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 Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:21 pm
The Haven never changed.
A beautiful, towering city of snow and ice that would have awed any of the mortals who lived far beneath it, unknowing, while the immortals who had the priviledge of looking upon it appreciated it not at all. Such artistry, such perfection...such frivolity. Vanity. It was creation without life, without soul. Creation wasted. It was no wonder that the handful of beings who could enter the Haven did so only rarely, and did not often linger long. It was perfect and pure, yes, but stagnant and cold, and those few who did tread there looked out of place: flashes of life and color defiling the vision of white, breaking the stifling silence when they spoke. But this place didn't tolerate disturbance or imperfection: as soon as the permitted intruders left, their echoes would fade and their pawprints would be dusted over by a new coat of snow. The Haven had been built to withstand and resist change.
At the heart of the Haven, however, the shining white gave way to the gleaming gold of the Gates of Heaven, solid and massive, and beyond them, a mystery. No immortal soul who set foot in the Haven was allowed past them, and the mortal souls who were never came out again. Before the gates lay the true stain on the Haven's flawless beauty, but he belonged as surely as the crystalline structures that had been built around him. He was so dark his features were imperceptible until one got very, very close, which almost none dared to do. His fur was deepest, bottomless black, laid over a large and leanly-muscled frame, bleeding into inky wings that had not been lifted to the sky in time beyond telling. If he had eyes, they were eerily indiscernible, and if he had a voice, no one had heard it within memory. Death was simply there, as he always had been, guardian at the gates of Mkodi's final mystery. A mystery to all but Mkodi, and to him.
He knew what lay beyond, where every single soul that ascended to Heaven went when he bid them pass by. He knew each soul, their lives and loves and triumphs and failures, from the most noble of sacrifices to the foulest of deeds. Every last one was granted entrance, for that was her decree. In her Heaven, they would all know the peace they had not known on her earth. It was a beautiful thought. A beautiful lie. Perhaps it wasn't a deliberate untruth. Perhaps she had genuinely expected the souls of the mortal dead to find peace in the limbo to which she relegated them. Perhaps, to her, the non-existence, the lack of will and consciousness, was peace. But she had never known prison as he had. She did not know the horror of stagnation, of nothing, for all of eternity. Not like she had sentenced him to. And she didn't know them the way he did. She didn't feel the pressing weight of them against her precious gates, didn't hear the incoherent whispers of what had been and what could have been, should have been, still could be. She didn't see the wasted potential, the tales cut short before they had truly begun, the wrongs never righted, the loves lost never to be found again. Creation wasted.
He had no choice but to be witness, to hear the wordless woe when murderers took their 'rightful' place in heaven amongst their victims. The shuddering groans, the heartsick sighs, the sheer restless discontent without form that lay beyond those gates was not peace. If she had been the one to lie here, she would have known that, but this task was below her. She had created All, but once she had, she had left. Debates had raged then as to why, and now and then the old speculations were resurrected, but these days the discussions were mostly philosphical. It was an old, old tale, and countless rebirths had distanced the immortals from its truth, and they had distanced themselves from its meaning. It didn't matter whether she had grown tired or disinterested: she had left. Every last one of them had been abandoned, discarded like old playthings in favor of new ones.
That was what he saw, and he had quite the view from here. Unlike the others, he had never been reborn. He had never forgotten. He wasn't like the others, and he never had been. Though he had been bound to this place, to this form, for centuries most couldn't even hope to comprehend, let alone count - but oh, he had been counting! - he had not always been Mkodi's to command. He remembered freedom, he remembered what had been done to him, and he waited. Day after day, year after year, until millennia had passed. Until the truth had been forgotten by everyone but him and a cautiously trusted few to whom he had told the tale - again and again, across lives - and the time was right.
Today, it was. No one else would know what made it so, but the long wait was over. He lay completely still but for the rise and fall of measured breath, but used what shreds of power he yet possessed to reach out with his mind and touch another's: Gather the others. It is time.
Today, the Haven would finally change. Everything would change.
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Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 11:31 am
Time was a strange, twisting thing. Easy to lose track of, especially for a god, and especially in the Haven and beyond. And they had been beyond it, outside of it entirely, into a great, dark emptiness past existence itself. It was a terrifying, soul-chilling nothing, and she would count herself lucky to never see it again in this lifetime or any other. They had only spent what felt like moments there, but though they had yet to realize it, they'd been gone for far longer...or at least, they had been as far as the waking world was concerned. Maybe they really only had been away for an hour, by their own reckoning, but had simply come back into time later than they had meant to.
They'd been in a hurry, after all, and had never done anything like this before, flung out beyond reality by an ancient, fading power to do the impossible, and given barely enough for them all to make the return trip. They couldn't help it if they hadn't been exact, if the timing or the place wasn't quite right; if anything, they were lucky to make it back at all. But making it back wasn't the end of it: the job wasn't done yet, and time was of the essence, now that they were back in the flow of it. Wrath surely followed close behind them, and would be far more accurate than they had.
Two of them snapped back into existence in the familiar chill of the Haven, staggering paws leaving prints and furrows in fresh snow. Heavy breaths panted steam into the cold air, and weeping rivulets of bright blood and black decay mixed together and spread out across the white landscape like gangrenous veins. The larger of the two figures threw a barred wing over the other and cast a hurried glance around, ignoring the speed and virulence of the unnatural infection. There wasn't time to wonder after it, nor after the whereabouts of their conspirators - who knew where or when they had emerged? The most important of them was here and now, and they would finish what they'd started.
"We have to hurry. Come on." The older goddess shouldered the weight of the other, as much as she could, to hurry them both toward the Gates, but the other soon stumbled and fell, hunching in on herself with a wracking cough that brought up more of the thick black ooze and choked out whatever words she might have responded with. Her companion grabbed her up by the strap of the bag she wore slung around her, bringing her to her feet and half-dragging her onward.
"Is this—really—necessary?" the other finally gasped out between coughs, an improbable ghost of laughter bubbling up right along with the blood and gunk.
"Stop talking," the paler figure growled out from between clenched teeth, her hold on the leather strap deforming the words, "You're making a mess."
"Might 's well," the other slurred, "Thought that was—that's the point, yeah?"
More coughing ensued, negating another insistence to shut up already, and they continued their staggering-dragging progress further and further, leaving a deep trail behind them. They would be easy to follow and find, but the one they were running from wouldn't need to track them, anyway. They would know exactly where they were going. The only variable was when they were, and perhaps that was what allowed them to reach their goal without being intercepted. With a grunt, the pale goddess tugged hard at her coughing, bleeding partner, and sent her staggering the last few steps to collapse against the living shadow at the foot of the Gates.
Golden shackles dissolved, dead eyes flared to bright life, and crackles of power raced out through the lines of darkness that had spread through the Haven, only for the darkness and power both to be snapped back in a rush, returned to their rightful owner at long last. Behind him, the shining gates groaned, then fractured, a jagged rupture that split and toppled the massive structure.
Death stood tall before the destruction, massive wings spreading as one goddess slumped beside him and the other gaped open-mouthed, but lightning cracked through the moment. The vengeance they had just barely outrun had finally caught up to them - too late to stop them, but here to see that they paid for what they had done. One goddess threw herself over the other as lighting flashed again, wings curling around her, bracing for the end—
Both were swept aside by an inky wing, thrown from the Haven and out of the way of the storm.
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