Gorhart left blood in her wake. The trail stretched back along the snow crust, turning rouge a moulin on the leeward peak. What she had dragged from those tunnels remained in her jaws. A pilgrim's body, broken first by a fall and second by her bite. Now no more than jumbled limbs and frozen rags, his gore slow-dripped with her thawing breath.

She circled Hupomone, like a hound bearing gifts it was reluctant to part with. Then she spat the corpse on the ground, so she might speak.

"Five of fourteen? A paltry offering, Dearest."

The pigeon took flight as the goddess hunched. From above it would see the bloody half-circle smeared around Hupomone. A red smile, for gods to stand in. When Gorhart reared up, her knee-joints reversed with a sickening crunch. Then, hair by hair, the icy breeze stripped off her fur.

"Had it been thirteen... with a sole survivor. Now that would be a story."

She returned to human seeming - at least below her cheekbones. Hooves became fingers, and Gorhart traced them along her curves. Then, naked, she squatted in the snow and dug through the bite wounds on the corpse. Where tooth had ventured, nail explored. She plundered deeper, freeing blood to daub her fingers with. Then she scooped and slathered. From her feet, redness rose in streaks to dare the summit of her thighs.

"Or one... just one... virginal and stripped to their final nerve."

She rose while painting crimson between her legs. Each slow stroke curved to end at her buttocks.

"Sweet Hupomone. You know how best the stories shine. Upon a Maiden Flayed... her every sense recording agonies."

The blood turned infinite. No longer from the corpse, it oozed instead from the center of her palms. By this stigmatic flow she painted her arms and shoulders, leaving belly and breasts till last. When all was done, her body seemed to pucker. A macabre inverse - not skin sealing across wound, but gore sealing over flesh. The filth flowed into hempen strands that hugged her form.

A robe fell into place, and she fastened its cord.

"How dull to let them live, Dear. A noisy and ill-fitting tale. Nine wretches gone their separate ways, to wither and wend?"

Gorhart plucked the sprig of blueberries tangled in her antlers. One by one, she fed the fruits to the messenger pigeon, which had returned to settle on her shoulder. Its lore matched the color of Gorhart's robe, as if someone had stripped the flesh between its eyes and nostrils.

"Why... that would be like Iola, alive and well in Anris's embrace."

She stepped over the pilgrim's remains and closed the distance. One slender hand, stained by blood and blueberries, rested on Hupomone's cheek.

"Or you, my sweet girl... strolling through the glade with your parents."

The pigeon melted into black and silver veins, coursing from her sleeve unto her fingertips. Each one crossed over, and knitted into strands of Hupomone's hair.

They stood there together, as Gorhart's gaze climbed the peak, and snow swirled in the hollows of her stag skull.

"There must be wind, and it must cut you to the bone. Or you will never know you were on the mountain."

credits

 

[Grumpy]

Location: A beach, near to the village outside the ruins of Pendra | Tag: allusions to Hadar by @Lesbingus, Estenia by @sele and Aelvaris by @wanderingcoder

---

Call me when they bury bodies underwater
It's blue light over murder for me
Crumble like a temple built from future daughters
To wasteland when the oceans recede
Merry in the morning, earn your bitter fodder
It's easier to try not to eat
So flood me like Atlantic, weather me to nothing
Wash away the blood on my hands​

They still find bodies on the beach.

Fewer now than in the first days after that terrible cataclysm. When children turned upon parent, creation upon creator. When calamity rained down upon the Elders' greatest creation. Choking. Crushing. Drowning. As air toxified. As earth split. As water surged. The lands mirrored the chaos unfolding above, within and beneath. The death and destruction pruning the ranks of divinity were visited tenfold upon divinity's creations.

They still find bodies on the beach.

In the beginning there was little to be done about it. The mewling creatures that had once built great cities as monuments to their fleeting brilliance were reduced to scuttling, starveling things. There was no time or inclination to consider the corpses spat out by the ocean, save in some desperate instances when hungry eyes were cast towards the abandoned flesh. They let the crabs pick the remains over, watched as the crows stole what they could, looked away as the waves pulled them out to sea once more.

Time passed. The starveling things survived, as they are wont to do. They began to rebuild. Where once a great edifice of human creation stood, a far more humble village rose in it's shadow. The people there found their humanity once more, and took to burying the dead that washed ashore amidst the sands and rocks so recently watered with the blood of the divine. They praised themselves for the good deed, as though it would absolve them of all the times they turned their backs before. As months became years, the corpses became fewer. Now whole seasons could pass in between sightings, between the times when the decrepit old soldier who now passes himself off as a priest had to be fetched and a ceremony performed over the body of some unfortunate soul. Usually they are now dealing with nought but bones, bleached and cleaned by the ocean's persistence.

Yet they still find bodies on the beach.

The sight of the corpse alone does not perturb the assembled group of youths, for they are children of the cataclysm - raised amidst ruin and devastation, bodies are a far more familiar sight than intact roads. What shocks them is how fresh it is. No broken skeleton or a cadaver half-consumed by the ocean's progeny, this girl does not look like she could have been dead more than a day. Morbid fascination has gathered them here.

The cruelty ever-present amongst children keeps them.

A boy is shoved to the front of the mob, to loud jeers from the rest.
"Touch it, Rusa!"
"Go on, do it!"
"Don't be a coward, Rusa!" Buoyed on by mockery, the unfortunate victim of this childish ritual comes within a step of the corpse. He looks down upon her, an empty vessel that was once a person; a girl who could not have been much older than him before fate cut her strings. Her black hair is like a mourning veil that hangs down over her face, the hemp dress that was formerly beige stained dark by the waters. Skin that might once have been warm and vibrant is now a pallid white - his mind thinks of the marble statues that stand ruined in the streets of the city beyond his village, lifeless and desiccated.

"He's stalling!" one of the other boys cries.
"Stop staring at her, you pervert!" More laughter. The boy named Rusa swallows his inherent disgust at the task set before him by his peers. His arm stretches down. A shaking hand caresses a cold, sodden cheek.

Then there is a cracking sound, like a branch being broken, and the corpse suddenly contorts.

It twists. It writhes. It rises. A puppet borne aloft on violent strings, the very movement a crime against human anatomy. Arms splayed wide, head still hanging lifelessly. Then lunging upwards, mouth agape as a sporous light erupts from it. Pale blue, like the ocean as it swallows you. Pale blue, like the bioluminescence of things dwelling in the depths. Pale blue, like the light dangled just beyond the jaws of an anglerfish.

Screams fill the beach. The children scatter. Rusa has reeled back, toppling over in his panic as the corpse sets her feet down on the sands. Empty eye sockets crawl and twitch as sharp barbs begin to push their way through. A passing glance could mistake the shapes for the branches of trees in twilight, but such shapes have no place erupting from a human face. The girl's mouth contorts into a rictus smile, sickly blue light still showing through the teeth. Through eyeless sockets that are still not empty she seems to gaze down upon the unfortunate Rusa, who still lies sprawled in the sand.

And my voice emerges from her mouth when she speaks.

"Take flight, little morsel," I tell the boy, and my voice is as the last choking rasp of sailors before their lungs flood with seawater, "or I fear you shall not leave this place alive." His terror is of suitable decorum, silent as he scrambles upright and races up the sand dunes towards civilisation. For a moment I ponder what it would be like to wrap my arms, my true arms, around his legs and drag him down beneath the waves. To feast upon him, and to let my own brethren feast on him in turn. But no. Today is not a day of hunting. Today is a day of gatherings.

I can smell them in the village ahead. At the temple raised in my Mother's honour that perches on the hill above it. The mortals have called out for divinity, and divinity has heeded the call. The new one that inexplicably smells of ages past. The blind one, with the aroma of warm fires and civilisation. And the dangerous one, reeking of guile and hidden motives. Two children of the Behemoth, one of the Goliath. So it is only befitting that Leviathan's spawn be in attendance as well. It was, after all, Her temple.

On ungainly feet that are much too few, I begin my march. Up towards the village and to the temple of a dead god beyond. Let the others bring ministrations and offerings to the mortals, as is their way.

For I shall bring tidings and bitter warnings. As is mine.

 

[wanderingcoder]

Location: village near pendra, beach. | Tag: @sele's estenia, @Grumpy's sonder, mention of others .
──────────────────────────── ˖ ────────────────────────────​

"A gift."

Someone had called out to her. The deity stopped her casual stroll, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Her features softened, and she swiveled at the voice.

Standing before her was a woman. A few centimeters taller than her, the woman had short, auburn hair that framed her delicate features. She appeared to be quite young—and was expecting, Aelvaris noted by the prominent bump in her belly. Emerald orbs gazed into the woman's soul. She looked tired. She saw sleepless nights. She saw a life that deserted her—though not of their own volition.

Praise. Home. Hearth.

Estenia had sent her greetings.

"I see you have already been visited." Rosy lips curved into a smile. A mortal that was attuned to the divine; she saw gods, and praised them. Though she may have been hesitant, the young woman had mustered her courage and addressed her directly. Aelvaris commended the respect that was offered.

The woman praised in silence, her brown eyes avoiding Aelvaris' hypnotizing greens. The deity took a step forward and, as if she had practised for that moment, the mortal bowed and made her offering. Aelvaris relieved the woman of her burden.

"Aelvaris accepts your offering." Her voice was soft, dignified. She gestured for the woman to straighten back up, and she turned towards the ruined, desecrated temples. "These temples used to be quite beautiful— if one was able to restore them, they would be quite blessed." Though some of them had once represented deities that could not answer prayers anymore. The woman kept her silence, and listened.

Nonetheless, even if the offering was home and hearth's greetings, Aelvaris sought to reward the mortal. She smiled. "Should your mind waver at the crossroads, seek the snake's discarded remains and pray. Aelvaris will descend and offer you an apple." It will be up to her to bite down or to refuse the temptation. "May you find guidance in strife."

The young woman smiled in response and nodded. An inaudible response could be read across her lips. She turned, and went back to the village. The deity looked as she became smaller and disappeared behind the corner. She was satisfied. She settled the round of bread under her arm, and went back to wandering, eventually finding herself among the ruins. She would grab bite-sized amounts of the offering and put it in her mouth. It had a texture that reminded her of biting down on a pillow. It was delicious; she would have to thank Estenia for it.

"Monster! Monsteeer!" Wow, rude. Her eyes narrowed, and she saw children not too far away from her. They seemed to be running away from the beach. Oh, so they weren't referring to her. She blinked, and her eyes met with the one who came in last. Death, woman, corpse, beach… 'Take flight, little morsel. Or I fear you shall not leave this place alive.' The words had been imprinted on the young mortal's mind. She laughed and plopped another piece of bread in her mouth.

The thalassian had heeded the call down at her father's temple.

She made her way down at the beach at her own leisure, and soon enough Aelvaris crossed paths with a marching—if she could call it marching—daughter of the Leviathan.

"If it isn't Sonder~! Scaring the shit out of mortals, I see!" She cheerfully greeted the thalassian and offered bread. "Courtesy of Estenia—she says hi." She beamed as she made a tempting gesture with the loaf. "It's delicious!"

Speaking of other gods, Pendra was starting to become a deity meeting place, huh? First her, then Estenia and Sonder… Another one had heeded the call of the mortals at the temple of Leviathan… Aelvaris felt another pull in her mind. The mountain? Interesting. Not her business though.

"What brings you here? Was the billy wine too attractive to pass on~?" A giggle escaped delicate lips. She threw another piece of bread in her mouth and made another appreciative noise.​

credits

 

[sele]

Dire wolf song became only mountain wind again – though perhaps it'd always been just that to begin with. Hupomone glanced away from the pilgrims and toward the penumbral shapes that chased the brightest curves of sunlight. Void-space impressed hazy vignettes from mortal nightmares, and sharp things seemed to glint at the edges where the new parhelion flashed brightest. Claws or fangs perhaps; antlers. There was something twisted in the wrong directions, and something feminine, too.

The imagery sharpened further. That the messenger bird returned whole and happy along with Gorhart gave Hupomone an unexpected satisfaction. She hadn't assumed it would have come back at all, not for an expectation about the ravening Gorhart, but that it might have just dissipated into the ether. It'd stopped existing to her, and yet, here it was again.

The fiend circled, dragging her regal train in visceral red. Hupomone stood her ground, it wouldn't do to trigger prey instincts. Her glance descended the slope again toward the pilgrims, keeping the sentient savagery in her midst in her peripheral awareness.

["They did not come to lay their lives down to us in sacred geometry."]

Though both deities had their own reasons to find such an outcome satisfying if that'd been the intention. Given the flavor of their collective motivations, though, Hupomone was interested in at least some portion of the expedition to make it back home. To her, that would prove itself a worthy delicacy beyond just the spill of blood or the placement of their mountaintop offerings.

Fiend adjusted toward something human, stark as winter frostbites. Fitting, as even the air itself had a kindred savagery.

["I will hold on to each of their final nerves until they fade from my grasp."] She'd interjected, though Gorhart's procession continued as gentle and as oppressive as heavy snowfall.

Gorhart's words succinctly piled into drowning snowdrifts, and with the weight of divine logic. Indeed, how dull a tale it'd be in the end if too many did live, without much endurance across mortal lives and retellings. Gorhart might desire to press the pilgrims with tribulation while Hupomone would bolster their wills to live; together, their opposed forces had the potential to expose a mortal worth remembering.

Hupomone's mouth became a line. Iola. Anris's agony. Her own parents and her depth of loss, too. She made no shudder away from Gorhart's stained touch upon her face. Her words were rose-thorns from tangled wilds; the warmth of tenderness and pilgrim's blood marked a soothing bloom on her skin. She subtly, briefly, slanted her face into the palm that held such sanguinary truths. That didn't last.

One couldn't become angry at nature, it was as it was. Life circled through death, and misfortune punished without prejudice. The perseverance goddess had to lean into her own nature to withstand the harsh gale in Gorhart's speech nonetheless. As it would seem, the pilgrims would have to grip Hupomone's hand with everything they had to survive Gorhart, too.

The wolves returned to the winds, calling their predatory songs to one another to organize their hunt. While Gorhart's eyes turned upward, Hupomone's lowered again, holding fast to the pilgrims in their struggles. Glints of purpose and will shimmered brighter in some than others – gold on the black of their circumstances. For what was coming, Hupomone had to strategically focus on those who shone best, or risk losing them all.

Where Gorhart was garbed in vital fabrics, Hupomone had manifested in shadowy material bearing gold filigree. Some chased more prominently, and other lines sparkled delicate paths. As Hupomone chose three of the brightest pilgrims, the gold filigree adjusted with her purpose. A trio of gold barbs condensed down her throat across the inky fabric.

When one of the previous gold traceries faded to feed the greater three, a shrill voice mangled itself into the increasing winds. Frantic hands tore at clothes, and one more pilgrim descended into mortal madness. He gave in to hypothermia at last, and his final memories were deceived into a delusion that he had been burning up. He died more quickly this way. This was a gift to the most doomed among the remaining pilgrims – a swifter demise.

Hupomone slid a side glance toward Gorhart. Though now, there was a trio of parhelia haloing against that mountaintop.

["Nyka joins us. I know his presence, we've battled enough."] Hupomone observed to Gorhart. There was no vexation to her tone, not yet anyway. Whether he'd truly accompany them or when, she couldn't know.

She turned her face into the new light contour, and in the blinding glare of it, the stain upon her cheek dissipated. Her look resumed one of a pale, chill-flush. There were soon to be two to struggle against in the shaping of these pilgrims' stories. Resilience only ever truly found itself in the crucible.

|| Tag: @Reverie 's Nyka, @Asmodeus 's Gorhart || Location: at elevation on Mt. Pendra || Music: Kyrr ||​