Ulthuan | Ulthuan in Flames ~ The Wilderness (By VictorK)

It was a single burst of consciousness, alive with impossible images and a world on fire that led him to believe that he was dreaming. It was not that the vision of a world inverted and stripped bare of its waking vitality was too fantastic and therefore must be the product a dream; it was the vision’s brevity. Almost as soon as his lucid mind began to perceive the creeping horror of this world the image collapsed and his nerves went dead. He confronted the new numbness for only a few moments, the span of a deep breath that he could not taste or a couple heart beats that were silent in his chest, before his mind followed his body and switched off the lights. He was not able to question whether or not the cessation of the dream meant that he was returning to awakefulness or if he had simply fallen back into the gap between the dream world and its interruption.

He awoke gently, drawn out of sleep by coaxing voices in the distance. The world was not on fire, but it was not settled, either. He felt at ease, no longer afraid to open his eyes and discover the horror that had been creeping up on him. He looked at the world, and it was cold. The colors were drained away, retreating into the shadows where they could be annihilated. Something moved past his skin and he flinched, a lump of fear rising in his throat before he remembered what a breeze felt like. So the world was not dead after all; it continued to breathe. And there was light form somewhere, faint and gray, but he reasoned that it must be there or else he would not have known that the colors were drained as they were. Light was the mother of all images, and even distant and weak it was here. There was a landscape, something supported his back. He could feel, he could see, he could reason…he was alive.

The world was born on that revelation. The whispers of reality that had tease his senses and roused him fro his sleep rose to a full-throated declaration. Someone spoke and on the strength of that word a world which had previously been formless was brought into spectacular clarity. He could not help but think that it was all for him. The words that had been spoken flooded his mind and enabled him to conceive and organize the images that graced his eyes. The world was complete upon its naming, though the catalogue he possessed was incomplete he was confident that his benefactor had equipped him with all the tools necessary to decipher the mysteries that awaited him, and in doing so had given him the sum total of all knowledge. He felt for a moment that he knew I all already, that all he had to do was remember and the words to describe anything past, present or future would come to him. But he could not, and having come close but fallen short he was left with only a glimpse of the godhood that had almost been his, and having for a moment glimpsed its enormity the confines of his present awareness and its pitiful locality left him feeling like a child. He was stuck with the world as it was; he had lost his chance to confidently confront it. For in knowing all things he would know all potential things, and from them he could simply choose and it would be so. But now he was cold, and his back hurt, and the world waited impatiently for its imperfect captive to take notice of it.

The tall trees, animated by the wind’s slow steady stream and given voice by the rapes of needles against one another, menaced the child-like mind that was struggling to come to grips with their shimmering contours. It was nighttime, but hat was not why the light was weak and the colors cold. He would have given in to despair right there and then if not for the shy glimpse of the heavens on the other side of the canopy. Stars, blazing whit hot in the firmament, beckoned to him. They were a promise that the world was not dead, that his waking was not in vain. And as he saw them he remembered the faint voices that had first called to him, now grown stronger. His fingers flinched around the dry earth, crisp and discarded needles pricking at hi palms. He disturbed the earthen scents of decay and from that sensation the whole scent of the living but dormant forest was revealed. He was a mind, a body, and senses. It was time to pt them together, to put life into motion.

He could barely stand. The weakness in his legs almost sent him to the ground, the harsh trunk of a tree saving him at the last instant. The ground and its needle bed hurt his feet, and for a few moments he was afraid to walk. His first trembling steps did not even carry him away from his support, and when his arm went tense from being stretched to its limit he stopped. It didn’t take long to decide that he shelter f the tree was too small to accommodate him. He let his arm fall, kept his balance, and began to walk in halting baby steps. He was aware that he was not tough, he was weak. He was soft, fleshy, at the mercy of the cold world. He was utterly helpless against it, but he was not afraid. His still chest felt lighter than air and the mechanical precision of his gait and bearing belied the childlike giddiness that was swelling inside of him. He was completely free. Powerless, but with no needs. Without power of strength he could have no obligations. He was truly alone in this wilderness, and so long s the backdrop remained silent trees ad a mild wind it could not harm him.

Although he was free he was not aimless. The wind carried voices, inarticulate but understood as a call. Someone was reaching out to him, and without calculation or apprehension he followed. The wilderness seemed to go on forever. Night was eternal; time had no voice to guide it back into the lives of the things here. The world’s emptiness was not limited to vague perceptions and mortal constructs. He was treading virgin ground; his feet were the first to gently depress the forest floor. Despite the lack of trails or any other sign the voices still called to him. Something else existed here, even if it occupied a distant section of the wilderness. Nor was the terrain monotonous. He paused at a gentle crest, its peak shrouded in the dense forest growth. Although he was sure that it was possible to go around it he was not interested in sparing his already aching muscles the climb. He started up the rise the same way that he had started his journey, with a single step.

The top of the hill was the first clearing that he had encountered. It stopped him cold, the open expanse of sky arresting him long enough to demand consideration. This was not the gentle sky that had convinced him to strike out in the first place. The stars were still there but the calm order they had promised was not. The dark firmament was fractured by veins of power that hurt his eyes to look upon. They alone possessed a vibrant color, an energetic green that cast no illumination. It seemed more real than the ground under his feet. The veins traced back to their source, a massive green disc that dominated the sky. He knew that his thing was alive, and that it touched the world, but he did not know if it could think and command the awesome power that radiated from it. How he had missed this monster before was a mystery, but he felt that having stood in front of it and invited into himself the green tendrils of its power it would never leave him. Lost for only a moment that voices son recovered him and he disappeared under the canopy, the slop of the rise guiding him downward. The trees did their best to obscure the rude disorder o the sky but failed. He did his best not to look up, to trust what he felt ad heard more than what he saw.

The wilderness proceeded ahead of him, the same empty woods that had been at his back. Yet it had changed. The emptiness was alive with the electric power written on the sky and the air was no humming with incoherent voices. He wanted to run, to finis off what remained of the forest so that he could his destination. Gradually he picked up speed, ignoring the needles that sought the soles of his feet. He could run forever, his chest was light and clear even as his pace picked up. The end was nearing, the anticipation of that moment drawing a smile on his features. He wanted to laugh, but had no breath for it.

Finally the endless curtain of trees was starting to break. Light, pure and intense, was lancing through the space between the needles. It was a clearing like before, but this time the wilderness itself would have to bow to whatever force commanded that it end. The light marked the barrier between the wilderness and whatever lay beyond; it obscured the voices that had called him back from his slumber. With a final effort he passed into the light, awaiting his glorious welcome.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The light was still there but it began to shrink, collapsing in on itself so that what had been a wall became merely something that could be understood. His feet felt dirt. The medium of pine needles was gone. Trees came back into view, but though they were only a few meters away it seemed that an insurmountable gulf lay between him and the resumption of the dead wilderness. A road had been cut through it, and he was not meant to cross it. It was already occupied. The light had formed into a procession of figures, starkly illuminated against the dark backdrop of the trees. As he finally saw them his legs gave out right at the road’s edge and he fell to his knees. The endless line of figures, beings of white light who sang as they moved down the road, demolished in him the seed of confidence tat had followed his awakening. What was sight, touch, even reason to the immaculate figures that paraded so serenely in front of him? Their shape taught him that he was like them, the same in limb and feature. Their glory reminded him that he was naked.

He touched is face, now that he knew what a fair face should look like. His fingers told the story. Where their eyes seemed fixed on the heavens and the pure light there his were sunken, and dark. Their flesh was raised on high cheek bones an as soft as the light that made them. His was stretched taught over bones that rudely interrupted the smooth flow his face. Despair welled up in him and he tore his hands from his face and sank them into the dirt. His body craved a release for the maddening sense of failure and loss that seemed to pull down on every inch of him, but his eyes were dry. His muscles tensed but they would not ache. Even in pan and grief he was not as perfect a these creatures. Where they could sing the song that rescued him from slumber he could not make a sound. So he tried to shut the world out. He closed his eyes and lowered his head, for the first time aware of the coarse hair that fell around his ears and onto the black earth it so resembled. He tried to sleep again, to forget this world and its names and in doing so erase It forever. He would forget that he was a lowly creature birthed in the wilderness.

But the voices would not let him. As he pounded his own ears they became louder. As he tried to remain still they seemed to speak directly to the muscles in his limbs, bidding them to rise. But he could resist these temptations. He was hollow, he lacked the light that illuminated them, and he could retreat within himself to wallow in his own torment. If he could not forget he could at least suffer in darkness, find comfort in his own slow destruction. He visualized that space, turning his eyes inward to reject what was just hidden from them. He built a barrier between what remained of his broken self and the voices that called it out to bear witness to what it might have been. He could not drown them out but he could create a chamber to contain their echoes and finally drown within the loathing that they generated.

He had almost achieved his self destructive end when the barrier shattered. The light flooded in, energizing the voices perverted by his self-loathing. The surge through him was incredible, he almost felt his heart beat before his eyes were torn open by the unspoken demand that they see. Trailing away from him like the cool caress of the wind were the long, perfectly formed fingers of a delicate hand that belonged to one of the immaculate figures in the procession. He gasped, for the first time drinking deep of the wilderness air. As soon as he had it it was gone, and he was left clutching at his chest, where he felt nothing but hard skin over insistent bone. He traced the hand to a pair of eyes that briefly looked back at him, eyes that mirrored the stars above in their promise that the world was not dead, and neither was he. But they turned away, back towards the front of the endless procession. At last he rose upon their command, and though h could not join them chose to follow them down the road that scarred the wilderness.

The city seemed all too familiar. Whereas the wilderness was cold and the heavens thrummed with a distant power the city burned with horrific intensity. It seemed to grow from the road it terminated, the grand apotheosis of artificiality run amok. This city had not been built; its white stone gats and towers had sprung whole from the fertile cobblestones. Though it was artificial it had to be alive, because it was in pain. The immaculate procession passed underneath its main gate. Not a single head turned upwards to ponder its impossible arch except his. The close space was reverberating with faint echoes, the remnants of a sound long since gone. They unsettled him because these echoes seemed to emanate from the stones themselves, stones that refused to reflect the soothing voices of the procession that passed through them. He was relieved to be through the gate, but the city itself offered little comfort.

The horizon was rimmed with a deep red color that oozed from the city walls. He feared that color and knew that he was in it. The city was saturated by it, an echo as real as the faint voices in the gate. He wanted to eave, even to stop, but the procession called him forward. The city was as empty as the wilderness. As he moved along the main street he peered into dark doorways and down silent alleyways. Truly this was a city of echoes; it had moved on and now stood, waiting to become another feature in the vast wilderness. But for now it was rejected. There was too much pain here, too much noise. It was still alive, and until it forgot the wound that had been inflicted upon it the city would always stand apart. It was a lesson that was not lost on him as he looked skyward, the moon and its offending entrails weaving between the tall towers.

The procession was slowing. The road was ending, feeding into the large square that stood at the city’s center. For a while he kept his place among the perfect beings, until he realized that since he was not with them, he could go forward as he pleased. It was stepping back that was impossible. He walked slowly, carefully, as if they might noticed that he had broken the order of their line. They were all still, voices flowing from them in clear, harmonious song. At last he entered the square, and saw the end of a procession that he truly had hoped might be endless. And he realized that they were not alone in the city. They had been brought here, to this place that he now understood to be his refuge.

She stood at the center of the square. She did not glow like they did, but she was more luminous than he was. She faced the procession, receiving each individual being one at a time. But he hardly noticed the mechanics of the arrangement. He was fixed on her. She was more beautiful than his companions, because she was more real than they were. Her flesh was pale and soft, absorbing the light from her followers and holding it so that it became even more entrancing. Her figure was perfect, curved alluringly but not lewdly. She was draped in white, a perfect compliment to her flaxen hair. It was only her eyes that were not clear, but the perfect lines of her face made their clarity unnecessary. He stopped and watched her, because motion lent grace to her beauty. She gestured delicately, welcoming another member of the procession forward. This one, a male clothed in long flowing robes that enhanced his dignity, stepped forward willingly and knelt before her. She bent at the waist and cupped his glowing cheeks, a serene smile crossing her features. She planted a single kiss on his forehead, savoring it for a long moment before her lips reluctantly left him skin. Then he began to fade, waves of calm that silenced the city’s foreboding emanating from him as he was released from the cruel wilderness into the embrace of the waiting beyond. It was what the observer had been waiting for, a true awakening from the dream world that held him prisoner. Once she had beckoned to a new subject he began to move forward. He walked in a dream, his cares evaporating on the promise of an end to uncertainty, that he might shed his wretched form and claim his luminous mantle along with the others. He had almost stepped past the line behind which the next being waited when those delicate fingers that had with a single touch saved him from his own loathing closed around his wrist like iron. He tried to gas but could make no sound. He was rooted to the spot.

For the first time, he saw as the members of the immaculate procession did. His sight was replaced, discarded forever. This happened in time for a wave to hit him, a feeling hat turned his stomach and made him want to collapse onto the stones and wretch up its contents. He was saved from this by the hand around his wrist, but he was soon released as the woman at the center of the square beckoned to his captor. When she stepped forward he could see the angel that had twice delivered him, a maiden with hair that flowed down to her legs in an endless volume. He would never see her face as she knelt in front of the woman. The hands that closed around her cheeks were no longer gentle. They were still perfectly formed and pale, but they roughly seized their prey, action erasing beauty. The entire woman had changed. Her curves were no longer serene but vulgar, barely contained by the purple wrap that now adorned her. Her hair was jet black and wild, twisting in an impossible wind. Worst was her smile, a toothy expression created by a depthless greed and arrogance. At last her eyes were revealed, an alluring mismatch of blue and purple. But perhaps most unsettling of all he finally heard the voices of the procession behind him. They were not singing, they never had been. Behind him for miles the wilderness reverberated wit the tortured moans of the condemned.

He could not tear his eyes from the two women as the horrifying harlot descended towards his immaculate savior. She kissed her hard and firm, forcing her up to receive it. He heard muffled screams and saw a shockwave ear through her form before the light that composed her began to fracture, and at last collapsed. The echoes from her utter annihilation inspired the same revulsion he had felt a few moments before, but now he could stand it. The echoes buried themselves into the city walls, multiplying the atrocities that had first inspired their horror. The harlot straightened slowly, luxuriating in the ecstasy that saturated every fiber of her monstrous being. The light that had once been an immaculate maiden, the most gentle and merciful thing that he had ever encountered or ever would encounter in the wilderness or elsewhere, filtered upwards. His eyes tracked it, eventually clearing the horizon and the city. The body of the moon was gone, covered by four dark holes, massive and depthless. They were all ringed by fragments of light, remnants awaiting their final consumption. The horror of what was occurring here overwhelmed any sensation he had felt since waking. For the first time he feared for his total annihilation, an existential uncertainty that could do nothing but inspire terror. His one hope was that as he was apart from the morsels those horrible things sought to devour that he might be invisible. When at last he looked backed down at the harlot and saw her mismatched eyes gleaming with deadly mirth he knew that he was wrong.

“You!” She declared, a mixture of surprise and joy in her tone as she stepped forward. “I thought that we had lost you…a long, long time ago.” That greedy, wicked smile crossed her face.

He couldn’t back up. He couldn’t turn away. She had him in the same sell that had annihilated countless others. All he could do was wait his turn, wallowing in terror. She started to reach out to him, to beckon with the hand that would seal his fate. He couldn’t even close his eyes to avoid the moment. She was stopped by a screeching from above. A thousand dark shapes descended on the square. They focused on the harlot, circling so that their beating wings drew a curtain between her and her prey. The ravens cawed and shrieked their outrage at their captive, but they failed to draw in close and employ their beaks and talons.

From behind her prison the harlot laughed, addressing her words to the wretched observer but intending hem to other ears. “Old Crone!” Her tone was mocking. “You are late, and you are weak. These belong to me, you can no longer protect them.” She had only to snap her fingers and a ring of purple flame engulfed the birds, extinguishing every last one and reducing them to faintly glowing cinders that were soon scattered on the wind. “You are weak.” She repeated. “That is all the justification we need.” She licked her lips. “Now. Where were we?” She sauntered closer, almost daring to touch his face. “Oh I have missed you.” She cooed. “How long has it been since we embraced? You always fit with us best. You could never reject us, after all. All the years have brought you back to us a last…Brother.” At the last word four voices instead of one issued from her mouth and she leaned in for that final, fatal kiss. He would face oblivion without ever knowing why.

The square was filled with a roar fit to shatter the heavens. The harlot reared back, startled. She was not fast enough to stop the blur of pure white that descended upon her. She shrieked as she was born to the pavement, striking it with a wet thump. He was relieved and horrified, unable to tell the difference in his shocked state. A white beast was hunched over the screaming harlot. It crushed her breast underneath its claws, and it silenced her scream with a savage bite to here neck. She gagged, thrashing about until the beast whipped around its powerful neck, stilling her. The beast was quick to leap away from the harlot’s corpse, careful not to touch the black fluid that oozed from her gaping wounds. It waited, growling as its amber eyes watching its victim intently.

Purple threads descended from the void above, drifting lazily towards the ruined harlot. The beast growled in what he thought was dismay. The threads caressed the broken body, infusing it with their power until it drew breath again, its words wounds closing. Only moments after she had fallen the harlot was back on her feet, a cool expression on her features as she rubbed her neck. “Oh, you bite hard.” She cooed, gesturing towards the beast with the intent of destroying it as easily as she had the ravens. Nothing happened, except that the beast stopped growling. The harlot frowned. “You could not be so foolish…” And then she began to smile again, an expression of near giddiness on her features as the beast sat on its haunches.

“You will not devour another soul today.” The lioness commanded in a serene, wise tone that belied her youthfulness. As she sat a change came over the lion. She seemed to shimmer, the tufts of fur that stuck out from her snow white coat around her limbs starting to waft in the same imaginary wind that tormented the harlot’s hair. The tips of these waves of fur darkened to red, and then began to shift color. Graceful swirls of red appeared on her flanks as if the gentle wind had left is mark on her. What had been a fearsome beast assumed a mantle of divinity. It was not quite real, shifting between a higher existence and the lowly wilderness though it had o reside firmly in both. It always seemed to be in motion, shimmering with an inner pale light that could not be contained. Finally red streaks appeared below its amber eyes before a crimson crescent moon, pointed upwards, was carved into the lioness’ brow. In that moment she was invincible, emitting a calming power that quieted the wretched observer’s nerves for the first time since the martyred angel had taken his hand.

The harlot was not impressed. She was gleeful. “I did not imagine that we would see one of you so soon! I would have preferred another, but…”

“She weeps endlessly now.” The lioness replied, calm and confident. “I can bear it no more. You will be brought to account for what you have done here.”

“She will weep even more as we extinguish every at on of her children.” The harlot cooed, walking towards the lioness. “She will only stop when she lies before us, broken. She will be devoured after we hunt her down. But you have presented yourself so…conveniently.” She twisted her perfect wrist, a whip’s cord falling to the pavement. “You will be the most succulent of all.” She licked her lips.

The lioness rose from her haunches, but the aura of power and the changes that had come over her remained in place. “No more.” She growled, and then leapt at the harlot. As she moved she illuminated the square, her long shimmering tufts trailing gracefully behind her, sketching a record of each deadly move. The harlot laughed and her whip flashed towards the lioness, enraptured in the dirty rush of battle. The wretched observer could only look on while they battled for his soul and those that waited behind.

But the fight was impossible to follow. Every blow that was struck had to be multiplied a thousand times to properly capture the scope of the confrontation which spanned not just the wilderness but countless planes beyond. The lioness and the harlot never seemed to separate, they were always at each other. They moved rapidly around the square, each combatant executing moves that they had planned out ten moves earlier. It all seemed to be orchestrated; a titanic clash that shook the very foundations of the city but that seemed stale. Recounting each blow meant nothing as it seemed that the harlot reconstituted her wounds after every blow. The lioness remained immaculate. They were dancing more than fighting, jockeying for a position that would overwhelm the other or prove their worthiness to a higher power. It was impossible to judge how long the battle lasted, in a sense the outcome was ordained before they even crossed arms but it could take forever to play out. It was will, more than claw or whip that would determine the outcome. Abruptly, the battle ended. The lioness broke contact, leaping away from the harlot to where it could stand its ground out of the reach of her whip. The harlot watched coolly, waiting. The lioness’ ribs throbbed with strained breaths. At last, a long sliver appeared along her flank. What poured out fell to the cobblestones where it pooled, shimmering like quicksilver. Other cuts opened along her nose, legs, and back. She had been beaten.

The harlot laughed, low and threatening. “I have not had such fun in ages. I had no idea that the immaculate maiden, always hidden away, had such fire!” She started to walk towards her opponent. “Now your fire is mine, to burn within me for eternity…There is no one left to sustain you, no one to resurrect your memory. This is oblivion, final, and eternal.” She smiled wickedly. “You will enjoy being a part of me.”

The wretched observer stepped forward. His heart ached for the fallen lioness, not simply because she represented their last hope of salvation. But she had fought, demonstrating that not everything in this forsaken wilderness was enslaved to the harlot. He was frozen no longer, free to move back or forward depending not on the constraints of the world around him but the content of his own spirit. He had no weapons with which to fight the harlot. Even though he was like her and not the spirits that she had devoured he could not resist her, but he owed it to the lioness to try. His fists were not good enough. He scooped up a rock and continued to advance on the harlot who was occupied with her prey. At long last he felt breath quicken within him, exhilaration teasing at his aching limbs. He was ready to strike a blow, any blow, to signal to the wilderness that he was every bit the actor that the harlot was, and he raised a mere rock over the back of her head to prove it.

He never got the chance to bring it down. The lioness used her last card, emitting an ear splitting roar that drained the color from her pelt and reeled back in her regal trailings. It was an attack that she could not recover from, but it was an attack that the harlot could not withstand. She screamed as the mighty roar ripped through her, tearing her perfect body to shreds. The fine remains washed over him, the force nearly destroying him as he stumbled back, dropping the weapon that he had thought to use against a god. Once the curtain of the harlot had been blown away he was revealed to the lioness who saw him for the first time. Even through her wounds and exhaustion the surprise on her features could not be mistaken. She echoed the harlot: “You.”

He could not reply, nor could he explain how they recognize him. He felt weak, the boundless energy that he had seemed to have since entering the wilderness finally fading away. He could not afford to be wary, or to exercise caution. He wore his desperation right on his face, his desire to survive and escape. The lioness regarded him as well, and then slowly padded forward. The wounds had not healed by they were closed. Her coloration was pale, but waiting to blossom. They did not need to speak. Those same purple tendrils were descending, promising that the harlot would soon be restored. The lioness turned her side to the wretched observer, letting him fall over it. “Hold tight.” She cooed, though her tone was that of a matron, not a temptress. He nodded, twisting fingers into her fur.

“What… At last he spoke, his words weak and raspy as if his throat had been encased in sand. It was all that he could manage, but his eyes were firmly on the spirits waiting to be saved or consumed. He didn’t have to see the pained expression on the lioness’ face to feel the utter despair that emanated from her.

“We must leave them.” She said sadly. She turned to leave the square before the harlot could return. Despite her heavy burden she bounded gracefully away from the center of the city, back towards the relative safety of the mighty wilderness.

For his part the wretched one was content to ride. He was slipping back towards sleep, which he had thought he had left behind forever. He shifted, moving his hand to a different position. As he lifted his left he noticed that it left behind a wet crimson mark on the lioness’ fur. He looked at the palm of his hand and it was dry and pale. A new word entered his mind: blood. Revulsion went down his spine and he shuddered, not having the will or the strength to confront this latest mystery before he slipped away.