Post by Zazu on Oct 18, 2006 7:02:04 GMT -5
*~*$*~*$*~*$*~*$*~*$*~*$* --VEIN OF STARS-- *$*~*$*~*$*~*$*~*$*~*$*~*
This is the most cramped room imaginable. It has literally no size--it is a No-Room. Seventy meters beneath the base of Pride Rock, there is a vein of nickel, cobalt, and silver ore. It runs for several meters before giving way to an expanse of iron ore, which is in turn surrounded by ochre bedrock. This vein of metal is studded throughout with bits of quartz crystal.
What interest could this mineral formation possibly have to the animals who walk the ground far above, you ask? None, save for the attention paid it by the ghosts of those least cherished by them in life. This vein is like a magnet to departed spirits unable to leave the ancestral earth. It calls them down, out of sight and mind, to linger, to wait, and--when they happen to encounter one another--to talk. It was discovered first by Talmaleki, ancient king of Pride Rock, and he has since led various restless leonine specters there who were unable to find it on their own.
The quartz crystals, you see, remind the departed monarchs of the stars in the sky. They lurk here, imagining themselves in the heavens, surrounded by the wisdom of an infinitude of generations. They sometimes remain for so long that they forget the truth, and imagine themselves to be hearing the voices of other kings more worthy of becoming stars, and forget the tragic blemishes that were their lives.
Exits:
[Rise] into the Chill Realm of the Living
Hold on! Shush! Be quiet! What you do with your paws on the broad flat ground is your business, but if you cease your business just a moment...listen with your feet, or better, with your ear to the ground...you may just hear something. Do you know what that is, jana? That is the heartbeat of the earth. That's right! The earth may be bigger than you or me, but it gets to have a heartbeat, just like us--and why not? What do you say? Nothing ever goes on inside the earth? Oh, how wrong you are! Just watch...just listen. Ghosts in the muscle...in the grit of the bedrock beneath the ancient monarchy. Ghosts stirring and stretching. They know the beat is stronger now, stronger with the season and with the rush of cool wind, and the approach of Mars far above. There is one time each year, jana, when the ghosts that STAY with us stir, because the earth and sky breathe and say it shall be so. Most years, they stay under the surface. But each year for a while now, they have been ever more wakeful...ever more restless.... And the great, gray-faded king with his wild, deep mane opens his jaws, and yawns, in the heart of silver. Talmaleki is awakened.
An eye, an ear, a long, shuddering, wispy tail-tuft, spiraling round and round to vanish into itself like the non-being it is-- a non-entity, a non-soul-- but lo, immortal!-- so long as a soul is possessed. And immortal are the ones who rest below, beneath, under, underneath the realm of the ones that Are, the ones who do not suffer from Not being--the Chanceries of the fate that do seclude the ones that are Not. And, lo! What have we here? An eye, an ear, a long, shuddering, wispy tail-tuft, appearing once more, perhaps by appearing to appear-- to Be? Was it possible? To Be, when one has condemned oneself to an eternity of Non-Being? To Be...to Be-- Not... It did not matter... to pretend to Be, after all, was only to pretend, and the spectre who emerged from his abyss of Non-Being, of Being Not, now knew it... an eye, an ear, a long, shuddering, wispy tail-tuft...lo! Olumide is awakened.
Echoes of loud, barreling voices fill the vibrating sea of the astral sky. No one mourns the wicked, unless the wicked mourn them first. A loud boom of thunder, followed by the crackling sizzle of smoke and brimstone. Are souls born wicked? Sometimes. Burning and searing flesh, ashes scattered, bones strewn in massive gorges, the stank reeking of death and decay amid the marching boom of bodies and war-cries. The ivory flashing of tooth and claw rattle the heartbeat of the silent night, tearing a glittering wound of festering ghastly smoke tendrils into the existence on this plane. Yellow, narrowed eyes glare from the black guts of the world, claws pulling forth a craned neck towards the heavens, a squared face and a pointed chin, a swirl of mane, like tentacles of some underwater leviathan reaching for more life to suck free of the good earth. A bloody maw roars in silence, tar and black dripping like disease and littering the sparkling planes with the image of evil. Ezenachi is awakened.
The heartbeat of the Earth, it summons, it calls, it strengthens... cradled and sheltered, the desolate wanderers can draw one of their few comforts from the constant beat of the soil, the clouds, the burning, churning mush that eventually becomes the solid earth now giving the latest spectre strength to heave himself out of his oblivion. Each pulsating thunder of the Earth breathes new life into the twisting, hulking non-entity, now a swirl of invisible whispers, now a faint, distant echo of a roaring lion, destroyed by his own propulsions. A grasping, greedy paw, an angry, spiteful gaze full of baleful hate... and an angry swipe at the mineral veins that constantly tease of the lost rewards above. A chilling, funeral dirge of a bellow as misery envelops the presence. Gwandoya has awoken.
Now the initial flashes have come, and the closed place smells of festering memories and all they contain. The stars are sparkling still, but they are not kings--they are embers--reminders of those who still live, those in whom fire burns yet. "The world is not yet dead," says the group's solemn chieftain. It is an observation that any of them might have made. "It has not been an eternity. It may even be that our own kind still live." Talmaleki does not mention the pain. He never mentions the pain any more, because who wants to be reminded of the pain of being shunted from a happy fantasy in which one is set in one's eternal place, in the heavens, only to find it was an illusion? Those mortals who have awakened from sweet dreams know only a sliver of their pain, and only for an instant. It is not worth speaking.
"How I wish to bring that perfect silence to the earth..." Gwandoya whispers in response to the first voice, his own empty and ringing with unfulfilled promise.
The seared remnants of what had once been a mighty conflagration, burning across the Worlds...that was Olumide, now a flame of Naught, as he gives ear now to his leader, and listens... and Talmaleki's words echo through the empty chambers of his would-be skull, and he gives them mind--he has no choice. It is why he is here--why they all are here. A half-moan issues from his smoky lips--what would have been a growl in another lifetime, and a pair of grey irises gleams beside the scintillating caricatures of the stars. "You do not need to tell me that the world is not dead!" The spectre's voice is savage, yet oddly distant, like his vague, unsolid form. "We who are here do not forget. How could we--we, who have been denied our rightful places among the stars?" Olumide moan-growls again, unable to forget his own obsession with attaining star-hood in life.
[OOC] Talmaleki snickers. This is so melodramatic it's awesome.
[OOC] Olumide nodnods.
The venomous dripping of ever-manipulated words spills forth from the red maw, licked with the stick of ages. "The world is littered in filth, desirous of her rinse." Black-pitted claws stretch over the bottom of nothing. "The world is littered and the sanity of eternal age must be preserved in twine with the loss of sanity of those who are not worthy of /life/." Whips of black lash themselves into the divine milk of the astral clouds, parting them like dust whilst the velvet voice of Ezenachi booms and drawls over the vast starkness of the realm of the dead, yellowed orbs turning up to the spirit realms far above in the starred sky, through the planes and lands where they will never stride again. "To seek the stars, to seek our place, our home inserted into the clouds of the sky as darkly tarred as my tarred heart to this realm of such disgrace...we must take up ourselves, to vault into the symphony of the milk-strewn skies."
The half-rendered silhouette residing in the silver vein expands and takes in the feeling of his fellows. He hears their words as ghosts hear, and also as living things do, and their sounds travel through the solid mass many times better than through air, causing a very faint rumble for any listeners on the surface. Talmaleki's voice bursts out of its initial placidity in a well-worn groove of frustration. "What are you, Ezenachi, a philosopher-poet? You strive, you vault, you rinse, and take your filth and twine and lofty words. You've done nothing for centuries, nothing each year, nothing more than the rest of us. Who #really# wants to see the world purged, I ask you?" He turns with fluid motion to the other three, seeking their opinion. "Are we not less than the living? Would we not be gone before them, if ever such a scourge came? Nay, I seek not the death of the world. I seek the death only of those who deserve it, and all deserts to all doers." He rises now, and sinks again, like a cloth bedsheet breathing. "What do you say we do, Olumide? Rise? We were but a body's breadth from the air last year, I swear it. And yet we sank. Why do we always sink!?"
The contour of the lion that had once been Olumide rises a few feet to hover broodingly over the twinkling stones--bigger by far in size than his fellows, but also the least solid--as though spread over too great an area--"stretched" too thin. At Talmaleki's words, he sinks back down again, as though brought down by the very words his leader had been speaking. "Rise?" The hint of a haughty look is thrown at Ezenachi--Olumide clearly has not forsaken his pride, even in death. "You speak as a fool does, Ezenachi. Rise? We cannot. We have tried many a time before, but our Kismet does not permit us to ascend. Why? Do not ask me--the question is better left up to the philosophers." This last word is emphasized with another heavy look, laden with meaning, at Ezenachi. His spectral visage seems to contort in mid-air, re-assembling to face in the direction of the chieftain. "No. That much is clear--sheer, physical effort alone will not land us among the far-sought stars. No, we must find another way. The question is--how?" Smoky eyes turn to the other specters, waiting.
A slowed hiss retorts in an echo. "I have done what must have been done..." Yellow eyes narrow in black. A silent war-cry echoes, followed by the tearing sounds of flesh. "You came so close, you say, dear ones...if we were to unite our efforts oft made in futility and failing back into the dark made from the guts of the granite? We shall find where the chain and circle lie weakest..." Ezenachi's tall, thick form wavers in else-vision, thick mats of tendrils flowing from his nose in a soft snort of black. "Shall we test ourselves, by creating panic? Shall we test ourselves, by breaking the lines? We must strike the tender belly of a hold, the sanctum created by those whom seek to divert us from our course..." A moaning snarl of blackened canines and bleeding gums. "Strike the stomach on the weakest hour, on the weakest day, in the midst of a shaman's sanctimonious den, thusly will the air be cleaved like water before the claw, only to slip shut whilst we make our way to the world."
"The Earth may trap us, but it gives us strength," comes the impatient whisper of Gwandoya. He rushes forward, a mass of dark and brooding terror, curling himself around the minerals and veins, lusting for their hollow, temporary dreams of redemption from his unjust imprisonment. "I feel a time drawing near. Why /not/ 'test', as our fearless leader delicately put it? We are not simpering poets, weaving grand words that ring with the same dearth of potential as these..." A slippery, sibilant snarl. "These naseuously unfulfilling *rocks.* Let us tear asunder the vulnerable belly of the earth that imprisons us!" His voice rises, now seemingly barely able to make an impact on the stones around them. "Why should they not feel the same emptiness that pervades this falsely full domain? Test? Show us where to dig our claws in, and I will make like a grand king on a feast."
"You perceive, my allies, that our efforts are crossed like tongues of lightning in a tempest," chides the resonant voice of Talmaleki, gliding amid the others. "One of us wishes to tear the earth asunder and exact vengeance on minerals whose worst crime is a happy deception. One of us wants only to float away, and failing that, to spread havoc above. Well, Olumide knows best, in asking questions." His ears take shape and whirl like smoky pinwheels now, clattering and growing to be the size of an elephant's. "What have we left to test about ourselves?!? Don't we know ourselves better than anyone would even hope to? If there is testing to be done, let us test the living! I personally know of a few experiments I would conduct, had I the chance. I will confess..." And the ears shrink again as does his voice and presence. "I feel a kindred spirit. This year is the first I have felt so connected to a soul above. And he does live above, perhaps in the very Pride Rock we once knew. He lives a youth, and I would meet him...and see whether he deserves the same fate I was given by my kind."
For somebody who's only really half-there, Olumide's voice comes remarkably loudly, and though it is barely above a whisper, the susurrations boom recurrently and angrily off the walls by the sheer nature of the restricted enclosure. Ghostly spittle is violently released from his mouth, vanishing mid-way to the cavern floor. "Fools, all! Why have we to test?! /How/ can we test others, my brothers, when we have failed the Test ourselves? Unless..." his voice fades now to a growl. "Unless, the only way to discover the Test /is/ to test others, and by that--the sheer knowledge of the Test itself--that is our first step in passing it." His smoky maw seems to expand to fill the chamber, contorting grossly into the shape of an orange slice--wide and flat on the bottom, a perfect semi-circle on top. The words that blare from this distorted, cavernous pit are accompanied by a monstrous wave of yet more smoky spittle. "That would seem to be the case, my brethren...how, then, may we achieve this testing to the highest purpose, to the ultimate release of our souls?"
"How, indeed?" chuckles Talmaleki, shying away from Olumide's gigantic maw. He has a certain fondness for this Starseeker's peculiar physical quirks. "We could test their strength or their nerves, but I can see no greater test for those above than..." His eyes narrow and flash green. "Loyalty," he concludes. And this is followed by a fiendish grin.
Gwandoya glances 'up' from his position of snaking over the veins. He bulls upwards, curling into himself. "*Loyalty*," he whispers balefully. "It sounds... as if it could remind us of what delightful used to mean," he mutters. "*Dis*loyalty is what sent me to this prison. Disloyalty is what marks those above! Their foolish plots and vaunted moralities that condemened us to this unjust damnation!" His eyes bulge out of his skull and burst into clawed paws, grasping, seeking, expanding vainly upwards. "But all this is nothing if our timing is not right. When, when can we claw sad frowns on the vapid happiness above? To shake the foundations of their love for one another... if it indeed can be called such..."
With a final flourish of a grimace, Olumide's lips close back into themselves, seeming to devour themselves from within with a loud /pop/- before cropping back up in the appropriate place and size on his hazy face. With his normalized mouth, the shade grins- a nice, normal grin, belying a not-so-nice-or-normal innuendo. "Yes, Talmaleki, brother...you speak wisely. Loyalty indeed!" His smoke-like voice sinks into a half-purr, filled with promise. "Perhaps by showing utmost fidelity and brotherhood to each other, the Kings-Among-the-Stars may look down upon us, and realize we are greater than they-- they, who have no need for pride or loyalty--the same they are, amongst the field of the Sky Country. And yet, it is our eventual goal...after all, nothing could be worse than--this...our present state is no better than Non-Being...it Is, after all, Non-Being." As he is speaking, the shadowy form of the lion seems to diminish and grow less, until it eventually fades out altogether. Only Olumide's voice remains, faint in the oppressive atmosphere of the enclosure. "I must leave now, my brethren...I sense that my tormentors--my killers-are asleep--the perfect opportunity to disturb their dreams with fiendish apparitions that will torment them, twist them, until they cry and beg for release." The last thing to go are the eyes, baleful and gleaming with a light illuminated of their own accord not by any celestial body, but by an inner ruthlessness surmountable only by the combined lust of the others for the field of interminable stars.
Talmaleki thrums up and down, waving listlessly, during Olumide's speech. He has never thought much of his philosophy of Non-Being, detailed though it is. To be is a grand thing, and to Half Be, as has been the case for ages, is a shiny band that Grandeur wears upon its finger. But the large Starseeker's conclusions are sound enough. Talmaleki is drawn upward as though sucked by a vacuum toward Olumide's destination...and then he stabilizes, once the other has vanished. "Why is it that no one truly seems to understand vengeance but myself?" he murmurs. Then he replies face-on to Gwandoya. "Some of us were marked more by disloyalty than others! Certainly, you were killed by traitors. But what can you expect, if you made a trade of creating traitors all your reign? Hah--HahaahAAA!!" The awkward laugh buoys the rampant Talmaleki further. "I have a treatise on timing. My conjecture is that the perfect time...is now." And so he fades out of sight, and in again, but changed somehow...more solid, more realistic, even while still embedded in the rock. No longer merely gray, he has a bit of color to him.
Gwandoya sucks back into himself, and then balloons as the shock envelops him. He forgets his earlier umbrage at the insinuation that he does not know what vengeance means. "Then this means... it is truly our time?" He grins maliciously, allowing himself to be taken up by the slipstream of Talmaleki's passing. "This lust of ours may at last find some means of satiation... yes, yes!" His uplifting thoughts act as an anchor to drift, fading into nothingness... and then tearing his way back to reality. His drained and sickened pallor is not as vigorous as it could be... but it is there. He stretches mightily, extending his fangs to the world above as if he can bite down on the minds and terrors of those in the living world already. A gasping roar exudes from a putrid, rotten mouth, full of decay and sorrow. "Time... what meaning has time to us, brother? Time is the sea, chaotic and rampant. I ache to bring this concept to the ones who bar our path."
The more compact lion takes on an ever more viewable form. No maggots feast on this specter--after all, his corpse is long gone and what matters is how he sees himself. Talmaleki snarls with satisfaction, and then cuts it short in his disciplined manner. "Take care, my friend! We must not wreak merely to wreak! We wreak to learn. Yes,--yes? Yes, to learn." Talmaleki fades in and out of focus, surrounded by black iron, younger by a year each time until he is in his prime. "I give you #one# to do this with. Only one! Find one and take time from him. Find another and take away his sense of space! EXPERIMENT!! Do you hear me, friends? We SHALL rise, and we SHALL escape the earth for this year's time of restless ghosts, but we shall NOT afflict any two creatures with the same ailment! In this way we shall maximize what we learn. Is that understood!?"
Gwandoya, despite his bouyancy and lust to unleash his long dormant hatred, shrinks before his chieftain's bellowing commands. He retracts like a snail's eye when it is poked by an outside usurper, and then expands again. "Yes, yes..." he says, grudgingly compliant. "This should provide an... invigorating investigation." He shudders and returns himself to his favorite form, warping back into a burly, toughened lion of a wizened age. "So many years of knowledge to catch up on... so many to regain. Knowledge is power!" Power, power, power! He feels *powerful* again! Unable to contain himself any longer, he throws his head back and explodes into a shuddering roar, a dead roar that is all echoes and rattling, joining the aftershock of Talmaleki's barking declarations. The rumbles echo through the Earth that holds them, pushing and pounding, sending the faintest of tremors to the surface world, a tiny herald of the terror to come. Once more, the spirits of old are free to smite the world as they did in lives long past...
...and that expectoration of rage is just what it takes to tip the balance, to break the shield, to shatter the mirror separating a false world from the true one of which it is part! As the earth rumbles, Talmaleki goes mostly invisible and rises, out of the comfortable vein, out of the crust of the earth, through soil and roots, through grass and--so suddenly, the transition comes. It was painless, compared to everything else. He is on the surface--just above it, in fact, floating. He looks around at the quiet Rock. "It's been...how long has it been? Hundreds of years? Or only...only..." But he shakes his head. What Gwandoya says is true--time doesn't matter for them as it does for the living. Nor should it, truly. What Talmaleki believes he represents is eternal.