Bright and Terrible: Part 1
This story was made using the solo RPG Bright and Terrible, by Rose on Mars.
Drowning. There is nothing more terrifying, more soul-rending than the feeling of being in the midst of an endless dark, unable to breathe as you sink further and further away.
How piddling a word it was for the humans. ‘Drowning.’ They even had a different word for the same emotion; ‘Overwhelming.’ They used it like children, ignorant of the true breadth of horror such a word contained. They threw such words around without a care. ‘Starving.’ ‘Awe-struck.’
Lonely.
I know what it is to drown, to feel the weight of the world’s oceans crash down on not only your head, but the whole world. The humans would use words like ‘culture,’ ‘civilization,’ or ‘Empire’ to describe what had been lost. Small, useless words. The meanest words of my people are as birdsong to the clattering bones of human-speak.
I am the last of my people. I am lost. I am lonely. I am starving. I am drowning.
The water leaks from my mouth, even now. Steam condenses on the air with my every breath. I have seen humans do it when the snows fall from the skies and they shiver in their thick beast furs. They are like lizards, warm when the world is warm and cold when the world is cold. For me, the burning fires and frozen crystals of Atlantis are nestled deep in my soul. There is no sun nor snow that will touch them.
I don’t remember as much human-speak as I once knew. As an Atlantean in the God-Queen’s court, I had to be able to converse at least passably with the visiting peasants of the human kingdoms. We told them it was a sign of respect for those who filled our wine-cups, cleaned our silks, and polished our gold. In truth, it was so none of our servants could speak in private with their country kin.
It was a tiresome issue. Perhaps it was a wise practice centuries ago, when the barbarians were not yet broken and needed constant taming, but now the humans were properly shaped to their place. When they spoke in their gibbering language it was minor slave gossip or hastily whispered warnings. At most I learned which head slaves were gentler with their charges than their obsequious mewling suggested. I respected those liars who risked discovery and our displeasure to spare a new serving-girl or clumsy servant the same. It spoke of honor.
It also spoke of hubris, to think they knew more of mercy than we. They received greater punishment than the servant they hoped to save, in hopes they now would understand.
No. Not now. Then.
How?
How had it happened? The history of the Atlantean people stretches ten thousand years into the past. It is a history both bright and terrible. We fought to build an Empire that held all the world in its loving embrace, and now it is all gone. Vanished in an instant. How could such a heavy past be scoured from the world like an errant puff of dust?
I don’t know how, but Atlantis has fallen. The Empire of Air and Darkness is lost to us. Mount Bleak has been torn apart in a blaze of flame and shadow. The Shining Towers, which one stood so proud and defiant over the Sea of Sorrows, are now pulled down into the hungry depths. The indigo triremes of our unyielding fleet now sail the ocean no more.
I have seen them, the humans, share the truth in their gibbering whispers. They tell tales of beasts and burning light, of trees of fire and the cold oceans boiling. The perfectly white carriages dismantled by unseen hands and echoing screams.
In my hand, a hammer. It is the one thing from Atlantis that survives, apart from me. It glitters in brilliant Orichalcum, a thousand colors all dancing and intermingling with each other. It sings to me, my fell hammer, the tool of my trade, for I was a diplomat — so the humans called me. A strange word, clumsy and inelegant, but not inaccurate. I conveyed truths. I convinced the stubborn. I educated the ignorant. Our human slaves always understood us better after I had finished my work. The most difficult barbarians who would not bow to our God-Queen were brought to me and my fellow diplomats. We changed minds as sure as surgeons with a scalpel.
I must not be the only one. Or perhaps I must be. I do not know. The miracles and majesties of Atlantis are gone forever, save me. I am the last.
It is too much. The whole ocean has poured over my head. My lungs fill with tears un-shed. I am drowning.
A human phrase: “I want to die.” I had heard the phrase many times, along with many different phrases that ultimately meant the same thing. I came to understand that humans have a strange need to exaggerate, to place emphasis not through tone or body movement, but through their own clumsy sort of poetry. As one who had heard many different pleas for death, “I want to die” always hit my ears as a petulant child throwing a tantrum.
I did not want to die. The mere idea is childish. I feel despair, hopelessness, and loss as keenly as any — more so than the barbarian humans — but still I live. I carry that despair and loss with me, like a penitent’s brace or marshal chains. It is to be borne, and to bear means to stand and move.
I moved, though I knew not in which direction I walked. I saw villages and cities, I heard music and the cries of battle. Flashes of flame and pain in the night as the humans learned of their new directionless fate. I paid them little mind. I passed farms and huts made from dry mud — was there anything more base than living from the dust of the earth? Where I walked I heard the choking of stoppered laughter and hushed song. I was terrible to them; their joy was squashed upon seeing me walk past, their anarchic revels suddenly premature.
I became so used to the grim and dour cloud I wore about me, that it was the sounds of anger that shook me from my wandering. It was no riot nor festival, there were too few voices for either, but the crowd of humans was thick. Two were shouting to the crowd, first one then the other. Murmuring and loud responses were intermittent from the surrounding throng, and I was able to approach without notice.
I saw at once what was happening. I knew instantly what had happened, and required no knowledge of human-speak to be certain.
It was a town meeting of some kind, a gathering of local humans in some barbaric mockery of a trial. The onlookers were no doubt given the duty of judiciary, as the two parties argued what amounted to their case.
There were two groups at the front of the mob. I did not recognize the first group of humans; they wore brown robes and copper symbols hung around their necks. They carried torches and dragged behind them a furnace that held a single burning flame surrounded with stone effigies. A traveling shrine to some pagan force, perhaps. The eldest among them waved a thin branch about like a wand, hitting the ground with it when he hoped to punctuate a particular grunt or whine. Were the branch thicker or made of stout iron, it might have influenced the throng.
The others…the others I knew. The winged ones were hunted by our shepherds for their feathers and high prices in the slave markets. Their cities had been pulled to the earth, and any seen flying were fair as game. I had paid little heed to their condition as I had no need for exotic servants, but never before had I seen so many in one place. Ten or twenty stood tall and proud in their leather coats and gripping wooden spears. A youth at their front spoke clear and pointed with the flat of their hand.
Between the two groups…
Though I did not know them personally, I recognized the shaven head and branded flesh of one of the Loeioi. This mortal had been chosen as a consort by some noble of repute in the halls of Atlantis — a Saltazan, perhaps, or a Hekonite. An odd custom, but one I did not wholly fail to understand. The Loeioi was held tight by the chain still wrapped around his golden collar, his eyes empty when they should be burning with shame and anger.
They were shouting over this Loeioi, their mad gibbering like pebbles falling on wet leaves. Frantic flailing of limbs and erratic hopping marked their agitation. They were fighting. They wanted him. Not to free him — nothing could break open the golden collar once it was sealed — but for what? A prize most likely. They had no symbols of leadership of their own, so they must have needed ours.
Their babbling grated my ears. I could hear the fire-worshipers claim ownership through right of conquest. They were the ones who had dragged the sorceress — such a slovenly word for a Hekonite! — from her chambers and burned her alive. Their holy flame had claimed her unholy flesh, so too must it devour the body she had befouled nightly.
The winged ones stood strong and demanded the Loeioi in turn. He had been one of them before the sorceress had cut off his wings. It was only right that he be returned to his own people, and to send him to the flames would bring its own retribution.
I cared little for their pleas, their mewling barks and whimpers. What I cared for I saw in the Loeioi’s eyes. Fool humans! It didn’t matter to the slave who held the chain. Death had already claimed the thing’s soul, it had no need for pity nor punishment. It was lost, broken, the one thing it had been bent to serve now gone.
By the dark towers of the Hepatizon, I felt more kinship with this Loeioi than I had ever felt for another.
I strode to the front of the mob. I could hear their panic and confusion as I reached out for the chain. “I claim the Loeioi for myself,” I said, mist pouring from my mouth. “Begone from this place, and trouble us no more.”
For a moment, my eyes stared into his and I took up my tool, my hammer to the nails of mortal thoughts. I could repair the thing’s mind, make it serve me suitably and quietly. I would have a measure of what I had before the seas consumed everything…
But I was a fool. I forgot how pain makes mortals foolish, and fear makes them brutal. They swarmed at me like ants over a carcass, their fear of my wrath measured and found wanting against their hatred. If they once thought I was immortal, thanks to the Sorceress they knew now that immortality was a fragile thing.
We of Atlantis have never run away. Supposedly a Grand Commissar of the unyielding fleet once withdrew from a battle with the local tribes of the northern isles. They say his excuse was they had launched a surprise attack, and it was better for the mortal animals to see the invincible armies of Atlantis withdraw than to see a single marble soldier fall.
He was skinned alive as punishment for his wisdom and his entrails burnt as an offering to our God-Queen.
I now understood the Grand Commissar’s plight. To stay and die or flee and be seen as a weakling is a horrible choice to make. How many nights have I stared at the darkened sky and wondered how much greater my story might have been had I chosen differently.
But chose I did. Flee I did. They scratched at me with their spears and swords, shouting their rage and panic. I slew enough to allow my escape, but could not bring myself to give them proper punishment and burn their bones to the ground. Though fury stung my heart, what mattered punishment now? Why teach a lesson if they would never see my like again? It would not be punishment but a petulant tantrum of a lonely child.