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faith and feather prologue |
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In the north, where the land stretches itself desperately tall against the ocean, where it throws up great cliffs and rocky shores to ward Leviathan away from its territory, there is a place so desolate that even humans, infectious and parasitic, do not dare to tread there. Here, it is so bitterly cold that the sun, on most days, passes the frozen land by - so oppressively barren that the creatures that survive there are just as harsh and unforgiving as the land itself. Yet even the monsters that once thrived there no longer visit the crater. There, the blood of the Planet pulses strongest. There she weeps her loudest as she toils to repair the damage that was once laid to her ice-encrusted face. There waits the wraith. It hovers alone in the center of the crater, its cries silent echoes of loneliness and fear, confusion and regret. Born from the Planet's greatest grief, lifted by her hope and locked in place by its own helpless straining for something whose name it has long since forgotten, its entreaties go unheard by most. In the midst of the ocean to the west, something stirs and begins to weep quietly, that soft, choked sound echoing down long and empty corridors. Don't leave me. To the south, jerking from disturbed slumber, something clutches silently at velvet darkness to combat tears of its own. I'm sorry. To the east, there is a watery sigh, and something else shies from the plaintive call, its sympathy engulfed by its watery grave. Let me lie. The wraith calls to them all, despairing, and the Planet weeps with the little lost child, torn from her gentle hands through no fault of its own. She weeps, and sends out her own call for someone, anyone, to come to her aid this one last time. The atmosphere was warm and glistening, buoyed along by a gentle hum until the tune fell suddenly flat and a scream burst forth instead, intense horror shattering the peace along with porcelain. Then came footsteps, frantic, running from cold, impassive faces and blood-coated walls, desperate for help, for a human, anything alive. The answering voice was strong and serene, exuding supreme authority and reassurance, a sense that no matter the horrors within, it would all be okay. That same voice failed when the eyes it belonged to looked upon the scene within the blood-stained pagoda, rushed out of its body in an obstinate, disbelieving exhalation. She closed the doors behind her, and leapt forth to race up flights of creaking wooden stairs, the heavy scent of carnage pervasive, even where the shutters were flung apart as wide as they could go. She climbed to the highest floor and drops to her knees, hands to her mouth, appalled by sudden, harsh cleanliness and the gaping absence of the person who needed to be there, for all of them. But there was nothing to be found in that topmost room. It was only later, when she had summoned the nerve to descend back into the lower levels, doused in blood that should never have been spilled, that her sharp eyes picked out a gleam of familiarity in the soaking sea of red. There was a flash as she prised cold, sticky fingers open, and only then did the tears begin to spill down her cheeks, the barest trickle from an endless spring of sorrows. "...Leviathan..." |
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