Children of Terra

~Where is it we truly need to go?~ ~What of the lost?~ ~What of the point?~ ~The Stygian Vessel~       Pruflas had not returned to within Vykan's mind since that day, weeks ago now.  The Duke opted to travel in brewed silence alongside, as the pair clambered the mountain ranges dense, just west of China.  He occasionally thought about the fact Vykan had not spoken a single word since, deeply conflicted on his view of the man.  He had done terrible, terrible things, and a common hallmark of such things is the lack of concern over it.  But . . . if it wasn't concern which silenced Vykan, what else was it?  Pruflas was unwilling to extend doubt to Vykan for one simple reason; he has literally been inside the Stygian's head.  Nothing exists there but the black ocean.        A question with no easy answer.  And so it was left for the past.  Currently, the pair were crossing the rugged terrain in the zone between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which made for a slog, as anything in the flood washes between crags was more than likely irradiated.  If it weren't for Vykan's limitless stamina, they would be near mortal levels of traversal speed.  Good news is that HV-infected thinned in rugged areas, as no supply to keep the ecosystem there existed.  A kinder way of saying not enough population to feed on.        Days at this altitude were cool, the nights cold.  The vistas themselves were beautiful; the way sky seems to yaw over a span, mountains hiding promises of the old adventures behind.  There could be anything between those peaks, hidden for centuries . . . Every time Vykan found his mind wandering in these directions, he had to force himself back to neutral.  Focus on the feet.  Just walk.        Such quietude was the norm as they continued along the passes and peaks.  Summer height slowly gave way to the briskness of Autumn, weather patterns brushing the peaks with promise to come.  Walls of wind battered on the pair, occasionally slipping the Stygian.  He coughed on one such gust, as the crushing dry air swelled with the settled air of a valley.  Just one of the many idiosyncrasies of the region, a curious blend where deserts and vibrancy had their battle -- trudging sand one day and grass the next -- albeit cold either way as Autumn brought its fist ever down.        Alas, the pair had finally reached the edge of the protective range around Tarim Basin.  The altitude was unlike what Vykan was used to, which he knew only as formality by now -- and much to his quiet disconcert -- as oxygen fatigue seemed further behind each day on the path; forward through dunes and hills.  On a particularly long pass-way, Vykan sat down on the rock lip of a cliff, so he could overlook just how far they had traveled.  The horizon from the vantage was a vast land, with barely any signs of human life at all.  Sun shadows played the hillside westward, like long fingers slowly overtaking sight.  He sat watching as the flat lands shaded into soft purples of evening, before the gradient to darkness.  It was a new moon that night.  The darkness would have been inhibiting, had a mote of aether-light not winked into existence by his head.        Vykan had a suspicion of what that meant.  He looked nowhere in particular, calling out.  "You left again?"  Just night winds.  I suppose I'll go my pace, then.  Vykan laid down on the spot, tucked in a nook of the Tien Shan range.  He was just about done with it all.       ~Why you gotta shove it in my face~ ~As if you put me in my place?~ ~'Cause I don't care if you or me is wrong or right~ ~Ain't going to spend another night~     He would be in severe frostbite, or even dead if he did that just a couple years ago.  Vykan laid on the hard stone, feeling his dead-cold flesh limber itself for another trek.  Just a couple years ago . . . What have I become?  Deciding to break the monotony, he sat up to climb the rock face, intent on teaching himself a new skill.  Things like that would distract him, at least.  At least as long as instincts still burned in his heart.  It didn't take long, as he began his three point ascent, which coincidentally is the limit of his knowledge on rock climbing.  His thoughts were quickly drowned out by focusing, his undead biceps curling like he'd never else known to pull along the rock faces up.        Progress was undeniably slow doing it, but the only emotion Vykan felt as he rolled himself over the crest of the next cliff, hours later, it was catharsis.  He looked back to the morning horizon while laying, as the rock pulled the heat straight from the sun through him.  How many times has a view just like this been seen by those ancients?  Sunlight painted an entire yawing span below, against the skirt and crags of a mountain behind.  The easy past.  What a shit allegory.  My greatest problem is acceptance.  It might always be.  For I only accept myself in moments like this.  He laid there as the mote, that string of constant reminder, swirled like a koi overhead.  And it seems I must get up.  It will be a long, long time before I can accept myself.  With a grunt, long since recovered of the vim spent climbing, Vykan set up the next rock face, intent this time to try new tactics.        This is life.  A battle between myself and the world.  One I am doomed to lose if I let it.  Just like this.  He made a daring leap between a vertical crack, landing and slipping down -- a loss of a lot of progress.  One only gets out of life what one puts in.  One of the laws of thermodynamics, isn't it?  Energy output equals input.  But, I'm a cheater.  He rolled over the second cliff lip, even less winded than before.  He looked down at the vascular arms, powered by whatever energy coursed his veins.  I cheat against physics itself.         He set up cliff three under the warming sun.  How strange.  I get most sad when around other people.  Does the source even matter?  What an introverted way of thinking.  And what a fucking fool I am, letting other people dictate my heart.  A faint, almost annoyed tug, pulled on his heart in palpitations.  I know what I did.  I fucking did it, goddamn it!  What a horrifying neutral state of thought, but at least I found myself again.  Next time I'm lost, it will be easier.  And that's the real fucking truth of life.  There will always be a fucking 'next time.'        In the third roll off the cliff, he began jogging again.  And that is the first step to acceptance.  Recognition.  It is not, 'why must I recognize I am a monster?'  It is simply the recognition that I am, in fact, a monster.  I lost all claim otherwise after Stygia, perhaps even before then.  The ugly emotions, the ugly things, the ugly truth -- they are all mine, for all time.  What a fucking joke, that only in solitude and alone, am I happy with facing it.  Because I will never be accepted.  Never.  Nowhere.  No one.        As he ran along the valleys and passes, through the Tien Shan range closer and closer to China proper, he felt a happiness then.  Because at the least, my demons are real.       ~Always a play by others' rules~ ~Because the game is a foul one~ ~With rotten players on both sides~ ~Vykan, one-half of Rot~     He practiced his parkour in the crags, inertia movement in running bounds across rock faces, pushing, pushing.  He felt a pulse.  It beat along his arteries, along the arms, down the legs, in his core.  The un-blood of an undead.  He was not the type to ponder and think about it.  It simply was, and he must accept it.  Let other people care, and damn them what they think!  Vykan's shoes ground up dirt from the stone, chipping away in his passage.  The force exerted by his legs was not something these lands felt in a long time.  But if the ocean is nothing but darkness, what is the source of the inner fire?  Vykan laughed at that track.  This is the question we are traveling to answer.  Because Truth is a weapon.  Truth is the weapon that rends the armor of demons.  I must become the greatest Truth they face.        Arrogance.  But that is the right of immortals, for I am simply the mirror check upon their necks.  That is why Pruflas tolerates me.  I am what even he is not.  And we both know that.  My only loneliness is not in solitude, but the lack of understanding.  But true understanding can only be found in my own shoes, only for my feet.  This is the source of conflict.  Only I will ever understand me.  Vykan felt a satisfying crunch of a branch under boot.  I must be cautious of the raging fire because only I know how truly tainting its light.  Pruflas could only handle but a tinge of it.  Trust him.  He must be my compass.  Without him, I am simply darkness and invisible fire.          The day passed into evening once more, Vykan heading fast on the eastern faces of Tien Shan.  The weather on this side of the geographic bowl was a mite different.  Humans call such things instinct, but pictures might see no difference at all from one side of Tien Shan to the other.  But he did not stop for the night.  In front of him like a dragon weaved the little mote.  It danced like a carrot, leading him to his destination, and he had his thoughts sorted.  For how long they stay in place is anyone's guess, but such is life in its infinite storms always a-knocking about.        Night had been so deep in its curve Vykan could not tell just when he finally planted his feet in the skirts of eastern Tien Shan.  In China proper.  It might have been hours ago, all he knew was the steady gradient of ground beneath transforming from tectonic granite back to soil of washed runoff.  I weather people like mountains weather rain.  I hide an ugly thing in me, and whether or not it was born in me, or formed by life, is unimportant.  What matters now is forming it into a spear.  For such thinking of the consequences, that is not what demons do.  I should ask more about them once Pruflas calms down.  Know thy enemy.  The trick is not believing lies, for they lead astray the spear.  What a burden you leave me, Pruflas.        Vykan knew he was pathic.  Psychopathic, sociopathic, it didn't much matter.  Did it?  It wasn't so much a debate of morality as much as him being a tool.  He was to be pointed and launched, nothing else.  While sportsmen are responsible for the bullet from fire to target, regardless of trajectory, he did have enough sense that such an argument wouldn't work.  Humans were not drones.  At least, there was cause to declare the exceptions unfit for trial.  After Mega-City One, he doubted that particular defense.  A twinge of annoyance cloyed his heart.        He allowed himself a laugh once night turned back to morning.  In short?  Fuck life.  Life's for the living.  He is death.  The mote had dragged him east-southeast, straight in the direction of Tarim Basin, China's western desert.  A concern for the living to venture out here, and Vykan relished the vicariousness in leaping through the beginnings of hardened weather dunes.  Not quite the romantic soft sand of fame, but he ran on so like a demon.  The fire within had been stoked to a point even he grew concerned.  This fire did not exist before.  Not in this way, and it only appeared . . . Palomar.  At some point between getting caught and waking up weeks later.  Pruflas was there at least, even if he didn't know specifics, he would have theories.        Day was noon when Vykan thought again.  A poison of some kind.  I got sick with radiation in Night City.  The limits of the blessing might not extend to those little weapons we should fear most.  He looked down at his chest, heavily more muscled than even the peak of Telkhine, as he ran through the desert.  The more prudent question is whether Stygia is giving me this, or . . . He leapt off the crest of a small dune, feet crashing down into sand like meteors before he was off again.  The sands absorbed solar heat enough to become uncomfortable, which is strange to feel the distinct differences between thermodynamic transfer.        When he closed his eyes and focused only on the senses, he could isolate heat as radiating.  The air itself was noticeably cooler between his ankles and his face.  That and the whip winds along his skin as he ran.  Opening his eyes again, Vykan did what he's been since Europe.        Run.  Run east.        The mote led him on for the rest of the day, and it was evening when it began to circle and dip in an unassuming depression of sand.  Vykan slowed down, jogging into a standstill as he gathered his scant breaths.  The orange of evening lit against the beige of sand, lit only by the mote hovering like a comet around the depression.  Vykan looked around the horizon for anything else.  Nothing, not a thing human as far as eyes can see.  What the fuck?  He stooped down, kneeling in the sand where the mote signed.  Scoop after scoop of warm into cooler and cooler sand kept him going a while, as sunlight softened and mote light brightened.        He was around 3 feet deep, digging like a dog with pawing scoops between his legs when a small shift sunk Vykan an inch or two.  He froze, stopping, considering, before the silence broke to the roar of rushing sand.  "Whoa - shit!"  He reflexively threw hands forward, before training impelled him to tuck and yaw-roll sideways.  He caught in his eyes before rolling a dark corridor, but lost in the swimming tumble down about 20 feet of a sand skirt.  Splaying out at the bottom of the sand, he forced granules out of his nose and mouth.  "Motherfucker."  He coughed as he looked back up to the entrance.  If it weren't for the mote, it would be darkness in here, as the hole he dug collapsed in itself.        A finger snap drew his attention back to the corridor.  Pruflas stood about 75 yards down, mote circling his shoulder.  "Come on.  Magia signature's this way."        Just like before, things like this were the demon's forte, Vykan pushing off knee to follow.  Echoes of boots muted against the stones of this place, and as Vykan looked to the stonework, he could almost make out mural depictions of events.  Troops against troops in some kind of unification, and the story almost seemed to become more fantastical the farther the pair walked inward.  Humans fought increasing amounts of monsters, the gear and appearances changing with eras.  As much as Vykan tried to peer for details, many depictions were long eroded, but fascinating to literally stumble upon regardless.          The stone hall deposited to a rather simple stone sarcophagus, all things considered.  The smaller room was otherwise sparse of really anything except the long gone story of whomever laid inside.  Vykan did not speak, despite wanting to ask.  He was taught the lesson of time and place long ago; neither applied.  If Pruflas wanted to talk, let the demon begin.  Vykan looked around the room, mote following as the Duke took a meditative repose at the foot of the sarcophagus.  He took from within his clothes that dagger Vykan has seen before, placing it on the floor in between himself and the coffin.        And that was it.  Pruflas sat by the coffin, eyes closed and hands at rest in the lap, Vykan standing silent vigil.  Well, shit.  I guess I'll study the murals as best I can . . . He turned back to hallway, inspecting for details with not much else to do.       ~Plying the threads of fate~ ~The demon that dares~ ~The mortal now immortal~ ~In the tomb of the unknown~     Vykan had a story in his head, time so long he might have gone insane either way.  And that was why he no longer trusted much his gut impression.  This place is driving me mad.  How the hell did Pruflas manage so long?  All Vykan dared to think was that some kind of unifier lived here and died here.  The monsters he fought might have been real, might not, but any more and Vykan felt he would fall into inescapable delusions, and he wasn't keen on losing self-control.        At the moment, Vykan sat in the coffin room, back against the wall as he watched the fibres of magia suffuse from Pruflas into the room.  That part was cool, at least.  He tried to cast his own magic for a long weeks' time alongside, sitting in the same pose.  Nothing.  Nothing he could tell, at least.  It was like watching a heatwave shimmer and spider web all in one.  The demon gave the impression of a hunting spider in times like that, within the element of the predator.  So what would that make me?        No answer came to mind, and for the first time in weeks, Pruflas spoke without moving.  "Ready yourself.  I have the veil."  The dagger floated upward at some compulsion, and like a magnet point, began to spin in place, vibrating in slow oscillations with the spider web.  It pointed first at Vykan, then around in locution, then to the sarcophagus.        Vykan pushed off the wall, shaking the light fatigue of rest from his eyes, as Pruflas drew a breath in, magia web fluttering at the inward pull of recalled magia.  Once stood, Pruflas took hold of the dagger, stabbing it forward and down, wrenching a tear in reality itself.  Vykan gasped at the sight, his vision swimming at the unnatural weave assaulting the mind.  Forced to comprehend that which shouldn't.        Pruflas turned over his shoulder, looking Vykan in the eyes for the first time in ages.  The Stygian flinched out of reflex, unsure.  The demon's slits narrowed.  "Close your mind.  It helps.  I'm hopping back in."  With a flicker, the demon vanished into the mental seat once more, leaving Vykan to stare at the rend in space as though it were an unholy Christmas tree.        I would tell you to step forward already, but for this, take your time.  It will be an assault on the mind like none other.        Great.  Vykan shuffled, but he was already grounded, so time only made him less sure.  With a slow breath in and out, he walked into the jaws between worlds once more.        Not too bad, all things considered.  Vykan had no idea what the fuck was happening, as every time an event occurred to draw his attention, something else washed his multicolored vision.  Basically a mushroom trip if anything, but surreal in the sense of disconnect.  He did hear a voice, though, and the voice didn't seem to even be Pruflas' so he had no idea what to make of even that.        You will find in my journals many of my amusements.  The mass of my distal family will be confused, as though my journals must solely be comprised of the important events of my long life and wisdom within.  I am the sole holder of my fate, and my words are mine alone.  Even my dying thoughts as I think them will be recorded, as such my command to the Ixians.  If the Ixians are but one thing, they are the actors of my play I write.  Do not begrudge them for their ambition, for in truth, that folly is one all of our humanity shares.  I punish them because I must; because we fail to learn once again the dangers of decadence.        I expect few to truly understand what I set out to do, and the visions which compelled me why, and such is my amusement.  'But why did you not Share?  Why did you not sire?'  I am not the holder of hands, my Sisters, for even you will never see these words.  So few of my journals survive, and the regret I feel is constantly beaten down by the multitude within.  This is why I adore the safaris of our past.        The danger is understanding the past is all of ours.  It is not solely mine, thus my purpose is to pass along the lessons we forget all too often.        Such is my amusement.