|
roseleaf320 -> RE: =WPC 2026= Field of Typhoon (1/22/2026 22:52:44)
|
On the gods… this better work. Even Admete’s thoughts were breathless. The star-cloaked woman dropped to a crouch, too scared to let her knees touch the rough gravel beneath her for fear they’d never leave it again. Her golden ornaments jingled from her waist as she bounced, laughing at her fatigue. If this really is it, please, let my next stop be utterly devoid of mountains. And if this led to nothing, and she had to get back down… well, how bad of a fall could it be?
Admete’s chin tipped upwards, so her eyes could scan the inscription above. It circled around the gaping entrance of the cave before her, a jagged wound ripped out of the cliff’s side bleeding sparkling quartz and shining obsidian. It was large enough to house a cyclops, or, more likely this high up, a chimera. But the oracle had spoken of a temple hidden within the Oetan cliffs: a place where Nyx nearly touched the underworld, where the Ferry god’s crook kissed Night’s tapestry. And Admete did not feel the huff of a beast, the crunch of teeth through bone, in her strand. Not yet.
“When sight and sound and skin decay, Their guidance is all that remains.” Admete read the words aloud, her low voice rough from dissuse. Though their sharply carved script was dulled by wear against the stone, Admete could see the golden glow of Nyx within them through her starlit eye, Clotho’s guidance drawing forth the presence of the Ferry god. The god that resided in Nyx, but moved ever-drifting between the over and underworld. The god that spared her once as she traced his steps. The god of travelers, guides, paths. The only god that might hold the path she needed.
Within your shores, your own Guide told me of other worlds. Admete closed her eyes and let her knees finally hit the gravel. She didn’t like to pray-- the less gods paid attention to her, the better. But… Ferryman…I need to find one. I need to find her. The only of Clotho’s tasks Admete had ever failed.
Her body wanted so badly to sleep, right here, where quartz and obsidian and slate all scattered together like remnants of a crashing wave against her skin. But underworld doors never stayed in the same place for long. So Admete rose, ornaments laughing, starlit cloth and coiled hair weighed down by dust and sweat. She grasped at the whip within her hands, strands of her goddess’ hair wound loosely around a golden core. Clotho’s gift; Clotho’s trust. The title of Strand and the ability to wield her own.
Admete did not glance back at the dizzying fall behind her as she stepped forward into the cavern’s jaws.
Even the humming, celestial light of her fate-strand did not break through the darkness within. It rushed in around her like a swarm of insects, eager to bite at her flesh and tear her cloth. Admete kept the fingers of her Nyx-carved hand tight against the left wall of the cave for guidance. But as she walked, the senses of her fingertips flickered, and fear welled up within her stomach. Had she lost grip of the wall? Had it disappeared, just for a moment, down a turn she’d missed, or had she wandered away from it entirely?
Soon, the fear was suffocating, and the air of the cave so light she began to feel dizzy. She gave up on the wall and let until her senses catch on anything, anything, that could guide her way. A flash of light off her starlit eye sent her left for several hours-- minutes? Before the crack of a falling pebble turned her right. Soon, the Strand stood completely still save for the flare of her nostrils and the deafening bang of her heart. She was lost. So, so lost.
Until she remembered the inscription, and her whole body calmed. Their guidance is all that remains.
Admete closed her eyes, and stepped forward.
When light finally floods through her eyelids; when the tug in her heart and the itch of her fingers tell her she has left the temple; Admete opens her eyes to a city almost barren. Elysium flickers through her memory, its dead-built walls like paled set pieces, houses empty of anything to suggest life. This… from this city, the color has been sucked completely, leaving only obsidian black coils and marble white towers. Nothing lives here. Not even the dead. Admete stands as still as the buildings that surround her. The buildings with architecture that looks nothing like the graceful columns of Perses, or the sturdy homes of Kratos.
She made it. The Ferry god’s cavern led her outside of Khaimon.
So of course the first thing she does is find a bar.
Not quite, really. She more of stumbles on it, after attempting to wander with purpose, with drive and determination in her heart, before she realizes she is exhausted and incredibly hungry and has no idea where to go. And then— as if the world itself hears her thoughts— there is a tavern, and somehow, it smells like home.
She enters; she sits. Her senses are so dulled with fatigue that she notices absolutely nothing about the tavern keep, or the person that comes to her table and serves her a plate of olives and bread and cheese. Only that she did not have to order and the food tastes exactly like how one would expect olives and bread and cheese to taste. She chugs the glass of honeyed water she does not remember getting, and drinks the second a bit slower when her server refills it. It is only once the olives and bread and cheese are gone, once her breathing has slowed and the she remembers she has traveled to another world, that she notices none of the people in the bar are breathing.
Now that she no longer needs to be served, none of them are even moving. She narrows her eyes, gaze flickering across each person. Each are simply the barebone shape of what Admete knows a human to look like-- two legs, two arms, a torso, a head-- but that is all. Skins of life-filled browns are replaced with smooth, unblemished porcelain. Instead of clothes, vines of black curl through each; some taken by it entirely, others merely clad with something like a scarf, or a vine replacing a single limb. Admete narrows her eyes, lets her breathing drop to a whisper. Constructs.
She clears her throat. No reaction. One hand hovers over the clasp at her waist, the belt curled and safely stowed. A construct built of bronze hovers in her memory, his forge-hammer sparking across their opponents’ helmets. What would you do if I…
A nudge of her elbow is enough to send her empty plate crashing to the ground, porcelain shattering across the tiled floor. Admete’s eyes do not leave the constructs. The constructs do not move.
A shove of her foot; porcelain shards slide across the tiles towards the nearest automaton. Admete’s voice rings strong through the silent inn. “Pick it up.”
With bone-white fingers, the automaton picks up the nearest plate shards and walks it behind the bar. The clang of porcelain against stone echoes through the room as it dumps them, presumably, in a dump-bin the same material as the rest of the place. Then, again, it freezes in place.
“Ugh.” Admete huffs in frustration and swings her legs out from the table. Her sandals grab shards of porcelain as she steps, their sharp edges scraping against the tiles, though they do not pierce through to Admete’s soles. She picks a second construct, its back to the wall, black vines like ligaments threading between its joints. Five steps, and her face is an inch from its featureless head, chin up in defiance. Do something, clanker. She breathes in; she blows, hard, into its face.
The automaton does not move.
A sneer paints Admete’s face. With a grunt, she slams her elbow into its chest, and it hits the wall behind it with a clap. She hears its limbs scramble to keep balance, to right itself. She braces for retaliation, limbs itching for a good brawl.
But after the automaton rights itself, it freezes once more.
“Fight me already!” Admete surges forward, slams her knee into the construct’s waist, palms into its torso as it clatters to the ground. She turns to another and unhooks her whip, white threads shattering its chest with a crack. They both tumble to the ground and lay still.
Admete’s breath turns to a pant, her flame flickering out as fast as it had erupted. There is nothing for her here. She feels it in the ringing of her ears, the humming that echoes through her limbs as her whip hung limply from her hand. She is to eat; to sleep; and then leave.
That’s no fun, Admete shot back in her head, to no one in particular. With a resigned huff, she held out her hand to the construct at the bar, took the keys he dropped into her hand, unlocked the room it led to, fell onto the bed, and slept.
Admete is convinced this city-- this world that is not Khaimon, that is not the underworld or Nyx or anything Admete has ever even conceived of-- is the most infuriatingly boring place she has ever been. She sits on the roof of a building, any building, for they all look identical, and she could be where she is or across the city and she would not know the difference. She has searched every corner, every building, every inch of forest, for a way out, or for a hint of her. And she has found nothing.
Was… was that movement? The rustle in her ears, the click of a gentle step? Or has she finally lost it?
No-- no, that was movement. Admete hears it again, below her, the click of something small against stone. The fog that pressed against her forehead clears in an instant, and when she looks down over the roof to peer through the glassless windows of her building, she sees the flick of an animal’s ears.
“You’re not a construct,” Admete speaks to herself, lifting her body into a crouch. There is a ledge not far from the animal’s window, maybe a fifteen foot fall from Admete. She grips the edge of the roof with some effort and slides herself off it, momentarily breathless until her feet hit the ledge. A crack of pain shoots up from her left ankle, and Admete has to reach her arms through the window to keep herself from slipping. “Pits,” Admete mutters. Might’ve scared it off with--
The animal in the window is not an animal, at all. Maybe it is? She wouldn’t consider a minotaur an animal; not in the literal sense, anyways. And this… this creature had animal-like ears, and a tail, and two paws, but it mostly looked like a person.
It-- she?-- is looking at Admete, eyes wide, tailfur relaxing back into its place as if she’d been frightened. “Neither are you,” it speaks, her voice soft like the fur of her ears.
Admete stares, open mouthed. She probably looks a fool. She hasn’t decided yet whether she cares.
“Although, you sound like one.” The creature gestures with their eyes towards Admete’s waist, where her ornaments of circles and chains are still recovering from her fall.
It’s as if she’s returned to Khaimon. A conversation-- a normal conversation, with jokes. Her specialty. Every lost and confused nerve in Admete’s body feels like it resets as a grin inches its way up her cheeks. Like a construct-- like Crole. This one, she knows. She snaps her limbs to attention and flattens her tone, imitating her old friend’s manners as much as she can. “I could not fool you, fox-human.” She gives two short, quick movements for a nod, and flicks her Nyx-carved arm out, flat-palmed. “Pardon me- while I- oil my joints.” She grabs her waterskin-- taken from a storefront that disappeared as soon as she left it-- and in two jagged movements, dumps a splash onto her shoulder.
The fox-person watches her intently, sky-blue eyes trained on the starlight of Admete’s arm. They smile at her joke, their tail swishing back and forth, and it pulls Admete towards them like a siren. After a breath, the fox speaks again. “Have you been here before?”
Admete shakes her head, clipping the waterskin back to her belt. She knows the creature does not mean this building, but this world, this void of black and white. “No. I assume you’re not from here, either?” And not from Khaimon, certainly. That means there’s more. Admete feels her breath hitch at the realization. If this void was all there was, she would be severely disappointed, and would certainly return to Khaimon empty-handed; which meant she would not return at all. But the vastness of her task suddenly weighs like all of Khaimon’s land upon her shoulders, and then some. There must be dozens of other worlds. Maybe thousands. To find a single person in all of that…
The fox-person has stopped talking-- Admete does not remember what she said. She nods in assent, hoping that will be acceptable. It usually is. “I suppose you haven’t seen…”
How in Erebus was she supposed to describe Alceia?
Alceia at the bar, drink in hand, warm smile on her face. Alceia’s furrowed brows, Alceia’s breath against her-- no, go away-- Alceia fighting in the coliseum, spear in hand, helmet plume red-- no, purple-- Ugh! This is why I don’t like thinking of you!
“A woman dressed like me, ever?” She settles on, though Alceia wearing Clotho’s gold and greens brings a scoff to Admete’s lips. Admete probably looked more like Alceia than any human from another world would. “White hair, maybe carrying a spear…” or her fate-strand. Admete’s internal voice is scathing.
The fox shakes their head. “I have met a very small amount of humans in my life, and none of them had spears or white hair.” Admete had known the answer before the fox person even moved, really. It was never this easy. Not with those who defy fate itself. But if this fox-creature is not her next step…
The inscription that got her out of Khaimon shines across her starlit gaze. When sight and sound and skin decay, Their guidance is all that remains.
Admete sighs as the answer clicks into place. You must teach me this over and over again, must you, Clotho? For though it was the Ferry god’s inscription, it was the Fate god that led her to it. Everything, through every deity, is always Clotho.
Trust in your fate to guide you.
Admete nods to the fox. “No worries. Thank you, but I think I should be going.” The fox’s reply is muffled by the jingling of Admete’s ornaments, the scrape of sandal against shingles. Admete slides down, until her legs dangle from the ledge, her skirt hitching on its edge. And Admete closes her eyes, and pushes off.
Gods, I really hate the ocean.
Admete doesn’t need to open her eyes to identify the scent on the winds that whip against her face and soak her curls with salt. The sea god was fickle at the best of times, and in Khaimon, Admete had not been keen to test the limits of fate’s protection against a thing like Amphe. It seems Clotho finally had other ideas. Of course my first stops on this journey through worlds are deathly-boring-city and flooding-ship-in-a-hurricane.
Admete keeps her eyes shut as a snap reverberates through the air, and the rain turns almost to sleet against her skin. She waits until the world steadies, until the storm seems unchanging and the wood beneath her feet sways only slightly. She is tempted to wait even longer, until Clotho has decided her Strand has suffered enough and whisks her to a new, more useful world. But a flicker within her chest tells her there is something she must see.
Three beings, other than herself, stand within relative proximity aboard their makeshift ship. One is a hulking amalgam of flesh, its single center eye the size of Admete’s head. The second is shaped like a human, but Admete catches the parts where rusted metal breaks through its exterior. Another construct. Above each of their heads flashes a swirling wheel, black as Nyx’s darkest night. The third being-- the fox creature from earlier, Admete realizes, and the calm it brings her is like a port in her storm, a shield against the dread that this sea-world threatens to boil within her. The fox’s circle is marble-white, its spokes straight. Admete glances above her own head, squinting her eyes against the rain, in time for the last flashes of marble to fade back into the storm. Teams. Allies. Clotho needs her-- and the fox-- to remove the black-swirled ones from play.
“That, at least, I know how to handle,” she mutters, unclipping her whip from her belt. It unfurls beside her as she glances between her two opponents.
Admete steps forward, cringing as the icy water splashes and bites at her toes. The cyclops first. Her whip would serve much better against muscle and blood than it would against… whatever the construct might possess. And if it is anything like Crole, she is not inclined to let it get close to her.
“Hey cyclops,” she yells, hoping it at least hears the spirit of her taunt over the storm. She flicks the whip gently against the water beneath her, Clotho’s guiding strands encircling the one golden strand she can never touch. “You got a pig’s snout hiding somewhere in there?”
|
|
|
|
