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mellifera38 · 6 years

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Mel’s Big Fantasy Place-Name Reference

So I’ve been doing lots of D&D world-building lately and I’ve kind of been putting together lists of words to help inspire new fantasy place names. I figured I’d share. These are helpful for naming towns, regions, landforms, roads, shops, and they’re also probably useful for coming up with surnames. This is LONG. There’s plenty more under the cut including a huge list of “fantasy sounding” word-parts. Enjoy!

Towns & Kingdoms

town, borough, city, hamlet, parish, township, village, villa, domain

kingdom, empire, nation, country, county, city-state, state, province, dominion

Town Name End Words (English flavored)

-ton, -ston, -caster, -dale, -den, -field, -gate, -glen, -ham, -holm, -hurst, -bar, -boro, -by, -cross, -kirk, -meade, -moore, -ville, -wich, -bee, -burg, -cester, -don, -lea, -mer, -rose, -wall, -worth, -berg, -burgh, -chase, -ly, -lin, -mor, -mere, -pool. -port, -stead, -stow, -strath, -side, -way, -berry, -bury, -chester, -haven, -mar, -mont, -ton, -wick, -meet, -heim, -hold, -hall, -point

Buildings & Places

castle, fort, palace, fortress, garrison, lodge, estate, hold, stronghold, tower, watchtower, palace, spire, citadel, bastion, court, manor, house

altar, chapel, abbey, shrine, temple, monastery, cathedral, sanctum, crypt, catacomb, tomb

orchard, arbor, vineyard, farm, farmstead, shire, garden, ranch

plaza, district, quarter, market, courtyard, inn, stables, tavern, blacksmith, forge, mine, mill, quarry, gallows, apothecary, college, bakery, clothier, library, guild house, bath house, pleasure house, brothel, jail, prison, dungeon, cellar, basement, attic, sewer, cistern

lookout, post, tradepost, camp, outpost, hovel, hideaway, lair, nook, watch, roost, respite, retreat, hostel, holdout, redoubt, perch, refuge, haven, alcove, haunt, knell, enclave, station, caravan, exchange, conclave

port, bridge, ferry, harbor, landing, jetty, wharf, berth, footbridge, dam, beacon, lighthouse, marina, dockyard, shipyard

road, street, way, row, lane, trail, corner, crossing, gate, junction, waygate, end, wall, crossroads, barrier, bulwark, blockade, pavilion, avenue, promenade, alley, fork, route

Time & Direction

North, South, East, West, up, down, side, rise, fall, over, under

Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, solstice, equanox, vernal, ever, never

dusk, dawn, dawnrise, morning, night, nightfall, evening, sundown, sunbreak, sunset

lunar, solar, sun, moon, star, eclipse

Geographical Terms

Cave, cavern, cenote, precipice, crevasse, crater, maar, chasm, ravine, trench, rift, pit

Cliff, bluff, crag, scarp, outcrop, stack, tor, falls, run, eyrie, aerie

Hill, mountain, volcano, knoll, hillock, downs, barrow, plateau, mesa, butte, pike, peak, mount, summit, horn, knob, pass, ridge, terrace, gap, point, rise, rim, range, view, vista, canyon, hogback, ledge, stair, descent

Valley, gulch, gully, vale, dale, dell, glen, hollow, grotto, gorge, bottoms, basin, knoll, combe

Meadow, grassland, field, pasture, steppe, veld, sward, lea, mead, fell, moor, moorland, heath, croft, paddock, boondock, prairie, acre, strath, heights, mount, belt

Woodlands, woods, forest, bush, bower, arbor, grove, weald, timberland, thicket, bosk, copse, coppice, underbrush, hinterland, park, jungle, rainforest, wilds, frontier, outskirts

Desert, dunes, playa, arroyo, chaparral, karst, salt flats, salt pan, oasis, spring, seep, tar pit, hot springs, fissure, steam vent, geyser, waste, wasteland, badland, brushland, dustbowl, scrubland

Ocean, sea, lake, pond, spring, tarn, mere, sluice, pool, coast, gulf, bay

Lagoon, cay, key, reef, atoll, shoal, tideland, tide flat, swale, cove, sandspit, strand, beach

Snowdrift, snowbank, permafrost, floe, hoar, rime, tundra, fjord, glacier, iceberg

River, stream, creek, brook, tributary, watersmeet, headwater, ford, levee, delta, estuary, firth, strait, narrows, channel, eddy, inlet, rapids, mouth, falls

Wetland, marsh, bog, fen, moor, bayou, glade, swamp, banks, span, wash, march, shallows, mire, morass, quag, quagmire, everglade, slough, lowland, sump, reach

Island, isle, peninsula, isthmus, bight, headland, promontory, cape, pointe, cape

More under the cut including: Color words, Animal/Monster related words, Rocks/Metals/Gems list, Foliage, People groups/types, Weather/Environment/ Elemental words, Man-made Items, Body Parts, Mechanical sounding words, a huge list of both pleasant and unpleasant Atmospheric Descriptors, and a huge list of Fantasy Word-parts.

Color Descriptions

Warm: red, scarlet, crimson, rusty, cerise, carmine, cinnabar, orange, vermillion, ochre, peach, salmon, saffron, yellow, gold, lemon, amber, pink, magenta, maroon, brown, sepia, burgundy, beige, tan, fuchsia, taupe

Cool: green, beryl, jade, evergreen, chartreuse, olive, viridian, celadon, blue, azure, navy, cerulean, turquoise, teal, cyan, cobalt, periwinkle, beryl, purple, violet, indigo, mauve, plum

Neutral: gray, silver, ashy, charcoal, slate, white, pearly, alabaster, ivory, black, ebony, jet

dark, dusky, pale, bleached, blotchy, bold, dappled, lustrous, faded, drab, milky, mottled, opaque, pastel, stained, subtle, ruddy, waxen, tinted, tinged, painted

Animal / Monster-Related Words

Bear, eagle, wolf, serpent, hawk, horse, goat, sheep, bull, raven, crow, dog, stag, rat, boar, lion, hare, owl, crane, goose, swan, otter, frog, toad, moth, bee, wasp, beetle, spider, slug, snail, leech, dragonfly, fish, trout, salmon, bass, crab, shell, dolphin, whale, eel, cod, haddock

Dragon, goblin, giant, wyvern, ghast, siren, lich, hag, ogre, wyrm, kraken

Talon, scale, tusk, hoof, mane, horn, fur, feather, fang, wing, whisker, bristle, paw, tail, beak, claw, web, quill, paw, maw, pelt, haunch, gill, fin,

Hive, honey, nest, burrow, den, hole, wallow

Rocks / Metals / Minerals

Gold, silver, brass, bronze, copper, platinum, iron, steel, tin, mithril, electrum, adamantite, quicksilver, fool’s gold, titanium

Diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, topaz, opal, pearl, jade, jasper, onyx, citrine, aquamarine, turquoise, lapiz lazuli, amethyst, quartz, crystal, amber, jewel

Granite, shale, marble, limestone, sandstone, slate, diorite, basalt, rhyolite, obsidian, glass

Earth, stone, clay, sand, silt, salt, mote, lode, vein, ore, ingot, coal, boulder, bedrock, crust, rubble, pebble, gravel, cobble, dust, clod, peat, muck mud, slip, loam, dirt, grit, scree, shard, flint, stalactite/mite

Trees / Plants / Flowers

Tree, ash, aspen, pine, birch, alder, willow, dogwood, oak, maple, walnut, chestnut, cedar, mahogany, palm, beech, hickory, hemlock, cottonwood, hawthorn, sycamore, poplar, cypress, mangrove, elm, fir, spruce, yew

Branch, bough, bramble, gnarl, burr, tangle, thistle, briar, thorn, moss, bark, shrub, undergrowth, overgrowth, root, vine, bracken, reed, driftwood, coral, fern, berry, bamboo, nectar, petal, leaf, seed, clover, grass, grain, trunk, twig, canopy, cactus, weed, mushroom, fungus

Apple, olive, apricot, elderberry, coconut, sugar, rice, wheat, cotton, flax, barley, hops, onion, carrot, turnip, cabbage, squash, pumpkin, pepper

Flower, rose, lavender, lilac, jasmine, jonquil, marigold, carnelian, carnation, goldenrod, sage, wisteria, dahlia, nightshade, lily, daisy, daffodil, columbine, amaranth, crocus, buttercup, foxglove, iris, holly, hydrangea, orchid, snowdrop, hyacinth, tulip, yarrow, magnolia, honeysuckle, belladonna, lily pad, magnolia

People

Settler, Pilgrim, Pioneer, Merchant, Prospector, Maker, Surveyor, Mason, Overseer, Apprentice, Widow, Sailor, Miner, Blacksmith, Butcher, Baker, Brewer, Barkeep, Ferryman, Hangman, Gambler, Fisherman, Adventurer, Hero, Seeker, Hiker, Traveler, Crone

Mage, Magician, Summoner, Sorcerer, Wizard, Conjurer, Necromancer,

King, Queen, Lord, Count, Baron, Guard, Soldier, Knight, Vindicator, Merchant, Crusader, Imperator, Syndicate, Vanguard, Champion, Warden, Victor, Legionnaire, Master, Archer, Footman, Gladiator, Barbarian, Captain, Commodore,

Beggar, Hunter, Ranger, Deadman, Smuggler, Robber, Swindler, Rebel, Bootlegger, Outlaw, Pirate, Brigand, Ruffian, Highwayman, Cutpurse, Thief, Assassin

God, Goddess, Exarch, Angel, Devil, Demon, Cultist, Prophet, Hermit, Seer

council, clergy, guild, militia, choir

Climate, Environment, & The Elements

Cold, cool, brisk, frosty, chilly, icy, freezing, frozen, frigid, glacial, bitter, biting, bleak, arctic, polar, boreal, wintry, snowy, snow, blizzarding, blizzard, sleeting, sleet, chill, frost, ice, icebound, ice cap, floe, snowblind, frostbite, coldsnap, avalanche, snowflake

Hot, sunny, humid, sweltering, steaming, boiling, sizzling, blistering, scalding, smoking, caldescent, dry, parched, arid, fallow, thirsty, melting, molten, fiery, blazing, burning, charring, glowing, searing, scorching, blasted, sun, fire, heat, flame, wildfire, bonfire, inferno, coal, ash, cinder, ember, flare, pyre, tinder, kindling, aflame, alight, ablaze, lava, magma, slag,

Wet, damp, dank, soggy, sodden, soaked, drenched, dripping, sopping, briny, murky, rain, storm, hail, drizzle, sprinkle, downpour, deluge, squall, water, cloud, fog, mist, dew, puddle, pool, current, whirlpool, deep, depths, tide, waves, whitewater, waterfall, tidal wave, flow, flood, leak, drain

Wind, breeze, gust, billow, gail, draft, waft, zephyr, still, airy, clear, smokey, tempest, tempestuous, windswept, aerial, lofty, torrid, turbulent, nebulous, tradewind, thunder, lightning, spark, cyclone, tornado, whirlwind, hurricane, typhoon

Man-made Item Words

Furnace, forge, anvil, vault, strap, strip, whetstone, brick, sword, blade, axe, dagger, shield, buckler, morningstar, bow, quiver, arrow, polearm, flail, staff, stave, sheath, hilt, hammer, knife, helm, mantle, banner, pauldron, chainmail, mace, dart, cutlass, canon, needle, cowl, belt, buckle, bandana, goggles, hood, boot, heel, spindle, spool, thread, sweater, skirt, bonnet, apron, leather, hide, plate, tunic, vest, satin, silk, wool, velvet, lace, corset, stocking, binding

Plow, scythe, (wheel) barrow, saddle, harrow, brand, collar, whip, leash, lead, bridle, stirrup, wheel, straw, stall, barn, hay, bale, pitchfork, well, log, saw, lumber, sod, thatch, mortar, brick, cement, concrete, pitch, pillar, window, fountain, door, cage, spoke, pole, table, bench, plank, board

Candle, torch, cradle, broom, lamp, lantern, clock, bell, lock, hook, trunk, looking glass, spyglass, bottle, vase, locket, locker, key, handle, rope, knot, sack, pocket, pouch, manacle, chain, stake, coffin, fan. cauldron, kettle, pot, bowl, pestle, oven, ladle, spoon, font, wand, potion, elixir, draught, portal, book, tome, scroll, word, manuscript, letter, message, grimoire, map, ink, quill, pen, cards, dice

Coin, coronet, crown, circlet, scepter, treasure, riches, scales, pie, tart, loaf, biscuit, custard, caramel, pudding, porridge, stew, bread, tea, gravy, gristle, spice, lute, lyre, harp, drum, rouge, powder, perfume, brush

bilge, stern, pier, sail, anchor, mast, dock, deck, flag, ship, boat, canoe, barge, wagon, sled, carriage, buggy, cart

Wine, brandy, whiskey, ale, moonshine, gin, cider, rum, grog, beer, brew, goblet, flagon, flask, cask, tankard, stein, mug, barrel, stock, wort, malt

Body Parts

Head, throat, finger, foot, hand, neck, shoulder, rib, jaw, eye, lips, bosom

Skull, spine, bone, tooth, heart, blood, tears, gut, beard

Mechanical-Sounding Words

cog, fuse, sprocket, wrench, screw, nail, bolt, lever, pulley, spanner, gear, spring, shaft, switch, button, cast, pipe, plug, dial, meter, nozzle, cord, brake, gauge, coil, oil, signal, wire, fluke, staple, clamp, bolt, nut, bulb, patch, pump, cable, socket

torque, force, sonic, spark, fizzle, thermal, beam, laser, steam, buzz, mega, mecha, electro, telsa, power, flicker, charge, current, flow, tinker

Atmospheric Words

Unpleasant, Dangerous, Threatening

(nouns) death, fury, battle, scar, shadow, razor, nightmare, wrath, bone, splinter, peril, war, riptide, strife, reckoning, sorrow, terror, deadwood, nether, venom, grime, rage, void, conquest, pain, folly, revenge, horrid, mirk, shear, fathom, frenzy, corpselight/marshlight, reaper, gloom, doom, torment, torture, spite, grizzled, sludge, refuse, spore, carrion, fear, pyre, funeral, shade, beast, witch, grip, legion, downfall, ruin, plague, woe, bane, horde, acid, fell, grief, corpse, mildew, mold, miter, dirge

(adjectives) dead, jagged, decrepit, fallen, darkened, blackened, dire, grim, feral, wild, broken, desolate, mad, lost, under, stagnant, blistered, derelict, forlorn, unbound, sunken, fallow, shriveled, wayward, bleak, low, weathered, fungal, last, brittle, sleepy, -strewn, dusky, deserted, empty, barren, vacant, forsaken, bare, bereft, stranded, solitary, abandoned, discarded, forgotten, deep, abysmal, bottomless, buried, fathomless,unfathomable, diseased, plagued, virulent, noxious, venomous, toxic, fetid, revolting, putrid, rancid, foul, squalid, sullied, vile, blighted, vicious, ferocious, dangerous, savage, cavernous, vast, yawning, chasmal, echoing, dim, dingy, gloomy, inky, lurid, shaded, shadowy, somber, sunless, tenebrous, unlit, veiled, hellish, accursed, sulfurous, damned, infernal, condemned, doomed, wicked, sinister, dread, unending, spectral, ghostly, haunted, eldritch, unknown, weary, silent, hungry, cloven, acidic

(verb/adverbs): wither (withering / withered), skulk (skulking), whisper, skitter, chitter, sting, slither, writhe, gape, screech, scream, howl, lurk, roil, twist, shift, swarm, spawn, fester, bleed, howl, shudder, shrivel, devour, swirl, maul, trip, smother, weep, shatter, ruin, curse, ravage, hush, rot, drown, sunder, blister, warp, fracture, die, shroud, fall, surge, shiver, roar, thunder, smolder, break, silt, slide, lash, mourn, crush, wail, decay, crumble, erode, decline, reek, lament, taint, corrupt, defile, poison, infect, shun, sigh, sever, crawl, starve, grind, cut, wound, bruise, maim, stab, bludgeon, rust, mutilate, tremble, stumble, fumble, clank, clang

Pleasant, Safe, Neutral

(nouns) spirit, luck, soul, oracle, song, sky, smile, rune, obelisk, cloud, timber, valor, triumph, rest, dream, thrall, might, valiance, glory, mirror, life, hope, oath, serenity, sojourn, god, hearth, crown, throne, crest, guard, rise, ascent, circle, ring, twin, vigil, breath, new, whistle, grasp, snap, fringe, threshold, arch, cleft, bend, home, fruit, wilds, echo, moonlight, sunlight, starlight, splendor, vigilance, honor, memory, fortune, aurora, paradise, caress

(adjectives) gentle, pleasant, prosperous, peaceful, sweet, good, great, mild, grand, topic, lush, wild, abundant, verdant, sylvan, vital, florid, bosky, callow, verdurous, lucious, fertile, spellbound, captivating, mystical, hidden, arcane, clandestine, esoteric, covert, cryptic, runic, otherworldly, touched, still, fair, deep, quiet, bright, sheer, tranquil, ancient, light, far, -wrought, tidal, royal, shaded, swift, true, free, high, vibrant, pure, argent, hibernal, ascendant, halcyon, silken, bountiful, gilded, colossal, massive, stout, elder, -bourne, furrowed, happy, merry, -bound, loud, lit, silk, quiet, bright, luminous, shining, burnished, glossy, brilliant, lambent, lucent, lustrous, radiant, resplendent, vivid, vibrant, illuminated, silvery, limpid, sunlit, divine, sacred, holy, eternal, celestial, spiritual, almighty, anointed, consecrated, exalted, hallowed, sanctified, ambrosial, beatific, blissful, demure, naked, bare, ample, coy, deific, godly, omnipotent, omnipresent, rapturous, sacramental, sacrosanct, blessed, majestic, iridescent, glowing, overgrown, dense, hard, timeless, sly, scatter, everlasting, full, half, first, last

(verb/adverbs) arch (arching / arched), wink (winking), sing, nestle, graze, stroll, roll, flourish, bloom, bud, burgeon, live, dawn, hide, dawn, run, pray, wake, laugh, wake, glimmer, glitter, drift, sleep, tumble, bind, arch, blush, grin, glister, beam, meander, wind, widen, charm, bewitch, enthrall, entrance, enchant, allure, beguile, glitter, shimmer, sparkle twinkle, crest, quiver, slumber, herald, shelter, leap, click, climb, scuttle, dig, barter, chant, hum, chime, kiss, flirt, tempt, tease, play, seduce

Generic “Fantasy-Sounding” Word Parts

A - D

aaz, ada, adaer, adal, adar, adbar, adir, ae, ael, aer, aern, aeron, aeryeon, agar, agis, aglar, agron, ahar, akan, akyl, al, alam, alan, alaor, ald, alea, ali, alir, allyn, alm, alon, alor, altar, altum, aluar, alys, amar, amaz, ame, ammen, amir, amol, amn, amus, anar, andor, ang, ankh, ar, ara, aram, arc, arg, arian, arkh, arla, arlith, arn, arond, arthus, arum, arvien, ary, asha, ashyr, ask, assur, aster, astra, ath, athor, athra, athryn, atol, au, auga, aum, auroch, aven, az, azar, baal, bae, bael, bak, bal, balor, ban, bar, bara, barr, batol, batar, basir, basha, batyr, bel, belph, belu, ben, beo, bere, berren, berun, besil, bezan, bhaer, bhal, blask, blis, blod, bor, boraz, bos, bran, brath, braun, breon, bri, bry, bul, bur, byl, caer, cal, calan, cara, cassa, cath, cela, cen, cenar, cerul, chalar, cham, chion, cimar, clo, coram, corel, corman, crim, crom, daar, dach, dae, dago, dagol, dahar, dala, dalar, dalin, dam, danas, daneth, dannar, dar, darian, darath, darm, darma, darro, das, dasa, dasha, dath, del, delia, delimm, dellyn, delmar, delo, den, dess, dever, dhaer, dhas, dhaz, dhed, dhin, din, dine, diar, dien, div, djer, dlyn, dol, dolan, doon, dora, doril, doun, dral, dranor, drasil, dren, drian, drien, drin, drov, druar, drud, duald, duatha, duir, dul, dulth, dun, durth, dyra, dyver,

E - H

ea, eber, eden, edluk, egan, eiel, eilean, ejen, elath, eld, eldor, eldra, elith emar, ellesar, eltar, eltaran, elth, eltur, elyth, emen, empra, emril, emvor, ena, endra, enthor, erad, erai, ere, eriel, erith, erl, eron, erre, eryn, esk, esmel, espar, estria, eta, ethel, eval, ezro, ezan, ezune, ezil, fael, faelar, faern, falk, falak, farak, faril, farla, fel, fen, fenris, fer, fet, fin, finar, forel, folgun, ful, fulk, fur, fyra, fallon, gael, gach, gabir, gadath, gal, galar, gana, gar, garth, garon, garok, garne, gath, geir, gelden, geren, geron, ghal, ghallar, ghast, ghel, ghom, ghon, gith, glae, glander, glar, glym, gol, goll, gollo, goloth, gorot, gost, goth, graeve, gran, grimm, grist, grom, grosh, grun, grym, gual, guil, guir, gulth, gulur, gur, gurnth, gwaer, haa, hael, haer, hadar, hadel, hakla, hala, hald, halana, halid, hallar, halon, halrua, halus, halvan, hamar, hanar, hanyl, haor, hara, haren, haresk, harmun, harrokh, harrow, haspur, haza, hazuth, heber, hela, helve, hem, hen, herath, hesper, heth, hethar, hind, hisari, hjaa, hlath, hlond, hluth, hoarth, holtar, horo, hotun, hrag, hrakh, hroth, hull, hyak, hyrza

I - M

iibra, ilth, ilus, ilira, iman, imar, imas, imb, imir, immer, immil, imne, impil, ingdal, innar, ir, iriae, iril, irith, irk, irul, isha, istis, isil, itala, ith, ithal, itka, jada, jae, jaeda, jahaka, jala, jarra, jaro, jath, jenda, jhaamm, jhothm, jinn, jinth, jyn, kado, kah, kal, kalif, kam, kana, kara, karg, kars, karth, kasp, katla, kaul, kazar, kazr, kela, kelem, kerym, keth, keva, kez, kezan, khaer, khal, khama, khaz, khara, khed, khel, khol, khur, kil, kor, korvan, koll, kos, kir, kra, kul, kulda, kund, kyne, lae, laen, lag, lan, lann, lanar, lantar, lapal, lar, laran, lareth, lark, lath, lauth, lav, lavur, lazar, leih, leshyr, leth, lhaza, lhuven, liad, liam, liard, lim, lin, lirn, lisk, listra, lith, liya, llair, llor, lok, lolth, loran, lorkh, lorn, loth, lothen, luen, luir, luk, lund, lur, luth, lyndus, lyra, lyth, maal, madrasm maera, maer, maerim, maes, mag, magra, mahand, mal, malar, mald, maldo, mar, mara, mark, marl, maru, maruk, meir, melish, memnon, mer, metar, methi, mhil, mina, mir, miram, mirk, mista, mith, moander, mok, modir, modan, mon, monn, mor, more, morel, moril, morn, moro, morrow, morth, mort, morum, morven, muar, mul, mydra, myr, myra, myst

N - S

naar, nadyra, naedyr, naga, najar, nal, naal, nalir, nar, naruk, narbond, narlith, narzul, nasaq, nashkel, natar, nath, natha, neir, neth, nether, nhall, nikh, nil, nilith, noan, nolvurm nonthal, norda, noro, novul, nul, nur, nus, nyan, nyth, ober, odra, oghr, okoth, olleth, olodel, omgar, ondath, onthril, ordul, orish, oroch, orgra, orlim, ormath, ornar, orntath, oroch, orth, orva, oryn, orzo, ostel, ostor, ostrav, othea, ovar, ozod, ozul, palan, palad, pae, peldan, pern, perris, perim, pele, pen, phail, phanda, phara, phen, phendra, pila, pinn, pora, puril, pur, pyra, qadim, quar, quel, ques, quil, raah, rael, ran, ranna, rassil, rak, rald, rassa, reddan, reith, relur, ren, rendril, resil, reska, reth, reven, revar, rhy, rhynn, ria, rian, rin, ris, rissian, rona, roch, rorn, rora, rotha, rual, ruar, ruhal, ruil, ruk, runn, rusk, ryn, saa, saar, saal, sabal, samar, samrin, sankh, sar, sarg, sarguth, sarin, sarlan, sel, seld, sember, semkh, sen, sendrin, septa, senta, seros, shaar, shad, shadra, shae, shaen, shaera, shak, shalan, sham, shamath, shan, shana, sharan, shayl, shemar, shere, shor, shul, shyll, shyr, sidur, sil, silvan, sim, sintar, sirem, skar, skell, skur, skyr, sokol, solan, sola, somra, sor, ssin, stel, strill, suldan, sulk, sunda, sur, surkh, suth, syl, sylph, sylune, syndra, syth

T - Z

taak, taar, taer, tah, tak, tala, talag, talar, talas, talath, tammar, tanar, tanil, tar, tara, taran, tarl, tarn, tasha, tath, tavil, telar, teld, telf, telos, tempe, tethy, tezir, thaar, thaer, thal, thalag, thalas, thalan, thalar, thamor, thander, thangol, thar, thay, thazal, theer, theim, thelon, thera, thendi, theril, thiir, thil, thild, thimir, thommar, thon, thoon, thor, thran, thrann, threl, thril, thrul, thryn, thuk, thultan, thume, thun, thy, thyn, thyr, tir, tiras, tirum, tohre, tol, tolar, tolir, tolzrin, tor, tormel, tormir, traal, triel, trith, tsath, tsur, tul, tur, turiver, turth, tymor, tyr, uder, udar, ugoth, uhr, ukh, ukir, uker, usten, ulgarth, ulgoth, ultir, ulur, umar, umath, umber, unara, undro, undu, untha, upir, ur, ursa, ursol, uron, uth, uthen, uz, van, vaar, vaelan, vaer, vaern, val valan, valash, vali, valt, vandan, vanede, vanrak, var, varyth, vassa, vastar, vaunt, vay, vel, velar, velen, velius, vell, velta, ven, veren, vern, vesper, vilar, vilhon, vintor, vir, vira, virdin, volo, volun, von, voon, vor, voro, vos, vosir, vosal, vund, war, wara, whel, wol, wynn, wyr, wyrm, xer, xul, xen, xian, yad, yag, yal, yar, yath, yeon, yhal, yir, yirar, yuir, yul, yur, zail, zala, zalhar, zan, zanda, zar, zalar, zarach, zaru, zash, zashu, zemur, zhent, zim, ziram, zindala, zindar, zoun, zul, zurr, zuth, zuu, zym

A lot of places are named after historical events, battles, and people, so keep that in mind. God/Goddess names tied to your world also work well. Places are also often named after things that the area is known for, like Georgia being known for its peaches.

My brain was fried by the end of this so feel free to add more!

I hope you find this reference helpful and good luck world-building!

-Mel

#worldbuilding #d&d #dnd #writing resources #fantasy #word list #dungeons and dragons

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bladekindeyewear · 5 years

Text

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 12 - Candy Page 18

==>

Time to see what all the fuss was about Page 18. We’re with Jane... that might not be good. Especially given Lollipop proximity.

Jane scoffing at troll genocide again. :(

Gamzee seems more woke than Jane here.

GAMZEE: sO yOu SaYiN yOu NeEd DiFfErEnT sHoEs FoR yOuR hUmAn DiCkS aNd WhAt NoT?

Pfffff

Jane narrows her eyes at the disingenuous buffoon.

I dunno, he sounds like he’s being pretty goddamn ingenuous right now.

It’s not the first time they’ve had this conversation? Are they black with each other or something??

What’s more likely is he’s attempting to get a rise from her. To get her a little hotter under the collar. To put her in a certain mood.

Oh my gosh she’s genuinely black for him, hahahahah

GAMZEE: AnD AlL I EvEr bEeN TrYiN To dO Is gEt yOu rIgHt tOo, WiTh mOrAlS AnD GoOdNeSs, AlL fIlLeD uP iNsIdE yOu As TiGhT aS yOuR tAsTy HoE bAlLoOnS aRe WiTh HuMaN mOo JuIcE.

Jesus christ that’s not the kind of metaphor i want to be hearing from canon

or anyone for that matter

JANE: No! I’d rather die than touch your disgusting clown baton ever again.

....yyyeah, context is showing she’s PROBABLY super Black into this. Still, pretty jarring to see a clear consensual “NO” right in the middle of things.

Quit calling her a dairy queen!!! D: D: D:

Oh god they named the baby Tavros.

Alright, there’s some grade A discomfort in this scene, which I’m enjoying, really. I can see why they singled out page 18. I could traumatize some people with some of these paragraphs out of context.

HOO HOO HOO, THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO THE DARK CARNIVAL!!!

Eeeeuugh

JAKE: Anyway whats up with you? Hows life with davekat going? JADE: oh its great! im really glad i just went for it JADE: all of us together... it really is the best of every world

God damnit Jade why are you obliviously torturing them????????

You could’ve been REALLY GOOD for them both if you just FUCKING LISTENED TO THEM AND RESPECTED THEM INSTEAD OF SITTING ON THEM.

JADE: theres no way me and dave could have a regular baby together because im... JAKE: Whats wrong? JADE: well lets just say that after all the sburb stuff its done some things to my body JADE: like merging with bec mostly

Oh my FUCKING GOD please don’t canonize this. This didn’t need to be spelled out so-- D:

jesus

D: D: D:

This... is actually making my stomach roil again????

not because id object to-- i mean, it’s one thing to deal with

FAN SCENARIOS

ISOLATED divergences from canon where she has to deal with that and its kind of hilarious, but can be safely ignored when it comes to her character arc as a whole

but once its CANON???????? D: D: D:

suddenly you can’t IGNORE the full import when you’re done with, like, an RP or something, of the psychological struggle she would be forced to deal with given an abnormal biological situation. Instead of thinking “Oh, that could be pretty painful to deal with! Let’s explore it temporarily for fun” it becomes “Oh, that would be painful to deal with and you have to think about her having to deal with all the complications of that whenever you hear about her LITERALLY FOREVER.” D:

andrew i know you couldnt resist because of how funny and practically-xenoprogressive it was but whyyyyyyyyy did you have to canonize that WHYYYY

Now instead of a fun joke thought it also has to be SAD FOREVER

AAAAAAAA D’:

i dont know why this would be the line thats crossed to upset me

Rose surrogate?

JADE: no jake, dave wouldnt be the father in this scenario!

Pffffff. Andrew’s just diving RIGHT into the, er, doggy fanfics here. I should... TRY to lighten up about this. Try. D:

(...wait, shit. Knowing my friend, THIS whole bit is why they alluded to this page. God damnit.)

[[ EDIT: askshenhibiki said:

Now that you read Candy 18, flash back to Meat when Roxy is talking about gender... and look at Jade's reaction looking at "where her hands rest on her lap". Yes, Meat hinted at that "mix" too.

Ah, let’s see...

ROXY: and so i got to thinking ROXY: what even is gender ROXY: amirite lol? JADE: oh yeah JADE: that makes sense i guess........

Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say. But I’ll refrain from any further comment. I’m staying away from this subject, from now on.

...yeah, guess Dirk at least had the decency not to spring all that on us before Jade got the opportunity to do it honestly. ]]

Guh, back to Jake suffering in his sad, trapped scenario. I hope THAT gets at least resolved by the end of this. Someone save Jake from this, because it looks like he’s not really that capable of saving himself?

==>

Dammit, Jade, I’m cringing at these descriptions of your intrusion.

Oh wow, John went for the mustache. Guess we knew that from, like, his stuffed statue oldself?

Jade doesn’t pick up on the obvious subtext in the conversation, however, because she’s been willfully undermining the subtext in her own personal life for nearly a year now.

D: D: D:

Seriously, Jade, how is what YOU’RE doing any better than what you were frustrated at seeing THEM doing, avoiding the real feelings and truth of anything even if it was conspicuously on body-language display?

KARKAT: THE NEW ADMINISTRATION IS CRACKING DOWN ON CERTAIN KINDS OF INTERSPECIES ADOPTION LAWS.

It’s like Andrew wants us deprived of even a happy imagined future for Earth C on top of everything else!!! What the hell! >:(

Is this about politics? Is Andrew just venting his anger that the Orange Guy is going to get away with ruining everything forever?? Because as understandable as that is, he could at least give us some imaginary happyfutures to look forward to.

Reading on... Hm, yet another intentionally-misused fridging reference.

KARKAT: HIS RELATIONSHIP IS A FLAMING WRECK OF AN INTERSTELLAR WARSHIP HURTLING TOWARDS THE PLANET AT TERMINAL VELOCITY WITH THE ENTIRE CREW BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERED UPON REENTRY, SHOVED STRAIGHT DOWN THE CHAGRIN TUNNEL AND THEN IMMEDIATELY SHAT OUT THE OTHER SIDE, THUS FLOODING THE ENTIRE FUCKING NEIGHBORHOOD WHEN IT CLOGS UP THE LOAD GAPER.

Yep, that triangle’s fucked. Wonder if the conversation’s going to transition to the CURRENT triangle’s problems...

...yeah, John using the R word there isn’t far from the fucking truth from the looks of things.

JADE: maybe that would work for a few days, but one thing i learned from dating around a lot in my youth is that no ones going to leave a bad relationship until its THEIR idea to leave

She takes in a shaky breath and shuts her eyes. Her hair spills around her face when she leans forward to put her chin on her knees. Dave and Karkat exchange a look that is equal parts confused, miserable, and desperate.

Oh SHIT. Is JADE going to be the one to finally vocalize about the problems here???

Something else comes hurtling out of the hole in the sky, too fast for Jade to catch. It hits the ground with a clap of green lightning. The collision sends a geyser of dirt, rock, and vapor into the air. Dave flash-steps to shield Karkat. Jade doesn’t move, taking the brunt of the explosion face on, using her abilities to warp the energy around her so that she’s a mote at the center of the storm. When the dust clears, she’s the first to jump in the crater, trailing smoke behind her.

There’s a body at the center of it. The torso is bloody, tangled, and curled into a fetal position. Its shoes are missing, but otherwise the outfit is quite familiar to her: it’s a dead ringer for her old Witch of Space uniform. Jade touches the body with the toe of her shoe, and then gasps when it rolls over to reveal its face.

JADE: its... JADE: ME???

Okay what the FUCK. It sounds like there’s going to be some context for that postscript after all. Something to bridge the gap between when that 16-yo Jade falls into the singularity and when Aradia goes off with her through a wormhole

I’m going to guess up front that this happens BEFORE the postscript... this younger version of Jade fell into the black hole and came out in THIS alternate timeline, possibly rather changed by the experience. But then again, the way the sky opened up... actually, couldn’t that be just a “natural” manifestation of the black hole abilities encouraged by Calliope or done by the singularity alone, followed by later in the Postscript this Jade actually getting control of it??

And... reading on, from the sound of it, her eyes aren’t black yet, either. Sounds like that’s to come, before the postscript. Question being, is it alt!Callie black eyes, or some black-hole-powers visual manifestation? Wait, never mind, I misread; this teenage Jade-corpse has NOT opened their eyes yet, so they couldn’t possibly tell, and the stuff about them “shaking” was about the adult Jade standing over her. Never mind. Let’s see which timeframe this Jade came from.

Also STOP TRAUMATIZING ADULT JADE ON SCREEN ITS NOT OKAY IM SICK OF IT ANDREW

==>

Page 20...

Stop letting babby not!Vriska bully babby not!Tavros.

Hm... same stupid tooth poison? No, Jade didn’t get hit with a tooth... so it’s more getting hit with shards of spacetime and spiraling down a black hole. Also whatever alt!Callie did to just barely keep her alive.

Hm, so the Heart stuff falls apart if you’re too separated from the mass-whole at Light’s center? That’s certainly a hypothesis at least.

ROXY: sounds like its time for another funeral lmao

ROXY WAKE THE FUCK UP AND STOP BEING A VAGUELY ROXY-LOOKING LMAO-ZOMBIE. WHERE THE FUCK DID REAL ROXY GO.

And where the fuck is Calliope anyway, she’s just being left in the dust and nobody’s even talked to her from the looks of it.

Hm, cut apart by political differences, this group...?

ROXY: woah ok karkat i get ur all fired up about politics and stuff but lay off gamz ok

ROXY WHO REPLACED YOUR FUCKING BRAIN WITH A BLOCK OF CHEESE

ROXY YOU’RE MY FAVORITE CHARACTER PLEASE GIVE US AN EXPLANATION FOR WHY YOU’RE ACTING NOTHING LIKE THE COOL SMART PERSON WE READ ABOUT.

JADE: dave what the FUCK did you say to him downstairs?

Oh my god you asshole don’t blame DAVE for this >:(

ROXY: this time next week well corpse party like its the end of the world!

I don’t want to think this has anything to do with Aradia, but we DID see her in that postscript bit... And, I mean, what the hell could she even do?? It’s not like this Roxy is just Aradia in really convincing cosplay or something.

==>

She leads John and Jake into the building and down the center of the nave, humming happily to herself the entire time. An equally effusive Calliope trails behind her, carrying a bouquet of purple flowers.

Well there’s Callie. What is WITH these hypnotized motherfuckers. I need a revelation on these shenanigans STAT.

What is with people being bathed in light here?

each time we witness death, we fall in love in with the important people in oUr lives all over again.

Calliope is gazing at Roxy with glassy eyes. She sniffs as she plucks the last petal from her rose. A breeze washes through the cathedral from the crack in the door at the end of the room, brushing the petal off-course and causing it to get stuck in Roxy’s over-sprayed hair. Calliope reaches out with a visibly shaking hand to remove the plant offal, but she does not draw back. Instead, she lets her hand graze down the side of Roxy’s face and cup her cheek. Roxy puts her own hand over Callie’s and holds it.

Uhhh.... huh.

So.

If Roxy was just lying to herself, then............ WHY??????

John tilts his head and squints at the image in front of him. Hmm.

Is John realizing he’s in some sort of fanfic drawn by another character, hence all the people in serene lightbeams at tender but unjustified moments?

Everyone whips their heads around to see, of all people, Aradia hovering in the foyer

Pff

(...I hope Aradia didn’t come here, like, from the postscript. Where the “action” she talked about might have just been this corpse party. Because that would be pretty fucking lame.)

KARKAT: MAYBE FUCKING NEPETA IS ABOUT TO POUNCE FROM BEHIND THAT GROTESQUE STATUE OF THE HUMAN SUFFERER T-POSING OVER THERE.

Pfffffffffff

The description of Human Jesus we all had in our hearts, but were too afraid to voice.

Alright, now we see the body we took our eyes off of. Is it going to get back up, or did it escape earlier?

since nobody was willing to dislodge the huge, otherworldly shard from her chest

My damn god, people.

...alright finally, everyone’s talking.

JANE: Agreed. I’ve always felt that Kanaya has done an exemplary job of providing a model for compassionate, empathetic behavior, which others of her kind would do well to follow.

JANE STOP BEING A XENOPHOBIC BASTARD

CALLIOPE: please. roxy gathered yoU all here for a reason. CALLIOPE: at least listen Until the end. CALLIOPE: after that yoU can argUe all you want.

...Huh. Huuuuhh. What the fuck is all this for. Are you saying ROXY caused this? Or...?

Okay I like this reinforcement she’s making in her speech about how different changes can influence how all of this unfolds, gives me hope that maybe these two cliffhangers aren’t all we’re going to be left with and we’ll be able to at least think of an IMPLIED future different from them if we wanted to like we thought about the seemingly-infinite-possibility original ending of Homestuck that I’d rather have been stuck with than this oh god breathe boots

okay there’s the labor going into good distraction

alright corpse get back up

JADE: i am not jade.

Right, so like the black eyes in the postscript suggested this is more just a... vessel for alt!Calliope now? To give HER a future beyond the one she sacrificed for that black hole business? And between alt!Callie’s became-the-black-hole nature and Jade’s Spacey Green Sun connection that’s been singularified, she has access to cool Black Hole powers? And is gonna do cool shit with them in implied future adventures we won’t see while Aradia gleefully watches the carnage? Huh.

The congregation watches her go, but no one moves to help her, or even looks in her direction. In her wake, she leaves a primal, echoing wail.

Oh my god why wouldn’t they have just a brief discussion or something IT’S NOT THAT BAD D:

JADE: and while i cannot say the same thing for the rest of you, JADE: i, at least, am exactly where i am meant to be.

Well fuck. So she just disconfirmed this timeline as... something. Relevant, possible, I dunno.

JADE: and i have entered this body to protect your world.

Okay that’s good. So thanks to alt!Calliope these side timelines where things unfolded differently MAY be preserved. Pretty fitting given alt!Callie’s origins.

.......unless there’s some other stupid interspecies civil war threat that she’s going to be fighting too, here, when the political situation falls apart. Dammit.

==>

Terezi talk Terezi talk

-- JOHN EGBERT sent TEREZI PYROPE the photo “ghostrain.jpg” --

TEREZI: WH4T TH3 4CTU4L FUCK JOHN: it started a few days ago. the sky above the capital of the troll kingdom just cracked open and ghosts began raining down everywhere.

Oh my GOD. So alt!Callie kind of “saved” all the doomed ghosts that got swallowed up in the black hole by redirecting them all to THIS UNIVERSE and timeline???????

That’s pretty interesting! Heck my stomach’s even calming down!

they can’t even be judges! TEREZI: G4SP

Yeah that’s pretty terrible!

...yep, the resistance WOULD put him in charge. I had a feeling it may have ended up in that direction in Candy since it wasn’t in Meat.

--oh FUCK YOU Jade for splitting up what he had with Karkat before they could sort it out!!! You did the OPPOSITE OF HELP and neither of them are going to end up happy thanks to you! D:<

PFFF wow, John’s so concerned about babby not!Tavros’s living situation that he’s considering legit kidnapping. That means things must be pretty fucking bad.

--okay Calliope’s still out and about with Roxy instead of being cooped up in her room like in the other timeline, that’s good.

Pff, trying to redeem Ghost Eridan in front of Ghost Feferi. Yep, that’s Gamzee.

GAMZEE: fIrSt, A LiTtLe RiGhTeOuS sPlAsH oF tHe NaNnA nEcTaR tO cLeAnSe ThAt DaNkNeSs FrOm YoUr SoUlS...

Gamzee takes out a baby bottle and flicks it, covering them both with little drops of milk, as clergy does with holy water. He then takes a swig from the bottle himself before returning it to his codpiece.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

I don’t want to believe that what’s in that bottle is what he’s making it sound like it is, but OF COURSE it is. Why would it be anything else. I bet there’s not even any Lifey hypnosis going on, it’s just the literal stuff.

The crowd falls silent as they raise their heads to watch a drone ship pass by overhead.

Jegus fuck stop going whole hog condesce janey

ROXY: lmao you worry too much ROXY: janeys got her head on straight shell show you yet

ROXY. WHERE DID YOUR BRAIN GO. I MISS IT. YOUR BRAIN WAS THE BEST FUCKING PART OF YOU.

Touching photo.

Alright lemme post split. I haven’t gotten as far as the last post plowed through since I’ve been typing so much... ah well.

#Homestuck #Homestuck Epilogue #Upd8 #Homestuck Liveblog #bladekindeyewear #BlastYoBoots

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vaultsofthefirstage · 6 years

Text

Deep Abyss’s Scream (Black Jade Direlance *****)

She had never once lived a happy life. She had never enjoyed her life. She had never been one to wish for more either. Until her ship went down and she heard the voice of the Silver Prince in her ear. When The Maiden of Deep Shadows opened her eyes, she was still underwater, standing on a deposit of Black Jade that she hauled to the surface with her before she arrived on an island filled with shadowlands through which she entered the Underworld to begin her work.

With her Deathlord’s guidance, she drew out the power of the Jade - the fury of the ocean, of the sea, of the Elemental Pole of Water. It was his words that gave shape to the weapon's might, that the newly reborn Abyssal forged a wonder as his hands guided her own. Her first time facing a Dragonblooded, an ironic fight as the Child of Daana'd brought her own mastery of the element to bear. But as she overcame her foe, the realization of her weapon’s destructive power struck a chord of fear inside her. As the waters of the sea turned red, The Maiden of Deep Shadows sailed away from Skullstone, looking for an escape from her existence.

Forged in the Underworld, the massive Jade spear is adorned with skull motifs inlaid with Soulsteel up and down the length, while its bladed edge is a sinister looking barb that would pierce through armor as easily as flesh. Across the weapon are 3 sockets for hearthstones. When submerged, water roils around the spear's tip, as if trying to escape the pain while inevitably drawn to it.

Attunement: 5m Type: Heavy (+1 ACC, +14 DMG, +0 DEF, OVW 5) Tags: Lethal, Melee, Piercing, Reaching, Two-Handed Hearthstone slots: 3 Era: Time of Tumult

Evocations of Deep Abyss's Scream When attuning to Deep Abyss's Scream, the Exalt awakens Abyss Geyser at no cost. An Exalt resonant with Deep Abyss's Scream who pays an additional 3 motes when attuning to Deep Abyss's Scream unleashes the full devastating might of the spear, gaining an additional initiative on any Withering damage roll that includes at least one 10 and applies double 10s to Decisive damage rolls.

Abyss Geyser

4m; Mins: Essence 1

Type: Simple

Keywords: Decisive-Only, Dissonant

Duration: Instant

Prerequisite: None

With her spear tip to the ground, the echoing scream brings forth the water deep below the surface. Geysers burst from the ground, tearing it apart in a bursting stream that rushes toward her opponent. She makes an attack out to Medium Range, which if it hits and deals at least one level of damage, knocks her opponent prone. If the weapon holds at least one water-aspected hearthstone, this water remains as large puddles across the area for the remainder of the scene.

Special Activation Rules: This evocation only functions on the ground floor of a building or the ground itself. Theoretically, there must be water below the ground and areas experiencing extreme droughts prevent the use of this evocation. While on the deck of a ship, she may choose to cause the geyser to explode from below, but this likely spells disaster without other charms.

Dissonant: Wielders dissonant with Jade may only send the geyser out to Short range.

Flood Gates Breach

Cost: 4m, 2i; Mins: Essence 2

Type: Simple

Keywords: Decisive-Only

Duration: Instant

Prerequisite: Abyss Geyser

Water swirls at her feet, gathering behind the Exalt like a wave. In a moment, it rushes forward, carrying her on the water with her spear intent to kill. The Exalt dashes forward a single rangeband, gliding across water and ignoring difficult terrain, before making a decisive attack. The wave strikes a moment after her blow, knocking her opponent back one rangeband unless they succeed on a (Strength+Athletics) roll with a difficulty equal to the successes on the decisive damage roll. She may perform this, even if she has already taken her movement action for the round.

Special Activation Rules: This evocation requires at least some body of water nearby, including the remains of the prerequisite if socketed with a water-aspect hearthstone. It can only be used once per opponent per scene, but it can be reset for a specific opponent by crashing them.

Ocean Burial

Cost: 6m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 2

Type: Supplemental

Keywords: Decisive-Only, Resonant

Duration: Instant

Prerequisite: Abyss Geyser

The Exalt leaps into the air, and water follows behind her, before crashing down with the might of Deep Abyss’s Scream, like an ocean falling from the sky. The Exalt may leap forward a single rangeband, before slamming down into the ground with destructive force followed by a deluge of water. After he decisive damage roll, the wielder of the Direlance can reroll (Essence) failed dice on her damage roll. Against a prone opponent, her damage roll benefits from double 10s.

Resonant: The attack and damage roll benefit from double 9s against a prone opponent instead.

Mountain Felling Corrosion

Cost: 1m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 2

Type: Supplemental

Keywords: Stackable, Withering-Only, Dissonant

Duration: One Scene

Prerequisite: Flood Gates Breach, Ocean Burial

Like a mountain wears down as the sea crashes into it, each strike wears down her opponent’s defenses. This evocation supplements a withering attack, ignoring a single point of soak. Each time the Exalt uses this evocation in a scene, he increases how much soak is ignored. Each activation after the first in the same scene ignores the Willpower cost. Any time she resets to base initiative, the amount of soak ignored resets to lower of (Essence or current stacks of this evocation).

Dissonant: This evocation can only be stacked up to (Essence+1) times in a scene.

Well of Black Depths

Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 3

Type: Simple

Keywords: Perilous, Dissonant

Duration: One Scene

Prerequisite: Mountain Felling Corrosion

With a wave of her direlance, seas churn, plants wither, rivers flood, and disasters abound. This evocation conjures deadly water across the ground from the nearest sources, draining plants dry, pulling riverbeds up onto the shore, and calling hellish rain to cover an area out to Medium range. Polluted through the curses of the Underworld, this water takes on a searing brine, that pulls water from those caught inside of it. Anyone wearing less than Heavy Armor (or waterproof footwear) feels the immediate pains of their body dehydrating. A character knocked prone in the scene is immediately re-exposed, as is any character struck by Flood Gates Breach or Ocean Burial. Otherwise, the liquid functions as a poison, with the following stats (3i / round, Duration of 3+Essence rounds, -1 penalty). A character crashed by the water immediately begins to suffer dehydration, taking a -3 penalty to their defenses and actions, that can only be recovered by leaving the body of toxic water and drinking pure water. The wielder of Deep Abyss’s Scream and up to one character per water-aspected hearthstone socketed in the direlance do not suffer the water’s effects. Trivial characters die in a matter of rounds of exposure.

This salt water brine remains, although at the end of the scene, ceases to be supernaturally dehydrating, though may still leave the ground salted and ruin plants. The water can only be purified by a Purity Gem hearthstone after the end of the scene this evocation was activated in.

This evocation can only be used once per scene and cannot be reset by the Dawn caste anima banner.

Dissonant: This evocation can only be used while the Exalt has 10+ initiative and resets the Exalt to base initiative after use.

Searing Sea Rain

Cost - (+1wp, 4i); Mins: Essence 3

Type: Permanent

Keywords: Decisive-Only, Perilous

Duration: Permanent

Prerequisite: Well of Black Depths, Rising Sun Slash (Exalted p.347)

At the pinnacle of the Exalt’s strike, it is not a glaring sun beam for the wielder of Deep Abyss’s Scream, but rather than storm cloud on the horizon. When her decisive attack benefits from Rising Sun Slash (on a roll containing at least one 7, 8, 9, and 10), the Exalt may pay an additional 1 willpower and 4 initiative to create an immediate one time hazard of acidic water, spraying out to strike everyone within short range of her. This deals (Essence) dice of damage to her target and anyone out to short range who fails a difficulty 4 (Dexterity+Athletics) check.

Birthing Mother Hydra

Cost: 8m (+4m); Mins: Essence 3

Type: Reflexive

Keywords: Perilous, Dissonant, Resonant

Duration: One scene

Prerequisite: Well of Black Depths

As the sea claims victims, the fear of the depths grows deeper, and from that deepening abyss, monsters of nightmare are born. Whenever the Exalt activates this evocation’s prerequisite, a small pool of the water forms into a jelly-like Chrysalis. Each time initiative is lost to the brine, it is stored in the chrysalis, to a maximum of 10 initiative. At any point, the Exalt may activate this evocation to birth from the chrysalis a snake like monster. It has as much initiative as was stored in the Chrysalis and can only make decisive attacks. Each time initiative is lost to this evocation’s prerequisite, the creature gains that initiative to a maximum of 10. If the creature is reduced to 0 initiative, makes a successful decisive attack, or leaves , it dissolves into water. The spawn has no health levels, instead attacks deal initiative damage to it, inflicting one additional level for every 4 dice of damage rolled. The Exalt may spend 4m to spawn another in the same scene, but may only have one creature at a time.

Chrysalis Spawn

Attack (Exalt’s Awareness+Melee+Essence). Damage (Lower of initiative or the Exalt’s initiative + trigger exposure to Well of Black Depth’s poison) Combat Movement: (10+Essence) dice Evasion: (1+Exalt’s Awareness) Parry: (1+Exalt’s Melee) Soak: (12+Essence) Hardness: (6+Essence)

Dissonant: Wielders dissonant with Jade cannot master this evocation.

Resonant: The maximum initiative of the Chrysalis and its spawn is increased to (10+Essence).

Horrors Lurk Beneath

Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 4

Type: Reflexive

Keywords: Perilous

Duration: One scene

Prerequisite: Birthing Mother Hydra

Below the surface, in the darkest depths, there are always more terrors below. This evocation can be activated in place of its prerequisite, causing the Chrysalis to spawn up to (Essence) creatures. The initiative stored in the Chrysalis must be divided evenly, to a minimum of three, and then gains an additional initiative. For example, a Chrysalis with 10 initiative can be turned into 3 creatures with 3, 3, and 4 initiative (which then becomes 4, 4, and 5). Each time initiative is drained from the Well of Black Depth’s poison, it goes into the Chrysalis, allowing the Exalt to spend 4m to spawn another creature reflexively when she chooses. She may only have up to (Essence) creatures at once, but she may choose to fuse two or more together to have their initiatives combines (up to the maximum of their normal initiative pools in this evocation’s prerequisite).

One Hundred Severed Heads Become 10,000 Jaws

Cost: 15m; Mins: Essence 5

Type: Simple

Keywords: Perilous, Resonant

Duration: One scene

Prerequisite: Horrors Lurk Beneath

Special Activation Rules: Only wielders resonant with Jade or the Abyssal exalted may unlock this evocation.

Stabbing her spear into the Crysalis formed by Birthing Mother Hydra or Horrors Lurk Beneath, the Exalt calls any spawned creatures back to her as water rushes around her body, raising her upwards in a tentacled multi-headed mass that she floats inside of. In order to activate this evocation, the Exalt must have 15+ initiative. In this form, she gains the following benefits:

For the purpose of feats of strength, she counts as having a strength of 6 and rolls 12 dice towards those actions.

Her soak becomes (13+1 for every spawn consumed by this charm), her hardness becomes (10+1 for every spawn consumed by this charm) and she gains an additional health track that must be overcome before she can be harmed.

She has three -0 levels, (Essence) -1 health levels, and (Essence+3) -2 and -4 health levels. If all of these health levels are filled, the evocation ends immediately.

The Exalt gains Legendary Size in her Hydra form. Smaller enemies can not inflict onslaught penalties without magic, nor can they crash her without a post-soak damage pool of 10+ dice. Decisive damage against her Hydra form’s health levels cannot exceed the attacker’s (Strength+3) without magic. Smaller creatures cannot grapple, knock back, or otherwise move her in her Hydra form. As a creature of Legendary Size, she ignores these benefits when she fights Warstriders, Tyrant Lizards, etc.

In addition to her normal action for the round (which must be something that an enormous hydra made of searing briny water can take), she may take a devastating action each round. The devastating action may be used to reﬂexively make an attack against either an enemy battle group or all trivial opponents within range of the pilot’s weapon.

Instead of making an attack, the Exalt may have up to (Essence) heads strike at different targets. She rolls her (Dexterity+Melee) with (Essence) non-charm dice added opposed by her target’s (Dexterity+Athletics) roll. Failure indicates immediate re-exposure to Well of Black Depth’s poison.

At the end of the scene or when this charm ends from damage, the Exalt hits the ground, body severely dehydrated, filling her health boxes to the -4 with lethal damage. This charm may only be used once per story unless reset by completing a defining or legendary social goal through water-based mass destruction.

#Artifact #Jade #Black Jade #Exalted #Exalted rpg #Exalted 3e

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astromeki · 4 years

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Rent a motorhome Auckland

In our camper highlight tour New Zealand you will learn why you should venture adventurously over a suspension bridge, watch a geyser from a helicopter and not collect jade stones. Did you know that New Zealand was recently added to the Club of Geological Continents? Especially in high season it is important to send a reservation in advance so that it is certain that the space really still has space for the motorhome. For many New Zealand tourists from Germany, a visit to Hobbiton, the film set of the movie saga Lord of the Rings, is a must. In contrast to summer, camper prices are significantly cheaper. There are not so many tourists anymore, the islands are very pleasant to travel. It is nice and warm everywhere, you can go swimming and enjoy the time outdoors.

Beach lovers should definitely drive the RV north-west towards Great Exhibition Bay, because the Ninety Mile Beach is worth seeing. But there are also some nature parks to the southeast of Auckland. Other well-known associations include the Family Parks Association and Kiwi Holiday Parks. All of these pitches offer you electricity, sanitary facilities, laundry facilities and even WiFi. Depending on the location and equipment, you will find parking spaces for two people and a camper from NZD 25 per night. Where can you camp "wild"? How much is the diesel tax for RVs?

Rent a RV in New Zealand - the new zealand motorhome best way to see Aotearoa

The area also offers a lot of challenges for sports freaks. Rainbow Mountain and the Te Ara Ahi Thermal Cycle Trail offer unforgettable outdoor experiences. Rafting is possible in Kaitiaki Adventures Park on Lake Rotorua and an absolute recommendation. With our CamperDays portal, we also help you to quickly and easily find the right motorhome offer for your trip. With the comprehensive price comparison, we take into account the most renowned motorhome rental companies worldwide and compare the most important rental criteria clearly and transparently.

A transaction fee of 2.0% will be charged.

There are currently no New Zealand competitions taking place, but check out our social media pages to keep up to date to stay.

In this case, the best way to travel is by bus.

At 328 meters, it is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere.

Because then you can rent the camper, for example, on the North Island and return it on the South Island.

There is simply nothing better than a 6 bed motorhome if you want to explore New Zealand with the whole family. The motorhome is not only easy to drive, with the surprisingly diverse interior you can also feel at home in this vehicle. The fully equipped kitchen including microwave, shower, toilet and heating or air conditioning leave nothing to be desired for the whole family. Motorhome rental in Auckland - private and cheap!

How does MotorHome Republic work?

Learn more about the Maoris in Rotorua - in the cultural heart of New Zealand on the North Island. The South Island also has a lot to offer with its New Zealand Alps, whale watching in the wild or take a helicopter flight on the Franz Josef Glacier. The cities of Auckland, Christchurch or Queenstown are excellent starting points for your motorhome tour. The 4 bed motorhome based on the Fiat is equipped with all the comforts you need for a vacation in New Zealand.

What is the climate like in New Zealand?

18 hours, 45 minutes in the air: this is the new longest non-stop flight in the world. The newest longest flight is over the Pacific and will have a length of around 15,335 kilometers. Singapore Airlines announced the longest non-stop flight in the world this morning.

You can end your trip on the beautiful beach of the Oriental Bay. The daily performances of Maori culture in the Auckland Museum are absolutely worth seeing! Goose bumps are a guarantee, especially with the haka, often interpreted almost exclusively as a war dance, but actually also with a mixed cast to greet guests. You can always admire that haka on TV whenever the New Zealand national team - the All Blacks - has a rugby game. Since New Zealand is generally crazy about sports, you can have a fantastic and funny time in every pub in Auckland.

#Rent a motorhome auckland nz

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ellebeebee · 7 years

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Varieties of Tea

Apprentice Xanthioppe (Xan) has an unpleasant dream involving her feelings about a certain someone’s chronic absentee-ism, and she deals with it. Kind of badly. Well-- very badly.

1850 words, Asra/Apprentice if you squint, teen rating by AO3

Pazu carried her. The high sun dug into their back, no doubt setting their black plumage ablaze with a dark beetle’s gleam. A strong headwind trickled through their wings’ plumage and spilled down the rocky outcropping and down, down onto the dry steppe floor. Their eyes were at once up on the mountain where they perched and also down amongst the scree and the scrabble and the holding-their-breath-nonmovements of lesser life. Prey.

But not all prey was equal. Pazu would not consider the mice and the insects, the vermin favored by others. He stalked the other winged things that ate like prey. He would climb to heights they would never dare and plunge through the thick and heavy air upon the lesser-bird and sink his talons into their too-late-aware flesh.

Ground life was trickier. But he liked the big, soft prey that could fight back sometimes and possibly hurt him. He liked the delight Xan expressed every time he dropped a lean rabbit at her feet.

Pazu carried her, and they bent with tensing muscles into the wind. They dropped from the outcropping, plummeting along the mountain’s surface until their wings pushed against the air and set them upright. They flapped, flexing hard down into their chest. They circled up on warm gusts.

The steppe stretched out below them. In one direction, the rocky ground softened to the Endless Sand With Hard Hunting. In the other direction sat the Close Places Where Xan Lived.

They glided up and up, skimming over warmth and dipping a wing slightly to avoid cold spots. Up and up they climbed, into the white sun. Their eyes raked over the faraway ground. They watched the rippling silk of dry grass in the wind. Xan felt Pazu’s instant dismissal and disdain for the desert rats scampering for cover. If pushed, he would eat them, but he was young and skilled and better hunting was plentiful.

A flash of unusual color snared their eyes. A swift shape slipped from shadow to shadow. Brilliant and unlike the dull brown rats and mice scattered in the grasses.

Xan’s chest tightened and her head clouded. Pazu flicked the tip of a wing, tightening the broad circle they’d been coasting on. He, for once, cautioned her. They could not yet dive until they were sure. Still, Xan’s heart-- their heart-- spasmed violently in their chest.

They followed the bright prey, whirling and watching. Their mark met a stretch of bare land several lengths from any cover. And instead of turning back, it slipped onto the grassless scree.

Pazu and Xan dropped. They fell and fell until the wind battered them and the flinty air cut at their eyes. As the ground neared, they leaned back into the drop and unfurled their talons.

The long, smooth-skinned prey made no sound as they plucked it up. Xan felt her head pound like a gong. She wanted to scream and curse and strangle. Instead, Pazu screeched as her emotions swept over him.

Darkness rushed in, or perhaps it had always been there. No sun, no moon or stars with which to see their blue captive. An empty void smothered them. Their prey somehow pushed open their talons’ grip-- but, no, it was thickening.

The snake grew impossibly heavy for them to clutch. But there was no up or down to drop it on. Implacable weight coiled around them, squeezing. Pazu shrieked again and writhed, rending stoneflesh with talon and beak. Xan raged. She screamed soundlessly. She thrust out ghost limbs.

The snake strangled them.

Xan woke. She released a shuddery breath and slapped at her sweaty brow.

Damn it all.

The sun peeked up over the earth’s edge, nudging up into a pink and grey sky. The light in her little second story loft coated everything with a soft and dim glow. She kicked away her blanket and pushed damp hair off her neck. Beside her bed, Pazu turned an inquisitive head toward her.

She stood and reached for him. Even hooded, he easily hopped from his perch onto her hand. His talons pushed into her bare skin almost to the point of pain, but she ignored it and smoothed down the speckled plumes on his chest. He cocked his head at her again.

“I’m fine,” Xan said.

He chirped.

“Well, I will be.”

He stared at her, and through the hood she could sense his thoughts. If something displeases you, fly away. Or kill it.

“It was a dream. Not a vision of the future, just a reflection of emotions.”

He chirped again. If a lifegiver is no longer a lifegiver, then they are predator. Or prey. Either way, kill them.

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “And you don’t have to always be so murder-y.”

He chirped. He was hungry.

She crossed the room to the roof ladder, grabbing her leather gauntlet on the way and slipping it on. Pazu transferred to the gloved hand. She climbed up and pushed at the trap door above with her magic. It sprang open. Cool, soothing air enveloped her.

It felt good against her back-stabbing murderer’s flesh.

Pushing that thought away, she padded between the garden boxes to the low wall edging the roof. Pazu radiated anticipation. She pulled the tall horsehair plume of his hood, slipping it off. His bright, yellow-rimmed eyes shone at her and at the world around them. Life was simple. You hunted, and you came home to the lifegiver.

Xan held her arm straight and aloft. Almost instantly, Pazu lifted his wings and leapt into the air. She watched him disappear into the sky for a while until she shivered with the cool air biting at her bare limbs. She hadn’t even grabbed a shawl.

At her wash stand, she poured out water into the basin as usual. But her eyes clung to her hands and the sloshing water, her sight skittering away from the ornate mirror on the wall. Her stomach churned and her pulse raced. The idea of crawling back into bed and burrowing under cover tempted her sorely.

Instead, she climbed down to the ground floor, actually glad that Asra’s room sat empty yet again. She wouldn’t have to face him or Faust-- today at least. Ugh, she couldn’t even imagine.

No, don’t think about that. Definitely don’t think about Faust’s sweet little face or her curious little tongue.

Xan tightened her grip on the shawl around her and went into the kitchen in the back. Maybe a cup of tea would settle her down. Instinctively, she reached for the porcelain container with the blue and emerald pattern, worn at the edges from the constant touch of fingers. She opened it and looked inside. The deep scent of smoke, touched with an herbal bitterness, wafted up into her face.

She could remember almost perfectly the first cup of this that Asra had brewed for her. The way his pretty hands carefully measured out the blackish tea leaves into the infuser. The soft smile he gave her as he tipped the pot over her cup. That infinitely heady and acrid taste and smell as she watched his eyes attend to her.

Xan clapped the lid back onto the container, nearly cracking it. Unbidden magical sparks shot across her skin. She shoved the tea back onto its shelf, whirling away.

No. Dammit, no!

Her feet sliding on the tiles, she grabbed the container again. Stomping, she burst back into the front shop area, ducked behind the counter, and snatched up her bag. She at least had the presence of mind to slap at the front door’s protective ward as she strode out into the street.

Xan wove through the streets and alleys, her hard feet hitting the pavement with increasing speed. A tight covered walkway spat her out into an open palazzo. In the center, a fountain bubbled away with disgusting cheerfulness. Ugh! She sprinted forward, reared back her hand, and hurled the tea container into the fountain with deadly (read: magical) force. Sparkling water geysered up and spilled over into the square.

“You stupid jerk!” she shrilled.

An old man that had been sitting by the fountain, feeding pigeons, stared at her through dripping strands of overlong eyebrows. A collection of pigeons squawked, sad and wet, at his feet.

“What are you looking at?” she snarled at him.

He studiously went back to dropping soggy bread at the soggy birds.

Xan heaved. She could imagine what she looked like: her amber legs and arms naked as she only wore her bodysuit and her shawl, her feet bare and dirty from her march through town, her black hair wild. Chucking tea containers into fountains. Whatever! She was a witch, who gives a shit!

She re-slung her shawl about her in a dignified manner and stalked across the square. She ignored the other gawkers. Maybe Pazu was right. If someone stops being a lifegiver, a source of comfort and care, then what are they? Huh? A stupid jerk, that’s what!

The other part-- the murder-y bit-- he was probably wrong about, though. Probably.

Down a side street and turning left, Xan unceremoniously rapped a sharp summons on the locked door of her usual tea shop. After a moment, the proprietor poked their head out.

“Xan?” they asked, eyeing her. “Are you alright?”

“I need tea. Urgently,” she said.

The shopkeep opened their mouth, closed it. “Well. Okay…”

Xan swept past them as the door wedged open.

“Lapsang souchong, right?” they asked.

She ignored them and stood staring at the wall of large jars full of leaves of varying shades of green. Emerald, chartreuse, jade. And the occasional bloom of yellow and pink and lavender: dried flowers and herbs. Xan turned to the proprietor.

“A few coppers worth of everything,” she said.

They blinked. “Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Are… are you sure you’re alright?”

“Everything!”

Hesitantly, they began pulling down the heavy jars, all the while giving her the side-eye. Xan huffed and heaved out some jars herself. When they got to the lapsang souchong, she pointed imperiously.

“Not that!”

They stared at her, hands hovering over the black twisting leaves. “What?”

“Not that,” she repeated.

The shopkeep sighed and went back to the dozens of other varieties of tea. Leaving a generous tip for future sales when she wasn’t acting like a complete loon (and also wasn’t half-naked), Xan exited the shop with a hefty canvas bag full of little bags of probably every form of tea known to man. At home, she left the lantern by the front door unlit and locked the shop up. After washing her feet, she set out to brew cups of everything. Everything. By the day’s end she had terrible stomach cramps for her troubles.

“Xan,” Asra asked from the kitchen, “Have you seen the lapsang souchong?”

“How should I know! I don’t drink that!”

He poked his head around the corner. A gentle raised brow and smile played over his features.

“But it’s your fav--”

“Get out and buy some if it’s that important to you! And don’t use the shop’s petty cash!”

#the arcana #the arcana game #fanfiction #my writing #asra #apprentice #what's a period-appropriate term for a bodysuit?#bc that was the best i could come up with #i mean leotard?? unitard??#they're all awful #excessive exclamation marks!!! how uncouth #yea i dgaf!#i gotta problem w stylistic authority!!!

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rpgchoices · 5 months

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Useless rpgs recs. Videogames (not dating sims) where you play or you CAN play as a character who is wlw or mlm

Names and characters/explanations under cut (might contain minor spoilers):

Just a note, when I say romance I mean that there is actual story and plot related to it. Otehrwise for games like Fable or Skyrim (no romance) I will just write "Marry". For the romance games, a more detailed list of characters and romances can be found here.

Dragon Age Origins: You can romance Leliana (f) or Zevran (m) even with a character of their same gender

Dragon Age 2: You can romance all your companions (but Sebastian) indipendently from gender

Dragon Age Inquisition: You can romance Josephine (f) and Iron Bull (m) with any gender, and you can romance a lesbian character (Sera) or a gay character (Dorian)

Greedfall: You can romance Vasco (m) or Siora (f) with any gender

Dragon's Dogma: You can romance any character with any gender

Jade Empire: Sky (m) and Silk Fox (f) are romancable by any gender

Fable series: You can marry a character of your same gender

Skyrim: You can marry a character of your same gender

Enderal: You can romance Jasper (m) or Calia (f) as any gender

Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire: You can romance all your companions with any gender

Pendula Swing: The protagonist is canonically wlw, and you can romance male and female characetrs

Hero-U: The male protagonist can romance male characters too

Cyberpunk 2077: There are different flirts (female characters) that can be romanced by any gender, plus two full fledged romances a wlw and mlm one.

Expeditions: Viking: There is a female character (Roskva) and a male character (Ketill) who can be romanced by any gender.

Expeditions: Rome: There is a female character (Daianeira) and a male character (Caeso) who can be romanced by any gender.

Pathfinder Kingmaker: This game has multiple romances that can be romanced by characters of the same gender, mainly for wlw. Regongar is the one male character who can be romanced by any gender and also in a poly relationship with Octavia. Octavia, Kanerah, Kalikke, Nyrissa are the female characters romancable by any gender.

Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous: Similar to Kingmaker, there are multiple characters romancable by male or female protagonists.

Rogue Trader: One male character and two female characters can be romanced by any gender.

Gamedec: Ken Zhou is the only romance option in game and can be romanced by any gender.#

Black Geyser: The romances are minimal, but there are multiple female and female characters romancable by any gender.

Always sometimes monsters (and sequel): you choose both the gender of the protagonist and the one of the romance.

Divinity Original Sin: If you play alone you control two characters who can end up in a romance (not fully written, almost subtle) indipendently from their gender.

Divinity Original Sin 2: All the companions can be romanced by any gender.

Disco Elysium: If you choose specific dialogue choices it is revealed that the protagonist (Harry) is attracted to men.

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, enhanced edition: The enhanced edition adds Dorn and Hexxat who can be romanced by the same gender.

Baldur's Gate Siege of Dragonspear: Two romance options are not gender locked.

Baldur's Gate 3: All the companions are romancable by any gender, plus there are some more flirts/less developed romances.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Multiple characters through the game are not gender locked for romance.

Eternal Home Floristry: You play as a gay man.

80 Days: The protagonist (a man) is clearly in love with a man, you can also romance a male character.

The Technomancer: You play as a male character, one of your romance option is mlm.

Sorcery!: If you play as a male character you can still romance Flanker, who is also a man and is the one romance option in the game. If you play as a female character there are some dialogue choices that can establish your character as wlw.

Knight Bewitched: The protagonists are two women in love.

Dreamfall The Longest Journey: One of the protagonists (Kian) is a gay man.

Dreamfall Chapters: Kian and Saga are respectively a gay man and a pansexual woman.

Newfound Courage: The protagonist is a gay boy, but also the whole game is about being queer.

Haven: You play as a couple of lovers, who can be two women or two men.

Fallout 4: Some of the romance options are not gender locked.

Morrowind: There is a mod to romance (links of all mods here).

Solstice: Visual novel but not dating sim, you play as two characters and one of them is a gay man.

Mass Effect Trilogy: multiple companions (nb, f or m) can be romanced with any gender.

Mass Effect Andromeda: multiple companions can be romanced wtih any gender.

Hades: The protagonist (the son of Hades) can romance a male character (and enter into a poly relationship).

Icewind Dale II: mods

Icewind Dale: mod (one male character who can be romanced by a male protagonist).

GAMES I FORGOT (EDIT):

The Red String Club: you play as two gay men who are a couple.

Please keep in mind that this is the post I constantly update:

#pillars of eternity #enderal #baldur's gate 3 #rogue trader #dragon age #etc etc #wlw and mlm games #useless recs #i haven't done one of the useless recs in a while

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whaq · 3 years

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Things that go bump in the mind: a creative non-fiction story

In my final Literature class, I was given a writing prompt to fulfill by the end of the day: we were to write about real events related to death in the style of creative non-fiction. I had always wanted to tell the story about how I ended up having an existential crisis on my way to get ice cream as a child and so I wrote a whole story around it. This is the first narrative piece I've made in years so it's a little amateurish. Enjoy!

I’m seven years old in the back of my father's car, knees on the seat ahead of me to counter the inertia of the moving vehicle. We’re headed home, the details of the events prior to this moment escape me, affirming their insignificance. Little was on my mind, just a never-ending craving for ice cream and an ache in my palms that yearned for a game controller. Without warning, my elementary grade mind found itself in a spiral. The image of a darkness that was blacker than black, coupled with a deafening static only I could hear that shrieked my attention to it. I shed a single tear, this movie star moment unceremoniously ruined by the snot that began dripping down my nose. I didn't know what to do. How do you expect a kid to deal with an existential panic attack? As I wiped my eyes, the words escaped my mouth before I knew it "Dad, I don't want to die." I looked at the rear view mirror, and saw the eyes of a man who just had an essential parenting moment stolen from him by his son's intrusive thought. "Everyone dies," he told me. We drive the rest of the way home in pregnant silence.

Years go by, the car my dad used to take me home that night was the same one he eventually packed his things into before driving away one day, never setting foot in my house again. I’m 10 years old, relying on my mother more than ever. Not as a mother, just a provider. The emotional distance between us was only dwarfed by the distance from her place of work in the Middle East, where she’s expected to return from this afternoon. Just like before, dread springs from a place far beyond my mental periphery. Unlike last time, I’m finally able to process the wave of grief that drowns me, to my detriment.

“People disappear overseas all the time”

“What makes you think she’s coming back?”

“Sometimes planes miss the tarmac”

“What makes you think she’s coming back?”

“When she’s gone, she’s gone for good”

“How are you so sure she isn’t already dea--”

I hear the familiar honk of her SUV, heard even from inside my own head. But I don’t rush down to greet her, embrace her, tell her how much I missed having her around, because that would be disingenuous. It wasn’t that I wanted her there, I just didn’t like the thought of her being gone. I refused to reveal my fear. Some might say I learned the wrong lesson, dodging the Dickensian moral aimed at me. I didn’t learn to hold my loved ones close, I learned of object impermanence.

I stopped taking death seriously when I was 18 years old. I was already desensitized to the daily soap opera that occurred below my bedroom, having been a background extra in it all my life. I go downstairs to find the living fossils at each other’s throats once again. I walk over to my jaded 29 year old of a sister and ask, “what’s all this about?” She allows a sigh to escape from her mouth before she says, “some dirt.” The adults walk over to us, sniffing out the cynicism in the air like a blood trail, and proceed to lecture us on inheritance. “You’re going to have to settle this when we die,” they nag. “We don’t give a shit,” we slur in unison and walk back to our rooms.

I draw a bath, submerging myself into the makeshift womb. As their nagging words drill into my head, it cracks the surface and unearths the trepidation once again, bursting like a geyser of the morbid. My focus lingers towards my legacy, what I’d leave behind, or what I leave to rot. It shifts to my confidants, is there any room in their hearts to grieve for me, in their minds to never forget me? It hovers over my family, if my passing would be a weight on their shoulders or a discount on their suffering. It all melds into a terrifyingly harmonious white noise in my mind; it’s almost... calming. I’m outside, the cloud of finality still over me. I sit on the sidewalk, giving the intrusive thoughts some time to stew for a moment. An unfamiliar white car pulls up in front of me, a more familiar hand wave from the man who raised me peers from the window. “Sounds like they’re at it again, I’m sure they won’t notice you gone for a bit. Wanna go kill some time?” I rush on over to the front passenger seat, it’s a newer model than I’m used to seeing him drive. I settle in, breathe a sigh, and, without thinking, I tell him, “Sure, let’s go live a little.”

#writeblr #story #nonfiction #death #creative non fiction #morbid #writing #creative writing #biography #biographical #fiction #writers of tumblr #childhood #existential crisis #lmao try reading it again but I drown in the bath #stories

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readinglightly · 5 years

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Continuar em TI ou a mim? (Elaine e Lisa)

Era uma vez, espera, eram várias vezes que eu fiquei perplexa. Chega uma fase da vida que eu não sei mais definir se é crise de idade ou o ápice da vida de quem já fez muita coisa e não tem mais o que inventar. Poxa vida, estou vivendo ou apenas compartilhando o ar com as pessoas? E essas pessoas já sabem o que querem para o resto da vida? Porque eu não, eu me chamo Jade Marylight, com vinte e cinco anos de idade, formada em TI, mas nunca atuei na área. Bom minha história começa por aí...

Com dezessete anos de idade comecei a trabalhar, logo após, iniciei o curso, paguei ele com a ajuda dos meus pais, que era super difícil para eles ajudarem, mas de alguma forma conseguiam, foram dias de luta para conseguir pagar cada mensalidade e enfim quando terminei, refleti “será que eu quero mesmo ficar na frente de um computador sentada em uma cadeira em um escritório?” Decidi comprar uma mochila e com todas minhas economias fui pesquisar para onde poderia viajar e tirar meu tempo sabático sem previsão para voltar, eu necessito disso.

Não foi fácil deixar tudo para trás, mas eu precisava sentir um novo ar, sem me sentir pressionada a ter que ser alguém na vida, pesquisei vários lugares para ter uma noção da viagem, mas vi que está fora do meu projeto financeiro, então pesquisei sobre fazer um mochilão que muitas pessoas optam justamente por questão financeira , fiquei pesquisando sobre onde ir, pois é uma tarefa difícil decidir já que existem tantos lugares, decidi então ir para a Oceania.

Oceania é um lugar mais isolado e já que foi o último continente a ser descoberto pelos europeus, pensei que também devo ter um atraso de descobertas, ou seja, é um continente onde pode-se refletir e é isso que eu queria em primeira instância. Além disso, Oceania é considerado um novo mundo, pela sua descoberta, eu penso que seria perfeitamente eu abrir meus horizontes e ser aberta a novas experiências, cheguei â conclusão que esse país é perfeito para eu conhecer.

Quando comecei a me arrumar para sair mundo a fora, recebi uma ligação de uma grande empresa que tem uma filial na minha cidade na qual minha mãe me forçou a encaminhar meu currículo. Falaram que meu perfil se encaixava na visão “jovem” da empresa, e que eu teria grandes chances de crescimento lá. Primeiramente minha função seria de analista, mas eles precisavam mesmo é de um coordenador para o helpdesk, e se tudo corresse bem eu certamente seria promovida para esse cargo.

Quando me dei conta eu já estava agradecendo a oportunidade e informando que nos próximo mês eu não teria disponibilidade. Pois bem, já era um caminho sem volto de qualquer forma mesmo. Meu voo saiu as oito horas daquela mesma noite, com ligação direto até a Austrália, onde eu ficaria quatro dias em Sydney. Todas as minhas estadias já estavam programadas em hostels.

Meu tempo em Sydney for incrível, como eu esperava que fosse. Conheci pessoas novas, mas não me comprometi em pegar contatos ou me aprofundar muito. Toda essa ideia de nunca mais estar naquele lugar era triste demais. Preferi seguir em frente aproveitando cada minuto, mas não me apegando a nada. Minha primeira grande “trip” foi para Blue Montain, foram trilhas e escaladas que valeram muito, só por poder ver toda aquela imensidão. Claro que nem tudo em Sydney era assim tão belo, tive meus problemas já que eu tive que fazer pequenos trabalhos para ganhar um dinheiro extra, mas nada muito desagradável, só não foi a melhor parte.

Próxima parada Nova Zelândia na Ilha Norte em Auckland, dormi em um hostel no litoral, e então parti para mais uma grande descoberta em Waitomo (black water rafting), fui com um grupo de excursão, pessoas muito divertidas e todas eram de algum lugar diferente do mundo. E a última parada na Ilha Norte foi em Rotorua (geysers) . Esse foi um momento mais solitário e de observação e reflexão. Nunca pensei que veria algo assim na minha vida, a natureza se revela de jeito indescritíveis e simples, difícil descrever o sentimento.

Depois de uma semana eu fui até a Ilha Sul para Christchurch. Visitei os parques nacionais em Arthur’s Pass, estava muito frio, mas creio que deveria ser incrível nadar naquele lago. Quando cheguei em Franz Josef (glacier), confesso que chorei um pouco, nem mesmo em imaginação eu teria capacidade de imaginar algo tão surreal quanto aquele lugar.

Ultima parada e despedida, foi em Sydynei para pegar o voo de volta ao Brasil. Em menos de um mês eu vivi coisas que em uma vida nunca teria pensado em viver. As coisas pareciam mais reais depois de tudo isso. Mesmo que eu tivesse que ficar presa 40 horas por semana em uma sala lidando com sistemas e pessoas. Eu sabia e tinha certeza que a vida seria muito mais que isso. Foi apenas uma pequena viagem, mas o que ela mudou em mim valeria por uma vida de aprendizagem. A questão no final é que nunca importou o que eu iria fazer com resto da minha vida, mas sim o que eu faria com cada instante dela. Só penso em viver agora, porque eu apenas sobrevivi por tempo demais.

#mochilão #oceania

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kommahana93 · 5 years

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Dragon Memories C3.P1

The storm raged along the aspen forest, making every branch and leaf shutter with explosions of golden light and poisoned swords. Flashes of white light made jade armor glint amongst the merciless crystal spears and glass dust that filled the forest like raining meteorites. Spiraling pillars of golden and scarlet sparks spurred into motion great flames that ate steal and flesh alike; unhindered by the heavy down pour of a storm. Geysers arose from sodden earth and the rain fell with pin-point accuracy; no soldiers were missed in the melee of elemental weapons. The army of Tregaron, the military might of the eastern valleys, raced in their jade armor and silver tunics. The knot work display of leaves, vines and their favored flower crawled across their every surface; from their leathers to their flowing tunics. Great emerald banners fluttered in the storm wind, displaying the ten petal cheery blossom with all the pride of a rising nation.

“Mū: Hutan Fermo Musuhku!” seven soldier’s braced their hands against a white-barked tree, an elaborate expanse of glowing jade light and emerald flames burst into ancient inscriptions and sigils. The forest groaned as it was brought to life, leaves twittered, branches twisted, trunks bent and bowed towards the sources of elemental magic. The crystals protruding from the sodden earth pulsed with the source of a new magic; alerting their creator to the impending danger. The crystals re-laid the message, whispering gently to every alley. Then the maker gathered those left to them and created a great white sphere, without further prompt they took through the air. The aspen forest seemed to grow and reach towards the white sphere, thick branches and quick roots stretching out to entrap them. But the white sphere could not be caught, not by the likes of an aspen forest.

The soldiers of Tregaron cursed as they gave chase, several dozen mages relaying messages to their kinsmen, giving directions to their comrades. Finally, after many minutes of barging through branches and trunks, the spiraling ball of white light burst from the nightmarish aspen forest—and straight into the range Tregaron’s army. The army of Tregaron, the military might of the eastern valleys, stood proudly in their silver armor and emerald tunics. The knotwork display of leaves, vines and their favored flower crawled their every surface, from their leathers to their flowing tunics. Great emerald banners fluttered in the storm wind, displaying the ten petal cheery blossom with all the pride of a decrepit noble. Several times the soring ball of light neared the earthen surface, barely evading the attacks of several mage-solders. Eventually the glowing orbit couldn’t remain out of reach, soon enough it began barreling through the banners, horses and men alike. Dozens of solders tried to stop the white-orb, mages band together to cage it, it was all for not. The orb soon enough took to the sky, leaving behind a divot in the muddy terrain and a small stuffed animal.

“Tirta: Göksu Jian!” a mage dressed in bright layered tunics of jade and black shouted, lines and wisps of jade light surrounded him. A great watery hand arose from amongst the soldiers, growing with the rain that filled it ever stronger. Without care the watery palm struck down on the white orbit, electing startled cries as the orb crashed into the surface of the muddy-valley. The wet land reacted like a commit in the ocean, dosing all in thick mud and heavy stones; a furious roar of a monster shook the air. The soldiers charged the creator of the white orb, watching the light dim as the source weakened. The sound of crying children crept louder and louder as the soldier’s neared the dimming orb. One soldier whispered a spell, coating his hand in thick mud that quickly hardened into thick stone spike. He leaped into the crater and his fist crashed through the white-glowing shield, he ignored the deep gorges in his hand as his spike shattered upon impact. But his goal was achieved.

Inside the orb a great cry, like a hundred spirits wailing in despair, arose with a near deafening ring. He swatted blindly inside the orb, pushing his arm further in, his teeth grinding together as the pressure of the orb tightened on his limb. There, cloth brushed against his fingertips. He took a deep breath, made eye contact with another soldier-mage and shoved all his weight into the hole, pushing his meaty-hand even further inside. Then, accompanied with a cry of despair, he wrapped his fingers around another’s limb and pulled. His fellow soldiers acted quickly, they each chanted their own spells and crashed against the orb repeatedly, ignoring how their earthen-spells rebounded and cut deeply into their fists and feet. Two mages scrambled to his side, whispering enchantments that aided with their strength. Finally he was able to rip the being inside the orb out, a young female child with hair like storm clouds and eyes of purest copper. She was dressed in a ragged orange tunic, dark pants and a bloody leather apron. The soldier didn’t even think about his next action, he followed with his orders—in one smooth movement he drew out his dagger.

“Aem!” The child screamed as she crashed into the surface of the muddy-crater, orange-eyes wide in terror, one hand outstretched towards him as if that would be enough to stop him. He brought the dagger down and threw away his humanity. “Sauf Na!” the earth roared with her cry. He had no time to register what happened before his world blackened and he left the world of the living; the last thing he saw was his dagger caught by a glittering fragment of white-glass. The soldiers scrambled back, the mages quickly chanting spells that pushed them all further away from the impact sight. Their comrade was left behind, a spear of magma reaching out of the creator to puncture the soldier too brave for the fight. The white orb pulsed, the girl scrambled back into the orb, sobbing in relief with the new safety. The earth shuttered and rolled as the glittering white orb shattered apart, sending great walls of earth flying through the air to crash into the soldiers and mages. Many mages tried to protect themselves but none of them could compare the power of the being inside the orb.

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wherestridestheworld-girdling · 7 years

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The Composite Black ch.1

He crackles with such abominable laughter. Emblazoned on his mulish mask of tapered sinew, hate-hewn flesh folds caked with dust and brusque are wide swathes of topological erosion. This is the dermatological attrition of ghouls and goblins, creatures of depravity and denizens of sacrilege, monsters whose skin weathers and bleaches in the divine of the daylight. His garish façade is the embossment from a nightmare, a face that haunted the sculptor’s sleep, ensnared eternal in gothic stone gargoyles or the twisted grimace of an amputated stub adorning a tortured ashen oak. His wrinkles purse like snake pleats, shivering subtly, coiled around his contemptuous orifices, intermittently blustered about by the intake of his olfactory snot-pits and wreathed around a rancid gyre of dental shards. Pan up but avoid the swallowing riptide of his gawk, those arrested by the shifting guise of his lunatic looking-glass eyes are often burnt asunder in smears of soot. They are eyes of caged aggression, of molten wrath, volcano eyes that sear what they see. The color of spent fuel, of cadaverous cinders, broken glass and smoke damage. Encircling this myopia is the crown-of-thorns of his brow, framing his persona like a band of spear-spiked dagger-tooth crags. These are accelerated geologic processes, flexing tectonic plates which know not the placation of a tranquil lull; their beveled furrows exist in a duality of disgust and mockery. Cast-iron rims lipping twin cauldrons, forever bubbling.

This is a hardened, deadened man whose scars shroud his marred body and mind. Each patch of discolored tissue that tattoos him tells tales, mostly violent and cruel. But the companion text is tenfold the volume, bedecking disfigured corpses strung about his travels. Most he left horizontal but some he let vertical, a fate hardly better. Those who walk the world mangled by the bite of his blade speak a bit softer, keep an eye at their backs, wake sweaty in the night. He is the shade which haunts their periphery, cloaking uncertainty in fear and calling out to them from the shadows. Just a winking remembrance causes the heart to race, the pupils to dilate, and the past superimposes the present. A torture wheel of cyclical trauma, perpetual terror of a deathblow half inflicted. His victims are many; they line cemeteries and bar stools, numb and cold to the touch. Almost as if he burned their spirits on the flaming alter of his own vehemence then let them frost over, a sacrifice to savagery, a vulgar display of power.

No matter. “Let the dead rot and the livin’ scorn,” blistering words from his blistered lips, shaky and sun-sick in the dry heat of the early morn.

“I dare say yer yella hide won’t last til’ noon. Those buzzards circlin’ up there won’t waste a horse’s fart before they’re on ya like the flies, pickin your eyes out, digging through your gizzard. I bet even half past 11 you’ll look even more like a dimes worth of dog meat than your ugly mug does now. Matter of fact maybe when your boots stop kickin I oughta cut you down from that tree and drag your sorry carcass through the mud into town so that the strays can each get a good meal from ya. It’ll be the only good thing you ever did for this town.”

Even as he said this, serrating his speech with disdain, the creases of the undertaker’s neck shook with fright. He felt as he had as a little boy throwing rocks at tethered dogs, hoping that in their fury the stake anchoring them wouldn’t be snatched from the dirt. The evil within this man seemed unnatural, impossible. It was foreign to him, this relentless rage, foreign to this tiny town pitted on the outskirts of dusty emptiness. This tiny town, where Main Street is the only street and whose primary riffraff are a few rough tough cattle rustlers, vagrant out-of-towners drawing from the herd come the fat flock of Spring time. Enter this black frothing demon whose snide grin makes the white dressed church ladies sign the cross, a smirk which consumeth like hellfire, and paradise becomes pit. Anubis had seen his share of atrocities, sights which may have maddened one of fragile temperament. He’d been a field medic in the Spanish war. Seen, heard and sometimes felt the splatter of men being shredded into mincemeat, splayed inside out by scalding shards of metal. He’d repressed much of those wretched memories, loosing them on his past future, which even now harass every moment of absent rest. And the days were not long passed when he’d been called on as the chief embalmer to clean up after a few of the Union’s scorched earth campaigns, burying massacred Hopi women and children, of all the vile things, in yellow-earthen mass graves usually after weeks of decay and carrion pick-throughs. He’d even had to put down his only daughter when her body swelled up with gangrene, but the carnage left by this awful man, this brimstone beast, was the brutality of legend. This was the monster before him, the twisted serpent of the apocalypse, Apep, fettered in maat by Osiris’ noose.

Then the shark put away his sawtooth bouquet, pivoting his rope burned neck in the guillotine of the hangman’s hoop, directing his vociferous focus on another individual from the small crowd of the witnesses who’d climbed the hill to watch this dreadful man’s death. The old Indian woman Xmucane met his fiery craters with her own cataracted pupils, a challenge in defiance, adversaries horn-locked on the battlefield of all space and time. Their concentrated beams of perception met and clashed, smoldering with static energy.

The words rose out of him and blew toward their mark like a waft of chemical death, “Have you come to tell my fortune grandmother? I should hope that even a blind ol’ witch like you could see the signs of my fate today. Or maybe you’re just so disoriented and confused you just wandered up here on this hill like the geriatric ol’ hag you are. Too..” his lips began to leak a rotten-colored mucus foam as they flapped and pursed and sneered. Spurts punctuated his rabid barks as the muscles in his whole body contracted in spasms of steaming rage. His carapace turned a furious shade of boiled red. “young to die and too old to screw! I’ve seen moldy cow pies that…” a gruff fit of gravelly coughing seized the doomed man so that any further curses became just choking hoarse gasps. Minutes passed and the hacking only worsened until only a few caustic spasms and the muted gurgling of air being forced through thick fluid remained. Suddenly within the leather of the man, the smoke-blackened corridors of his body flooded with sludge, his air passages became expulsion channels for emergency discharge. Prison-food regurgitation geysered up the tunnel of his throat and waterfalled out of the cave mouth. The gastrointestinal flow sizzled down his jailbird stripes in chunks of grey dribble as eyes, nose and gob spurted like drainage faucets. At last, when the conniption ceased, the muscles holding him ridged loosed limp, letting his weight dangle from the rope collaring him for a moment. Coated in perspiration and exhaustion, all that was left of him was the furnace of his anger and a heaving breath. Air pressure writhed against the pressure of the lariat strangling his airway, lungs bursting in heft.

Xmucane was already halfway down the hill, strutting slowly and steadily, never looking back, never uttering a word; she just continued driving her cane into the dry earth followed up by each hoary shuffle step. This repeated in rhythmic synchronicity as her short precise movements churned the declining distance back to town, through glades and gullies, past rockslides and embankments, hugging the curvature of the trail and moving like the passing minutes. Somewhere, there amongst the bramble, a whisking river resided as an auditory undercurrent, a rivulet which had conveyed sediment from distant mountains for hundreds of thousands of years. This is the sculptor who carved Hangman’s Hill from bare plane. It reached out from within the drape of the trees at a spot perpendicular with the crook in the trail of the advancing ancient seer, Xmucane, greeting her with roaring thunder from the mountains. She continued on past the Road to Xibalba, with her descended her daughter-in-law the waning moon, fading into the light of day.

“In nomine Iesu Christi, Deus et Dominus noster, Immaculatae Virginis intercessione ab ipsis Maria..”

In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the immaculate Virgin Mary..

Back atop Hangman’s Hill, at the seat of the execution of this nameless man, the preceding spectacle of grotesque behaviors attracted like moth to flame the mercy of god’s instrument on earth, the surrogate of Papal presence, the local orthodoxical authority of godliness, the Catholic missionary Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. With the bluff as his sandy pulpit he exercised training he’d received in the seminary as a youth. Vocal muscle memory and gospel rigmarole drilled ad nauseam under the oratorical tutelage of the Head Father at the rocky coastline church of San Miguel. He fondly recalled praying to the Blessed Virgin those many years ago on bent knee, tightly gripping the Bible and rosary his parents had given to him, trembling with righteousness in that stuffy old adobe chapel as chartreuse swells of spray crashed against the rocks. There were times of distant recollection when the word of god resound within his mind like vivid hanging melodic lines of Gregorian monks bounding out of mass halls and cathedrals. But with the melting years his faith had become by jaded by dour funeral processions and exorbitant church politics. He clutched his indented Holy Book in one crinkled hand and the other pressed palm forward, shaking with a bit of the hall-hallowed vindication he’d once felt but mostly just the fear of an excruciating death at the hands of this tenuously bound hellion. He prayed as if blacksmithing a suit of armor.

“Mother of God, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beatis apostolis tuis Petro et Paulo, et omnibus sanctis auctoritate officii nostri potentem..”

Mother of God, of blessed Michael the archangel, of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul and all the saints and powerful in the holy authority of our ministry..

“suscipere fidenter impetus propulsare insidias diabolic..”

we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil..

A light breeze swept the hillcrest. Misty dew-laden air whisped up in thermal currents as the freshly angled sun warmed the valleys of wildflowers and sod below, cycling moisture. The breeze ruffled multicolored swatches of deciduous leaves stapled onto the fronds and twigs of the circular band of white oaks which surrounded the site of the hanging. Then the breeze tousled the silent crowd, flexing hat brims, swaying ties, brushing skirt tails, flapping pant-legs, bringing dusty tears to dry eyes behind the veil of handkerchiefs. Finally the wind rippled into the ganglion of the scene stirring its focal subject. The man’s limp unconscious body swiveled slightly in the stirrup of the noose strung from the single low-hanging splintered branch of the lone dead tree. However most of his inanimate weight remained planted to the earth, supported by locked knees atop an aged fruit box, its paint flecking. A crystalline snail of spittle oozed from the gape of his mouth and was blown and whipped around by the current around the side of his head, seeping into one of the few remaining haggard tufts of bristle on the back of his desiccated scalp.

“Deus oritur; inimici ejus dispersus est et qui oderunt eum, a facie ejus, secundum impellere fumum..”

God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him. As smoke is driven away..

“ita pulsi sunt; sicut exustio ignis tabescerent, sic animam meam in conspectu Domini. Ecce crucem Dómini..”

So are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God. Behold the Cross of the Lord..

“fugite inimicorum. Leo de tribu Iuda, radix David, qui vicit. Fiat misericordia tua, Domine, super nos quanta speravimus in te..”

Flee bands of enemies. The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the offspring of David, hath conquered. May thy mercy, Lord, descend upon us as great as our hope in thee..

The diminutive old man paused after that line for a dangling moment, taking a rasped breath and wiping the sweat dripping down his forehead with a cross-embroidered handkerchief produced from within the folds of his black vestments. A few syllables still hung in the air, echoes of Medieval Latin ricocheting off canyon cathedrals, saguaro shrines, stain glass mirage. But the point of omni-ocular convergence remained the captive. The small crowd of tense observers were fixated, captivated by the captive, as if the depth of their focus was his only restraints. It had to be unequivocal, this man’s extinction; if even an iota of irresolute distress remained it would be catastrophic to these quiet people and their small agrestic community. It had to be confirmed, the light leaving his eyes, so they could live once again in their accustomed peace. Ruggieri continued..

“Adjutorium nostrum in nobis, quicumque haec legis, Et spiritus immundi, omnis satanica viribus, omnes invadentes infernali, omnia impium legiones, et coetus sectis..”

We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects..

“In nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi et eius virtute, ut sit Deus et effugare ab ecclesia et ab animabus ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei, divini agni sanguine redemisti. Serpens callidissime..”

In the Name and by the power of our lord Jesus Christ, may you be snatched away and driven from the church of God and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the precious blood of the divine lamb. Most cunning serpent..

“YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS?!! You do well to utter such flattery but this meagre title leaves much to be desired by my parched discrimination. My sapless ear has reached but a fractional portion of its full satiation and demons these days just don’t grovel as they did in those glorious days of old, the Fall anew, when plague shadows of locusts and immortal armies of darkness smote the world under my blood blackened banner. Abbadon? Lucifer? Perhaps Wicked One? Or Deciever? Appolyon is what the Greeks called me or maybe you’re feeling particularly biblical, in that case the classic Hebrew is utter elation. Bleed your tribute and yield your dignity, lay paltry and prostrate before the infamous Beelzbub. Nothing says ‘Prince of Darkness’ like a black winged monster that manipulates buzzing clouds of ravenous flying insects. Although my personal favorite is good ol’ Satan, doesn’t the word just remind you of pagan blood orgies and violent fertility sacrifices cast under occult torchlight? Ssssaaataann. It rolls off the tongue, or hisses off if yours is forked I suppose. Let’s all say it together! Saaataan… Saaaaatan…”

“Decipere humanum genus ultra audeas, Dei Ecclesiam persequi, ac Dei electos excutere et cribrare sicut triticum..”

You shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God's elect and sift them as wheat..

“Imperat tibi Deus altissimus, he, cui in magna tua superbia te similem haberi adhuc præsumis. Imperat tibi Deus Pater..”

The most high God commands you, He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal. God the father commands you..

“Imperat tibi Deus Filius. Imperat tibi Deus Spiritus Sanctus. Christus Dei Verbum caro factum, imperat”

God the son commands you. God the holy ghost commands you. Christ, God's word made flesh, commands you..

“Your feeble crusader dogma and moral avarice is fetid muck pilled high by sociopathic old men, deceptively arranged to countervail their own perverted chastity and empathetic ineptitude. The theologic doctrines to which you egregiously prescribe, and to which you presume supremacy are just the bones and bits, carrion detritus, convenient canon leftovers that you have culturally appropriated and reconfigured from semi-legitimate religious heritages into a hypocritical, racist and sexist, anthropocentric cult of personality and fanaticism. The tyranny, genocide and mass subjugation performed by the filthy, bloodstained tentacles of your Holy Catholic Apostolic Church and all its puppet entities and dummy financial institutions is as heinous an act of malign villainy as has ever been committed, and it occurs in the light of day, applauded by boisterous mobs of enraptured subjects. It’s commendable, it really is. Such blood-draining callousness, such wanton barbarism, such murked wickedness. We are brothers you and I, legionnaires of death. Don’t you remember? We cut ourselves out from the same womb. Don’t waste your breathe Padre, let us entwine our barbed fingers, for together we can concoct such exquisite chaos and mouthwatering malcontent.”

“Qui pro salute generis nostri tua invidia perditi, humiliavit semetipsum factus oboediens usque ad mortem..”

He who to save our race outdone through your envy, humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death..

“Qui Ecclesiam suam ædificavit supra firmam petram, et portas inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam, cum ea ipse permansurus omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem saeculi..”

He who has built His church on the firm rock and declared that the gates of hell shall not prevail against Her, because He will dwell with Her all days even to the end of the world..

“Ergo, draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica, adjuramus te per Deum vivum, per Deum verum, per Deum sanctum..”

Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God..

“Per Deum, qui sic dilexit mundum, ut Filium suum unigenitum daret, ut omnes qui credit in eum, non pereat, sed habeat vitam aeternam..”

By the God who so loved the world that he gave up his only son, that every soul believing in him might not perish but have life everlasting..

“Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque æternæ perditionìs venenum eis; desine Ecclesiæ nocere, et ejus libertati..”

Stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the church and hindering her liberty..

“Vade, satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis..”

Be gone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit, enemy of man's salvation..

Explosively vaulted across the physical and virtuous distance between these two men was a putrid projectile, an expulsion of contempt, a gust its coconspirator. The coagulated salivary squirt was a conglomerate of gastric ebullition, nostril slop, fermented dental scum and various caramel colored pusses and oozes from infected teeth, gums and cold sores. The noxious cocktail erupted in a sticky spray that coated the clandestine breeze, commodiously transporting the range strike to its unsuspecting target. A toxic cloud of insolence and filth assaulted the castigating old man, penetrating his saintly demeanor. It splattered in tobacco tinged splashes across his gold rimmed spectacles, a bit of the acrid pitch inflamed the sensitive peripheral creases of his naked eyes. While most of the foul fluid doused his sun-spotted forehead and drooping cheeks, lathering them in slime, a portion cemented to his short lampshade mustache while another equitable fraction spewed into his articulating mouth via direct oral transmission. Vomiting ensued and part of the crowd rushed over to aid the collapsing Ruggieri until he waved them off, wildly swaying up from his knees with his bible clenched under his arm. The brown old skeleton doggedly rose to his feet and continued the exorcism, shaking in his robes, sweat pouring down the troughs in his face. The nameless man just laughed and laughed, a rapping sound like a fissure tearing open the ground or a mammoth wave slapping a stone shore or a shimmering bolt of lightning shredding the clouds, low pitched and decrepitating.

“Da locum Christo, in quo nihil invenisti de operibus tuis; da locum unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, quam Christus acquisivit Sanguine suo pretio..”

Give place to Christ in whom you have found none of your works; give place to the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church acquired by Christ at the price of His blood..

“Humiliare sub potenti manu Dei; contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine Jesu, quem inferi tremunt..”

Stoop beneath the all-powerful hand of God; tremble and flee when we invoke the holy and terrible name of Jesus, this name which causes hell to tremble..

“Cui Virtutes nomen istud et Potestates et Dominationes subjectæ sunt caeli, hoc indesinenter quem Cherubim et Seraphim..”

This name to which the virtues, powers and dominations of heaven are humbly submissive, this name which the cherubim and seraphim praise unceasingly..

“Dicentes: Sanctus Sanctus, Sanctus..”

Repeating: holy, holy, holy..

“HAAAHAHA HEHE AHHHHAAAAAAAAHAHA HEHE!.....”

“Better save your prayers for decent folk, Padre. This one here is just a few heel clicks away from feeding the worms at the bottom of an unmarked grave. I don’t reckon we’ll hear his sorry squawks when he’s buried six feet under being dragged to hell by goblins and ghouls. Why don’t you give it a rest son? What would your momma say, seein’ you up there spittin’ an’ laughing like a mad-man, carrying on so shamefully, right before you meet your maker?”

“Oh I don’t know if my mother would have much to say in the matter. She sort of lost her voice when I was born, as well as a heap of internal organs. What can I say; I was a very needy, grabby infant. But I’m sure it made for an eventful day for the country doctor at the county courthouse, a birth certificate and a death certificate all in one wagon ride!”

“That’s enough young man. No sense in speakin’ ill of the dearly departed now that my gavel’s swung and your noose fitted. The big judge sittin’ up there in the sky probably has enough scorned testimony marked against your spoiled soul as it is.”

What perfunctory sympathy he usually felt for those he’d sentenced to capital annihilation had completely eroded within the judge at this point, soured in his gut like green meat. This man was nothing to him, horse-shit stuck to the heel of his boot, malted hogwash foaming in the sun. Yet how could ultimate justice still feel so inequitable? Tragic pawns, passive hosts of death reproducing itself. Putting down vile men for vile acts leaves their stench on you, their skin under your fingernails, their curses echoing your ears. After being the eminent lawman, judge and jury with a chrome peacekeeper for nearly twenty years in this township, ghosts with bullet holes in their heads followed Yama around. If he looked over his shoulder he knew he’d see them standing there, garbed in caked blood and charnel dirt, forgotten children grown up. “Another for the spooks,” he’d tell the barkeep each night. With whiskey on his breath he’d sing to the sunrise, silky phantoms surrounding him. “There's blood on the saddle and blood on the ground, and a great great big puddle of blood all around; a cowboy lay in it, all covered with gore, and he never will ride any broncos no more..”

The sun beat down, acquiescing its focal zenith, heightening the midday heat. Its rays dissolved the gruesome gaggle’s shadows like the razing eye of god, whitewashing the hillcrest in solar bleach. High noon aproacheth, the awful hour of death. A brazen beam struck Yama’s copper badge, ricocheting off into the prisoner’s soggy iris, branding it like a blacksmith’s white-hot nail. The scorch only magnified as the lawman took limped steps towards the disheveled captive, his spurs and leather speaking softly. Nameless and noosed, the damned man recoiled at the brilliant bright, squirming in his chains, insulating himself under clinched eyelids.

“The time is nigh, boy.”

From behind the wiry judge approached the town doctor, a shriveled cob pipe pinned under his icicle white mustache and a hand restraining his charcoal bowler against the pull of the wind. His slacks brushed through the ankle-high wildgrass until the accused hinged faintly within arm’s length. Dhanvantari, the wizened backcountry surgeon, reached up as he had at countless executions to examine the machine of death. In a far off lifetime, or only what seemed to have been, Dhanvantari was a merchant ship’s doctor, operating on deck with rusty instruments in turbulent seas, pulling the captain’s teeth by crinkling wicks of sperm oil lanterns, sweeping puddles of blood into the sea. Those decades spent marinering the open ocean made his fingers as fluent with knots and lashings as he was with the braids of the spine or with tensile ligament musculature. This man had lost many lifetimes to the sea, swallowed by brine, swept overboard by swells, but somehow it always spat him back out, after due restitution. How many times had he thought he’d seen the sun for the last time as the waves closed around him and the surface fell away? Six? Seven? Perhaps he was still there now, drifting to the salty bottom and this, an illusion in the last rays of light, an eternity in an escaping air bubble. Regardless he thumbed the noose knot, testing its competence, ignorant of the murdering intimidation ensnared within it. He examined the loop, stretching it across the man’s Adam’s apple in strangulation simulation. By his determination death should be nearly instantaneous with the fracturing of the epistropheus. Dhanvantari removed his hands.

“Whaddaya say Doc? Humane?”

“Too humane.”

“Oh I wish that was up to me, hell I’d have him drawn and quartered already, each arm and leg’d be draggin’ through the desert in opposite directions by streakin’ stallions by now. But I suppose a bullet in the temple would get the job done too. No time to waste with slaphappy daydreams, we’ve got to adhere to the distinguished code established by our competent elect, those Washington monkeys and their executive goon. Is it whats-his-name Rutherford or wha-cha-ya ma-call-it Garfield after the last one of their confounded dog-and-pony-show elections? God only knows.. How’s about we get on with it? Next the accused is to be read their offenses but I’m sure all of us gathered here and now can well attest to the horrendous acts of brutality this man has committed. No sense in speakin’ of such evil since his deplorable deeds will undoubtedly torment our waking hours forever. But I won’t deny the prisoner his last words. Even an infernal devil can sequester some semblance of penitence from the Lord in his last hour if his voice holds even an ounce of goodness. What say you, rogue? Bless thy tongue and utter thy last words.”

“I have nothing to say to you people or your forlorn humanity. I was birthed among you but sever our kinship thereafter. Your bastard race of mutant hominids is the scourge of existence. You ungraciously tout your dubiously predominant intellect with one arm raised in self-admiration while the other quashes down your stricken brother, stepping on his pleading face and bruised throat. You feed each other into the teeth of the meat grinder for a few pieces of silver, sealing the audacity with a smile and a kiss. You’ve the blood of your father Ares and the fury of your mother Lyssa. Such horrific worm-like abominations of filth, I want no part of you unless you’re disinfected, dismembered, dissected and freeze-dried. But you have taught me much, much barbarity. Because of your imprint I am what I am, the distilled essence of your misanthropy, hate tincture. I am the anti-soul, the maneater, the devourer of fire and light, the siren of the necropolis, the falling reaper, Death’s dragoon. I am the one to whom the wolves howl and in my company volts of vultures and cackles of hyenas. Draped in my cape of babies’ bones and crown of thorns I have blistered the nightmares of the fearful since the dawn of man. In my wake spite suicides and human husks, desolation and brimstone. You cannot kill me, I am already dead.”

His taunt a command, Yama reduced him to mindless thrashing with a decisive toe-kick to the fruit box, sending it tumbling off before stepping back and affirming his capital judgement. Gasps ran through the crowd as the knot was tested for capacity for the first time, the charred branch held strong under the burden of the man’s now disintegrating ego. He expended his life force in feral flounders of wild muscle contractions, as if parasitic monsters within him wrestled to escape from their host’s diminishing body, spinning himself around haphazardly like a broken whirligig despite his wrist and ankle restraints. Clearly his movements were involuntary, spastic seizures of shocked nerve endings triggered by raging lightning storms of neuronal firing as distressed organ systems desperately faced shut down and annihilation. His already unsightly appearance became even more revolting in the absence of mental dispensation. Cloudy eyes pinched in their sockets, bulging outward in masses of crimson jelly as the blood vessels ruptured around flaked lids. Indeterminate sloughs of foamy fluids composed of various pasty consistencies, textures and hues leaked from his orifices, drooling off the dripping points on his face like subterranean stalactites. A scarred sliver of grey tongue draped from within his chapped lips. Eventually the jittery agitation ceased and the stillness was broken only by the swivels of his vacant body. His grizzled neck was crumpled in the noose, disjointed disks of irregular vertebrae pressed asymmetrically against the inner walls of his skin in nauseating bulges of obvious malformation.

In the crowd a woman began to wail, her immediate elicit reaction to the majority of external stimuli after such loss as befitting a victim who had been made widow by the now deceased bane. She pulled her black bonnet down over her eyes and reached for her threadbare handkerchief. Now what? A question she posed to herself, the fates, townsfolk, anyone who’d listen to her bereaved sobs. Her maternity scars and her wedding ring were the only remaining evidence of her curriculum vitae, her frontier family and their homestead ambition; stolen like the breath from her lungs. Somewhere along the wagon trail, abandoned in the gutter like a roadside attraction were the charred remains of her Manifest Destiny, a monument of torched wagon frame and scattered skulls. The thought of which drove her to nihilism. But revenge was an opportune emotional departure from the tragedy her faculties refuted as preposterous, incorrigible, a night terror to be expunged by the waking mind and the ascending sun. But confound it! There it was! That dastardly conflagration, a gleaming confirmation of calamity, the boiling skies its diabolic domain and drenched in its glow she simmered in survivor’s grief. Niobe willed the hellmouth open, to stride between its chasmal jaws. Her ample offerings of woe lured the rabid devils and unclean spirits from their untold ethereal realms but on upon arrival she was already of stone. A brooding destitute, an aimless golem of flesh and bone and tears.

From within the congregation Anubis stepped forth to dress and prepare the body for burial, a process which his coarse muscles and tired joints knew well. They were creased by the contour of the embalming tools, sculpted by a mortician’s toil; grave dirt under his cuticles from the raw tomb shoveled out this morning. He unsheathed a blade from his belt, feet advancing, to cut down the inert cadaver from its moored swing. Behind him his comrades held the reins of a bridled burro which had ferried the bound prisoner to this hill in life and would now from it in death. It shifted listlessly in its halter, braying nervously with whipping tail. He approached the hanged man serenely, detached, his mind distanced by the habitual funerary ritual he’d undergone so frequently this past fortnight with so many hideously slaughtered. But at rest his morbid vocation invaded the asylum of his slumber. Within the dreamscape he donned the suit of a jackal breathlessly devouring grisly messes strewn about by Death himself, scavenging meat morsels from innocents slain. But it was over now, the beast was vanquished and this would be his final burial. He extended his arms, blade in hand, to cleave the noose when the whiskers on his scruff spiked straight up.

The dead man frenzied into rampage by the scent of slaughter, riving the lull, summoned to survive by his colleague in chaos the razor blade. The tumultuous details of the next few moments can scarcely be spoken of, saturated with skirmish vectors and martial artistry but if one simply follows the slashes of the edge, its perforatory operation can be fluently plotted. In one swift motion his blueish corpse-hand swaddled the knife’s pommel, enveloping Anubis’. It then yanked upwards, burying the tip just underneath the undertaker’s chin, tickling his brain like a lobotomist. The next instantaneous flash of dynamism was the stiletto’s evacuation from his greymatter. It whistled as it arced through the air, tearing into the fiend’s own death-paled shatter-boned neck, sinking in and carving in a radial orbit around its circumference. In a splitting second the ruined mort had accomplished a series of obscene acts totally unforeseen, completely against the natural laws while still bound in chains, and as such, the throng was baffled immobile. Aghast with gaped mouth and opaque eyes before such ruthlessness, the man holding the burro’s reins barely noticed as it bolted off. Yama’s hand lunged for his holstered pistol as Anubis finally dropped to his knees.

As the last degree of girth was rent, gravity bisected the possessed’s brainstem, sending his feet to tread the earth and his dislodged cranium to roll it, unencumbering the blood-sprayed noose loop. At this point fright overtook the cluster and fugue became imperative. They trampled each other to flee this undead waif, careening down the hillside, never mind the trail with evil nipping at the heels. But one gallant soul delayed, familiar with the company of demons. Yama leveled his revolver at the headless monster loosing three rounds before it was upon him, lopping off his gun hand, hacking through his throat and spilling open his intestines in one mercurial, clockwise arm rotation of serpentine laceration. Like a tornado it bucked off Yama’s dead shoulders after trailing fingers relieved the weapon from his amputated grip, tumbling acrobatically through the gap between its next kill.

Scrambling to escape was Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, sprawling over his tailored robes, clawing the muck for leverage with gold ringed fingers. A cone of destructive force interrupted the priest’s bumbling with a tremendous boom of sound shattering. The slug pierced his temporal lobe just behind the ear, exploding from the other side in a plume of gore and smoke. Padre crumpled in the dust but his soul soared skybound on angel wings while cherubim and seraphim beckoned him from their hammocks, the clouds. Another righteous crusader of light skewered on the flames of evil and so sealed was his heavenly reward, obedient even in martyrdom to the cult he worshipped. The gates of St. Peter were thrown open upon on his winged approach, the celestial scene frescoed immortal by Nuvolone’s Milanese masterpiece. But the earth claimed his body, to the victor the spoils.

Twin claps of corkscrewing thunder plowed two more inconsequentials, their flaccid constitution summersaulted down an embankment in snaps of branches, dousing the underbrush with their blood. The doctor, Dhanvantari afforded a precarious over-the-shoulder peak at the proximate commotion between labored footfalls, just long enough to see Death’s skeleton-hand reach for his face. And then he was dragged to the frothy underbelly, towed from the shallows to breathless leagues of darkness, to the frigid depths, the domain of the leviathan and its swimming monsters. His cob pipe floated up to the surface like an epitaph.

Last alive was the half-hearted Niobe, tailed by her shadow of mourning. She fled on instinct alone, lusting for a peaceful deathbed to lay her head. She mused macabre that she’d be visited by twinkling visions of her loved ones, at last reunited in paradise after they carried her from her sepulchral bedstead, off and away into the white light. Her wits were unraveled by the poison of this unfulfilled conclusion, drunk with adrenaline at concept of such unimaginable pain of an undoubtedly savage mutilation. The tree line broke and a valley of Spring-bloomed wildflowers carpeted her clambering passage with purple street signs of knapweed and rushpink, golden sidewalks of butterfly weed and bahia, creamy bushels of loveroot and turkeypea. She sprinted through their syrupy bells with hiked dress and tapping laced leather boots, soon slathered with aromatic pollen. Their perfume seeped into her psyche, fumed by her exhausted inhalations, tousling her antediluvian reptilian cortex, the cerebral seat of fear and flight. The flowers drenched her in a calm, resonant bliss which relaxed her gait. Suddenly she stopped. Her shadow had dissipated and she found herself on the embanked edge of the lily field, below a river’s bellowing whitewater scrapped against huge agate boulders. A slight draft swept through the valley, undulating the buttercups and the tassels of her braided hair. Where had she lost her bonnet? She peered down and found it tangled in spines of sagebrush but her reach was interrupted by a blindsiding death. The monstrosity shoulder tackled her while her weight was unbalanced, tossing them both off the ledge of the cliff. It stabbed her repeatedly while falling, madly puncturing her face down to her abdomen with glossy lesions.

The white dashing crests of alpine water slapped the hurtling pair, bowing under their load and momentum. The sacred stream drew them into its clutches, buffeting their languid corpses with jagged rapids succeeding in the thorough pulverization of their now unrecognizable meat mishmash. Hunks of homogenous human peripherals floated downstream like the foodstuffs conveyer belt in a packing plant. A few flesh pocked bones flipped and twisted, arrested by the current as its skeletal companions swept by the festivities, a sanguine parade. Soon they were utterly mired on an outcropping of some rocks, the fisherman’s net of an eddy. Passing nearby Anubis’ knife head embedded itself in the iridescent quartz-spackled river bottom. Fast in pursuit, bouncing and bobbing like lost baubles in the whitewater, the two handcuffed fists of the nameless man inexplicably threaded a chain-link with the marooned blade. That duplicity of hand dangled there for years; shackled, shriveled rotten flesh, palpitating so near the portal to Xibalba. The subterranean aqueduct portion of the road’s journey began only a few hundred yards downriver, where the river water surged under the foot of the mountain. Underground, within its cavernous limestone bowels, the freshwater runoff engaged green, salty aquafers from the distant sea. An apparitional estuary, the nether-door to the underworld.

Unseeing eyes parted on the decapitated head of the desperado, pealing open the world. Though his awareness was distressingly limited, somehow the slurred outlines of shape and form came to mean something to him. A bush. An uncomfortable bush with prickly thorns and homely desert flowers, this was likely his setting, the bramble hemmed the borders of his peripherals like a picture frame. Central to his porthole of vision was the simple sky, an impressionist composition of sowed blots of buttercream and torpid sheets of blue. It was all too much, too weighty, too involved; it swam and swooned before him like a rocking bowl of water, filling him up, pressing him into the earth with its gravity. From his phantom body, he felt each toe, each patch of skin. Though he knew it missing, the nervous signals must’ve disseminated from a source, some sensory connection, or his brain seemed to believe so. The invisible air squeezed his surface area. Tightened tourniquets burdened him like a full body straightjacket or a collapsing cast. “A mountain must have fallen on me,” he spoke without lips a sparse cognition. The clouds seemed to descend from the sky, fused and swirled in milky stripes of fog and spewed into the man’s mouth, nose and ears. It retarded his lucidity and reason, soon laden with dusty dunes of bewilderment. The world was a mirage of dancing light.

Then the dam began to crack. He felt crooked fissures snaking across his skull and body like spreading vines, soon he would rupture and there was nothing to be done. Sure enough the bleeding cracks started to sweat the liquids from his body; blood, bile and lymph, and as they leaked they whispered a static hiss. Gushhhhhhhhh. The noise vibrated through him and up to his ears, he heard it as though underwater; berating, omnidirectional and boisterous. The gashes grew thick in sinuous ropes of entanglement, infesting ostensibly the extent of his being. And through them breached torrents of life-water overflow. The crevices poured out the viscous distillation with the cacophony of a thousand teeming waterfalls. There was nothing but the thunder, no room for anything else. Its density rose past any measure of volume until it overcame him, overtaking his presence by force of will. Suddenly it crescendoed and was gone, dissolving in a fizzle of diffuse ringing. The drainage had stopped as well, he was now presumably empty. He cried out from the hollow of his head but was not heard, his hearing had left him. What reverberated instead however was fear; a ping of hysteria. In absent mannerism he desperately reached for his face and found just ruined fragments, quivering lumps of lips and chin, like crushed scraps of a Mardi Gras mask. Hunks snapped off as his fingertips probed for a landmark, an eye socket, a cheekbone, something familiar to enshrine his ego but there was barely anything left. He broke his pointer finger off at the knuckle scouring a caved in nostril cavity in his mania. “Hell, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. What do I care?” his internal thoughts illumed apathetically, for his speech facilities were in white corroded shambles. From his powdered granules of ravaged carnage a breath of smoke arose, the rubble dust twirled up towards the void, suctioned into the lofty abyss where it surveyed from above.

Then flames reared up like pillars of plasmic light, engorged by the heat of combustion. Jagged tongues lapped hungrily at the abraded man whose consciousness was amorphous and unsensing, only dimly cognizant of self-presence. An incendiary holocaust raged sensation away. Every ounce of feeling was expunged in a deliberate eradication, neuronal overstimulation to excess until the connectivity wore through and the atomic structure crumbled in fatigue. The heap of blanched biologic matter was scarified to complete tactile stupefaction, unrecognizing even neighboring cells. Then the conflagration expired having extracted the last of its nourishment and his botch of body cooled off.

First the warmth left the deteriorated boneyard of his extremities, vanishing into ice like the last warm days of Autumn, blanketing the plaster hunks of disintegrating anatomy in inches of snow. Next to succumb to anesthesia was his chest of decrepit organs, frozen solid in their collapsed disrepair, forgotten now in the advancing permafrost of numbness. Last was his mess of frostbitten face, abandoned in paralysis, left to entropy. A nearly bare mindscape was the man’s totality now, devoid of light and motion, vibration and sound, texture and touch. His being was only tethered to locality by lingering senses of smell and taste which now dominated his concern. Driving columns of bellowed air churned in opposite directions within lungs and sinuses that he knew were imaginary figments, apparitional muscle memories, repackaged experiential data. Astral nostrils flecked with astral ether intake, sifting its contents. Each unlikely breath was a kaleidoscope of pungent samples comingled from various lifetimes and experiential encounters: a fresh peeled apple, steam off quenched metal, damp mattress body odor, a musty draft from the root cellar, miscellaneous tails of perfume on a street corner, etc. Soon faded had the aromas’ potency, gradually sojourning elsewhere. The circulations of invisible current also ceased and without its tidal oscillation there was stillness. But before its last drags a cloudburst of amber sparks, an eruption of fireflies to festoon the sparse canvas of nothingness. “Where do you lead, oh wavering stars? Abridge this inked abyss.”

That was when an even more extensive purgatory of nothingness descended on his bleak reality of senseless ambivalence. Abandoned in a crawlspace of the universe, dreary anathema, doldrums of inaction, his operative reality was staggeringly reduced to a naked impression of existing, as if lingering on the threshold of non-being. His lifeline was taste; last vestige of a world that had all but forgotten him. His formless presence diffused into the surrounding unknown at uncontrolled random, performing its forsaken duty because the possibility of anything else did not exist. Stimuli drifted in and out of his localized perception like a filter feeder’s chum, exotic glimpses of a fully realized world beyond this low dimension, rationale for perseverance. This continued for an imperceptible interval, perhaps ten thousand years, perhaps a hummingbird’s heartbeat. Over time the meaninglessness came to mean even less to the erratic coagulation of man, now only a remote ancestor of his worldly persona devolved and inbred. It tongued the grey brittle of its immediacy, probing the filth and cobwebs of its hermitage for traces of vim, for even a hint of neurological input or residual aftertaste, anything to subdue the mental paralysis. “I’ve no business left here. Take from me what you will but don’t leave me in this hall of mirrors.” And at long last the candle flame was extinguished, leaving the smoke to dissipate and disseminate throughout the universe, replenishing omission, stuffing lack, becoming again.

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