Before she speaks, the aether is diving through fragments of time and place again – each step lacquered with the mindfulness of the movement, but the mind hitched to a where, roving over bloodsoaked plains and shuddering woodlands that scream, that scream, and the night bending to kiss the dry and unholy grounds with star-fire. The crater where once the pool of wisdom stead, a puddle of blood and mud. Were it the cries of srreptu that echoed that night over the emptiness, peeled from the foothills and the pines? And the ocean, forever hungry, roaring over the howling gales, muffling the song of a dying era?
The wilds, the wilds, the wilds. She yearns for more and he does not fault her, he is not some clandestine guard of his own secrets by necessity but habit. The wilds were, in truth, not as interesting as what some would regard the vast variety of Novus – the silvery sentinel peaks of the Arma Mountains, the rolling meadows, green foothills, the cultured halls of grand and ancient cities. To the aether, all creation was an anomaly worth observance – the Wilds were beautiful in their own way, in the way that each biome has its own peculiar details few cared to immerse themselves in. But they certainly were nothing like that web of existence it was once a part of, from the fiber of things like grasses to the pulse of creatures that soared through its bitter air. Every molecule, every cell, divided and consumed by the essence of what bore the Aether unto all.
It was not a part of this world. Novus, and the Wilds, were a reminder.
“Like and... not like. Far, flat dry plains and sparse grasses for as far as the eye can see. Moreso a desert, gray-brown sands and grit. Few hardy plants. Mountains are a faint shadow on the southeast horizon, woodlands to the west. There were no cities, only vagrant camps.” There is nothing now, he ceases to continue, but bones and blood and tattered fabric, and the wind that howls on, on, and on, and the wild things left to scavenge. A subtle grin crawls to his features as hunger stirs fondly, remembering the thrill and consumption of appetite. When he looks back to her, he wonders what she would think if she visited the Wilds, if she witnessed what the aether had left in its wake. Those who lived there were troubled, their lives empty, children dying in the heat of the blistering sun and the desolation of drought and famine. Now they were liberated. Would she see this, she, who believes that death is not finite?
But she does not see him when he looks to her, for her eyes are marked on the distance, somewhere far beyond the plains before them. He wondered what she had seen then, before – there is someone i'm searching for, but i'm not sure who. An heir to a kingdom, lost in the civilized wilderness of Novus. Spoken like a legacy of oaths, a promise, or a curse. She is gone again from them then, her mind left to wander elsewhere, but Erasmus does not ask to pry on those private sectors of memory or contemplation. What does not make sense then is the combination of not knowing who and yet knowing that it is an heir, a simultaneous knowing and un-knowing that riddles itself, and the chore itself then seems counter-intuitive. Is it not possible then that she come across this heir in passing, perhaps even striking a conversation, sharing a meal, a room, a road?
Before he asks, her curiosity rises again and she returns, lively as before. Why did you leave the wilds? It thinks back to the remains of the wilds, the dry air silent and still, bodies lifeless and strewn. One hunger satisfied, another anew. It thinks to the boy, or the memories of the boy, floundering over the waves of the Terminus sea and dragged to shore by a woman in a cowl and a smile like starlight, or like a setting sun. “I am not sure yet.” he answers, drawn aside still in thought, dreaming of devouring stars and meteors and seawater and flesh. For purpose. It is a helpless thing, and it distills something unsettling when it reaches desperately for an answer to a thousand of its own questions.
Did it begin with the aether, or with the boy?
The boy, tumbling over downed trees, the sound of his dying mother's screams echoing wildly in his ears, peering desperately over a loathing ocean, gasping for air in its depths, choking on sand and water on the shores of Novus. For a purpose. Was it not? The boy supposed once that Caligo had saved him from an oceanic grave, dragging him to the shore of Denocte. He supposed once that he was the child of a god, child of a grand purpose. Was he right? Or was he simply a vessel for the aether to consume and devise, to ruin and devour? What was the purpose left for the Aether then, when it had only known destruction and absolution? When carving the belly of a galaxy, it dreamed of creation, was it so unlike death?
When Erasmus stops and looks back to Nicnevin, it is not with the eyes of a boy that is the son of a god and a doting martyr mother. It is a gaze full of starlight and galactic dust, of beginnings and endings, of dying suns and sparking meteors tearing through the black stretch of soundless night. “I served my purpose there, and I was drawn here. But I do not know why.” Godless eyes. They reflect her, reptilian. Something darkens, then wanes, flickering in and out. Hunger stirs silently.
“How will you know,” his voice rolls like dark clouds and thunder, calm before the rain and wind. “How will you know when you meet the heir?”
The wilds, the wilds, the wilds. She yearns for more and he does not fault her, he is not some clandestine guard of his own secrets by necessity but habit. The wilds were, in truth, not as interesting as what some would regard the vast variety of Novus – the silvery sentinel peaks of the Arma Mountains, the rolling meadows, green foothills, the cultured halls of grand and ancient cities. To the aether, all creation was an anomaly worth observance – the Wilds were beautiful in their own way, in the way that each biome has its own peculiar details few cared to immerse themselves in. But they certainly were nothing like that web of existence it was once a part of, from the fiber of things like grasses to the pulse of creatures that soared through its bitter air. Every molecule, every cell, divided and consumed by the essence of what bore the Aether unto all.
It was not a part of this world. Novus, and the Wilds, were a reminder.
“Like and... not like. Far, flat dry plains and sparse grasses for as far as the eye can see. Moreso a desert, gray-brown sands and grit. Few hardy plants. Mountains are a faint shadow on the southeast horizon, woodlands to the west. There were no cities, only vagrant camps.” There is nothing now, he ceases to continue, but bones and blood and tattered fabric, and the wind that howls on, on, and on, and the wild things left to scavenge. A subtle grin crawls to his features as hunger stirs fondly, remembering the thrill and consumption of appetite. When he looks back to her, he wonders what she would think if she visited the Wilds, if she witnessed what the aether had left in its wake. Those who lived there were troubled, their lives empty, children dying in the heat of the blistering sun and the desolation of drought and famine. Now they were liberated. Would she see this, she, who believes that death is not finite?
But she does not see him when he looks to her, for her eyes are marked on the distance, somewhere far beyond the plains before them. He wondered what she had seen then, before – there is someone i'm searching for, but i'm not sure who. An heir to a kingdom, lost in the civilized wilderness of Novus. Spoken like a legacy of oaths, a promise, or a curse. She is gone again from them then, her mind left to wander elsewhere, but Erasmus does not ask to pry on those private sectors of memory or contemplation. What does not make sense then is the combination of not knowing who and yet knowing that it is an heir, a simultaneous knowing and un-knowing that riddles itself, and the chore itself then seems counter-intuitive. Is it not possible then that she come across this heir in passing, perhaps even striking a conversation, sharing a meal, a room, a road?
Before he asks, her curiosity rises again and she returns, lively as before. Why did you leave the wilds? It thinks back to the remains of the wilds, the dry air silent and still, bodies lifeless and strewn. One hunger satisfied, another anew. It thinks to the boy, or the memories of the boy, floundering over the waves of the Terminus sea and dragged to shore by a woman in a cowl and a smile like starlight, or like a setting sun. “I am not sure yet.” he answers, drawn aside still in thought, dreaming of devouring stars and meteors and seawater and flesh. For purpose. It is a helpless thing, and it distills something unsettling when it reaches desperately for an answer to a thousand of its own questions.
Did it begin with the aether, or with the boy?
The boy, tumbling over downed trees, the sound of his dying mother's screams echoing wildly in his ears, peering desperately over a loathing ocean, gasping for air in its depths, choking on sand and water on the shores of Novus. For a purpose. Was it not? The boy supposed once that Caligo had saved him from an oceanic grave, dragging him to the shore of Denocte. He supposed once that he was the child of a god, child of a grand purpose. Was he right? Or was he simply a vessel for the aether to consume and devise, to ruin and devour? What was the purpose left for the Aether then, when it had only known destruction and absolution? When carving the belly of a galaxy, it dreamed of creation, was it so unlike death?
When Erasmus stops and looks back to Nicnevin, it is not with the eyes of a boy that is the son of a god and a doting martyr mother. It is a gaze full of starlight and galactic dust, of beginnings and endings, of dying suns and sparking meteors tearing through the black stretch of soundless night. “I served my purpose there, and I was drawn here. But I do not know why.” Godless eyes. They reflect her, reptilian. Something darkens, then wanes, flickering in and out. Hunger stirs silently.
“How will you know,” his voice rolls like dark clouds and thunder, calm before the rain and wind. “How will you know when you meet the heir?”
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