Chapter 11: Chapter 12: The Hues of the Lady

Oh, very well, child. If you're certain about this pilgrimage to Machrae Diir--and you should cease calling it a pilgrimage--I will do my best to prepare you. Do you know the meanings of her colors? Their warnings and their lessons?

Yes, the colors. Wh-of the Lady’s spectrum, what else?!

Well, no, they do not. Whatever this color psychology of yours is, it is surely a taught thing. Perhaps the Lady has a color psychology of her own, but if so, it’s hers, and I doubt very much that her hues will mean any of the things you expect them to. Fool child.

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I mean. Blue used to be the girl's color in your world, and pink was for boys. For a few decades only--before that, no one cared. That's the trouble with going to Machrae Diir, child. It's the hub of the million-spoke wheel. It's the sunburst lacing its searing in every eye that looks too close to its place in the interwoven horizons of all. The truths of the Lady are written in its every age. And they have a way of teaching themselves to you when you meet them, whether you can survive the lesson or not.

The hues of Machrae Diir were laid into their meanings by the ancient days, the vicious days, the days of her scorn and perfect hate of the imperfect. The Epoch of Accretion, when she called forth the wraiths of ancient volcanoes from the morass of unattained potential. When she shaped mountains and forged empty cities of glittering star-steel with a sweep of her hand. A young outer devil surrounded by worlds too full of themselves to give her a canvas. She had to destroy, you see? Create enough emptiness to work with.

The hues have never forgotten those old truths. The destroyer-truths.

If you know the meanings, you'll have a chance to know when Machrae Diir is challenging you, when it's beckoning you. You should take those as warnings, child. Those are the times you know you must lower your eyes and fly away.

The light is first. It reveals all the colors, true. But you must learn to think of it as a color unto itself. The more glinting there is in something, the less you should trust it. The glints are the mark of the ageless inferno.

Yes, the very same. But you must not speak of that creature.

The sheen, the shifted hues of something split by a caught ray--you must watch the reflections in Machrae Diir with utmost care. When their color is a little too vibrant, when their shapes are not quite like the shapes of the matter-mirror they birth from--flee. Hide. Every gleam is an echo of the rosy tyrant’s hymn, the forbidden hymn, the first sign of the infinite name and the infinity of infinite Words.

Gods? Oh, poor child. The mightiest god is such a lowly thing once your eyes have seen the colors out of outer hell.

Of the hues themselves, then--a color is not just one color. It is a multitude.

All mean something different, but to mean a different thing does not prevent them meaning the same. Some meanings have been lost and other meanings have been obscured for terror of them. Machrae Diir’s most favored guests are not above that folly. The bitter misstep of punishing fear for its warning, and so robbing ourselves of the one sentry that might stir us from the sleep of ignorance before the mortal harvest begins.

But enough. I can find no further nuance to hide in.

In its dimness, blue is the veiling nocturne and the harbinger of winter. You can trust a silver moon on a blue-shadow night, as long as the shadows are still deep enough to call shadows. In those times, seek the deep reaches. The Lady will guide you to gifts, revelation, and all the bounty of lustful dreams made manifest.

But do not put too much faith in blue. When it is bright and sharp, cyan or turquoise, you must be wary of it. This is the invitation and the infection, the socket, snare, and the spark.

When blue is deep and undeniable and too blue for the other colors as cobalt or azure, it may be too late already. For in cobalt, blue is become the gatekeeper and the key, the promise and the revelation. Azure is the threshold, the betrayal, the tyrant in self-rebellion. They are obsession and ascension, the wild abandon of the seeker and the furious ecstasy of annihilation's hunger.

What? No, foolish child, that does not mean you are safe in red. Did I not say that EVERY color is a warning?

In its dimness, red is anticipation. It is the promise not of the threshold but of an end to all thresholds. Whether by smothering or piercing--oh, red can be either. Red shadow is the cycle and the succor, the lulling--unless there is a glint in it, or a liquid seep. Then it is blood, and blood is the most ill-omened of all substances in Machrae Diir. Blood is the fuel of the mortal soul. The currency of endtime.

Hm? Well, yes... yes, I suppose blood could be any color at all. Take what I have said of red in flowing, then, and remember it for every color.

Oh, that cannot be helped, child. Try not to think about the rushing in your veins when you are in Machrae Diir. And if you must think of it, do not think of those thoughts escaping your mind. If that happens, they will escape, and the denizens will hear.

Ah. Yes. I suppose that advice was more harm than good, wasn’t it? Let’s move on.

When it is bright and sharp, as scarlet or the red we so often think of when we say red, red is become the ruin of all order save the order of ruin. It is the antidote to antidotes, the venom that poisons venom--the dissolving of all into the morass of the death spiral.

Of course, when it is faded, red is not red but pink--whether of the rose or other. Pink is the hue of the lost screaming for rebirth, of the self-forsaken and the mad--unless there is nova in it, or it is itself of nova born.

Then pink is the color of the self-agony embraced. The destroyed become the echo of the destroyer's deeds upon them. The hollow in its emptiness taking the shape of the scathing who made it. It is the false-true promise of life preserved by birthing into the end--and in truth it is so very, very hollow.

Yes, I suppose blue could be just the same if there is nova in it, but we will not speak of that. The Lady is the very same mad devil who thinks to claim such irradiance. To risk sending ripples to her is to risk meeting the ones she will challenge with ripples of her own.

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Enough. Let us move on.

Green in its dimness is the balance and its decay, the refuge and the prison. Green gives promises in earnest that only a liar could keep. A green night or green fog presage only the most meaningless dreams--except when they are dreams of truth so awful the psyche must hide it.

Hm? Oh, child, it does not matter if what your human eyes call green is magenta to the eyes of a soul in the flesh of another species. In all its wheelings, that color in Machrae Diir is as I say it is, not matter how it appears to be through different eyes.

Now, when green is bright and sharp it sings the bitter awakening, the rising into the power unsought, the calling denied. When it is faded and pale it is melancholy and spite, but when it is ripened to vivid emerald it is zealous embrace of the once-unwanted--innocence forsaken.

When there is nova in it, green is the entrancing we should throw off yet cannot deny. The whisper without an echo, the breaking chain and the toppling pillar, the root and the branch each devouring the other. The consuming for consuming's sake.

Then, of course, there is purple.

In its dimness it is the withheld word and the fastened door, the off-note in a song half-remembered. If you should enter a purple night, go swiftly and loudly so it will be certain when you have left. It will be worse if there is no moon. The gleam of purple is the clawing that hates its escape, the lightness as burden, the heart as its own stopping.

When there is nova in it, it is become the glee of self-immolating fire. The dominion of dominion broken. The drunken wonder of loving hatred. When it swells to violet, it is the caress of skin unraveling, the lock without a key. Sinew reshaping the bone beneath, the inverse plummet of another truth's apotheosis.

Hm?

Oh, child... ALL the colors are corruption. All the colors are its expurgation. That is Machrae Diir.

That is the dimension, and its Lady.

In its dimness orange is the wellspring, the harbor, the vessel forever on the brink of filling. It is the gallop and the smolder, the promise that could yet be kept--so long as no other promise is given. You will rarely find moons or light to guide you in orange shadows.

When it is bright and sharp, orange is become amber: a bated breath, an aching shudder, the tearing soothed only by its deepening. It is a scent too sweet to forget and too painful to keep hold of, melting into cold, burning into shadow. When there is nova in it, orange is a razor gust and the breaking point. The terror of a threshold one needs to cross but will never find.

Oh? Yes, I did forget one word of the threshold--green in its dimness is not the cross or the breaking, but to become the threshold itself.

Yellow in its dimness is the glance over the wall, the barrier where the watcher stands, the needless blotting of things written only in dust, never ink. It is what you read in the words no one writes, the substance found by seeking the seams in substance.

When it is bright and sharp yellow is the gnawing sight of emptiness in its full truth. It is surrender to a realm of no thresholds at all, submission to the rule of the dustless circle on a dusty altar where no idol has ever stood. When it is bright and sharp, yellow becomes gold. It is the warping of all the other colors just as they are the warping of it.

Gold can call the nova into yellow, yet never becomes it. As gold, yellow is the dream that must be shared to be felt, but frays apart in the giving. When there is nova in it, yellow is the sudden whip for a shallow cut, the echo of its own diminishing. The rotting crystal, the purified rot. The promise despite every oathgiver's plea for its breaking. The threshold crossed before we knew what thresholds were--even our own.

There are other colors, for the wheel is a lie and every shade of Machrae Diir is unto itself its own color. But these are the ones I know.

Hm?

Yes, child, there are warnings and meanings in the colors you and I cannot see. You will just have to hope they are shared in the ones we can.

What of shadow? What of shadow indeed. Yes, you are right... if the light of Axiom is its own color, and it is, then so is the shadow of Axiom. You will know the true umbra because it needs nothing to cast it. It flows against the rays as well as away around their borders.

The umbra is the realm that ends beginnings and ends--neither becoming nor unbecoming, but simply to be. It is the refuge of its own horror, and all the colors and even the nova are hidden away where it runs deepest. When the shadows move of themselves, you have found it.

Yes, child. Much like the ones in my eyes. I have poured too much into you, I think, to give you away to this pilgrimage. But you were in Machrae Diir all along. Some day I will tell you what a dimension truly is, and why it is not always a bounded and clear thing.

Besides, your eyes are open to the colors. The ones outside will hear the knowing, and scream to fill it sharper. Be wary of the glints in the cutlery drawer. Even here, we may not be safe--but I will keep you as close as I may.

That is no request. I am, after all, umbral.

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