“Panes of Glass
shaped as cubicles, cold to the touch
Imaginary order, surrounded by chaos
Not glass, but porcelain, still as a corpse, still cold
Porcelain aquariums, polished by their fish to be opaque
Chaos encroaches on order, strengthening delusion”
It was dark,
and the dark was peace,
and the dark was rest,
and the dark was safety.
There was light, but only from the stars and the moon, and what they offered was more illumination then light.
In the darkness were living shelves arranged in a circle like the stone monoliths of old.
These shelves had books on them of many lives and they too brought illumination.
Under the light of the moon and the stars was a beast, its coat was pitch black, like liquid shadow,
and it was warm, but a threat would only see the white of teeth.
The air was cool, but not cold, as a perfect summer night was,
and one could listen to the ambiance of life beyond the woodland perimeter longer than one could live.
It was dark,
and the dark was peace,
and the dark was rest,
and the dark was safety,
and in the dark one could see all the stars, because they were alone.
The script is written in whatever the native tongue is for you so that it can be understood. There might be words, phrases, or idioms used that will not make sense in the context of the setting, but exist in the setting in a different form and are used in this work to convey meaning to the reader. Additionally, there are some phrases or words that will be in a different script as these are more sacred or powerful and they cannot be translated as lightly, at least not with the same effect. The script also makes it so that the passive will be unable to glean information from it. Little knowledge should be truly forbidden, but effort and interest must be put in to earn anything of value.
Was a time within the domain of this Lesser Phyluminary that many would describe as turbulent. Beings of universes that are very young in the scale of things and of little reputation were developing at a pace to become more powerful, than beings that are their elders by far. This has led many in the higher planes to take measures to ensure their strength and if possible redouble it.
It was aggravating to him that in order to enter, his arms and his sword had to scrape the stone-like material of the Lesser Terrium, such a weapon is not to be treated with such disregard. Whether the slight was intentional or not, he was at a loss, but the whole construct gave the feeling that it disliked him, giving the illusion that he was trying to cram himself into a space too small for him. Moving into the tunnel earnestly, he is assailed by a sound like a roaring river. Echoes, upon echoes, upon echoes fill the cave-like tunnel berating his senses. Moving past the claustrophobia-inducing tunnel, he entered a larger cave-like chamber with no other entrances or exits. The ceiling held the visage of a huge open sky, with billions of alien stars. The sound here was different from in the tunnel, sounding more like the tide than the white noise of a river. The echoes from the tunnel continued booming, most were still indistinguishable, with the sporadic intelligible word. What made this sound like the tide though, is the pushing and pulling effect it gave. The echoes would bable, then, like a response, there would be an answer from the “sky.” This answer would be similarly indistinguishable as words but carried an undeniable air of authority.
The queer creature that inhabited and maintained the plane turned its eyes on him. The thing appeared to him to omit an orange-tinted light, though it is not light, but something that could be described as an aura. Along with the aura, her “skin” had the same starlight pattern as the alien sky above and with a body structure matching that of the inhabitants of his old world. Unsettlingly though, each of the stars appeared to his other senses to be watching him, like billions of eyes staring at his soul. Of course, it would be appropriate if that was true if she truly is the type of creature he sought. Drawing a breath, or rather what he deemed to be an action similar to drawing a breath, to proclaim a statement to her.
Faster on the uptake, she said, and her voice came from the sky, but not with the same authority the answered the murmurs, “Destroyer, I know your request, I will not read your ethos. I will allow you to find neither power nor comfort from me.”
“Diviner,” and he sensed a modicum of relief from her at his loss of any sense of a true name for her, “If you know who I am, then you must know you cannot resist me.”
“Your threats fall short, I am old. I will not help you, even under pain of death for refusing, even if you can come through on your threat.”
“But do you fear for the weak, the innocent? If you know me, you must know my rampages in times of rage.”
“And with your power redoubled, how much more potent would you be when you, inevitably, fall into one of your rages? You will strike down the innocent either way, if I choose to assist you, I simply make myself an accomplice in your crimes.”
“Then what can I offer you? What treaty can I consign myself to to sate you?” And he realized he had an air and, almost, the attitude of pleading. With her abilities, the Diviner no doubt noted it as well.
“I will offer you no bargains. I will not haggle with you. Begone, you have nothing to gain and, with an eye on your ethos, you have no chance of besting me.” Her bolster had been bolstered by his misshapen plea and she was pressing with her advantage.
With an air of desperation, he said, “If you are so confident in your abilities do this: look at my ethos and gauge for yourself whether or not to tell me my name.”1
Jointly because of her bolster and because of her own curiosity, she looked. She peered past his body, what would be described as a humanoid, with four arms and a face typical of a human, he had no hair and he was entirely colorless. She looked into and through his Lesser Terrium (mind), which, ancient and powerful, was hard to navigate. His mind was filled with conflict after conflict, battle after battle, one could be lost in there for eons with a history of conflict, pain, and devastation to baffle any.
Finally, she arrived at his Ethos. All his battles, conflicts, as well as every other sort of experience he has lived carved into It. The Ethos Itself, being the indescribable and infinite. Around It circled a name, but a better descriptor might be a vocation. The name was transcribed on the surface2 of the Ethos and the etchings of his experience diverted from its path long ago. Most vocations could be described as a feeling or a sentiment, but this one was far more specific, giving a full sensual experience as she places her mind on the path it presented.
She was observing3 inside a mid-sized home and time was passing rapidly, with a timelapse-like experience, the first scene was of a four-armed male being carried into the house by a female, Aakew, both were wearing their wedding clothes. Both were of the same species as the Destroyer, the Khrujaa. A movement began in the home forming a daily routine. At four repetitions of the “day/night cycle,” an ethos could be felt from within the female, at forty-three repetitions a noticeable bump formed on the female's midsection, at 373 repetitions a healthy, baby, female Khrujaa entered the house, soon Aakew was pregnant again and at seven hundred and forty-eight cycles they brought home another daughter. Then at 1,111 cycles, their third and final child and their only son were born prematurely, but lived and came home six cycles after. Time began to move far faster and age was easily seen setting in. Time then slowed to a trickle.
We are at the deathbed of the male, we are at 18,4174 cycles into the vision, his three children, all now full-grown, and his wife stand at his bed. He addresses each of them, too quiet to hear from the Diviner's vantage point. He finishes his words, closes his eyes, crosses his arms and dies, peacefully, with a smile. The whole vision then “fades to black.”
The Diviner's orange glow had intensified, looking at her made it appear almost as if her eyes were more open, or more numerous than they had been before. He stood there for almost 13 days with her in the state, then she blinked. She looked stunned for a moment, then she began laughing. The Destroyer looked at her with confusion for a moment, then indignation when realizing the context, then with anger. She wheezed out in between laughs, ‘Destroyer of Worlds,’ ‘conqueror of immortals,’ ‘fear of titans,’ ‘antonym of gods,’ You are a greater failure than any of those that you smote. Pathetic!”
She chortled, “You wish to know your purpose, ‘slayer of gods?’ You were supposed to bear three insignificant, mortal children, with an insignificant, mortal wife, and die at the average expiration date of your mortal, insignificant race! In all your glory, in all your success, you have only reaped failure!”
His anger boiled, and if anyone were to see him, he would appear towering and terrifying, but the Diviner kept laughing. He bellowed, “You lie! You wish to provoke me to my downfall, to doubt!” Then she spoke his name with authority, and he saw.
He moved and his sword in his hand, and with no input from his Ethos, without thinking, he moved, and he killed her. The Diviner was impaled, pinned to the stone floor, barely alive, but still mocking with merriment in her eyes, she spoke with conviction, “Oh Destroyer, do you know what my name is?” And she spoke with authority, and he understood it as ‘Titan Feller, Defender of the Weak.’
With great exertion, she said, “Even in my last moments, I am completing my vocation more fully than you will ever be able to.” She chuckled, and she died, and her last words joined the babel of the cave’s echoes.
The script is written in whatever the native tongue is for you so that it can be understood. There might be words, phrases, or idioms used that will not make sense in the context of the setting, but exist in the setting in a different form and are used in this work to convey meaning to the reader. Additionally, there are some phrases or words that will be in a different script as these are more sacred or powerful and they cannot be translated as lightly, at least not with the same effect. The script also makes it so that the passive will be unable to glean information from it. Little knowledge should be truly forbidden, but effort and interest must be put in to earn anything of value.
This is a direct continuation of the events of Visit to the Diviner. If you have not read it, this will be far harder to understand.
A clearing in a jungle was illuminated by dim, red fire, burning in intricate patterns. The fire threw three shadows into the trees, the first man was daunting, at least two and a half meters tall, he was muscle-bound. He had a polearm, very similar to the “English bill” strapped on his back. His most distinguishing feature though was his tattoos, they were so plentiful it began to give the effect of camouflage, the like of a zebra or a leopard. One particular tattoo, on his left hand, gave a gray aura of great intensity obscuring its form. The second creature was strange, looking almost gelatinous. Its body was translucent, but only one organ was visible inside, a pulsating semicircular, glowing mass was in the center of its form, when concentrating on itinerary could distantly hear muffled explosions. Now its form was an amalgamation of three animals: its base was a bipedal whale, on its back, it had massive bat wings, and one huge claw on its left side. It was hulking, at least ten meters tall, but it was partially hunched over. The final figure was a very pale, base human, he was less than two meters tall, looking minuscule next to his companions. He was fidgety he tapped his feet, he brushing the grass, and, when he did, it browned and died, he was also wringing his hands which were dyed burgundy.
Their fire burned down, and in the middle of the burnt-in ornate symbol was a presence. The group saw a humanoid-adjacent creature. I gave the appearance of a primitive and crudely made doll, the former canopy had bent down forming its frame, well the grass and the leaves of the branches grew and weaved forming a sort of skin, shadows darkened inside the shell to form a stuffing. The body made an incomprehensible rustling, whistling noise. The trio, on the other hand, seemed to understand what the creature was saying.
The tattooed one said, “I’m sorry we interrupted your hunt, but we have a proposition for you.”
The frame responds with a burst rustling and whistling.
He raised his left hand and said, “I want you, Hessesh5, to track down the Destroyer. In exchange for his whereabouts, when we kill him, I will bring you his top right arm as a trophy. Do you accept?”
Hassesh’s leaves furrowed for a minute leaving the group to bask in the ambiance of the jungle. Finally, it creaked something that was easily identifiable as a confrontation and left. The shadows lightened and the branches forming its structure snapped with great vigor up to the canopy leaving a stream of leaves to drift back down to the clearing.
Not in the right mind to will his sword to him, he strode over to unsheathe the sword from the formerly luminous creature’s chest, ‘Titan Feller, Defender of the Weak,’ he would not allow his felling to be its final work. Grasping the handle, he raised the blade into the “starlight.”
Even with the blade in his possession for so long he still marveled and feared it. Killing a creature of similar age and strength to him with aid of the weapon antagonized with thoughts of, “It could be you.” Of course, his strength did not come from his armaments alone and he knew that a weapon cannot kill on its own. The form the weapon most often resembled, a two-handed katana no handguard of any sort was present, a physical allusion to the danger of wielding such a weapon. Its blade was sharp enough to cut through atoms if swung with adequate force, and it was strong enough to be cast in a blackhole and remain uncompromising. The handle was made with a brown, sand-like material. When grasping it, the sensation was given that it was holding on to him in return, but not in an entirely friendly way. The blade looked like refined iron when pure, and when tarnished gave way to the accidents of pig iron. Right now the pure iron facade was “flaking off,” presenting the dingier and weaker pig-iron look instead.
He murmured, “The blade needs to be cleaned.”
He lifted the weapon and channeled his force into the blade, but then, like a blow, the echo spoke his name, disrupting him and bringing back the torrent of visions of the life he was supposed to live. No longer thinking he was over cover with the want to flee, but fervently wanting to avoid the claustrophobic tunnel, as well he brought his blow down on the cave wall, exposing the nebulous abyss outside. He jumped into the cacophony and willed himself up to the Greater Terrium.
The Destroyer now stood in the middle of a town square. A car drove through him and continued moving down the street, he glanced at it with ire for a moment, then considered that it might deserve a little bit of impertinence considering their imminent fate. Populated Greater Terriums are annoying like that, but it’s as if they could perceive him. He stood there for a moment longer, temporarily filled with the wonder he felt first experiencing a Greater Terrium. He opened his eyes and saw the fullness of the Greater Terrium. It was like looking in a kaleidoscope, an infinite version of every person danced around infinite versions of their daily schedules, some practically mirroring each other, some with differences that could only be considered in dreams. He focused on the Terrium where the car had ran through him and prepared to do his deed as all the variants faded into infinity.
He drew his tarnished sword out of its sheath and raised it, he opened his mind and engulfed the entirety of the universe then located each sapient being (that is each being with an ethos) and swung, and killed them with his sword, all expect five. A father, a mother, two brothers, and a daughter. One boy was twelve, the other was fifteen, the girl was six, their family was being attacked by three armed men. The father was going after one of the men with a bat, the mother was using a kitchen knife, the oldest son laid at the edge of death on the ground, with a bullet hole in his chest. The younger boy was sobbing, wrapped around his hysterical sister, trying to shield her. The Destroyer’s heart curdled with envy, pity, and compassion, he wrapped the hand of his mind around them and deposited them in an adjacent universe. He finished his deed.
The end of a universe is beautiful, as life begins from one splitting into two, into two, into two, into two, each notworld, split innumerous, bonded to each other until there was only one. Then that one joined with its brothers below. This same process cleansed his blade, as each of the powerful components were recombined6.
He let his mind linger in the void he had created. He pondered to himself, “Why? Why did I save those people? There were millions of other families, and I saw them all, why them?” He knew, but he refused to know.
The void was vacated, collapsing, and destroying the only thing left inside, the sentiment of a single tear.
The Destroyer arrives on an asteroid; the only landmark on the space rock was a single rough wooden door. He strode over to it and opened it, letting out the smell of intoxicants and body odor of dozens of species. Before walking in, he morphed his form and made his katana appear as a greatsword to disguise himself.
He walked in and the mariment was palatable, one who was blind and deaf could still feel the joy. The room was roughly circular, and largely made of wood, the whole place was tinged oranges by the “gas lit” lanterns hanging from the ceiling. The room was populated by eight tables, each with four chairs, about three fourths of which were filled.
Seeing him come in, one of the more sober men got up, he glanced at each of his arms and at the conclusion of his count he saw a grief flash in his eyes. The man was covered in black plumage, with two wings swinging at his side like feathery tassels, he had orange eyes, but they were reddened as though by crying a great deal. Overcoming his hesitations (or perhaps the sustenances he had consumed overcoming them for him) he beckoned him to sit down at the bar with him with a skeletal hand. He spoke, “He struck again, killed billions,” He snaps, “like nothing.”
He takes a sip of the magenta brew he was fostering then continues, “Five survived, for no desirable reason, nothing physiological, nothing magical, they were in a fight, that’s the only notable detail, it seems like it was mercy, maybe he wants to come and torment them later. If only he gave that to Lareon…”
The bird creature pulled his skeletal hands into the folds of his feathery tassels, then the Destroyer realized his hands weren’t skeletal, they were his bones, he had ripped his wing bongs from his wings. The creature wrapped his wings around himself, with the grief from earlier dripping from his eyes and said, “Call me Raven, no one uses real names here, in case He decides to wipe our elcoves out.”
The Destroyer asked, with intent to confirm his fear, but hope not to, “What happened to Lareon?”
Raven inhaled, “Either as cautionary tale or commiseration, I’ll tell you: Our world was lofty and the air of our world was heavy making it easy to fly. I had a wife named Lareon, and we had fertilized three of her eggs.” His voice cracked, “We found things outside our “Terrium,” and we sent emissaries… Me. Then He came and killed,”
The Destroyer held up his hand, partially to hold back his own tide of memories, “I’m so sorry,” he stumbled out of his seat and out the door.
He collapsed on the surface of the asteroid with only the stars as his witness, the cold dark lonely rock was the starkest contrast he could think of for the lively tavern. Despite the shocking disparity, it was not enough to relieve him, and threw up, despite not having eaten in millennia. He saw himself killing Lareon, along with each of her and “Raven’s” unhatched children, two girls and a boy. He hallucinated his childrens’ faces, the ones from his vision, his vocation, on the three preborn bird creatures.
He jumped into the void, and retreated into his own Lesser Terrium (Mind), a plain of eternal war and conflict, for millennia and he found peace in the chaos…
It took many years, but the hunter, Hassesh, found the cave of the diviner and called the trio to him. The three stand around the figure, they all look older and more worn. The tattooed one’s markings had been partially obscured by dirt7, the pale human was dirtier as well, and his hands were darker red, the gelatinous looking one was not dirty, but his form had completely changed, an his tourso and legs were that of a wildcat, albeit bipedal, he had the wings of a falcon, and the head of a goose, the Hassesh’s form here was composed wholly of shadows.
Standing in the center of the group, he whistles about his discovery.
The cave is in a state of degradation, the hole in the wall was still there, allowing one to peer into nothingness, the corpse of the Diviner lay, with the hole in her chest alighned with the hole in the stone floor, her aura was gone, the remaining stone wall were “not all there,” a person could put their hand right through them if they desired, the place was wholesale desaturated and dimmed. Summarily, the place looked and felt like a corpse.
What had not changed though, were the echoes, of cource that make sense, echoes are already a fraction of a being, the one who voiced them, just as a corpse was a fraction of a being. What had diminished though, was the answer of the answers from the sky, the voice from the stars no longer spoke with authority. It had ceased to sound like the roar of an ocean tide, but rather like two co-conspirators whispering in darkness. The Hunter, Hassesh, told then all this, for they would not have know otherwise. But, the Hunter knows many things, and he knew how it should have been, and how it had changed.
The tattooed one, acting as the spokesperson again asked, “Where does this information leave us? Do you require our active assistance for something?”
He communicated that this was simply a progress report, because this is a breakthrough. Previously had been listening to the echoes and the stories of the notworld to hunt for the very rare clue, or some faint trail. Now though, this was an actual trail that he could follow, to find the Destroyer.
Request For Log Specific Wipe
Identification: D1PT-F0
Make: Detention class 1 Predatory Technology
Rank: Fixed 0
Time since reset: 146,952 M.L.J.
Log in question:
Screaming, not in a physical manner, but carrying the same effect, fills D1P-F0’s being. D1PT-F0’s singular purpose is to search for escapees and interlopers. Where they were escaping to, interlopering from, or why they would want to was not their job to know. The closest D1P-F0 had come to fulfilling their duty was guiding the occasional lost soul back to the fold, but now its heart seethed, long dulled instinct now brought to the fore.
As they stalked closer to the source of the psychic cacophony, and the terrain became strange and warped, the dirt shifted into incomprehensible patterns repeating patterns, fractals made of dirt and strings of shedded and discarded paper. Interspersed with the mental cries were impossible questions from a piercing and commanding voice, “A beast steals a child and promises its return if the father can correctly guess exactly what the crocodile will do. How should the crocodile respond in the case that the father guesses that the child will not be returned?” “A creature says, “All of my kind are liars.” Do you believe it?” “This sentence is unknown.” The voice continued and the noise continued, and their mind clouded, involuntarily thinking about the questions asked of it.
A little over three and a half kilometers into the phenomenon D1P-F0 could barely see a meter in front of them. The very air here had been thickened and been coerced into fractions, grabbing their visual sensors and dragging them into their abyss. The paradoxes had not stopped either, but by now their mind was too preoccupied to comprehend speech, compelled to solve unanswerable questions.
Reaching what they could only assume to be the center of the effects, D1P-F0 sees a creature, the source. Its eyes were blank, milky white, on an otherwise shapeless, slumped head, and it held, limply, a broken sword in its left hand. Attached to each hand was a manacle with a chain attached to it, each pulled taught in a different direction, attaching to nothing, but extending forever. The creature was less substance than idea. What could be divulged of its form was ghastly, the creature had a human like torso, but more emasated then any he had seen, it was pale, paler than white, and the whole mass was continuously moving, as though the frightful thing had a hyperactive colony of slugs living under his skin.
Entering within five meters of the creature, the back-facing sensors saw the entire area was contained by an indeterminable amount of rotating Penrose triangles. The creature, though visually appearing not to move, looked at D1P-F0 and talked with a throat gurgling grasshoppers, “My name is Mewangamiza (Mew-ang-a-mi-za), look (Grasping a cold, metal, sword handle,) upon (plunging it into the ground,) my (now burning, like a sun, branding my hand.) works (Everything is visible, every life all at once,) ye mighty (all at my mercy,) and despair (of which I have none.)! Nothing remains (A catlike construct made of metal staring up into my eye, I am staring into my eyes.)
Displaced suddenly, D1P-F0 was out of my anomaly, floating in a void surrounded by debris, looking out at the stars in the middle of the asteroid field, still chained and hideous, but still, was Mewangamizi. It commanded, its voice now clear, “Construct, free me.”
Logic circuits whirling, still reeling from the madness before, D1P-F0 had no response.
The creature repeated the command, more forcefully, “Free me.”
With most of their falcaties now recovered, D1P-F0 wirled, “I cannot: Primary function is to detain escapees and interlopers. Therefore, I cannot comply.”
Mewangamizi’s skin began to crawl, then began growing and stretching into tendrils, reaching for D1P-F0. As they began to be dragged the mirage of the void flashed in and out of the view revealing that they had never left the phenomenon. Half a meter away from the Mewangamizi’s face, a shadow passed over and a gust of lukewarm air blew past their head. A shining hand contacted Mewangamizi’s face and with a flash they both were gone.
[End Log]
Post Log:
One non-sapient scout construct was deployed to the scene as D1P-F0 had not made contact at the correct time. The scene was inconsistent with D1P-F0‘s logs, and the only things recovered were the damaged body of D1P-F0 and a strange feather twenty centimeters tall and three centimeters wide, it was primarily white-beige with no identifying pattern.
Conclusions:
It is possible this “Mewangamizi” was using unknown magics, but it has been determined most likely that this was some sort of hallucination or perhaps an interception of some fictitious broadcast. These latter explanations however, do not explain the damage to the unit. Until more information is recovered I advise this file to be archived and the construct to be wiped.