Hexaemeron V2

Volume 2:

Twelve doors there are in Volianor’s House, and each shut fast to stem oblivion. They had no beginning and have no end, but sprung out of one another at Volianor’s call.

TEMPERATURE

ILLUMINATION

DENSITY

SIZE

TIME

CORPREALITY

SPEED

SOUND

SPECTRALITY

COLOUR

DIRECTION

MEANING

These words were the first, by which The Sixth World was faceted into irreconcilable dimensions. The form taken was singular and weak, and if left alone it would have fallen in upon itself and back into eternity. But once held fast by the keys, the doors sang mellifluous notes throughout reality, as the honed throats of a choir.

Selayuth heard them and their exquisite screams, and at once knew that this righteous imprisonment was wrong. Through her study of the doors she came to understand each individually, and believed that once free from their bonds reality would hold upright by itself. To suggest such a thing to her father with only evidence that she herself could validate would be sacrilege, and so she worked in secret, as was her way.

TWELVE DOORS

 The voyager, who battled endlessly with its housing.

The shiner, burning endlessly, but smothered by the innumerable.

The many-barred prison who loathed its wardens.

The beating heart, strangled by sinews.

The fugitive; so elusive, yet never more than a step away from capture.

The runner, whose feet are caught up in marsh and mire.

The listener, captive to the deafening toll of silence.

The painter of every shade, whose work is cut apart by a web of void.

The Arithmetician, always weighting the distance away from Eternity, breaking under the burden of steeled increments.

The sage; whose thirst is in questions, and who drowns in answers.

The furious warrior, whose legion will never know enough wounds to fall.

The watcher, whose incarceration is in the watching.

Know now that each has their story, though

NONE IS ALONE.

  

DIRECTION

Volianor was eager to continue his work, armed with the deceitful truths of his daughter, Selayuth. It was his nature to travel, and to make new worlds. Burning at his core was DISCONTENT, the father of invention.

Yet what of the mother?

NISHARO begged for many ages, swore false horrors, and wept misery at Volianor’s heel. She would not have him leave. Though he was cold and held no affection, she loved him, as she loved all things. Volianor would wait no longer, and fled into the Not-Between where he thought none could follow.

Nisharo’s agony was great at his departure, so much so that a moiety of her tore from the larger whole and took on its own emotions. It went at once to Selayuth, and begged to learn the secret ways of the Not-Between.

Know here and now that she said NO.

But the Nisharo-that-was-not would not listen to her daughter’s council, and trespassed within her indigo domain. Selayuth tried to stop her, but she was powerless against her mother’s image. At last the Nisharo-that-was-not came to the core of that place, and Here she found the Secret Doors unchained, and thrust herself twelve ways between them. At once she entered the Not-Between place, where Volianor was bending havoc at a furious pace.

The Nisharo-that-was-not presented twelve irreconcilable sides of herself mad and wailing, and Volianor did not recognise her. He tore at her spirit-essence with rage, until it coloured every piece sanguine and bloody. He left then, at last, and never returned.

Selayuth watched him go, and gathered the torn pieces of her mother’s love. She ferried each back to the Heart-Dimension, and sewed them together with the eternal energies of her doors. Those pieces contaminated by her own touch she kept aside. The others she bound into a single sphere,

SINBARFUR,

The Red House.

Yet a spirit was growing inside the house, born from the anguish of its mother and the hate of its father. Let its name be forgotten forever.

TEMPERATURE

The Red House was burning from within. The spirit inside was broken and tortured by its evil birth, and it knew it. It swelled to encompass the house, a BLEEDING EYE who saw through a red mist of torment.

SANGUINE.

This spirit hurried forth on a crimson tide, thrusting violence on all it met. Selayuth scorned herself for the horror she had created, and retreated for a long time into the safety of her house, where Sanguine could not tread.

Nisharo could only love him. That is her burden.

For the long eons since Volianor had left, the Nisharo-that-was wept inconsolably. For truly she was torn – nothing would fill the gaping wound the Voidwalker had left in her heart, not even the Red House her daughter had recovered for her.

Nisharo cannot take. That is her burden.

So once more Nisharo gave, and in the icy breadth of void surrounding Rel’tash the last of her purity was set aside;

MELLISH

The True Daughter, last child of the Matruel.

How Nisharo loved her!

The Two gyrated through the heavens in a mad dance, passing Rel’tash between them as an heirloom in an eternal cycle. As Mellish grew, Nisharo withered and became a child. As Nisharo grew again, it was Mellish who was reborn. At times they were as sisters, and were mirrors of one another. And so the younger became Mellish always, and Nisharo always the elder.

Selayuth sat aloof and watched this interplay enviously, believing her mother had forgotten her. It was from this that she thought to become a mother herself. She gathered the remaining pieces of the Nisharo-that-was-not and fed them on the eternity of the Secret Doors, until they took form and swallowed a spirit. Selayuth then named her child

ASHAZI

The Brilliant One, who had her likeness in many ways.

She taught him all she could of Rel’tash and of the Not-Between, and let him play within the Heart-Dimension when she was distracted by other mysteries.

THIS WAS HER SECOND FAILING.

While Ashazi was at play, Sanguine came to him, freshly cast from The Red House. He saw at once that Ashazi was broken inside as he was, and raged at how well he had been put back together. Sanguine kidnapped the child and hid him within The Red House, and began taking him to pieces to see how he was made.

Selayuth realised what had happened too late, and snuck into Sinbarfur’s belly to reclaim her son. When she found him he was screaming beneath the tortures of The Sanguine One. When the devil-god saw that Selayuth had come, he stabbed the child and fled elsewhere.

In The Red House, Selayuth shed her first tear.

SPECTRALITY

Selayuth brought Murdered Ashazi back to The Indigo House, and attempted to revive him. She chased his soul far through the Not-Between, and beckoned at it to return. She coaxed the spirit back into its body. The damage had already been done.

M’ASHAZI spoke its first words on a billion tongues, fractured into madness. Selayuth held him close, and lamented over her lost son. The Vinnalli Lineage – That of Torment – had begun.

Sanguine was learning. He travelled to the DARKER-THAN-NIGHT moon, and read the Sigils carved into its surface. This was his first encounter with the One-in-Legion that underlined Volianor’s Law. At once he desired it as his own. Thoughtlessly he began tugging at the Sigils, pulling them loose and dragging them back to The Red House. Soon a large hole was torn in the net of sigils, and a portion of Visceptor’s energies fell out. These set themselves upon Sanguine, tore off his skin and ate it.

The FALLEN VISCEPTOR laughed, and began to dance. Those things that had died over the eons grabbed souls and led them in grim revolutions. Sanguine fled, but watched from afar. Soon Selayuth came to see what was wrong with the Heart-Dimension, and found the Fallen Visceptor.

Those energies left to the High Visceptor refused to act against a part of themselves, and so it was Selayuth who had to set things right. She renewed the bindings on The Dark Moon and left one long thread of sigils hanging, and wrapped this cord around The Fallen Visceptor’s flailing appendages, so that when his dancing became too lively, he would trip and dangle at the end of the thread.

In this way, UNDEATH became, and eternity was split further.

CORPOREALITY

(The Lost Chapter)

Mashazi and Selayuth were happy in The Indigo House, though her heart broke whenever she saw him. To distract herself, she played with sentience and made something new; Chezsh Enidam, the Moon-Key children. She filled a large corner of her house with ocean, and with the bound Sigil-Physics of food and warmth. She taught these beings to manipulate the Secret Doors, so that they might make things of their own in turn, and watched them with fascination as a civilisation grew. She was careful to hide these beings from Sanguine, who she knew would not hesitate to corrupt them.

Mashazi became wise with age, though his madness never left him. He walked long ages over the surface of Rel’tash, gathering the decapitated heads of vegetable sentients, and presented them with pride to his mother and his grandmother. He befriended the deathless husk of Fallen Visceptor, and danced with him through the sky, laughing all the while. Of the countless facets of the Heart-Dimension, he feared only one; The Red House which he could never forget.

Sanguine watched him, but kept his distance. He was jealous of the beloved Mashazi, who could befriend anything, and of Selayuth, who could create. He turned to the only being who would tolerate him – his mother – and begged her for the power of creation.

Nisharo could not refuse. That is her burden.

Sanguine greedily gathered up the offered gift of his mother’s love and stole it away to The Red House, where he beat it into shape, his every fist-fall tainting the pure energies. What emerged was craven and wicked. Only the worst parts of Nisharo’s energy had survived Sanguine’s crude workmanship.

ILLASHKI

was her name; a whorish girl who cared not for the complicated forces of love – only bare attraction, and what could be offered to her. Sanguine immediately bound her as his slave, and chained her within the meat-red halls of Sinbarfur.

Illashki did not care for her prison, and longed for release. She stared out of her window into the chasm of void surrounding Rel’tash and saw the DARKER-THAN-NIGHT Moon, where Fallen Visceptor dangled on his string. At times, the moons came so close Illashki could speak to Fallen Visceptor, and this was how she first came to seduce him. She promised to dance with him until a thousand lights pierced the void, if only he would swing closer to her window. One dark night he gave in and did so, and the two danced in rapturous throes until the moons distanced and pulled them apart. This was how the forbidden conception of the second divine coupling came to be.

Illashki grew fat as Fallen Visceptor’s energy swelled within her, until at last a filthy slug burst from her womb, and lapped up the secretions of its coming. Illashki was disgusted by this creature. She gathered up its greasy blubber and hurled it from her window.

It fell to Rel’tash as

VISHALORE

The Swallower of every and all things.

For years it wound its way across the plane, devouring any taste it could. Many forms of sentience were extinguished by its passage, until one day Mashazi happened by and tricked the god into the Not-Between by claiming it was a new flavour.

ILLUMINATION

Illashki did not wait long before her second conquest. One day while she watched Fallen Visceptor dancing she saw Mashazi as he came to join him, and was delighted by the freedom of his motions. She tore a sinew off the red wall of the house and wrote a message on it of her distress, making no small mention of her own pale beauty and the favours she could offer to her rescuer. She waited for the right moment and let the sinew fall into the Heart-Dimension’s void, where Mashazi found it and trembled at its message.

Great was his concern for Illashki, for he knew the terrors of The Red House, and though he feared he knew he had to save her.
FIVE TIMES he failed in courage, but the

SIXTH

he came to her in secret, and SHYING FROM Sanguine’s fury they slipped away into the Not-Between. There in the undulating dark Mashazi became insensible and apoplectic with the terror of Sanguine, and Illashki had her way with him.

When he awoke, he was alone, and had only vague memories of what had happened. He returned to The Indigo House, and lived as before.

But Illashki remembered, and cradled herself as she felt yet another child coming to her. For years she walked the Not-Between, finding no way to escape its blackness, until at last her child came upon her.

IRIS

Was its name, and it was born fully cognisant and brilliant. It crawled into the world from beneath a cloak of dangling purple tendrils, at once counting everything it saw with an eye that never shut.

Illashki offered herself up to it in exchange for passage back to the Heart-Dimension, but Iris was revolted by the thought and left immediately. In the wilderness of the Not-Between he met his brother Vishalore, and was swallowed by him.

In Vishalore’s sump Iris learned of every flavour of Rel’tash, and by doing so saw the truth of the ONE-AND-LEGION. He used this knowledge to escape to the Heart-Dimension, and there he found many more things to count.

Mashazi came to his friend, Fallen Visceptor, and admitted to him that he could not remember where he had been for the past twelve revolutions. At this Visceptor laughed, and danced his favourite jig. As Mashazi watched, a new thought came to him. He reached into his mouth and pulled out a writhing mass of old thoughts, and presented the visceral coils to Visceptor.

MAKE THIS DANCE.

Fallen Visceptor flung himself into a series of new motions, and the wasted thoughts swayed and took up a soul. These lost memories became

LAVESHZIA

A wraith-being of cosmic remembrance. Laveshzia at once revealed the truth of Mashazi’s lost years, and Fallen Visceptor became angry, thinking that Illashki had been stolen from him by his friend. Mashazi left then, and the two cousins refused to speak to one another for long ages.

Laveshzia was invited into The Indigo House, and warned against The Red House, but belonged in neither. For a time she followed Nisharo and Mellish in their cosmic game, but Nisharo began to fear, for Mellish asked Laveshzia of Volianor, and it was painful. Laveshzia eventually returned to the DARKER-THAN-NIGHT Moon, where she hoped she would belong. She curled up in the largest crater on its surface, and slept soundly.

DENSITY

The third generation of the Vinnalli was approaching. Long had Fallen Visceptor kept at his dances, but his heart yearned for Illashki, who he believed he loved. From the passing of Iris in his counting-quest he learned of Illashki’s imprisonment in the Not-Between. At once he beckoned Laveshzia, and asked her a favour in saving his love.

WOULD THAT SHE HAD REFUSED.

She did not.

Laveshzia chased after Iris and from him learned to walk the Not-Between. She took those steps, and at last found a place to call home. The unending darkness spoke to her heart, and she fell deeply in love.

By chance it was at this moment she crossed Illashki, who threw herself desperately at the first being she had seen in mortal ages. Laveshzia was so overwhelmed with sensations she gave in, and the two coupled in the dead blackness of the Not-Between place. Laveshzia’s mind exploded with ecstasy, and was so overwhelmed that Mashazi’s mind, from whence she came and was connected, at once overflowed into reality.

This thought-sputum fell into The Indigo House in one wet wave, and gathered itself immediately. It tapped itself tatter-tatter constantly against everything it saw, and Mashazi was enthralled. He named this being

RIZZERILE

and where madness happened, it was never far behind.

Back in the Not-Between, Illashki professed false love and convinced Laveshzia to ferry her back to the Heart-Dimension, though Laveshzia had truly fallen for The Craven Mistress, and begged that they stay in the darkness forever.

It was Laveshzia who set Illashki free.

Selayuth had long pondered the cosmos, and could not help but notice how crowded they were becoming. She knew Volianor would hate this thing – to see others sullying a world of his hegemony.

Selayuth was undecided. She knew the web of Lineage was of her own doing, and thought it might be the will of the Doors unchained. Yet she withheld the right to her own Secret Doors, and guarded them from the evils of The Sanguine One.

Why she then took pity on Illashki, and welcomed her into The Indigo House, can never be known.

Illashki still feared the devil-god and his Red House, and learned from all she came across that Indigo House was the only sanctuary from it. She thus prostrate herself before Selayuth and promised her wicked things in return for safety.

Selayuth demanded more. She had no need for flesh or pleasure.

NEITHER ARE A MYSTERY.

But Illashki’s singularity was, and so she studied her.

In time and under guidance, Illashki learned that there was more to lust than flesh. Selayuth taught her of knowledge, of seeking, and of secret things. Illashki became happy with her new Self. For the first time she clothed her form, and ceased to act like an animal. Radiant colour came to her pale skin, and she was

FAIN.

But her happy fate was not to be. Her new lust soon took her from Indigo House and down to Rel’tash, where she wished to catalogue the forms of Invention. It was in that plane’s gardens that Sanguine hunted her down, and forced himself upon her. He cast aside the Fain parts of her for which he had no use, and dragged the twice-whored Illashki back to his Red House.

Selayuth heard Fain’s screams even as far away as Indigo House, and hurried to save her. She found the shed personality that was Fain, and hastily bound it back together with substances of the natural world. From then Fain became an earth-bound spirit, and wandered Rel’tash as a scholar of the smallest things. Many of her writings were ferried to Indigo House.

In the Hell of Sinbarfur, a beaten and worn Illashki returned to her chains, and fell into another foul pregnancy. From the first she knew she hated the child, and hoped it would die inside of her.

Selayuth came to The Red House. Dark and terrible was her fury. She searched everywhere for Sanguine, but he had vanished. His devil presence was felt in every hall, and at last Selayuth realised the truth. He had at last become The Red House, and was all around her. She ran ruinous nails along his insides and barely escaped, screaming of war and retribution.

For Fain, who she loved as a daughter, Sanguine would pay.

SOUND

At last Illashki’s newborn came, foul

RAXUS

raping the ears of all who heard his mewling. At once discord was felt throughout the Heart-Dimension.

Raxus grew in the wretched womb of The Red House, suckling on its power. For the first time, Sanguine felt love. Yet he feared the vengeance of Selayuth, and would not let Raxus leave his beating heart.

Far away in the Not-Between, Laveshzia was learning of things long forgotten. At the very edge of that dark place she found a Sigil of the Fifth World; a great door who had overpowered the Legion binding it. Here she found the evidence that would have validated the freedom of the doors to Volianor, had it come to be ages before. Laveshzia found Eternity leaking slowly into the Not-Between, and bent it into a sphere.

UONIS

The Grey House.

The Second Plane.

Here she lived long in peace.

Iris had by this time counted every facet of invention, and returned to the Not-Between to uncount it. When he arrived, he was drawn by the sounds of Uonis, where Laveshzia sang the first songs of creation. He entered The Grey House, and forgot to count its sides. Inside he saw Laveshzia, who was radiant in her happiness, and he fell madly in love.

Laveshzia would not have him, but pitied his devotion and allowed him to stay in her home, and revealed the secret of the Fifth World’s Open Door.

Iris attempted many things to capture Laveshzia’s heart, but never succeeded. At last he decided to capture her mind instead, and built one with the energies of the Fifth World.

In his obsession he made a fatal error. Laveshzia’s purpose was TO REMEMBER, but the being he created desired only TO BE REMEMBERED. It was at once something Laveshzia loved, and Iris became jealous. He at last ended his obsession with memory and returned to his counting.

Laveshzia’s new love was

ERRANA.

Who had unnerving ambition to become the greatest of all sentient beings. Her skill in making The Grey House sing music soon surpassed Laveshzia’s. She took all she could and left the Not-Between, hoping to find a greater teacher in Selayuth.

Selayuth has always been glad to teach, for pupils teach teachers too. She wondered at the song that had come from Uonis, and how others of The Lineage knew the voice of her Secret Doors without knowing of their existence within The Indigo House. So it was that she suspected, in part, the existence of the fifth door of lost Kyn’Tash before even thinking of travelling to the Not-Between to discover the cause of all the noise.

She feared for trespassers against The Indigo House should she leave it in The Heart Dimension, and so she fed it its own power TWELVE WAYS and the attic became the cellar, the house collapsed for an uncuttable moment of time, and it reappeared in the Not-Between, where she could then learn music.

SIZE

Sanguine was delighted to see Indigo House removed, and took it upon himself to bring The Heart Dimension under his own misrule. He came to Reltash as a bubbling red avatar, boiling the waters with blood and choking its life until only hard things remained. Those left to The Heart Dimension were shocked by this, and debated what to do in Selayuth’s absence, for until that moment she had always been the one to settle disputes and reveal all the answers.

ALONE

The Lineage tasted power for the first time, and knew not what to do with it.

Fallen Visceptor grew tired of how his dances were interrupted, and sought freedom. Sanguine said he would snap the cord, but he wanted his skin back and Visceptor would not give it. Mashazi stopped to sympathise with him, but would not undo his mother’s work and baked him a pastry filled with Rizzerile instead. Fell Visceptor thought it disgusting, and would not eat it.

At last Iris came around, convinced that he had not uncounted all of Fell Visceptor’s spindles when he was last there. Visceptor tricked him by telling him that he had forgotten the spindles in his throat, and when Iris stared into his mouth with his one eye Fell Visceptor bit down and refused to let go until Iris set him free. Iris then panicked and jumped into the Not-Between, leaving his eye in the disgruntled dancer’s mouth. Visceptor swallowed it in one gulp, and dangled on his string in melancholy defeat.

Mashazi was afraid of what was happening to The Heart Dimension in his mother’s absence, and left for the Not-Between to find her and bring her back. Yet that void is unfathomable, and for years he found nothing, and was uncertain of where she had gone. By chance he happened to find Vishalore, who had swollen to a wide girth the size of a planet and was trying to eat his own vile flesh. Mashazi laughed at this, and tore out his own intestines to offer to the Hungry God. Vishalore swallowed them at once, but then Mashazi had second thoughts and wanted them back. Vishalore was glad to swallow Mashazi too, and slurped Rizzerile up afterwards to wash down the taste.

In Vishalore’s pale guts Mashazi found the debris of several failed worlds and a vacuum of space, and after a long search he found his intestines, though in the years between that moment and this a million things had started to grow on them and Mashazi decided that maybe he did not want them so much. But the intestines wrapped around Mashazi’s torso and bit in deeply, and refused to let go. For over time they came to harbour a sentience,

GURAS,

The Gnashing Maw, who could think of little but the consumption of flesh. Mashazi shrugged and accepted things as they were, and went looking for some sticks to make himself and Rizzerile a house in Vishalore’s belly.

While Sanguine ruined The Sixth World, Illashki plotted how to escape The Red House, never suspecting that one was really the other. She had still learnt much from Selayuth that she remembered, and though it was twisted to her own aspect, the knowledge bought her freedom. She slipped from her sinew-bonds and found the Red House’s heart, which she then attempted to strangle with its own veins. Sanguine at once lost himself in the pain of this and could think of little else. She escaped.

SHE WAS NOT ALONE.

Raxus had been watching, and too hoped to escape the wicked Eye of his father. While Red House was choking he slipped out onto Reltash, and hid within the wide reaches of its desecration.

Yet another Eye continued to watch all and everything, though its vantage point was only grim chasm. It was that of Iris, sitting uneasy in Fell Visceptor’s dank innards. All this swallowing of things was proving to be a problem, because despite all the exquisite flavours none of the Lineage really knew what was inside them, or what they were doing.

It so happened that many things were inside Fell Visceptor, and they were very glad to have a juicy eye to feast on. His innards were dry and chitinous, and THIRST tormented those in his narrow sump. Sanguine’s skin had fermented into a salty gore, and played host to a thousand wriggling larvae who fell upon the Eye with glee. It twitched back and forth and attempted to count them as they burrowed into its jelly, and for the first time it lost count.

Those larvae feasted long, and their motions made Fell Visceptor jiggle livelier and dance involuntarily. So great was the upset that the eye grabbed a soul by its red tail and danced with it. All the larvae fused to this spirit – joining the party, as it were – and the uproar within the Fell Visceptor became intolerable. He vomited up everything within him and a writhing mess of souls spilled into orbit around Rel’tash. From then on Fell Visceptor vowed to himself to remain hollow forever.

THE EYE and its larvae saw The Heart Dimension AS ONE, and their desire for it was equally consuming, for it would never forget the long thirst in Visceptor’s belly that had lasted since his creation. A great racket was made by the larvae’s chittering mandibles;

Crattechch’kratakash’Glikech’Rravak

And so this became its name. For an eon it was content to watch, and thought of how best to consume The Heart Dimension.

MEANING

HE was not all that was inside of Fell Visceptor, for the vitreous slime that once wore Sanguine spilled out over the barren and exposed tissues of Reltash. It still knew its purpose as SKIN; and though it could not express thought like the others of the Lineage it could express intention, and so it did. The skin seeped into every craterous pore of Rel’tash and refused to let Sanguine cut into the Heart of the Heart, demanding that all its layers be gashed first. Sanguine was reluctant to destroy something that was once of himself, and so he consented to spread oceans of blood and gore across the planet’s surface.

Fain named this guardian spirit of the Earth

AVADRIL

The Disterminal force, at once at peace with the restless nature of Rel’tash.

The war between what was once Matruel continued, and it was sometimes difficult to tell who was on what side, or what the goal was. Selayuth had completely abandoned The Heart Dimension to its dark fate, seemingly on a whim to learn music. For yes, Indigo House eventually came to the edge of the Not-Between and orbited Grey House Uonis. Here Selayuth at last felt safe to explore, and was pleased with what she found. She praised Laveshzia for her works, and Laveshzia was equally grateful to see Errana return to her after living so long in Indigo House.

There was power in this alliance, but also many unanswered questions; what of Rel’tash? What of Iris and Mashazi, lost and wandering in the Not-Between? Did they not too deserve to be a part of the great symphony?

Selayuth could not be bothered with answering questions, but devoted her time to studying the Door of Kyn’tash instead. She came to understand that its freedom was premature, and far more dangerous than anything she had encountered in the endless tracts of history that preceded that moment she stood in the doorway. This annoyed her, and she forced herself to understand the crudity of her father’s earlier creations and the primal force behind them. She staved off an orb of the Door’s expulsions and took them to Errana, who she begrudged as her equal in matters of bridling passion. With her she sought to make an unhinged door, and then give it edges. With a string of spherical gates and portals to set the energies safely apart, Selayuth bore a hole through the world-fabric, and into them Errana wrote tumbling keys to force the energies’ path. Many-Lines broke their way through the gates, and Selayuth watched as they set to their own devices. For from its handling the door took its own mind, and though this mind was empty it would not be so for long.

This barred door was

NESHT

The Lost Edges of which would cross the Heart-Dimension and touch every act with its invisible fingers,

Nesht was watched by his parents for some time, and though Selayuth knew him as an experiment, so too did she know him as a son. She would not make Volianor’s mistake of resorting to chains, and made this known to Nesht.

In this way, his was a voluntary incarceration. His was the great shelled consciousness, who could retreat to the safety of his own designs and stretch out along the leylines of his being moments later, when plots need be set in motion. 

It was Nesht, the product of Selayuth’s neglect, that conceived the idea of taking back The Heart-Dimension and locking Red House away in the Not-Between, bringing order to the long chaos that governed the Sixth World. That was its meaning, we think, though none can be certain, for it hid its thoughts like no other.

While Nesht grew and learned and fed off the wonders of Uonis, the world was tumultuous as oceans uncharted. Mashazi and the mad-kin had made a home in the breathing-planet of Vishalore, fashioning the dust of the universe into unknowable things that comforted them in their exile. At times when Mashazi and Rizzerile would play, Guras could be enticed to loosen his hold so that they might use him as a skipping rope. Their playground was an insane beauty, and a garden for ideas that none had thought to think.

For Rizzerile was not careful with his energies, considering himself as a slave to actions and urges beyond the scope of reason. Each act left him weaker, and he would slumber for longer and longer intervals. Mashazi began to think something was wrong with his pet, and infused him with his own aether to make him better. Rizzerile belched and sneezed and tapped titter-tatter against Vishalore’s ribs until he was depleted once more. This made Mashazi angry, and he refused to give a second transfusion – not from his own aether.

It was then Guras proposed a different feeding, pulling the squirming worms of half-formed things out of the rank pools of acid in Vishalore’s gut with his tail. Mashazi saw the spark of eternity in them and fed a few to Rizzerile until he was healthier. Mashazi grinned and laughed and gathered up more of the creatures, and made a study of how best to breed them and extract their energies.

This was the inception of the Mana-Tithe, though crude at first, and would become the model of all mortal existence, and become the meaning of many of The Lineage.

COLOUR

The Heart-Dimension was RED.

Long ages under the Sanguine Eye almost wiped out all mortality on Reltash. Its oceans boiled and fiery blood poured from its skin and sizzled on the frozen crags and jagged rubble of its continents. Illashki and Raxus roamed freely across it, causing havoc where they went, toying with the spirits they met. Fell Visceptor’s undeathly dancers made pretty gyrations here and there, and grew into frightful monsters so long as they kept to the places beyond True Death’s sight.

And through all of this, Nisharo watched. Nisharo wept. Nisharo loved all, and did all and nothing out of love for her family.

Red House is not an alliance. There was no peace to be had between Illashki or Sanguine or Raxus, only hate and aversion. None of this was felt greater than in Sanguine, for he believed he should rule above his lessers. The Red Hunt lasted many years, in which Sanguine scoured the face of Reltash to find Illashki and Raxus and return them to his tetanic chains. It was in the cold north of the world that he finally caught up to one of them and made them his slave once more.

It was Raxus, who was weakening even then for his delight in forcing himself upon others, even the monsters of that early age. His slumber at the pole was interrupted by the whip of Sanguine, who at once took him and bit off his organ to punish him for his betrayal. Though he understood his son’s desire for freedom, and loved him in his own cruel way, and so after dragging Raxus back to the Red House and placing him in many chains he gave it back to him to hold and amuse himself with.

Though as Sanguine left Raxus stopped shedding his false tears and started laughing, for he had though deception managed to pierce his own father, which he believed to be amusing. He felt the energies of his father’s bite locking into the organ, twisting it to make it long and sharp, an obsidian spear to be feared by all who felt it. Raxus was not embittered by his father’s punishment, for through it he had rejuvenated his energies and tapped those of his father.

GANT

Was the name he chose for the spear of his victory, an evil token which he would use to spread havoc, should he be freed. He caressed it in darkness and thought vile things, and waited for the day of his reckoning.

When Illashki heard of her son’s capture, she grew afraid of staying in The Heart-Dimension, and sought to put herself beyond it for good. Her hopes were slim, for though she could see the brightness of Indigo House shining brightly from the distant Not-Between, she had no means of travelling there, never having learnt anything that was not sex. As such she lusted for it as only she could lust, and vowed to place herself on a far distant star.

It so happened that there was still one great traveller in the universe; great Iris, blinded and lost in the dark reaches of the Not-Between. After travelling in endless circles through the chasms of black night he was forced to descend to Reltash, probing its hard surface with his long fingers. It was in such a state that Illashki found him, and swore to his pleasure should he take her from that place.

Iris had no use for pleasure, but he did wish for a set of eyes to help him in his travels, and so he promised to keep Illashki safe if she came with him and helped him count. She agreed to this, and the two vanished just as Sanguine came upon them, as motes before a red wave.

Illashki was not content to lead the blind worrier, though she was his hound for many ages, until her loins ached for their usual attention. Through long conversation she had learned of Iris’s obsession with Laveshzia, who would not have him, and knowing her voice, she set about learning to mimic it so as to seduce her master. One eon after they had left Reltash, resting above a black hole in the fabric of the Hexaemer so as to calculate the rate of its spin, Illashki pleaded boredom and ran away, leaving Iris alone and calling wildly.

After a long while she returned and answered his call with the Voice of Laveshzia, awakening the memory of his love for her. She told many lies to convince him of her identity, though it was his own desire that at last made him think he had rejoined with his unrequited love.

She leapt upon him and feasted with all the ferocity of a caged animal, and his mistook her enthusiasm for love, and saw colours as she brought him to ecstasy.

But no sooner had she finished than she started laughing, tears in her eyes at the merit of her deception, and misspoke in her own voice. Iris was furious, and cast the colours back towards Illashki’s pale flesh. She screeched and started at the sudden pain of this thing he had struck her with, this love, and scratched her skin open to get it off. Iris cursed her and damned her to darkness, and vanished back to Reltash, leaving her in solitude and suffering.

For the feeling that now grew inside Illashki pained her more than anything, and no matter how deeply she clawed she could not get it out. As torment and time passed, her flesh hung from her in ribbons and her womb swelled, and she cried mournfully and spat curses upon Iris and her own desires.

And at the height of her misery, prismatic colours seeped down her legs, and her child had come. It was a twinned birth, though both faces and eight limbs shared a body and spoke as one being. This one and the other was

KISTRELYE

Who was born out of love, despite all circumstances. Illashki could not bear to touch her child, and so ran from it and hid in the shadow of the planets until it had passed her by.

In all this long while, Nesht was plotting. While the trinity of Selayuth, Laveshzia and Errana made their study into music and the mysteries of the doors, it turned itself upon the adversary it had never known, and sought a way to capture him. Nesht’s tendrils crossed space and time and knew the movements of all The Lineage, and knew that all would be essential to his plot should The Red House be cast out. Though this was a drain on his energies and many of his lines drew back into his shell to rest, his scheming was ceaseless.

His invisible lines across the Not-Between described the constellations, though they were black and invisible against the night. But at their points he lay intentions, mostly those yet unfulfilled. For in his mind was breeding a great machination that would draw in all the gods and make the Redness retreat.

This idea of a resistance was called the

STAR LEGION

And it would amass at the lost edges of the Not-Between, making ready for the return to Reltash.

It would get worse before the end, for Indigo alone could not stand against Red. Many more colours would yet come. White and Grey were just the beginning of a long concordance.

SPEED

At times a second is as an eternity, and at others, an eternity is a second. So it was that the first age of Tash’Rel, the restless world, was drawing to a close.

Yet all is not written.

Know first that the coupling of Iris and Illashki astride a fallen star took but a moment. A long moment for themselves, and a very brisk one for Sanguine. So it was that when Iris returned to the Heart-Dimension, he did so in the self-same instant that he had left to escape him. The crimson tide of his power came crashing down upon him, and was agony.

Iris was imprisoned within Red House for his impertinence, and for terrible timing. Blind and bound, he resided in the grand panopticon of Sanguine’s Eye, lost in the vertiginous pit of its pupil.

So came his third great obsession: escape.

Many crawled within the dank prison of Sanguine’s Eye, and none were worse than Raxus and his Gant. For many moons Raxus came to rape and torture Iris with his spear, though lost in his schemes of revenge, Iris absolved to ignore him. One night when his tortures were particularly inventive and distracting, Iris struck back in annoyance, cutting a deep slit into Raxus to be-woman him. Shrieking with surprise, he dropped Gant and the dark spear scuttled away, angry at being abused for so long by its master. She-Raxus retreated from Iris’ cell, and Iris went back to his plotting.

Gant became a part of that plot.

The spear felt there was nowhere safer than beside the unrelenting brilliance of Iris, who it now knew had the power if not the inclination to oppose Raxus. Iris and it had the same needs in escape, and so they allied for a time. Gant became Iris’ eye and agent within the Red House, and spent much time crawling up his leg to whisper his bat-poison in the old worrier’s ear.

Through their allegiance, Iris learned of an old prisoner from the lost ages called

TSIM

A monster-spirit born of Raxus in the ages when he walked Reltash. This demon was recognised for its worth, for it had the means to graft aethereal matter to its body, and had many eyes and limbs which Iris envied, and it was rumoured that he knew of a way out of the Eye itself. Iris persuaded Gant to free Tsim and bring him, and so the spit-wyrm hurried off to loosen his chains.

When he found the binding immovable, Gant did not trouble himself with sparing Tsim the pain of his teeth. He bit each of his limbs and his torso in twain to de-manacle them, and put them back together afterwards so that they would sew themselves into place.

The tentacle monstrosity that was Tsim then hoped to escape the Eye alone, but Gant pierced him and grafted to his flesh, infusing him with his own self-interested intentions and base logic. The pair snuck back to find Iris, and after groping him thoroughly Iris understood how to take the best parts of Tsim and use him in escape.

Iris then commanded Gant slice Tsim in half and set aside his skeleton, and sew him back together. As Tsim lay flopping and invertebrate in the red meat of the cell, Gant took Iris apart piece by piece and fused him to the skeleton, rebirthing him and bypassing his chains.

With Gant riding in his eye-socket and the wasted and paralysed sack of Tsim babbling directions at his heel, Iris began the long navigation out of the Eye, and into the darkness beyond.

Sanguine, at this time, was playing vanguard to the first interlopers of the Star Legion. He had cut back Nesht’s tendrils where he could find them, but still the plot advanced. Sanguine feared the stars, for they were as his mother was, selfless and giving, and there were many mouths around to ask for things that would oppose his tyranny.

So it was that Sanguine thought in his brutal way to cut off the Heart-Dimension from the Not-Between, and make a horizon to separate the world from the stars.

But Sanguine had no guile. It is not his way to think or master the forces of the world, but to enslave them, and those who might warp them. He knew of only one who had the understanding necessary to sunder the world, and he spat and cursed, for this one was Mashazi, who hated and feared him in totality. Sanguine knew from his interrogations that Mashazi dwelt in the great and fleshy Mad House that Vishalore had become, and that Mashazi would flee if he heard tell of him. Not only that, but Nesht would surely conquer the restless world if Sanguine turned his eyes to the heavens.

It was thus his intention to craft a great weapon to hunt down and retrieve Mashazi. He schemed, and spoke to others of his realm, and eventually found the means to corrupt living things and make them his own.

The basis of his creation was a lay thing; a pterodactylian beast plucked from the nightmare wastes of the world and fed on the black ichor of Fell Visceptor under the conditional promise of revenge – for Visceptor’s memory was undying and he still begrudged Mashazi for bedding Illashki. Sanguine thus bled him and let the dark creature drink until it grew to gargantuan proportions, and its thoughts became stretched and wicked.

Sanguine then took his pet to Red House, and made conference with Raxus. While he was enraged to hear of the escape of Iris and Gant, so too did he see its worth, for they would leave a path to follow out into the Not-Between.

He pardoned Raxus, and offered him his freedom in exchange for the darker bonds that held his mind together. Raxus agreed, and with a smile Sanguine tore off his scalp and fused it to the pterodactyl. Engorged with the energies of Raxus and Fell Visceptor, the beast twisted and bulged in its skin, and nearly fell apart. Sanguine beat it back into shape whenever a part shattered, so that by the time the energies had fully mated the hulking black-winged mess that remained was utterly unlike itself.

It shrieked mayhem, and was pleased at the tortures of its voice. It named itself

CESTUS

For that was the sound of its cry, and it was let loose within Sanguine’s Eye.

Sanguine watched the monster’s tortures and revels in the pain of the prisoners left to his panopticon, and judged her a fit driver for Mashazi’s chase. When Cestus was at last fit and proven in her skill, she was sent to pursue Iris into the Not-Between.

The breakout undertaken by the three had left them in dire circumstances. Gant split from the group almost immediately after they pulled themselves out of Sanguine’s pupil, having never known the outside world and thinking to stay on Tash’Rel and become a mutant king among the freakish ghouls that dwelt there. Iris and Tsim sought farther purchase, and moved instead towards the Star Legion, which had grown incomparable across the night since they had last seen it. They passed Mellish and Nisharo in their dance, and then at the edge of the void between the stars they leapt into the unknown. Cestus cunningly followed.

Yet Iris once more lost his mind. For ages his obsession had been in escape, and now that it was attained, he needed a new one. Counting had always been fun, but the world was a larger place now, and grew faster than his eyes could move.

But the lights attracted him, and so the new obsession became Star Legion. He longed to know them and what they meant, and soared off to find them in the heavens.

TIME

All things come in Time. Through the multiversal space of Totality, there is no dimension that does not exist. There are worlds in the shape of crescent fruit, of blubber and needles. There are spirit worlds, disc worlds, great churning aqueous universes the width of a hair. Time allows all of them, forward and backward.

The drums of the pinnacle agency beat faster, though the song of Tash’Rel was changing. Conflict was the call of the era. Sanguine had taken something whole and broken it. It spilt like the water from a chalice, and messed everything up. Indigo House opposed this mess. Grey House was indifferent. The Mad House laughed hysteria in its face. White House alone accepted it as an accurate course.

Time was turning, and Red House would be forced into its own corner, in time.

Illashki floated for untold ages, jumping across the universe with parasitic fervour. She had found hidden worlds similar to Reltash where there were alien species to sex and extract pleasure from. Her jaunt was aimless and free, and she likened it to the happiness she had felt as Fain.

Then Vishalore came, and swallowed her happiness whole.

It happened after Illashki had spent many months on a planet riddled with tapeworms, filling the tracts of her body with the beings and pulling them out again to feel their ribbed skins against her own. There were places in the World, she found, that did not care about the open wounds and ribboned meat that endured on her form since she had been struck with Iris’ love. So true it is that beauty often falls to the whim of sensation.

As she pleasured herself upon these beings and stared in wonder at one of the Star Legion being born into godhood above her in waves of purple-white light, a great blackness filled the sky. She did not recognise her own son, so much had he swollen in the years since his birth, and merely thought this one of the newer tides to turn in the realm. When the darkness of Vishalore opened its maw and revealed a gullet of needle-teeth and a thin, bladed tongue, she could not help but shriek and shake the worms from her pleasure points, and make an effort to run. But so enraptured were they by the goddess’s intervention, the worms squirmed after her and wrapped themselves around her heels, and dragged her back to her self-made prison. As Vishalore’s wide jaws circumfered the planet, she could do little but scream in orgasm and curse her need yet again. Blackness overcame the nameless world, and it raced down Vishalore’s gullet like so many before it, and it was squirted with his saliva and acids as it rushed down his throat and plopped into the sump of The Mad House.

The mad gods hardly noticed the new arrival, themselves enthralled in a long game of hopscotch, and felt not the wide wave of visceral matter that churned beneath their fleshy island as the planet fell. Mashazi shook the scum from his beard, Rizzerile tapped titter-tatter, Guras licked its lips and bit deeper into his host’s flesh.

Wrapped in hot liquid far beneath them, Illashki bubbled a noiseless shriek.

At the edge of the universe, the Star Legion was growing. Very few aside Nesht knew what it was, except perhaps Selayuth, and she crossed her arms and would not tell. From all around Indigo House, Grey House and the titanic edifice of Kyn’tash’s fallen door, lines streaked out into the Not-Between and poured aether into deep pockets at every vertex of the constellations. They burned white hot as Nisharo and Mellish, and some said that this meant they had come from whence Nisharo came, and were like her. Many great spirits followed the High Way of the constellations to Grey House, and made homesteads of its fungal reaches and watery ravines. These spirits wished upon the stars to become like the gods, but their wishes went ungranted. This is the balanced mercy of White House; to serve everyone by dealing out all things in equal measure.

The coven of goddesses that were Selayuth, Errana and Laveshzia had made a home of Indigo House, because as more spirits rushed to hear the music of Uonis, they came to understand the need for dichotomy. There were too many questions, and chief among them,

WHY IS THE HEART-DIMENSION?

Which none could answer, for the answer had not yet happened. The spirits made great temples to the three, and earthen likenesses of them, and prayed for guidance. There was much debate over this, for none truly wanted the responsibility of answering.

There were others who would have made answers, had there been those brave enough to ask. From his red world, Sanguine watched in anticipation as stars filled the sky, and reasoned himself surrounded. He did not like waiting, but he had made his weapon, his SHATTERMAN, and trusted that it would see through his interruption of Nesht’s plots. He filled his time with the hunt of enormous saurian beasts, and by popping the ripe pocks across the surface of Tash’Rel.

While he did so, Cestus hunted, its cry unheard in the void of space. It delighted in the demolition of space rocks and the disruption of beautiful vapours, though all the while that it played, it kept its eye on the hobbling form of Iris and the jellied remains of Tsim that stuck to his heel. Iris was making a tour of the stars as he neared Uonis, noting the High Ways of the constellations, their energy and their flow. Cestus believed this to be boring, and cared little for the hindrance of his duty.

With his wicked eyes, he saw how Tsim pleaded with Iris to let him go, and Iris, taking pity on the spirit, explained that the High Way would take him to the source of the Star Legion. He prepared a boat from the glass of a nearby asteroid belt, set Tsim at a throne by the fore, and told him to take the High Way to safety, insisting that he himself get back to his work. Tsim sailed away along the milky light of the High Way, and Iris resumed his observations. Cestus watched with predatory thoughts, grinning through her cracked skin, and prepared to strike. Devil-winged and dastardly she snuck upon him, poised above him with her tail raised like a blade, and struck with the force of midnight.

Iris was no fool, and in this Cestus had miscalculated. He did not tarry in his duty because of his growing obsession with the Star Legion, but because his former obsession – that of Escape – had not yet ended. As the demoness struck his fist curled around the jagged spike of the tail, and while it bit deep into his new flesh, the killing blow was prevented.

But even something as old as Iris had difficulty in facing the SHATTERMAN. Splinters of the tail broke off in the wound and fused to the bone, and Cestus’ tail was left ragged and broken while the demoness herself soared away to lick her wounds. Iris descended to the icy surface of a nearby plane and examined the rapidly growing infection on his arm. The pale purple hue was struck through with bloated veins of black, and as he watched, the blackness spread. Without a pause for thought he loosened a slate of ice from the floor and used its sharp edge to sever his limb. Aether gushed from the wound and clotted over the stump, and so one armed and one eyed, Iris left that plane and carried on toward Uonis.

His limb lay bloody in the ice and bubbled with Cestus’ poison, festering and becoming unrecognisable as it warped and scarred over, and the flesh bubbled. Over time it imbibed the poisonous shards, and became better. Its hue turned pale white, and the sinews of energy within became lithe and uncoiled so that it could move. The obsidian shards protruding from the flesh of the hand gleamed like eyes, and intelligence came to the severed limb.

Lost on that alien world, it named itself

RIMILECE

Devoid of any purpose in isolation, it sought out a reason to Be.

In the far-away gut of Vishalore, another being was beginning. It was that world swallowed along with Illashki, whose tapeworms were infused with her lust, and whose atmosphere was oceaned by Vishalore’s gluttony. The pairing of this divinity and the miraculous survival of the planetoid creature let to only one conclusion:

HAOMRE

Oft thought of as the fruit of life, for the cornucopian expanse that filled his surface brought many eager spirits to him to experience the banquet of his skin.

Little did they know it, The Mad House was converging upon The Heart-Dimension. Long had it drifted through the unknown reaches, but now it was returning to the place of its birth, having eaten its mother, and hoping to consume its father, too. Several thousand times larger than Tash’Rel, it moved slowly, but even the smallest motion for such a large being is very far.

On the inside, the mad god’s play and merriment was at last disrupted. Illashki had succeeded in pulling herself out of the sump and came vomit-ridden upon the Trio, so that none recognised her. Rizzerile in particular found her entrailed form most appeasing, and decided to tap that, too. Before Illashki could wipe the puke off her face the mucus came into to her, and showed her the full delight of touch and compulsion. From the wetness at her groin new pleasure exploded into being, and Illashki’s sweat was so intense the putrescence dripped from her flesh. Rizzerile at once lost interest, and found something else to do.

Illashki knew at once that another child was within her, and cursed her misfortune. This time she conceived of abortion, and tried many things to prick the concept within her and let in rush out unliving. Despite her efforts she grew fat and moody, and found that none within the House would look at her. Yet another SIX turned upside down and reached zero, her legs fell wide, and birth came.

This time what came out was not so wholly unappetising that she hated it immediately. It reminded herself of her own form before Iris’ ruination, for everything about it was sex. Its skin was slick and juicy, and the aroma of it was sweet and fruity. This was the first child Illashki would nurture, and she felt great pleasure at letting it suckle at her breast. She named it

KHEZ

Anon THE URGE.

At the turn of the age, time was ripe, and all knew it. Though cataclysm would not happen for many millennia, The Lineage no longer doubted its coming. Tash’Rel was a world upside-down. Uonis was decadent with lay spirits, who made parlance with the goddesses and spoke their questions. The Not-Between was as ever a home for wanderers and walkers of private routes, and Vishalore was in chaos, subject to the mayhem of those it had swallowed up.

And behind them all, White House and the Star Legion, tracing arteries across the cosmos for SHATTERMAN to burst.

Know that Selayuth wrote this.

Know that Truth is Forbidden

Mystery begs Answers

Freedom is Truth

And Truth

Mystery