View Full Version : Of Consequence And Calamity (Solo)
Of Consequence And Calamity (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFin1IG2yis)
2407
A continuance of Of Angels and Angles (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?21056-Of-Angels-And-Angles-(Solo)).
One Life of so much Consequence!
Yet I—for it—would pay—
My Soul's entire income—
In ceaseless—salary—
One Pearl—to me—so signal—
That I would instant dive—
Although—I knew—to take it—
Would cost me—just a life!
The Sea is full—I know it!
That—does not blur my Gem!
It burns—distinct from all the row—
Intact—in Diadem!
The life is thick—I know it!
Yet—not so dense a crowd—
But Monarchs—are perceptible—
Far down the dustiest Road!
Emily Dickinson
Their souls were not theirs to take, but they took them. Their lives were not theirs to enslave, but enslave them they did. My fear, it was not theirs to brandish, but wield it eternally they shall. The consequences; how I am familiar with them so. The calamity; how I fear the ruination true.
Oliver stepped defiantly towards the angel, his clothes tattered and ripped under the duress of their onslaught. The blood of his relatives was lacquered to his skin beneath the frayed ramparts of his feeble defence. He breathed heavily and walked with a gait in his stride, but let nothing slip before the terrible creature that had massacred his world.
“Do you know child why we have come?” Its voice pierced his very soul, but elevated it to new levels of determination and perseverance. The juxtaposition between murder and mystery kept the boy quiet. His naive eyes gazed between the glimmering wings and the distant celestial spheres that hovered ominously over the horizon. “Do you know why we are here?”
With a furtive bite of his lip Oliver remembered the moment he looked into the forbidden pool by the house. He pieced together a tale the likes of which he never thought he would have to tell. Mud and sulphur swarmed his nostrils as the recollection of what he had done overwhelmed him. “I…I fell into the divining pool.”
“Stepped into death,” the Angel whispered. It’s Choir beat their wings in a concentric circle about the still radiant dome cast by the Coven. They added an ethereal echo to the Seraphim’s taunt. “You stepped into the forbidden, the eon and the eternal!” With a wave of its hand and a piercing thrust of its mitre, Oliver was struck with a blow of bright light.
Exasperated and gaunt he let his wall crumble. The idle scent of the riverbank fell from him, replaced instead with terror and iron. The clash of blade and sorcerous energy still scorch the ethereal atmosphere. “I could not help it.”
He had fallen, like any mortal when faced with an image of perfection. He had been tempted to step into the water of the pool with a leap of faith that only a child could possess. His ignorance of law was born through being scorned by his peers and ostracised by the woman of the Midwinter family. It was a simple yet poignant decision. It was a decision that had cost him everything. “Oh sister…” he reflected on her determination to forbid him to raise the alarm. He wondered what would have happened if he had…
Oliver motioned to wipe the damp hair from his forehead. With shaking fingertips he set it to one side like a carefully laid plan of action. Through the simple gesture he brought himself time to take stock of the corpses, bent, broken and barren puppets of their owners. He feared they were still not quite dead, writhing in agony and screaming on the dew laden grass of the Midwinter residence. It was too late to be able to leave the spirit world to save them.
He bit back a tear and returned his teary eyes to the hallow pupils of the Seraphim. “What…what is to be done with me?”
With a serene swoop the Prime Seraph entered the supposed sanctuary of the dome and settled before Oliver. The lesser choirs of angels continued to flutter in concentric circles about the dying embers of the Coven's protective magic. Silently they salivated over the meal that lay within.
"Nothing."
Oliver flinched. He had expected to hear utterances of foul play, torture, and inevitable death, but the apparent mercy came as such a surprise. He found himself speechless.
"The burden pressing down on you is enough."
With a beat of it's wings the angel motioned for Oliver to step forward. An aura of fear, palpable both through the nose and eyes surrounded the ancient creature, who had been used in Oliver's formative years as a myth to keep him from straying into deviance. 'The Angels will come', his sisters and his mother had warned. A sharp pain ran up his left side as he approached his judge, jury, and penitent spirit, but he bit his lip to quell the need to cry.
"From magic you are to be exiled."
Those words Oliver could not ignore. He clamoured for the right form to express his horror, but managed only to mumble "No!"
The Seraph stretched out it's arms and the choirs in the spirit world screamed. "Silence!"
The deathly echo dragged mere seconds into an aeon. The beating of Oliver's heart rattled out a drum beat for the creatures that dwelt in the great ocean beneath the circle to hear, and wait, and pray the magic should fail.
"The Coven of Albion is no more, it's providence torn, it's monarchs dethroned, it's children, bar you, slain and corrupted. From the Creed, I strip you, from the lies, I tear you, from this village, flee."
"I will do no such thing! This is my home, these are my f-" he let his arms, so eager to raise themselves and flail in anger fall back to his sides as he realised how futile an argument he was about to make. "These were my friends..."
The Seraph's armoured form leapt into the air with a great beat of it's wings, feathered and splined with owl plume and razor blade. The movement buffered Oliver, and his tattered clothes sprang into life in little flourishes as the angel ascended from the Coven's circle. Their lifeless and glowing spiritual forms still lay where they had fallen, and for a moment, Oliver cast his mind to the still, silent lawn of the Midwinter Residence.
He had failed them.
He imagined with abject horror how deathly that scene must appear.
He imagined for just a moment what would have happened if he had not been so foolish...
“Do you understand?” The Seraph’s question shattered Oliver’s daydream and he shook his momentary tiredness from his eyes.
“I…do.” He dared not question the authority of such creatures.
He had after all broken one of the principle tenets of his people’s tradition. You did not bathe or even so much as disturb the water of the divining pool, no matter how powerful the enchantment placed upon it drew you to do so. It was part of the temptation of witches, who had to strive to break the bonds of their past mistakes and not become trapped by the lure of greater, more affluent powers.
“Then the commandment is done, and you are to be reviled.”
The long tapestry of colours that scintillated over the Seraph’s golden, spiked armour glowed brighter for a brief moment. It appeared to be channelling anger, before it settled down into a reflection of the stars and distant worlds on the horizon of the spirit realm. Oliver felt the connection between the material realm form and vanish and hung his head in shame. At the centre of the circle, amidst the ruins of his life he could show no other emotion or feel anything more elated than desperation.
“Leave Albion forever. Remember forever what you have done. Forever find purpose in solitude.”
He blinked.
The Seraph had not spoken. With cautious glances he looked around, half expecting one of his relatives to still live. The Choir screamed in unison one last time and began to beat their wings, exalting their presence with trumpets sounding and death knells falling into the ocean. Oliver watched them disappear into the very distance, their screams still audible in his mind for almost an hour until they vanished completely over the mountainous horizon.
Azure, vermillion and crimson worlds span overhead whilst he thought about his actions. Silence fell over the circle, which slowly crumbled and cracked and faded. Soon, it would give way completely and the spiritual glows that were members of his friends would tumble down into the ocean to be claimed by the wraiths forever. He would fall too but be rejected by their greedy hands. With a rush of pain they would cast him back into his body.
He fell to his knees with a thud. Little circles of light exploded out from where cloth touched manna.
“Forgive me sister…grandmother…brother…”
“Leave Albion, and live again!” The voice returned like a thunder clap in the sky. Oliver snapped alert and glanced at the bodies, certain he had heard the voice with his ears and not tired tricks of his mind.
“Hello?”
His voice rang out through the heavens but reached only death ears and ancient, moaning cataclysms of nothingness. He was alone, and the consequences of his actions were calamitous sirens in the solitude.
Time seemed to pass slowly, though in the spirit world Oliver could not be sure if it had been minutes or hours. The stars overhead fell from view, rotating through constellations alien to the avid astronomer as he remained silent and still in his isolation. Nobody had replied to his question, leaving him asking after his sanity, peeling back the layers of emotion to divine the difference between illusion and reality.
He became slowly more alert to his circumstance. Idly he turned to the four pillories of power that had conjured the circle and bound it to the ether of the spirit realm. Four elements gave the circle power and four objects it's presence. Normally, the Coven would disband the circle when it was time to leave and send them all reeling back to their corporeal bodies. Oliver was no true witch, and all that remained was a rite known as The Sundering.
"Forbidden lore..." He bit his lip nervously, even thinking about committing such a heinous act was beyond reproach. "On second thoughts," he stood slowly and feverishly.
To break a circle would exile any witch, no matter their standing in a coven for eternity. With the Seraph's command stripping him of his rite to practice The Creed, Oliver did not think he would be bound by it's rules. He was a renegade now. In the ancient tongue he would be branded a Carding, a Wayward Chylde.
He walked to the edge of the transparent circle and looked down at the shaky sea fifty feet beneath him. The dark waters were inviting, perilous, curious...just as the divining pool had been to his young and inquisitive mind. With a long and drawn out sigh he pulled the crystal wand from his left hip and tightened his belt.
"Blessed Be those who walk the Wayward path, turned to chaos to find order." He knelt slowly, as if his erratic motions might wake the leviathan below. Slowly he placed the tip of his wand on the inner circle of chalk that had sealed the coven away from supposed harm. It had done them no good then, and it would serve no purpose now.
He closed his eyes, prayed to the Gryphon that represented his soul and with a long breath, blew onto the circle. He waited for his breath disturb the chalk before before he tucked the wand under the dust and lifted.
Oliver immediately felt the swarming locum of power all around him collapse. It gave way without fanfare and the glowing platform started to crack. Despite the nerves that sparked his survival instinct he continued to lift the edge of the circle, raising it with his wand until he stood on the tips of toes.
“What I see here,” he muttered, biting his lip. He sighed before exhaling the last of the long recital that would sunder the binding tenets of the circle for good, “is nothing but an illusion.”
He fell forwards with longing and descended towards the glimmering and enticing waves below.
You will rise again…
The voice returned, stronger and carried through the air on fell wings of omen. Oliver rolled onto his back and looked up at the circle as it finally gave way. Light streamed through the cracks in its translucent surface. As it broke apart the writing swirling on its surface forming single words, single syllables, letters, then dust. He could have sworn he saw something in the debris.
The many face of the coven flashed before his eyes, each contorted or twisted by death in some slight way. Eyes sunken, skin torn, hair bedraggled, ears bloodied. Each one a clear indication that their owner was lying in wait on the grass lawn of the Midwinter Residence.
A single tear rolled up Oliver’s nose and fell upwards as he passed from the spirit world, through the ocean of souls, and landed with a heavy crash back into his dormant body.
He gasped for air. Frantically he pushed himself upright with great urgency and force, as if an unseen weight kept him pinned down.
"Helena..." he mumbled between breaths, each one sending chill pain into his lungs as he fought to regain conciousness and shake away his neuralgia.
The distant smell of incense, candles and dew comforted him.
The distinct smell of death and flames did not.
When Oliver had been younger he had played for hours on the lawn of his family residence. The sun kissed bough of the cherry blossoms and the many varieties of fruit trees which provided natural canopies to slumber beneath and sustenance for the long twilight hours between meals had been his fortress city. Caroline Haven's many rockeries were his mountain ranges.
"Those days are gone..."
As he looked idly around from the ground there was no life in them, only shadows cast by the nearness of dawn.
From the wicks on the banquet table and the last flickers of flame in the dying lanterns hanging from every available branch overhead, Oliver could only draw the inevitable conclusion that time had been sundered as they had travelled through the realms. What had been perhaps no more than two hours in death, had been many long moments in life.
He turned to inspect the corpses which surrounded him and shuddered. He felt sick, as any young mind might standing at the heart of a massacre. He considered himself a strong soul, but knowing it was his hand that had guided death to the doors of his kin broke down his defence and set his emotions free on a wild course into madness. He swallowed the bile penitently.
“I am sorry…” was all he could blubber as he burst into tears.
His chest clamped, as if a vice had surrounded his rib cage and was squeezing without subtlety or constraint. Each turn of the screw sent him rocking back and forth, his vision blurry and his mind in a spiral of fear. As if jolted with electricity, he pushed himself upright and stumbled over nothing, as if he had to leave at all cost.
“Why!” He roared to the stars, which twinkled indiscriminately overhead.
“Why them? Why not take me in their stead!”
His words echoed through the garden, danced over the lake of divination and rattled along the edge of the villa's white privet fence. He stared upwards for an age, half expecting the gods to answer his cries. He wished the old mothers would descend and tell him it was all a sick, twisted joke – a proverb imparted with realism and meaning.
When no answer came he dropped his heretical fists to his sides. His head flopped forwards and his gaze fell onto the shining grass, the little jade blades wet with the approaching light of dawn over the tree lined horizon.
For a while the only thing Oliver thought about was tomorrow. He imaged the sun shining over the tips of the northern forests and breaking through the gloom of darkest night. He thought of the azure and vermillion rays crashing over the grass, rushing with illuminating grace from one end of the Midwinter Residence’s acres to the other. He smiled at the sight of the rushing wave of sun hitting the great red walls that flanked either side of the Albion Valley.
For a great while longer, he thought about his family.
“I have betrayed them,” he said finally. His cold breath formed wisps of dancing mist that floated up into the twilight as if they too scorned him.
Sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, kin and kith of all ages and all walks of life from every hierarchy and circle within the contained world they inhabited.
There had been witches and warlocks in the Midwinter abode for centuries, ever since the red headed spell singers the Burtons had vanished one day, fled up the cliffs to a world beyond worlds.
It was funny how a dynasty like theirs could rise so quickly, yet fall so swiftly as to eclipse its dominance of Albion culture. With the smell of regret in his nostrils, which was remarkably similar to staling bread and pork, he turned finally to acknowledging the bodies at his feet.
There was the baker’s wife, Trudy. She had come to rest on her side, arms splayed in front and wrists bent out of all recognition. The bones had splintered beneath the gaze of an angel and she had fallen beneath the follow up swing of those deadly, golden scythes. It had not hurt her body, but her limbs had snapped as her soul had been wrenched from existence, leaving a corpse in its wake still warm with love and admiration for The Creed.
He pulled his eyes away and stared at the serene expression on his sister Helena’s face. He pulled a puzzled expression from the memories of his childhood, when she had constantly belittled him and challenged him with theological riddles and puzzles wrapped in the tenets of the coven’s faith.
Oliver still did not quite believe that he had heard voices in the spirit world at all, but he stepped closer to her body and knelt by her side. With loving, attentive and tired arms he picked her up and cradled her. With caring fingers he flicked the hair from her eyes with gentle touches; he feared she might break, as if he still believed she had life in her bones.
“I will rise again, will I?” He said mockingly, finally believing what his heart wanted to believe.
“I hope it is on wings as radiant as yours…” he closed her twinkling eyes and hugged her, squeezing out the last of the warmth that lingered in her blood and for a brief moment, he felt as if nothing had happened.
These terrible things had happened, sadly. After an hour or more passed in silence and sorrow, Oliver set his sister’s sleeping form down onto the still moist grass and pushed himself upright with tired, aching limbs. The rickety stubborn pain in his joints refused to budge, and he rolled his wrists and wobbled side to side to try and shed the fatigue brought about by his long ordeal. The aura of death in the clearing still smothered his senses, threatening to burn permanently into his retina and onto his tongue if he lingered there any longer.
“Goodbye, sister.” He made a circle in the air and let the sorcerous energies of his heart spark warm the cold atmosphere with little flickers of ochre flame. He traced the same symbol at his other family members first, and then moved over each corpse in a similar fashion. As he moved between the bodies, he muttered a farewell to the coven members with a tear descending through the dawn from cold cheeks for each.
All the while, as the sun permeated over the horizon and turned night into dawn and darkness into golden twilight, the thought of what to do next crossed the young warlock’s mind. Without the Talent, he could not talk to the deceased. Without the ritual, he was now unable to stay in Caroline Haven beyond the next full moon. Its ancient cantrips would burn his flesh and cut his throat if he lingered here unwelcomed by fate, the Angels and destiny.
“Do I stay and suffer the consequences?” He asked the heavens, arms pleading to the last light of the night’s stars for an answer.
“Or should I go, and find penance elsewhere for my transgressions…” Innocence fell from the warlock, who had become a man by all means and intentions, but not in the way that the ceremony and his tradition of passage had dictated. He ruffled his demi-cloak and tossed his matted hair from his eyes, struggling to remain composed after venting so much frustration and loss to an audience of owls, sprites and midnight daemons. The clucking and watchful creatures dwelt in the rosemary bushes and maple thickets that were scattered in tufts on the Caroline Haven lawn.
“You can wait to feast on the dead,” he shouted, a sudden outburst in a slowly composing personality.
The noises ceased and silence descended over the garden. As Oliver thought about his options, the gibbering and cackling and wolf like howls slowly returned as the creatures found their voices again. He shook his head. Longingly he stared up at the sun as it exploded into view and streamed over the jade green grass towards the silence of his family home.
“I don’t need the Creed,” he said, half biting his lip with worry that someone might hear him and cast him down for such a sin.
He ran towards the house, chasing the wave of golden light.
“I do not need the Angel’s warning to set out into the world and be free of my own rigidity!” He crashed into the patio doors at the side of the house and cast them open with a slam. The glass in the panels shuddered and rattled, threatening to break and smash against the flagstones of the extensive summer patio.
The stagnant smell of an early morning sitting room rushed into his nostrils, followed by stale cinnamon loaves left out on the coffee table from the afternoon’s banter. The sweet scent mingled with the coffee and the odour of well stewed tea leaves. He flashed back to the moment when he had risen to find his siblings discussing marriage on the multicoloured sofas, lounging around in preparation for that evening’s grand celebrations.
He gave himself no time to inflict further doubt on his mind. He fled up the rickety wooden stairs with heavy, reckless footfalls to his small meagre chamber in the cob loft of the house.
Oliver Midwinter's Journal
It has been almost a week since I packed my meagre possessions, kissed the pentacle over the altar of our household and fled Albion. It feels like it has been many aeons longer, but time plays tricks on the minds of the weary I cannot begin to fathom. Truth be told, I think I could wander for a thousand years and still be none the wiser what day it was, what month it was becoming or what year it had been. Every step of the journey I have felt that same weight press down on my shoulders, getting heavier and heavier until I fear I can bear it no longer.
I deserve this penitence.
I deserve this tribulation.
I am without the Creed, but I am not sad for it. Somehow, losing the one guiding light in my life has perversely cleared the way for something better. Strong in the arm with flame and wind, I feel akin to the world, the grass, and the long bough bending in the gale of life.
My feet took me up the red cliffs of the valley and to the company of the strange machines my brother uses to seal away the village from the harsh reality of the outside world. I tinkered with it and slipped through the violet luminescence unhindered.
Awe.
I still remember the first impression the world left on me. I was breathless, tearful, and still numb from the discomfort of killing the people I love.
Without sounding clichéd, that moment truly opened my eyes. Nettles and dock leaves might cause a constant cycle of cure and curse on careless skin, but I have come to realise that pain and happiness mirror nature in a man’s mind to do just the same. Without that sorrow, there can be no moments like that. There can be no joy to feel and no pleasure to taste on tongue and stomach’s knot.
Angels.
Even as I sit in this dreary tavern I hear them overhead. I have no doubt that they are watching me, waiting for me to succumb to temptation and use witch craft once again. I will not fall foul of their damnation.
Sorcery is my gain now.
With it, I will do something good in the world, to right my wrongs and to become the man I was supposed to become on that fateful night.
I will keep a track of my progress as I travel east to the city my mother called Scara Brae. Maybe I will find my parents there, or some long lost relatives. With bedraggled hair, muddied hands and a sodden bag of clothing, cantrips and wands, I hope to seek a truthful answer to the new question in my mind.
I have given up asking the clouds and stars of angels and angels…
Now, I seek to know the answer to why man must undergo such harrowing consequence and calamity before being allowed to live.
Silence Sei
09-14-11, 06:05 PM
Story (6/10): I enjoyed this story, and the introduction kept me wanting to read more. Your rising action/climax was a bit under sold and your conclusions change up of writing style was somewhat unique. Overall, not bad.
Continuity (8/10): What can I say? This thread continued almost immediately after your last quest, so it worked well.
Setting (5/10): None of your settings really enthralled me at all, and there wasn’t enough details given to allow it to do so. You could have definetly done more with the circle of corpses that surrounded Ollie.
Creativity (7/10): It’s odd to see angels as the antogonists of a story, but you pulled it off. I would suggest elaborating a bit more on why your character and his former family have decided the angels are bad, though.
Character (7/10): Ollie grew as a character in this thread, and I could feel it. You did well to convey his determination around the end.
Interaction (5/10): I felt you could have worked with the corpses more, though yelling at the animals of the dark was a rather nice touch.
Strategy (5/10): Pretty average thread, no need to really think that hard about it.
Mechanics (6/10): A few grammatical errors here or there, but your biggest mistake had to come from writing ‘Angels and Angels’, when I am 100% sure you meant ‘Angels and Angles’
Clarity (7/10): A lot of the stuff was clear and concise, aside from some confusion at the start of your post that had me re-reading the end of OAaA to see how everyone died.
Wildcard (8/10): Very fun thread to deal win.
Total: 63/100
Oliver Midwinter gets 650 Exp, 200 GP, and a new level, yay!
Silence Sei
09-14-11, 06:07 PM
GP-EXP Added.
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