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
