Chapter 7: All Songs Are Heard

No.

The Radiant Soul was good, though at times unfathomable. Othomo sighed, then heated his armored fingers and began tearing free of the matron's... tube. Shadow emerged from bleeding rubbery skin, and weariness fell to the ground. Atop a high mound of bones they were, a sad blanket to cushion the dreadknight's fall.

The matron had been slumbering, and woke with a terrible scream. Laughter echoed beneath the dark horse tail, and the thoughts of the deep sprawled before him. In the halls of Aurora, the Waiting Queen, promises chatter endlessly, echoing in much needed refrain, that those in tartarus may adjudge forever Yallah's crest. There is no birth like the birth of the Mighty. Light gathered into a point so small, that even by itself is it occulted, to negative mass so that flame sparks in the kiln, given impetus, cosmic prodding, magni consilii emergence, and in an outward maelstrom the aether has eyes. In his infancy, Othomo was the softest of babes, swaddled in the thought of Oroboron and Itara, who's combined hearts gave spirit to the nova betwixt their love. Three more were there from them, each before and after the other, for Oroboron's first boon is the Oculus Omnia, and his sight through those eyes can wrestle time into a knot and make it its slave when the heart is strong enough; no easy thing to accomplish.

The matron had been slumbering, and woke with a terrible scream. There were tears of multi colored light within the smouldering greathelm, and before the old hag could rise, a few embers escaped to waft upward past the dark horse tail. The wind that was ever close to the shadow took them in its hands and said a prayer. Darkness weeps.

Hadeon was born in chaos, and was the lodestone for said tempest. It was said he had no boon, but a curse. His thoughts on the matter were unknown, as he was at all times too distraught to speak. He took to hiding in remote places within the void, limping reluctantly to battle when called. The void was his perambulator, and so when he was deemed too mad to live, his spirit was blended with the void, rather than extinguished, and a small piece of it sobs for him and him alone. There the inannis drums softly in his dreams. Hadeon sends his strength to his brother, so much as he can but not so much as to wake the echo that can once again become a chorus.

The matron rose in terrible pain. Friend rattled loose of her... tube, and dropped to the ground, having caught its point in the gummy proboscis and making for itself another tear beside his master's. Othomo picked up his dagger, and held it by his waist while forcing himself to gather ohr from the lands about him. There were still souls in torment within the matron bulbweaver. It was time to end their pain.

His sisters, where were they? Noctis! You filthy whore, they know what you are.

His sisters were precious to him. Asteira taught him how to write poetry, and Aurora taught him swordplay, and often he would find them singing gentle songs outside the door of Hadeon's august ruin to comfort him. It was Aurora who beseeched Phosphora to craft Hadeon a mirror that showed only his courage and compassion, before the firmament was built and the lights were shackled. Hadeon would look into that mirror during his urge to vomit the storm that constantly seeks refuge in his deep inner vaults. They would hear the pained sound of his retching, but his tears would be gentled by the reflection shown in the mirror Aurora gave him. When his purging was so great that it damaged any of the embryonic pillars of future tartarium, Asteira would add her poetry to the reflection shown in the mirror Aurora gave him, and in time, he would cry himself to sleep. It was from his sisters that Othomo learned affection for his afflicted brother.

As the matron rose to her feet, Othomo became aware of the massive curved spires that surrounded the mound of death she perched upon. Bones skittered down the heap in the thousand thousands when her silent feet pounded downward. She must have feasted while Othomo awaited an answer. She was swollen beyond what he remembered, so much so that she quickly lost her footing. She stumbled, tottered over, then regained herself, only to get her feet tangled up in the mixture of rotten flesh and viscous webbing that splayed outward from beneath the mound of death. Othomo looked at the curving spires. Two caught his eye, smaller and more curved than the others, close together at the far southern point of the necrotic ring. Glutton.

Othomo pondered over the nature of the mound while Friend guided his hand, which has the effect of slowing an enemy's advance, as it did just now. The matron looked sick, wobbling on her feet. True, she was fat with murder, but her bulbous abdomen writhed as she clambored to her feet. These were eaters of souls, not fit for carrion. Othomo wondered if she'd feasted on the food that burst from the dowager, her splayed out empress.

Long ago he'd seen the bulbweavers gather for the first time. The empress was of the eldest of them, thought to be motherless, an elder being before the Mighty and beyond Yannis's corruption. Each of her followers were risen in view of a special child, who could enjoy the privilege of sharing the most beautiful of sights to future generations of primordial forces. Oroboron, the Scrying Eye, father of Othomo was one, and he spoke sweetly to Itara the Green of what he saw, thus wooing her. The Roiling Eye, known by a nauseating number of other names (his true name is Ander, which he felt dull next to names like Othomo and Oroboron) was so taken by the sight that he fled in search of the end (convinced that there had to be one) in the chance that he could stop it. Torch Holder Taara was the only one to maintain her vigil, as the empress carried on to start her family of daughters and grand daughters who would seek the edges of tomorrow so they could see together the next foundations being raised (convinced there would be some).

Othomo felt sad as he watched the matron stumbling about the wreckage of her wayward surrogate. Was it out of love she fed on the dowager's spoiled excess? Or had they laid waste to all other lands nearby? Or did she wish to die, her mother and sisters gone, and all she'd thought to do turned vile? Was her true malady a memory of how it all began? Did she look in some pool on her way to this bed of sorrow and catch a glimpse of the cosmos treading nymph she used to be? Friend was as a hound at the horn, a bowl of wrath tipped above the firmament, a nocked arrow, a birthing mother giving her final push. Othomo sheathed his hungry dagger, and let the matron approach him unhindered. She was not for him to dispose of. The other bulbweavers had attacked him, but now their elder sister was already nearing her end, and as one of her fellow Mighty, his lot was simply to mourn her.

From the eastern sky came a bright light, a lance carried by a golden cataphract on the tilt. Othomo dodged a strike from the matron and began to climb the bed of sorrow. It was a long and weary ascent, with the matron dogging him, sometimes coming close to landing a strike, sometimes stumbling and sliding back down. Once he turned back, and saw she'd been covered in an avalanche. When she emerged she was half her former size. A sharp bone had pierced her, and guilt poured from her in frightening volume. Steam hissed from where her ooze bled out, and by the time she was close she was a withered husk that shrieked empty curses.

He'd risen to the top of the mound and was sitting in wait, his legs crossed and hands on his knees. Wind that wept flicked the dark horse tail, not so as to make majesty of it, but so as to give it a piteous voice. The spider clawed desperately upward until its jaws were within reach of Othomo's sabatons. The victims trapped in its sinful member had fallen amongst the bones and were mercifully dissolved, carried away to a vault of healing where the memories of their anguish would be expunged before they were returned to their native elements. The spider's head froze with its mandibles open around the dreadknight, and a half hearted scream played as her visage turned to mist. Left in its place was a small woman with soft blue skin. She was naked, slick from the stagnant bilge of her unwholesome carriage, dragonfly wings crinkled and bent. She raised her head and saw her hand. It was small and clever, with strong little fingers and a round palm. She'd once been a playful thing who rolled in the mud and chased stars through the byways connecting the unpopulated realms, and her voice was a comfort to one bereft of peace. Memory moistened her eyes as she looked at the faceless greathelm. Her face spoke the message clear, 'I was still me, underneath all that confusion and hate.' The dreadknight nodded, and before expiring she spoke his name.

Othomo had assumed the identity of the bulbweavers without full knowledge, but of one thing he was fully correct. The matron was Mighty, of the second generation, and could not be undone by starvation or exhaustion. A force wielded by spirit was needed to unmake her. Othomo had miSunderstood the answer from the Radiant Soul, for while he wandered through memory to evade torment he had forgotten the wording of his own question. No, he was not sent alone and without aid. The light shined above him now, a bolt of golden judgement above the veil. It stopped and hovered over the tawny curtain of the dustlands, then shot downward, a pillar of blinding heat that left only a few blue embers. Othomo caught one of them and cradled it in his palm until it faded to nothing.

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