View Full Version : The Howling Ziggurat (Solo)
The Howling Ziggurat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZweDwbJ_Ic&feature=related)
Part Four of the Story Arc 'Legacy,' set following The Rise of Van Ocupanther (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=21044&highlight=occupanther) and A Momento For The Fallen (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=21127&highlight=momento+fallen).
1937
Miss me, but let me go
When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom filled room
Why cry for a soul set free
Miss me a little - but not too long
And not with your head bowed low
Remember the love that we once shared
Miss me - but let me go
For this is a journey that we must all take
And each must go alone
It's all a part of the Master's plan
A step on the road to home
When you are lonely, and sick of heart
Go to the friends we know
And bury your sorrows in doing good deeds
Miss me - but let me go
Anon
The Temple of Lao Sheng stood at the heart of the Akashiman woods, an eternal testament to madness in the folds of nature’s overwhelming caress. Long ago, it had been a vibrant radix of power and community, but as time had turned and the day to day become every bit the history of its people, it was forgotten and was left to the wolves, vines and ghosts.
Blank strolled along the ruined flagstones of the outer gardens, stepping over tree trunk rotten and branch bough bent low. The heavy palette of deep earthen green and rotten brown had dredged his senses from their usual sharpness and he slipped and stumbled as foothold blurred away into nothing. He moved with a reckless abandon and an almost automatic motion, eyes locked onto the road ahead and head spinning with fatigue and exhaustion. His goals drove his mud-slavered corpse forwards, leaving the mind to wander through the eons that is had witnessed.
He had traveled north from the Dao village of Tokyun and then East at the first of the way stones as he had remembered, but the path was not easy, and the reclamation of the temple by the foliage would make it more difficult still as he approached the central conclave and the great Ziggurat itself. Despite the thick and heavy cloth that his trousers were lined with, thorns and Brandy-wine flowers had nicked and cut at his thighs and knees, adding a constant niggling pain to his many troubles.
With every step a chorus of unseen birds responded in a flourish of mating calls and warning heckles, and the tops of the bushes at the very edge of a traveler limited vision in the dense forest rustled and swayed; perhaps from the winds which whistled between the tall trunks and ancient pillars, or perhaps from the clumsy advances of predators, tricksters, oni and thieves. Blank paid them all no heed, and calmed his growing apprehension by holding onto the hilt of the Rheilhand to stay his need to check his surroundings every second.
The dampness in the air and the hedonistic scent of the flowers that bobbed in the pseudo-breeze at his feet threw up a blissful and peaceful aroma that reminded weary travelers of better times. Blank resisted the Kami of Old Tides’ wish for him to simply lay down with his head on the coiled floss grass and close his eyes, to throw all questing away in favour of the rolling waves of his dreams. Many had not, and if Blank had paid better attention to the mounds of moss and bracken that he walked over, through and around, he would have caught the sporadic glimpse of a long rotten skull or a ribcage protruding from the forest floor.
Only one thought spiraled around his mind as the howling wind grew in intensity and the anger of the forest riled his nerves. He had to stand at the heart of the Ziggurat and offer his blood to the Keeper of the Winter Scar; the Guardian of Death, the Servant of the Thayne and the protectorate of the souls offered in Blood Magic sacrifice.
He had to barter with the darkness in his heart for his mother’s soul.
Akashima, Blank had decided, was as strange a place as he remembered. Despite his memories and their torrential return in fleeting visions of reality scorned, he longed to be able to forget the youthful years he had spent in the fast forests of this small, hidden kingdom in the mists. As he walked through the ancient gardens, he remembered twisted laughter and hide and seek behind the monkey statues as clear as day, and longed even more to close his eyes and be home amongst the squalor and hubbub of Scara Brae.
A macaw screamed overhead and snapped Arden from his daydream. He looked around, and saw a strange old sight he had not expected to see. The pathway through the gardens gave way briefly to an ancient bridge, an arc over a long stagnated waterway which had once irrigated the temple with bathing and drinking water. The statue which guarded it had a twin brother, and a cousin at the opposite end, and Blank smirked at it's half-degraded visage.
"Nekojin, Ikuzi," he nodded to each of them in turn and remembered. His brother had once plaid a cruel trick on him at this very bridge, and had hidden beneath it to throw his voice into the then gleaming stone as if the oni had possessed them and come to claim his young soul. It had taken him weeks to overcome his fear, a time in which he had to take the long detour around the Northern quadrant through the rose guardians to avoid encountering his nightmare.
He walked up onto the bridge with a kick in his stride, and he patted both statues, now half their size in his mind on the head before continuing. He expected to face many ghosts of his past as he travelled to the central pyramid and the trinkets of time that hung suspended at it's core. The wind whispered and trailed through the tall spindly trees and ancient blooms as he progressed, and the feeling in the pit of his stomach, of blood, iron and wine churned and grew ever stronger. The ritual he had to perform was no longer at the back of his mind, and the Howling Ziggurat claimed another victim in the name of delirium, blood oath and madness as he approached.
After an hour traversing the vines and ruined walkways over sludge and quagmire, Blank set his eyes on the gaping doors to the inner temple through the distant tree line. The sun shone on it's surface and shone like a beacon of hope at the end of a long, violent tunnel. Blank's body was mottled with small cuts, rashes and bruises from where his sight had failed him and his body had been over eager in climbing and leaping.
The last two hundred feet or so went quickly, as adrenaline and expectation picked him up and gave him wings to ascend over the heavy, moss covered fines without difficulty. His eyes gleamed with joy as he stumbled out of the trees and onto the large square lawn that formed an expanse all around the Ziggurat, separating it from the feral world. Long ago, the builders of the temple had enchanted the pristine blades with powerful spirit magic, to ward away the encroaching power of nature, so that the Ziggurat would forever stand amidst the heart of Akashima, safe from decay, safe from harm.
It hummed slightly, and emitted a strong aura that Blank could feel in his bones. The ancient ancestry between his family and the constructors of the temple roiled through the air, as if serving as a home coming celebration. He walked over the grass with naked, muddy and cut feet, calloused and worn from the long journey and placed his right foot on the first step.
The only entrance to the Ziggurat, with the exception of the single mile high vertical shaft at it's tip was set some fifty feet up the side of the pyramid, and the steps were worn smooth and bowed at the centre from a thousand years of worshippers and pilgrims visiting the tomb. Blank felt as if he were walking in history itself, drawn to climb the stairs and enter the dark, narrow and featureless passage by a boiling of his blood - by a strong, almost magnetic field that could not be resisted, negated or quelled.
There was no turning back from the path of Blood Magic.
The atmosphere in the Ziggurat was noticeably calmer, and the temperature almost in stark contrast to the hedonistic haze of the jungle - Blank's skin pimpled and the mud on his lithe legs began to solidify and crack before falling off in little flakes of history. He advanced slowly, with his hand on the hilt of the Rheilhand, even knowing that there was no danger within; certainly not of the variety which could be killed or injured with common steel.
For what seemed like an eternity he continued, until a faint light appeared at the end of the tunnel after a sharp left and another, and Blank swallowed his phlegm and coarsely tucked his hair behind his ears. As he approached, the chamber beyond focused, and he saw for the first time in his life, the tomb of his ancestor, Lao Sheng.
He had, or so the legend went, been a powerful spirit warder who protected the smaller villages of Akashima in times of war and peace - an eternal guardian standing vigil over the dispossessed and undefended people, who were far from the prying eyes of the great capital and it's mighty shogunate army. As time passed, the Great Oni of the Mithril Mines of Tokyun and the Dragon Daemon of the Howling Spire both succumbed to his blade and spells. Irony would have Lao die not from war, or fell teeth and claw, but from age - the passing of time would be his greatest enemy.
The villages and Spirit Warders had mourned for a full year after his passing, and spent three years more constructing the Ziggurat and the surrounding necropolis and gardens. It's spiralling, glistening pyramid stood at the centre of a great square territory, and the smaller necropolis marked out the six heroes who had borne the coffin to the centre of the tomb and lain it to rest - they too, when they died, would join him in the afterlife.
The burial chamber was the Ziggurat's only room, at least the only room that remained common knowledge. Many has long suspected that the necropolis and the strange water ways held secret entrances to shrines and treasure troves buried in the vast architecture, but no-one had discovered them. It was a large, circular chamber at the heart of the temple, with a hundred alcoves set in the walls and a large, raised dias at the centre of the room set immediately beneath the long shaft that rose all the way to the tip of the pyramid.
The sunlight descended down the foot wide tunnel and struck a curved mirror bowl set atop the tomb, which reflected the light onto six mirrors, which in turn cast beams of heaven down to the bottom of the steps; they shone on six sigils, wards of great power formed from the souls of the six men who died to defend him, and died building the temple.
Blank admired it for a moment, before bowing, and turning to his right. He had not come to see dead gods and mourn, he had come to find his mother. The alcoves in the walls were almost full, with the exception of a handful of empty depths where coffins, in time, would appear. His mother was buried fourteen alcoves to the right of the door, three up. He had extracted this small snippet from his brother's lies many years ago, and kept silent of it's implications for almost a decade.
He bent at the knee as he found it, and pulled the handle. With a great and heavy thud, the long coffin, wrought iron with elegant stone panels and kanji inscribed over every inch thudded onto the floor. Blank stepped back as the dust cloud settled, coughing and spluttering and realising he was practically dehydrated, and then set his gaze on the top panel.
It read, in elegant sprawl, Maria Kazumi, Daughter of Tokyun.
Blank read the inscription aloud, for the third time.
"Daughter of Tokyun...Daughter of Tokyun..." it had not occurred to him, before now, just how much of a coincidence his life had been. Whilst many families in Akashima inter married, he had never considered the possibility that he was related to Lillith somehow. It was too suspicious to believe, but Lucian's meddling in history, time and power had no bounds.
He dusted the top of the coffin and began to investigate the symbols which covered it's surface, chiselled into the stone with delicate and painstaking attention to detail. His father, despite his murderous streak, had gone to great lengths to inter her in the correct manner with great pomp and secrecy. The Janelle family line had been guardians of the Temple in some way or another for six decades, until his father passed the key to the next in line and done away with Blank's legacy out of spite.
Carefully and slowly, he clipped away the metallic and ornate bolts that sealed the coffin shut, and lifted the lid with skeletal, hungry fingers. Images of his brother's betrayal and those flashing, haunting memories of his mother's death played out before him, over and over, until at last the coffin lay open, lid upright on it's velveteen and iron chain hinges and his parent revealed to the world.
The corpse was, for all Blank could see, still as perfect as the day it had been lain to rest. The magic over the coffin instantly broke and ended as soon as it opened, and Blank burnt the perfect skin and simple, elegant lines of his mother's cheek bones into his mind, should his spell fail and his dreams fade forever. He knelt by the coffin, drew the twin daggers that had cut his brother and taken his blood, and held one in each hand with their blades crossed and touching the opposite wrist.
"It is time..." He mumbled, wincing as he drew the blades across his skin.
A deep crack, a thundering sound and a foreboding tenseness broke the chamber's air as the first drop of blood touched the corpse's skin. Pain trembled up Blank's arms, but it was more a weakness, a relaxing of strength than outright agony inflicted with a burning brand. His wish became his command, and the first drop covered the torso of his mother in a red pool that oozed across the ancient cloth with the determination of even more ancient magic.
Images of his father's sword cane falling through the night toward's her neck flashed in his mind, feelings of helplessness fell onto his heart and he felt the remorse he had felt then tripled. All he had needed was the bravery to scream, the anger to rage riot against that abomination of a mortal man - but his father's magic had bound Blank hours before, leaving him helpless and silent to watch his brother and progenitor take his world and crush it underfoot.
A second crack rolled into the chamber from above, descending and ricocheting down the single shaft from the heavens above. The potency of the Blood Magic gathered the clouds in the skies and drew them in a great spiral of dark thundering columns; they circled the Ziggurat, and lightning flashed between them in deep blue bolts and crackling nets of power.
Blank's skin drew pale and he slumped forwards, resting his arms on the edge of the coffin and breathing heavy and slow and with time slipping from his lungs. The room fell into darkness, if only for a moment, and then in a brilliant explosion, the coffin at the centre of the chamber ruptured into light. The bolts ran about the mirrors and illuminated the chamber; the magic turned them to pour the light onto the coffin, and beneath the scouring light of heaven, Blank found his answer.
The corpse's eyes opened and rasped a breath through parched lips.
Blank's eyes closed, his last gasp falling onto his mother's heart as a sacrificial welcome to the world.
With a rasp, the corpse pushed her son from the coffin and rose serendipitously from her death bed. The flash of light that struck the mirrors in the centre of the chamber worked their ominous magic as she returned fully to life, and with a glimmer, her skin took on it's full colour and her clothes faded back to life as if dragged through a stream of time. A silence descended across the chamber as she took in her surroundings and thought to herself for a sombre moment. It took her a while to realise what her last memory meant, and who the boy had been that had dragged her from her slumber in the twilight realm between nirvana and purgatory.
"Arden..." she whispered, turning her head and looking down at his slumped body. "Oh Arden," she pushed herself upright with a hand resting on each side of the coffin and slowly, as if alive but not whole fully real moved to crouch at his side. She tentatively unfolded his limbs and set him on his back, arms by his side, head lolling to the right. "You stupid, wonderful, handsome child - I was supposed to die, so that you might live." She drew a line across his forehead to remove the hair plastered to his skin, and then caught the cuts on his wrists with a shudder and a gasp.
"If living is still what you call this..." she picked up his hand and let it flop back to the dirt with a slosh. The blood had started to congeal in two scattered pools of crimson mud. The smell of iron and decay filled her nostrils as her senses returned to her indistinctly. "No," she gripped him by the throat and pulled his upper body up, and cupped him in her arms, "it is too soon for you to die by your father's hand. Blood Magic shall not be the death of you, as it was me, nor shall it consume you, as it did your father and one day, your sister..." she supressed the desire to flee and see Lillith once more.
"Awaken, Arden, take my soul and bind it to the ether, live in twilight, for that is the only way to live, and use your talents as a swordsmen silent and an arcane weaver of our very essence to end Magnarion...end him," she picked up his dagger with her free hand and with a pause, hovered it next to her neck.
She cut it across her skin, and for a moment smiled with the angelic glean of an angel, a high seraphim casting it's glow down onto the mortals of the world.
As she fell, Blank coughed and spluttered back to life as he rolled to the side; free of his mother's love once more.
"W-what...happened?" He looked up dizzily, pain and suffering rising from his wrists to his third eye in a fiery convocation of restorative, regenerating power. He smelt sulphur, and the taint of flame, and knew that he was free from hell's sycophantic caress.
The Howling Ziggurat howled and groaned and came alive. Arden looked to his mother, and it dawned on him. Her love for her son had overridden her need to live, her need to survive, and she had sacrificed her own life to bring him back to the fold of existence. Ironic, he thought, despite the sickness that grew in his stomach.
He knew enough of Blood Magic, the ancient art that ran in his family to know that to take and give life required not only sacrifice, but great loss. He had sundered his soul to restore her from her coffin, and no doubt shattered it further still when he had been dragged kicking and screaming back from hell. This was what he feared the most - his father could end him, destroy him, cut and mar his flesh for all eternity, but it would be the loss of his sanctity and place amongst the dead that would hurt him the most.
He spat blood, and pushed himself upright slowly. The dust in the air grew heavy on his lungs and the light that rattled to and fro between the dome's many mirrors cast illumination to all corners of the dark tomb.
"Oh mother..." he mumbled, setting about dusting himself off with gentle patting motions. "I guess I will live without you for just a while longer. My blood is yours, and your blood is mine, entwined in our curse for all eternity." He convulsed.
He turned and walked back to the entrance, but stopped to look over his shoulder once more with a longing expression of sorrow. All his journey was wasted, but he felt kindled to learning the truth behind the treachery and betrayal between the members of his family. Blood Magic was a curse, and his father would not stop until he was it's most powerful proponent, but why pursue such an art when it had not failed to consume and destroy a wielder in the many centuries since Lao Sheng first sundered the Order of Sangria in the dark days of the Janelle line.
"Family," he groaned, "can't live with them, can't live with-" he vomited, and a dark power welled in his heart and stomach with a painful wave of agony that transcended all expectation.
A bloodied wing spread from Blank's shoulder, and arced over his body with pulsating and oozing beauty. It fell in a pool and congealed quickly, the dry air drawing moisture from it's form. Feathers appeared, like images in a rippling divination bowl. Blank roared, screamed and fell to his knees.
A ghost appeared above the central coffin, a man of Ashikaga origin with no hair and nothing more than spartan ethereal robes for attire. He held out his hand for a longing moment, then pulled it in and crushed it mockingly. "Your blood is my blood, my blood is yours."
As Lao Sheng faded away, Blank's wing fell away in a gross waterfall, and left him blood stained, aching and suddenly horrified at what he was becoming. Had he turned into his father, after all? He had been willing to sacrifice his own life to allow his mother vengeance, how was that any different to killing his father, or allowing his brother to live to witness the horror of his ignorance?
He spat the remnants of the blood that had flowed upwards from his lungs, and stared at the black ichor for what seemed like an eternity.
Irony.
"I will not succumb to history..."
Whilst the Tantalum fought Lucian and fought the Liviol Tower that had risen in the heart of Scara Brae in his rise, Arden Janelle had to learn to fight his own daemons, before they recoiled into a facsimile of failure - a timely reminder that the Janelle were nothing more than murderers, assassins and martyrs to excess.
He punched the sandy floor, and fled into the night.
Blood Magic: Blank has unlocked the Blood Magic of his family's line, allowing him the ability to sacrifice his own life to revive another, if he does so within an hour of their death. He can also summon blood wings, allowing him minor feats of prolonged leaping, or to slightly prolong falls from heights of up to fifty feet.
Silence Sei
01-05-11, 12:07 PM
STORY ~ 23/30
CHARACTER ~ 20/30
WRITING STYLE ~ 16/30
Wild Card ~ 7/10
Total: 66/100
Blank gets spoils approved, 1700 exp, and 150 GP.
Good job for a ‘Sei style speed post train wreck’ as you phrased it :P
You know where to find me for questions.
Silence Sei
01-05-11, 12:07 PM
Exp-GP added.
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