flaera

Daughter of Evil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q46Osg9C4pA

She's seen a lot of things. There's a reason she's their leader, now. There's a reason she rose through the ranks faster than anyone else, and a reason why she was called upon in a moment of desperation. Her judgement has always been flawless. She has no reason to doubt herself.

But for that one moment, as the blade falls, and just before the young queen's head rolls, she feels childish doubt. Her resolve wavers and at the edges of her vision, a black cloak swirls.

The moment, the weakness passes. No one could fool her, after all, but even if they did... To fool an entire nation? An impossibility.

She digs her fingers through that blonde hair, still soft and glittering like gold. The young queen hadn't been imprisoned more than a single night, why should she be filthy? The scalp is warm and firm, and the blood that drools down from the severed neck is the same shade- bright, rich, lively- as her armor. She hoists the girl's head into the air, and the cheers erupt, even from those few strange half-loyal denizens in their mourning shrouds.

//So, you've seen the myth that survived, as vague and odd as any creation myth. Now to see that which was.

The Andhari Scholar

He'd actually quite liked the little one. They hadn't been friends, by any measure, but they'd been colleagues, working together on the complexities of their creations, and Odahin had been sad to see her go. He'd even protested, though admittedly without his usual pasison or grace, that he was as responsible as she for the horrors that infected their worlds now. That he ought to accompany her into exile.

But, of course, the punishment was only truly effective if it was the burden of a single mind, not a shared agony. 

He had tied his own noose with that little act, and the little one- even he wasn't allowed to use her name any more- had smiled grimly and silenced him before he could make himself any worse on her behalf. But the rest of his people had seen his faults, when he had spoken out for her, and so he had his own punishment.

To solve an impossible riddle.

And the worst part was, they didn't believe it was punishment. They honestly thought that he, as the grandfather of the mortals, would be bidden to save them at the cost of his own sanity. They hoped for him, believed in him, and it was so much worse for that.

He tried, for a long time, to have a new suggestion for every appointment. But, when faced with the mind-bending monstrosity that was the Mother of the Sombray, it was all he could do not to reel back and scream. She stank like rotting flesh, with eyes grew and withered away across every part of her body, and her physical form was disturbing enough. But the aura that surrounded her was stolen from their Homelands, it echoed and swelled with all the worst things that had every been and would ever be. The singing screams of endless holocausts rattled through her words, the pain and fear of all lives bubbling murkily from her flesh, and she was horrendous.

In time, his innocent exuberance grew weaker and weaker, and he began to avoid the meetings. The pain of knowing that he was condemning his children to unfair and unclean deaths was so much less than the horror of approaching her.

He had argued many points, by then, though.

"Let them live until they choose to die." He had said, and the Mother had made some noise that was almost like laughter. "They will never choose to come to me."

"Let them birth more than they die, so they may always grow and flourish." He had offered, and the Mother had frowned, if that great gaping hole in her belly were to be called a mouth. "Let the filth outweigh the clean? Don't be a fool. That is precisely what I was created to prevent, Odahin."

"Let them all live for two hundred years, that they may know their lot and use it fully." He had countered, and it wasn't the Mother that grew annoyed that time. No, it was his own people, disgusted with him. But he had exhausted every option. There was no way to save them from the death. Wouldn't this mitigate it? The Mother had been quiet in her response, her voice an oil slick filling his lungs. Her approval was enough to make him retract the offering "Some of them will be more dangerous in fifty years than others would be in ten thousand. If you would be so cruel to your creations, then so would I."

He had been laying in his bed, alone, so alone, and trying to think and not think all at once. If the little one were here, she would have an answer. She was the creature of creation among them, with a mind more agile than any among the Andhari, even his own. But he was abandoned to this task, while the rest of his people simply tried with endless desperation to appease the MOther long enough to win him one last audience.

He had stretched her tolerance to the limits.

His missing limbs were more than proof of that. The Mother hadn't enjoyed hurting him. Odahin was like her brother in so many ways. Just like her. They were endless creatures of the Home. The Nothing and Everything that would exist without end.

They were the same. How could he possibly trick her? Because, that's what it was. There could be no bargaining with such a creature as the Mother. She didn't understand compromise, or change. She was truly a creature without end, more than anything else. Always the same. He had to find a way to make her choose something else, when she didn't even know what a choice was.

What had his people done to him?

He would have sent himself back to the Nothing, to be returned fresh and new, but he suspected that he wouldn't be able to reach it. He had business to attend to.

The Mother was an immovable object. He was not an unstoppable force.

The idea wasn't sudden, it grew slowly and formed itself out of his thoughts in much the same with life had formed itself from the little one. But the realization that it existed, that was sudden. It felt as if the idea was not his own. As if it had been provided to him. Perhaps from the Nothing.

When the Mother returned to speak to him again, one last time, he was calm. He smiled at her, gaze soft and steady. 

"You are different, Odahin. Have you come to accept that I cannot be swayed?"

"Yes."

The Mother hadn't expected that, nor had his people.

"My dear friend, I am so glad you understand, finally. Give me your agreement, and I will let my children have the word."

"Before I do, I have my proposal."

"As always, little one. Let me hear it then."

The Mother had expectations. She had been attending these fool's meetings for too long. Odahin had said, unequivocally, that he was giving in. The Andhari did not lie. She had expectations.

"Take them when they need to be taken." He began, and the Mother nodded in accord. Many of their proposal had begun with those words. A promise that no life would be ended before its time. "When they grow strong enough to stand against you, let their foundations crumble, for they are of the Worlds, and they cannot withstand time like us. They will come to you, defenses fallen. Do not fight them." Another common demand. The Mother agreed silently once more. All the Worldly ones would die, it was in their nature, but yes. If they grew powerful enough to stop their own deaths, then they would earn reprieve, however temporary. So few of them would ever reach that point. "And when you take them, let them decide what will befall them."

There was the new thing. The Mother lidded many of her infinite eyes, confusion clouding her painwracked aura. "What do you mean, Odahin."

"When you claim their mortal souls, and remove their spark of Nothingstuff from them, let that which remains decide what will come of it. Whether it will fall away into emptiness, or continue in agony, or in joy. Let them choose another life, beyond their mortal one. Let them decide their fate."

"No Mortal can make that choice. They are too torn by their desires to know what they truly deserve." The Mother rpelied, words slow, carefully considered.

"It is your responsibility, Mother, to teach them how to decide. Those are my agreements. Take them and fulfill them, and your Children will be happy. Do you accept these limitations?"

She was certain there was treachery here. The Andhar stank of satisfaction, pleasure even. How could he be so joyous, if she was in control?

But, as the limitations turned themselves in her mind, she could see no foul play in them. They were words, binding in that way, but so loosely restrictive. Her children would be allowed to decide when enough was enough. Her children would be allowed to trick the Mortals into ruining their own attempts at eternity. Her children would plant seeds of weakness in mortal minds, undermining even those whose bodies somehow survived ravages. What difference did it make, if they were allowed to choose?

"I accept your terms, Andhar Odahin. Our agreement is binding, from now until their existence ceases to be. You will create Mortals, and we will uncreate them. You will grant the spark of Nothing that lets them live, and we will reap it, and return it to its rightful place. So be it?"

"So be it."

Chapter Three:
The Treatise of Lifespan, and the trickery of the Andhari Scholar

Their young one had been the creator of life, and by extension, the grandmother of death. She had been forbidden from speaking, stripped of her title, and even today to speak her name is to curse yourself to endless horrors. It is lucky, in a way, that no mortal recalls its syllables. It was cruel to her, for she had done only as bidden by her people, but she took the exile with pride and strength, and though she was Andhar, she cloaked herself in mortal form, let herself die a thousand thousand deaths, and more still, and never spoke against her people's ruling.

But that punishment did little to satisfy the Sombray's need to end, to kill, to clean. The Andhar had created filth, and the SOmbray had been sent from the nothing to tidy it away, like bustling parents to dirty children. And, like children seeking leniency, the Andhar bargained, but they were not children, and their words could persuade the sun to burn cold, the stars to cease their spinning. The Andhar were the greatest force that all existence had ever known, and even death itself could not hope to rival them, only to contain them.

The Mother of the Sombray, wisely, agreed to compromise. But the details of that agreement took lifetimes to create, every tiny contingency accounted for.

And, in the end, it was decided. When the creatures of dirt and blood that the Andhar had birthed reached the skill necessary to maintain themselves infinitely, and become unto the two Great Races, they would be capped. Their minds would falter under the weight, each created with specific, delicate weaknesses designed to fray and crumble. And they would die in soul, if not in body, and they were be lost to the strange world of the Sombray's creation, where they would be stripped into their basest parts, punished and rewarded.

But the Andhari were not fools. There must be a way out of this trap they had laid for themselves? They took their finest mind, their thinker and scholar, who lacked the young one's creativity, but had more than her ability to find and repair flaws, and the gave him this riddle.

All things must die, they said to him. How can we admit that death, and still let them live without fear of it?

It took endless passes of stars and galaxies as they developed the possibilities, and each time, they were rejected by the Sombray, and the Mother's patience grew thinner and thinner. Her children were allowed to continue their duty, but there was no reason to it, no satisfaction to be garnered. The Sombray are creatures of utmost and perfect order. And that was their failing.

Although they could not save their children, the Andhar had the benefit of freedom. And so, they demanded something that the silly Sombray could not comprehend. They had been designed for only one purpose, one goal. The concept of choice was nothing to them. It was not luxury or necessity, it was nonexistent. Sombray have no choice. They clean our worlds of that which would burden them. They are not evil, they cannot be evil. To be evil one must have the capacity for goodness and refuse it. The Sombray are incompatible with the very idea of it.

So, what was it to them, to their wise Mother, to agree? To let the silly mortals choose what fate befalls them? To let their wracked and ?refined souls decide which rewards and cruelties are best suited to their sinful, beatific lives. Perhaps, even, the best among them might be allowed to travel to the Nothing in between, and become Andhar or Sombray themselves.

And so, my little one, you see? All mortals die, in time enough, and only enough. Never too much, never too little. And when their life ends, they are punished only as much as they truly believe they deserve. They are blessed only as much as they can grant themselves. We make our own eternity. But, of course, that isn't your question either, is it?

No. You don't care to know how life ended. You still want to know how it began.

Well, there are Three Great Races, aren't there? Let us speak, then, of the Unmortal Djinni, the truest children of the Andhar, who in their own rights and time, learned the tricks of dealing with their own Sombray, and bargained for strength and power immeasurable long before the rest of our ancestors had even begun that most delicate process of tipping from protein to organism.

The numbness is disturbing, and it never allows itself to think too hard about what that means. Not feeling. It knows, from well honed reflex, that spending too much time thinking about the lack of sensation is enough to make it mad. To send it spinning, tumbling through the nothing, losing itself. If has come back from that nothing a few times, but each time seems harder, more unlikely.

It is a survivor, clinging to the life of something else, long after its body faded to dust, turned to ice.

But it knows something is wrong. It has spent too much time, already, thinking of the nothing. It is going to lose itself again, even if it claws desperately, trying to cling to life. But it has no claws, and there is nothing to which to cling. Horror of horrors.

The nothing is coming to swallow it.

It does not breath, it has no heart, it has nothing, already, and so it isn't hard for more nothing to come for it.

It burns.

It boils.

It feels.

Pain, beyond comprehension, torture arduous and instantaneous and then it is nothing again, nothing at all.

What relief, she had been certain that she would die this time.

There now. Well done. She thinks, though the words are hardly words. She hasn't spoken to anything but herself in centuries, and what use is there for words? She flexes her long fingers staring at them. Her skin has gone grey with age, and she had always believed she would never see such a thing.

But, all it takes is a bell like laugh, and the color floods back. She has done it. She had completed an impossible task. Killed herself, at long last. How many years has it been, since her son strangled her in her sleep? How long has she waited, with desperate patience, threading events? She could no longer speak to that bit of herself, left behind to haunt a child, and then that child had become immortal, and she had been trapped in this place of judgement, incomplete, unable to continue.

But she had done it, now. Pried the last shred of herself. Brought it here, to be seen, weighed and measured.

The euphoria bubbled up in her chest, and she smiled. It was an unfamiliar expression. It didn't matter. She had succeeded, and now, she had chosen.

Too long.

"Don't be silly. We've always said we'd be forever."

She hears a voice like song, and she isn't sure if its just her loneliness, or if it really is that beautiful, but it doesn't matter, as she collapses into formlessness, but not nothing. Oh no. Never nothing, never again.

And far away, a child is born, with one eye black as coal, and one blinded white. They will never be apart again.

Now the daggers are drawn,
And the beggars perform.
Whose the crook in this
crime?

In which its goldarned time that Nevada Iolanthe progressed from amusing concept to legit character. We'll begin by assigning him a playground. He's too human for Chandra, too magic for PC, and too Mary Sue for Fanwork.

That leaves St Francis. Lets do this shit.

==-==-==

Vanessa told Nevada once, a long time ago, that there were as many of them as there are names for colors. According to the internet, there are twenty recognized shades of violet. His particular color is hard to place, bluer than purple, redder than blue, and with a strange dullness that makes him feel a bit like he's going to cough.

There are dozens upon dozens of each other color. Vanessa's blue, and there are more than fifty of those.

He never thought to ask if words for colors in other languages counted. But, that would make a degree of sense.

The point of the matter is, though, that there's not much chance that he'll ever run into someone like himself. Even the chances of meeting another Vanessa or Meredith are frighteningly slim. It wouldn't matter anyway, though. Because Vanessa proved that even another one of their odd, odd sort couldn't withstand what he could do.

But maybe, if he met Lavender, or Purple, or Fandango, then they could handle him?

Probably not.

So, he spends endless days and mindless nights on the ancient laptop that he may or may not have stolen from Vanessa, talking to faceless creatures of the internet, and its almost like having friends, so that's good. 

He wanders around the midwest, and should have starved or died of exposure a long time ago, except, ridiculously, the only thing that could ever let him die is feeling love for himself, and he's filth, so that's not going to happen. And the hate keeps him alive, no matter how much he doesn't want to be. What's living, really, if you can't have love to go with it? If it means that everyone always dies, and you still. Keep. Moving.

He has considered doing many things which could, potentially, put him to good use. Join the red cross, maybe. Travel around the world healing the sick like some kind of godforsaken messiah to the masses. Maybe if enough people loved him, he could love himself, and be freed from this hell hole?

But he just kicks another can down the street, whistling tunelessly, and considers jumping in front of a train to see how long it takes before he comes around. Maybe someone would even take him to a hospital this time.

He likes them. Hospitals. Because whenever he's in them, no one dies. Just for a day or two. And they don't get sick. There are no complications. Things heal faster, and lives are brighter, and it almost makes everything else worth it. Attempting suicide and ending up there, often, is the only thing that can dig him out of the black hole he crawls into from time to time.

He wanders, and strolls, and occasionally runs. His clothes are ragged, and they show off more of his body than he'd prefer, because people will make assumptions that he doesn't want made, and he doesn't cry because it's unbecoming of a young man, homeless and heartbroken or not, to break down in tears in public. Positively indecent. And he hasn't had an 'in private' in four years now.

He sleeps under a tree in the middle of a forest, and it snows, and he wakes up burning from the cold, but it doesn't kill him, because nothing does.

But worse than that, he isn't alone. There's a pair of big yellow eyes watching him as he struggles to sit straight. And then, the eyes wink, and from behind him something that might be mistaken for a train slams into him violently. Oh gods, and he'd thought the snow hurt, but he was wrong. Nothing in the world has ever hurt quite like the glass claws of a vamp digging under his jawbone, trying desperately to pull his head off, and of course, it doesn't work because he can't die. But he can hurt.

The yellow eyes are attacked to a little naked girl who looks like she might be seven, except for the part where every hair on her body is bright,  searing green. Because no. Not good enough that he'd get a vampire trying to tear his skull from his shoulders. He has to get the fae too.

"Oh stop it, chere. It obviously isn't going anywhere. I told you he wasn't real." The little girl intones, her voice nasally and high.

The vampire growls out their frustration, and then his head is free. "Noses don't lie. She's human. Why won't she die? I'm hungry."

"I'm not human." Nevada hisses, the words creaking painfully from a dry, stretched throat. "'N I'm not a she."

The vampire, apparently having had enough of being proven wrong, does not hesitate to shread the last shreds of his clothing. "Yes. You are. Now shut up, bloodbank. Lyssie, what the hell is wrong with her."

"He's one of my folk. The solitary. En't you ever wondered why it's called that? Rather than being, I don't know, the gray courts of such? It's got its share of humans in it. Couple of Others, too. Mostly the fae. But I knew a Therian once who was one of the solitary. This one, poor little boy- and he's a boy, don't be crude- is one of the Violet. And mortal, no less, so an inversion. I wouldn't want to be him, not at all."

Nevada was trying to crawl away without drawing the vamp's attention, but 'Violet' stops him in his tracks, the snow crunching wetly in his clenched fist.

"Whaddya mean 'one of your folk?'" He grits out, between painfully clenched teeth. That little girl knows what he is. 

"I'm one of the green. Alianthus Trillium. Or, being that you're not kin, Alyssa. I forget the exact title. Probably Chartreuse. Could be. And you, you're not just one of the violet, oh no you aren't. You're Violet. Pity that. I hate when the proper ones end up mortal. Steals what's rightfully family property. But you'll be the worst of them. Not dying until you come to peace with it. And goodness, that could take lifetimes." 

Beside her, the looming, alarmingly muscular form of the vampiress is growing more agitated, displeased with being ignored and confounded.

"I'm not fae."

"No, darling. You're colorless. But you're Solitary, nonetheless. Filthy, I must say. If I had any sense about me, I'd drop you with the Seleigh for a few decades. Let their drugs and rhymes wear you down. But, then again, I do believe they'd kill me as soon as thank me. No, no. Sooner."

Nevada growls, beating his bare fist in the snow. He hates Fae. They make no sense, always nattering on about things beyond mortal knowing. That's the trouble with living forever.

He'll end up like them, one day. Talking about Reds and Blues and...

"You're lying." He spits, without thinking. Because, of course

"Now, little brattikin. I can't lie. You know that. Tell him he knows that, Calliope."

"My name's not Calliope." The vampiress replies, glaring. She wants to kill him. The rage drains from her body suddenly, though, and Nevada has the horrible suspicion that he's going to die anyway. "He can't die. Can he still bleed?"

The answer is yes. But neither Nevada nor Alianthus Alyssa Trilium says so, because the nameless vamp is on him, tearing at his neck voraciously, sucking him empty and watching with muted awe as he fades into unconsciousness, then hacks and chokes back into life, skin warm and flushed with her second course.

It takes twenty seven years to escape.

*headdesk until the discomfort goes away*

Well. A few things to point out before we begin. I don't play TF2, I can't play FPSes, they hurt my brain. But, for unknown reasons- probably of a demonic nature- whenever I have a major examination coming up, I have TF2 dreams. RED wins? I kick the exam's ass. BLU? Hello C or less. 

I had a software midterm yesterday. RED won, but due to (I presume) my preoccupation with the upcoming NaNo, RED (and BLU) were horrifying hybridizations of their appropriate personas, and people from Chandra and PC.

Guess who was Medic? Guess what that made Verites?!

How is that relevant to the following? It's not. I just don't have anyone to discuss my mental wtfs with, because I'm worrisomely alone.

==-==-==
( When Revlis dreams, she wishes they were nightmares.Collapse )

Chandra Rising.

Myths, legends, and bed time tales from the age of Sirius.

1 How life began: the emergence of the Andhar 2 How life ended: wherein the sombray began. 3 And yet, we still live: the accord of balance and the cunning treachery of the andhari scholar. 4 Only a man may rule men: the emergence of the Djinni. 5 Why do mortals so love war? The beginning of an endless rivalry. 6 peace so tenuous and yet long lived. The treaty of the Djinni. 7 foolish folk: the twinned races 8 to fight with fate oft ends badly: the tale of war in Tamaranth 9 its funny how they never give in. The rebirth of tamaranthan technology. 10 the imperative to reproduce: the emergence of the nay. 11 the instinct to survive: the victory of the empress 12 even against hardship: why the males of the rani are mutilated 13 as white as snow as red as roses: the origin of rani skin 14 the sea sun sky: thieves and pirates of notoriety 15 safe within your watchful gaze: the four great captains and four grand ships. 16 til death she said steals our lives away. The creation of the unchildren. 17 our grand lady: the first revered of the chandrans. 18 love: the tales of the heat bound water breather. 19 hate: wherein extinction threatens and prejudice looms over the world of francesca 20 mud for blood. The cirradan and the czardan. 21 who are you? The short and impressive lives of the brave crews of shakti and arjuna. 22 who was I? The long and arduous life of your narrator. 23 apocalypse: the rani meet the darkness 24 gravity: omerya wishes the wipe the slate clean 25 unity: we rather disagree with that plan. 26 path and path and path again: the seer never lies 27 asphyxiation the day I didn't die 28 abomination mortals should not live forever 29 the curtain falls the day my clock stopped. 30 slumber and dismissal. A lonely Djinni meets her captor 31 a candle to see. The girl who would be key. 32 promise unbroken. Did they not warn you, omerya? 33 a fools errand. Sometimes, a machine is merely a machine. 34 the ground began to shake, the buildings began to fall, and all tue world did burn.

Righto. That'd be the table of contents for my upcoming nanowrimo. Its a radical rethinking of Chandra Rising that embraces rather than rejects the scene by scene nature of the source material. Wish me luck, my dears and darlings.

Hmm. That oddball Julian. No matter where he ends up, he's always the happily married one. Having been literally the only pair to come out of Chandra unscathed, Mael and Julian were wed shortly after the retrun of the Andhari, by blessing (read as, intensive political manipulation and a lot of legal blackmail) of the Seer, because really, you can be as openminded as you want, but a government as bitchtastic as the Unselei is always going to balk at inter-species-is-it-even-homosexual-if-they-have-different-genitalia marriages.

Julian was also half of one of the theoretical PC-verse couples to wed (in New York, New York- ceremony paid for by the alarmingly generous Ade and Sari) in celebration when gay marriage was legalized in the united states (some fifteen years from now).

So, guess what? It's about time that boy had to stare, vaguely boggled, at someone else being awesometastically happy and commited while he himself struggles maddeningly with emotional turmoil the likes of which is hard to grasp.

Also, apparently, Pern!Julian puts up an excellent front of being super-straight, given that, like AllOther!Julians he'll pretty much sleep with whoever bids highest.

==-==-==

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In which J'ula, being an expy of Julian without his Mael, tries to explain how someone so wildly unqualified came into power while simultaneously attempting not to downplay the tragedy that has befallen his small domain.

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