Leaderboard

Apologies if this is the wrong part of the forum to advertise this, mods feel free to remove this, but in light of some recent irl issues, I'd like to advertise that I take art commissions. This is a rough idea of what my prices are, of course, I am willing to do Bionicle as well as anything else Lego under the sun, Lego stuff is my primary specialty, I do have more examples of my work in this thread, plus my social medias linked on my page. These prices are just rough estimates, depending on what you're looking for, I'm willing to lower/raise prices accordingly. Feel free to contact me here or on other platforms, I do take Paypal as payment. Also, small correction, as this is somewhat of an old sheet, but if desired, I can send physical goods such as the commissioned artwork as pins or prints. (Would offer stickers but I currently need to fix my sticker machine- will update this tidbit upon fixing it.) Prices listed are USD.

Dulce et Decorum Est Moc based on the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen. 19/01/2024

Thanks many bunches for so kindly remembering, Bambi!!!!!

I guess I have to just take this one day at a time.

IC: Not for nothing did the god-warriors of Zakaz call this plant the Miracle Cactus, Jennak thought with a shiver – a relieved, involuntary tremor that owed as much to the sweet taste of the juice upon his tongue as it did to the cold feeling permeating everywhere else in his mouth. His teeth would have chattered, if only they could touch, but at that moment death seemed preferable than extracting them from the spiny flesh of the legendary plant. So, he slurped more of the pulpy juice from the cactus; eight bony fingers gripped the plant, like spindly skewers at the ends of maize, and the great bricks of alabaster that lined his bulging jaw continued their transformation into great blocks of ice. For the past four days and three nights the Mantling procession had trudged on without true refreshment. That was not to say they were not provisioned; each of the five-Skakdi band had brought survival packs to last them a fortnight, with other fruits, salted meats, and skins of water and ale plenty to keep them from starving until Jennak had completed his Mantling. At least, that was the case on paper. A popular refrain among his fath-- --Warlord Kredak— --among Warlord Kredak’s hanse was that they could provision for a year, with a battalion of livestock at their back, and still die starving before Jennak proved himself a true Skakdi. The jests, as jests so often did, had burrowed under Jennak’s skin like insects, sucking away the nutrients from what little meat trudged upon his bones. Like me, he thought, drinking from this cactus. Suddenly, the juice felt like acid in his throat. Or perhaps that was the urban legends about the Cactus, returning unbidden to his mind. Or perhaps it was just the Rift. He turned again to look at it, even though all the veterans in the party warned him not to, and shivered again at the sight of it – crackling with viridian electricity and lined with rocky, stalagmite teeth that oozed Antidermis like pus, it was not a scar on the face of the world. It was something more, something unspeakable; far beyond any wound to an island, or even a world, it felt like the sneering grin of Irnakk – a terrible rictus, blighting the fabric of reality itself. Even looking at it made his eyes sting with fearful tears. From the way that some of his heralds were rubbing their eyes, Jennak guessed they were stricken by the same terror, even though they would all swear it was ash or silt in the air that brought them to tears. That was the excuse they had used when they stopped being able to swallow food, two days ago – when the meat had started to taste rancid, and the fruit had grown too bitter to even chew. He could still feel the cuts on the roof of his mouth from his last skewer of iguana meat. That was the excuse they had used when they stopped being able to drink water last night, when the ale began to taste like curdled milk and Cronnak touched his leathery canteen for a drink only to find it radiated the heat of a Tahtorak’s scale and the water had boiled inside. The burn still gleamed on his right palm. That was an excuse Jennak recognized for the feeble lie it really was. Such freak accidents were as commonplace in the Rift as those fools who dared to try taming it; thrill-seekers and would-be warlords a-plenty had tried to conquer the Rift in centuries past, and parties would regularly form to search for the treasure that gunslingers, con artists and street preachers swore was buried at the back of the devil’s throat. Casualties and horror stories from these voyages were endless, but still there would always be a few treasure hunters or Lesterin rogues in the slums of Seprilli, trying to get rich quick with the hidden gold of the Rift, and the streets of Irnakk’s Tooth were filled with fundamentalists doom-chanting the same refrain: Run or Crawl, Reclaim or Die. Fan:Dii Balom Skak:Dii – No gods, but for the Skakdi. Until the Skakdi once again controlled all of Zakaz, as they had in the days of the first Ancestors, they could not hope to control all the world. Jennak had always been a superstitious child, fond of stories about Kvere;Ivi, where the palaces of the Lesterin merchant-princes had become their undersea graves. He had grown up on the legends of Lamo-Lyco-Cosa, and the sacrifices made there to the dark god Mata:Nii. But he was fond of the versions Cronnak had told him growing up, the kinds that ended in a jump scare and an affectionate punch in the shoulder. Seeing legends like the Rift up close…well, he would have very much appreciated if they had just stayed legends. Cronnak was right – a Mantling ceremony like this was the best antidote to any stray thoughts of joining the Nakihl. Speaking of Cronnak…his older brother had been gone too long. Jennak nibbled anxiously on the Miracle Cactus. If something had happened to his older brother while he foraged, Jennak had slim odds on outliving him for very long. He knew that his snap decision to undergo his Mantling at the Rift was a foolish one, and likely deadly, but he had spent his whole life being the runt of Kredak’s sons, the bookish one, obsessed with legends of past disasters instead of focusing on the life of glory that awaited all Skakdi. Jennak had only volunteered such a place for his coming-of-age ritual to show that his respect for tradition went beyond the dusty old legends and ghost stories that the Nakihl so zealously guarded in their fortress to the north. He had even thought of challenging his father, reminding him that he himself had never gone to the Rift to undergo the Grand Performance of the Gods and plunge into the Rift. In the ancient days, that ritual was how all true warlords had proved themselves to the Skakdi; nowadays it was a relic, and the Rift was used only for the purposes of terror and execution. To do so on your Mantling, the basic coming-of-age performed by every Skakdi on Zakaz, and for no particular reason…it was akin to suicide. Every veteran warrior, demigods though they might have been, on the island knew it to be so. It was only Cronnak’s intervention to join his party that had shamed other warriors to serve in his Mantling procession, and it was only Cronnak’s reputation that had kept the other Skakdi from leaving him to starve – or, more likely, from just slitting his throat. If something had happened to his brother… Two wolf whistles cut through the air in quick succession. Even in his state of anxiety, Jennak didn’t jump; nothing natural lived or grew in the Rift, so only one of the two scouts could have sent the signal back. He didn’t even jump when he felt the familiar fist slug his shoulder or look up from his Miracle Cactus until he caught the glimpse of scarlet armor that sat unceremoniously on the rock across from him. “Find anything?” Jennak asked, a little petulantly. He found the idea of scouting the Rift to be particularly stupid. This morning, when Cronnak and Grognak had gone off, Jennak mentioned as much – that there was nothing worth seeing in the Rift, and that they would only step in a stray pool of Antidermis without help if they strayed too far from camp, or that something might attack them after all if it did lurk here, or any other number of reasons. Perhaps if he had only stuck to one, honed his argument, it might have had some effect on the others. Skakdi were far from intellectuals, but nor were they brutes; strategy and tactics had been bred into them and brought their Ancestors to the cusp of godhood. If Jennak had put forth a convincing reason, it might have made sense. Ramble on with four or five, and Skakdi began to mistake an abundance of caution for endless excuses. Cronnak, as much as Jennak worshipped him, was no exception. Right now, Mr. No Exception was proving particularly smug about his survival. “Not a thing. What did I say?” Cronnak tossed the sketchpad he had been using to map their progress, as well as a hunk of worn charcoal, onto his younger brother’s lap. Cartography was one of their shared passions, but one of Cronnak’s rules for serving as herald on this Mantling was that there would only be one sketchbook, and he got final say as to when it would be used. That way they could both draw maps to their hearts content, but there would be no use of it as a distraction. Jennak had sworn to their father that he would face the Rift; this was his chance. “You told me I was a coward. You might as well have said that Irnakk had me now.” That was the worst thing one Skakdi could say to another, equal parts grave insult and death sentence. “A lot about glories old and new, looking good for handsome worshippers someday, and how you would have been raw meat if you had jumped blind into the Burning Steppes. The Tahtorak came up. A lot.” His words were dismissive, but he delivered them with a begrudging smile. He could begrudge his brother almost anything; there was no reason one such as Cronnak;Dii, hewn from all the past glories of their fathers, would have any reason to treat a borderline Nakihl like Jennak with any love, but Cronnak doted on him. He had overseen as much of Jennak’s martial instruction as he had ever gotten, coached him on what to hunt and forage for in survival situations, and even read to him some of Jennak’s favorite legends in his youth. Cronnak had no patience or interest in such things, and made it known as often as possible, but the thought went a long way with him. “Where’s Grognak?” he asked. “You two split up?” Cronnak waved his hand dismissively. “He said he saw some old weaponry up in the east and wanted to check it out. You know him, always swearing up and down he’s right behind you. He was the same way on our Mantling. He’s probably a quarter-bio away just waiting to make it seem like he scouted. Throw me that Miracle Cactus.” “How do you want it?” “Up high.” Jennak threw it down low, another one of the dumb games they always played together. When one asked for something, the other would always be sure to give it to them in the exact opposite fashion they asked for it. Perhaps with other races, like the Lesterin, that was a form of playfulness, but among the Skakdi it was rare. Cronnak was an equal participant in the game and knew just how to catch it. He plucked the Miracle Cactus one-handed from the air and took a bite from it; he made the motion look effortless, but Jennak saw his brother wince slightly as his fingers closed, and he shook his wrist afterwards. His burned hand looked raw and blistered, the Rift’s landscape writ large upon his weathered palm. “Will you be able to fight with that?” Jennak asked, concerned. Cronnak waved him off and took another bite. “Of course I – mm! – will. Besides, nothing to fight out here, right? That’s what you said before we left.” Cronnak gave him a toothy grin and looked down at the Cactus. Juice dribbled down his chin, so viscous that he could see the pulp beneath his lip, and for some reason his stomach churned. He could hardly fault his brother for finding the plant nutritious and delicious, not when he’d done so himself, but…when he watched someone else eat one, he remembered the legends of the Miracle Cactus. The plant was used as a mild hallucinogen during the days of the Valin;Xalt, the forgotten ritual warlords used to use to prove their mettle before jumping headlong into the Rift. But it had a darker origin, according to the more superstitious among Skakdi: given its status as the Rift’s only indigenous plant, the rumor went that the plant flowered with the life force of Skakdi who had died there, succumbed to Antidermis or exhaustion. The juice of every plant was alleged to be the essence of a Skakdi, valor and cunning, fear and rage, all distilled into a goulash and entombed inside a plant forever. Thus, the only way to survive in such an inhospitable spit of land would be to cannibalize those too weak to do so themselves. The irony of the tale was probably deeply rooted in its origin, but it still made Jennak queasy to think about. Especially since the Mantling party had stumbled upon a patch of five in the spot where they’d made camp. One for each of them. “You never take your wounds seriously,” Jennak admonished. “Adrenaline will only get you so far. And we aren’t even talking about how water boiled in a leather—” “We don’t need to talk about it,” Cronnak dismissed him. “It happened. Turning back now means you don’t pass your Mantling, and only means we still have to travel another four days before we hit Lesteri;Dak again. Then it’s another three days to Irnakk’s Tooth. No. If either way is a risk, then why go backward?” Jennak opened his mouth to retort, but behind his brother’s broad-shouldered frame, his eyes focused on an earth-toned figure, far from the reds and greys of Warlord Kredak’s sons. Instead of his retort, what came out was: “It’s him.” Cronnak turned around and squinted, confused. “From the west? Did the idiot forget what direction he was supposed to scout? I should beat him to death with my bare hands, that Brakas. He forgot to signal his way back, too. Probably dozed off by a rock and is still shaking off the—” “That’s not it,” Jennak interrupted. His throat had gone dryer than before he’d cracked open his Miracle Cactus. “Cronnak, look at him.” Cronnak looked from his brother, then to the brown dot on the distance. His vision power was laser vision; useful in many a combat situation, but no help now. If Jennak hadn’t been so worthless on his own in survival situations, he probably would have been the one on scouting watch today. “Nektann’s flames…” “Did Grognak get uglier?” Cronnak asked playfully. “What am I missing? You’re the one with telescopic vision, you tell me.” Jennak’s lips trembled. Cronnak’s good-humored eyes, normally red with passion both good and ill, narrowed. By now, golden-armored and Four-Tooth Sabnak, the sage old warrior who had tutored Cronnak at arms since he was still Twelve-Tooth Sabnak, had wandered over. They made up the rest of Jennak’s Mantling procession. “I—I—Ir—" “Spit it out, brother.” There was no humor in Cronnak’s voice anymore. He was acutely aware of the other two warriors glaring at the back of his neck. Jennak whispered at first, but then repeated himself: “Irnakk--has him now.” A tense silence fell over the group. “Jennak?” Cronnak asked, turning his head back to his brother. Jennak had never seen him look at anyone, especially him, so coldly. “You have some nerve, boy,” croaked Trezzik, the bob of his throat straining against the scar where a Skakdi had once slit him end to end. It had ruined his voice forever, made it ghastly to listen to. “I’ve fought at his back in a dozen campaigns while Heu:Nii like you screamed and begged like dogs. I’ve heard his battle roars, loud enough to make Ancestors shake in Kino-Ur. When our blood would rain on Skakdi like you it would rain so heavy you would swear you had been cleaved in half. If your brother wasn’t here—” “He is here,” barked Cronnak, rising to his feet in a flash. Standing there, with the scrapes of every battle he’d survived still looking fresh upon his flame-colored armor, Cronnak looked every inch the young man who had marshaled a rabid Tahtorak through the Burning Steppes during his own Mantling – every inch a future Ancestor. His hand was on his chainsaw, a motion that dared Trezzik to find out if he could survive a slit throat twice. “Stop it!” Jennak was jittering, hands clapping on his knees and the very bones in his fingers clattering like chimes, but his voice had found some steel in its timbre. “Stop it and look. He didn’t signal. He’s staring at the ground, but—but he’s not looking where he’s going. He just tripped on a rock, and…and he’s not even looking for Antidermis. He’s trudging, and he didn’t signal. Irnakk has him now.” Another silence, before Sabnak finally chimed in: “We’ll make a scout of you yet, Heu:Nii.” The words whistled when coming out of Sabnak’s mouth, a Rift unto itself with how many teeth he’d lost in battle over the millennia. But it was still a compliment coming from the Skakdi who had trained his brother and his father, and it would have made him proud to hear. It might even have impressed Warlord Kredak. But today, right this instant, Jennak felt no pride. All he felt was foreboding – foreboding and deep, cold terror. Grognak was at least a hardened warrior; he hadn’t even been Mantled yet. If something in this accursed scar had driven him into the arms of madness, what chance did Jennak fare? The party had been gripped by its longest silence yet – possibly the longest silence of Jennak’s life. By now, telescopic vision was unnecessary. Grognak had shambled close enough to make out the distinguishing features of his face, and every other Skakdi present knew what Jennak said for fact: Irnakk had him now. Irnakk had him now. The four words were the death knell of any Skakdi; it was as good as declaring them dead on their feet. If each Skakdi was a god unto himself, then those words meant that shock, terror, or cowardice had driven a Skakdi to a state of mortality. It meant fearing the same shapes in the dark that a child feared, the same wisps and phantoms that drove young Skakdi into the arms of their mothers. If a Skakdi had plumbed so thoroughly the depths of fear and misery, then his reputation was in ruins; he could never be counted on in a battle again, and he would never go to join the hordes of his ancestors in Kino-Ur, the great staging ground for the Skakdi’s final assault on all the universe. They were, quite possibly, the only people more universally loathed in Skakdi culture more than Sarke referees. Cronnak dared to venture within reach of Grognak, brought so low by terror even his teeth trembled to their roots, and grabbed him by the shoulder roughly. Jennak had been the shoulder grabbed or struck on many an occasion and had come to associate it with fraternity and even love; he had never before seen the world’s most comforting gesture weaponized so. He realized he was no longer the Skakdi most considered scum in this party, but somehow he found no succor in his new place in the world. “Grognak, report.” For the moment, Cronnak’s voice was professional and clipped. “No one told you to head west. What happened to you?” Since his birth, Grognak;Dii’s eyes had a unique, pulsing quality to them – two beating scarlet hearts within his face, they constantly throbbed with fury and a thirst for blood. Now they did not move at all, save for occasional, lagged tracing of Cronnak’s face. Their crimson hue had grown so pink they were almost pale, with only occasional veins to give them color. They look like eclipsed suns, now, the dead eyes of an alcoholic stripped of all his poisons. When his jaw slackened, his reply stolen from his throat, the glimmer of his wolfish-grin had turned the color of bleached skulls. “Cronnak;Dii,” he replied simply, hoarsely. Cronnak had the look of a poisoned man, dark-faced and unswallowing. “Nektann’s flames…” cursed Trezzik softly. “I said report.” Grognak’s eyes had turned to Warlord Kredak’s other heir, and there was a hint of accusation in his pale, fish eyes. “You brought us here,” he whispered. “You killed us all. They’ll find us because of you.” Jennak recoiled slightly from the threat and Grognak’s dead gaze, but he did not have to bear it for long; Cronnak’s meat hook fist struck the beleaguered scout a mighty blow to the body. Any Skakdi in his prime would have had trouble standing, but Grognak’s legs actually seemed grateful for the reprieve, and he buckled without complaint. Jennak remembered the stories of Ahk’rei:Nii, the haggard Lesterin demon worshipper who reunited the phantoms of the dead with their flesh. Grognak seemed proof of one such melding, albeit an imperfect one. Cronnak was not so poetic about the other warrior’s sorry state. “Grognak,” his elder brother roared, blocking Grognak’s slumped body from view. “You were there at my Mantling. You rode with me on that Tahtorak when none else dared, gripped its scales beside me and rode through half the Burning Steppes with more fire on our bodies than armor. You are my friend, and if you’re still in there I grieve for you. But if you ever speak to my brother like that again, or if the next words out of your mouth aren’t telling us what you found, I will kill you. I will knock as many teeth out of your mouth as I need to so my fist will fit, and I will reach down your throat until you choke and die. Now. Report.” Grognak’s eyes focused a little, and Jennak felt relief. Since the days of old, one Skakdi had always required another to channel their once-fearsome elemental powers. Sometimes it was much the same in battle; only the threats and thunder of one could resurrect a man who thought even himself lost to cowardice. He let out a shaky breath that even he hadn’t realized he was holding— Grognak reported. And that breath became a gasp. A rattle escaped Trezzik’s slit throat. Even Cronnak’s pale face had gone ashen. “What did you just say?” he asked quietly. Grognak propped himself against a rock, starting to massage the blow Cronnak had laid upon him. It had knocked some life back into him, clearly, but when he spoke again his voice still shook. “I saw…” He inhaled and held the breath for several painful seconds. “A Vortixx.” The way Cronnak kicked the downed Skakdi’s head was the way a child kicked his ball. “What did you just say?” he asked louder. Grognak’s head lolled, but his voice was absorbing strength from his commander’s furious blows. “I saw…a Vortixx.” The way Cronnak kicked the downed Skakdi’s head was the way a child kicked his ball. “What did you just say?” “I saw a Vortixx.” The way Cronnak kicked the downed Skakdi’s head was the way a child kicked his ball. “What did you just say?” he barked for the final time. Grognak cracked his neck slowly, blood trickling from a face already giving way to swelling. But when he was done cracking his neck, he stood, and pulled himself to his full stature. His eyes had darkened to the color of roses, of blood, and he rubbed at his cheek sullenly. “I saw a Vortixx. I saw a Vortixx. I saw a Vortixx,” he repeated. It was an ancient Skakdi ritual, although Jennak quietly could not comprehend the barbarity of it. When Irnakk gripped a Skakdi by the spine, it became impossible to trust his grasp on the situation that had terrified him so thoroughly. So, under physical and mental duress, a Skakdi would be made to repeat their story over and over in the face of increasing trauma. To stick to their guns and persevere was a sign that they were still demigods at heart, despite a momentary tango with the horrors of mortality. Or the horrors of the Vortixx. Their scout, now reminded of his own greatness, recounted his story. As Cronnak had predicted, he had decided to go off and take a nap, perhaps a little too assured of their solitude in the base of the Rift. They had all been traveling, growing sick of each other and tense in Zakaz’s heart of darkness, so he had thought to steal a few minutes for himself rather than return with the same empty hands they’d returned with every time someone had gone scouting. He hadn’t thought to be gone long, nor had he thought himself very far from camp. But where he had woken up was not the idyllic little spit of wasteland he had chosen to fall asleep in, and what he had awoken to was far from solitude. What he described was a freak of nature with proportions too unnatural to be any living creature; captivating to the eye, but somehow horrific to absorb, too alien to be anything but a nightmare. Her edges were too sharp, her features too angular, and her eyes were as black as her armor; she was a masterpiece, Grognak explained, a miracle of ebonywork that a sculptor had only half-completed; her other half she had carved herself. It was a feat of poetry uncharacteristic for most Skakdi, which made his story ring all the louder with uncomfortable truth. When he finished his report, all five Skakdi had been reduced to statues themselves. None dared to move or speak their nightmare into reality. “We investigate,” Cronnak finally concluded. “Grognak, take us west.” It was the typical Skakdi answer; none of them would dare to openly suggest backing away from a foe, whatever that foe’s origins or prowess, but from the oldest veteran to even the young runt on his Mantling, all of them entertained the thought of just going home in those crucial moments. Cronnak’s orders felt familiar; they rang out in the voice of the horde, simple and dedicated to conquering one and all. They broke camp quickly and began the trek west. Jennak handed over what remained of his Miracle Cactus to Grognak along the way; such a gesture would be considered pitiable by some Skakdi, or an expression of pity itself, but he hoped Grognak would take it in the spirit it was intended – a sign of pride and respect for returning from the clutches of Irnakk. Whatever he thought of it, Grognak didn’t speak. No one spoke. For hours of the march, sky and earth were but different shades on the all-encompassing spectrum of grey, so that as the Skakdi grew more anxious they forgot which they were even marching on – sky or earth. Toothless old Sabnak broke the silence with a brusque order that was half command and half bird call. “Whelp,” he whistled. “Tell us what you know of the Vortixx.” Jennak was surprised to be asked for input. “In the Time Before Time, when the world was in the grip of the demon Mata:Nii and their wicked fingers on earth the Lesterin—” “What, another sermon?” Trezzik grumbled. “Another doom-sayer. There are more of you every year, seems like...makes Irnakk’s Tooth unlivable…” “Ignore the cutthroat, whelp. Keep going,” Sabnak said, not unkindly. “—the Lesterin dominated the Skathi with steel and sorcery. They could not wield the elements without us, and their eyes lacked true vision, but they wore Kanohi capable of powers we were incapable of, and their ships and guile made them a power among the weakling races. The Vortixx were chief among their allies. They were as powerless as the Lesterin in all aspects but one. It was said that whatever they dreamed came to life. Great machines, plagues that could bring low islands, weapons of war the likes of which only gods dared to wield…the Vortixx could conjure these tools with their wits, and the Lesterin would use them to subjugate. After we broke the Lesterin and Irnakk forged Zakaz from their bones, the Vortixx saved themselves by allying with us.” “Until they turned on us,” said Cronnak. “I know this part.” Every Skakdi “knew this part.” First and Cruelest Irnakk:Dii had forged Zakaz and the Skakdi in his own image, but their bid for power had cost them dearly. To try and leech them of their greatness, the Lesterin’s demon spirit had robbed them of their individual elemental control and their vision powers, forcing the once-subservient Skakdi to again be reliant on others. To compensate, the Skakdi horde began trafficking in the Vortixx’s particular, mad brand of creativity – and for centuries upon centuries the synthesis between brutality and ingenuity had been a force to be reckoned with across the known universe. All that had changed centuries ago. The Vortixx had infiltrated Irnakk’s Tooth, the single neutral place in all Zakaz, and dared to dive beneath the frigid, placid surface of Kvere;Ivi to see what secrets the Skakdi had buried alongside the kings and queens of the Lesterin. Perhaps they had not taken the Skakdi at their word when they said no one knew what was at the heart of the great lake in the island’s center; perhaps they had believed them, but ravenous curiosity and the prospect of mystery with no answer had driven them past the point of reason. Regardless of their reasons, a few mad Vortixx took the plunge. Whether they found answers no one knew, but they did find truth. Nothing was at the bottom of Kvere;Ivi. Nothing here not being ‘not a thing,’ but Nothing, a greater, emptier, more horrifying Nothing – Nothing, in the way that the skies and the sea stretched on endlessly with Nothing to fill them. Nothing, in the way that death was Nothing, yet could overwhelm life so easily and outlast it for so long. Nothing was a great, yawning void beneath the heart of Zakaz, and all the universe but Zakaz was doomed to return to it; only the Skakdi, the great cosmic iconoclasts, could stand against Nothing and retain themselves. The Vortixx had proved that in Kvere;Ivi – for those Vortixx never surfaced from the lake to take another breath, no Vortixx ever returned to Zakaz to make another sale, and when ships from Seprilli went in search of the Vortixx homeland to investigate their allies’ absence, they all returned with tales of Nothing. No Skakdi or Lesterin had seen one since until Grognak. “So how did the Ancestors kill Vortixx?” Trezzik asked. “I always heard they were powerless.” “No creature that can pull a trigger is powerless,” Sabnak counseled. “Grognak, did this Vortixx have a gun?” “No.” Single words were about as much as he had been able to manage for the last few hours. “Did this Vortixx have armor?” “No.” “How about limbs?” “Yeah.” “My eyes hurt,” grumbled Cronnak. “Does anyone feel that?” “Then that’s what we do. Each grab a limb and pull.” At least we have a plan, Jennak thought wryly, nose crinkling in wry amusement. Then it crinkled for another reason altogether. “My eyes hurt too,” Jennak said. “It’s hard to see.” “It’s ash,” Sabnak replied stolidly, for the hundredth time in five days. “Ash and silt.” Then the smell started, acrid and harsh like flesh aflame; Cronnak was intimately familiar with the aroma in all its forms. He raised his voice to yell: “Antidermis! Move!” The air did not smell like burning flesh; it was the smell of the air itself that was burning as the Antidermis started to fall to earth. They had prepared for this – Antidermis raining down was about as predictably unpredictable as Antidermis welling up from the ground, after all – but they were all tense and uncertain of heart after Grognak’s report. More importantly, the only scouting reports had come from a single delirious, half-sane source, and the Mantling party could only judge the terrain at face value. Reduced to only their animal instinct, each scurried for what they perceived as cover. Behind him, Jennak heard a loud, shrill scream. It was a sound as undignified as it was pained. Instinctually, he knew that Grognak had been too slow. It was a mercy, in some ways; the Vortixx had left him in the grip of Irnakk, and this was merely the disposal of a body. But now Jennak wished he hadn’t wasted the rest of that Miracle Cactus. He wondered if Grognak would become one too someday. The smell of the burning sky brought him to his senses. He had sprinted on autopilot in the direction of a cave system; his footfalls had gone on until what grey, meager light the Rift afforded him had faded into black, until he had taken enough twists and turns and slides that the decomposed smell of the sky had left him. Only then did he feel it safe to drop to his knees and savor his survival. The musty air he was gulping in great mouthfuls was almost sweet by comparison to what was happening outside. He rubbed his palms on the surface below him, and in his mind several things stuck out to him as odd. For starters, the cave was oddly smooth, almost pleasantly so; he was reminded of the way marbles had felt in his hand as a child, or perhaps empty Zamor Spheres. The whole tunnel, in fact – he had run so far that the rocky outcroppings with their stalactites and stalagmites of Antidermis pockets were but a distant memory. He rubbed the wall beside him and felt certain of it. The second thing he noticed was the black, grainy substance that had smeared on his hands. He’d left a streak of it when he touched the wall. “Hello?” he called out. “Cronnak? Sabnak? Trezzik?” A beat. “Cronnak…?” A miracle from the Ancestors: “Here.” Jennak actually laughed aloud at the sound, resonating deeper into the tunnels. Then he stopped for a second, his superstitious mind overwhelming him. Well did he remember the tales of the city the Rift used to be. The voice could well be some dark magic, attempting to beguile him with the voice of his heroic brother. “Tell me something only we would know!” The darkness was silent. “What the—Kino-Ur. Are you serious?” That was a good start. “Jennak, I’m going to beat you to death if you don’t show yourself. It’s hard enough concentrating as is.” “Just tell me something. Anything.” A loud groan was his response, along with the angry revving of Cronnak’s trademark chainsaw. The sound was getting closer, and Jennak reached behind his back for some weapon, something he had picked up to defend himself before the Antidermis began to fall… “You read too many ghost stories, little whelp,” Cronnak said, an ivory gleam of hope stepping out of the unknown in the cave. “Fine. Remember that Tahtorak scale I gave you when I came back from my Mantling? The one you tried to throw into the lake because Grokk said Tahtoraks gave off pheromones, and his mother would cross the Burning Steppes to find you holding it, and instead you both fell in?” Jennak could have cried. He rushed forward to clap his brother on the shoulder, an action Cronnak mirrored heartily with a relieved breath. “The others…” Jennak started. Cronnak shrugged. “I heard Grognak go down, and saw Trezzik get splashed on. Sabnak was carrying him, and if anyone can stay alive in this desert it’s him. Come on. I’ve been leaving a trail for us to get out of here, but first I think I found something.” Jennak eyed the void behind them uneasily. “You want to go deeper in there?” he asked. Cronnak was glaring unsympathetically. “This is still your Mantling,” his brother reminded him. “If you return alive while veterans are dead, the warlords will only consider you a coward. Just surviving isn’t enough for a Skakdi. You have to prove you survived for a reason. If it’s not bringing back a dead Vortixx, it’ll be something we find down here. Come on.” His brother’s determined face broke into a toothy grin. “Come on. Don’t you want to explore Lamo-Lyco-Cosa?” “That’s not funny.” But like any younger brother, so captivated by the confidence and power of his elder, Jennak followed. He eyed the streak he had left on his brother’s armor during their brief embrace. “Is that Najin dust?” “Told you, I’ve been making a trail,” his brother replied. “We’ll need to watch how much we use if we have to shoot our way back home, but rationing for two is easier than five. Same goes for food and water, way I see it. Maybe three, if we can find Sabnak. More likely than not he put Trezzik out of his misery.” Skakdi would often do the same for other Skakdi in the face of hopeless odds, but to do so out of necessity, or to share rations…well, in a place like the Rift who would really investigate? It was another horrifying thought in a day full of them. “The tunnel’s odd, isn’t it?” Jennak finally asked, after they’d walked for a while with naught but the sifting sound of Najin dust in their ears. “It’s like…an artery, connected to a larger one.” “What, connected to the Rift?” “Yes,” he replied. “This isn’t natural, it’s…infrastructure. These turns all lead somewhere different. How will we know if we’re going in circles?” “Probably when we follow the flames on the way back,” Cronnak said with a wry grin. “Worked for me in the Steppes. Come on, we’re here. Got a Lightstone?” Jennak fumbled in the supply pouch on his right hip and withdrew two Lightstones. “The rest were with Grognak.” “Doesn’t matter. These should do. Use the sketchbook and the charcoal and get some rubbings of the left side.” With the Lightstone in his good hand, Cronnak did a slow rotation in the center of the room – for that was where they stood, a small antechamber where their entrance blended seamlessly into one great, curved wall that enveloped most of the room. The other wall was a flat surface, so broad that ten Skakdi’s wingspans might not have been enough to measure its width. For a couple minutes, Jennak did as his brother instructed – each took a sheet from the sketchbook, snapped the charcoal in half until they each wielded little more than nubs, and began etching whatever symbols they found. Between segments, Jennak would take glances at what they’d copied. The symbols were alien to him, but something about the text made him uneasy. “You know what any of this means?” his brother called to him from across the chamber. Cronnak wasn’t as literary or superstitious as Jennak was, so doubtless he had none of Jennak’s concerns over this – although, if he had to ask in the first place, maybe something here was getting to him too. “No,” Jennak replied with a shake of his head. “If this was Lamo-Lyco-Cosa, you would think more of the characters would be in Lesterin, but this is a…a creole, almost.” He felt uneasy. “Cronnak, can we go? Surely the Antidermis storms have stopped by now…maybe we can find Sabnak and Trezzik…” “You’ll never get anywhere in life if you’re terrified of an empty room, little brother. What did you call it? A what?” “It’s a creole. A mix of languages, old and new, dead and alive. Like you would hear on Seprilli. Characters, grammar, syntax, borrowed words and idioms…there’s just enough Lesterin in here to recognize, but it’s almost as if other words are shoved between Lesterin characters, breaking up the sentences. Those I don’t understand.” Cronnak sighed. “I already looked at the big wall, too. Looks almost like a door, I thought.” “A door?” Jennak looked over and bit his lip in thought. “…Well…maybe? The room would have to be enormous for that. What could it be guarding?” “Treasure chamber?” Cronnak grinned. “Bringing back the treasure of the Lesterins’ demon gods would be as great as joyriding the Tahtorak.” “Really?” Jennak asked, smiling back. “You’d be willing to admit that?” “Well, almost as great.” Despite the sighting of the Vortixx, the Antidermis storm outside, and the eldritch feeling of the tunnel system they’d spelunked into so heedlessly, Jennak felt at ease like this – bantering with his brother. It had become the fulcrum of what was otherwise a very, very dangerous, confusing world. “Here.” Jennak began walking over to the flat wall. Each of his footsteps scuffed against the smooth surface of the floor. “I’ll get this, and then we can…Cronnak?” “Mm?” Cronnak followed his brother over. Jennak had frozen up in front of the wall. “You said there was text here?” his brother whispered. Cronnak lifted up his Lightstone and blinked. “What in Irnakk’s—” The wall was blank from end to end. Cronnak blinked again. His burnt fist clenched, but he hardly noticed the strain. “From wall to wall,” he responded in confusion. “I didn’t get a single letter of it.” “That’s so weird...” Jennak reached out to touch the wall, but Cronnak caught his wrist with the reflex of a viper. “Cronnak, look!” “Nektann’s flames!” Cronnak cursed. “Here I thought I was the one who didn’t pay attention to all those stories. Are you trying to wind up with your face etched on some ancient demon wall, Heu:Nii?” “No, Cronnak.” Jennak looked to Cronnak, teal eyes wide with a mix of awe and horror; the brothers turned to face the wall together. They may not have stretched wall to wall, as Cronnak had described, but both of them could see the text forming now – carvings so thin they looked etched from thimbles, glowing scarlet as they burnt hot shapes into the smooth surface of the stone. Like the carvings they had etched on their scraps of paper, they appeared to the two Skakdi in a smattering of languages – here some Lesterin, there some ancient Vortixx, some in even the ancient writing of the Skathi from the Time before Time. Other characters were in shapes neither had ever seen before. Worse still was that the text itself felt unfinished; even to the untrained eyes of the two brothers, the meanings of parts of the text felt etched into their very souls. Other parts were completely illegible. Jennak squinted. It was odd; he felt dread, for sure, more than he’d felt at any point during his Mantling. Maybe than any point during his whole life. But he felt fascination, too, woven deep into the complex fabric of his emotions – as though he had arrived at a point in his destiny. With bated breath, he began to read: Across an endless ocean Whe▂▂ bones My key rests ▂▃▅ ▅▅■■■■▅▅▂▂dead demons ▂▂rones T▂▃▅▅rkest of my ▂▃▅▅ Will lead you to ▃▃▅▅▃▃ ▂▂▃▃▃▃▂▂ abyss remembers What ▃▃▅▅▃▃ has forgot Lift ▅▅▅■■■■ ▂▂rown ▂▂▃▃▅▅ tore the heavens down “What does it say?” Jennak asked rhetorically. “No, I know some of it…is that a d there, towards the end? Drown and down? It’s a poem of some sort, or a riddle…Cronnak?” There was a look on his brother’s handsome face he had never seen before. His lips traced the same words that Jennak himself “Jennak?” he finally asked. “You’re right. Cark this place. We’re going home.” He’d never been so happy to hear his brother find reason – snapped from his reverie over the text, he nodded his assent with a relief too great to speak. Cronnak knelt and struck a match on one of his enormous front teeth, touching it to the Najin dust at their feet. The powder went up as fast as its name; the Skakdi did not call it ‘deathly light’ for nothing, but right now there was nothing deathly about the light and the heat that went up down the tunnels. The road of fire they walked alongside improved their moods considerably, and to fill the time retracing their steps the two brothers found it in them, as brothers do, to chat about absolutely nothing. It was empty banter, and both knew it, but they both felt that the sooner they put the mysterious chamber out of their minds the better. For those two hours, despite the ache in Jennak’s legs and the terror of his Mantling thus far, nothing in the world was wrong. Then, suddenly, he realized something was. His teeth were chattering. “Cronnak?” “What is it?” “The fire is cold.” Cronnak jumped on his feet slightly in surprise. He had thought nothing of it – perhaps discounting it as fresher air from the surface as they neared it, perhaps thinking nothing of it so long as the fire gave off light, or perhaps trying deliberately not to think of it. No one could blame a sane man for doing so. But Jennak had the truth of it; he waved his burnt hand over the flames once, twice, and felt only a chill as though he’d dived into Kvere;Ivi. He knew on an intellectual level that he had burnt his hand again, but it didn’t feel like burning. In fact, the flames had begun to smolder when his limb approached them, only to leap and jump as though fueled when he pulled away. “Nektann’s flames…” It was hardly an appropriate curse given the phenomenon, but it was the only one that leapt to mind. “Jennak, how long have they been cold? Jennak? Jennak.” Jennak had stopped in his tracks, so abruptly that Cronnak with his leaden footfalls and steady pace walked right into his brother’s back. “Jennak!” His brother’s bony finger raised in a point. At the end of the serpent of flames, a black warrior stood, drinking up the light. She had raised a hand curiously to feel their tongues, licking over her slender arm. The flames burnt; she did not. Her hand hovered for long seconds, fingers dancing between the fire like she intended to grasp it. She was a head taller than any Skakdi, even powerfully built Cronnak, but slimmer than both brothers. She was emaciated; she was full-figured; she drank in the light and heat and offered Nothing in return. Both Skakdi found it hard to look upon her, for her poise and idle glare both lacked life. It was the same uncomfortable feeling that had gripped them at the antechamber wall. It was something truly alien – the beautiful Vortixx was merely its mask of choice. This was no ghostly text or Antidermis from the skies; this was a tangible threat, and Cronnak;Dii was hewn from the glories of the Ancestors and his forefathers, made for combat and decisive thinking. He tossed a heap of Najin dust into the air before them and smashed his Lightstone against a stalagmite. Antidermis trickled out of the rock, sizzling a hole as it bled from its pocket and towards the ground. Greenish-black and viscous, it bled into the fire and dyed it the same sickly shade. That same fire struck the Najin dust Cronnak had created as a smokescreen, and the Vortixx became just another black candle of flame among many. Using the distraction, he grabbed his brother by the shoulder – hard – and shook him. “Jennak!” Jennak shook limply, paralyzed with indecision and horror. He had finally reached his threshold – the same as Grognak. “Jennak!” His little brother looked up; his eyes had the same pale, listless look as Grognak’s had at the sight of the Vortixx, but the expression itself was unmistakable. He was looking for a way out of this that only Cronnak could provide. Cronnak himself was never much for plan Bs – a course, once imagined, would be followed through without regard for the cost. Any doubts he had about his course he kept to himself, if not crushed outright. When he looked for the final time on Jennak’s pleading look, he crushed them outright. “Help me with the elements,” Cronnak urged him. “It’s going to hurt, but you’re going to make it. After that, you run back the way we came. It’s the carkin’ Rift – a big, straight line back home. Promise me you won’t stop. Promise me you won’t turn back.” Jennak blinked hurriedly; the viridian fire was causing his eyes to singe, and one had begun to water up. “But…my Mantling…” he whispered hoarsely. “They’ll say I abandoned you. They’ll say I was a coward. Fath—Warlord Kredak. He’ kill me.” Cronnak gritted his large teeth in frustration and looked down at his own burnt hand. All doubts were crushed outright. Between those gritted teeth, he set the cord to his buzzsaw and pulled. The chainsaw took three tries to rev to life, but only needed one clean cut. The cord snapped back to the weapon as his teeth unclenched, the echoes of his pained bellow going in both directions – down into the labyrinth and back outside into the Rift. Jennak squealed in shock – at the noise, at the hand falling to the ground, at the blood that splattered his torso and his face, and at horror for his brother’s pain. Cronnak kicked his own dismembered appendage as contemptuously as he would a spider. For her part, the Vortixx seemed curious – not quite unnerved, but certainly taken aback. Notably, she refused to touch the fire now that Antidermis had marked it. “Pick it up,” he hissed, grinning through the pain. “Take it to Kredak. He’ll know you were with me, then. At the end. And if anyone still doubts you, I’ll come back from Kino-Ur myself and drag them back with me, to tell them the truth of how brave you were. Pick it up.” Jennak crouched to do so, and when he stood, he did so with a sob. Cronnak wished he could grip his shoulder one last time, the way he had as they were boys, but to do so would mean dropping the chainsaw. And he would die with that in hand. “Listen to me.” Cronnak’s words and voice were not his own anymore; in them was the steel, the fury and fearlessness of two dozen of the Ancestors, all ready to welcome the young phenom into their ranks. There was no such thing as ‘before his time’ for deaths like this. He would die young, and proud; that way he was sure to join their ranks. “I need your help to control the fire. The Antidermis won’t hold her off once the fire breaks, so you take that chance and you run.” “Maybe—” Jennak licked his lips nervously. “Maybe you can kill it. I can help. Stab her in the back.” His big brother seemed to take some humor in that, though he still growled in impatience at the suggestion. “You’re wasting time.” His brother gulped. “I love you,” he whispered, voice thin and papery. “Just. Run.” Jennak turned towards the flames, ashen-faced. One hand he lifted towards the fire, concentrating on the tunnel beneath. The chainsaw in Cronnak’s remaining hand tilted towards the flames. Together, for the final time, the two brothers joined their minds. The tunnel split in half down the middle, fire and rock erupting outwards and towards the Vortixx. She was lost in a haze of flame and dust, completely obscured. Just like Jennak would be, so long as he ran. The two brothers locked eyes. Cronnak knew Jennak didn’t have it in him – now, of all times in his worthless life, he could not run. So he shoved him. With a final yelp, his brother was lost to the burning smokescreen. Cronnak knew he would never see him again and set his mouth into a hard line. He swallowed a lump and waited for their haze to clear. It did, eventually, cinders and chunks of rock beginning to tumble to the ground and stick against the walls. The Vortixx stood where she had before; Jennak’s body was nowhere to be found. Once he’d been given his head start, he took it and ran. Some would call that cowardice, but Cronnak found it comforting. He’d followed his brother’s final order, despite the impulse of every cell in his body to fight. Those impulses, and accepting his command anyway, did him credit. He just might make a good Skakdi someday. Cronnak smiled ruefully, and gripped the cord between his teeth again. Three strong pulls, and the saw roared to life. Ancestors, guide me. The cord snapped back to his blade as he let out a roar and charged. The Vortixx did not flinch – not at his roar, not at his charge, and not as the saw ran clean through her. Cronnak skidded to a halt, kicking up pebbles and the grey, dead soil of the Rift as he slid out of the cave system and spun on his heels. The Vortixx had been cleaved in half; her lower half, long, spindly legs up to a narrow waist, remained planted on the ground. Her top half hung in midair, suspended, arms splayed out and face serene. Then the top half smiled. Jennak sobbed. He had always been too skinny. All his life, Cronnak had worked with him personally, helped him with weights, running circles around Irnakk’s Tooth, gone climbing together in various parts of the Lesterin’s Crown…everything that a meathead older brother could think of to toughen his younger brother up. He had always been too weak. The best warriors in Warlord Kredak’s hanse had worked with him personally, with his father’s permission and with Cronnak’s recommendation, had taught him swordplay, marksmanship, and elemental finesse, all to no avail. He was discerning with his vision power and had a mind for tactics and cartography, but in a straight fight Jennak had always been as honest with himself as the rest of Zakaz had been – he was worthless at being a warrior. But sobbing, outright, over the death of anyone? It was humiliating. Cronnak would be appalled to know his brother was responding to his glorious death with tears. Anyone else would have cheered for him. But sobbing was all Jennak had. Sobbing, and his brother’s amputated hand, fingers interlaced with his own to prevent him from dropping it. He had no idea how far he had run. His legs throbbed and ached, and his organs felt like they were doused in Antidermis as he sprinted. He had gone too many hours without any water, and by now it felt like it had been a day – five? Ten? – since Grognak had returned to camp with his tale of the Vortixx. He needed rest. He needed water. He needed his brother. But to stop was to die. Hurriedly, he wiped at his eyes. They had started to burn again, independently of his tears; they ached and stung with the feeling of foreign matter. Ash and silt, he thought madly, it’s just ash and silt. That was what Cronnak and Sabnak had both said. But it was more than that. It was ash and silt, and grief, and terror. Then the buzzing began. At first he thought it was mere insects, mosquitos and fleas that even he was mighty enough to swipe away. But then he remembered where he was – this was the Rift, and nothing but demons could live here. Stupidly, he turned over his shoulder to look at them. Insects in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, were buzzing after him in black swathes that made him long even for the normal, pallid greys of the Rift. They were gaining fast. His eyes widened at the sight. He tripped. His foot caught on one of the spiny arms of a Miracle Cactus, ripping the plant from the ground as he tumbled and rolled. He could feel the pulp on his feet and tried wiping it off out of impulse. He turned back to look for the swarm, sure by now they would overwhelm him. But there was no swarm. Instead, two dozen Vortixx gauged him silently. Twelve they stood, each on one of the craggy lips of the Rift; they gazed down upon him, in the dug-out crater that gulfed them, like an animal in its pen. Each was unique in her own way, like any sculpture, but they shared the same basic template as any race; some male, some female, but all ebony-armored and eyed, all of a body type that was both uniquely appealing and anatomically wrong. The buzzing resumed as another host of insects, maybe hundreds in number, swirled around his head and descended. When they stopped and congealed, they were no more than fifteen feet behind him. From the swarm stepped another Vortixx – and Jennak realized they were not insects at all, but crystals, infinitesimal in size and infinite in number, and that they were combining to form the Vortixx’s shape. In her hand she held his brother’s saw. Oddly, he did not scream. There was not even any fear anymore – or perhaps it was the other way around, and he was so afraid he had become numb to all else. That sounded more accurate. Irnakk has me now. He just did what Cronnak had told him to do – he stood, not bothering to dust himself off or pick up the Miracle Cactus, and ran. The buzzing did not resume, but he knew they were watching, because when Jennak looked up at either lip of the Rift there they stood, equal in number and gaze, all still watching him flee. He could do nothing about it, though; he could do nothing but run, and run, and run until he tasted the sweet air beyond the Rift. Or until the demons grew bored of him, at last, and decided to descend. -Tyler