Chapter 1: Drinkers Of Dust

Othomo had no memory of waking. He merely became aware of the weight of hard packed soil and the struggle of reaching through. Power flowed slowly through the inannis within his chest, kindling his fingers with heat that parted the earth surrounding him. Darkness ascends. So he emerged from his deep tomb, stiff from half an age of sleep, and sat for a long time, hunched and wounded, while traces of strength trickled into his limbs. The air was cold, the sky was brown, far and faint was the sun.

He nursed his weakness until the nearest Pillar of Seasons pulsed, spreading a burst of splendor that bordered on ineffectual. The cracks in his iron flesh glowed again, and the dustlands about him became a little more dead. He used this surge of strength to turn his head and scan his surroundings. There was a broken tower and the ruin of a stable, but otherwise the land was barren and cold, with no more than rocks and mold reflecting the half-light of the sun. A river of steam cut through the tundra spanning the northern horizon. Nested within a rotten tributary was a dust town; a cluster of shapeless heaps piled around a bell tower and a well. A gust of wind came from nowhere, searching for leaves to rustle, and choked as it ate cold sand.

Yuluru. Othomo sighed. He knew beauty. He knew peace. He knew love. He knew the taste of blood and the smell of slaughter. He stood, slowly, stiffly, and turned to the sound of a child.

It was clothed only with soil and scabs, its hair a matted tangle of insect eggs and splinters. It sniffled, sobbed, or wheezed, and stared up at the tall and weary knight. Othomo extended a mailed hand. The child looked dumbly at his smouldering gauntlet, then knowingly at his faceless greathelm. He withdrew his hand and counted the child's ribs through dirt and sores, then looked back at the dust town. Something on the bell tower moved.

He reached out with his heart and felt almost nothing in return. Weak.

A large, heavy cloud of dust swirled beyond, spiraling but not travelling. Between the homes and the vortex were rows of tilled soil. There was food, such as could be grown here. Suvius beans and oilcorn, and the fleshy, wrinkled black roots that turn mortal bowels to water, but put an end to their hunger for days. They are a salvation for them when food is scarce. Such times were common in these lands of dust.

He looked down at the child, opened his right palm, and pointed with his left hand at the town. The child sniffed and nodded its scabby head. Angel. Othomo led the child to the dust town with long, slow strides; a tired gale.

It was some time before the dustfolk came out of their midden heaps. The sky had turned the color of damp sand, marking the time of waking when so far from the high spires of Avon Lasair, where Arun sits beneath his crown. There the sky is molten gold.

The bell tower was made in the likeness of Noctis. Lavish and obscene, she writhed about the rotted post with voluptuous form and serpentine limbs. From her mouth came many tongues, under her brow were many eyes, her hair was flagellum.

The dust folk emerged blindly, going about their tasks with automated detachment. It was a placid old female who first noticed the ashen lord and the starving child. She looked first to the child with delayed realization, producing a morsel from a pocket in her robe. The food looked as palatable as the dingy garment it was stored in, but the child snatched it away eagerly. The woman then looked at the tall knight of black iron that burns among shadow. Her face wore the stupified wonder of a peasant looking upon a thing not part of the daily doldrums, until her slack jawed gaze rose to his greathelm. Black and faceless, cracks running upward that glowed faintly with orange fire, crested by the hair of a dark horse tail. She covered her mouth with both hands, and would have reached for one of her fellow townsfolk were she not trembling so violently. As it was, she could barely stand.

Othomo pointed to the child, then the woman's soiled roughspun, then the rows of seed growing beyond the village. A youngish man with sparse hair and pinched cheeks came slowly out of the gathering crowd. He bowed nervously, gestured for someone to come forward, then steepled his white knuckled hands before the timeless soldier. A pair of adolescents came with a burlap gown which they handed to the child. The pinched man looked pleadingly for mercy, and Othomo nodded before turning away.

When he was some distance he heard the rumbling of speech, a dry and airy noise when coming from dustfolk. They mumbled the mimicry of words; grunts and hums and hoots, meaningless gibberish but close enough to the real thing to convey mood. Something small and desperate tugged at his cape, which is made of the fabric of the thing not yet made. Othomo stopped, his head turned, the child wheezed. Behind it on the ground was the burlap gown.

The townsfolk watched with quaking knees. He looked at the child, then the burlap gown, then the rows in the soil. With a hand he pointed to the huts of the dustfolk, shelters from the cold brown sky and storms of heaven-flung stones. The child shook its head, touched the garment, touched its scabbed over skin, scratched furiously.

Othomo stood still, deep in unfathomable thought. His mind, a black pool of then and here and there and now, swirled in its infinite mass and purpose. He took Friend from its makeshift sheath and cut a length off his cape. Where the garment was cut, shadows wove their roots through the air and healed the wound. He handed the riven piece to the child, who wrapped it about its scrawny body. The shred of the cape wove itself into a glove around the torso and waist of the hungry little beast, which showed its teeth to Othomo in a ghastly smile. To convey his amusement, the risen one's helm glowed softly for an instant. Vessel.

The pinched man came close, his arm under the shoulder of an old one. The elder lifted a hand with fore and mid fingers raised, thumb extended, remaining fingers folded. His mouth mimed words.

Othomo shook his head. You are not mine, he wanted to say. He was a lord with no lands, a king without a crown, an emperor who would never sit a throne.

The child took the corners of his cape in both hands, grunted and pulled. He took his cape away, and again pointed to the dust town, though he sensed a future fondness emerging. The child pointed past Othomo's shoulder, and before he could look he felt the nearmost Pillar of Seasons again pulse autumnal fire into his carbon veins. Beyond the town the crops withered, and a puff of dust shot out of the well. His shoulders sank, and he walked slowly back.

When by the rows of dead seed he outstretched his hand with his palm to the ground, and from a distant void the inannis drew breath. Sprouts of beans and shafts of wheat grew in the furrows where rancid food had just turned to rot. What was taken channeled power to a womb of distant stars. In that vast retort all things gather, the great centrifuge, locked away in osmium halls, gifts are taken back and held until the coming of what is to be has been and is. Othomo can draw from that well, but it is far and deep, and the sowers of rot that were born from dust took the fruit of his strength and stowed it away, eating what could be spared without alerting the dread scion atop the bell tower. While they hid the bounty, the dreadknight slept, his faded strength slowly returning.

They took him to their smithy, that hulk of black iron, and laid him on a bed of glowing coals. His flesh drank soot and cinder, and bilge dripped from the crack between his helm and gorget. He woke briefly in the dim of sky, clouds the color of dirt swirling above the visage of that whore Noctis. As above, so below, and her face has many eyes; she is a ravenous thing.

A trio of stars pierced the sodden gloom of the dying heavens, so dark was that evenday. The pinched man was standing watch in the center of town. By some force he stood aloft, raised above ground so that his head reached Noctis's navel. He leaned back and looked to the three stars, now and then twitching as if a power coursed through him. Othomo watched him through a crack in the smithy door, and drifted between worlds of then and now and hopefully soon. He saw the noble metals, fading from their forced exertions and mounted on grand scepters. A curtain was raised betwixt them, and there was healing, serenity, peace. Sleep took him, and as he drifted into a dream, the pinched man rose higher.

 

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Do you come to kill us?

No.

Then why have you come? You have no gift to offer but death. You would shroud the source of life, what we protect and preserve, and extinguish all that is.

I come to give mercy.

You are a liar, and a bringer of sorrow.

There was a tower, not tall, near a grand fort on the border of the two lands. On the hour of his guilt, the Pale Queen Selenne sent her emissary, and golden Arun sent Sulphina, the first born of the Mighty. Lord of Goldenmount and Lady of Silvertree often sent their avatars in days long gone, to pass secret messages and to watch for the enemy. Mortal guards fought for a post within sight of the musical sphere so that they might steal a glimpse of these blessed beings. On that hour they climbed to the top of their small tower and saw the Nimbus Sanguine, the portal that returns the relentless shadow.

 

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The child wore the strip of his cape, a curtain of the nameless thing that was yet to come. Where it covered the little mongrel there was no light, no fold of fabric, only the color of void. The mortals dare not say the word (to be truthful, few but those near the citadels knew it), and the wayward of the Mighty wished to wish it away. But Othomo said it to himself when he came lumbering out of the smithy and sat by the well. The child grinned and threw a rock at him. It made a clang and bounced off his greathelm. He reached and poked the child's sides where his cape had cloaked it. Its flesh was fuller than before, and there was a color like fire in its cheeks. It grinned proudly, and again Othomo spoke the word of his shroud in his mind.

Dimday, the dust folk called it. Evenday was an old word they did not know. There was dimday and brightday, and the vacant hour when their dust returned to the ground. The old man who made the sign met his vacant hour as Othomo sat. His kin sang a dirge while the others danced, and at the first of brightday he was scattered over the thirsty furrows of farland seed. Goldencorn was growing tall, ready for harvest. Othomo would have granted them more of his boon, but he needed all he could siphon from the womb of the cosmos for his labor. But perhaps, his work would begin here?

After several cycles had passed, he perceived the pinched man's absence. He looked about the populace, but he could not be found. Some had gone foraging for meat, if it could so be called, and some went on a hunt for water. He tarried until the parties returned, and the man was not among them. During that time a young girl vanished as well, and the dust folk looked at him pleadingly. He worried he may have caused their plight, so he turned to leave. One look back, and their faces had not changed, so he took long strides away from the village. The child came, of course, and tugged on his cape, but Othomo was the liberator of light, bringer of dark, and had the strength to stand against a tumult of mountains. He went on despite the child's screams.

Another scream turned him about. It came from the visage of Noctis. He peered into the dimday gloom and saw nothing but the brown haze of half light. He did a thing not yet done since he would slay Sulphina; he uttered the summons of his deep breath, which wore away at the weariness of the land, and the rotting air subsided. Through the clear path he saw something move atop the bell tower. He strode closer and saw the pinched man, slowly lowered by a long sallow cord.

He looked upward, and there he saw the terrible crown sprawling claw-like over the whore's flagellum hair. Legs, eight, long and stout, with stiff hairs like spines. The head had more eyes than the statue, and a trio of fangs with hollow tubes for the injecting of emulsifying fluid and the suction of liquified souls. This is a bulbweaver, maiden in terms of age and evolution. These envoys from a land more feeling than matter, these throneless queens, laden with breath amidst a formless spirit taken to spider aspect, they are the torturers, the devourers, the disgusted ones. They climb high places; towers and steeples and obelisks, primordial spires and lightning struck trees, so they can look through the eyes of the decider. Had these dustborn hoi polloi the sense or reason, they might look at this ashen wanderer and see in the bulbweavers an answer. Of no mortal flesh were they made, yet mortal flesh they wanted. This one was afraid, as in the dreadknight's breast beat the rhythm of spirit's undoing.

Othomo drew Friend, drank of the sparse heat in the dimday air, gathered ohr within his free hand and with it pulled Noctis down. The bell rang as it collapsed, and the maiden screamed. A child was stuck to one of her fangs, many days dried out. The maiden rushed towards Othomo upon landing, then withdrew, realizing that one of the oldest stood before her. She had cause to pause, to birth a berth, to not ride the tide of her ire. Othomo gave breath.

She shrieked, spewing soul water and rot from her tubes. The dark horse tail was lifted by a wind that sought to rustle leaves. Othomo could feel the pain in the earth beneath his charred black sabatons. Friend rattled in his hand, thirsty for Fiend's blood and the justice of the Radiant Soul. Those who choose may wander, free of judgement, lest corruption sully their dark hearts. But when thou becomest a Fiend, thou art marked for judgement.

Othomo cast a shadow of the unborn thing across the space between him and the rebellious spirit. To chafe against chains; glory. To chafe against walls; unity. To chafe against order; collusion. He lifted his left hand, hunger and hate coursing through his fingers and black flame out his palm. The maiden cowered, turned, then returned and lashed out with a clawed leg. She instantly recoiled, her blow missing, uncertain what to do against such a thing as Othomo. Poisoned motes of dust gathered about her many fanged labrums and chelicerae, and before the weary hunter could strike, she let loose her call. She erupted in a cloud of dust that onced loved and cared and dreamed. Friend was joyous.

Othomo stood vigil throughout the next week. Dimday and brightday alike, he remained in the place where the whore once stood. What power there was in her likeness that was not wholly tainted, he drew into the inannis and purified it with the devil soul; that is, apathy. The maiden called, he knew, to those she came plummeting from the black ocean with. There were six of their ilk, the false makers of silk, the predators and pre-daters, the antediluvian and slaves to oblivion, the finders and binders and winders. Sickened by vitriol, diseased of mind after spiraling alone in the unmade void of Yettobebutmaybenot, desperate for an excuse for their unaimed angst, in the half alive space between the noble metals, they came to inflict unjust pain. A maiden called, another would come. Perhaps, Othomo hoped, they would all come together. Ilk attracts ilk, and mood attracts mood. He could turn one on the other, should they approach as one, because one they are not.

The child stayed by him the first three changes of light, then took to playing with the dust children, then took to working with the dust folk. A woman gave birth in that time, laying still on her back while her belly split down the middle, the thin skin layer giving way to a veneer of red. The wind blew her excess dust away in sheets, leaving the granular form of an infant. When the babe had grown its skin, and her belly came back together (imagine a flower unbudding, its petals closing together swiftly and forming so tight a bond there looked to never have been a seam), the child made false coos and the mother mumbled elation. The next day, when she mumbled screams and the villagers cast their eyes to the ground, Othomo knew another bulbweaver had come.

As his prey did, so did he. The soil around his sabatons grew hard and dead, and through his black iron veins coursed magma and quiet lightning. The middle three rows of the crops withered again, but better the dust folk go without a few meals then continue being fed upon by Fiends. Before the answering maiden revealed herself, Othomo had time to wonder how many Fiends had come while he convalesced.

She leapt at him, spraying the sticky wet thing from her many pronged mouth. Othomo felt pain as the spittle ate away at his cold flesh. He reached outward with a hand to catch her, but she wrapped her legs around his arm and scuttled around to his back, tearing with clawed feet and hooked palps at his cape. He would have screamed, but his voice was not for such a vulgar purpose as pain or fear. Instead he blazed, glowing white with rage and malediction. The maiden's voice was a purposeless atrocity, and she used it liberally as the dreadknight chastized her with power from the dark places of Genesis. The white of blinding emanated from the cracks in his hide, searing her with guilt for the radiance she'd long ago spurned. Her thick and gummy skin boiled over in viscous sores and she sprung with all her knobby legs at once, her lesions weeping as she flew.

Othomo stood still, watching her closely as she scurried in a circle around him. That's when he saw the child, sneaking from behind a hut with a rock in its hand. The rock steamed from some unknown might, but still Othomo bid it to stay with a look. This is when the maiden attacked, charging straight between his legs. Halfway to his waist she stood, the height of a mortal man. She flattened herself and took his ankles in her mouth.

She was strong, terribly strong, a vice that no mortal could hope to escape. Once taken, a man or woman or boy or girl would linger in agony as long as she wished. Tears would fall slowly from a side turned face, while a person who once dreamed and loved languished in hopelessness and disgust over the disturbing horror of having the hollow fang of a wicked beyonder siphoning the substance of their body at a leisurely pace. In such a state, one was consumed with the insignificance that is stapled onto every mortal coil. The fire of heaven burns in the mortal heart, and the stars of the vast forever wheel about in the mortal mind, all dancing according the whim of the individual. Yet poke a sharp thing into a mortal's tummy, twist it a little, dink around a bit, feel the shapes of what's inside, take a souvenir out for curiosity's sake, and oops... it's dead. All gone.

She was strong, terribly strong, a vice that no mortal could hope to escape. Othomo is a mountain, and could be a maker of mountains, if he wished to be. The relentless shadow could hope to escape from a maiden bulbweaver. He wrenched a leg free and kicked her hard in the teeth, then brought his fist down on her even harder. He struck her head, knocking several fingers and toes out of her tangled mouth. She spat, hissed, cursed, scuttled, leapt. He kicked and struck, and brought down a boulder of unseen force from the air above, pressing her down with pure contempt. His engine growled with fury as he reveled in the feeling of sacred might flowing through his carbon veins. Dark is his blood, and empty is his mighty heart, so that the Nimbus Sanguine may feed him from afar when his ascendancy is in full, or his return necessitated. Long ago he'd been struck down, by lovers desperate to protect what sight had blessed them with. He was tired and weak, but each movement of battle reminded his infinite muscles of what they were. He clenched his fist, bringing the force of condensed wind down on the bulbweaver until her weaving bulb was a puddle.

They had come together, at least a few of them. Two more maidens came, leaving the matron and the empress behind, perhaps. Othomo threw Friend into one's head. It plunged deep into a pustulant eye, but she plucked it out with a pedipalp and cast it angrily aside. She was larger than the first two, and the other was larger still, their knees rising to the dark horse tail that streamed on wind that sought to rustle leaves.

He thrust out with his strength this time, shooting a beam of flame that is the marriage of red and blue, fire and ice. Deep, glowing purple light beamed, tendrils of innanis lightning crawling up the shaft as it bored a grievous hole through the wound left by Friend. That maiden, healthy and in the prime of her young morph, rolled to the side, curling her legs as she tumbled. She retched, fawned at the wound with some obscene appendage, then rose again and renewed her charge. Her larger sister had already closed with the dreadknight. Othomo grappled with her, punching with mailed fist and kicking with cruel sabaton. She was long legged and spindly, but her limbs were strong and she eventually held his eyeless helm in her pedipalps. Friend longed to be in his hand, NAY!, her gullet, spilling her corporeal parts onto the ground. Fiend and Mighty were both knit together in their own masquerade of flesh; coils and sheets of abyssal armor that housed whatever engine matched their purpose and mood. Friend longed to become acquainted with either of these beast's intimate aspects. But he was tainted, bid to lay still by the mouth of the maiden.

Othomo made do. He felt vitality resurging as he wrestled the irksome creatures. Where the dust folk were, he could only guess. He imagined they would be gathered near, watching hopefully as the great spirits collided. Now and then he caught a glimpse of the child as he threw one maiden aside and throttled the other. They would rise like a storm tide and struggle to pull him down. At times they did, but he always rose, angry and strong and lustful for carnage. At last he came into his own, and he held the larger bulbweaver over his head and split her in two. The dark horse tail waved through the air like the hair of a sea nymph, and above it opened a small tear into which the maiden's blood poured. She now had never been. The other trembled in terror, seeing Othomo to be the promised cataclysm long awaited. She wailed apologies to the Radiant Soul, whom only the Starry Ones knew, but Othomo rose in the air above her, casting an impermeable shadow about her quivering pile of legs and mouthparts. The shadow turned hot as the golden sun, cold as the silver, and the space between her atoms grew hungry. Her shrieking was a thing no ears would soon forget. Othomo excruciated her before bringing her to an end. She would prey on the weak no more.

Where there was a foe, there was now nothing. Only he now remembered that she had been, for the void knows the gifts it reclaims. Above the curtain that Selenne and Arun spread over the world, to shield their fortress nations from the scrying eyes of their fellow Starkind, the stars themselves shine. In between them is the womb that brought Othomo into being. He was the unlight, the black sun, the coming and enveloping silence. Given to him were weapons too fear inspiring to be understood by even the Mighty, save those of cosmic birth. Arun knew his power, as did Selenne, but Othomo knew theirs as well. He'd fought them before Sulphina's begetting, and was soundly vanquished, though he was then in his full strength. When he slew their precious daughter, he felt the force of her fourfold ohr tearing holes in his dark heart. With their crowns donned, they were glorious. He came in glory once. Now, he would tread softly.

The matron's foot blotted out the sky. Othomo dodged, then felt a swarm of hands take hold of him from above. The matron had lowered her head and opened her vile orifice. The thing that she called her tongue, but others would call a blasphemous monstrosity formed in mockery of both phallus and labium coated with mucus and blood and an ooze of something born out of hate and sin and the reversal of what was deemed good and successful and healthy for the enjoyment of existing had lowered from the opening in her remorseless face. Bodies were embedded just within the member's oily skin, kept alive by some heinous fluid. Their arms were free so that they could feel wind and soil, and the touch of each other's fingers; painful reminders that made their prison all the more unbearable. They clung to Othomo and passed him upward, groping at his iron body and clutching at his cape. He could hear their muffled screams, see their faces writhing within the thin translucent membrane of the matron's disgusting thing, and he could discern the meaning in their words. They wanted to die.

The matron lifted him high off the ground. The victims wailed at him, a communal, tortured organism mad beyond fathoming. All manner of mortals were clustered together in there; dust folk, mud folk, sea folk, tree folk, wind folk, stone folk, iron folk, beast folk, gem folk. Even some of the lesser Mighty were in the agonized mass. There were nymphs and sprites, minotaurs and chimeras, an infant wyrm shuddering within its chrysalis. Friend had twisted free of its shackles and came flying into Othomo's hand. He cut away at the 'tongue', and slit the throats of all he could as he fell. He dug his knife deep into the end of the appendage and swung onto a palp, then leapt onto one of the long, iron hard hairs that sprouted from the matron's nearest leg.

She moved silently in spite of her monstrous bulk. Each foot left a crater in its wake, but made no sound. This observation frightened Othomo. The Fiends had to die, all of them, or else his labor would be for nothing. But this old thing was bloated with conquest, while Othomo had wasted in a prison of cold earth after being vanquished. And there was the dowager, wherever she be. He was not strong enough to defeat these corrupted matriarchs, and he did not have his sword, so a thought passed through him. Would you send a treasure through dangerous lands with no guardians? Would you conquer a fief and leave no garrison, or send an army unsupported? Do fortunate daughters wed with no dowry? Should thy will be done, thy hand must not shun.

Othomo found his way to the ground and dodged the stamping of the matron's feet. Many times he was not able, and his hard flesh was dented and rent. At last he fled away from the dust town, swiftly running with measured strides, now and then hurling breaths of the cold to come at his pursuer. She was vast, her legs long, her spite far reaching. Their minds touched as she gave chase and he gave sport. Long ages of waiting gnaw, so why should one wait? Never was this her intent. The Fiend is the mighty of spirit, while impatient of heart. One could ask if such a thing were true of the first of thieves, but perhaps they're argument is convincing. Dunes of soot and dust boulders rolled under the feet of the giants as they traversed the planes. Othomo stabbed the matron with thoughts, reminders, questions, while Friend grew jealous of the zweihander the dreadknight yearned for. Keep your Friend close, he was told, but your Foe closer. It would seem the thieves stole that as well.

The dreadknight found himself in a mobius strip. Pain kindled within his wounds, and bilge roiled within his helm. The matron was unyielding, determined to stamp him out.

Why?

The answer scratched at the insides of his armor. YOU ARE A SLAVE, AND THINK NOTHING OF THOSE WHO CARE FOR THEIR OWN DESIRES.

He was not surprised she saw him thus.

His body was weakening, his spirit fading, he could not escape her sting. Each swipe of her thorned feet, each caress of her disgusting siphon, each brush of an iron hard hair, drained him of essence, leeching his inannis too dry to channel even a droplet of ohr. He fell to his knees, felt the weight of mountains slam onto him, felt his vision fade, felt the world slip away, felt his future hurtling toward him at quantum speeds. The matron slammed a foot down on him hard, pinned him down, and took him into her 'mouth'. Othomo felt himself pressed by knotted muscles made smooth by a boiling slime, and was amidst the nameless ones who wail within the monster's flesh. Lost as they were, so the dreadknight was, to the lands unfinished where time echoes off the walls of the tartarian world.

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