{ BGM : Kosmogonia, Wit }
“Dark seductress, broken night, endless dost thou bend my light,” Kor mused, her thoughts turned back on her journey hence.
Light years, it seemed, stretched between her and the moment she saw the anomaly. Its telltale wink and the weird passage of alien life within and without belied a mystery to the black hole that aroused in her a curiosity that would not be slaked and, inevitably, drew her inward. It prevailed in spite of the natural forces insistent on its annihilation. It inexplicably existed. Just to penetrate its singularity demanded she weave an abstruse tapestry of spellcraft, yet through it she endured. Within the strangely folded space, she found a world more bizarre than any other she hitherto encountered. It was a plane where planets were psychotic monsters and a star revered as a god.
Unseen, she drifted to the dark side of Glaceria, an ice moon she thought abandoned. Unnaturally massive, it circled, with its fiery brother, Gathix, a living planet. There, hidden from a star’s light that threatened to rule her soul, she observed the system’s tumult. Accurately, she guessed at the reason as to why, on the largest world, the conflict intensified. They were without a clear leader. For that cause, alpha beings rent land and sky in defense of their selfish and futile claims to that role. Wonder soon gave way to doom, for, she realized, her presence went unmolested not due to the subtlety of her craft; rather, the internal strife of the system’s inhabitants made for a potent distraction. She was even certain one of the beings, Disciple, noticed and dismissed her presence. Why, she could not say. Perhaps his focus was on Colossus, mother of these worlds, and his role as general on her vast battleground.
Flight, while prudent, was nevertheless an untenable option.
Midgarðsormr was not due to awaken from his slumber for centuries, whereon the world serpent again would glut on Glaceria’s mountains of ice and seas of snow. What manner of chaos such a future would yield, Kor was uncertain, but for a great while her occupation of the moon was one of grim isolation. Too much, reminisced Kor, although within those hours she worked to refine her arcana and studied in detail the mysteries of the icy sphere she now considered home. Soon she found it was inhabited, but with lesser beings whose encroachment she swiftly whelmed.
Meanwhile, on Colossus, the blare of war suddenly and auspiciously reverberated with fresh intensity. The cadence piqued her interest and she found herself mesmerized by the conflict. Soon crystallized the notion that the frenzied monsters struggled toward what they incompetently assumed benefited the whole. All because they did not listen; nor could they, enslaved as they were to an absent master. Psionic blasts magnified by Colossus’ many Behemoths insisted on capitulation, only to be opposed by the notion of individuality; Leviathans inundated the defectors with massive beams laced with a cocktail of subjugation; orbs of psychic energy sped throughout the fray; and billions of creatures were coerced into proxy battles. Ultimately, they fought for the rank of leader even as their nature required servitude. They recognized that weakness in another, but their inward gaze was blinded and refused to bend the knee, even against the might of Colossus’ syncopated directives.
For that reason, all—Azeroth, Hellion, Disciple, and more—failed.
Finally the battle, Kor thought, reached its conclusion.
It should have all been over.
Only later did Kor realize time on Colossus was, for all intents and purposes, at a standstill; yet, part of the planet remained earnest, even as decay seeped into its roots, in its compulsion for self-perpetuation and preservation of the species.
Beneath Colossus’ massive shadow, Glaceria was almost always dark and cold, only occasionally illuminated by Sal’Chazzar’s warped light. During those times, as Kor peered upward, the star’s radiant green bioforce both warmed her cheeks and sent a shiver of inexplicable horror throughout her spine. It was no mere vessel of matter fused to light. She understood why they revered it. Yet, more than the star, which unsettled her to profound depths, she was perturbed by the antumbras that drifted before it in a steady departure from Colossus’ nebulous influence.
“Sons of Idea and their mother,” she sneered, “that repellent creature, whatever it may be. That such a progenitor of repugnance exists is intolerable.”
The second of the many escalations that ultimately tore the system apart was planet fall.
Out of the pinpoint of nothingness at the system’s horizon burst a torrent of matter, thick and ocher. At the edge of the event horizon, it manifested as a torrent mud forced through a crack in a cave wall. Whimsically, it tumbled and coalesced; rivers of dirt and water lashed their way inward; clots of filth rained down on Glaceria while Gathix erupted with rage at the mountains of gravel and mire that cascaded into its molten streams; and incrementally the invader swelled to the mass of a mid-sized terrestrial planet. Just as it achieved wholeness, it struck Colossus. Although it was, in comparison, a small sphere, the forces involved were tremendous. Shockwaves rippled along the recently recovered fog that covered Colossus’ expanse and bowed the behemoth spires that pierced the cold of space.
Ostensibly dauntless, the greater of the worlds soon recovered. Ruddy oceans cascaded into ravines and eventually Colossus swallowed the remnants of Mire. Then from the very core of Colossus’ bled an indecipherable stain of crimson and rust. Bubbles burst incessantly just beneath the flow’s tenebrous film while giant blades obscenely pierced its viscous membrane and heaved it upward through its mother’s bowels. Outward it surged, through caliginous crevasses and contorted shafts—an intertwined labyrinth of vicious geometries that scorned sane comprehension. These were its native halls, through which it careened onward unabated, its consciousness bound to the myriad assimilators that lined the world’s interior. Only a brief time passed from when its journey began until it tore through, as a fetid deluge, the murky atmosphere and coalesced in space.
With grotesque majesty, Tsathoskr drifted into the midst of its brethren. Mighty Son of Idea, its psi-link resonated with the nearby leviathans and dreadnaughts, monsters not unlike itself, and the millions of lesser beings asleep in their holds. Still, theirs were forms that, while hideous, did not adamantly defy nature’s very order. That distinction belonged to Tsathoskr, neither Herald nor Son of Idea, but an amalgam of both, just as it was a crazed and sordid union of every unremembered nightmare and fiend born of creation’s wiles.
Unbound by chitinous rock and unaffected by the Midnight Fog, its body flattened and a plumage of blades maligned into serrated pinions, spikes, and spears that likened to the crest and claws of a wild hoatzin. Amidst these, talons extended to reveal lidless eyes, only for them to be blinded by the storm of black particles that ever ensorcelled its contorted frame. To the fore, the plane of its body split dorsally, the fresh hollow lined with innumerable rows of gargantuan teeth while in its midst of it maw a sickly cyan aether buzzed aglow.
<< Return to us our feast, >> boomed a psionic voice throughout the system. It brought Kor to her knees, yet its intended recipient hovered in adamant calm. She recovered her senses fast enough to behold Tsathoskr’s reply, which came not with words but a low rumble that expanded in force until it flooded the Val’Gara psi-link as with the relentless and continuous crash of an avalanche. Even as it freed a multitude of its brethren from the stasis of the Midnight Fog and evoked in them the same deep impulse the quasi-herald felt, an intense and insatiable hunger, it paralyzed all others embroiled on the field of battle and wiped clean the slates of their minds of its presence.
None who lingered on Colossus after its passage would recall the moment of its birth, its form, its being, its name. All—Disciple and his minions, Azeroth and his confederates, Singar and his erstwhile mechanizations—were deprived of that honor.
Within its maw brightened large globs of crimson, an aetheric model of the constellation the flotilla presently inhabited. Soon that diminished, joined by many more luminous motes, more constellations, then a nebula. Faster, the lights, now barely visible glints in its massive pseudo-mouth, swirled and receded. Nebulae became small blurs, a galactic arm seemed to manifest, but that all too quickly grew dim. Whole galaxies were apparent, although faint at so fine a scale. Finally, in two of the minuscule blurs, what were two invisible specs suddenly shone with a radiance that overwhelmed all displayed, the model rotated, and with it so too did the universe.
It felt like a lifetime, but only seconds fell through the mythic Phanes’ fingers as Kor detected a third of the present armada churn into formation. The others were motionless, frozen in time and space. She thought the spell to awaken her own monster, but did not invoke it for there remained the possibility that this act did not concern her. Another moment where she was ignored by such a host, at least until her pet was roused, was her hope, and, breath held, it was granted—not in the form of a stay, but of irrelevance.
The assembled host vanished in its entirety.
She took a step back in shock and glanced over her shoulder, a meaningless instinctual gesture. No, it wasn’t there. Even with far more potent senses and a spell hastily woven to accomplish the purpose, she detected not their presence, and even they were unable to mask that from her. Indeed, she sensed no magic or dimensional manipulation at all, neither nearby nor in the void wherein their astra once shimmered; not even the tell-tale signs of warped space. She sensed nothing except cruelty of intention that extended away from her far off into the distance.
The remaining escalations, suddenly roused, came in abrupt cadence—blurs of internecine strife to which she assigned monikers that fell utterly short of the gravity of their egregious transgressions; continental upheaval, planet shatter, star fade, and system abort. They were merely bookmarks in her mind to events that defied description. In awe, she watched the strife unfold from the false security of her observatory located behind and magnified by one of Midgarðsormr’s great lidless eyes. Although camouflaged by magic and ice, she knew her defense was false. Still, she forced herself to linger, to watch, and to understand.
Singar enveloped the globe in his vile fog, but managed only to make the combat more viciously and strenuously waged. The demon did not stop there, but, before he left, flung his scabbards, with their blades yet secured within, to every world in the system so they might suffer under his corruptive influence. At some point, his plans came to fruition, and he absconded with Sal’Chazzar’s light. With that fait accompli, Val’Gara space diminished to something unremarkable. Instead of a mote of darkness, impenetrable to all but the mightiest and keen-sighted, the entire system was exposed to any amateur astronomer.
Ruin upon ruin came, yet, inexplicably, op rumbled the drums of war. They struck their baleful rhythm until Colossus, already rent, was strewn across the expanse and her satellites thrown into disorder. Megalodon dove into and further maimed the pit formed by Tsathoskr’s egress, even as it struggled to mend, violently burrowed through the planet’s core to the other side, and engaged Thane in a pointless duel that tore their mother asunder. Amphiprioninae and Disciple waged a psychic battle, although the latter’s will was crushed by his recent defeat, and in their intermingled distress planted the seed for an even greater menace. For that errant germ, Colossus exploded. Glaceria and Cathix whirled into space like tenuously linked bolas. Meanwhile, the once great planet, mother of the Val’Gara, was reduced to a strand of dust littered with flesh and frozen gore. An accusatory finger pointed toward Caorthannach’s recreant departure, for the newly born being’s gravity pulled behind it a train of her deceased mother’s debris.
Infamous and mercurial, the eons old first dominion of the Val’Gara was no more. Totems to a bygone age, Gathix and Glaceria stayed near another, guarded by the Collective who, all the while, stayed inexplicably dormant. Without direction, the lesser children soon strayed.
Finally, Kor was alone.
Truly alone.
A great while passed, perfect in darkness, silence, and solitude; time for Kor time to reflect and train.
Her first act was the construction of a barrier around Glaceria, for she sensed an eventual return of the ferocious darkness. Weak, at first, due to its size, steadily she poured her will into its invisible folds, gnarled light into pathways of magic, and imbued it with the strength and complexity only attainable through fastidious effort. It became her magnum opus, a work refined all but continuously and polished until it flourished as a mastercraft beyond any she hitherto had known—even in rumor and unrivaled by even the most demented thaumaturges.
Were all her time spent thus, she would have gone mad.
To abate that fate, she explored other occult matters. Repeatedly, she tried and failed to awaken the Collective. They loomed silent, either dead or expectant of an incantation known only by the Val’Garan god. Still, she was careful, for she understood that to provoke their wrath would be lethal to her and lead to the final annihilation of this splintered realm.
Frustrated and eager to alleviate boredom, she pursued yet more endeavors. She explored the frozen world she gradually related to as her home and, in time, discovered a secret base deep within Glaceria’s bowels. Although hardened against the cold, the drones there were no match for the algid bonds in which she ensnared them nor the astra with which she shattered their forms. There, in that weirdly organic laboratory, she learned Val’Gara were more than mere depraved ravagers, but an intelligent race who honed their craft even as they premeditated the overthrow of, to them, alien worlds. Ages waned, but eventually their science exposed itself before her mind’s eye. She learned of the Vesuvian Virus, the Unity Effect, and more.
Were she to survive, she concluded, if she failed to abandon this place in time, she needed to improve on their bestial work. With that in mind, she unleashed her augmented product of these mysteries on the eartech pools of Gathix. Soon, they heeded her command. Not yet content with their limitations, she bred new mutations, unfettered the manacles of their corporeality, and transformed them into parasitic vapors that swam through aether as readily as air. They became an invisible fog of mental coercion that bowed, for the while, to her will.
Early in her sojourns, she encountered the envaginated blades flung by the demon Singar. The first on Glaceria soon led her, by way of its unique aura, to the latter on Gathix. Both reeked of powerful and corruptive magic. Repulsed by them and the thought of their creator, she found purpose anew in her research. A spell swiftly woven, for she dared not touch them, she contained them in spheres of air and brought them to her atheneum. Likewise, she secured samples of the Midnight Fog that lingered near Colossus’ detritus. There, she possessed artifacts and knowledge sufficient to safeguard herself from any foul influence even as she dissected and manipulated their perilous properties. Ages passed until, surrounded by stacks of vellum and sacks of scrolls, she unraveled in full their secrets. From the design of the swords, she deduced their provenance; with that knowledge secure, she discovered the name of their owner. Notes of his mephitic magic, Hellish origins, the fog, and the variety and mode of his manipulations were compiled and filed within the library for reference. Were she ever to encounter the vile crafter of those tools, she was fully prepared.
With her newfound knowledge in hand, the twin moons were cured of Singar’s blight; fully explored, her exploitation of Val’Garan biology was as complete as conscious allowed; her masterwork perfected; and the Collective stoic to her advances. With nothing left to do, she turned inward, for the time of Midgarðsormr’s awakening was nigh.
She passed the remaining time in her atheneum, an infinite library with infinite knowledge. Manifold and insightful, she never grew tired of its teachings. Yet, still, there were moments where she caught herself in a discussion with herself, where she realized her mind had wandered, and where she wildly pined for a fresh rendezvous with the magister she met during her subjugation of Fortis so long ago—so much so that her mild infatuation burgeoned into a passionate obsession.
Eventually, as she awaited the awakening of her pet, lassitude overtook her.
Inexorably, it returned. A thousand-fold lives spent in preparation and still Kor was caught unawares. Yet there it lurked, a black smudge that sought to blot out the stars. It did not hide, but its stillness cast into Kor’s soul a trepidation no invective could have framed. Flecks of cyan splashed from a multitude of maws that diminished and recrudesced as readily as pustules on the crest of a wave. Glutted on the spoils of its conquest, it was no longer a newborn, but far vaster than before—indeed, it rivaled in proportion the very moon on which Kor dwelt. The anxiety that lanced her soul is how she recognized it; that terrible and disabling familiarity. She knew, fully and with no doubt, what hovered before her was the being that so long ago afflicted her with incapacitating fear.
<< Tsathoskr. >>
In spite of the protective magic she spent ages weaving, its name spilled into her mind as a deluge of raw evil, effortless and colder than any cryomancy conjured throughout her long practice. Behind it, she sensed a multitude of other presences; worse, something awakened. Somehow, she sensed it was the Collective—finally, it responded to this being’s presence.
“You can not harm me,” she insisted, but her shout echoed in her mind like a wail of despair.
Forcefully, she shut her eyes and cleared her thoughts. This vile creation was not her better. She was older, wiser, and more powerful. It was also time, she realized; Midgardsormr’s slumber was sufficient, near its end, and she desired its strength.
“Vakna, ormur eilífs vetrar!” she screamed.
Beneath her, Midgardsormr’s roared to life. Eyes opened again, and much higher, she beheld from a vantage of alarming propinquity an ebon strand uncoil from the primary mass of her foe. A tendril of cruel darkness, it probed her barrier, pressed, scratched, and scraped the surface as if curious as to its properties.
Then it crashed through as though it, her mastercraft of an age of effort, was mere glass.
Her barrier breached, a torrent of stygian hatred rushed through the fractured aperture. Frantically, she fled, shade-stepping and teleporting out of the way the matte bIack spears that assailed her from every angle. Into her fortress hewn into Midgardsormr’s skull, she retreated. Yet the malevolence poured into her steed’s mouth, even as it awoke and rose to confront the threat. Drowned, it flailed impotently in a black sea of insanity, each gasp a choked gargle; beneath its weight, Glaceria was nearly halved. Inside, the river of night crept through the small places, violated wards, perverted ramparts, and inundated her citadel with a tide of malice. Relentless, it pursued her. Finally, she sprinted down the corridor to her atheneum. Behind her she felt the roar of a million screams, pinions of death struck her back, and strands of doom grasped at her limbs. Terrified and moments from obliteration, she slammed behind her to the door to the one place it could not follow—a door secured by a thousand magisters and a million years of craft greater than she, alone, could ever attain.
She hid within her atheneum.
Prostrate, exhausted, and forlorn, she hyperventilated rapidly. With a hand that trembled, she wiped, to little avail, the tears that cascaded down her cheeks. She was safe, finally. Not even a god could breach this chamber.
Somehow, its voice again ripped into her mind.
<< What have you done? >>
“Nothing! Go away!”
<< I shall feast upon your flesh. >>
“No! Please, what … what do I do?”
<< You have nothing to offer. >>
“I have knowledge! I can tell you who did this to your home, to your mother! If it means not having you as my enemy, I will tell you everything you need to destroy them all!”
KOR REFLECTS
“Dark seductress, broken night, endless dost thou bend my light,” Kor mused, her thoughts turned back on her journey hence.
Light years, it seemed, stretched between her and the moment she saw the anomaly. Its telltale wink and the weird passage of alien life within and without belied a mystery to the black hole that aroused in her a curiosity that would not be slaked and, inevitably, drew her inward. It prevailed in spite of the natural forces insistent on its annihilation. It inexplicably existed. Just to penetrate its singularity demanded she weave an abstruse tapestry of spellcraft, yet through it she endured. Within the strangely folded space, she found a world more bizarre than any other she hitherto encountered. It was a plane where planets were psychotic monsters and a star revered as a god.
Unseen, she drifted to the dark side of Glaceria, an ice moon she thought abandoned. Unnaturally massive, it circled, with its fiery brother, Gathix, a living planet. There, hidden from a star’s light that threatened to rule her soul, she observed the system’s tumult. Accurately, she guessed at the reason as to why, on the largest world, the conflict intensified. They were without a clear leader. For that cause, alpha beings rent land and sky in defense of their selfish and futile claims to that role. Wonder soon gave way to doom, for, she realized, her presence went unmolested not due to the subtlety of her craft; rather, the internal strife of the system’s inhabitants made for a potent distraction. She was even certain one of the beings, Disciple, noticed and dismissed her presence. Why, she could not say. Perhaps his focus was on Colossus, mother of these worlds, and his role as general on her vast battleground.
Flight, while prudent, was nevertheless an untenable option.
Midgarðsormr was not due to awaken from his slumber for centuries, whereon the world serpent again would glut on Glaceria’s mountains of ice and seas of snow. What manner of chaos such a future would yield, Kor was uncertain, but for a great while her occupation of the moon was one of grim isolation. Too much, reminisced Kor, although within those hours she worked to refine her arcana and studied in detail the mysteries of the icy sphere she now considered home. Soon she found it was inhabited, but with lesser beings whose encroachment she swiftly whelmed.
Meanwhile, on Colossus, the blare of war suddenly and auspiciously reverberated with fresh intensity. The cadence piqued her interest and she found herself mesmerized by the conflict. Soon crystallized the notion that the frenzied monsters struggled toward what they incompetently assumed benefited the whole. All because they did not listen; nor could they, enslaved as they were to an absent master. Psionic blasts magnified by Colossus’ many Behemoths insisted on capitulation, only to be opposed by the notion of individuality; Leviathans inundated the defectors with massive beams laced with a cocktail of subjugation; orbs of psychic energy sped throughout the fray; and billions of creatures were coerced into proxy battles. Ultimately, they fought for the rank of leader even as their nature required servitude. They recognized that weakness in another, but their inward gaze was blinded and refused to bend the knee, even against the might of Colossus’ syncopated directives.
For that reason, all—Azeroth, Hellion, Disciple, and more—failed.
Finally the battle, Kor thought, reached its conclusion.
It should have all been over.
Only later did Kor realize time on Colossus was, for all intents and purposes, at a standstill; yet, part of the planet remained earnest, even as decay seeped into its roots, in its compulsion for self-perpetuation and preservation of the species.
Beneath Colossus’ massive shadow, Glaceria was almost always dark and cold, only occasionally illuminated by Sal’Chazzar’s warped light. During those times, as Kor peered upward, the star’s radiant green bioforce both warmed her cheeks and sent a shiver of inexplicable horror throughout her spine. It was no mere vessel of matter fused to light. She understood why they revered it. Yet, more than the star, which unsettled her to profound depths, she was perturbed by the antumbras that drifted before it in a steady departure from Colossus’ nebulous influence.
“Sons of Idea and their mother,” she sneered, “that repellent creature, whatever it may be. That such a progenitor of repugnance exists is intolerable.”
The second of the many escalations that ultimately tore the system apart was planet fall.
Out of the pinpoint of nothingness at the system’s horizon burst a torrent of matter, thick and ocher. At the edge of the event horizon, it manifested as a torrent mud forced through a crack in a cave wall. Whimsically, it tumbled and coalesced; rivers of dirt and water lashed their way inward; clots of filth rained down on Glaceria while Gathix erupted with rage at the mountains of gravel and mire that cascaded into its molten streams; and incrementally the invader swelled to the mass of a mid-sized terrestrial planet. Just as it achieved wholeness, it struck Colossus. Although it was, in comparison, a small sphere, the forces involved were tremendous. Shockwaves rippled along the recently recovered fog that covered Colossus’ expanse and bowed the behemoth spires that pierced the cold of space.
Ostensibly dauntless, the greater of the worlds soon recovered. Ruddy oceans cascaded into ravines and eventually Colossus swallowed the remnants of Mire. Then from the very core of Colossus’ bled an indecipherable stain of crimson and rust. Bubbles burst incessantly just beneath the flow’s tenebrous film while giant blades obscenely pierced its viscous membrane and heaved it upward through its mother’s bowels. Outward it surged, through caliginous crevasses and contorted shafts—an intertwined labyrinth of vicious geometries that scorned sane comprehension. These were its native halls, through which it careened onward unabated, its consciousness bound to the myriad assimilators that lined the world’s interior. Only a brief time passed from when its journey began until it tore through, as a fetid deluge, the murky atmosphere and coalesced in space.
With grotesque majesty, Tsathoskr drifted into the midst of its brethren. Mighty Son of Idea, its psi-link resonated with the nearby leviathans and dreadnaughts, monsters not unlike itself, and the millions of lesser beings asleep in their holds. Still, theirs were forms that, while hideous, did not adamantly defy nature’s very order. That distinction belonged to Tsathoskr, neither Herald nor Son of Idea, but an amalgam of both, just as it was a crazed and sordid union of every unremembered nightmare and fiend born of creation’s wiles.
Unbound by chitinous rock and unaffected by the Midnight Fog, its body flattened and a plumage of blades maligned into serrated pinions, spikes, and spears that likened to the crest and claws of a wild hoatzin. Amidst these, talons extended to reveal lidless eyes, only for them to be blinded by the storm of black particles that ever ensorcelled its contorted frame. To the fore, the plane of its body split dorsally, the fresh hollow lined with innumerable rows of gargantuan teeth while in its midst of it maw a sickly cyan aether buzzed aglow.
<< Return to us our feast, >> boomed a psionic voice throughout the system. It brought Kor to her knees, yet its intended recipient hovered in adamant calm. She recovered her senses fast enough to behold Tsathoskr’s reply, which came not with words but a low rumble that expanded in force until it flooded the Val’Gara psi-link as with the relentless and continuous crash of an avalanche. Even as it freed a multitude of its brethren from the stasis of the Midnight Fog and evoked in them the same deep impulse the quasi-herald felt, an intense and insatiable hunger, it paralyzed all others embroiled on the field of battle and wiped clean the slates of their minds of its presence.
None who lingered on Colossus after its passage would recall the moment of its birth, its form, its being, its name. All—Disciple and his minions, Azeroth and his confederates, Singar and his erstwhile mechanizations—were deprived of that honor.
Within its maw brightened large globs of crimson, an aetheric model of the constellation the flotilla presently inhabited. Soon that diminished, joined by many more luminous motes, more constellations, then a nebula. Faster, the lights, now barely visible glints in its massive pseudo-mouth, swirled and receded. Nebulae became small blurs, a galactic arm seemed to manifest, but that all too quickly grew dim. Whole galaxies were apparent, although faint at so fine a scale. Finally, in two of the minuscule blurs, what were two invisible specs suddenly shone with a radiance that overwhelmed all displayed, the model rotated, and with it so too did the universe.
It felt like a lifetime, but only seconds fell through the mythic Phanes’ fingers as Kor detected a third of the present armada churn into formation. The others were motionless, frozen in time and space. She thought the spell to awaken her own monster, but did not invoke it for there remained the possibility that this act did not concern her. Another moment where she was ignored by such a host, at least until her pet was roused, was her hope, and, breath held, it was granted—not in the form of a stay, but of irrelevance.
The assembled host vanished in its entirety.
She took a step back in shock and glanced over her shoulder, a meaningless instinctual gesture. No, it wasn’t there. Even with far more potent senses and a spell hastily woven to accomplish the purpose, she detected not their presence, and even they were unable to mask that from her. Indeed, she sensed no magic or dimensional manipulation at all, neither nearby nor in the void wherein their astra once shimmered; not even the tell-tale signs of warped space. She sensed nothing except cruelty of intention that extended away from her far off into the distance.
The remaining escalations, suddenly roused, came in abrupt cadence—blurs of internecine strife to which she assigned monikers that fell utterly short of the gravity of their egregious transgressions; continental upheaval, planet shatter, star fade, and system abort. They were merely bookmarks in her mind to events that defied description. In awe, she watched the strife unfold from the false security of her observatory located behind and magnified by one of Midgarðsormr’s great lidless eyes. Although camouflaged by magic and ice, she knew her defense was false. Still, she forced herself to linger, to watch, and to understand.
Singar enveloped the globe in his vile fog, but managed only to make the combat more viciously and strenuously waged. The demon did not stop there, but, before he left, flung his scabbards, with their blades yet secured within, to every world in the system so they might suffer under his corruptive influence. At some point, his plans came to fruition, and he absconded with Sal’Chazzar’s light. With that fait accompli, Val’Gara space diminished to something unremarkable. Instead of a mote of darkness, impenetrable to all but the mightiest and keen-sighted, the entire system was exposed to any amateur astronomer.
Ruin upon ruin came, yet, inexplicably, op rumbled the drums of war. They struck their baleful rhythm until Colossus, already rent, was strewn across the expanse and her satellites thrown into disorder. Megalodon dove into and further maimed the pit formed by Tsathoskr’s egress, even as it struggled to mend, violently burrowed through the planet’s core to the other side, and engaged Thane in a pointless duel that tore their mother asunder. Amphiprioninae and Disciple waged a psychic battle, although the latter’s will was crushed by his recent defeat, and in their intermingled distress planted the seed for an even greater menace. For that errant germ, Colossus exploded. Glaceria and Cathix whirled into space like tenuously linked bolas. Meanwhile, the once great planet, mother of the Val’Gara, was reduced to a strand of dust littered with flesh and frozen gore. An accusatory finger pointed toward Caorthannach’s recreant departure, for the newly born being’s gravity pulled behind it a train of her deceased mother’s debris.
Infamous and mercurial, the eons old first dominion of the Val’Gara was no more. Totems to a bygone age, Gathix and Glaceria stayed near another, guarded by the Collective who, all the while, stayed inexplicably dormant. Without direction, the lesser children soon strayed.
Finally, Kor was alone.
Truly alone.
. . .
A great while passed, perfect in darkness, silence, and solitude; time for Kor time to reflect and train.
Her first act was the construction of a barrier around Glaceria, for she sensed an eventual return of the ferocious darkness. Weak, at first, due to its size, steadily she poured her will into its invisible folds, gnarled light into pathways of magic, and imbued it with the strength and complexity only attainable through fastidious effort. It became her magnum opus, a work refined all but continuously and polished until it flourished as a mastercraft beyond any she hitherto had known—even in rumor and unrivaled by even the most demented thaumaturges.
Were all her time spent thus, she would have gone mad.
To abate that fate, she explored other occult matters. Repeatedly, she tried and failed to awaken the Collective. They loomed silent, either dead or expectant of an incantation known only by the Val’Garan god. Still, she was careful, for she understood that to provoke their wrath would be lethal to her and lead to the final annihilation of this splintered realm.
Frustrated and eager to alleviate boredom, she pursued yet more endeavors. She explored the frozen world she gradually related to as her home and, in time, discovered a secret base deep within Glaceria’s bowels. Although hardened against the cold, the drones there were no match for the algid bonds in which she ensnared them nor the astra with which she shattered their forms. There, in that weirdly organic laboratory, she learned Val’Gara were more than mere depraved ravagers, but an intelligent race who honed their craft even as they premeditated the overthrow of, to them, alien worlds. Ages waned, but eventually their science exposed itself before her mind’s eye. She learned of the Vesuvian Virus, the Unity Effect, and more.
Were she to survive, she concluded, if she failed to abandon this place in time, she needed to improve on their bestial work. With that in mind, she unleashed her augmented product of these mysteries on the eartech pools of Gathix. Soon, they heeded her command. Not yet content with their limitations, she bred new mutations, unfettered the manacles of their corporeality, and transformed them into parasitic vapors that swam through aether as readily as air. They became an invisible fog of mental coercion that bowed, for the while, to her will.
Early in her sojourns, she encountered the envaginated blades flung by the demon Singar. The first on Glaceria soon led her, by way of its unique aura, to the latter on Gathix. Both reeked of powerful and corruptive magic. Repulsed by them and the thought of their creator, she found purpose anew in her research. A spell swiftly woven, for she dared not touch them, she contained them in spheres of air and brought them to her atheneum. Likewise, she secured samples of the Midnight Fog that lingered near Colossus’ detritus. There, she possessed artifacts and knowledge sufficient to safeguard herself from any foul influence even as she dissected and manipulated their perilous properties. Ages passed until, surrounded by stacks of vellum and sacks of scrolls, she unraveled in full their secrets. From the design of the swords, she deduced their provenance; with that knowledge secure, she discovered the name of their owner. Notes of his mephitic magic, Hellish origins, the fog, and the variety and mode of his manipulations were compiled and filed within the library for reference. Were she ever to encounter the vile crafter of those tools, she was fully prepared.
With her newfound knowledge in hand, the twin moons were cured of Singar’s blight; fully explored, her exploitation of Val’Garan biology was as complete as conscious allowed; her masterwork perfected; and the Collective stoic to her advances. With nothing left to do, she turned inward, for the time of Midgarðsormr’s awakening was nigh.
She passed the remaining time in her atheneum, an infinite library with infinite knowledge. Manifold and insightful, she never grew tired of its teachings. Yet, still, there were moments where she caught herself in a discussion with herself, where she realized her mind had wandered, and where she wildly pined for a fresh rendezvous with the magister she met during her subjugation of Fortis so long ago—so much so that her mild infatuation burgeoned into a passionate obsession.
Eventually, as she awaited the awakening of her pet, lassitude overtook her.
TSATHOSKR RETURNS
Inexorably, it returned. A thousand-fold lives spent in preparation and still Kor was caught unawares. Yet there it lurked, a black smudge that sought to blot out the stars. It did not hide, but its stillness cast into Kor’s soul a trepidation no invective could have framed. Flecks of cyan splashed from a multitude of maws that diminished and recrudesced as readily as pustules on the crest of a wave. Glutted on the spoils of its conquest, it was no longer a newborn, but far vaster than before—indeed, it rivaled in proportion the very moon on which Kor dwelt. The anxiety that lanced her soul is how she recognized it; that terrible and disabling familiarity. She knew, fully and with no doubt, what hovered before her was the being that so long ago afflicted her with incapacitating fear.
<< Tsathoskr. >>
In spite of the protective magic she spent ages weaving, its name spilled into her mind as a deluge of raw evil, effortless and colder than any cryomancy conjured throughout her long practice. Behind it, she sensed a multitude of other presences; worse, something awakened. Somehow, she sensed it was the Collective—finally, it responded to this being’s presence.
“You can not harm me,” she insisted, but her shout echoed in her mind like a wail of despair.
Forcefully, she shut her eyes and cleared her thoughts. This vile creation was not her better. She was older, wiser, and more powerful. It was also time, she realized; Midgardsormr’s slumber was sufficient, near its end, and she desired its strength.
“Vakna, ormur eilífs vetrar!” she screamed.
Beneath her, Midgardsormr’s roared to life. Eyes opened again, and much higher, she beheld from a vantage of alarming propinquity an ebon strand uncoil from the primary mass of her foe. A tendril of cruel darkness, it probed her barrier, pressed, scratched, and scraped the surface as if curious as to its properties.
Then it crashed through as though it, her mastercraft of an age of effort, was mere glass.
Her barrier breached, a torrent of stygian hatred rushed through the fractured aperture. Frantically, she fled, shade-stepping and teleporting out of the way the matte bIack spears that assailed her from every angle. Into her fortress hewn into Midgardsormr’s skull, she retreated. Yet the malevolence poured into her steed’s mouth, even as it awoke and rose to confront the threat. Drowned, it flailed impotently in a black sea of insanity, each gasp a choked gargle; beneath its weight, Glaceria was nearly halved. Inside, the river of night crept through the small places, violated wards, perverted ramparts, and inundated her citadel with a tide of malice. Relentless, it pursued her. Finally, she sprinted down the corridor to her atheneum. Behind her she felt the roar of a million screams, pinions of death struck her back, and strands of doom grasped at her limbs. Terrified and moments from obliteration, she slammed behind her to the door to the one place it could not follow—a door secured by a thousand magisters and a million years of craft greater than she, alone, could ever attain.
She hid within her atheneum.
Prostrate, exhausted, and forlorn, she hyperventilated rapidly. With a hand that trembled, she wiped, to little avail, the tears that cascaded down her cheeks. She was safe, finally. Not even a god could breach this chamber.
Somehow, its voice again ripped into her mind.
<< What have you done? >>
“Nothing! Go away!”
<< I shall feast upon your flesh. >>
“No! Please, what … what do I do?”
<< You have nothing to offer. >>
“I have knowledge! I can tell you who did this to your home, to your mother! If it means not having you as my enemy, I will tell you everything you need to destroy them all!”