Member
Megatron
evierose
Fallenreaper
Snowdrops
Taka
Dark Jack
Crimson Flame
Kalas
HeMandaddy
High above a peak of obsidian and pitch, a glowing emblem rose into the sky, piercing clouds, rain, and wind alike. It shone with black and azure hues and looked down upon the world or at least its greatest shard.
Below, in a cavernous mountain tomb, the God of Form stirred, writhing as the coiling expanse of its mind considered its domain.
The Eye of Malath swiveled, and its gaze saw what remnants of life remained. Few survivors remained, and even fewer hailed from the old world that the god could not remember. He knew only that these beings held little substance from those who had come before; it was written in their flesh. So too, it seemed, had quintessence been shorn away, as only wisps and fragments did remain.
The monolithic entity shifted in its hollow realm, and though no light touched the air or stone of the place, eyes opened and found that they could see. Far away from its titanic form, a gateway opened in the mountain, light barely spilling in. The god considered the world through its aperture--and indeed, through its greater Eye. It saw many things.
Plants withering, animals burning. Men...so few men. Sadness struck Malath in that moment, for he understood all at once the enormity of what creation had lost. He felt it in the broken chains of succession, in the branches that had vanished from the Tree of Life, never again to be seen. He knew that lives had been lost, but so much more was gone than that. Even substance itself had fled, reason too was gone from this world for its ancient enemy writhed above him--above them all--stirring up the skies.
The great Eye swiveled once more, and the glowing symbol lit upon something genuinely new, yet unspeakably ancient in a way.
Pestilence.
Far afield, a deific force wrestled with the chaos of the skies. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, it was winning, but it was not enough--not by half. The being was small in stature and wreathed in dire sickness and decay. To look upon it was to know true malignance and disease. For Malath Kaal, it was at once like learning he had a brother and discovering that they'd committed acts too heinous even to recount.
Still, even such a force acted to save this decaying shard, perhaps even against its essential nature. This...this Malath Kaal could respect. Yet still, he was not done, for there was much to see. The Eye turned, and in a great arc, joy surged anew in his form.
Like beacons, other figures--large and small; ancient, yet newly born--appeared within his awareness. One struck a great metallic drum with a bone of the earth, its head crudely shaped yet sturdy and robust. With each beat of the figure's rhythmic work, the shard stabilized. Others wrest pillars up from the earth and maintained them, stilling the trembling remnant of stone and rock and dirt. Others still existed, twisting life or forging it anew--spreading it. Some few held forms utterly alien to him, so unlike his own were they. Their actions he could not comprehend, and with those, there were others whose forms were familiar but whose minds wove in patterns that his own could not seem to follow. Pride swelled within him, joining the jubilation that had come before. Soon, those emotions welled up with power, and then conviction joined them.
Far above, the Eye of Malath began to brighten. First, it could be seen only from his mountain, then it was so bright it lit the sky for miles. In moments it became a star, and then a sun so bright was its glaring gaze. Brighter still, it glowed until the entire mountain range was obscured by its brilliance, and the intensity of its light burned away all clouds and wind and rain that it did touch. A roar echoed out from that blackest of mountains--Se'raa Kelet, the Black Maw--and it struck the structure like a gong. Yet, despite the vibration, the earth beyond it did not shake, though a tremendous wind roared out, carrying the sound. There were no words in it, but it held its own deeper sort of meaning.
Endure.
The luminescence could easily be seen from every corner of the shard, and further...it would not matter where one looked. Even buried within the earth, its shining brilliance would be known. The echoing sound of that victorious roar would resonate through the bodies of all that yet lived. It would give them warmth; it would fill their bellies and sate their thirst--if only for a time. Further still, it did something that few others of his kin could do; it cast a trillion-trillion lifeforms through the air and scattered them far and wide. In a microscopic rain, would these organisms fall like a gentle blanket barely seen drifting down to earth.
That unseen shower of life soon came to rest all across the shard, and all it touched birthed new life as if the ground itself had become a womb. Slowly, those tiny lives sunk into the soil, stone, and soot where they lay for a time...dormant. Then, as with his first children, the tiny lives within the Maw, they spread. At first, they formed only tendrils, writhing through the dirt, and where some failed, they changed. These became hardier to traverse stone and long since antiquated bone. Gradually, as the world breathed, these lives spread out far and wide, uniting as they stretched out unseen limbs beneath the ground. Finally, with a final burst of their Lord's light, they began in earnest their most crucial work.
All across the shard, the varied mycelium of the Ke'esath Sae'a burst forth from the soil. Some entwined with roots and bark, others stalks, and yet others merely spread across the surface. Through the Ke'esath, nutrients were divied and cast out far and wide. Where fires raged, they scorched at the fungal roots of Malath, but they would not be impeded. Adapting, as all things must in a world so harsh and cruel, the mycelium took from its would-be-killer and harnessed its destructive might. So fires became fuel themselves, and the mycelium crept on.
Slowly, as the fungus finished its great encroachment, Malath's Eye began to dim until once more it was seen only by a seldom few nearby. Far below the Eye, the Great Presence briefly grew still within its abode, considering its work. Every branching fiber of that vast mycelial web was like a nerve in his own body, allowing him to perceive much even without the aid of his greater Eye. Still, that had not been his aim, for while the Ke'esath Sae'a indeed spread nutrients all across the shard’s many miles, it barely made a difference. This irked him, for he knew the world needed more, and so he moved once more. Twisting, the unending bulk of Sa'a Malath Kaal rose up within the mountain. In response, the gateway at its base slipped closed, cutting off all light. Moving with a swiftness that one could not expect of such a massive creature, the Deity of Form reached the limit of his domain. Only then did the gateway open above the god, revealing to him the sky.
Light cut downwards through the black, but it revealed only swirling mist and the faint outline of an endless coiling beast. That haze ascended from the mountain's opened peak and pressed up into the sky. Where beams of brilliance struck that blinding brackish fog, it died as if eaten by whatever dwelled within. Then, as the fog--and the god within it--reached the apex of their climb, they met with Malath's ardent sigil. Within the veil of essence that hid his divine flesh, something stirred and then was revealed. It was like a wall of flesh, beautiful and strange, but the truth of it was soon unearthed. Upon that pearlescent skein opened a truly massive orb, its gaze taking in even the symbolic Eye of the god.
The Eye of Malath, at that moment, faded from existence, replaced instead by the true countenance of the Formless Flesh. At the true Eye's unveiling, the world shuddered, and then Malath Kaal spoke.
"Arise."
With a sound like thunder--no--like reality snapped in twain, his voice rang out through the heavens and across the shard. Where storms of unreality writhed, his voice took shape, calling upon Ke'esath Sae'a to aid its cause. That sound it drove itself into the earth in many far-flung spears of iridescent power, and where it struck so arose something new. At first, they were only saplings--small and supple wood--but in minutes, their fibrous bark groaned. With a violence they grew upwards at the sky, their branches spearing upwards at the storms that threatened life's long-since-weakened hold. The winds tore at them, and those supernatural forces threatened to shatter their earthbound trunks, but they would not relent.
The Unbent Lord, their god, called out; his truest Eye a shining beacon.
"Renew."
That edict struck their bark and suffused them with power most divine. So blessed by Malath, they opened blossoms to the storm of unreal etheric force and supped upon its power. Like men dying of thirst after a long drought, they drunk from the storm, taking their fill--then more. Steadily, the arcane storms began to calm as the power was drawn down into the shard itself, suffusing the earth--and as the trees exhaled--the air as well.
Satisfied, Malath Kaal withdrew his form and power both into the mountain, leaving behind enough only to maintain the delicate balance that the Kel’a Maeori--those great trees--maintained. Quietly, he rested, allowing his sleeping mind to spread far and wide across the Ke'esath Sae'a so that he might dream of the world soon to come. His final thought, before unconsciousness took hold, was singular and ringing. It shut out the light from the world--the peak to his abode forming anew--and released flickering fragments of his power onto the shard.
It was not thunderous, but it could be felt, if only as a whisper. It said only…
'Emerge.'
