YaneUraby Miro MMChaptersSlurThe AvatarsLullIncorrigible WheelSeventh SealThe Lost RiverOrnate VoiceMount of OlivesTarPenetraliaSefirotThe Hellenistic DeceiverThe Yoni StaircaseShawl for he'b, no bye the bye, in the Masoretic Text Plops Bougie ja da king jing jing jing muffled by-With Proof the Princess Fucked Lisping in Greasy Creeks, Da da da, da da da, Altair, Vega, Deneb, Psst, psst(psst)psst, I’m a Pleione DwarfKellipotGolgothaThe First Five Minutes After Violent DeathSlurRoaming land. Roaming sands. Roaming sons. As I watch the sun sink down On the blood-red edge of the blood-red town There are shadows for sale On the edge of town On the edge of the night Is a darkness seen From the side of the night And the wind blows round this sleeping town This sleeping town This crimson land of disgusted foes and humming vows And it seems to me that when I close my eyes All the lights in the world Go. Out. And the night passes by and you whisper to me A thousand lies I stare in surprise Towards the desert's warm black And the desert stirs And the desert stares back With a thousand eyes Piercing eyes Ancient eyes Author's Note The AvatarsThe Avatar Electric. In the heart, in a windowless room, deep within the marrow of ancient stone, veined from the cracks of time, thick, heavy, smog, silk hung from the ceiling, cascading in concentric loops, slowly a sinuous movement which defied gravity, the fabric glistened as it spun in slow motion, the air was stirred. Sky Clad. A dance of neopaganism. Golden in the iris, silk spiraled downward, motion impossibly slow yet noticed, pattern change, a fall, a fault, without formality, just movements, normalcy raped, swaying of the silk, responding. Silhouettes melting into one. Making the blackness blacker. Bodies stilled. The sea rose in ecstasy, waves of which climbed impossibly high, like water in a bowl, hit, and the waves splashing upward, crests silvered by the pale moon in the black, cliffs silent, resistant, indifferent even as the ocean molested them, clawing, violent embrace against stone that yield nothing. And there was no sound, no roar of mighty waves, no howl of the wind, only a hum, a vibration that rippled deep and resonate, through the air, the wood, the stone and through the surface of blue. Growing wilder, the storm, the waves which rose higher, movements so frenetic, ecstatic, orgasmic, gavotte of chaos, defy nature, snow turned into rain, hard as hail, vanishing as it came, no standing around, swallowed by the ocean's maw, tendrils of light slithered, dodging the droplets at the speed of light, smoke, golden and soft, honey which fell dark upon the earth. Sprays of silver and white, oppressive and absolute the sound of nothing, unrelenting pressure of the Atlantic. Resume. Calm. Cold. Rise now. You and me against the world You and me against the world You and me against the world World about to end World about to end World about to eend Windblown Centrifugal Bestial Logical Amber rain is beautiful... Author's Note LullIn a crumbling coastal town where the salt hung thick in the air and the waves gnawed relentlessly at the cliffs, the town leans as if weary, its stone and timber structure sagging under the weight, slouched towards the sea though ready to collapse into the churning grey below. The saltness thick, palpable sting in its presence, which clings to the coats of the townsfolk and the facade of cottages and jagged cobblestones with thin crystalline film. An earthly chilled wing, sharp and biting, which roams the narrow alleys in the misty distant and the great below which carries with it a mournful cry of gulls and the relentless roar of the waves against the base. The cliffs themselves loom vast and ancient, black stone streaked with veins of white from centuries of rain, like they were carved by the hands of forgotten mystics. They rise sheer and unyielding, edges ragged where the frost and the wind has worried them into scared jagged teeth. At their feet the sea writhes uncanny, dark, restless expanse flecked with powdery foam painted with slate, its surface a scar of unseen currents and the horizon an indistinct blur, a meeting of sky and water that seems both endless and impossibly close like it could fold in at any moment. Perched precariously at the edge, a lone lighthouse stands, its stone blackened with age and its beacon long extinguished. Inside, the walls hum with the sound of the sea, a gentle vibration perminates the chiseled stones. This cliff holds its stories in its teeth, and the town its own. But at the base before the oceans meet, their stories intertwine. Forming together, a cautionary tale, a stain, a sickly trickle, remembered out of spite, price of love, pain to pay, for a quick visitation, a reign of love that stank of thrown out toys. No festival of light, a moral mean majority. Nowhere New Jerusalem. Author's Note Incorrigible WheelSalt-laden air heavy with an enchantment. Whispers of ships dashed against the rocks. The Wind carries them inland, a gentle slip through the cracks in the dirt. Wretched faces. A library stood like a forgotten hymn, half sunk into the earth, its facade had been weathered to a gray-green sheen by the brine and rain which bore a heavy wooden door carved with sigils now smoothed out and illegible by passing eyes. Few came here, fewer still with a purpose, those who entered did so as if compelled by the vague pull towards its darkened stacks, the faint smell of mildew and dusty parchment lingered like a ghost in the lungs. Inside, the library was a labyrinth of quiet shadows, rows of shelves sagging under the dense neglected tomes, the light filtered through high dust-furred windows, catching on the motes that floated in suspended animation as though a bubble of time had decided to pause right here, unwilling to commit to the world outside. The air carried a camp chill, which was thick with the decay of the words, that slow decomposition of knowledge and somewhere deep within was a faint scratching sound like of pen on paper, it was deliberate, rhythmic, the heartbeat of the place. Celestia sat at the long scarred desk near the back of the library, where the vaulted ceiling curved low. Her hooves were pale and deft, moved quickly over a sheaf of notes, a quill scratching arcane symbols with practiced precision. Her pink hair loose and fallen over her broad shoulders, her features were sharp and royal but they wore the quiet exhaustion of someone who had long rejected the weight of such titles. This was her sanctuary, her sabbatical, her secret. Daughter of a dying. king, heir to a throne she despised, shed had fled to this remote edge of the kingdom under the guise of scholarship, to escape those awful suffocating expectations at the court of fools. Her exile was a quiet defiance of the royal family who had branded her ungrateful, unworthy because what princess, hid herself hide herself away among forgotten texts and dust? But here, Celestia could breathe. Here among the deteriorating spines of books on alchemy and esoterica, she was able to lose herself in questions older and deeper then her own lineage. The dissolution of matter, the transmutation of the soul, the forbidden hidden in the margins of the world. She heard the door creak open but didn't look up, few entered and rarely lingered, but this time, the hoofsteps did not wander aimlessly. They had moved with a purpose, a soft padding that passed just before her desk, Celestia glanced up. The mare standing before her was slight, her dark purple hair with a pink strip in the middle, her eyes sharp and glittering with curiosity, a cloak behind her tied at the neck which made her mysterious, she held a book to her chest, its cover was faded and cracked. "You're the archivist" the mare said. Her voice low but steady as if speaking too loudly might disturb the silence that clung to the place. "I am" Celestia replied, studying her. "And you are?" A stillness. "Twilight." The name settled in the air between them, simple and unadorned. "I saw the sigils on the entrance, hard to make out but I saw them, I believe you have what I'm looking for you." Celestia raised an eyebrow, setting her quill down. "And what is that?" Twilight's lips curved into the barest hint of a smile. "Secrets." She slid the book across the desk, her hoof lingering on its cover. "And how to unlock them." The book was old, older than most in the library, its binding was held together by what seemed like sheer will. Celestia brushed a hoof across the leather, her heart quickening, a shiver through her body, she recognized the sigil on its spine. A symbol from her own studies, a mark of alchemical transformation. "You've read this?" she asked, her voice betraying a hint of curiosity in its tone. "Enough to know I need more," Twilight said, her gaze unwavering. "Enough to know that you can help" Celestia hesitated. She had spent nearly a year guarding this place, her refuge, keeping the demands of the world at bay. But there was something in Twilight's eyes. Those eyes, sparkling. A reflection. A hunger. "The library is rarely visited," Celestia said finally, gesturing to the empty stacks around them. "You must have traveled far." Twilight shrugged, her smile sharpening. "I go where the books are." For the first time since she came here, Celestia felt the stillness of the library shift, disturbance, the air around her crackling faintly with possibility. She opened the book and began to read. Look into its eyes It will look into your eyes Author's Note Seventh SealLeaves lay open on the desk, the bark crackling like old sinew. Thin and bruised with the weight of ink, inky, sickly, river flowing into whorls, the markings that breathed in dim light. Hoof hovered over casting a shadow on the parchment, afraid, to touch for to long, disturb the trickling heave. As the stones could leach into the fur, sticky and unkempt, woven together, leave imprints that could never wash away in the golden river. Stark and bold, a demand rather than an invitation. Beneath it, diagrams sketched with a maddening precision, the dust in a circle inside circles, angles intersecting in ways that suggested impossible geometrics. Mercury. The base distillate, distill. The purple one murmurs. Her voice a whisper of wind through cathedral hell. Same purple hooves trace a line of text, letters crawling down in a spiral, beneath her touch those words did not still still, agitated from her touch. Shimmering. Reshaping themselves, making way, meaning fracturing into refrains. Tumbled like stones, hollow. Uneven. A breath warm against the page, ink it swelled, pulse. pulse. pulse. Elixir. Self dissolvation. Dismember. Text blurred in a gaze. This act of reading was an intrusion. The page refused that kind of comprehension. It hissed, it could not place. A line leapt from the page, glint of steel. Colorless. Fabulous. Blurred. The Seventh Seal has been opened. Something deep. Twisted, a struggle for a moment, it reached down a struck a chord strung between the ribs. She heard the sea outside, so far away but insistent, its roar rising. Falling. Echo chambers. Cryptic rhythm. Plagued text. Another diagram. Next. Figure. Fragmented. Head severed. Torso opened. Inside rendered in exquisite. Agonizing detail. Those organs, not right, shimmering, morphing, reshaping. Staring. The heart, firstly red and fleshly, secondly crystalline, edges sharp and glittering. Lungs turned to coiled serpents, an ouroboric loop swallowing itself. Alembic body. Furnace. Smudged, faltered scribe. Unspool. Union of opposites. Alchemical wedding. Chasing endlessly for. Tremulous. Triangle. Pierce. Corner. Cost of names. Thread and ash. Will you pay. Question mark. Shadows defied the angles of the library. Somewhere distant. The sound of a Church-bell chimes. Voices. Shrill and indistinct. Rose and fell. "Do you feel it?" "What?" Set in motion. Fate. "The book, its asking us" A maw opened up. Reforming, shifting tides. On the leaves. And I ask my lovers, "Do you know Where the desert roses bloom and grow?" And I ask my lovers, "Do you know Where the desert roses bloom and grow?" And I ask my lovers, "Do you know Where the desert roses bloom and grow?" Author's Note The Lost River"Im gonna down myself..." Lost River. Black and deep as night, winding beneath the town like a thought too dangerous to be spoken. The inevitable curse. Not water. Not entirely. What spilled was different. Not salt, not fresh. In between. A memory of rivers never formed. Lifeless flow. Where the drowned not to rest but dissolve. Inside. Apart. One. Inland. In the hills that crumbled to the cold green slopes. Slipping. Jagged disdain. For the tide to come. Ran under the cottages. Threading. Beneath cobblestones and the sagging buildings. Beneath the church and the library, a secret vain pumping its pulse into the heart. But no lifeline. Taking things, sounds that followed, shadows thats should follow, a lingering in unwantdness. Unraveled before the finisher. "A river without light." Her voice thin against the library's silence. She felt the words, their syllables cold and heavy. Pressing against her chest like a weight of a dream constructed too thick to wake from. Celestia sat across from her, hooves folded. Her gaze sharp but distant, like she wasn't seeing the library anymore but beyond, beneath it. "Do you think it's real?" Celestia asked, Twilight hesitated, the words in the book resonated, as though they weren't being read but somehow remembered. Manifested. "It doesn't matter if its real" Twilight said, her voice trembling against the air, jaw shaking. "It matters that it's there" I walk down to the rain. Her hoof went to the page, brushing the edge. Labyrinth. Spiraling. Fate and soul. Fused. No incantation to speak. Words bled. Blue. One word breaking into two, two words breaking into none. The unseen. Current tugging at the bones. A pull. Tension sat there and witnessed the winter days finish their short-spanned lives. Pallid. One by one. A russet fog that creeps up the river, when the sky hangs thick on summer nights, thick with stifled color. And stars shine small and shyly. I think I like it best on these summer nights. Flicker golden and oily under the regiment. In the wan, lingering light of winter afternoon, the town stands deserted, sluggishly drowsing, so it seems. In spacious and distant muffled grayness, unclean yellow, amid the heavy ugly patches of dank and rotting bracken. A little mare picked her way noiselessly in the clasp. Vague listless rhythm of the creaking saddle. White ethereal glow. Yellow at a glance. Poof. Shroud of ghostly mist enveloped the earth, up from that vaporous distance crept slowly the evening darkness, sullen glow throbbing overhead. Golden will-o'-the-wisps are threading their shadowy ribbons above the golden trees. Distant rumor of a feverish nightmare waits in the still air of the crowd huddled together. Shame the dingy stars. across the east and west of the estorteric flares of a sky-sign, a gaudy arabesque feign. All air draped in the mysterious sumptuous splendor of a murky Equestrian night. Im gonna down myself in the lost river of Equestria. I am gonna drown myself in the lost river of Equestria. Author's Note Ornate Voice"Tell Me." "How did you find this place?" Celestia asks, words slipping before she could properly catch them. Twilight looked at her then, truly looked at her, her head titled just slightly, as if Celestia herself wreathe puzzle to be solved. She leaned back, her hooves crossed, the faintest curve of a small brushed her lips, though it wasn't a smile at all, not really. "I suppose you could say I dreamed it," she said finally, her words were slow and deliberate. "A dream?" Celestia asked, glancing up. "Yes. Or an epiphany. A prophecy, maybe." Twilights hooves opened in a shrug. "Does it matter what I call it? I just woke up one morning, and I knew I had to leave. No explanation, no reason I just experienced a pull, like gravity or hunger. Like something had called me by a name I'd long forgotten I had" Celestia passed, her quill hovering above the desk with the faint glow of her magic aura around it. Something cold stirred in her chest, not quite a fear but its quieter cousin. "A pull", she repeated. Twilight nodded, her gaze fixed on something past Celestia's shoulder, as though the library's shadows held answers she couldn't see. "I left my town, my school, everything. Told them I was taking a sabbatical, thought I didn't know where I was going, I... I still don't, really" She let out a soft laugh, bitter and faint. "But I found this place, didn't I?" A pause. "A sabbatical," Celestia said her voice was sharp and sudden, and the quill fell from the air, its tip snapping against the wood as the magic ceased. "I'm on a sabbatical too." Twilight blinked, surprised. "You?" "Yes?" Celestia's hooves moved to gather the book before her, as thought grounding herself. Her voice softened, but the words came much faster now. "Or at least, thats what I've told myself. A sabbatical from my family, my title, the weight of it all. They think I'm-" She stopped, pressed her lips together, her gaze dropping towards the table. "It doesn't matter what they think. I just couldn't stay. I couldn't breathe there." Twilight leaned forward, her curiosity sharpening. "Your family? Your title?" Celestia met her gaze then, something defiant and raw flashing across her features. "I am Princess Celestia. The second daughter of the royal house of Canterlot. The one they whisper about in court. The disappointment. The exile. The one who abandoned her throne to sit here, among the dust and ink, chasing ghosts and shadows." Her voice wavered, though not with shame, more akin to anger, or relief. Twilight didn't flinch. "Royalty." She said the word plainly, as thought it had no weight at all, no kind of reverence. And her smile returned, small and pointed. "And what does a royal daughter do in a place such as this?" "The same thing that you do" Celestia replied. She gestured toward the book, the room, the world of paper dipped in silence around them. "Looking for something I cannot name, something older than crowns and sounds, older than any childish kingdom. Something real." Twilight sat back, her smile softening but her eyes not leaving Celestia's. "Then maybe we found the same dream," she said. Stop. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The air between them thickened, the silence was not heavy but now charged, like the space between lighting and thunder. Above them, the rafters creaked, the sound was like breathing, like the weight of their words had woken something long in suspended animation. "We didn't find this place" Her voice low. "It brought us here." In the dream I am crawling around on my hooves and knees, smoothing out the prairie. All the dents and the gouges and the winds dying down. I lower my head, press my ear to the prairie. Mount of OlivesA kiss, wet, muzzle, a clouded eye. The library became their world, and the world became the pages they read from. Words no longer sat still, they would spill out, spread thin like ink in water, splurge. Soaking into the air between them. Twilight would arrive in the morning from her temporary housing in the town's empty saloon. Her mane damp with salt, breath cold and clouds form from her mouthed exhales. And Celestia would already be waiting, a stack of books before her, spines cracked, as the cliffs. They read aloud at first, the sound of their voices wrapping through the aisles of the shelves like a weaving sown, each phrase looped and bonded into the other. Celestia's voice was steady, measured, the cadence of the accustomed to command but softened by the exile. And Twilight was quick, restless, her words skipping ahead like they couldn't bear to be contained. They would pause to argue over a line, a meaning in it. Twilight was always certain that she saw the heart of the thing. But Celestia, insisting there was much more beneath the surface, something that Twilight was missing in her venture. Ethereal salt, hermetically sealed up. A wideness opening and closing To keep the darkness sealed within Has absence ever sounded so eloquent. Little mare. "You're too quick," Celestis said one day, her tone edged with amusement as she pointed to a diagram of interlocking circles, their centers marked with glyphs that defied translation. "Alchemy doesn't reveal itself to the impatient Twilight" Twilight scoffed, leaning over the table, the very tip of her hoof tracing the curves of the symbols, heir mane falling loose on the parchment. "And you're... too slow," she countered. "If you wait too long then the answer will pay by, and you'll never catch it." Their laughter echoed softly in the vast silence of the library, a sound that felt out of place and yet entirely right, like a light streaming through a crack in a wall, everything in its right place. In the evenings, when the cold crept in and the oil lamps cast flickering halos, they would stop reading and start speaking. Twilight would press her hooves to the desk, imagining it passing right through the wood, her voice low and alive with wonder as she would describe what she had glimpsed in her sleep, that river, winding through the dark underground cave to the salty waves in the opening. Her reflection cast cross it, then dissolving. One. As the grossness of spring lolls its head against the window, there's a song in the air. Splendor of gold in the desert, pale meadows of stranded pyramids. Paralysed street, dipping into the street. Puddle beneath the cork. I love you too with all my heart and soul. Celestia listened, her chin resting on her hoof, her gaze warm and steady. the star[mess pf her royal phenotype softened in the glow of the lamplight. And when they grew quiet as they often did, they would read again but not the words in the books. They would read each other. The sparkle of Twilight's eyes as she studied Celestia's hooves, their pale elegance, the way they lingered, as if reluctant to turn the page. The tilt of Celestia's head as she watched Twilight, the way her smile grew faint but real with emotion, like a secret she couldn't keep hidden. One night, Twilight found a book tucked away in the farthest corner of the library, its cover worn rough, the ink on the pages turned the color of dried blood. She brought it to Celestia, sitting it down with a quiet reference, and they opened it together. The text was dense, spiraling, language fractured into shards of meaning, but Celestia deciphered it with the patience of a sculptor chipping away at stone. Twilight watched her, her gaze flickering between the words and the mare reading them, the curve of her lips as she spoke, the faint furrow of the brow as she wrestled the verse. "You love this," Twilight said suddenly. Celestia looked up with a surprised reaction. "What?" "This. The search." Celestia smiled then, a small, private smile. "Yes," she said simply, and then softer. "And I think I love that you do too," They didn't touch, not yet, but the space was thinner, lighter, the air itself was leaning in, drawing the magnets closer. The books hummed, a shifting of blurs imperceptibly out of line, rearranging of the silent. Inanimate. Voices intimate. Words. Movements. The cadence. Library held them. Books their witness. Boundary between teacher and apprentice. Reader and listener. Dissolve. One. Only the river, winding. Hail the rain. One by one. Are you with me or not? I don't know. TarAAre you shivering? Are you cold? At the cliffs edge, where the brittle bones of the land jutted skywards like the ribs of a leviathan, the ocean was gone. A long time has passed. The great expanse of water that had once swallowed this horizon had raced, dried up, leaving behind a basin salt-crusted stones, its surface was cracked and glimmering faintly, snow had been eating away at it, piled up around it. Glistening. The pale light of the sun just barely able to pierce through a hail of white, the air burned cold, cold that buried itself deep in the marrow, and the snow fell relentless, sharp as glass, spectral white against the grayness and blackness of this frozen land. And there, suspended above the suffocating white of the basin, was The Wheel. It was a blackness so complete, an absence rather than a defining force, a void carved from the fabric of being. Perfect circular, hovering motionless, yet at its edges it twisted imperceptibly, an eternal gyration that was a thought you couldn't hold onto. Seeming to drink all light around it, a hole in existence, bending the snowflakes that dared to fall just in reach of its gravitational pull, the faint curvature of the mass it reflected. The air near it was alive, colorful-uncolour, trembling with a low hum that resonated from The Wheel. Not sound in the ordinary sense, a vibration, a shivering through skin and stone, an undercurrent which gnawed at the sense, uneasy, unfiltered. It vibrated deeper than hearing, deeper than thought, something which was primordial, which resonated at the threshold of actuality. Pulse of an ancient drum. Came whooshing. Cutting through wind. Slicing silence with ease. Erratic. Violent. Exhalation. Impossible living. Flakes swirled so violent like a wheel, drawn to the center but never touching. The edges dissolving, lines and shapes of the blurry formations in the distant bending into impossible geometry, reality folding in on itself. Fracture. Moments breaking apart. Folding over and over. Collapsing forever. Pebbles crumbling into the desiccated basin. Revolving wheel. Motion and stillness at once. Barren expanse. Shivering in the cold. The Wheel stared, with no eyes, no face, no form, only its hum. Silent. Cold. Scared. Silver lands. Inescapable. Author's Note PenetraliaMotes of dust sired in the beams of light that slanted through the round attic window, golden spears which pierced the grey abode, the air up here was warmer, closer, scented thick of old paper and wood. A breath held too long. Shapes that bended with the slant of the sun. Golden morning shine. Waiting. A resting place for the discarded copies that weighed it down with a sag. Twilight loved it here, not just for the books, but for the quiet, the way the air was of a space none cared to disturb and because Celestia came here, her presence the filling the room needed. Faint scent of salt and tinsy flakes of snow that clung to her long pink mane. They sat in the center, a scattering of books opened between them, pages worn dry and yellow. A tome of spells which claimed nothing new, nothing real. Purple hoof brushing, gaze flickering upwards. Caught by way of light which played across the face of Celestia. Sharpest of lines that were softened by the shadows, heir mane clutched and catches by the sun in threads of pale fire. "Why do you come here?" Twilight asked, her voice breaking the silence. Celestia glanced up, her eyes narrowing slightly, as if the question was a test. "Why do you?" Pause. "I asked you first," Twilight said, leaning forward. Celestia's lips quirked, a hint of a smile appearing. "Because it's even quieter then down there, and the books don't ask for anything." Twilight titled her head, studying her. "And I don't ask for anything?" Slip. Celestia didn't answer right away. Her hoof moved absently, tracing a faint line in the dust that had settled and built on the floorboards. The light shifted as a cloud passed outside, dimming the room, and so when she spoke again, her voice was more hesitant, quiet. "Not yet." Twilight laughed softly, the sound sharp and unexpected, and Celestia's gaze snapped to her, a bit startled. "What's funny?" "You," Twilight said, shaking her head. "You make everything sound so serious. It's like the world's going to crack open if you say the wrong thing." Pause. Warp. "Maybe it will," Celestia said, and there was something in her tone, her eyes remained steady. The Wheel. Twilight's smile faded slightly, replaced by a softness, which lingered, distant, a piece of the sky floated in, fractures of the back of her feature etched in gold and shadow, thrwated of course by the blocking of Twilight meant for Celestia. Twilight leaned forward, slow and deliberate, Celestia didn't move, didn't breathe, her gaze locked on Twilight's. Following of the eyes. Gifted motion. And then Twilight's hoof reached out, and pressed against Celestia's cheek, a touch so light like it had been imagined. "Celestia." Thread pulled taut. Ready to snap. All at once. Shattered the stillness. Twilight closed the space and her lips found Celestia's with force. Abrupt. Inevitable. Collision. Breath and warmth. Tasted of salt and ink. Smell of snow, frozen. Blur of fragments. Mingling. Celestia moved. Hooves reaching to pull her closer. Reduced to this. Kiss. Not gentle. Searching, desperate. Turning of a wheel, pull of a river, opening of a door. The air hummed. When they broke, they were inches apart. Still mingling in the space between them. Raw and trembling. Celestia lunged for more, wrapping hooves around Twilight's neck and forcing her gently down onto a stack of opened books that sprawled on the floor. Moans. Stealing exhales. Inhaling. Tongue. Her cunt gripped her like a warm friendly hoof. A chilling exploration of erotic consumption. With a hoof across the torso Face on the pages With a hoof across the torso Face on the yellowed parchments Charging in Are charging in Charging into fields of white roses Charging So paint me With a halo Etched out The flesh, the image, the reflection Those who dwell in scarlet darkness Frenzy Vivid Blind and hypnotizing Ulcer Sacred crimson rose Bathed in fragrance Verdigris Ochre, amber, mauve Over the snows To nowhere SefirotUnwritten on the walls of the void, cometh ten spheres in disarray, not sequence, not perfection, but a scattering, these broken vessels trembled in the honey hollows of a world that dreamed itself awake. Attic. Lines of Keter and Malkuth blurred, burned. Tiferet pulsed and Da'at was nothing. Nothing at all. Swell of a lost tide, spoken. "Not a bridge, its a falling." Falling into the cliffs where the Zebras once lived, their stripes fading into the walls of the Yaodong. Ancient hoofprints pressed deep into this brittle earthern mass. Fossilized. Spiral. Inward towards The Wheel. Before the hum, before time twisted and the snow fell, they were there. Keter was the light above the cave. Pinprick. Dome of the star which refused to extinguish. Striped bodies moved below, hooves kicking up the dust of Yesod. The foundation which crumbled beneath their feather. Nameless. Cave dwellers of the breath which steamed in the air, sizzling. Cliff's edge they rest. Snuff out. Binah and Chokhmah clashed on the walls, chalk frisked. Splintered the bones, fractal, looping nonsensical till realized. In a dream. Memory. The Wheel was there too. Black wound pulsing above the rocks. Shaking the markings loose. Presence like leaves. "The Zebras... they knew." Whispered. Cracked. Pulled from the library. Falling into the Sefirot. The impossibility of the striped beasts carving the first revelations of The Tar. Chesed. For survival, but Gevurah was the bite. Clash. Teeth. Ripped. Nashed. Demanded for blood when the snow grew deep and food went scarce. Balance of Tiferet. Fleeting yet. Glow of Keter dimmed like a bulb when fried. The Zebras closer now. Drawn in the dirt by the smallest of them. It points a hoof, round and round. Stalactites fell loose and the hum shooketh. Dagger. Netzach, history in victory was survival. For the oceans to return. And Yesod, the foundation, was the bones left. Fill the snow, until it only hummed. Echo through the Yaodong, into the honey hollows it marched. Malkuth is here now, the kingdom crumbling, Listen. Twilight opened her eyes, breath catching in throat, a kiss begotten. Rays of the fractured light, pierce the metal of the window, chipping away. "Do you feel it?" Hoofbeats on stone. "Yes" "I feel it" White. Blinding, unending. Roarless silence, absolute, totalism in silence. Emanation. The corner of every nerve, every thought. Whiteness, not color, but the absence of everything expect itself. Gasp. Ghostly vestige, image, thin as light filtered in frost, the hooves of Twilight, hooves of Celestia, the body of them, transparent. Eyes burned, lids squeezed shut against the glare, in folds the clock came, a line, back and forth, shell of perception. The cliffs edge appeared once more, the edge of the earth, their hooves rested in the air, no sensation was known, but there was ground, invisible, intangible, solidified and held them afloat. Frozen lacework, the crystal flakes didn't melt, they clung in constellations in nearly transparent forms of freeze. Veins pulsed. Only to vanish. The snow on the ground was thin, clinging, a mess of white on unnatural grey. To the sea she stared, where the sea had stood. Gone in a blink. Rocky basin stretching beyond reason, the sky a vast indifference of shifting gradients. Gray, white, Nihility. Color. For a moment. Returner. Cold flush of blues, the jagged green of the faraway moss, the raw reds of their lips chapped from the wind peeling flakes for a nanosecond, the copper glow of Twilight's mane, sudden, the mathematical beam of light, everything swelled, a rumbling, expanded outward and downward, the cliffs turned to mountains as the ground pulled from each other in a stretch that defied comprehension. And then white again. The Wheel, a smudge on the horizon, wound in the whiteness, pierced by the blade, bled light too bright, a hum turned to silence that still buzzed behind their eyelids, pulling focus. Unbearable. Fathom. Upwards, eyes locked. Above them, a tree that wasn't a tree, sprawling out vastly upon the open, branches not woods but pathways, emanations, spheres connected by threads that hovered. Diagram. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life hangs in the gallows. Life hung. Away. Flicker, symmetry. Names hooked. All felt wrong, sharp and double edged, unclean, a tightening at the chest. Where The Wheel had been, a new form now hovered, close, distant, a sarcophagus, black and gold adorned, surface etched with the rays of light, faint flames that did not move and did not turn the surface black as gold. Rotated in a movement too smooth, through the invisibility. Shin. The sarcophagus replaced, in its place. The Kaaba. Black and monolithic, heavy yet suspended so thoroughly, at the seams it cracked, the perfect cube couldn't sustain itself here, pitched, felt in the marrow, the thimble rolls. A purple hoof clutched the white hoof. "Something's wrong." Quavered. Grip tightened. Frightened. Anchor. Unplaceable, the white eternal. Unfamiliar, faintly screeching, screaming, the holy trinity. "We shouldn't be here" Author's Note The Hellenistic DeceiverCelestia'Mathematical'Angelic'Axiomatic'Source of Radiance'Infinite convergence of light and wisdom'Alpha and Omega kingdom come'line of all sequences of logic and where reason converge'being of transfinite cardinality'essence stretching beyond finite integers of the mortal comprehension'The puny' whirlwind'Higher-dimensional geometry unfolding of presence'form not bound by the Euclidean constraints'but factually invite'self-similarization among the planes of existence'wings of infinite surfaces'tessellated with golden ratios'shimmering and glimmering in iridescence in calculus curves of vision'each feather a singularity 'contains a universe within its vanishing peak'the edges of her being as hyperbolic arcs'curving endlessly in divine eternity'tpology folds space and time witchever way'pink mane of Riemmanian manifold'undulating in spectral hues'shifting through a continuum of wavelengths'perpetual energy field calculating endlessness in a vector space of light'curling'uncurling'precision of Fourier transformers'containing every frequency of creation'equinism rising' eyes invariant under the symmetry, gaze upon the cosmos of the burning of light of unobservable inanities'a glowness illuminating the patterns'voice of cosmic strings'reverberating'collapsing probabilities'opera composed of prime numbers'perfect'indivisble'resonating'she is the axis mundi'knowledge'felt as a unifying field equation'tying the threads of chaos and order'entropy'tcreate'aura the Shekinah'luminous presence'the crown of Keter'ineffable'rings upon rings upon rings upon rings'toridal flows of pure energy'spinning'burns like the Planck epoch'hooves that consecrate'sacred space of marks'a geodesic line of the steps across a curved fabric of ultimate'o behold'confront the unresolvable paradox containad in finite tension'every angle and every curve'proof of the divine equation'energy = light to the Celestial power' Author's Note The Yoni StaircaseOne step Two step Three step Four step Measure the extent of a Dizzying descent Down the Yoni Staircase Alcove, hidden between the towering shelves, a space, a ledge, carved wide enough for two bodies to rest, to lean, to collapse into one another. The wood, held its breath, watching, waiting, shaking with anticipation. A moan, Celestia pressed her hoof down below, towards the Yoni Staircase her hoof moved, with Twilight below her, mouth agape and eyes closed, foreheads touched, breaths mingling, each exhalation stealing the other, leaving them light-headed, trembling, heart racing, Celestia's hooves found Twilight's waist, tentative at first, then firmer, pulling her closer until the space between them was gone, until their bodies pressed together and their mouthes into one, perfect. Their movements slow, exploratory, hooves tracing paths along the multicolored fur that touched between them, mapping the contours of each other with the reverence of cartographers. But the slowness gave way to something hotter, an urgency that burned, which demanded a fast release. Celestia's lips found Twilight's, a glob of spit as she dominated the submissive, licking and deepening, hot, quickening into gasps. Celestia shifted, her thighs pressing against Twilight's, her body arching into her, her ass moving with a rhythm that was instinctual, awakening a deep familiar want to mate, her hips rolling, pressing, grinding, sending shockwaves through them, nerves alight, bodies alive, only heat, as Twilight's hooves found Celestia's thighs, grazing her hooves upwards, and holding onto her buttocks, pulling closer, through the fur their skin touched, motion, friction. Sweat beaded on their messy manes and fur, glistening in the light that filtered through which casted down and made them glow high windows, the heat grew from the entrance of the suns warmth, radiating outward, together in perfect sync, each thrust, each roll, a visitation in the hay, each press drawing them closer, deeper, until there was only them, their bodies, their breaths, their gasps, their moans. Pure delight, ecstasy sprung. Celestia moved her hoof, to the entrance of the Yoni Staircase and plunged her hoof inside, forcing her cunt open, as she dipped it in, Twilight's eyes rolled upward, catching glimpses in the shadows of the eyelids of light spilling inward, the blurring of shapes, in this unity. Their movements grew faster, more desperate, their breaths turning to pants, steam rising so faintly from this cocoon of warmth, of fire, Celestia moaned, her hoof exploring her cavity as its walls clamped down on it, bracing her hoof, coating it in a musk so thick, a scent of honey. The pleasure was sharper, bordered on pain, pain that fed the fire, shuddering, melting, scent of sweat, a faint haze, bodies entwined, limbs tangled, cobwebs, only this. Only me. Put just one hoof On the staircase A tick, tick, tock. Where are you? Are you hiding from me? Are you still looking for things that no-pony else can see? Where are you? Are you in some place that we cannot reach? Are you bathing in moonlight or drowned on the beach? Where are you? Each of us lies bleeding Our rivers intermingling I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage Shawl for he'b, no bye the bye, in the Masoretic Text Plops Bougie ja da king jing jing jing muffled by-With Proof the Princess Fucked Lisping in Greasy Creeks, Da da da, da da da, Altair, Vega, Deneb, Psst, psst(psst)psst, I’m a Pleione DwarfA Stallion wakes, jerking upright, his chest heaving as he coughs, the night thick and choking around him. The bed trembles beneath him, not violently but steadily, an exhale, an inhale, a low hum threading through the air. He retches, and rubs his eyes as he glances at the glass of water on the nightstand ripples, faint concentric rings in its stillness, moonlight leaks through the curtain, the glass of water cold and a droplet races down with another. He sits, rubbing his temples and shaking his head to battle away the drowsiness of sleep, muttering curses under his breath, his hoof brushing his coarse hair, as the vibration grows deeper, a pulse now, rhythmic, alive, coming from somewhere outside the bedroom walls. The wooden boards creak under his hooves as he rises, pulling on his boots, grabbing his coat, his breath fogging upwards, like dim rising ever fast out his mouth as he moves through the house, the cool night air pressing against his fur. The walls of the house are humming, faintly shaking, as though the structure was resisting some unseen force beyond. In the silence, a noise emerges, not a sound but a sensation, a deep, resonant thrum that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, its origin unclear but its presence undeniably there. He steps outside, the chill biting at his face, the moon high and pale, the world cast in a muted silver of the thickness of twilight glow. The ladder leans against the shed, where it always is, its wood weathered but sturdy, the same ladder he’s used for a hundred tasks, a hundred ordinary days. But this night was not ordinary in the slightest. His gaze drifts toward the library, that dark monolith with its backdrop, the cliffs, its silhouette sharp against the sky, like a bubble, its windows faintly glowing with a golden light. His boots crunched softly against the frost-dusted ground of frozen leaves half buried in mud, his breath shallow and quick. He reaches the library, the ladder under his hoof, trembling, not from cold, but from something buried, something nameless crawls which under his fur, like an ant racing across skin, burrowing into a speck, unease. He places the ladder against the stone brick for support, the wood settling into the frozen dirt and mud staining the blackened bottom, its top resting against the ledge of a high window. Slowly, cautiously, he climbs, with an ashen flavor in his mouth, the wood creaking harshly beneath his weight, his breath catching in his throat as he nears heaven. And then he sees. The alcove, glowing, golden light spilling over rows of books, over the ancient wood and stone. And in the center of it all, them. Celestia and Twilight, bodies entwined, their lips meet, their hooves move, their bodies press together with an intimacy that is unbearable, a unity that feels too pure, too complete, too alive. He freezes, his breath caught in his throat, his heart pounding in his chest. His mind rebels against the sight, against the heat, the closeness, the tenderness, against the sheer rightness of it all. Disgust churns in his stomach, rising like a wretched blackest bile, hooves tightening around the rung of the ladder as his body trembles, the later shakes, as he shakes, from rage, from hatred. He climbs down, his descent uneasy and jerky, the ladder creaking loudly. His boots hit the ground, and he turns, walking quickly, his breaths short and shallow, his hooves, the bones clenched with fury. He rouses the others, knocking on doors, his voice loud and urgent. He tells them what he saw, what he has witnessed, his voice trembling with an outrage, his descriptions vivid and graphic, sexual and grotesque, painting the scene with words that burn and sting, words that ignite the anger of the crowd who listens. The townsfolk gather now, their faces pale in the moonlight, their eyes wide with shock and fury. Pitchforks, torches and all, the hum grows louder, deeper, the ground beneath them rumbles with every step, through the air and through their bones. White as snow. The mountains loom in the distance, their peaks sharp to cut the dark sky in half, and as the townsfolk murmur and mutter and curse, the cliffs seem to shift, their jagged edges trembling, their forms bending, warping, moving as though alive. And above it all, The Wheel turns. The hum grows louder still, the great awakening, revelations, the vibrations turn violent, as the townsfolk gather their torches, voices rising with heated anger spilling from their holes, feeding the storm that brews just above the sharpest cliffs, which groan, cock and twist, their stones grinding against one another like an earthquake rips through the core, the ground townsfolk gouge upon shifting, as though the land itself is responding to their fury. The ocean rises in the distance, waves crashing against the rocks with a force that twirl the water upward in a slow movement, slowing down, united by hatred, united by fear. The Wheel turns faster, its hum now a roar, it's gyration a blur, dancing with a waltz its presence a shadow that looms over the cliffs, over the library, over the world the shadow advances, grows like a tumor. The air thickens, the golden light fades rapidly, blot out by the clouds, hail of arrow, the dark creeps in, heavy and suffocating, as the townsfolk begin their march, their torches burning, their voices rising, their anger spilling into the night like fire, like blood, like the beginning of the end. Discrimination KellipotBurn. Burn. Ignite. I have a terrible fear of heights. Through the haze of sleep, Twilight stirred, her breath catching on the faint acrid taste of smoke had filed its way into the room. Eyes fluttering, then opening, the dim glow of pre-dawn light creeping in through the slats of the high window, her chest tight. Vibration, a thrumming of strings a pulse in the walls, the air, her own fur which stood up. She sat up sharply, her hoof brushing against Celestia's sleeping form, still warm, still lost in the deepest hour of dreams. The scent was harsh and stinging her nostrils. Twilight's eyes darted to the faint orange glow spilling under the door. Her pulse quickened, she shook Celestia’s shoulder and whispered her name, an urgency laced into every syllable of plurals. “Celestia. Wake up. Smoke, there’s a fire.” A groan, flutter of the lashes, Celestia’s eyes meeting hers, wide and bleary, confusion giving way to alarm as the reality of the situation sunk in within seconds. Together, they scrambled quickly, the alcove spinning around them in the dim light, all around them were silent witnesses. A howl and a roar, wind screaming through cracks in the library, the audible hum of The Wheel, vibrating at the center of their bones. And beyond it, the voices of anger, shouting, indistinct words carried on the wind, just outside the walls. Kellipot rising. Twilight moved first, her heart pounding, her hooves fumbling at the latch of a high window, her horn glowed and she used her magic to force it open, the coldness of the air rushed in, biting at her, the metallic tang of soil and stone bathed in flames carried upwards, fire licking at the door in a sensual exploration. The townsfolk gathered beyond, their torches bobbing like naga fireballs, their faces pale and twisted, their eyes wild with fear, with hate, with something Twilight didn't want to name and felt deep in her gut, a familiar hatred which brewed in all corners of the world. “We have to go,” Twilight said, her voice cracking, her magic around the window frame, her eyes scanning the ground below. It wasn’t far, a leap would do, a chance at escape. Celestia nodded, her face resolute with a hint of fear sheltered underneath, her hooves finding Twilight’s, squeezing. Together, they climbed, their bodies pressed against the stone and wood alike, the cold seeping into their fur and leaving it damp and sticky, their breaths shallow, quick, visible in the air as a mist. Twilight slipped through the exit first, a hoof finding purchase on the narrow ledge of the side, her horn glowed which left her dangling as she looked back to Celestia, eyes meeting as she reaching a hoof out, brushing against the white hoof, urgent. “Come on. Quickly.” And then, a hoof. Stallion. It came from nowhere, fast and calloused, grabbing Twilight’s hoof, yanking her back with force that knocked the air from her lungs. She gasped, her body heaving, she slipped and the world spun as she was pulled down, down, down. Gasp. She hit the ground hard, coughing and spitting, ears filled by a loud piercing noise, vision blurred and the voices rose around herm shouting, screaming and condemning her. Hooves at her, her shoulders, her legs, pulling her up to the sky. "Seducer!" “Twilight!” Panicked. But the hooves were too many, the grip too tight. Twilight struggled without hope, her voice rising in desperation, in fear. the stones shifting in the gravel path, the pebbles breaking apart like a puzzle, the earth itself groaning under the weight of something vast, and above, the mountains loomed and rose, long and menacing as they fell apart, yet rose, by the ground, as it ascended. The ocean churned once more, forever crashing against the cliff in a loop, one more roar to the count. Thrashing. No use. Above, Celestia disappeared from the window, rapid hoofsteps ran as Twilight was dragged across the ground, screaming, crying out for help. The fire consumed the entrance, the smoke rising as the library receded into the distance, pale light od dawn, a window crashes. Above, The Wheel turned. One day, you know, you're gonna fall, or I'm gonna fall, or something's gonna happen... Author's Note GolgothaCardoon, Curare, Fermented Kumis Sea of hooves, no longer needed an ocean to thrive, rough and coarse, twisting of flesh, cloth to dirt, dirt to nothing, Celestia clawed, wooden splinters against the frozen ground, raw, the grittiness of salt and stone which burned into her, the traction of friction of a painful redness, Twilight was ahead, her form swallowed by the tide of the town, torches raised, dancing specters in the wind that blowed so harshly some of the flames blew out, and black smoke rose. There at the edge, at the farthest point of the coastline where the cliffs nearly met the mountainside, where the rocks cascaded down, and the edge of the earth was hidden by a mist, the wave as if knowing the approachhed, pulled back, residue of water splashing onto the support beams, the skeletal tone of wood and rope, the pyre, the lighthouse ahead, out of sight, cruelest reach at the edge of history. Looming against the sky, a painting, blackened timbers of charred claws of a griffon, ravens, pay your respects to the vultures, for they are your future. The ocean held its breath, waiting for what was the come. The Wheel unnoticed, hung in the air, a vacuum, as the town passed by under it, rising ever so slightly above the town, the library had begun to collapse, break, become just more ash, another memory as Celestia ran, ran towards her only hope. Unholy in its pain, shredded, the scream from Celestia. "Twilight!" Reverberated across the whole land, royal voice, the old her, the one she had tossed came out from the woodworks, for a last plea, but the voice lost to the wind, becoming just another sound, Twilight was bound to, lashed to the pole at the center of the pyre, she stuck her hooves outstretched to her sides, a crucifix, in the sea of hatred somehow their eyes met, not peace, defiance, condemnation, curses of black pile among the ground below as Twilight rested, Celestia surged forward, kicking with all might in her being, hooves swinging wildly, but they held her back, with the force of all they could, restraining her magic, her horn and her wings, suffocation. Incoherence, raw animal in the wilderness. The first torch hit the wood. Sparks. It leapt from branch to branch, a hunger still unsatisfied, a golden serpent, there was honey in the hallows, in the rocks, which oozed thick from the mountain, a sluggish golden river, a sickly, sticky golden trickle, to be expunged, coiling around this pyre the flame burned, you could hear the bones humming, singing like a puncture. And the contours of the body, emanations. Twilight's features softening, sobbing, choking, drowning Celestia, she fought, pressed and crushed herself into the mud, the grass never felt so painful. The body in the basin In the shallow sea-plane basin The flames went higher, golden tongues wrapping around her legs like a pair of lovers, the fire danced like death, shimmering the air, casting a heat, plumes, tears streamed down the white once pristine coat of an abandoned princess, leftovers. The ocean boiled, as the gold from the mountains trickled into the water, no outlet, no end. Twilight's body arched as the flames consumed her, face titling upwards, ribcage visible as the fur peeled away. Purple to black, a final prayer, a final benediction, a curse, the flash of the Glass Alembic, for a moment, light, returned reality. Face illuminated by the fire which curled along its brother the smoke like a veil, a crown and dress adorned her. Dressed her accordingly. Cheers from the town, cacophony of triumph, torches risen, a sea of torches, and their constructed effigy. No hope. Celestia fell, collapsed, no hope, again, no hope, the heat still scorched her face as she slumped in the dirt, stained the mountain, of the bloodstained coast, of Ostia. The town, revealed for all to see, the true face of evil, killed to keep the world turning. Throw her bones over the white cliffs of Ostia, and in the flames. Twilight disappeared. Into the sea, the sea of Equestria. Sleeping in the sunshine. Twilight lies down. And murder me... In Ostia. On the sacred ground of Golgotha, Celestia lays, body broken against the earth, the warmth had receded, flames sputtering, a furious dance to a languid crawl, embers flickered, dying orange specks that floated and vanished into the still air. Streaks of black and salt trailing down her cheeks. The townsfolk drifted away in silence, in grimace, but not even one glance backward, not a word, disdain which hung heavy, sunken. The world exhaled. The ocean below stilled, surface unerringly smooth, like a gray sheet that was drained of its hue, of movement, though it seemed to mourn what had passed. Everything stabilized. The rumbling ended, the pebbles stopped bouncing, the grass died, Celestia raised her head, throat raw, eyes hurting, the wood of the pyre groaned, smoldering still, blacked out, a sickening finality, as Twilight's charred corpse fell, disintegrating as the remnants crumbled away, sliding over the edge of the cliff into the abyss of the dull ocean. The ocean claimed her without a sound, no splash, no ripple, just a void where she had been, carved there and searing, eternal. The sun rose over the horizon, the sky cleared, the clouds parted ways, out of a view and then gone, the colors were wrong, too beautiful for the violence that had unfolded, honeyed, gentle, a golden glow against a scarred Equestria. Above in the sky a lone vulture circled the pyre, its great black wings beat down on the air slowly, falling, deliberately, its shadow punishing the hunched form of Celestia, it titled its head, such imperceptible acknowledgment of the ruin below, the sacrifice made. She sat unmoving, eyes locked on the horizon, Eskaton. As the faint sound of the fire crackled towards her side. The only constant reminder. Emptiness. Ruins. Left in the night. Under Luna's moonlight. Twilight, are you listening? Author's Note The First Five Minutes After Violent DeathCelestia crawled, her hooves trembling against the frozen ground, her fur ruined, coat devastated, a path of white feathers behind her. The dirt clung to her in strands, streaked with ash, blood, and the remnants of a world unraveling. She forced herself up, painfully with her legs shaking, every motion was a battle, against the exhaustion that had hollowed her out completely. Her breath came in shallow exhales, gasps, just one body, a million tear stained eyes, her ribs aching with every step as she staggered forward. There was nothing left. Nothing to lose. She reached the cliff’s edge, where the land broke off into nothingness. The wind, sharp and biting all night, stilled the moment she arrived. The air fell heavy, suffocating in its silence that basked her. Beneath her, the ocean stretched endlessly, its surface smooth, devoid of any motion, any flow, its waves frozen mid-motion, caught in a moment of suspension. Time has abandoned it, life has fled this place in the wake of these events. She stared downward, her eyes dry, her face numb. Her body numb and all that called to her was the abyss, not with a violence, a malice, not with anger or hatred, but with a quiet inevitability, a pull that could not be resisted, the unbreakable pull of fate. Her left hoof, shaking, caught her attention suddenly. She looked at it, the fur ripped against the dark earth, splayed. From the center of her hoof, golden ichor spilled out, a strange light bled out from an open wound on her body. A splinter from the pyre. She hadn’t felt it, hadn’t noticed it until now. The ichor shimmered faintly, catching the rays of the golden hue of the rising sun, pooling and dripping to the ground below. blood. It wasn’t hers. But it was in her. So she closed her eyes. And then she let go. The wind carried her, the absence of it, just the weight of her body which vanished into the air. She felt nothing as she fell, no rush, no fear, only the quiet, only the cold. The Wheel turned above the cliffs. Its dark surface was motionless for a moment, suspended in a mourning unseen before, and then it resumed its slow, gyration. There was no hum, no vibration, no roar of its previous presence. Only silence, heavy and vast. The land was still. The ocean remained frozen, its vast expanse empty. The mountains stood like sentinels, their peaks shrouded in gold from the sun that no longer warmed with anything left to devoid its energy too, it had died aswell. Life had ceased, not in violence but in surrender, as if the very world had given up. But. The Wheel remained. It spun slowly, what it gave off was an aching sadness which filled the air. Unexplained. Its motion was endless, purposeless, a relic left to mourn the echoes of a life that no longer was. There was no terror here, no chaos, no destruction. Only quiet. Only stillness. And somewhere, deep within that silence, a sorrowful cry let out so vast it could only belong to the last thing left turning. Alive I'm the only one left alive I'm the only one left alive I'm the only one left alive Alive I'm the only one left alive I'm the only one left alive I'm the only one left alive Author's Note Thank you, John Balance.
SlurRoaming land. Roaming sands. Roaming sons. As I watch the sun sink down On the blood-red edge of the blood-red town There are shadows for sale On the edge of town On the edge of the night Is a darkness seen From the side of the night And the wind blows round this sleeping town This sleeping town This crimson land of disgusted foes and humming vows And it seems to me that when I close my eyes All the lights in the world Go. Out. And the night passes by and you whisper to me A thousand lies I stare in surprise Towards the desert's warm black And the desert stirs And the desert stares back With a thousand eyes Piercing eyes Ancient eyes Author's Note
The AvatarsThe Avatar Electric. In the heart, in a windowless room, deep within the marrow of ancient stone, veined from the cracks of time, thick, heavy, smog, silk hung from the ceiling, cascading in concentric loops, slowly a sinuous movement which defied gravity, the fabric glistened as it spun in slow motion, the air was stirred. Sky Clad. A dance of neopaganism. Golden in the iris, silk spiraled downward, motion impossibly slow yet noticed, pattern change, a fall, a fault, without formality, just movements, normalcy raped, swaying of the silk, responding. Silhouettes melting into one. Making the blackness blacker. Bodies stilled. The sea rose in ecstasy, waves of which climbed impossibly high, like water in a bowl, hit, and the waves splashing upward, crests silvered by the pale moon in the black, cliffs silent, resistant, indifferent even as the ocean molested them, clawing, violent embrace against stone that yield nothing. And there was no sound, no roar of mighty waves, no howl of the wind, only a hum, a vibration that rippled deep and resonate, through the air, the wood, the stone and through the surface of blue. Growing wilder, the storm, the waves which rose higher, movements so frenetic, ecstatic, orgasmic, gavotte of chaos, defy nature, snow turned into rain, hard as hail, vanishing as it came, no standing around, swallowed by the ocean's maw, tendrils of light slithered, dodging the droplets at the speed of light, smoke, golden and soft, honey which fell dark upon the earth. Sprays of silver and white, oppressive and absolute the sound of nothing, unrelenting pressure of the Atlantic. Resume. Calm. Cold. Rise now. You and me against the world You and me against the world You and me against the world World about to end World about to end World about to eend Windblown Centrifugal Bestial Logical Amber rain is beautiful... Author's Note
LullIn a crumbling coastal town where the salt hung thick in the air and the waves gnawed relentlessly at the cliffs, the town leans as if weary, its stone and timber structure sagging under the weight, slouched towards the sea though ready to collapse into the churning grey below. The saltness thick, palpable sting in its presence, which clings to the coats of the townsfolk and the facade of cottages and jagged cobblestones with thin crystalline film. An earthly chilled wing, sharp and biting, which roams the narrow alleys in the misty distant and the great below which carries with it a mournful cry of gulls and the relentless roar of the waves against the base. The cliffs themselves loom vast and ancient, black stone streaked with veins of white from centuries of rain, like they were carved by the hands of forgotten mystics. They rise sheer and unyielding, edges ragged where the frost and the wind has worried them into scared jagged teeth. At their feet the sea writhes uncanny, dark, restless expanse flecked with powdery foam painted with slate, its surface a scar of unseen currents and the horizon an indistinct blur, a meeting of sky and water that seems both endless and impossibly close like it could fold in at any moment. Perched precariously at the edge, a lone lighthouse stands, its stone blackened with age and its beacon long extinguished. Inside, the walls hum with the sound of the sea, a gentle vibration perminates the chiseled stones. This cliff holds its stories in its teeth, and the town its own. But at the base before the oceans meet, their stories intertwine. Forming together, a cautionary tale, a stain, a sickly trickle, remembered out of spite, price of love, pain to pay, for a quick visitation, a reign of love that stank of thrown out toys. No festival of light, a moral mean majority. Nowhere New Jerusalem. Author's Note
Incorrigible WheelSalt-laden air heavy with an enchantment. Whispers of ships dashed against the rocks. The Wind carries them inland, a gentle slip through the cracks in the dirt. Wretched faces. A library stood like a forgotten hymn, half sunk into the earth, its facade had been weathered to a gray-green sheen by the brine and rain which bore a heavy wooden door carved with sigils now smoothed out and illegible by passing eyes. Few came here, fewer still with a purpose, those who entered did so as if compelled by the vague pull towards its darkened stacks, the faint smell of mildew and dusty parchment lingered like a ghost in the lungs. Inside, the library was a labyrinth of quiet shadows, rows of shelves sagging under the dense neglected tomes, the light filtered through high dust-furred windows, catching on the motes that floated in suspended animation as though a bubble of time had decided to pause right here, unwilling to commit to the world outside. The air carried a camp chill, which was thick with the decay of the words, that slow decomposition of knowledge and somewhere deep within was a faint scratching sound like of pen on paper, it was deliberate, rhythmic, the heartbeat of the place. Celestia sat at the long scarred desk near the back of the library, where the vaulted ceiling curved low. Her hooves were pale and deft, moved quickly over a sheaf of notes, a quill scratching arcane symbols with practiced precision. Her pink hair loose and fallen over her broad shoulders, her features were sharp and royal but they wore the quiet exhaustion of someone who had long rejected the weight of such titles. This was her sanctuary, her sabbatical, her secret. Daughter of a dying. king, heir to a throne she despised, shed had fled to this remote edge of the kingdom under the guise of scholarship, to escape those awful suffocating expectations at the court of fools. Her exile was a quiet defiance of the royal family who had branded her ungrateful, unworthy because what princess, hid herself hide herself away among forgotten texts and dust? But here, Celestia could breathe. Here among the deteriorating spines of books on alchemy and esoterica, she was able to lose herself in questions older and deeper then her own lineage. The dissolution of matter, the transmutation of the soul, the forbidden hidden in the margins of the world. She heard the door creak open but didn't look up, few entered and rarely lingered, but this time, the hoofsteps did not wander aimlessly. They had moved with a purpose, a soft padding that passed just before her desk, Celestia glanced up. The mare standing before her was slight, her dark purple hair with a pink strip in the middle, her eyes sharp and glittering with curiosity, a cloak behind her tied at the neck which made her mysterious, she held a book to her chest, its cover was faded and cracked. "You're the archivist" the mare said. Her voice low but steady as if speaking too loudly might disturb the silence that clung to the place. "I am" Celestia replied, studying her. "And you are?" A stillness. "Twilight." The name settled in the air between them, simple and unadorned. "I saw the sigils on the entrance, hard to make out but I saw them, I believe you have what I'm looking for you." Celestia raised an eyebrow, setting her quill down. "And what is that?" Twilight's lips curved into the barest hint of a smile. "Secrets." She slid the book across the desk, her hoof lingering on its cover. "And how to unlock them." The book was old, older than most in the library, its binding was held together by what seemed like sheer will. Celestia brushed a hoof across the leather, her heart quickening, a shiver through her body, she recognized the sigil on its spine. A symbol from her own studies, a mark of alchemical transformation. "You've read this?" she asked, her voice betraying a hint of curiosity in its tone. "Enough to know I need more," Twilight said, her gaze unwavering. "Enough to know that you can help" Celestia hesitated. She had spent nearly a year guarding this place, her refuge, keeping the demands of the world at bay. But there was something in Twilight's eyes. Those eyes, sparkling. A reflection. A hunger. "The library is rarely visited," Celestia said finally, gesturing to the empty stacks around them. "You must have traveled far." Twilight shrugged, her smile sharpening. "I go where the books are." For the first time since she came here, Celestia felt the stillness of the library shift, disturbance, the air around her crackling faintly with possibility. She opened the book and began to read. Look into its eyes It will look into your eyes Author's Note
Seventh SealLeaves lay open on the desk, the bark crackling like old sinew. Thin and bruised with the weight of ink, inky, sickly, river flowing into whorls, the markings that breathed in dim light. Hoof hovered over casting a shadow on the parchment, afraid, to touch for to long, disturb the trickling heave. As the stones could leach into the fur, sticky and unkempt, woven together, leave imprints that could never wash away in the golden river. Stark and bold, a demand rather than an invitation. Beneath it, diagrams sketched with a maddening precision, the dust in a circle inside circles, angles intersecting in ways that suggested impossible geometrics. Mercury. The base distillate, distill. The purple one murmurs. Her voice a whisper of wind through cathedral hell. Same purple hooves trace a line of text, letters crawling down in a spiral, beneath her touch those words did not still still, agitated from her touch. Shimmering. Reshaping themselves, making way, meaning fracturing into refrains. Tumbled like stones, hollow. Uneven. A breath warm against the page, ink it swelled, pulse. pulse. pulse. Elixir. Self dissolvation. Dismember. Text blurred in a gaze. This act of reading was an intrusion. The page refused that kind of comprehension. It hissed, it could not place. A line leapt from the page, glint of steel. Colorless. Fabulous. Blurred. The Seventh Seal has been opened. Something deep. Twisted, a struggle for a moment, it reached down a struck a chord strung between the ribs. She heard the sea outside, so far away but insistent, its roar rising. Falling. Echo chambers. Cryptic rhythm. Plagued text. Another diagram. Next. Figure. Fragmented. Head severed. Torso opened. Inside rendered in exquisite. Agonizing detail. Those organs, not right, shimmering, morphing, reshaping. Staring. The heart, firstly red and fleshly, secondly crystalline, edges sharp and glittering. Lungs turned to coiled serpents, an ouroboric loop swallowing itself. Alembic body. Furnace. Smudged, faltered scribe. Unspool. Union of opposites. Alchemical wedding. Chasing endlessly for. Tremulous. Triangle. Pierce. Corner. Cost of names. Thread and ash. Will you pay. Question mark. Shadows defied the angles of the library. Somewhere distant. The sound of a Church-bell chimes. Voices. Shrill and indistinct. Rose and fell. "Do you feel it?" "What?" Set in motion. Fate. "The book, its asking us" A maw opened up. Reforming, shifting tides. On the leaves. And I ask my lovers, "Do you know Where the desert roses bloom and grow?" And I ask my lovers, "Do you know Where the desert roses bloom and grow?" And I ask my lovers, "Do you know Where the desert roses bloom and grow?" Author's Note
The Lost River"Im gonna down myself..." Lost River. Black and deep as night, winding beneath the town like a thought too dangerous to be spoken. The inevitable curse. Not water. Not entirely. What spilled was different. Not salt, not fresh. In between. A memory of rivers never formed. Lifeless flow. Where the drowned not to rest but dissolve. Inside. Apart. One. Inland. In the hills that crumbled to the cold green slopes. Slipping. Jagged disdain. For the tide to come. Ran under the cottages. Threading. Beneath cobblestones and the sagging buildings. Beneath the church and the library, a secret vain pumping its pulse into the heart. But no lifeline. Taking things, sounds that followed, shadows thats should follow, a lingering in unwantdness. Unraveled before the finisher. "A river without light." Her voice thin against the library's silence. She felt the words, their syllables cold and heavy. Pressing against her chest like a weight of a dream constructed too thick to wake from. Celestia sat across from her, hooves folded. Her gaze sharp but distant, like she wasn't seeing the library anymore but beyond, beneath it. "Do you think it's real?" Celestia asked, Twilight hesitated, the words in the book resonated, as though they weren't being read but somehow remembered. Manifested. "It doesn't matter if its real" Twilight said, her voice trembling against the air, jaw shaking. "It matters that it's there" I walk down to the rain. Her hoof went to the page, brushing the edge. Labyrinth. Spiraling. Fate and soul. Fused. No incantation to speak. Words bled. Blue. One word breaking into two, two words breaking into none. The unseen. Current tugging at the bones. A pull. Tension sat there and witnessed the winter days finish their short-spanned lives. Pallid. One by one. A russet fog that creeps up the river, when the sky hangs thick on summer nights, thick with stifled color. And stars shine small and shyly. I think I like it best on these summer nights. Flicker golden and oily under the regiment. In the wan, lingering light of winter afternoon, the town stands deserted, sluggishly drowsing, so it seems. In spacious and distant muffled grayness, unclean yellow, amid the heavy ugly patches of dank and rotting bracken. A little mare picked her way noiselessly in the clasp. Vague listless rhythm of the creaking saddle. White ethereal glow. Yellow at a glance. Poof. Shroud of ghostly mist enveloped the earth, up from that vaporous distance crept slowly the evening darkness, sullen glow throbbing overhead. Golden will-o'-the-wisps are threading their shadowy ribbons above the golden trees. Distant rumor of a feverish nightmare waits in the still air of the crowd huddled together. Shame the dingy stars. across the east and west of the estorteric flares of a sky-sign, a gaudy arabesque feign. All air draped in the mysterious sumptuous splendor of a murky Equestrian night. Im gonna down myself in the lost river of Equestria. I am gonna drown myself in the lost river of Equestria. Author's Note
Ornate Voice"Tell Me." "How did you find this place?" Celestia asks, words slipping before she could properly catch them. Twilight looked at her then, truly looked at her, her head titled just slightly, as if Celestia herself wreathe puzzle to be solved. She leaned back, her hooves crossed, the faintest curve of a small brushed her lips, though it wasn't a smile at all, not really. "I suppose you could say I dreamed it," she said finally, her words were slow and deliberate. "A dream?" Celestia asked, glancing up. "Yes. Or an epiphany. A prophecy, maybe." Twilights hooves opened in a shrug. "Does it matter what I call it? I just woke up one morning, and I knew I had to leave. No explanation, no reason I just experienced a pull, like gravity or hunger. Like something had called me by a name I'd long forgotten I had" Celestia passed, her quill hovering above the desk with the faint glow of her magic aura around it. Something cold stirred in her chest, not quite a fear but its quieter cousin. "A pull", she repeated. Twilight nodded, her gaze fixed on something past Celestia's shoulder, as though the library's shadows held answers she couldn't see. "I left my town, my school, everything. Told them I was taking a sabbatical, thought I didn't know where I was going, I... I still don't, really" She let out a soft laugh, bitter and faint. "But I found this place, didn't I?" A pause. "A sabbatical," Celestia said her voice was sharp and sudden, and the quill fell from the air, its tip snapping against the wood as the magic ceased. "I'm on a sabbatical too." Twilight blinked, surprised. "You?" "Yes?" Celestia's hooves moved to gather the book before her, as thought grounding herself. Her voice softened, but the words came much faster now. "Or at least, thats what I've told myself. A sabbatical from my family, my title, the weight of it all. They think I'm-" She stopped, pressed her lips together, her gaze dropping towards the table. "It doesn't matter what they think. I just couldn't stay. I couldn't breathe there." Twilight leaned forward, her curiosity sharpening. "Your family? Your title?" Celestia met her gaze then, something defiant and raw flashing across her features. "I am Princess Celestia. The second daughter of the royal house of Canterlot. The one they whisper about in court. The disappointment. The exile. The one who abandoned her throne to sit here, among the dust and ink, chasing ghosts and shadows." Her voice wavered, though not with shame, more akin to anger, or relief. Twilight didn't flinch. "Royalty." She said the word plainly, as thought it had no weight at all, no kind of reverence. And her smile returned, small and pointed. "And what does a royal daughter do in a place such as this?" "The same thing that you do" Celestia replied. She gestured toward the book, the room, the world of paper dipped in silence around them. "Looking for something I cannot name, something older than crowns and sounds, older than any childish kingdom. Something real." Twilight sat back, her smile softening but her eyes not leaving Celestia's. "Then maybe we found the same dream," she said. Stop. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The air between them thickened, the silence was not heavy but now charged, like the space between lighting and thunder. Above them, the rafters creaked, the sound was like breathing, like the weight of their words had woken something long in suspended animation. "We didn't find this place" Her voice low. "It brought us here." In the dream I am crawling around on my hooves and knees, smoothing out the prairie. All the dents and the gouges and the winds dying down. I lower my head, press my ear to the prairie.
Mount of OlivesA kiss, wet, muzzle, a clouded eye. The library became their world, and the world became the pages they read from. Words no longer sat still, they would spill out, spread thin like ink in water, splurge. Soaking into the air between them. Twilight would arrive in the morning from her temporary housing in the town's empty saloon. Her mane damp with salt, breath cold and clouds form from her mouthed exhales. And Celestia would already be waiting, a stack of books before her, spines cracked, as the cliffs. They read aloud at first, the sound of their voices wrapping through the aisles of the shelves like a weaving sown, each phrase looped and bonded into the other. Celestia's voice was steady, measured, the cadence of the accustomed to command but softened by the exile. And Twilight was quick, restless, her words skipping ahead like they couldn't bear to be contained. They would pause to argue over a line, a meaning in it. Twilight was always certain that she saw the heart of the thing. But Celestia, insisting there was much more beneath the surface, something that Twilight was missing in her venture. Ethereal salt, hermetically sealed up. A wideness opening and closing To keep the darkness sealed within Has absence ever sounded so eloquent. Little mare. "You're too quick," Celestis said one day, her tone edged with amusement as she pointed to a diagram of interlocking circles, their centers marked with glyphs that defied translation. "Alchemy doesn't reveal itself to the impatient Twilight" Twilight scoffed, leaning over the table, the very tip of her hoof tracing the curves of the symbols, heir mane falling loose on the parchment. "And you're... too slow," she countered. "If you wait too long then the answer will pay by, and you'll never catch it." Their laughter echoed softly in the vast silence of the library, a sound that felt out of place and yet entirely right, like a light streaming through a crack in a wall, everything in its right place. In the evenings, when the cold crept in and the oil lamps cast flickering halos, they would stop reading and start speaking. Twilight would press her hooves to the desk, imagining it passing right through the wood, her voice low and alive with wonder as she would describe what she had glimpsed in her sleep, that river, winding through the dark underground cave to the salty waves in the opening. Her reflection cast cross it, then dissolving. One. As the grossness of spring lolls its head against the window, there's a song in the air. Splendor of gold in the desert, pale meadows of stranded pyramids. Paralysed street, dipping into the street. Puddle beneath the cork. I love you too with all my heart and soul. Celestia listened, her chin resting on her hoof, her gaze warm and steady. the star[mess pf her royal phenotype softened in the glow of the lamplight. And when they grew quiet as they often did, they would read again but not the words in the books. They would read each other. The sparkle of Twilight's eyes as she studied Celestia's hooves, their pale elegance, the way they lingered, as if reluctant to turn the page. The tilt of Celestia's head as she watched Twilight, the way her smile grew faint but real with emotion, like a secret she couldn't keep hidden. One night, Twilight found a book tucked away in the farthest corner of the library, its cover worn rough, the ink on the pages turned the color of dried blood. She brought it to Celestia, sitting it down with a quiet reference, and they opened it together. The text was dense, spiraling, language fractured into shards of meaning, but Celestia deciphered it with the patience of a sculptor chipping away at stone. Twilight watched her, her gaze flickering between the words and the mare reading them, the curve of her lips as she spoke, the faint furrow of the brow as she wrestled the verse. "You love this," Twilight said suddenly. Celestia looked up with a surprised reaction. "What?" "This. The search." Celestia smiled then, a small, private smile. "Yes," she said simply, and then softer. "And I think I love that you do too," They didn't touch, not yet, but the space was thinner, lighter, the air itself was leaning in, drawing the magnets closer. The books hummed, a shifting of blurs imperceptibly out of line, rearranging of the silent. Inanimate. Voices intimate. Words. Movements. The cadence. Library held them. Books their witness. Boundary between teacher and apprentice. Reader and listener. Dissolve. One. Only the river, winding. Hail the rain. One by one. Are you with me or not? I don't know.
TarAAre you shivering? Are you cold? At the cliffs edge, where the brittle bones of the land jutted skywards like the ribs of a leviathan, the ocean was gone. A long time has passed. The great expanse of water that had once swallowed this horizon had raced, dried up, leaving behind a basin salt-crusted stones, its surface was cracked and glimmering faintly, snow had been eating away at it, piled up around it. Glistening. The pale light of the sun just barely able to pierce through a hail of white, the air burned cold, cold that buried itself deep in the marrow, and the snow fell relentless, sharp as glass, spectral white against the grayness and blackness of this frozen land. And there, suspended above the suffocating white of the basin, was The Wheel. It was a blackness so complete, an absence rather than a defining force, a void carved from the fabric of being. Perfect circular, hovering motionless, yet at its edges it twisted imperceptibly, an eternal gyration that was a thought you couldn't hold onto. Seeming to drink all light around it, a hole in existence, bending the snowflakes that dared to fall just in reach of its gravitational pull, the faint curvature of the mass it reflected. The air near it was alive, colorful-uncolour, trembling with a low hum that resonated from The Wheel. Not sound in the ordinary sense, a vibration, a shivering through skin and stone, an undercurrent which gnawed at the sense, uneasy, unfiltered. It vibrated deeper than hearing, deeper than thought, something which was primordial, which resonated at the threshold of actuality. Pulse of an ancient drum. Came whooshing. Cutting through wind. Slicing silence with ease. Erratic. Violent. Exhalation. Impossible living. Flakes swirled so violent like a wheel, drawn to the center but never touching. The edges dissolving, lines and shapes of the blurry formations in the distant bending into impossible geometry, reality folding in on itself. Fracture. Moments breaking apart. Folding over and over. Collapsing forever. Pebbles crumbling into the desiccated basin. Revolving wheel. Motion and stillness at once. Barren expanse. Shivering in the cold. The Wheel stared, with no eyes, no face, no form, only its hum. Silent. Cold. Scared. Silver lands. Inescapable. Author's Note
PenetraliaMotes of dust sired in the beams of light that slanted through the round attic window, golden spears which pierced the grey abode, the air up here was warmer, closer, scented thick of old paper and wood. A breath held too long. Shapes that bended with the slant of the sun. Golden morning shine. Waiting. A resting place for the discarded copies that weighed it down with a sag. Twilight loved it here, not just for the books, but for the quiet, the way the air was of a space none cared to disturb and because Celestia came here, her presence the filling the room needed. Faint scent of salt and tinsy flakes of snow that clung to her long pink mane. They sat in the center, a scattering of books opened between them, pages worn dry and yellow. A tome of spells which claimed nothing new, nothing real. Purple hoof brushing, gaze flickering upwards. Caught by way of light which played across the face of Celestia. Sharpest of lines that were softened by the shadows, heir mane clutched and catches by the sun in threads of pale fire. "Why do you come here?" Twilight asked, her voice breaking the silence. Celestia glanced up, her eyes narrowing slightly, as if the question was a test. "Why do you?" Pause. "I asked you first," Twilight said, leaning forward. Celestia's lips quirked, a hint of a smile appearing. "Because it's even quieter then down there, and the books don't ask for anything." Twilight titled her head, studying her. "And I don't ask for anything?" Slip. Celestia didn't answer right away. Her hoof moved absently, tracing a faint line in the dust that had settled and built on the floorboards. The light shifted as a cloud passed outside, dimming the room, and so when she spoke again, her voice was more hesitant, quiet. "Not yet." Twilight laughed softly, the sound sharp and unexpected, and Celestia's gaze snapped to her, a bit startled. "What's funny?" "You," Twilight said, shaking her head. "You make everything sound so serious. It's like the world's going to crack open if you say the wrong thing." Pause. Warp. "Maybe it will," Celestia said, and there was something in her tone, her eyes remained steady. The Wheel. Twilight's smile faded slightly, replaced by a softness, which lingered, distant, a piece of the sky floated in, fractures of the back of her feature etched in gold and shadow, thrwated of course by the blocking of Twilight meant for Celestia. Twilight leaned forward, slow and deliberate, Celestia didn't move, didn't breathe, her gaze locked on Twilight's. Following of the eyes. Gifted motion. And then Twilight's hoof reached out, and pressed against Celestia's cheek, a touch so light like it had been imagined. "Celestia." Thread pulled taut. Ready to snap. All at once. Shattered the stillness. Twilight closed the space and her lips found Celestia's with force. Abrupt. Inevitable. Collision. Breath and warmth. Tasted of salt and ink. Smell of snow, frozen. Blur of fragments. Mingling. Celestia moved. Hooves reaching to pull her closer. Reduced to this. Kiss. Not gentle. Searching, desperate. Turning of a wheel, pull of a river, opening of a door. The air hummed. When they broke, they were inches apart. Still mingling in the space between them. Raw and trembling. Celestia lunged for more, wrapping hooves around Twilight's neck and forcing her gently down onto a stack of opened books that sprawled on the floor. Moans. Stealing exhales. Inhaling. Tongue. Her cunt gripped her like a warm friendly hoof. A chilling exploration of erotic consumption. With a hoof across the torso Face on the pages With a hoof across the torso Face on the yellowed parchments Charging in Are charging in Charging into fields of white roses Charging So paint me With a halo Etched out The flesh, the image, the reflection Those who dwell in scarlet darkness Frenzy Vivid Blind and hypnotizing Ulcer Sacred crimson rose Bathed in fragrance Verdigris Ochre, amber, mauve Over the snows To nowhere
SefirotUnwritten on the walls of the void, cometh ten spheres in disarray, not sequence, not perfection, but a scattering, these broken vessels trembled in the honey hollows of a world that dreamed itself awake. Attic. Lines of Keter and Malkuth blurred, burned. Tiferet pulsed and Da'at was nothing. Nothing at all. Swell of a lost tide, spoken. "Not a bridge, its a falling." Falling into the cliffs where the Zebras once lived, their stripes fading into the walls of the Yaodong. Ancient hoofprints pressed deep into this brittle earthern mass. Fossilized. Spiral. Inward towards The Wheel. Before the hum, before time twisted and the snow fell, they were there. Keter was the light above the cave. Pinprick. Dome of the star which refused to extinguish. Striped bodies moved below, hooves kicking up the dust of Yesod. The foundation which crumbled beneath their feather. Nameless. Cave dwellers of the breath which steamed in the air, sizzling. Cliff's edge they rest. Snuff out. Binah and Chokhmah clashed on the walls, chalk frisked. Splintered the bones, fractal, looping nonsensical till realized. In a dream. Memory. The Wheel was there too. Black wound pulsing above the rocks. Shaking the markings loose. Presence like leaves. "The Zebras... they knew." Whispered. Cracked. Pulled from the library. Falling into the Sefirot. The impossibility of the striped beasts carving the first revelations of The Tar. Chesed. For survival, but Gevurah was the bite. Clash. Teeth. Ripped. Nashed. Demanded for blood when the snow grew deep and food went scarce. Balance of Tiferet. Fleeting yet. Glow of Keter dimmed like a bulb when fried. The Zebras closer now. Drawn in the dirt by the smallest of them. It points a hoof, round and round. Stalactites fell loose and the hum shooketh. Dagger. Netzach, history in victory was survival. For the oceans to return. And Yesod, the foundation, was the bones left. Fill the snow, until it only hummed. Echo through the Yaodong, into the honey hollows it marched. Malkuth is here now, the kingdom crumbling, Listen. Twilight opened her eyes, breath catching in throat, a kiss begotten. Rays of the fractured light, pierce the metal of the window, chipping away. "Do you feel it?" Hoofbeats on stone. "Yes" "I feel it" White. Blinding, unending. Roarless silence, absolute, totalism in silence. Emanation. The corner of every nerve, every thought. Whiteness, not color, but the absence of everything expect itself. Gasp. Ghostly vestige, image, thin as light filtered in frost, the hooves of Twilight, hooves of Celestia, the body of them, transparent. Eyes burned, lids squeezed shut against the glare, in folds the clock came, a line, back and forth, shell of perception. The cliffs edge appeared once more, the edge of the earth, their hooves rested in the air, no sensation was known, but there was ground, invisible, intangible, solidified and held them afloat. Frozen lacework, the crystal flakes didn't melt, they clung in constellations in nearly transparent forms of freeze. Veins pulsed. Only to vanish. The snow on the ground was thin, clinging, a mess of white on unnatural grey. To the sea she stared, where the sea had stood. Gone in a blink. Rocky basin stretching beyond reason, the sky a vast indifference of shifting gradients. Gray, white, Nihility. Color. For a moment. Returner. Cold flush of blues, the jagged green of the faraway moss, the raw reds of their lips chapped from the wind peeling flakes for a nanosecond, the copper glow of Twilight's mane, sudden, the mathematical beam of light, everything swelled, a rumbling, expanded outward and downward, the cliffs turned to mountains as the ground pulled from each other in a stretch that defied comprehension. And then white again. The Wheel, a smudge on the horizon, wound in the whiteness, pierced by the blade, bled light too bright, a hum turned to silence that still buzzed behind their eyelids, pulling focus. Unbearable. Fathom. Upwards, eyes locked. Above them, a tree that wasn't a tree, sprawling out vastly upon the open, branches not woods but pathways, emanations, spheres connected by threads that hovered. Diagram. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life hangs in the gallows. Life hung. Away. Flicker, symmetry. Names hooked. All felt wrong, sharp and double edged, unclean, a tightening at the chest. Where The Wheel had been, a new form now hovered, close, distant, a sarcophagus, black and gold adorned, surface etched with the rays of light, faint flames that did not move and did not turn the surface black as gold. Rotated in a movement too smooth, through the invisibility. Shin. The sarcophagus replaced, in its place. The Kaaba. Black and monolithic, heavy yet suspended so thoroughly, at the seams it cracked, the perfect cube couldn't sustain itself here, pitched, felt in the marrow, the thimble rolls. A purple hoof clutched the white hoof. "Something's wrong." Quavered. Grip tightened. Frightened. Anchor. Unplaceable, the white eternal. Unfamiliar, faintly screeching, screaming, the holy trinity. "We shouldn't be here" Author's Note
The Hellenistic DeceiverCelestia'Mathematical'Angelic'Axiomatic'Source of Radiance'Infinite convergence of light and wisdom'Alpha and Omega kingdom come'line of all sequences of logic and where reason converge'being of transfinite cardinality'essence stretching beyond finite integers of the mortal comprehension'The puny' whirlwind'Higher-dimensional geometry unfolding of presence'form not bound by the Euclidean constraints'but factually invite'self-similarization among the planes of existence'wings of infinite surfaces'tessellated with golden ratios'shimmering and glimmering in iridescence in calculus curves of vision'each feather a singularity 'contains a universe within its vanishing peak'the edges of her being as hyperbolic arcs'curving endlessly in divine eternity'tpology folds space and time witchever way'pink mane of Riemmanian manifold'undulating in spectral hues'shifting through a continuum of wavelengths'perpetual energy field calculating endlessness in a vector space of light'curling'uncurling'precision of Fourier transformers'containing every frequency of creation'equinism rising' eyes invariant under the symmetry, gaze upon the cosmos of the burning of light of unobservable inanities'a glowness illuminating the patterns'voice of cosmic strings'reverberating'collapsing probabilities'opera composed of prime numbers'perfect'indivisble'resonating'she is the axis mundi'knowledge'felt as a unifying field equation'tying the threads of chaos and order'entropy'tcreate'aura the Shekinah'luminous presence'the crown of Keter'ineffable'rings upon rings upon rings upon rings'toridal flows of pure energy'spinning'burns like the Planck epoch'hooves that consecrate'sacred space of marks'a geodesic line of the steps across a curved fabric of ultimate'o behold'confront the unresolvable paradox containad in finite tension'every angle and every curve'proof of the divine equation'energy = light to the Celestial power' Author's Note
The Yoni StaircaseOne step Two step Three step Four step Measure the extent of a Dizzying descent Down the Yoni Staircase Alcove, hidden between the towering shelves, a space, a ledge, carved wide enough for two bodies to rest, to lean, to collapse into one another. The wood, held its breath, watching, waiting, shaking with anticipation. A moan, Celestia pressed her hoof down below, towards the Yoni Staircase her hoof moved, with Twilight below her, mouth agape and eyes closed, foreheads touched, breaths mingling, each exhalation stealing the other, leaving them light-headed, trembling, heart racing, Celestia's hooves found Twilight's waist, tentative at first, then firmer, pulling her closer until the space between them was gone, until their bodies pressed together and their mouthes into one, perfect. Their movements slow, exploratory, hooves tracing paths along the multicolored fur that touched between them, mapping the contours of each other with the reverence of cartographers. But the slowness gave way to something hotter, an urgency that burned, which demanded a fast release. Celestia's lips found Twilight's, a glob of spit as she dominated the submissive, licking and deepening, hot, quickening into gasps. Celestia shifted, her thighs pressing against Twilight's, her body arching into her, her ass moving with a rhythm that was instinctual, awakening a deep familiar want to mate, her hips rolling, pressing, grinding, sending shockwaves through them, nerves alight, bodies alive, only heat, as Twilight's hooves found Celestia's thighs, grazing her hooves upwards, and holding onto her buttocks, pulling closer, through the fur their skin touched, motion, friction. Sweat beaded on their messy manes and fur, glistening in the light that filtered through which casted down and made them glow high windows, the heat grew from the entrance of the suns warmth, radiating outward, together in perfect sync, each thrust, each roll, a visitation in the hay, each press drawing them closer, deeper, until there was only them, their bodies, their breaths, their gasps, their moans. Pure delight, ecstasy sprung. Celestia moved her hoof, to the entrance of the Yoni Staircase and plunged her hoof inside, forcing her cunt open, as she dipped it in, Twilight's eyes rolled upward, catching glimpses in the shadows of the eyelids of light spilling inward, the blurring of shapes, in this unity. Their movements grew faster, more desperate, their breaths turning to pants, steam rising so faintly from this cocoon of warmth, of fire, Celestia moaned, her hoof exploring her cavity as its walls clamped down on it, bracing her hoof, coating it in a musk so thick, a scent of honey. The pleasure was sharper, bordered on pain, pain that fed the fire, shuddering, melting, scent of sweat, a faint haze, bodies entwined, limbs tangled, cobwebs, only this. Only me. Put just one hoof On the staircase A tick, tick, tock. Where are you? Are you hiding from me? Are you still looking for things that no-pony else can see? Where are you? Are you in some place that we cannot reach? Are you bathing in moonlight or drowned on the beach? Where are you? Each of us lies bleeding Our rivers intermingling I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage I'll wrap my last kiss in a bandage
Shawl for he'b, no bye the bye, in the Masoretic Text Plops Bougie ja da king jing jing jing muffled by-With Proof the Princess Fucked Lisping in Greasy Creeks, Da da da, da da da, Altair, Vega, Deneb, Psst, psst(psst)psst, I’m a Pleione DwarfA Stallion wakes, jerking upright, his chest heaving as he coughs, the night thick and choking around him. The bed trembles beneath him, not violently but steadily, an exhale, an inhale, a low hum threading through the air. He retches, and rubs his eyes as he glances at the glass of water on the nightstand ripples, faint concentric rings in its stillness, moonlight leaks through the curtain, the glass of water cold and a droplet races down with another. He sits, rubbing his temples and shaking his head to battle away the drowsiness of sleep, muttering curses under his breath, his hoof brushing his coarse hair, as the vibration grows deeper, a pulse now, rhythmic, alive, coming from somewhere outside the bedroom walls. The wooden boards creak under his hooves as he rises, pulling on his boots, grabbing his coat, his breath fogging upwards, like dim rising ever fast out his mouth as he moves through the house, the cool night air pressing against his fur. The walls of the house are humming, faintly shaking, as though the structure was resisting some unseen force beyond. In the silence, a noise emerges, not a sound but a sensation, a deep, resonant thrum that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, its origin unclear but its presence undeniably there. He steps outside, the chill biting at his face, the moon high and pale, the world cast in a muted silver of the thickness of twilight glow. The ladder leans against the shed, where it always is, its wood weathered but sturdy, the same ladder he’s used for a hundred tasks, a hundred ordinary days. But this night was not ordinary in the slightest. His gaze drifts toward the library, that dark monolith with its backdrop, the cliffs, its silhouette sharp against the sky, like a bubble, its windows faintly glowing with a golden light. His boots crunched softly against the frost-dusted ground of frozen leaves half buried in mud, his breath shallow and quick. He reaches the library, the ladder under his hoof, trembling, not from cold, but from something buried, something nameless crawls which under his fur, like an ant racing across skin, burrowing into a speck, unease. He places the ladder against the stone brick for support, the wood settling into the frozen dirt and mud staining the blackened bottom, its top resting against the ledge of a high window. Slowly, cautiously, he climbs, with an ashen flavor in his mouth, the wood creaking harshly beneath his weight, his breath catching in his throat as he nears heaven. And then he sees. The alcove, glowing, golden light spilling over rows of books, over the ancient wood and stone. And in the center of it all, them. Celestia and Twilight, bodies entwined, their lips meet, their hooves move, their bodies press together with an intimacy that is unbearable, a unity that feels too pure, too complete, too alive. He freezes, his breath caught in his throat, his heart pounding in his chest. His mind rebels against the sight, against the heat, the closeness, the tenderness, against the sheer rightness of it all. Disgust churns in his stomach, rising like a wretched blackest bile, hooves tightening around the rung of the ladder as his body trembles, the later shakes, as he shakes, from rage, from hatred. He climbs down, his descent uneasy and jerky, the ladder creaking loudly. His boots hit the ground, and he turns, walking quickly, his breaths short and shallow, his hooves, the bones clenched with fury. He rouses the others, knocking on doors, his voice loud and urgent. He tells them what he saw, what he has witnessed, his voice trembling with an outrage, his descriptions vivid and graphic, sexual and grotesque, painting the scene with words that burn and sting, words that ignite the anger of the crowd who listens. The townsfolk gather now, their faces pale in the moonlight, their eyes wide with shock and fury. Pitchforks, torches and all, the hum grows louder, deeper, the ground beneath them rumbles with every step, through the air and through their bones. White as snow. The mountains loom in the distance, their peaks sharp to cut the dark sky in half, and as the townsfolk murmur and mutter and curse, the cliffs seem to shift, their jagged edges trembling, their forms bending, warping, moving as though alive. And above it all, The Wheel turns. The hum grows louder still, the great awakening, revelations, the vibrations turn violent, as the townsfolk gather their torches, voices rising with heated anger spilling from their holes, feeding the storm that brews just above the sharpest cliffs, which groan, cock and twist, their stones grinding against one another like an earthquake rips through the core, the ground townsfolk gouge upon shifting, as though the land itself is responding to their fury. The ocean rises in the distance, waves crashing against the rocks with a force that twirl the water upward in a slow movement, slowing down, united by hatred, united by fear. The Wheel turns faster, its hum now a roar, it's gyration a blur, dancing with a waltz its presence a shadow that looms over the cliffs, over the library, over the world the shadow advances, grows like a tumor. The air thickens, the golden light fades rapidly, blot out by the clouds, hail of arrow, the dark creeps in, heavy and suffocating, as the townsfolk begin their march, their torches burning, their voices rising, their anger spilling into the night like fire, like blood, like the beginning of the end. Discrimination
KellipotBurn. Burn. Ignite. I have a terrible fear of heights. Through the haze of sleep, Twilight stirred, her breath catching on the faint acrid taste of smoke had filed its way into the room. Eyes fluttering, then opening, the dim glow of pre-dawn light creeping in through the slats of the high window, her chest tight. Vibration, a thrumming of strings a pulse in the walls, the air, her own fur which stood up. She sat up sharply, her hoof brushing against Celestia's sleeping form, still warm, still lost in the deepest hour of dreams. The scent was harsh and stinging her nostrils. Twilight's eyes darted to the faint orange glow spilling under the door. Her pulse quickened, she shook Celestia’s shoulder and whispered her name, an urgency laced into every syllable of plurals. “Celestia. Wake up. Smoke, there’s a fire.” A groan, flutter of the lashes, Celestia’s eyes meeting hers, wide and bleary, confusion giving way to alarm as the reality of the situation sunk in within seconds. Together, they scrambled quickly, the alcove spinning around them in the dim light, all around them were silent witnesses. A howl and a roar, wind screaming through cracks in the library, the audible hum of The Wheel, vibrating at the center of their bones. And beyond it, the voices of anger, shouting, indistinct words carried on the wind, just outside the walls. Kellipot rising. Twilight moved first, her heart pounding, her hooves fumbling at the latch of a high window, her horn glowed and she used her magic to force it open, the coldness of the air rushed in, biting at her, the metallic tang of soil and stone bathed in flames carried upwards, fire licking at the door in a sensual exploration. The townsfolk gathered beyond, their torches bobbing like naga fireballs, their faces pale and twisted, their eyes wild with fear, with hate, with something Twilight didn't want to name and felt deep in her gut, a familiar hatred which brewed in all corners of the world. “We have to go,” Twilight said, her voice cracking, her magic around the window frame, her eyes scanning the ground below. It wasn’t far, a leap would do, a chance at escape. Celestia nodded, her face resolute with a hint of fear sheltered underneath, her hooves finding Twilight’s, squeezing. Together, they climbed, their bodies pressed against the stone and wood alike, the cold seeping into their fur and leaving it damp and sticky, their breaths shallow, quick, visible in the air as a mist. Twilight slipped through the exit first, a hoof finding purchase on the narrow ledge of the side, her horn glowed which left her dangling as she looked back to Celestia, eyes meeting as she reaching a hoof out, brushing against the white hoof, urgent. “Come on. Quickly.” And then, a hoof. Stallion. It came from nowhere, fast and calloused, grabbing Twilight’s hoof, yanking her back with force that knocked the air from her lungs. She gasped, her body heaving, she slipped and the world spun as she was pulled down, down, down. Gasp. She hit the ground hard, coughing and spitting, ears filled by a loud piercing noise, vision blurred and the voices rose around herm shouting, screaming and condemning her. Hooves at her, her shoulders, her legs, pulling her up to the sky. "Seducer!" “Twilight!” Panicked. But the hooves were too many, the grip too tight. Twilight struggled without hope, her voice rising in desperation, in fear. the stones shifting in the gravel path, the pebbles breaking apart like a puzzle, the earth itself groaning under the weight of something vast, and above, the mountains loomed and rose, long and menacing as they fell apart, yet rose, by the ground, as it ascended. The ocean churned once more, forever crashing against the cliff in a loop, one more roar to the count. Thrashing. No use. Above, Celestia disappeared from the window, rapid hoofsteps ran as Twilight was dragged across the ground, screaming, crying out for help. The fire consumed the entrance, the smoke rising as the library receded into the distance, pale light od dawn, a window crashes. Above, The Wheel turned. One day, you know, you're gonna fall, or I'm gonna fall, or something's gonna happen... Author's Note
GolgothaCardoon, Curare, Fermented Kumis Sea of hooves, no longer needed an ocean to thrive, rough and coarse, twisting of flesh, cloth to dirt, dirt to nothing, Celestia clawed, wooden splinters against the frozen ground, raw, the grittiness of salt and stone which burned into her, the traction of friction of a painful redness, Twilight was ahead, her form swallowed by the tide of the town, torches raised, dancing specters in the wind that blowed so harshly some of the flames blew out, and black smoke rose. There at the edge, at the farthest point of the coastline where the cliffs nearly met the mountainside, where the rocks cascaded down, and the edge of the earth was hidden by a mist, the wave as if knowing the approachhed, pulled back, residue of water splashing onto the support beams, the skeletal tone of wood and rope, the pyre, the lighthouse ahead, out of sight, cruelest reach at the edge of history. Looming against the sky, a painting, blackened timbers of charred claws of a griffon, ravens, pay your respects to the vultures, for they are your future. The ocean held its breath, waiting for what was the come. The Wheel unnoticed, hung in the air, a vacuum, as the town passed by under it, rising ever so slightly above the town, the library had begun to collapse, break, become just more ash, another memory as Celestia ran, ran towards her only hope. Unholy in its pain, shredded, the scream from Celestia. "Twilight!" Reverberated across the whole land, royal voice, the old her, the one she had tossed came out from the woodworks, for a last plea, but the voice lost to the wind, becoming just another sound, Twilight was bound to, lashed to the pole at the center of the pyre, she stuck her hooves outstretched to her sides, a crucifix, in the sea of hatred somehow their eyes met, not peace, defiance, condemnation, curses of black pile among the ground below as Twilight rested, Celestia surged forward, kicking with all might in her being, hooves swinging wildly, but they held her back, with the force of all they could, restraining her magic, her horn and her wings, suffocation. Incoherence, raw animal in the wilderness. The first torch hit the wood. Sparks. It leapt from branch to branch, a hunger still unsatisfied, a golden serpent, there was honey in the hallows, in the rocks, which oozed thick from the mountain, a sluggish golden river, a sickly, sticky golden trickle, to be expunged, coiling around this pyre the flame burned, you could hear the bones humming, singing like a puncture. And the contours of the body, emanations. Twilight's features softening, sobbing, choking, drowning Celestia, she fought, pressed and crushed herself into the mud, the grass never felt so painful. The body in the basin In the shallow sea-plane basin The flames went higher, golden tongues wrapping around her legs like a pair of lovers, the fire danced like death, shimmering the air, casting a heat, plumes, tears streamed down the white once pristine coat of an abandoned princess, leftovers. The ocean boiled, as the gold from the mountains trickled into the water, no outlet, no end. Twilight's body arched as the flames consumed her, face titling upwards, ribcage visible as the fur peeled away. Purple to black, a final prayer, a final benediction, a curse, the flash of the Glass Alembic, for a moment, light, returned reality. Face illuminated by the fire which curled along its brother the smoke like a veil, a crown and dress adorned her. Dressed her accordingly. Cheers from the town, cacophony of triumph, torches risen, a sea of torches, and their constructed effigy. No hope. Celestia fell, collapsed, no hope, again, no hope, the heat still scorched her face as she slumped in the dirt, stained the mountain, of the bloodstained coast, of Ostia. The town, revealed for all to see, the true face of evil, killed to keep the world turning. Throw her bones over the white cliffs of Ostia, and in the flames. Twilight disappeared. Into the sea, the sea of Equestria. Sleeping in the sunshine. Twilight lies down. And murder me... In Ostia. On the sacred ground of Golgotha, Celestia lays, body broken against the earth, the warmth had receded, flames sputtering, a furious dance to a languid crawl, embers flickered, dying orange specks that floated and vanished into the still air. Streaks of black and salt trailing down her cheeks. The townsfolk drifted away in silence, in grimace, but not even one glance backward, not a word, disdain which hung heavy, sunken. The world exhaled. The ocean below stilled, surface unerringly smooth, like a gray sheet that was drained of its hue, of movement, though it seemed to mourn what had passed. Everything stabilized. The rumbling ended, the pebbles stopped bouncing, the grass died, Celestia raised her head, throat raw, eyes hurting, the wood of the pyre groaned, smoldering still, blacked out, a sickening finality, as Twilight's charred corpse fell, disintegrating as the remnants crumbled away, sliding over the edge of the cliff into the abyss of the dull ocean. The ocean claimed her without a sound, no splash, no ripple, just a void where she had been, carved there and searing, eternal. The sun rose over the horizon, the sky cleared, the clouds parted ways, out of a view and then gone, the colors were wrong, too beautiful for the violence that had unfolded, honeyed, gentle, a golden glow against a scarred Equestria. Above in the sky a lone vulture circled the pyre, its great black wings beat down on the air slowly, falling, deliberately, its shadow punishing the hunched form of Celestia, it titled its head, such imperceptible acknowledgment of the ruin below, the sacrifice made. She sat unmoving, eyes locked on the horizon, Eskaton. As the faint sound of the fire crackled towards her side. The only constant reminder. Emptiness. Ruins. Left in the night. Under Luna's moonlight. Twilight, are you listening? Author's Note
The First Five Minutes After Violent DeathCelestia crawled, her hooves trembling against the frozen ground, her fur ruined, coat devastated, a path of white feathers behind her. The dirt clung to her in strands, streaked with ash, blood, and the remnants of a world unraveling. She forced herself up, painfully with her legs shaking, every motion was a battle, against the exhaustion that had hollowed her out completely. Her breath came in shallow exhales, gasps, just one body, a million tear stained eyes, her ribs aching with every step as she staggered forward. There was nothing left. Nothing to lose. She reached the cliff’s edge, where the land broke off into nothingness. The wind, sharp and biting all night, stilled the moment she arrived. The air fell heavy, suffocating in its silence that basked her. Beneath her, the ocean stretched endlessly, its surface smooth, devoid of any motion, any flow, its waves frozen mid-motion, caught in a moment of suspension. Time has abandoned it, life has fled this place in the wake of these events. She stared downward, her eyes dry, her face numb. Her body numb and all that called to her was the abyss, not with a violence, a malice, not with anger or hatred, but with a quiet inevitability, a pull that could not be resisted, the unbreakable pull of fate. Her left hoof, shaking, caught her attention suddenly. She looked at it, the fur ripped against the dark earth, splayed. From the center of her hoof, golden ichor spilled out, a strange light bled out from an open wound on her body. A splinter from the pyre. She hadn’t felt it, hadn’t noticed it until now. The ichor shimmered faintly, catching the rays of the golden hue of the rising sun, pooling and dripping to the ground below. blood. It wasn’t hers. But it was in her. So she closed her eyes. And then she let go. The wind carried her, the absence of it, just the weight of her body which vanished into the air. She felt nothing as she fell, no rush, no fear, only the quiet, only the cold. The Wheel turned above the cliffs. Its dark surface was motionless for a moment, suspended in a mourning unseen before, and then it resumed its slow, gyration. There was no hum, no vibration, no roar of its previous presence. Only silence, heavy and vast. The land was still. The ocean remained frozen, its vast expanse empty. The mountains stood like sentinels, their peaks shrouded in gold from the sun that no longer warmed with anything left to devoid its energy too, it had died aswell. Life had ceased, not in violence but in surrender, as if the very world had given up. But. The Wheel remained. It spun slowly, what it gave off was an aching sadness which filled the air. Unexplained. Its motion was endless, purposeless, a relic left to mourn the echoes of a life that no longer was. There was no terror here, no chaos, no destruction. Only quiet. Only stillness. And somewhere, deep within that silence, a sorrowful cry let out so vast it could only belong to the last thing left turning. Alive I'm the only one left alive I'm the only one left alive I'm the only one left alive Alive I'm the only one left alive I'm the only one left alive I'm the only one left alive Author's Note Thank you, John Balance.
