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the crown of a wandering man
The moment it happens is abrupt. Startling.
The Void has been compared to many things, from the many mouths of the many minds that have crossed it. A lingering brush, a quiet whispering. A thick, black hollow or an endless plain – a world without horizon, where its roads never condense to a finite point on a skyline, because there is no line. No sky, or all sky; it depends on what someone drags along with them, streaming behind them like banners, like the rotting carcasses of fish snared in a longline.
And like rot, like flesh and meat made tender by the ceaseless lapping tongue of waves, pieces of them break off and pollute the water, the air, until they are swimming, as it were, in their own filth. Clouded by what they themselves have created, have pulled in their wake.
They leave it behind themselves, too; shipwrecked islands of moment and memory set to drift forever.
The Void has been compared to many things; the Outsider tries not to make such paltry statements. What is the Void like? What could it be compared to? There is nothing adequate, nothing that can call to mind such vacancy, such eternity. Perhaps the wide, blank gap of a pupil, drinking in the light, revealing nothing in turn. Keeping to itself and its keeper the images that flicker upside down in its depths. For all the power that men long for words to hold, they are always found wanting in the end. Still a barrier between thought and mouth, between ideal and expression.
Well. Everyone falls short of ideal. Even he.
And so the Outsider might compare the Void, in this instance, to a cool, still pond. A motionless body of water, whose placid surface covers the movement of tiny, squirming things. Whose great mass allows great things, ponderous and slow, to glide through itself without disturbance. Whose spilled ink color drinks in light and reveals nothing, can only hint at its depths.
The moment, as it happens, abrupt and startling, is like a rock being heaved into its center. A clumsy action, thoughtless and without skill. But skill is hardly needed in such instances, when all one desires is to create waves, to tip over someone else’s pieces.
To cry into an echoless Void for attention.
One instant – such as can be perceived, when time itself slips and slides like a loose joint, like a bone no longer supported by its ligaments and ties – the Void is as it always is, and always will be, and the next: plop. One startling, abrupt moment, and already the Outsider is following it back, walking his fingers down the strands of action that led to this… surprise (because nothing, really, is surprising; the only surprise is the breadth of his neglect, the blind spot that allowed this disruption to build upon itself as it has).
One moment the Void is as it is, and the next, it is diminished. In ways that are only barely perceptible. In the way that a papercut makes one bleed. Something, somewhere, has gone horribly right, for a someone that once upon a time, when he still had wishes of his own, he might have wished were less familiar.
When examined the correct way, the barrier between the Void and all else is thin. Razor blade thin, insect wing flimsy; a gossamer barrier crafted of abandoned cobwebs, waiting for an enterprising hand to push it out of the way. This is no hand brushing through, no wings squished to wet mangled pulp. This is timid fingers plucking at strings, one at a time, until a thousand tiny leaks later, a wall collapses unto itself.
He can’t keep himself from sneering. With or without form, the muscle memory of such sings through his thoughts. Will human desperation ever cease to impress – to disgust – him? All this, for the attentions of a god long since turned away. Well, they have his attention now, don’t they? Scratching and pawing at his door like a dog, ripping out the roots of an immense foundation.
It would be one thing, certainly, if they knew the scope of what they were doing. If they could recognize the scope of their actions, what all that mindless gnawing and weakening of borders would accomplish. Of course, they do not. They never do – his Chosen fare no better in the long run than any other man or woman, fading to tatters as their life grinds itself to smaller and smaller pieces. There has yet to be to the exception that proves this rule.
Daud, certainly, is no exception.
The Outsider’s most recently chosen. A killer, through and through. Perhaps nothing more than a killer. Becoming bloated on corpses and gold, while the Outsider’s shrines grow steadily colder.
(Did Daud feel it happen? The sudden fluctuation of the source from which he pulls his gifts? A flicker through the yellow lines of nerves in his hand. Somehow the Outsider finds it doubtful.)
Daud hasn’t disappointed him. His Chosen is competent and ruthless. Soaked to translucence with blood and sweat, as if Daud were the cloth clutched to the gaping throat of the Empire, stymying its loss, absorbing all its detritus.
Except for the fact, of course, that he is the Knife.
One of his Marked, somewhere out the wide, expansive world, has allowed their scrambling hands to outstretch what should rightfully be within their grasp. He would applaud such action, if he couldn’t see the utter disaster that lurked at its end. If their motives weren’t so trite, if his contempt hadn’t already been worn so well. Their greedy fingers pluck and pull at strings, and time, so meaningless in every other instance, suddenly feels very short indeed.
Who better, then, to render those fingers unable to pluck?
This part only works when they’re dreaming. Something about the state brings mortal men’s minds closest to the Void, allows the Outsider to come and go as he pleases. To make himself as known as he will, to leave what thoughts and ideas – what inspirations – he may. He can’t see what Daud dreams of – not at first – but he can feel the way his presence, the leaking drip of the Void, fractures it, and unmoors it from its rails, its rules.
“Daud, dear friend,” he says into the still rippling, rearranging dream. His tone flat and dry, almost sarcastic, almost disdainful – but not quite. “You’ve been making quite a name for yourself, haven’t you?”
Like the feathery fragments of a dried husk, bits and swirls of blackness propagate themselves in the air, combine into his form, and the Outsider has made his appearance, arms crossed, suspended neatly above the ground.
“Do you know what they call you? Down in the city streets that are now so far below you. Mothers use your moniker to scare their children into bed, but the brave ones take those stories with them into sleep, and dream of a better life.”
The Void has been compared to many things, from the many mouths of the many minds that have crossed it. A lingering brush, a quiet whispering. A thick, black hollow or an endless plain – a world without horizon, where its roads never condense to a finite point on a skyline, because there is no line. No sky, or all sky; it depends on what someone drags along with them, streaming behind them like banners, like the rotting carcasses of fish snared in a longline.
And like rot, like flesh and meat made tender by the ceaseless lapping tongue of waves, pieces of them break off and pollute the water, the air, until they are swimming, as it were, in their own filth. Clouded by what they themselves have created, have pulled in their wake.
They leave it behind themselves, too; shipwrecked islands of moment and memory set to drift forever.
The Void has been compared to many things; the Outsider tries not to make such paltry statements. What is the Void like? What could it be compared to? There is nothing adequate, nothing that can call to mind such vacancy, such eternity. Perhaps the wide, blank gap of a pupil, drinking in the light, revealing nothing in turn. Keeping to itself and its keeper the images that flicker upside down in its depths. For all the power that men long for words to hold, they are always found wanting in the end. Still a barrier between thought and mouth, between ideal and expression.
Well. Everyone falls short of ideal. Even he.
And so the Outsider might compare the Void, in this instance, to a cool, still pond. A motionless body of water, whose placid surface covers the movement of tiny, squirming things. Whose great mass allows great things, ponderous and slow, to glide through itself without disturbance. Whose spilled ink color drinks in light and reveals nothing, can only hint at its depths.
The moment, as it happens, abrupt and startling, is like a rock being heaved into its center. A clumsy action, thoughtless and without skill. But skill is hardly needed in such instances, when all one desires is to create waves, to tip over someone else’s pieces.
To cry into an echoless Void for attention.
One instant – such as can be perceived, when time itself slips and slides like a loose joint, like a bone no longer supported by its ligaments and ties – the Void is as it always is, and always will be, and the next: plop. One startling, abrupt moment, and already the Outsider is following it back, walking his fingers down the strands of action that led to this… surprise (because nothing, really, is surprising; the only surprise is the breadth of his neglect, the blind spot that allowed this disruption to build upon itself as it has).
One moment the Void is as it is, and the next, it is diminished. In ways that are only barely perceptible. In the way that a papercut makes one bleed. Something, somewhere, has gone horribly right, for a someone that once upon a time, when he still had wishes of his own, he might have wished were less familiar.
When examined the correct way, the barrier between the Void and all else is thin. Razor blade thin, insect wing flimsy; a gossamer barrier crafted of abandoned cobwebs, waiting for an enterprising hand to push it out of the way. This is no hand brushing through, no wings squished to wet mangled pulp. This is timid fingers plucking at strings, one at a time, until a thousand tiny leaks later, a wall collapses unto itself.
He can’t keep himself from sneering. With or without form, the muscle memory of such sings through his thoughts. Will human desperation ever cease to impress – to disgust – him? All this, for the attentions of a god long since turned away. Well, they have his attention now, don’t they? Scratching and pawing at his door like a dog, ripping out the roots of an immense foundation.
It would be one thing, certainly, if they knew the scope of what they were doing. If they could recognize the scope of their actions, what all that mindless gnawing and weakening of borders would accomplish. Of course, they do not. They never do – his Chosen fare no better in the long run than any other man or woman, fading to tatters as their life grinds itself to smaller and smaller pieces. There has yet to be to the exception that proves this rule.
Daud, certainly, is no exception.
The Outsider’s most recently chosen. A killer, through and through. Perhaps nothing more than a killer. Becoming bloated on corpses and gold, while the Outsider’s shrines grow steadily colder.
(Did Daud feel it happen? The sudden fluctuation of the source from which he pulls his gifts? A flicker through the yellow lines of nerves in his hand. Somehow the Outsider finds it doubtful.)
Daud hasn’t disappointed him. His Chosen is competent and ruthless. Soaked to translucence with blood and sweat, as if Daud were the cloth clutched to the gaping throat of the Empire, stymying its loss, absorbing all its detritus.
Except for the fact, of course, that he is the Knife.
One of his Marked, somewhere out the wide, expansive world, has allowed their scrambling hands to outstretch what should rightfully be within their grasp. He would applaud such action, if he couldn’t see the utter disaster that lurked at its end. If their motives weren’t so trite, if his contempt hadn’t already been worn so well. Their greedy fingers pluck and pull at strings, and time, so meaningless in every other instance, suddenly feels very short indeed.
Who better, then, to render those fingers unable to pluck?
This part only works when they’re dreaming. Something about the state brings mortal men’s minds closest to the Void, allows the Outsider to come and go as he pleases. To make himself as known as he will, to leave what thoughts and ideas – what inspirations – he may. He can’t see what Daud dreams of – not at first – but he can feel the way his presence, the leaking drip of the Void, fractures it, and unmoors it from its rails, its rules.
“Daud, dear friend,” he says into the still rippling, rearranging dream. His tone flat and dry, almost sarcastic, almost disdainful – but not quite. “You’ve been making quite a name for yourself, haven’t you?”
Like the feathery fragments of a dried husk, bits and swirls of blackness propagate themselves in the air, combine into his form, and the Outsider has made his appearance, arms crossed, suspended neatly above the ground.
“Do you know what they call you? Down in the city streets that are now so far below you. Mothers use your moniker to scare their children into bed, but the brave ones take those stories with them into sleep, and dream of a better life.”
uhhh this isn't late at all uhhhhhhhh
Which is why these rippled fragments surprise him, offering images he’s known only dimly before. Flickers of red unanchored, sensation of a burning in his hands (it’s the Mark but it’s more than that, runs through the whole of his veins, something bloomed from deep inside him). And a sense that a knowing he’s in motion through a scene unspecified, scarce changing even as he moves, or the changing of it doesn’t signify for who and what he is. Infinite, it’s as if he could charge ahead forever, as if he will charge ahead forever and stretch his stinging hands and burn, and burn beyond the end of everything.
Ashes. There are ashes.
Pain flickers through his arms.
And slowly, slowly, the unseamed pieces pull apart.
He realizes what’s happening as soon as he feels the chill. It catches him in the spine, a cold driven deep to ache away all force of living, a cold wrought of centuries and convulsions of space.
(Only cold isn’t precisely the word, is it? The feeling left behind is cold; what strikes before is an emptying, a vacancy that astonishes all animation. At times, he’s wondered if that wild emptiness could take him. If remaining long enough within the Void meant giving yourself to the emptiness.
Not, of course, that it could ever hold him. Daud has and has always had too much of life for that. Too much will to be driven to stillness.)
He remembers this. He knows precisely where he is.
Dear friend.
No.
He can feel his skin crawl, just a little. Doesn’t bother to hide the sneer that works across his face.
And there he is. The bastard himself.
For a moment Daud can find no words, or no words that will suit. He’s thought from time to time on what he’d say if– when he saw the Outsider again. Had come up with expressions for all his indignation, all his cool and lack of caring. Only those words are distant right now. Only he can’t call them back to himself; doesn’t even think on their existence.
’Where have you been,’ though of course Daud isn’t going to say that. The words whisper only faintly in the back of his mind; mostly, it doesn’t matter whether the Outsider shows himself or not. Doesn’t matter that it’s been months, a year and more (as if Daud doesn’t know the time down to the day) since he last saw the Void-ridden bastard.
Doesn’t matter, because what does Daud need the bastard and his cryptic messages for. Hasn’t he done well enough for himself? Doesn’t his name, his influence grow stronger every day? Two years ago, he might have felt the Outsider’s absence; now it means and has meant nothing.
(Never mind that a small part of him feels almost, almost relieved to be called on again. That something in him breathes relief.)
He ignores the trite little telling of his name. Glares cooly at the god above.
“What do you want.”