Orphyn

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 85686

Many stories are told of beginnings.

There are stories of the beginnings of empires, of sprawling kingdoms that rose to glorious ascendancy and disappeared beneath ocean waves, beneath a storm of poisoned arrows, beneath the fire of dragonfury.

There are stories of the beginning of man, and of dragon, each one pompous and hyperbolized in the telling so as to enthrall the apathy- stricken youth, who care only for the present and the immediate now.

There are stories of how the world began, of sentient entities who forged a vessel within a limitless expanse of nothingness; a vessel that would carry and nurture the spark and imagination of life itself, in its seas, in its soil, in its skies.

And there are stories of what there was at the very beginning. A time, or specifically a point in time where all of this began. There are fables, there are myths. There are theories dreamt, calculated and divined by those who claim the gift of wisdom to be theirs. Most are entirely inaccurate, others mostly so. All minds, those of men, of dragons, even of Gods are forever tainted with the metaphysical cancer of subjectivity. It cannot be suppressed. Were a being to achieve such a total absence of subjectivity, it would no longer be what it was. It would become something else. It would become a machine.



In the Beginning, there was Creation and there was Destruction......


...

Conscience had nearly refused to believe the arrival of the winged ones, for to believe it was to believe utterly, inexorably, in Fate. They had come following the stench of that pathetic, bitter Minestus' death. Her original intent had been to get Adele to retrieve Minestus' killer, the one who had absorbed his flame, and then Conscience could have continued her attempts to deconstruct her from within, to distil the dragonflame. But there had been.......an intervention, and the dragon killer was not where she should have been.

And Conscience had been frightened, for Adele had then chosen to relinquish the ring, to relinquish Conscience to the liquid flame. Such an act would not have destroyed her, but would without doubt have been disastrous in other ways. And then Fate (surely, surely Fate) had brought Heraclius, and he had stopped them at the edge. He had saved them both.

And when their perfect draconic saviour had discovered the Nexus, Conscience had revelled in his anger, for it was a baseless, teenage anger born of dusty lectures on the folly of man and his infernal creations. His anger was in fact his forefathers' anger, and without the wisdom of knowledge to temper it, it had worked beautifully to Conscience's advantage.....


...


In the box now, thought Adele, but it was not her thought and yet she obeyed, for Heraclius the black dragon was before her, eyes aflame and throat brimming with a horrific power that would surely vaporise her, the ring, the machine, everything. She flung herself into the Nexus as the room exploded and the doors slammed shut above her.

But the doors were not above her. They were beside her, and now made of gnarled, ancient oak, bruised and yellow from a hungry tree-fever that hugged its surface like a repugnant wet curtain. Adele turned and saw the blank white corridor with its myriad side passages, and there in the middle was Conscience. And she was shaking with laughter, the laughter of the victorious. With each laugh, the rank, hot odour Adele recalled from her last meeting with Conscience washed over her. Adele felt sick.

"Oh, Adele." began Conscience, her wounded face beaming like a child's. "So many victories, so little time. Is not the world a fine place of fine lines, twisting and binding to make such pretty bows? You were a wonderful slave, my dear, but fate is a far more wonderful master."

Adele felt anger and hate claw at her breast. "What victories, Conscience?" she demanded, stepping forward. "Astra and Elaine are lost to me. Sigin is dead by my hand. Matthias, my love Matthias is gone! I tried to use this accursed power to destroy a dragon and fared worse than even Elaine! And now that same dragon has destroyed everything my father created! Where is the victory!?"

"Oh, sweet Adele." purred Conscience. "The victories are mine, not yours."

Adele hesitated. "Y.....your....? But....I...."

"Oh, Adele." drawled Conscience, reaching her arms out towards Adele in an enigmatic gesture. "You cannot possibly know the time, the sheer expanse of time I have expended bringing the world to this edge. Imprisoned! Imprisoned for longer than the longest within this infernal circlet, I came to know the nature of imprisonment, its nuances and effects; on the body, on the mind, on the soul. Through this knowledge came more knowledge. Of how I might imprison others."

Adele stood and stared, compelled to listen....

"Your father.......amongst mortals, his was a particularly superior mentality. So vibrant and......ripe. He saw things as few others saw things, and I hungered for his perception. I granted him many boons of power and clarity, for which he was very grateful in the course of his studies into the deepest arcana. Slowly, little by little, he submerged his will to me, unbeknownst, unseeing. I was very careful, Adele. I have time enough to be careful."

Conscience's face formed a deep scowl, and her eyes turned a shade of red. "Then you were born. Sweet Adele. Believe me, child, I made the damndest effort to stop your conception, but it transpired that Belboz the Great Deathwarder had the same mockworthy weaknesses of any common man. Infected with infatuation, he was, spread by that whoredog Martina. Always I felt his mind on her, and for a time he forgot me, forgot the gifts I had bestowed upon him, and together he and Martina spawned you. Although, given current events, even that appears to have ultimately worked in my.....in.....in my....."

Conscience found her monologue interrupted by a further bout of uncontrollable laughter. She held a hand to her forehead and guffawed drunkenly, her overbearing stench once more wafting over Adele, who clamped a hand over her mouth and nose, eyes streaming as she began to understand. This.....creature that claimed to be Conscience had manipulated her father in the same way that it had manipulated her. The ring......it was imprisoned inside the ring and had been for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, plotting and preparing for this moment. Adele's anger began to wilt under the icy smog of fear.

Then something strange happened in that moment. Behind the laughing Conscience, far down the white corridor and almost beyond Adele's vision, something moved. It emerged from one doorway, travelled across the width of the passage and disappeared into another doorway. It was only visible for half a second, and Adele could barely see it, but saw it she did. But now Conscience was reclaiming her (its) composure, and she was looking at Adele. Adele looked backed, silently praying her eyes did not betray her.

"Your birth angered me, it is true." continued Conscience. "I was concerned that Belboz might sense my anger, and so I withdrew. I bode my time. Soon he returned to me, as family love grew stale and tasteless to him. I was the one who taught your father the secret of eternal existence, Adele. I was the one who taught him the darkest roots of every 'mancy he could comprehend. And I was the one who brought him to this.....Shreken......to build the Nexus. The dragon was a nuisance, but Belboz did not disappoint me. He pacified the dragon with careful words, and our work continued."

"And then you intruded on us again, sweet infuriating Adele, on some hapless pilgrimage to reclaim your father's attention from me once more. There the truce was made with the red dragon, and your life spared. For centuries, we worked together, your father and I. Slowly our masterwork grew to fruition, and slowly I revealed more of myself......and himself......to Belboz. But your father......he was weakened by you, his mind clouded with dumb, animal emotion as the years passed and you remained frozen and blind, divorced from time itself. I grew ever so impatient, dear Adele. I offer your father's memory a modicum of credit - though emotion strained his will, his perception was still steelsharp. He perceived my impatience, and he grew suspicious."

"Alas, torn was he. I could smell his growing animosity to the Nexus.....so near completion but for one final cog......wrestling bloodily with his love for you. Doubt pierced him through and through, and he began to understand truly what he was building, and its function. Can you imagine his ambivalence, child? Finish the machine, or sacrifice his daughter? His inner turmoil made him hesitate, and I bled with fury. He shut his mind to me, broke free of his prison so I could no longer draw his thoughts in my direction. Rage. Rage, rage, rage felt I."

"But then your father died, and with it his suspicion, replaced by young, ambitious Elaine. Together we did what Belboz dared not - destroy that petty, virulent Minestus. Together we took his flame, his final cog. And we returned to the Nexus. Complications arose - the pure flame had been spoiled by the girl's immaturity. But now, FINALLY now! Dragonflame, pure, natural, unsullied dragonflame has charged the cogs! Do you not see child, your father's work is not destroyed, far, FAR from it! And now. Now, it beginsssssssssss......"

Conscience changed. It was not a slow, dramatic metamorphosis as many a fancy scribe would embellish. It was fast and it was hideous. Her face suddenly bulged to three times its size like a fleshy bag filling with a jet of air. Every strand of her hair slid out of the expanded follicles, tumbling erratically to the floor. Her eyes squeezed out of their sockets and dangled uselessly by her cheeks for a single second before the head exploded, showering the screaming Adele with pieces of foul smelling offal. In its place was two dark green tentacles, covered in vicious spikes and twisted barbs and glistening mucus.

The hands of Conscience morphed into two massive, hairless paws. Without hesitation, they sank their claws into her own ribcage and yanked outwards with maniacal strength. Her innards opened like a hellish cupboard and a black mist emerged forth, enveloping her whole form. Then there was a noise, an indescribable noise that interrupted Adele's screams that she might stagger back and retch violently. The mist was sucked into the quivering pile of dark ooze that was now Conscience. No trace of human form remained - only a deranged pyramid of glutinous flesh, with the two writhing tentacles atop its spire.

Adele struggled to gather her senses, to stop herself from losing her reason to terror. She backed up until her back struck the poisoned oak door behind her. "You're no Conscience of mine!" she cried, fists clenched and eyes wide. She reached back to pull the door open, but it was locked. "What fell beast are you!?"

As if in response, two more tentacles sprouted with frightening speed out of the monstrosity's skin (if the shifting, bleeding mess of bulging veins and scum could be called 'skin') and joined the first pair, swaying and shaking in the air as if dancing with joy. A vertical fissure cracked open in the centre of the thing, and an eye peered through at Adele. It was over a foot in diameter, perfectly round and black, with a white dot the size of a pinprick in the centre.

I am Orphyn said Orphyn. And now I will awake, and I will draw all into the Void.

The tallest tentacle lashed out at Adele, wrapping tightly around her neck. The barbs sliced into her flesh, the grip tightened, and breath was denied her. "Nuh....nuh no......" moaned Adele, reaching up to pull the foul appendage from her throat. But two more tendrils darted forward and snaked around her wrists, dragging her arms back to her sides. And together, they pulled Adele to Orphyn.

Adele bucked and twisted and scrabbled her feet against the hard floor, but the tentacles gripped like the heaviest shackles, drawing her inexorably towards the unholy dark mass, the single insane eye gazing unblinking at her. Adele slipped, and final tendril spied its chance, approaching with speed, encircling her ankles and closing the loop tight, binding her legs together.

All this time.....I wanted to show your father My rebirth said Orphyn But now I will show you My rebirth, and you will die by My beauty. My final boon.

Adele tried to scream, but the hold on her neck was so tight her lungs could neither fill nor expel a shred of air. She squirmed helplessly in the painful, cutting grip of Orphyn as she was dragged to within a mere few feet of its throbbing, sickening mass. With no visible effort, it lifted her high into the air, and a mindless, acidic burbling noise poured out of it, filling her head with nightmares long thought dead. She closed her eyes, and prayed that all to come would not be as hellish as her heart believed......

And suddenly Orphyn screamed, and Adele was thrown awkwardly against the wall. The tentacles vaporised into nothing, and Adele fell on her side, gasping for breath. She heard another unworldly cry from the thing that was Orphyn, and urged herself to her feet. Turning, she saw dozens upon dozens of tentacles struggling to emerge afresh from Orphyn's flesh, but each one was dissipated without a sound before it could achieve full growth. The oozing body of Orphyn swelled and bled black oil as it wavered and waned. The mad white pupil in the centre of the eye flew this way and that, searching for the unseen assailant. Adele looked further, behind......

A man stood behind Orphyn, a blistering white beam of light blasting from his outstretched hands into the back of the dark beast. His skin was yellow and weeping, peeling from his emaciated, skeletal, naked body. His hair was naught more than a few wispy strands of white lines, and his face was terribly gaunt. But his expression was one of utter, focused determination, and his eyes flowed with exuberant passion. He turned to Adele, and Adele felt a massive sliver of ice drop through her heart and land in her stomach.

"RUN!" shouted Belboz.

  1. And Adele ran.....
  2. Heraclius materialised before Euaristus, filled with a fear not felt by dragonkind in millenia....
  3. Fred, Exotica, Luc and Matthias all turned back to the now distant Shreken. Something was happening.....
  4. Far, far below the deepest stone roots of the mountain, something stirred.....

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Cicero

2/25/2009 12:52:24 PM

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