Welcome to Gaia! ::

𝕹𝖔 𝖋𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖕𝖘 𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖑 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖗𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖓 𝕽𝖔𝖆𝖉, broken and winding through lands once fecund and now fallen. No desperate, unsightly figures wander the streets of Despot, of Essent Cray, of Morendy and Bilgewater Bay. The palaces of the world now rot from both within and without, their shadows now only looming on high to haunt rubble. Not even a rat remains to fear and worship and resent their once overbearing power.

Above the Blistered Steepe rises the gravemarker of the world, the home to The Last, The Only, The Ever Hungry. Within the Charnel Cliffs, her figure is a bright stretch of skin, pulled taught over bone and draped in tattered glory. She shifts on her throne, a single feather falling from her waist. Seeing it, irritation stretched her features even further with disgust.

There weren’t many that remained to her, after all.

With a grunt, The Last Grieve Spoke to her audience, voice full of gravel and laden with threats, “Do you admit your guilt, Pigman of Oberance?” It was leveled at a figure, wide but not especially tall, that stared at her with glassy eyes, nearly obscured through sagging wrinkles and a large protruding snout of a nose.

After a moment, she sneered, “Huh! I’ve no need for the twaddle of a poor fiend. Had you bribed me well, perhaps a deal could be made, perhaps we could sever your string of crimes with a little snip off the tip. Alas, you mongrel! You twisted piece of greed and flaccid sack of inability.” As she spoke, The Last Grieve tossed thin, pale rings of bone into her mouth, gnashing them between her teeth.

Another pause.

“That all you got, then?” She laughed and it was horrible. “So let’s be done with this. Off with his head!” A shining ring flew viciously from her hand and hit the penitent with a crack, followed by a bright, shattering sound. The head heavily thumped down onto the dusty cave floor. Its glassy eyes still staring vacantly, uncaring of its fate. The remains of the thrown crown glinted on the floor, much too brittle with age to take part in her rough little plays. The Last Grieve gave a sigh, but didn’t mind all too much. There were more where that came from.

Crunching on another handful of bones, she looked around the chamber at the other figures, with their glass bead eyes, their stitched together faces and finery. “It’s boring. I miss when things would try to crawl after I broke them.” Of course, she missed quite a few things. Meat for one. And sugar for another. Company, loud and boisterous and always ready to fight. She missed the smell of things that would bleed out when pricked. Longed for bodies that weren’t simply the stuffed remains of old friends, enemies, and strangers.

There were still a few small casks of wine left, saved over the centuries and opened only in those moments of sudden awareness. Those frozen stretches of time where she stood outside of the moment and saw, and felt, the immensity of this vast nothing that her life has been. Should she open one today? Something felt a little different today, didn’t it?

But maybe she should open one of the experiments instead? The casks of drink made by a bored, nearly immortal creature with little understanding of the process and much too much time on their strong, bony hands. At the very least, they wouldn’t kill her.

Drumming her long, broken nails along the arm of her throne, she focused on that something, a restless feeling of something just out of sight, barely out of reach. The drumming quickened. Something was happening. Something was happening for the first time in a slow eternity. The Last Grieve grinned, and it was terrible. She laughed and it was awful. And then she was greeted by clean night air. The taste of tree, and mammal, and nearby cooked food sparking across her tongue.

The sound of chatter and people began raining down and around her like a sudden storm in the middle of her silent desert. Leaning against the filthy wall of a darkened alley, surrounded by the rich scents of garbage and piss, Grieve listened to the sounds of life that traveled the nearby street and chuckled.

“So…I suppose we’ve got a new contract, then?”