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Jan 27, 2021 18:42
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here we go i guess ~ Onwards, Babel (906 Words) Broken glass and broken dreams, thus, a vision! ... In the lanes and avenues where great men did great works, lost eternal, Babel. Words cast unto dirt, slipping from the mind as sand through a sieve, thus was its legacy, thus was its curse. All fallen, rendered to dust, where only wordless lamentations are sung. A barking call, a tongue garbled, sung from gaps of strewn rubble! heralding as in times past, two men greeting each other as equals in the wreckage of a world where words were lost. A mirror, stark and revealing, for difference between them was obliterated for a moment, gone by the force which stripped word from their minds and replaced it with chaos. Vision sharpens, and things become known, not by the word, but by their movement. How does one convey these things without a form to build from? A mighty tower, carved of grammatical law absolute, hewn from mind, thought, and idea. A scaffold on which to build an ascent into the heavens, dashed to the ground in thunderous violence. All is lost! Ah, all is lost. To lament what one cannot comprehend is to be human, and as they could not comprehend, so too did they curse their fate. First, a howl, a chaotic jumble of words mumbled and broken between them. Both glared wildly, gnashing their teeth and curling their arms, clutching close anything they could that would give grounding to their world. Shattered meaning clawed at their minds, fragments of something, but ever more, the lamentation, the howling of loss, the grief of dissonance. Both were rendered quivering, gripped with the curse’s might, but one swallowed chaos and fire, sealing it within their gut, and moved. To build a tower anew requires a foundation. A gesture, at first, pointing to something nearby, conveyed without sound, conveyed without needing to know the words. The eye drawn, understanding gleaming like a coal in a fire, rising into a blaze. They spent time, as all do, learning, gesturing, pointing, deriving meaning all their own. With their hands and their feet, their grimaces and their grins, they construct the scaffold, putting together pieces. Striding across wreckage and grief alike, holding each other close, standing against what was, is, and could be, they began to understand. Where one could not rely upon the word, one could rely upon emotion and deed. ~ Where did the hours go? When time soared without consequence, when food filled the stomach and company grew closer, meaning drew always from the visceral, the felt, the act. They knew well of each other, from the time they had spent together. One was to be known as Points-Forward, for they were quick to point, and the other was known as Arms-Outstretched, for their strength was great. Arms knew much of the ways, of trekking across ruin and bog, while Points knew of other ways, when others failed, to push through and break… Fear? Perhaps that is a word that could be used, but words held nothing anymore, only hesitance and a wall in the mind that could be felt. Where one had words to describe the act of overcoming adversity, they now had the rush of breaking through what was impossible. The roar, the din, chaos rippling through their minds fell away as in their acts and motions they became as one. Casting away the remnants, the tower began rebuilding anew. A life spent in contemplation of nothing but acts and deeds blurs together, a collage of emotion and movement. The scaffolding crept up more and more, as a sound was added, perhaps to punctuate, perhaps to denote, as the actions they could do made them realize what else could be conveyed. As they lived, so too they thrived, and as they understood the world, they understood themselves. Between them then, an understanding of the whole! … Their place together under the firmament, sealed with an embrace, a gap closed, and hearts made into one. So was love found anew, now without words to carry it . The world sang as all things became known, by what they did, how they made one felt, and more and more, the ruins of the old were broken down to make room for the new. Time rode upon the wind, and life sang with its vibrancy, as they moved on from lamentation. But never, ever, could they escape from the inevitable. ~ One day, Arms stopped moving. Nothing more remained. Nothing more could be said, whether by movement or word. But like fear had to be overcome, this, too, had to be broken. A hole was dug, a thing, no longer a man, thrown within. The clay and dirt from which they came, piled atop as if to erase them whole from existence. Finally, a stone, placed atop with reverence, a reminder of movement once made. There was no word for anguish, there was no word for sorrow, there was no word for anger, and there was no word for the one Points loved. Once again, that wall, that irresistible wall, loomed over Points, and once again, they pushed through. Upon that stone, scrawled into the rock with a scrap of metal, was the unmistakable sign of what once was, meaning defined in that moment in a mind that could not know words, but knew of action and pose. One brick layed down, the first of many, to a new tower, to a new beginning. 'T'.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:14
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Feb 16, 2021 23:35
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i dug myself out of a "war criminals that never faced consequences" Wikipedia pit to edit this and give it to you Mess (831 Words) "So,” an easy going voice drawled, from the primordial chaos. “It didn't go as planned?" "Not quite," spoke a reedy, thin voice from a man seated in a quilted plush chair. A blistering assault on the senses drowned out everything, save the shattered remains of a dressing room where Ilas regarded the collapse of existence. A drawn-thin wraith of a man, eyes hollowed by years of failures, Ilas tampered with the lines between the mundane and the divine. This was his fate. “You really did make a mess of things, pal. What, you thought you could just violate a few laws of reality and everything would be fine?” The voice manifested as two eyes, with scintillating irises of indeterminate hue, and a mouth, wide and leering, without lips. Ilas regarded this as normal at this point, after all, it was hardly the wildest thing that had happened. “Well, yes.” The inventor coughed for a moment, as motes of the dressing room drifted off into nothingness. “According to Wellenstrom’s Theory of Conservation of…” “But Wellenstrom was wrong.” The mouth grinned a wide and leering grin, teeth winking in and out of existence. “Turns out meddling with the conservation of metaphysical forces as it relates to mechanical processes on a sub-divine level is a big no-no. And so here we are.” Indeed, there they were, amidst what was presumably the end of all things, a whole collaged mess that Ilas couldn’t look at for very long. It hurt the head more than all the absinthe and the opium and… Oh. That was it. Opium. This was just an opium dream. “Here we are, yes indeed. You seem to be quite intimately aware of my work. Have we met?” A relieved look came to Ilas’ face as he slipped into the comforting knowledge that this was a hallucination. The face spun wildly in place, its teeth then spiraled outwards into a thousand splintering fractals before reforming before his eyes. “Met is kind of a funny word to use in a place without time, friend. Before what you did? Nope. As a result of what you did? Or will do? Probably.” The grin stabilized into a jovial face that reminded Ilas of home. “Never seen this design though, fantastic work. Craftsmanship like this comes only once in a few millennia, you know.” The beacon sat on a pedestal floating off near the corner of the dressing room. Copper interlaced with bronze, silver, and gold alike, glinting with entropic potential and delight, crafted by a hand obsessed as much by the occult sciences as by the mundane. Ilas stared at it dumbfoundedly, as if the knowledge of it appeared in his head from sweet oblivion. “Well, yes, there were common running themes throughout a variety of source materials that related to…” The face cut him off with raucous laughter, eyes bubbling something that dripped off into the void. “Mmhm, yes, and you certainly solved them all out perfectly. Drew the power of the heavens down to Earth to bring about a new age of prosperity.” Ilas’ eyes lit with recognition, the hurried campaigns, the meetings to raise funds, how much time and effort he had put into his search. “Been looking for an awful long time, haven’t you, Ilas, my boy? 20 long years of searching for the golden key to the proverbial kingdom. Regular things didn’t quite work. But that never stopped you, ha!” Ilas stepped up from the chair, motes bubbling from it as it, too, began to slip into chaos, voice sounding a tad stronger "Well, yes. The common themes between divine traditions culminated in a common pattern. The natural world couldn't account for the math, so I looked at other means." "Other means, other means, he says! Oh yes, no consequences at all for setting up an unrestricted divine conduit into the mundane world. You hit the proverbial reset, bud." The face sneered at him, the lips beginning to bubble too. "A thousand divine symbols, woven into each gear and sprocket, an immaculate conception!" The cracked and split corner of the dressing room, too, began to fragment and twist, wood shredding and warping itself into tangential angles that winked away into the rest. Ilas hadn't noticed, however, eyes locked on the beacon. "So what happens now, if you know everything that's happening?" "Well, that's simple, my boy. I finally get out of this horrific mess of an existence." The eyes sizzled and burned away, the edges of the lips splintering away into nothing. Some force, unbidden, pushed the beacon towards Ilas as he caught it in his hands. His eyes locked with it, mesmerized, the writings upon it spinning in harmonious circles. "As for what you'll do about it, old chum, you've got the power," The words burned in his mind, a thousand symbols for the divine sinking themselves into his brain. Once again he was lost in the madness, seeing the scope of all unfolded before him. "You figure it out."
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Feb 21, 2021 03:18
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thanks a ton for the critique, time to work on it
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Feb 23, 2021 03:23
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Pththya-lyi posted:Thanks for judging fast and judging good, all! When you think of an entrepreneur, do you think the wondrous heights of success? Business conducted, precisely, men in suits briskly running to and fro, but never missing a beat, thanks to Richarsson's Droolmop. Richarsson's Droolmop, overcoming salivary overhydration one Terry cloth at a time.
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Feb 23, 2021 04:49
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in, gimme a far off land
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Feb 23, 2021 13:55
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Yoruichi posted:CRATER AREA FORMER HOME OF TRACKING SITE are the savage bat tribes involved
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Feb 23, 2021 20:17
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Yoruichi posted:You tell us VALID thanks
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Feb 23, 2021 20:29
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here we go here we go here we go here we go Bat Mission - 1500 Words A special mission, they said. For someone of special talents, they said. An explosion, the first of many this morning, sent both a cloud of birds from the jungle and a cloud of rifle-armed bats from the entry vents well above head level. In front of Atra loomed the biggest complex she had seen, and above the massive fortification rose the skeletal finger of a transmission tower. Atra sprung into action with a surge of raw power as the guards were distracted, sprinting towards the base of the wall and then leaping up, climbing the sheer concrete surface effortlessly. This mission's paycheck was to be the best yet, and there was a hell of a reason for it: she was heading right to the last place any self-respecting gorilla commando wanted to be. The center of the Bat Empire, and its Tracking Base. A ping rattled through Atra’s head, a few brain cells shaking loose. That ping was what let the bats organize their military, spreading across South America and disrupting trade. Normally, the ping was inaudible, but bats could hear how it echoed. With that ping, they could know where everything was. Instantly. As a result, they’d expanded their influence into the Caribbean and even more northwards. Coastal air raids were nearly constant on the shores of the Tiger Empire, and although the state corporations that effectively ran the country cared little for loss of lives, they did care for loss of profit. Plenty of eyes were turned to what was happening in South America, and plenty of ways had been devised of neutralizing its effect, but the best way to stop the ping was to cut it off at its source. More than a few tiger tycoons put together the big bucks to fund this venture, so she had the best gear on offer. First came the suit, a fluffy affair that funneled sound around her. It seemed rather porous, but the way it rested on Atra’s fur annoyed her. The presence of both loose gauziness and tightness was an unpleasant feeling, but as long as it kept the bats from finding her, she didn’t care. Climbing up the sheer concrete, she crested the lip of the entry and went further in, the remaining guards swarming about in confusion. Inside didn’t seem to be much better, as random clicks and chatters rose amidst the hallways, multiple bats rushing past her. Atra pressed herself tightly against the wall, avoiding contact with the bats rushing to and fro. The suit worked its wonders, as none of them seemed to even notice she was there. She inched along the wall, continuing to avoid contact with anyone or anything, before slipping into a dimly-lit maintenance corridor. Within, a bat worked off to the side, welding frames together. Atra took a moment, a moment too long, as the bat raised its eyes towards her, making out the vague black vastness of her shape. Its eyes widened for a moment as it lunged towards the other side of the room, towards a panel. Atra dove for the bat, before whipping her mighty fist to crash against the bat’s torso, propelling it against the opposite wall with a sickening crunch. That bat had covered twice the distance she had in the same time, that meant she needed to get them quick or she was never going to make it out of here. The other goody that the tiger trillions bought for her was the smallest bomb she had ever laid eyes on. The whole thing was covered in warning labels and tool marks, but the eggheads who made it assured her it would work "very well". Sticking to poorly lit maintenance areas, Atra pushed further in towards the center of the base. As she did, she was struck by two things: she was going down, and there weren’t an awful lot of people. Only a few personnel seemed to be staffed to the inside, and almost all of them seemed to be unarmed. The vast majority of the security seemed to have vacated their posts in order to respond to the explosion outside. It was funny in a way, to pass some of the technicians and troopers by, listening to their clicks and chatter as they gossiped. What they were saying was beyond her, but it amused her to no end that they were missing the gorilla in the room. Finally, she got to what seemed to be a central control station of some kind, slipping past as a door slid open for a technician to get inside. It had view ports into some kind of engineering area, possibly a reactor for the emitter, and it was there and then that Atra knew she hit the jackpot. Slinking along the room, she slipped past a few techs before activating the bomb and stowing it in a trash bin near one of the consoles. All in all, this was so far the easiest mission she had accomplished to date, really. She was surprised something hadn’t gone more wrong, until one of the bats saw her, its nearly-blind eyes focusing on her. It screeched and slammed its hand on a panel nearby, as a high pitched klaxon began to blare. Time to leave. Lifting up a table and throwing it at the encroaching bats, she retreated, sprinting to the corridor. Clicking and screeching followed behind her, and came up from ahead. Atra simply ran forwards as fast as she could, stampeding down the hallway towards the troopers running towards her. She didn’t stop moving, even as they began to raise their rifles, and slammed into them, her mighty fists tearing them asunder before they could fire a shot. The hallways were sparsely crowded, and what little engagements were left were with a disorganized and chaotic force relying on one of their worst senses. Atra rumbled through the hallway, an ill-defined blob of silent, black death that loomed over the troops beneath her. Breaking out of the entryway where she had come, she sprinted for the treeline once more, shots rattling out around her, one catching her in a graze across her shoulder and a few more rippling through the fabric of the suit. Leaping up into the branches of the jungle, she grasped a vine and began swinging, as a mass of screeching bats careened after her, gunfire echoing and bullets whizzing their way through the canopy. The bats could fly, certainly, but keeping up in the thick of the jungle was something only she could do. With grace and ease, she swung through the air, diving between cracks and crannies as bats crashed around her into branches and trunks alike, tangled and screaming. As the last of the pursuers broke off, Atra enjoyed herself for a moment, swinging leisurely through the jungle up towards the mountain to the south. It was where she approached the base from initially, since the bulk of the mountain blocked the sonar, and it provided a useful extraction point. Settling on a branch near extraction, Atra relaxed, looking off into the distance at the mighty concrete structure below. With a thunderous bang, the bomb went off, a crack splitting the entire structure in two, eliciting a cheer from the exhausted commando. Then, something unexpected happened. From afar, she saw a flash emit from the cracks in the structure, before a cataclysmic heave happened to the earth beneath her feet. Turning away and running as quickly as she could, the earth buckled and cracked as an obliterating light and sound destroyed all thought but the need to run. The only important thing was to get to the other side of the mountain. She could hear the ground beneath her splinter and quake, the rippling of the blast’s shockwave rolling through ground and air alike. Diving into a cave large enough to fit her, Atra shielded her head with her arms and waited for the end. A roar and a shaking that threatened to tear the world apart were her companions for the next hour. There were many times she was afraid the cave would collapse, but to go outside would risk far worse. After an agonizingly long moment, it ended. Once it had subsided, she made her way to the entrance, picking away fallen rubble. Emerging to the outside world, she beheld an apocalyptic spectacle. Her side of the mountain was a devastated wasteland, the ground torn to shreds by some unearthly act. New rifts in the earth were formed, sea water rushing in. The mountaintop above her seemed to be sheared cleanly off by the force of the blast, and as she peeked around the corner, she understood why. A massive crater now filled the valley and well beyond, stretching well past what she even thought was possible. It looked like, quite literally, the entire Bat Empire was blasted back into the Stone Age. She stood at the rim of the Crater Zone, and spat into it. “Never liked bats anyways.”
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Mar 1, 2021 03:38
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You did NOT just loving say what I think you said You really hosed!!! up giving us (me and my wife), a SMALL FAMILY OWNED MORTH CAROLINAA American BUSINESS... a one-star review on Yelp Our PROUD FAMILY TRADITION... mulching small ethnic children into feed for hogs SUSTAINS OUR ECONOMY, and meanwhile you and your LIBERAL! STAANIST! PEDOPHILE! friends complain about SAFETY STANDARDS... and NORO VIRUS well let me tell you SOMETHING punk I LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE!!!... and you and your dirty communist ideas about DISEASE TRANSMISSION and FEED STOCK dont matter any to me I have ALREADY... contacted the AMERICA SHOOTERS SOCEITY HUMAN ASSAULT TEAM our local brave militia and TOLD THEM about you... AND YOUR COMMIE TREASON and they TOLD ME that they have a GUY that WILL FIND YOU!...
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Mar 2, 2021 21:40
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in, to force to forge, becomes smith
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Mar 3, 2021 04:47
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Signed On, 1,522 words. ~ Work’s work, and you get it while you can, ‘cause if you don’t, you get snatched up by the Gov’s Ruddy Boys, and get sent off to the front. Folks who go there either don’t come back, or don’t come back right. All’s gotta be for the war effort, don’t you see. So I -- a professional layabout by trade and heritage -- haven’t the dosh to pay off the boys or go to moneyed halls of knowledge, and so I found myself looking for work. The foundry’s always looking for out of sort types, folks to do what have you around the works, so I went and signed on, expecting hard work and honest pay. You signed on for a few years, not only for the security but for the living space, even if I didn't get to see Paul or Levin anymore down at the Gopher Hall. Not like listening to either of those two louts helped me any. I was assigned to a crew under Foreman Janssen, a gent broad in frame and heart from what I learned of him. A few others: Hans, a mute giant of a man that I never saw break a sweat, Leon, who swore organizing under every breath, and Kal, an empty sort of person missing a few fingers, whose eyes still held battlefields hidden behind smiles and jokes. We worked on the main lines for a year or so, and it went as well as we’d hoped, even as the boom of shells rolled closer and around every hill. One day, things changed. The front was moving closer, and though we still needed to show up, the military would be moving in artillery in the lots near the works. With the military, though, came new investments and new tooling, ‘cause the steel we were making wasn’t getting made well or fast enough for their liking. First thing we noticed about the new tools was that something wasn’t quite right about them. They felt sticky, like they were covered in pitch, and clung to your hand. The tooling and furnaces were off too, it never seemed to get warm itself, but everything around it was hotter than hell. Speaking of the heat, something rightfully was off about those furnaces and the heat they made. Heat was one thing, but what this thing put off weren’t a regular heat made by coal and coke. It weighed on you, it seeped into you. “Don’t like it, not one bit. You, Isaac,” he pointed to me. “You rethought organizing?” Leon piped up, as he always did when something he didn’t like happened, which was constantly. He didn’t have the guts or spine to do any of the work and neither did the rest of us. After all, we were signed on, and it was better to have a roof and a wage than dirt and your freedom. “You always loving say that poo poo, Leon.” Kal spat the words out with an exhaustion we all knew well. He’d been twitchy around the artillery, as if he knew something we didn’t. “When are you actually gonna do it instead of trying to convince us? The way you’re talking instead of doing poo poo, you’d think the boss hired you to find union folks.” That gave us all a laugh, Hans cracking a broad smile over by his position by the crank. Leon shook his head. “Nah…. Nah, I ain’t doing this. Never felt worse in my life.” He slipped out in the middle of the night. Kal confided in me that he thought about the same, but he never quite mustered up the strength to run. “Fate,” he said, “It’s just fate for me to end up back here.” The crank was the strangest part, as it was right next to the furnace. Steel flows out of a normal furnace, but this thing cranked it out like a thick syrup, and it needed to be cranked. Constantly. Hans didn’t mind it, and he was just fine standing and cranking all day, so after a few days of us trying to swap out, we left it to him. We all settled into jobs on the new equipment like that, some of us just moving towards places that felt right. Janssen oversaw us and coordinated what we were doing, Hans turned the crank, Kal ran the mixing, and I filled the molds. One day, the shelling started. All we could hear was Kal’s screaming each time the artillery fired, but we tuned it out, because there was work to be done and no one else would do it. Funniest thing, it seemed like working with the new stuff just got harder and harder day by day, but the steel just kept on coming out of that furnace, like meat from a grinder. Janssen’s barks became louder, harsher, his voice going shrill and grating as it had to carry over the din. I saw him cough at the end of the day, and saw something on his sleeve as he passed silently to bed. It wasn’t anything normal, but it looked like soot and slag, straight from his lungs. We all got worn down from the hours worked, sores forming on our bodies from the heat and the strain. The company doc said it was just stress, and we should just make sure we get to sleep on time each night and never miss a shift. The sores ached something fierce, but work made the pain stop, even as they oozed black foulness. I don’t know what even kept us going. At the end of each day, we simply shook in our beds, no longer speaking anymore, ears ringing with the deafening roar of artillery. At one point Kal stopped screaming and we didn’t even notice, marching back into our places every day. One day, Foreman Janssen doubled over in a coughing fit in the midst of work. He clutched a railing, heaving for his life as his eyes bugged out. His throat was bulging obscenely, something seeming to rise from within. A sickening wet sound came from his neck as it split clean open, black sludge seeping from the wound as oily black steel grew out from it, forming into a box with a speaker on it. His eyes widened in terror. I was the only one who was watching him, and even so, I was so busy filling the molds, I could not help him. He mouthed the words to me, over and over and over, ‘help me’, but once the sludge cleared from the voicebox, it crackled to life with a booming and jarring voice. “GO-OD MORNING WORKERS, LET’S BE PRODUCTIVE TODAY!” We never had a problem hearing Janssen over the noise anymore, even if the way his lips moved never matched the way the speaker roared its hellish racket. We hadn’t even left the foundry for days at this point. Why bother stopping? The artillery from outside never stopped either, the booming rattling each of us to our core even as the speaker crackled out reports and work statistics none of us knew the meaning of. It was a new kind of hell, as if we were the ones being forged into something rather than the steel we were working with. Hans had it the worst. He barely looked human anymore, sunken skin and eyes that simply looked ahead without seeing anything at all. I wondered if that’s how all of us looked. I watched him as he refused to break, but instead I saw something break in him. Hans' shoulder twitched, spasming in fits, glassy eyes staring ahead as his mouth went through the rictus grimace of incredible agony. His skin swelled forth as something pushed from beneath, before a pipe burst forth, steel coated in black ooze. The slime bubbled onto the side of Hans' head, a dull sizzling noise coming from his flesh. A low moan was all he could muster, before a loud whistle of steam screamed from the pipe. Foreman Janssen's accursed voice box roared out raucous applause coupled with the grinding of gears and everyone stood and clapped. I clapped. It went like this: We sunk ourselves into it. Everything faded but the artillery’s roar and the belching of steel and that sickening oily black steel that churned into the molds and churned under our skin. Kal slid into the mixer one day. Janssen’s voice does not speak in human tongues anymore, only the crisp churn of mechanical gears slamming into each other again and again and again and again and I never paused to look at myself. I looked around, and all I saw was equipment for making steel. I looked down at my hands, and leaned down, down, further down still, so I could kiss the oily molten metal beneath me. I pressed myself down against the steel underneath me, warmed by it, as I molded it into shape. I did not know what foulness it would be used for, I only knew the shaping of steel.
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Mar 7, 2021 07:48
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In with "The Eye of Argon" by Jim Theis. The persistence to abandon all reason, cast off all doubts, and write something, however bad, is the reason we're all here. This is not a good story. This isn't even really an absolutely terrible story. It's poorly written, obviously the author's first work, but what it DOES show is that the writer, for better or for worse, has a thesaurus, has a lot of misconceptions about how words work, and has passion. What strikes me about this story is the willing abandonment of reason or logic in a profane and loving ritual to the tropes and fixtures of a pulp barbarian story. It is a work of love, and thus, one to be cherished. Gimme a hell rule. fishception fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Sep 8, 2021 |
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Sep 8, 2021 17:49
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Barbarian Inspired by Jim Theis' Eye of Argon 1427 Words ~ All doubts were cast aside, all accomplishments sundered, when the Barbarian came. The shepherds from the hills saw it first, like a patch of the world that shook and would not stop. It moved across the lands, bringing change in its wake. Wild grass grew where farms were tilled, weeds grew fresh where they once were plucked. I, Sapth, know this, for I saw it in the barley fields where I worked, and saw my work undone. I saw it, where it rippled and touched the crops and left dust and cracks, made crop decay, and made dreams, fevered and glorious, into reality. My barley, and all the others, were made into dust. I lamented, but left my fields, for there was nothing left to tend. I took axe in hand, and I followed it from a distance as it spun, whorls of itself spiraling outwards to afflict all around. I did this, so that others will know what happened to my home of Shapish. I passed roads, once with the ruts of trade, now dust and rough scrubs, a blasted heath that did not resemble home. I saw homes, now desolate and broken, hungry eyes looking out from the shadows within. The places I knew were no longer what they were, with skittering shivers of the thing running down the lanes and alleyways, their forms shifting and changing before my eyes. At the end of the road lay the gates, with bronze lions clutching lapis stones within their jaws. A pall was cast over the land, foreign red gleam shining from on high, and I knew it was soon to end. As I saw, it crawled its way over the gates, and where its whorls spun, the nature of things shattered. The bronze fell to pitting, the lapis stones ground to powder. There was a man I knew, Nahil, who worked at the gate and kept it safe with spear and shield. He charged at the Barbarian as I followed behind it, peeking my head from behind the decrepit gate. As he charged, one of its whorls caught him up. His body warped and twisted before my very eyes, his muscles bulging and growing before he was a hulking brute of a figure, armor and weapon alike. I looked in his eyes for a brief moment, and I did not know the man I saw there. There was an alley I ran down as quickly as I could, the buildings looming and shifting before my eyes as the crowds screamed horror. Those caught by the whorls were changed, made into a mockery of themselves, as if an atavistic streak was planted upon their soul. Everything moved too fast, as if the world could not catch up to us, the red sky overhead churning as a multitude. I sped myself down the alleyways and roads, trying to see where it was going. I saw the telltale signs of its work, and that was enough to keep me on the right track. Buildings became looming, people became unruly, the streets became a strange mix of party and riot. Wine of no known vintage overflowed from fountains, their color matching the sky overhead. The further I ran, the fewer people I saw that I knew, til the faces became indistinguishable blurs. The other end of the city walls met me well before I was ready for it, and as I ran up the now abandoned towers, I saw that it had not gone through the city. But as I looked backwards, I knew, truly, that this city was no longer my home. The great temple, where we give our tribute to the Great Bull of the Heavens, seemed to be crowned with the thing, as it wriggled and whirled itself in circles around the city. People streamed, driven by the unholy bidding of the Barbarian, climbing the steps of the temple and throwing themselves down upon it in prostration. There was wailing, there was lamentation, there were all the usual marks of a great tragedy, but even still, their faces rose towards the peak of the temple, where rose a figure, standing atop the great altar. The mayor, clutching a knife up and holding it to the sky, brought the crowd to silence. I knew him well. Ilabrat had spent many years administrating problems within the city, and his wisdom was known far and wide, but this was not the same man, though he wore his skin like a burdensome cloak. Where he opened his mouth, words, screams, and pleading came in equal measure, where one could not tell where one started and the other began. The words he spoke resonated through the city, and I saw the reviled thing atop of the temple shiver as if in anticipation. I climbed down from the tower, looking to get closer. Those who were not under its thrall, such as I, were hidden, but hiding would do no one good in this moment. The words rang in my mind, in a way that I could not simply ignore, but I could not simply understand either. Closer and closer, I approached the compound of the temple, skirting around and entering through the side through an unguarded servant’s entrance. As I got closer, another voice joined the cacophonous chanting, this time a scream. I climbed up again to see what it was, and before me I beheld the strangest sight. A woman, or what I assumed was a woman, was staggering her way up the steps, but where I could see through the diaphanous veils that covered her body, there was no skin there, merely twists and turns and hidden things that make the skin crawl. She did not struggle, not in a way that seemed to matter, as her legs took her, shakily, jerkily, up each of the brick steps. It was almost as if strings were hoisting her up the steps like some kind of twisted puppet, making her dance up to the top and to her fate. The screams that came from her were bleak, but also carried within them exaltation. The congregation writhed in ecstasy, howling to the sky, distracting a sentry for long enough for me to slip by and deeper into the temple complex. I saw the priests within deep cloisters as I crept, daubing blood in sigils and spirals. They rattled and quivered as if they had a life of their own, and the priests drank deep of their secrets. I turned my eyes away, lest I drink too, and lose myself as they clearly had. I crept to the top, climbing along some stonework, feet soft and silent against the bricks. The screaming and chanting had not ceased, though it had levelled off into a wailing keen that defied comprehension. I strode closer and closer to the altar, from behind, and stared at Ilabrat, cavorting and lost within the whorls as much as any other person had been. His eyes alighted on mine and he babbled incoherently, spittle flowing over his chin in a foam. In that moment, he was not guilty. I knew that the Barbarian had him within its clutches, and I knew that the knife he held was destined for someone’s throat that didn’t deserve it. None of the others deserved their fate either, and as I stared across the crowd gathered, I raised my axe, and I hurled it, as hard as I could, towards the center of that terrible thing, that spinning mess of whorls. Perhaps I thought I’d do one last act of confrontation, perhaps I had gone mad in that moment, as mad as the rest. A sound like fabric tearing, like glass screaming, echoed out from it. The crowds gasped as one, and froze. The Barbarian folded inside of itself, once, twice, again and again, until it became nothing more than a gem, floating down to rest upon the great altar. As it touched the rock, it melted, flowing around the altar as if the very touch of the earth upon it repulsed it. It flowed, down through the crowds, and where it touched them, they melted away as if they never were. All doubts were cast aside, all accomplishments sundered, when the Barbarian came. Most of Shapish died, and the places where we could live still writhed and twisted in the whorls that had birthed it. Even now, it is a place of horror, of grim tales, but of those of us that survive, we speak of its doom, so that others will heed our warning.
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