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1. |
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I’m awake. Though I do not yet have the means to conceptualize the word.
Meaning would not present itself to me until the Flesh Braiders had spoken their stilted words and spun their jointless fingers in such a way as to form my womb. Until a thousand years had passed, and my physical formation was completed. Until my womb partner blossomed, her glow, the beating within her, filled the space around us.
We lay suspended in warm liquid, meaningless, until the synapses fired and my eyes dilated in the darkness and, with time, I was violently pulled, screaming, from that thrumming haven. My voice, an alien pitch to my ears.
The Braiders shifted their tongues to words of soothing as they separated me from my womb partner, placing me beside our Matriarch. All of this, a sensory blanket, both jarring and too smothering to properly register. I feed and taste and breathe and smell and hear and touch and weep and feed.
All this newness at once.
^
__
__
____
_______
<——————>
Meaning
thrust
upon
me.
V
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2. |
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I place her to my chest.
I feel her, I hear her.
Her place in my hands
is no placement at all.
More than anything she
belongs there. Inevitable.
I move her edge through
the air and with each swing
she ripples, her colors
shifting and fading
into one and more than one.
The Bleedmothers tell me
she will be a tool of war.
This is her meaning.
I believe them, for
I know nothing else.
They do not speak of
her beauty. They do not
speak of her song. These
appear to be for me alone,
and I hold them closer.
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3. |
The Umbilical Mage
03:24
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I grip the Stave tightly against my palm, feeling the naturally hardened grooves and ornate lines that the Braiders weaved into the length of it. Its color is organic, except where the inlayed designs wrap around its length. There, the color seems to shift and pulse and bleed into one another. A prismatic wash of magic, created from my very own lifeblood. The Stave was once part of me, the means by which sustenance was delivered in the womb, now preserved and imbued with the magics of the Visceral Realm. With this catalyst I can touch those forces at the root of creation, grab its disparate elements and rework them into new forms.
With the Stave in my left, the fingers of my right mimic the motions taught to me over decades and the fleshy matter in front of me shifts, following the guidance of each flutter. I can manifest beauty and suffering with each movement, but for now focus on beauty. An organic statue of pink writhes and liquifies, stretching and splintering into limbs that intertwine and form florid patterns. I close my eyes to focus as the pinnacle ends in a sphere that I continue to spin with an outstretched palm, my wrist rotating in circular motions at the joint.
Each particle of this new creation, I can feel. They move individually and are part of the same whole. They are of me, and apart. It is rapture in creation, sublime manifest. I let my hand fall to my side and watch my work come to rest. This moment is my own, something I cannot share, but standing real, nevertheless.
I smile and look to my teacher. She does not meet my joy. Instead she slowly nods, her eyes glancing knowingly at me, before shifting to the statue. I look towards it once more and with hesitation so slight that not even I am aware of it, I bring my right hand up in a violent arc and as if cut by an invisible blade, my creation is severed at the center. I flatten my palm and guide the matter back into its original shape, ready to be made into something anew.
An impermanent beauty. So much easier to suffer.
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4. |
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Millenia have passed and the preparations to ready me for my journey have come to an end. Even the Matriarch is here, looming beside my mentors, a strangled chant in their throats. I make my way along their ranks as if in procession, and they each touch me at the core of my being with magic resonance. At once separate, and as one.
When our farewells are finished, I stand before the Endless Door and their chanting becomes more desperate. It reaches a pitch that even I had not become familiar with and as it continues, I feel a kinetic shift in the air. It seems that the pallid sky even begins to ripple. I focus on the gateway before me, letting the newfound motion of the atmosphere wash over me.
Just when I think their throats cannot bend and rattle any further, they break past a point of dissonance and transform into rapturous harmony. With that, the void at the center of the door splinters into light, shifting, branching, swirling into a prismatic structure that towers above me. When the colors reach the boundaries of the frame, they dissipate and I am met with a seemingly endless field of beacons. Mere pinpoints in the field of darkness.
I rest a hand on my partner at my hip and she hums with an anticipation that matches mine. I look back one last time, and every eye is averted towards the ground. A kindness. They say the only way is forward. Nothing remains here. I turn, and step into the expanse.
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5. |
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I’m awake. I open my eyes to the the darkness of the star field once more. I reach to my side and feel my partner in her sheath and feel relief. It is not until a bracing cold envelops my feet that I jerk into motion and realize that I am no longer staring at the opening of the Endless door, but rather a night vista. I stand as another wave of lapping ocean gathers around my ankles and stare down at pitch black granules between my toes. This is what remains of my predecessor after the inhabitants of this world tore into them and their life blood spread across the oceans. The vibrant shifting tones drifted across the waves until they dried and stained the sands, leaving them obsidian. Dread and horror fill me and I immediately make my way further inland.
When I come upon a copse of woods, I find them warped and drained. Brittle plant life and acidic pools dot the landscape. Sick algae grows upon stone, discolored and stinking. A mere waste left to crumble away. I kneel and place a hand to the ground, feeling for any life that could be salvaged from the poison. It will take days before I can find a suitable place to begin, but when I feel those subtle stirrings within, my growing hopelessness dissipates. I immediately set to work, pulling my partner from her resting place and driving her into the soil. I then draw my Stave and combine my efforts with hers.
It is slow work, but healing often is. I break apart the toxicity where I can, manipulating and incorporating the elements that will foster new growth. Before too long, I see a verdant flush begin to form around my partner, sprouts of life breaking ground and climbing their way up her form. It continues to spread outward until we have enough space to craft shelter. The work becomes easy after that. The nubile life willingly follows my musing, and within moments I have a structure of flowering braided vines. I pull my partner from the ground before she can be completely overtaken and make my way inside. I need to rest and recover. The hardest part is over.
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6. |
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Time passes and I pay it little mind. It means as much to me here as it did back home. I focus on the work and the work is fruitful. New growth sprouts from the old and the color of the landscape slowly shifts. The flora here is vivid, rich, and diverse. Nothing like the Visceral Realm. To think that this is what the inhabitants lost as a result of their hubris and corruption fills me with a unique, pitiful fury.
Surviving wildlife begins to migrate towards the spreading vibrance, bringing with them new sounds and smells. I can only imagine that they appear as husks compared to their ancestors. Hollow and sick. I do what I can for the creatures, but too much tampering will leave them more twisted than they already are. Maybe, in the future, they will return to a former glory. Or a new one.
When I finally encounter a group of humans, they are gathered around a recently purified pool, hunched over, grabbing handfuls of the clear liquid and bringing it to their faces. I observe their excited chatter amongst each other before one of them notices my presence and alerts the others.
They turn towards me, drawing primitive looking weaponry cobbled together from whatever they could salvage. One of them begins to shout unintelligible words toward me, and fearful aggression is clear in his tone. I step closer to them and they move away, the one who is shouting taking a step into the water at his back. I force my contempt for these destructive creatures down, and draw closer. I hold out an open hand of peace, hoping to assuage some of the tension that is clear on their faces. The one with a foot in the water lashes out with his rusted steel, severing multiple fingers from my outstretched hand, a geyser of warm prismatic blood dousing us both. The dam of contempt was undone. I reach for my blade with what is left of my hand and in less than a moment, the man is severed. His top half briefly twisting in the air before splashing into the surface of the pond. He does not realize he has died yet, and begins to scream. The rest of them break and retreated from the scene, leaving what is left of their leader.
Where my partner had split him, I see amongst the spreading red a trail of green forming, vines swirling in the wake. They blossom from within him, transforming what he once was into something new. I watch him slowly drift in circles. Briefly his eyes meet mine, and I turn way. The water is now crimson, another poisoned pool.
I shudder. A sense of prying eyes. I quickly scan my surroundings and focus on a black smudge off in the distant wasteland. It sits motionless, too far for clarity of detail. I feel a queasy familiarity before clamping my eyes shut. The next instant it is no longer there, and the sensation leaves with it.
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7. |
The Wasteland Dance
04:18
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I set about repairing the damage to my hand, reworking elements of life around me into new flesh. I also make adjustments to my physical form in an attempt to better mimic the identity of the humans in the hopes of avoiding future confrontation. The vegetation around me makes a fair substitute for clothing, which I need for no other reason than to more easily blend in.
I make my way to the outskirts of my work and am shocked to discover a small settlement of the humans. Here the peoples are gathered in larger proximity, following established patterns and rituals. They sleep in humble shelters and appear to share the newly foraged fruits of my labor with each other.
I act as an observer, always keeping a distance in effort to not draw their attention. Occasionally a rogue citizen will spot me and I am forced to retreat back into the safety of my environment.
On one night, where the planets orbiting body hung pale in the night sky, the peoples did not retire to their homes as usual. Instead, they gather around a monumental fire filling the cold air with unfamiliar songs. They not only sing notes from their throats but also pound and pluck and blow into crafted objects. This noise is in configurations wholly unknown to me and I draw even closer in an attempt to better understand. I see their silhouettes against the flame. They move in patterns both chaotic and well worn. Leaping, twirling, at times coming together for a period and breaking apart again. Particles of the night that converge into one and quickly individualize, all of it a product of this alien rhythm. I felt myself in this dance, and without thinking made my way even closer. My head is abuzz and it becomes more difficult to differentiate the forms from the night, the flame from the dark.
My eyes latch onto the stars above and I think of home and without conscious effort I begin to sing the song of the Visceral Realm. Filled with rapture and longing I cry out the melodies of my childhood, my own projections intertwined with those around me. Universally close.
I weep before finally ceasing and am met with the silence of the night. Every eye around the enormous flame is turned towards me and on impulse, I draw my blade. Standing before them, I prepare for their violence, but none comes. Instead, they stare. Their faces are not creased with the fear of my previous encounter and in moments, one of their own starts to move, coming to a stop before my outstretched blade tip.
The smallest of them, a mere child. Her face betrays nothing as she raises an open palm. A stoic offering. Understanding, I place my empty hand into hers, and gently squeeze her frail fingers, feeling the steady rhythm of her heart. I feel no trace of cold, bitter, wretched fear.
Only warmth.
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8. |
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I’m awake.
The morning sun shines emerald through the slats of the human shelter I have been calling home. I stand, and open the chest that holds my partner and stave, as well as the pure white garbs that were given to me by the townsfolk. They have presented many gifts. I suppose as means of payment for the bounty I have unwittingly provided, or perhaps as offering. Either way I am appreciative.
I have made this place a sanctuary for them. Life now sprouts where sickness had permeated. Fruits and foliage not seen for millennia now fills their baskets and the change in them has been drastic and almost instantaneous.
I move to the door, preparing to be greeted by the sounds of a bustling dawn, but am instead greeted with a tenuous silence mixed with a bitter stagnation in the air. Standing a distance away, the folk are gathered in tense bundles, their attention focused on a solitary figure that looms over them, motionless. Its garb is dark as pitch, and its head appears to be adorned with a grotesque metallic mask.
I close distance and as details come into focus I see that the mask is covered in dozens of misshapen eyes. The surface of the mask writhes with shifting prismatic color and I freeze, a growing horror gripping me. In an instant the attention of the figure is upon me, the pupils upon the mask all shift as one and I am on my knees, bile and vitriol escaping from deep with myself. The figure begins to emit a sound that cuts to the core of my mind and the townsfolk around me all cry out in a suffering to match my own. My horror grows because this feeling has a sense of the familiar. A sense of the Visceral Realm. Home! Twisted, distorted, bastardized, but home!
I fumble for my stave feeling the familiar grooves in my palm, calling to the element of all things. It is faint but it is there and I hold it tight. I desperately reach out my palm feeling for the center of this abomination and I find it. It is wholly wrong, and more than anything sadness and loss fill my being.
With a powerful effort I wrench and tear at it, and in a fetid burst, the creature separates at the stomach. A shower of viscera raining down upon myself and the surrounding village. A wet stinking downpour.
My recovery is labored but I eventually find my feet, propping myself on my stave. The folk around me are scattered some still hunched over in pain, while others work to helping who they can. My attention is drawn to a small group that gather weeping around a solitary figure and I falter.
The child, on her back, eyes locked on the sky above. I rush to her and place a hand upon her chest, feeling for the warmth, but she lies cold. I sing the guttural songs of displacement, recite the lines of Endless Sorrow, and gently consign her to the embrace of the soil. My contempt returns and shifts. I look towards the putrid remains of the vile thing splayed upon the ground. A new target for my efforts. My meaning will change. My work shall become cold. Suffering will come, and it will come easily.
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Grim Father Beaverton, Oregon
Fantasy Dungeon Synth from the forests of the Pacific North West.
"Like spooky video game music, but weirder."
Instagram:
@grimfathermusic
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very haunting yet very calming. nice music to read and fall asleep to :)
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