View Full Version : How The Fire Dies (Solo)
How The Fire Dies
How Gods Are Born
1840
Arabian plume and fire,
Desert sand in beat,
Simorgh blanching arrogance,
Beneath it’s taloned feet.
Sandstorm whirl and screech,
Ancient lore in wings,
A tear that heals all woe’s dilation,
The death song Simorgh sings.
---
Thirty years from the present.
To fall at one’s peak is to fall from grace indeed. Like an eagle descending from the mountain top, it is a swift and graceless rush of air with little purpose other than to end life and cry in ardour. I watched Duffy fall, hard. Claws rending at his life, twisted visions of reality scorned all compounding together in a scene to end all scenes, an act to end the play of life.
What could I do? I am but a woman, a voice like a siren with no ears to heed my call. When Duffy died, so did my passion, my conscience, my drive to live. I felt nothing, where before I had felt the very song of the universe ring out as clear as the moon in the midnight sky. That thing, that monstrous remnant, he took everything from us.
Continued immediately from How The Orb Came To Pass. Ruby's posts are in the form of diary entries following the event, Duffy's are the 'current timeline' so to speak.
The hands of time ticked, and Duffy didn’t see it coming. Like black lightning the fabric daggers of Lucian’s ancient cloak swarmed around him, lashing out and striking with such speed and ferocity he had little hope in his defence to hold them off. His own weapon flashed in the gloom of Lady Gregory’s entrance passage to no avail, and then he felt the familiar sense of doom his characters had succumbed to so many times at the end of so many poignant scenes. He transgressed, he ascended, with a sharp jab of pain, he came close to death. The fabric dagger dug into Duffy’s chest stopping him dead in his tracks, his nimble leap and roll like a glacier nextto Lucian’s quicksilver.
Ruby screamed a long and desperate cry.
Lucian’s face, dashing and youthful cracked the first true smile he’d smiled in almost a century. His cloak bellowed wildly and then it withdraw, it’s tree of shadows forming a simple long cloak of heavy wool and cotton. It became nothing more than a highwayman’s garb. The thief before him stood petrified, one hand held outright defending himself against a ghost of an enemy, the other clutching the gaping wound at the centre of his torso. The moment, in Lucian’s eyes, was almost too perfect, too excruciatingly tantalising.
“Oh, how sickly sweet this passing, to have endured so much to end in defence of nothing.” Taking a step forwards he could sense the wave of fear emanating from Duffy’s mind and Ruby’s heart, both beating and pulsating in the nightmare he’d created. “How does it feel? How does this compare, knowing in your reticent fantasy that you will not take a standing ovation this time?”
“Duffy!” Unable to contain her emotions any longer Ruby shouted, scrambling to her knees with an outstretched hand. She made to run towards her friend but Lucian waved his hand at her with a spiral of circumlocution. An unseen force propelled her backwards like a maul to the chest. She skid to a halt at the foot of the bookcase by the dining room door. She was winded and taken aback, but still alive and half conscious.
“Pathetic. All the powers of the ‘Great God Tantalus’ in your veins. Yet no you've no competency or gall to call upon it now. I wonder.” A second wave of force took hold of Duffy’s slumped form, splayed it’s limbs outwards like a cross and drew it nearer. Lucian’s hand beckoned him closer and then wavered left and right to stop his psychic movements. Duffy could see his nemesis’s eyes glowing in the dark, he could smell his rotten form but could not move or scream or even cry.
“I wonder…do you even know how to call upon the Aria?” Without the trappings of undeath Lucian’s voice was once more human, devoid of any malice or dark menacing undertones. He sounded once more as he had done on the stage, vibrant, upper class Scara Braen, but ultimately as prominent and authoritarian as he thought himself to be. Arrogant, Duffy thought to himself through the pain.
“The…Aria?”
“Yes.” Lucian turned Duffy’s suspended body around slowly, mimicking the motions of a puppeteer as he did so. “The Aria, the god song, the voice of the bard king - the noise in your head and the curse of the Tantalum.”
Duffy knew fully well what it was, but did not know the name until now. So that’s what it’s called… He’d wondered, but thought it an aspect of his own semi-sanity, not part of his mantle as the troupe’s leader. “No…” He lied.
“Ha!” Lucian flicked his wrist and propelled his quarry across the room, pinning him spread-eagled at the edge of the hole leading to the ante-chamber below. “Down there. Do you see?” He pushed further, until Duffy’s head and upper body hanged over the ledge. In the gloom below he made out the shape of Lilith. She was still alive and well but stood and listened to the events unfolding above, craning her next in the dark. “She can hear, she can feel, she cannot see, but in her mind she sees.”
“What of it, what metaphor are your veiling your deceit with?”
“I do not deceive you, nor do I cloud your judgement with falsities. Lilith can see you dying, see you fall from grace. She too hears the Aria. No doubt the whore with the scarlet voice can hear it too. These players on the world stage can tap into the endless ocean of the god song and they are mere insignificant pawns. Why then Duffy, the chosen, the avatar of the song, do you try to tell me you cannot?”
Lucian flipped Duffy around and upright once more, he stepped closer and closer, his heavy boots ominously sounding a countdown on the black and white tiles. “I am no fool Duffy, you know this, more than any other in this world. You hear The Aria and hear it well, as loud as the dawn chorus of the gods themselves!”
Ruby stirred nearby, regaining vaguely enough strength to pull up her head to watch the events transpire. Suspended over the hole with a slightest further push by the dark master, she could see a think trickle of blood streaming down the thief’s inner leg and down into the room below as his boots fell off as deadweight.
Plonk. The sound of their impact on the cushions did not reach their ears, but the sound of them being picked up and investigated, and promptly thrown aside by Lilith in shock did. Lucian smiled even more brighter, to the point where his immaculate teeth shone, illuminated by an unseen torch. “Now you will die, having suffered all I suffered, having felt all I felt, heard and written all I have written. By revenge my will is done, the finale sung, the sages of the stage have recorded this matinee and we are set.”
Duffy laughed, breaking through the wall of imprisonment just enough to flaunt his amusement. He was scared, scared beyond all imagination but Lucian was wrong. He could not say it any other way than with belly strength laughter. His youthful if somewhat aggrieved voice echoed through the entrance hall, metaphorically rattling the chandelier above and cracking the columns that held the roof aloft. Lucian’s death blow to Duffy was one of physical proportions and cold steel and magic, but Duffy’s was one of contempt, of a higher knowing, of being able to see the funny side. If only it didn’t flippin’ ‘urt so much!
It’s funny. I never really though of myself as a saviour, a harlequin of saving and protection. In my former life I would have thought nothing of myself. I would have driven my personality deep underground with negative inflictions of self doubt. The Ruby then, before he died, would have sat and done nothing, become a powerless victim.
The Aria gave me the key, the strength and courage and determination to be something so much more. Much still lefts to be said, but it is a tale that I can tell in time to my heart’s content, for the memories of those days are still clear in my mind. They still sit lucidly in the sea of The Aria’s form. They are crystal, they are glass, they are polished stone, they are mine.
I should, I guess, tell you how Duffy died.
I should also tell you how the fires dies.
I should tell you, diary, how the Gods themselves are born.
“What is so humorous? You are about to die and yet you seem content with casting it foolishly aside. Do you not feel aggrieved by my actions, at having lost everything at my hand?” Doubt crept into Lucian’s mind like a sledgehammer to ice. Somehow, even if momentarily Duffy could see that his captor's composure was beginning to crack.
“I laugh because’ I don’t care ‘bout dyin’, caus’ I know. I know Lucian, I know you won’t kill me!” He spoke with a remarkably stubborn sense of being right. Seeing the funny side had it’s drawbacks, it made good strong men do stupid, weak things.
“What,” Lucian tightened his grip, plucking at bones and twanging nerves, “makes you think,” he spun Duffy over the hole slowly, “that I won’t kill you?”
“Because,” Duffy smiled, “you already have.”
Lucian smiled again, a third strike on the gong. With a drawing together of invisible threads he weaved a tapestry of shadow into the room, the shadows in the corners grew darker until vision itself began to warp. The stairs twisted, the chandelier spiralled, the columns buckled. Ruby stood, Duffy laughed again. The dark master doubted.
“That blow will not be the death of you, you will not die until I tell you to, you will hear the falsehood tales of your deity first, and suffer the will of my transgressions. You will hear of your parent’s death, Ruby’s love lost, and how you were corrupted and turned by the slightest of dents in your path.”
A thunderous crack and a deep resounding roar filled the entrance hall as if a great beast of the Concordian forest had ram raided the front of the mansion. Strands of crystals from the intricate ceiling décor crashed down like diamond rain and the plaster on the walls cracked and fell in clods. The darkness swarmed the walls and surrounded the three in a sphere of distorted malice. Lucian held out his hand and clasped at a fake heart, mocking Duffy’s fading life. “You will see the world through my eyes, feel the shadow in my heart.”
“Duffy!” Ruby cried once more, now upright and edging slowly towards the hole to Lucian’s left.
“Ruby! Run! This’ a fight you can’t win, leave now!”
“Oh, she will go nowhere. You both will see this, see my work, see my Aria, see my hatred for you.” Now only the floor and the hole into the ante-chamber were visible, all about them a dense dome of nothingness had formed, crushing and destroying the very fabric of the house in it’s formation. Sound carried with an echo and a vibration, with a sense of other-worldly presence. The deep roar continued, it was sound of the void creatures that waited on the other side.
Ruby felt suddenly trapped, as if ice had formed about her legs quickly, a cold snap of fear mingled with a sudden grasp of Lucian's will. His telekinesis seemed to have no boundaries, no limits. The light dimmed, Ruby could hear The Aria, a sorrow and mournful requiem sung by the ocean waves in her mind. A tear formed in the corner of her eye.
“Come, come to the darkness. Come to the land beyond the planes you see as real.” With each tensing of his hand Lucian pulled at the sphere. It began to crack, faint lines of bright yellow light appeared like lightning. Static grew in the air and the tiles on the floor split apart and floated upwards. Duffy felt his legs fade, and Ruby felt her torso dissapear slowly. Time slowed, time stopped, time started.
In a disintegrating maelstrom the three bards errupted into a thousand particles and all condensed into Lucian’s outstretched palm with a rush of sound that was beyond the senses, like air vacating a vacuum. Three cracks that sounded like thunder, loud, ominous and reality tearing heralded the collapse of the dome.
With a sparkle of light the singularity formed for a moment, then faded.
All went to black.
Light returned to Lady Gregory’s hallway leaving no trace that anyone had ever been there.
A voice from the opening in the floor drifted up meekly, like a mouse whispering through it’s hole to see if the cat awaited him. “Hello?”
Eight years from the present.
I have forgiven Lucian. I have forgiven myself for ever having hated him, having despised his existence. Humility is not lost on the angered soul it is merely clouded by other things, and I am thankful I regained the ability to believe in redemption. In these recent few years I like to think I’ve undergone some small transformation of my own, some exchange of personality with a higher power. It can be said that I am thankful for the nature of being, and I wish to recount our encounter, and our lives since, clear of any resentment or malice.
In the shadows, the umbra realm conjured by magic still beyond all comprehension, I listened in silence. Duffy, suddenly healed in this other place, and Lucian, now clad in drab robes with long black hair and pallid skin talked amongst themselves. They battled with words, not steel, an exchange of affairs I was somewhat more comfortable with. I can still feel the memory of the tears as they rolled down my cheek and splattered onto the shadow floor. Secrets and truths flew through the air, snapping bones with invisible hurt.
I started to realise that passing the mantle of the Tantalum to Duffy was part of something far more than tradition, than an age old mantra of apprentice and master. The Aria was shining so bright in that darkness, that I could not see well enough, I was blinded by the passion floating in the air and the memory of the world’s written tongue.
The gods were screaming to hear Duffy’s name.
Lucian was screaming to hear it fade.
The darkness scintillated. Even in no light it shined like calculated radiance in an unknown land. Duffy could not understand, he could not conceive the notion. He was alive, but there was nothing. He felt disconnected from his body, from his self. The cold rasp of their departure was a swift and jittery reminder of Lucian’s power, of his wrath for all things living, all things theatrical. Where were they? Why was he still alive?
“Do you see what I have endured all these long years?” Lucian’s voice cut through the shadows like a dagger to exposed flesh. With calculated cuts, Duffy felt all the man’s intent directed at him even though the voice sounded as if it were coming from a thousand mouths all about him.
“Can you feel all I felt, can you endure all I endured?”
“Lucian!” Duffy cried out in vain.
“This is the inner sanctum, this is the harbouring darkness, this,” everything went darker still for a moment, like a flux in the ether that was felt, not seen, “this is my heart.”
“You? A heart?” Duffy laughed in the permafrost night. You don’t have a heart…
“I am but a man, Duffy. I did not deserve to be treated with such… indignity. Such reverence I had for all life, until it built me up, and knocked me down with a single swipe of it’s indignant hand. Do you not see?”
Evidently Duffy did not. Metaphors were not something that ticked away timely in his youthful, slow, and otherwise occupied with dying mind. He played it safe. “Yes. I see. I see why you do what you do.”
The endless nothing turned, very slowly, into something. Like a horizon appearing at the dawn of existence Duffy began to see a faint light in the beyond. It back lighted a tall, slender individual. He did not have to think too hard to determine who.
“Where are we?”
“Do you even need to ask, Duffy?” A black cross formed in the white, Lucian’s arms lifted up and to their sides like a saint on a cross. “Look beneath you. Look down and tremble.”
A song rushed up from below. The dark shattered, lines of lightning formed in the air and tore the reality away. Rushing up from his heels Duffy re-appeared fully formed as he had vanished. His tattered Akashiman garb was still tattered, the wound on his arm still black. He had not died, or been destroyed, simply transported. He looked down and saw. Saw what he heard, and what every Tantalum before him had heard.
An ocean appeared beneath them. In the blackness Duffy’s senses had dulled, but now he could see that the light behind was not the afterlife, but the sun. It cascaded it’s glow onto the gentle waves beneath them, onto the endless, infinite waters that stretched in all directions further than any eyes could see. The scent of salt in the air tingled up his nose and the sound of seagulls crackled like life itself through the slowly moving air.
Duffy was home.
This was The Aria.
Three weeks later…
Still no sign of Duffy. I fear for his life in all honesty. Although I have arrived in the land known only as Salvar, and my travels here have foreshadowed a grave chapter in the history of the Tantalum, I cannot see beyond the current hour knowing he is not safe, knowing what Lucian could have done to him.
The sun beats and the winds waver my resolve, but I will not give up until we are reunited and until we are back in Scara Brae.
I will not give up until Lucian is dead.
Four weeks later…
Cael is a mysterious one. I cannot begin to fathom his reasons for being here, in this strange environment, fighting for a cause I’m not entirely sure he believes in. Veiled opinions perhaps he may have, but I hope one day to be able to get the truth from him. For now, all I can do is help him. He is the only one who seems to know how to work these ‘portals,’ how to send me home.
He has made no promises.
But then, on the matter of aiding his progress, neither have I…
Five weeks later…
How I wish to be on the streets once again! I miss the humble nature of being, of orphans, poverty and working for coin with song and dance. I thought I knew everything there was to know about survival, but this is beyond even my worldy hubris, my domesticated dominion. Out here, in this catacombs and dirty stalls, I am no longer Ruby LA Roux, I am just an unknown face. A pawn on a chessboard, when I should be the queen.
Three weeks later…
So this is what loneliness feels like…this eccentric man of the cloth, or the ink, or the sword my only company. I have only heard of Salvar in my dreams and I cannot concentrate on escaping it’s temperament when all I can think of is Duffy, Lilith, and how my song gave fire life, and turned fire into a weapon.
The Simorgh Song of legend…slowly it is making sense.
It is a Salvar myth, part of the fabric of the land.
Maybe I am here to find answers, to find out why I sang that song?
‘Cry and scream Duffy, your precious songs will not have power here. Do you remember when we first met?”
“Cry me a river, that’s what you first said to me.”
The words from Duffy’s lips hung in the air for a moment, teasing and daring and prodding Lucian to reply, to raise him to anger. “Now you say you’re lonely, seeking revenge, crying out in exasperation.”
“I cry not, love not, only hate. You would not understand!”
“Oh?” Duffy replied, flicking the hair back behind his ears and leaning back to test the tensile strength of what ever magic held him aloft. It was a long way down…
“I inflict on you nothing more than was inflicted on me! Why should I have to endure Tantalus’s wrath, when you go unscathed from his malice!” The long tendrils of drab and matted hair began to flicker and spring to life all on their own. Something, or rather someone seemed to be losing their control.
“Because I am not you Lucian. I am me, I am Duffy, but we are all as one.”
Silence, interspersed with distant calls of albatross flocks and trans-dimensional gulls. Wind tainted the semi-conscious, time passed.
“Brothers?” Lucian almost whispered.
“No- well, in a sense, yes, but brothers at arms, not in solitude or solace. You would strike me down just to enact your revenge on a god?”
“I would kill you, if I could. Not to enact, but to detract from the work our mutual deity has worked his tongue upon! You should not be Tantalum! You should not!” Anger gathered behind Lucian’s vocal chords, his visage so easily cracked with the lightest of pushes. Even in his semi-euphoric state Duffy could see his chance through the pain. The wound on his arm throbbed, that much was true, but the strike to the heart seemed to heal merely through fighting his assailant, through impassioned resistance.
“Why should I not? Was the mantle not passed on to me in the traditional way?” Why can’t he kill me?
Silence.
“Lucian…whatever Tantalus did to you, it cannot be undone, and hurting me or Ruby or any of the troupe - these deeds will only go so far. Satisfaction you will not have, satisfaction you cannot have, let it go!”
“Let go?” The strings above Lucian snapped, his master given in, his scrupulous fakery shattered. The question turned very quickly into a bark, behind which teeth snarled and a flicker of dark light and shadow bound manna flew. “My dear, dear boy…how would you fair, if all in the world that was bequeathed, earned and respected by you was taken away at the drop of a pauper’s hat, at the pinnacle of success?”
Duffy thought long and hard. In all honesty, he supposed he too would strike a match and burn the world down. But now was not the place to fan the flames of controversy, he needed to sedate Lucian…to pry from him the true reason and the machinations of all that had transpired…he did not have long left. The Aria may still have been beneath them, a sparkling crystal floor; but in his mind, it sung a song of Godly Arrival, of the Rapture.
“I guess…” He shrugged as much as he was allowed under the mental weight of his captor. “I guess I’d just build it all back, brick, by brick, by brick…”
Shadows grew from nowhere and the sun died in a flash. Duffy felt Lucian’s reply manifest as a locking cell door to a darkened hovel.
He was winning, but the abyss he found himself in was too great a cost.
Twelve Years Later…
I’ve recently started to reflect on my origins. Not on ‘what makes the girl,’ but ‘what made.’ As hard as I try, I cannot remember a time before coming to the throbbing streets of Scara Brae, before finding myself a young snotty nosed brat in the troupe’s midst. It’s funny, when we really start to weigh out the substance of our lives how little we actually find.
That is not to say I have lived an unfulfilled live, nor to say I will not encounter greater danger, intrigue and adventure in the years to come…it says more that I have accepted life for what it is, and taken each moment in it’s stride, no matter how harshly stepped it may be.
If I cannot have the memory of my parents, then I shall consider the Tantalum my birthplace, parents and guiding light. It shall be mother, and father, and sisters too. Now that I have come to accept this state of being, the world is begging for me to stop making sense of it, to restore it’s mystery and majesty.
This then is what made me, well, what made me - me! I am torn between roles as I am an actress, a ticking time bomb of virulent persona. I am unsatisfied by any one because I love them all truly in equal measure. I am the slave girl in the jungle adventure, the harlot of the Bronx, the undecided vixen in the detective thriller. I am mistress, matador, maiden and mother, and above all, I am the true epitome construct of Celia…how I love the tale of I Want To Be Your Canary.
Above my head at night, in my little princess bed at the foot of the stage of the Prima Vista, I dared to dream of a future life…a dream that came real…somehow.
I suppose that as a young girl in the troupe I fantasised in great and sordid detail about the plot of the play. I lived it each and every night in my dreams, stepped the steps of the court dance and swash buckled on the rooftops in the steps of the duelling sequences. I became Cornelia, as Duffy eventually became at least part of Marcus. He the hero, I the heroine.
Settling on that thought by the fireside at night, I start to wonder which Ruby remained. The princess, or the new fangled commandeering Queen she spawned? There’s little cause for concern, my dearest diary, but I just want to question these things now, before time passes and memory fades from my mantle.
Ruby La Roux once more vindicated her presence with a kick of her heel into the stained carpet and hurried out of the dining room. In the few moments since she’d re-assembled in the hallway of Lady Gregory’s hall her instincts had taken over, giving her no choice in her movements, mannerisms or mighty motions. The cry of outrage from the jabbering wrecks in the far corner of the dimly lit room quickly faded as she left. Cowards, she muttered, rolling her eyes and breathing through her nose like a charging bull.
If the people she thought of as her second family could not or would not help her rescue her most treasured friend, after he had tried to save them all from Lucian, then she would not suffer their presence. All the talk of the dinner table, of exotic adventures and head-hunters in the deserts of Salvar were a farce. She decreed it bravery concealed by cowardly notions. She felt sick, she felt hungry, she felt ashamed to have called herself a sister of the sewing table.
Her world was in tatters, in pieces, in little shards so small and ground down even the greatest mage would have scorned all life at having to re-assemble them. How did you rebuild your world when everything fell from underneath you? The stories of princesses and castles seemed a million miles away now, the Crimson Mistress was being tested, and she did not like exams.
“Lilith!” She shouted across the hall as she moved towards the hole. “Lilith, are you down there?”
A coy reply seeped up partially filled with apathy and joy.
“Good! Now tell me, what exactly do you see…tell me everything, the colour of the walls, writing, inscriptions, anything at all!” The command echoed once or twice as it ricocheted downwards into the gloom. With Lucian gone, the candles and lanterns had returned to life slowly but surely. She could see a figure moving below, even if her vision was blurred by a beating heart and adrenaline automations.
Lilith peered through the twilight at her surroundings. With the hem of her lace skirt held tightly in both hands she stepped forwards and approached the altar slowly. An innate sense of danger tingled up her spine, a memory regressing to remind her of what had appeared her…the dark stranger…the shadow…The Howling. She was safe, that she knew, but it didn't make her incarceration beneath the house any easier on the mind.
Several moments of ignorance dragged time out until something clicked at the back of the seamstresses's mind. “Oh!’ She shouted in an eureka moment all of her own. She skipped back to the pile of cushions, hopping over the bloodied boot as she went. “Ruby! Ruby! There’s an inscription!”
Her voice carried upwards.
Ruby’s sense of expectancy went down in response, a dumbwaiter of impatience.
“It says The Flames Shall Light The Dark!”
Oh…
Ruby embraced the chill in the air and took stock of the situation. Sweat was starting to form on her brow and it trickled down her body through the many layers of her undergarments. It permeated every inch of her form like a blanket of worry, of matriarchal threat. Could she even rescue Duffy, no matter how hard she tried? She closed her eyes for a moment and let the imagery of shattered pillars and dusty murals fade away. The steady and oddly calm ocean that was The Aria replaced it, a clear and grey sky hovering above like an evening storm was brewing, growing and threatening to clatter.
Nothing…
“Lilith!” She shouted again, her voice quivering with nerves. She started to shake. “Close your eyes and tell me what you see!”
The blank expression on her sister’s face mirrored the cold and scornful look on Old Mr Gregory’s , peering down at Ruby from behind a wax work veil. The picture was one of many in the hall, all older than the house was no doubt. The sense of antiquity cast it's magic over Miss Delacrouix, she felt like a young sprout in a dark and aeon written forest. Icy wind whipped up dread and fury, the darkness and silence of the midnight hour loomed then all went silent.
The Aria made no waves for Lilith, and she shouted up ‘nothing.’ It was a single word Ruby did not want to hear.
Could he really be gone? The normally resolute and headstrong Ruby flopped to her knees in a collapsing pine tree shape. Her dress flopped out all around her, giving her the stoic appearance of a dwarf wearing too much silk. Desperation won, filling her beating chest with deep pain and the pre-shakes of tears. She cried. She screamed, she feared.
Then the waves moved, as if the gods had heard her cry.
Ruby closed her eyes and began to sing.
Time and sound dilated together, each breath and beat of Duffy’s heart stretched out like a long and infinite echo. Somewhere beyond his grasp, a light flickered, and a voice called out to him. It sounded familiar, but not familiar enough to give away ownership. He strained, craning his neck up to catch a better listen. It did not cry out again.
Minutes passed into an hour and slowly his senses returned. Moving his hand left and right, he discovered that the suspension he was under before had been replaced by a cold hard floor. “H-hello-o-o-o-o-o?” His ears rang for what seemed like a decade as his echo drifted on and on. He cried again, but no-one answered.
Duffy pushed up, trying to right himself with whatever strength remained. Half upright, his arm gave way and he collapsed back into a bundle on his back with a grunt. He tried again, too stubborn to realise he was in pain. “Hello-o-o-o-o-o-o-o?”
You are nothing to me…
Sharpening his wits quickly Duffy flipped upright into a seated position and saw where he was. The voice came back, but it was not one spoken with lips, but with a mind…Lucian was toying with him.
We are apart…
“Lucian!” He squinted and tried to rub the distortion from his eyes. “Show yourself!”
We should never die, yet you wish to throw it all away for love’s folly?
All Duffy could see was an endless marble floor stretching in all directions as far as he could see. Above, there was cloud, a faint sparse smattering of wispy smoke. Something serial was afoot and he doubted it was part of The Aria. He soaked in the solitude for a while, breathing in through his nose and out of his mouth like the age old performance mantra told him. It calmed his nerves, for one, and kick started his recovery. It dawned on him that the injury to his chest, the one which had threatened to snuff him out was no longer there.
There was no hole in the Akashiman cloth, no blood, no pain, no trace that it had ever occurred. Why trick me, yet poison me with your shadow? He thought alone to himself as he rubbed the blackened wrist of his right arm slowly. “Lucian!”
Duffy slowly became overwhelmed by the unknown. He tucked in his knees and buried his head into his trousers, rocking back and forth slowly, waiting for change to come, for death to arrive, or for life to make itself known.
The clouds drifted on without giving him regard. The marble stayed icy to the touch. All was static, all was dead. All was nightmare…
Three years later…
I cried then like I’d never cried before. There are few moments in life when we are truly weak, when we are overwhelmed and our emotional hatches are battered and battered and battered some more. Our mettle is tested in such times, even if we only suffer them once. It is only the true gentleman or hero that can endure them without passing on that hurt or sorrow to others. I passed on mine, but not in a way I could have imagined.
I had not considered the possibility of losing the troupe or Duffy. He is all I’ve known, he is like a brother to me. Of course, watching someone die, even if such a death was staged, like all good theatrical endings was not easy for me. It changed us.
It changed him.
Whenever I am sad now I think of that moment and smile. I conquered my fear, I was given the chance to prove myself to the gods of Althanas that I can be strong, that I can do great things in their names.
From within my heart welled something stronger than hatred, malice of misery. More tangeable than gold, buildings or lovers. Deadlier than the mightiest blade, arrow or cannon…from within me, came the fire.
From within me came the scorching wreath of heart bound desperation. The Aria, so silent for so long in the dead of night burst into life. The ocean ripped up a terrible storm and the lightning and thunder called out the requiem of the world itself. I could not move, I could not breathe, I could not see the world. It took me, dragged me through the dimensions and I became, in the twilight, the symbol of the Simorgh.
I saved him… It makes me smile still today.
We cannot be apart. Thoughts of my love for my husband filled my head as the fires sprung from my ankles and travelled upwards, sheathing me in the primal sun. I thought so hard I wonder now if he heard them in that terrible place. I dare not ask him, our troubles in the wars that followed our parting of ways are more pressing now, more dangerous to disturb.
We should never die, yet you wish to throw it all away for love’s folly?
With a shining blast of light I landed on that marble floor and it melted, warped and cracked with each of my steps.
This diary was given to me by a dear friend, a friend whom I owe my life, and in it, I will tell you how the fires dies…
I will tell you of the Phoenix.
Duffy’s knees started to warm. Satisfying memories of hearths and bonfires flickered into his head, pushing aside the halcyon death. Stricken with curiosity he glanced up from his shame and dropped his jaw wide open. Before him was a familiar figure, but different in a thousand ways.
The sound wall shattered and the whispering wind and echoes were torn apart and replaced with a scorching maelstrom of burning air. Ruby was changed, Ruby was alive. Her eyes glowed with deep umbra power, her arms were aloft and from them sprang energy wings of orange and marigold and crimson reds. The floor beneath her feet was warping, turning to slag with the merest touch of her heel.
“Ruby!” Duffy sprung upright and took a bounding step forwards, forgetting for a moment that fire was typically dangerous to mortal flesh. “Oh…” He stops and edges back slowly. “Wha-what’s he done t’ya?”
She did not reply.
“Lucian! Let her go!”
He did not show.
Ruby pulled back her arms and moved her phantasmal wings upwards, as if she was going to beat them and fly. Duffy saw the danger almost instantly and buckled his knees and bounced backwards in a delicate and agile back flip. He tumbled into a constant cartwheel and kept going, instinct overriding common sense that you had to swerve to avoid oncoming danger.
The wings came down, and from the fire surrounding Ruby surged a great searing wave akin to a supernova. It crackled and buckled reality and sped with such speed even monkey man could not flip or roll or drop out of it’s deadly path. As it rushed past it tore the clothes from his back and the wind from his lungs with a blanching light. He closed his eyes and waited for death. He cannot kill me, so he sends his puppet.
A moment went by.
Duffy opened an eye scared of what hell might look like. When he saw the same floor, and the slumped form of his sister of the stage in the distance he sighed. Something was…different. He inspected his body, albeit naked, and found nothing was out of place. There was no black mark on his arm, no dirty under his finger nails, no sweat or signs of fatigue at all…
“Ruby?” He looked at her once more, repeating her name as he started to run across the marble, embers dropped from him as he did so. “Ruby!”
As he skidded to a halt and bent down onto one knee to pick her up in his arms a familiar sense of dark foreboding appeared in the air. Behind Duffy’s back, Lucian re-appeared in a opal swirl of dark mist.
“Oh…now I understand. Now I see why my power could not kill, could not do more than scar the great bitch of Tantalus…” Lucian smiled, running his long and bony finger down his nose to tap his cheek with tentative consideration. “So brave, yet so foolish. Sacrifice is best left to those who will not be missed when they are gone…”
He stepped forwards and rested his hand on Duffy’s shoulder like a vicious and abusive uncle. “What will you do with this second chance, this key she has given to you? You are strong enough to leave this place and there is nothing I can do to stop you doing so…you should go, you should return to your life and be forever…”
Ashamed… The last word stung Duffy’s mind like a telepathic dagger. He winced, spiralled and jumped to one side, wrenching himself free of his nemesis’s gentle pincer. Ruby flopped to the floor with a thud, one he knew she would have kicked him for if she were conscious.
“You will pay for this!” Tears started to roll down his cheeks like glass beads. “You…will….PAY!”
The Aria burst into a caterwaul, screeching strings and fiery tubas rattled out a battle song that stirred the very sinews of Duffy’s heart. Grief was a bitter yet resourceful entity, and as the naked thief started to run toward’s Lucian, all remnants of humanity in the ghoul’s mind dwindled. He smiled, watched the boy’s steps, calculated his movements, and then he rolled to one side with perfect timing.
Empty fist collided with precision blow.
The duel raged on.
Their fists stopped. Locked together like titan brands. Lucian looked up from his crouch and looked sternly into Duffy’s eyes. The boy was panting, driven to rage by grief and sorrow. This was not how a true man fought, but up on the stage a man battled with his raw passion and his desire to transgress human emotion, to become someone else entirely. Lucian longed to have the thief out of harm’s why whilst he tore the troupe apart himself. It seemed his plans were not to be, something always came along to burn his bridges.
“I will kill you!” Duffy pulled his hand back and lunged downwards with a follow up, with a snatch and a tug Lucian pulled him over his head and cackled as Duffy’s naked body slammed on his back and slid a few yards away.
“Kill me?” He rose like a vampire forming from a shadow. “How can you kill those already dead?”
Duffy flipped over and went down on his haunches. It was a familiar stance, one street fighters used and monkeys ate with. He grinned. He did not care that he was unarmed, outmatched, and he’d forgotten his lines. You couldn’t care when family were hurt. Marcus had made the mistake of putting Cornelia before his friends, and look where that had gotten him…dead.
“I will hunt all of you down, kill each fragment of the traitor Lucian, and I will write a play so magnificent that you shall never rise from your tomb again!”
“-and with what blade or magic will you commit such acts of bravery?”
Duffy slouched.
What good was fire and strength and the passion to fight without weapons? He smiled. So that’s what Ruby did…
Duffy stood slowly and spread his feet, his right foot pointing right and his left straight forwards. It was so simple! Ruby had given Duffy her heart, her passion, her desire to succeed. She had stripped him of his clothes not to lighten his load or to hurt him…but to make him see that he was armed, wherever he went. He did not need trinkets and clothes to be a hero.
All he needed was belief.
“You will not leave this place alive Lucian and I will not be trapped here…a paradox mighty indeed your actions have created. So, let us continue?” Duffy didn’t wait for an answer, he simply sprinted forwards and pulled back his right fist. Steeling at a great pace he leapt over Ruby and punched nothing.
His fingertips spread, and like the fire eaters and mages of old, a spark appeared and kindled in his palm and rushed outwards in a great cone of fire. Lucian’s cloak flipped up and around but was burnt to cinders. Duffy landed and ducked the counter, the stone shattering fist missing his forehead and caught only his afterimage.
“How?” Their fists connected again, retreated, connected, retreated. An exchange of blows blocked with deft fore-arm and agile kick. The rotting edges of Lucian’s clothes smouldered and as he moved, so did the smoke trail. Sulphur and peat swarmed both their lungs, but there was no time to heave or to phlegm.
Duffy could not hear. The Aria was singing, through the ocean and his devotion to Tantalus he had allowed a persona to slip through the cracks and take over. He saw with unknowing eyes and heard with unfeeling emotions. But could not control his movements or the surges or flame that pummelled and scorched and tore at Lucian’s form.
He was no longer Duffy, he was the Simorgh.
“Enough!” A sphere of shadow force rushed out from Lucian’s temple and knocked the fire chylde back. It’s naked form flew and landed squarely on the marble. With a whoosh and a ruffle the sparked fires in his palms went out, and he went still. Duffy sighed, coughed and spat blood onto the ancient floor.
“It appears that even in the afterlife, Tantalus cannot stand back and watch his avatar die for his own misgivings. How pathetic, the gods meddling in their champion’s affairs at the moment they are about to lose their wager with the Fates!”
“What,” Duffy rose slowly, “are you talking about?” He wiped the corner of his mouth with his wrist and spat again. He teeth were the same colour as Ruby’s dress. “I hear not the gods, is that what you think?”
“How do you pray and be heard, when you are nothing like me! You have no decorum or no skill, your acting is Talentless and your methods jovial…why does he answer you and not I?”
Duffy rolled his eyes.
“Tantalus gives us The Aria, he does not help us. We must learn to revere the power of the spoken word, we must live it’s live and we shall be rewarded. He never abandoned you, Lucian, you abandoned him, you ga-” Lucian flicked his wrist and knocked Duffy upwards with a blow to the chin.
“ENOUGH!”
He re-appeared at Duffy’s side, looming over him like an executioner. Raising his metaphorical axe he conjured a shadow ball and smiled. “Even his interference will not save you!” The black orb and the fist behind it came down heavy at Duffy’s exposed chest.
Three years later…
As I have come to understand it, after great and lengthy debate on theological matters with Duffy, the fire was not me, my soul, nor my desperation. It was the healing flames of the Simorgh, the very essence of the Salvarian myth that flooded my body through The Aria, for I cried for help and a light to guide me, and it was the first thing to heed my call. I know now how some aspect of my songs works. I sing songs, and The Aria fills my wish as much as it can depending on the lyrics.
It filled Duffy with the truth. Sacrifice after all is the greatest gift a person can give and so my need and hope gave Duffy the strength and will to stand up to Lucian. It gave him the strength to question all that he lived for. We did not die that day because Duffy believed in me.
He believed in all we stood for, all the troupe meant, and all that it would continue to mean when we are too old to whisper, too frail to walk. He is a most pious one, despite his disparaging enthusiasm.
I do not recall the conflict between them. I am told it was a duel worthy of fables and songs longer than any one man could recite. I will take his word for it. I am somewhat suspicious of his recollections, as much I would like to believe him. After the pork pie incident four years ago I do not think it wise to take everything he says as gospel.
He’s still not told me how I came around to find him wearing a dress…
The katarhna appeared in thin air. It didn’t arrive in any sense of pomp or regalia, it simply wasn’t, then was. The shadow ball collided with the upward blade and dissipated as Lucian snapped his hand back in shock.
Duffy’s eyes opened with a grin.
“NOW he’s interfering!” He chuckled and grabbed the Akashiman wrought blade with a greedy hand. Flipping up and backwards onto his feet he felt suddenly warm and less exposed both to the elements, and to eager weapons. His gear appeared, the same baggy trousers, headscarf and bandolier, just like that.
The Aria shined.
“Clothes and swords will not prevent me from shattering your spirit and leaving you here a broken man!” Lucian’s hand darted out once more and a sphere flew towards Duffy. The thief ducked but it clipped him, knocked him back and his sword hand out. “You will suffer and suffer and suffer!”
“You would toy with the thayne? Toy with…destiny?” Someone spoke with Duffy’s mouth, but it was not the thief. The katana gleaned light from somewhere and shone in the dim greyness of the void.
“You would suffer my wrath, for the deeds you yourself purveyed? The hollow question recoiled into Lucian’s head and rattled down his rotting spine and decaying flesh. He snarled, like a rat backed into a proverbial corner.
“Hark now, the puppet of the theatre! Dangling on strings when the puppet master hides behind his divinity!” He kicked forwards and flew upwards, stopping a few feet above the ground to rain six spheres down onto the boy in quick succession, each darting fist flat and precise as a cobra’s bite.
The orbs spread out slightly, hovering in the air for a moment before all rushing at Duffy in a hail of death.
Through their awakening connection with one another Tantalus spoke to Duffy in a humble and jovial tone, one far removed from the haunting whispers of his threats to his former prodigy. “You are all you wish to be, Duffy. Do not question your identity, even when you act. Be you prince or concubine or knight or squire, you will always be free to chose your own path. You may be Tantalum, and I Tantalus, but titles are all they are…”
The Aria shined.
“You are all of us, you are all of them, you are every part and parcel of every play…be true to yourself…”
He left Duffy’s body with a rush of honey and lavender and then the katarhna rose into the air with an upwards slash diagonally cut through the air.
Duffy’s clothes changed to those of Blank, the silent swordsman, the wanderer. With a cut and a thrust, he smited each of the orbs with a deft two handed strike. Each strike sent the shadow energy rushing outwards in little pales of liquid, splashing the marble floor with poison. Heavy footfalls cut into the rhythm, the stance of the samurai prevailing against even the strongest of magicks. The Akashiman Bushido Blank knew so well from his origins swarmed into Duffy and he survived the assault. In The Aria, Lysander smiled down at him.
The simple leather pants turned into a long white dress, and suddenly Duffy was Lilith, the seamstress, the waitress, the wanderer. With a bow and a smile, the knowledge and running of the troupe flaunted efficiency at Lucian.
“We do not dangle on any strings, Lucian.” Lilith’s simple white dress and hat turned into a waistcoat and baggy trousers, similar to Pete and the other children. “We are the future of the stage, we are children, mother’s, sons and daughters. We are the family you shall never have.”
With a flash, the clothes faded and twisted and turned into something else entirely. A tall wig and Victorian ball gown appeared, like that of the cook twins Misery and Sodomy (a name best left unexplained all in all). “We nourish one another through our bonds, through our dedication, through our understanding.”
Lucian looked down at the amalgamation of personalities flickering before him. He knew every face, every single persona that appeared and taunted him with sickening fantasies of belonging, of needing, of brotherhood and sisterhood and connection. He would kill every, last, one of them.
Duffy re-appeared, his own clothes suddenly hanging from his lanky form. “I am but one part of the Tantalus, neither his pawn, neither his slave. Whilst we all fight for what we believe in, Lucian, you shall never tear us apart!”
“Then I shall crush each, and every, last, one of you!”
Ruby’s eyes opened slowly.
Duffy’s attire turned into a long crimson ball gown topped with feathered hair and dainty boots. Ruby rubbed her eyes in disbelief. Duffy became Ruby, the Crimson Mistress, the daughter of grace, the songtress, the wanderer. He scorned Lucian with a feminine smile and clicked his fingers. Fire formed around his nails like sprites dancing on his fingertips. “I am Ruby, we are Ruby, we are all as one. Our fire’s shall burn bright!”
The flames did indeed burn bright, rushing up at Lucian in a flurry of small orbs. He waved them aside with a delicate push and smiled.
“Then your deeds shall be measured from afar, and I shall tear the troupe from under you until you know sorrow!”
Darkness rained down over the two Ruby’s.
Duffy re-appeared and scrabbled at the mist. Ruby stood upright, inflicted with energy from a rush of adrenaline.A flash of blue energy surrounded both of them and dragged them away.
“Begone!” Lucian clicked his fingers with a satisfying snap. He was alone at last, and the world was his oyster.
The two bards both felt a rush of vertigo and then fell through the fabrics of the world once more.
A faint portal in the depths of a church crackles to life.
From it slips a tumbling and screaming woman clad in red.
The Phoenix had come home to roost, come home to burn.
Salvar welcomed her with open arms.
Perhaps the scribe that had opened the portal did not. Such was the nature of the unexpected.
But such adventures deserve more parchment, they deserve more credit, they deserve a whole new tale of their own!
Arabian plume and fire,
Desert sand in beat,
Simorgh blanching arrogance,
Beneath it’s taloned feet.
Sandstorm whirl and screech,
Ancient lore in wings,
A tear that heals all woe’s dilation,
The death song Simorgh sings.
In Duffy’s mind a conversation raged on between his self-doubt and his sense of certainty, his good and his bad. Both were throwing words about that had little meaning, semantics be damned, they both thought. Several accusations of ‘your mother is a’ crackled between them, retorts of witty anecdotes and scientific maladies replied all-round. “I suppose you think it’s all my fault!?” Duffy questioned himself.
“Well, you could hardly ascribe to the notion that this was forced upon you. You made the decision to enter the house.”
“Oh-oh, sure I did. It’s all come and take and send away wi’ you ain’t it! You’re like the unpleased mother I never ‘ad!” This exchange continued for sometime, serving as a momentary distraction from the sobbing and the bewilderment.
The portal wavered, grew, and wavered some more. It was now wide enough for its size to penetrate the small vacuum around it, and in a small explosion of noise, the rush of air gave its location away to anyone nearby. Three cracks of reality shattered the battered floor, arcing on the walls and burning the air. The screaming started to wobble, as if its owner was spinning, and spinning, and spinning some more. Duffy flopped out of the portal like a doe from its mother’s loins, blood spattered and covered in prismatic afterbirth.
He rolled, thudded and tumbled along the floor, taking jagged shards of tiles to the side and a heavy knock to the back of his head as he finally came to a standstill. Groggily, he sat up. The portal crackled, and died. With a sucking noise that sounded like hell itself was simply packing up to leave, the air returned to normal and all that remained to give away the portal’s presence was a rather bewildered looking Scara Brae thief, and a desperate need to call for a architect.
Duffy settled his gaze onto the backs of the line of tall people not too far in front of him. Paying little attention to his surroundings, he settled instead on trying to make his presence known. “Ermm, hello?” Emotions mingled with the sense of expectancy and supercharged the butterflies in his stomach. He reeled from the hurricane. What have I gotten myself in for this time? He scratched his head and inspected his plethora of small injuries, none of which would prove fatal or long lasting, but they certainly made a prang of attention seeking pain to remind him to tuck his knees and roll next time.
Sixty years later…
I have flicked back through these pages a thousand times and still I cannot see what I want to see. How did I ever fear death so much? Decades have passed since we first encountered Lucian and I still cannot begin to fathom where that fear came from. Even as I watched Duffy ‘die’, I knew that it was not so. I did not feel him go although I doubted that feeling for all my troubles through the deserts of Salvar.
Now? Now I know he is truly lain to rest. Duffy Bracken, the theatre master of Scara Brae, a legend in his own right has died. He is passed and gone beyond our realm. Where he rests now, that is not for me to say, but wherever he ends up in spirit, I hope that he knows we are happy, we are thankful that he died having lived and loved.
Lucian still lives. There is nought we can do to lay him to rest. The war was long and took it's toll on all of us. We fought and our allies came to our aid as Duffy had promised they would, but we could not overcome his power. In the end, we settled for banishment, adding the task of keeping him captive and away from the world to our many tasks and tantamount duties. He is bound in his hovel beneath Scara Brae, a fitting capstone to a tortured soul’s tomb, wouldn’t you say? From our encounter with Visla behind the stage to the adventures of the Red Scourge and the journeys we endured through Salvar and war, and Raeira and the dead wandering, we came to know all that there is to know about living. We endured.
The funeral was contrite, simple, understated. It wasn’t very ‘Duffy’ at all, but it was how it was done. He will be remembered by those who knew him, and by those who will know him in the years to come. I am a woman of venerable age now, my time will soon come and I too will be laid to rest beneath the canopy of the Winslow Tree at the heart of the Bracken Theatre’s Grande courtyard.
Yes Duffy…we finished it. Our new and grandiose apartment block complete with regalia, theatre and multiple stages. It is a wonder to behold, and it’s place in the city is no thanks to you. For years we have run the streets as thieves, criminals, people fighting for their lives in a cruel world. No more, although we gained the favour of Scara Brae’s ruler and established the theatre as part of the city’s life whilst you were alive, we could not complete the build.
I’m so sorry you are not here to see it, but I guess in some small way you are. You will forever watch over your child, your ancestors in turn will watch over you.
In that coffin rests the Orb, the Cutlass, the Katana, Lysander’s Books, a Phoenix Plume from the deserts of Salvar, the blessing of every hero and villain and man and child you saved and sanctified in your great performance. It is a treasure trove, it is an archive.
This diary will be buried with us and it’s contents will be read aloud as it is copied and learnt down the generations.
My first gift to you Duffy, is one of celebration. Lucian's Call is no more. Instead there is Bracken Cake and Red Wine on Midsummer's Eve for people to remember the troupe as a whole, as a collective.
My final gift to you Duffy, for making my life so fantastic is a play.
You are the star role.
You are the centrepiece.
May you play the lead in Her Fearful Symmetry forever in the afterlife.
Goodbye Duffy,
I love you…
And thus ends Chapter One in the struggles of the Tantalum Theatre Troupe. All acts transpired before this shall be committed to history, all acts following, shall form a shining and radiant present. From here on, all new threads will follow Chapter Two, and Duffy and Ruby’s adventures in the separate FQ’s to try and return home after Lucian has exiled them. This thread follows on from How The Orb Came To Pass. spoils requested here are based on performances in both threads.
Spoils: Abilities are locked until the noted levels. They are manifestations of The Simorgh, one of the symbols of Tantalus.
Duffy - (Locked Until Level 2) How The Fire Dies - channelling passion found in performance and lust, Duffy can mimic, three times per thread, the cone of flame that he would otherwise produce using the Tinder Gear. It operates in exactly the same fashion but is considered magical, and thus can be dispelled or repelled by relevant abilities. It does not consume gold or XP to utilise, but cannot exceed the strength or damage of the Tinder Gear itself.
Duffy - (Locked Until Level 2) The Communal Throng - Duffy can magically summon a new costume twice per thread, from the Tantalus Menagerie. He may conjure one of his weapons once per thread, as per a conjure weapon spell. The clothes summoned must be mundane, and do not bring with them the tools or trappings of the costume required. He can conjure a thief’s outfit, for example, but not lock picks or rope or other such items. At the minute, the ability does not change physical appearance, although with use and practice, it might be possible to summon a vague illusion of being someone else. (No increase until level 4 at least.)
Ruby - (Locked Until Level 1) The Passionate Cantor - a new song type, channelling passion found in performance and lust, Ruby can surround herself in fire and with a beat of such flaming wings, she can gift one person with a temporary boost to physical energy, movement and fighting ability. One use per thread, at the cost of 25% of any XP awarded for the thread. It increases combat by one grade, ( so average becomes above average etc) against opponents of a lower level, and increases by one level for one attack or parry against opponents up to three levels higher. Downsides to this are of course, the removal of any non metallic clothing worn by the individual. Metallic or enchanted items worn are not affected.
The Tantalum and Destiny: I'd also like to request the events hinted at in Ruby's Diary entries formulate the start of the troupe's rise to fame. They hint at theatre coming to life and the Tantalum becoming an Althanas wide, if not Scara Brae wide household name. Of course, the events suggested are merely based on the current present, and could be changed by other characters or by the actions of Duffy/Ruby and those involved in the FQ (time has a fickle way of changing as it pleases.) In essence, I'd like this to be considered as part of a legendary item request in the future, (for the Orb of Attainment) as well as background posts for future reference/inclusion in schtuffs.
Visla Eraclaire
10-17-09, 10:04 AM
Limited commentary requested; limited commentary received. Limited is, of course, relative to my usual length. It's hard to come up with a numerical score without thinking through comments, and if I have to think them, you have to read them.
Story ~ 9
Continuity As a sequel, this could have had fantastic continuity if you had bothered to link it up, but it feels like I just walked into “my regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.” The end tries to place the thread in a grand continuity but I think it goes too far. Writing the end when you've barely begun seems foolhardy. 3
Setting For all your florid language I'm not actually sure where they were when they started. Once they entered this shadow realm, there were some descriptions but they were generally more devices than true ambiance. 4
Pacing Alternates between full intensity and almost none. The dual perspectives make this very jarring, and unfortunately I do not mean that in a good way. 2
Character ~ 14
Dialogue Overwhelmingly overwrought, even for stage actors. Lucian is over the top and Duffy is bland as can be. Also, Duffy's broken accent seems somewhat inconsistent. Much of the dialogue is just filler, calling of names, bare contradiction, and posturing. This also hurt your Persona. 4
Action There's certainly a lot going on and it seems to be well written. If only I understood what on earth it was all about.6
Persona I can't describe your characters as shallow or stock characters. They're fairly clearly dense, but they're impenitrably so. I gleaned little insight into what drives these people and the manner of their thoughts. Post #9 was perhaps the most helpful in this respect. The rest, not so much. Also, jumping all the way ahead to Duffy's ultimate demise seems like a bad decision. You've written yourself into a corner and unless your planning is immaculate, that statement may become something you're ashamed of. 4
Writing ~ 14
Technique You stopped doing your whole posts in color, but you now throw around orange and red in a way that I think rather desperately wants to be significant. As best I can tell, it is barely deserving of italics much less color changes. This is supposed to be a journal. Is Ruby so convinced that these words are important that she carries with her vials of red and orange ink to write them? I hope not, because they're not that important. You use a great deal of poetic turns of phrase and metaphors. Some are very strained, and they're used with such frequency that they batter the audience. “prismatic afterbirth “ is also one of the most oddly vile phrases I have heard in a long time. 4
Mechanics It's means “it is.” Its is a possessive pronoun. There were commas instead of semicolons, missing commas, and runons. None were particularly distracting, but I think that's because I was already so confused. 7
Clarity Posturing, drama, and sweeping action with absolutely no context. This is a sequel, but it would have taken you a paragraph, perhaps two, to explain to me what this is all about. I haven't a clue. Take out the intro poem; insert explanation. The time jumps were also unhelpful. Things became somewhat more understandable as time went on, mostly due to Ruby's posts, but even if it all made sense at the end (which it didn't) I'm not sure if that's success. When your reader spends so long confused, he may miss things and not fully appreciate the effort you might have put in because he's preoccupied just trying to grasp the story. 3
Wildcard Overambitious. You tried to grab something massively complex, using a difficult style, and featuring an interwoven narrative. This is something you should do as an extra challenge once you've mastered simpler things. You seem to have all the ability to write a fantastic piece of straightforward prose. Succeed there and build a solid foundation before you try and construct some towering edifice. This seems like something to write as a dramatic conclusion, not at level 1 by jumping ahead decades.
You had moments showing things which would have deserved scores in the 6-8 range but weak fundamentals prevented these from shining through. Compare with Flames of Hyperion's recent judgment. He executed poorly on strong fundamentals. You put a great deal of polish on something that was flawed from the start. By my wildcard score I express my preference for the former.
If anyone saw, as I did in my youth, the last two episodes of Evangelion, that is what this is like. Flitting from one thing to another, struggling desperately to be deep and powerful, but ultimately unsatisfying and confusing. More than once I shouted aloud at my screen, “What!?”Hideki Anno got death threats. All you get is a 3
Final Score: 40
Duffy gains 673 exp.
Ruby gains 336 exp.
Your locked ability spoils are denied. Take that matter up with the RoG mods when you level. Your requested story-related spoil is also improper. I cannot approve your writing as canonical. Take that up with continent writers, but even then it will not convince other players to recognize you. Only genuine fame will do that.
Taskmienster
10-17-09, 12:15 PM
Exp added!
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.5 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.