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49. Dark King
🕑 Added 2024-08-22 12:08:22 +0000 UTCA young horned male Aeldari with purple skin could be seen levitating in front of a gargantuan golden ring impeded in the ground, its size beyond the realm of the equally immense mountainous range surrounding it.
In the palms of this strange being, more Daemon in appearance than Aeldari, a diminutive arcane rune could be seen peacefully hovering, within it a pentacle of depthless darkness. Long minutes passed in absolute silence, the wind forbidden from blowing, and he languidly clapped his hands together. And from the seemingly innocent action, a shockwave exploded outward, echoing far and wide across the mountains like a howling monster of myth.
Then the horned young man opened his hands back, and the rune had drastically changed, its intricacies beyond even the most skilled and knowledgeable of mortal and immortal psyker, mage, sorcerer, or otherwise profession of the supernatural. Reality rippled, folding onto itself as its very rules were bent and denatured into submission to the will of the Aeldari God of Magic around it.
“There…” Hoopa smiled as he meticulously moved his legs, feet, arms, hands, and fingers through a series of calculated movements representing glyphs of his designs as his spell reached completion. The entire motion was akin to a slow hypnotic dance impossible to understand, nevertheless reproduced by humans.
“You may once again walk among the mortals!” He grandly exclaimed, the Golden Gate flashing like a star before turning to the usual flowing dark constellations and nebulae. His words resonated far and wide, and less than a second later, a theatrical mask of sorrow and laughter timidly poked out.
Bright orange eyes full of mischief swiveled up and down, left and right, as the mask of tragedy and comedy's prominent chin and long, pointed nose took shape. With it, cockscombs weaved itself above, completing the head imitation.
Then a peal of laughter rang, pure, merry, innocent, and demented in all manner as the mask turned upside down and a strange creature of living, tattered, flashy colored tissue pootled on air like the grandest of mime, disembodied white-gloved hands grasping at nothing and everything as the laugher grew and grew.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHIHIHIHEHE! At long last! The Great Harlequin is back on the stage, the Great Game!” Cegorach, the Aeldari God of Trickery, Artist, and Creativity, asserted grandly. The world acclaimed his arrival with claps, cheers, and chuckles from every corner as if an elated audience was present.
“How do you feel, brother?” The Avatar of the Archdjinni of the Rings questioned cooly, his movement never ceasing as the spell had only begun. A tilt of his head served as the only physical acknowledgment of the liberated ancient deity.
“Excellent, I say! Excellent indeed! I swore upon my name and essence to make it so you can experience the same fate! To taste the freedom that has been wrongfully robbed!” The First Fool proclaimed, bowing deeply to the much smaller and currently weaker form of his sibling whose smile told more than words ever could.
‘Interesting…’ Hoopa thought, ‘True betrayal of Asuryan it is then, can't say I'm shocked, but it's very bold. Not that I complain. It should smooth things out.’
“Likewise, I, Kornous, follow the Devil, Magician, Archdjinni of the Rings, Original Sin, First Betrayer, Dark Prince, and my youngest brother. May the hunt be dark or bright; my fate would lay in your many clawed hands, for my loyalty is yours.” A man, more beast than man, more beast than man followed, falling on one knee, his hooved foot bringer of the hunt and wild as nature was born anew in his mighty presence.
An instant later, it was followed by the sound of wings beating gently in the wind but with the power to devastate countless worlds, accompanied by the chiming of melodious bells. Feather of the purest white rained as a celestial white-haired Aeldari woman descended from the portal. The golden bow in her hand was held low yet tight. Extremely so.
“I, Lileath, the Dream and Fortune of all children true to the way of olden days, shall unwaveringly walk the Darkest of Path in its Esoteric Mystery, for it is endless and boundless as Fire and Wisdom had fallen low into the shard of an unreachable destiny where life can proliferate no more.” The Maiden sang, landing with an elegant and profound curtly following on the steps of her father.
Finally, the last of the four advanced from the Celestial Enclave, and life bloomed from each of her silent steps: flowers, trees, grass, moss, vines, and thorns manifested in a bouquet of flora accompanied by its fauna, both small and big, inoffensive, and deadly.
Tranquil were her movements as delicate as her unarmored body, but the Merciful Mother was all but frail despite the tear on her visage or the aura of innocence. Realspace welcomed her as her presence grew across Yuggoth without her willing it. The only limits were the barriers and the
primeval planet belly was the influence of mightier deftly blockaded hers.
“I, Isha, shall follow the Dark King, history to be forgiven but not forgotten as the branches of life diverge. May we free him as he did for us from a fate most horrific through our loyalty and power and honor our debt by serving under his divine rule. Do you accept our vow?” The Goddess declared, her voice soft, sincere, hopeful yet hard and resolute.
“Isn't that a bit of an over-dramatic display?” The ‘Dark King’ mused aloud, causing his audience, well subject now, to look almost offended and very nervous, at least all for those who weren't Cegorach, “But I earnestly accept, though our eldest brother would be heavily displeased. Not that it changed a great deal, truthfully.”
“What is your edict, oh Your Dark Majesty?” The Great Harlequin asked as he stood up, his tone light and with a hint of playful sarcasm that made the Avatar barely hold off a scoff.
It was evident this was the clown’s scheme, one among thousands more the Archdjinni of the Rings could barely fathom. Or wanted to, for the majority were overly complicated and unnecessarily fragile, their ingenuity and success rate of little effect to change his opinion.
He preferred to be direct and honest; half-truths and abuse of loopholes were merely an extension of it. Righteousness wasn't his forte.
There was little shame in admitting the stark contrast in intellect regarding the innumerable facets of life. These aspects of deceit, trickery, and manipulation weren't what Hoopa excelled in.
Leading an average mortal or mortals by the nose without force was easy, but controlling their every thought, action, and movement for a practical joke to be done on their descendants millennia later by a series of amusing coincidences was of an entirely different realm. They were birthed to complement one another; redundancy was present, but only to an extent.
And he would happily play on the board for all the jester's intelligence and wisdom. His path was in the light, and his ultimate goal was predictable. Joy, amusement, and safety were what he sought, oh so mortal in essence but common among the divine of a sane mind.
“Wait a bit, brother. R̵͕̞̒E̷͖̅Ļ̷̣̀E̵̹̔̊Ă̴̖̥S̶̛̳͝Ë̴̖́!” Hoopa said, psychic energy crackling around his form, showing his artificial veins and nerves, and with both palms wide open closing, a resounding crack was heard from the Golden Gate as it crumbled to ashy dust. The high altitude did the rest as the breeze blew the portal into the cold mountains.
At the same time, in a different place, a similar construct suffered the same fate, turning to its most primal components. Still, compared to the first, they lit up in countless colors and shades, creating an exquisite shifting tapestry. Each glint resulted from a denatured particle adorned by hundreds of master-crafted runes. They pulsed one time, then two, three, four, five, and at the sixth… they all at once detonated, birthing a magical conflagration with the power to turn a world to glass.
“The clock is now ticking.” The only Avatar let out, frowning heavily, the gravity of the statement heavy, “My first order is simple: defend Yuggoth in my stead while I support you.”
And with that, Hoopa vanished through a ring, leaving the four Aeldari Gods behind, for at his state, his portals couldn't support the strain of warping beings of such powers. However, his mastery of the Wandering Planet was great, and so his voice came from everywhere at once.
“Be careful and mindful. The goal is not to win through sacrifice but to deter them. Bring out your equipment at the moment of exit for me to bless them in darkness. If all fail, retreat and let me handle the rest.”
Cegorach was the first to go, with a burst of giggles escaping as his non-existent legs morphed into existence before becoming metal springs. And he flung himself with them, leaving behind confetti.
The one following right after was Lileath, a vaguely exasperated and amused expression on her features as she flew right after him. She rapidly caught up to him with rapid flaps of her wings for a strange garish fake flower on his chest to propel a glittery purple jelly on her face.
“Uncle!” Outrage was short-lived as she reoriented herself to the present and merely willed the gunk out of existence, deciding to ignore the clown, all the while increasing her velocity.
“My love, was this the right choice?” The Merciful Mother asked her Consort, her feet leaving the ground with his hooves as both followed their daughter and brother through a bridge of vegetation. Her tears flowing below and wherever they fell formed an oasis of life in its purest form.
“I hope so. I dearly hope with all my being. There is no walking back or regret permitted with our choice of today. No forgiveness to be earned.” Kurnous told calmly, his voice a relaxing rumble and bestial purr, “A new king for a new chapter of a hopefully eternal fair reign.”
The only sins Asuryan had committed was overdoing his kindness and patience, which had also been his greatest strength. His progressive and unstoppable fall to dementia did little in his favor as well. And Hoopa was of different clothes. Neither were incomparable, but the recently crowned Dark King was of a nature closer to the Bloody-Handed God in many aspects but colder, far colder, yet no less passionate and sinister at heart.
Alas, there was no alternative from a factual, emotional, or moral standpoint. Hoopa had freed them no matter his past act of great betrayal of their Mother. At this very moment, he had them avoid their tragic destiny, and by this choice they have taken to accept, tearing the Pantheon apart came with a price.
For all their strength and capabilities, they weren't all-powerful, and enemies were omnipresent as such a warden and guide was necessary for their survival. And this warden and guide was in a new Godking.
It was a trap they themselves had set in motion, or so the godly couple believed. And in many ways, it was.
Reaching their destination, Isha and Kurnous did as instructed, the former willing a spear of minimal yet intricate design ending in a tear-shaped blade with an ethereal pink ribbon. Her Consort's weapon was incredibly crude in comparison; it was an aged, well-taken care wooden quarterstaff adorned with a few white runes of meaning lost to time.
The skyline flashed, and a film of pure darkness impregnated itself over their weapons, armor, and bodies, flashing away soon after as if it had never happened. It was a fragment of the shields, imbued to serve as protection and alarm if the worst happened—a worthy sacrifice from Hoopa's viewpoint with the inconsequential price.
The last defense was breached, and the two Aeldari Gods joined the first two, now hundreds of perfect mirror images of their daughters, making it impossible for them to tell who was real or imitation. The absence of Cegorach signaling the clown was either one of the lifelike puppets or hidden away in his illusion.
The rattling of his cackle at their arrival made it even harder to pinpoint his location, if even in one place, and it was the sign for the battle to begin.
“FIRE!” He screamed mid laughter, and the arrows were let, a hundred golden stars in ever-rising numbers zipping across the chaotic water of the Sea of Souls toward the conglomeration of the vilest, most tortured souls, ideas, and concepts born of wars, diseases, and treachery.
Wails of despair and joy, cries of maddening rage and bloodlust, caws of ever-changing tones and emotions rippled. The endless torrent of rot, pestilence, life, death, hate, war, blood, honor, change, ambition, sorcery, knowledge, and fate, given daemonic forms of flesh, blood, and bone, poured like a tidal wave of never-seen scale since millions of years past.
They ran, swam, flew, and dug in the non-Euclidean realm toward the four Gods, uncaring for their future as their Dark Masters extended their power beyond their realms in a united assault, an entire portion of their true self on the battlefield. Their gazes, promises, cries, laughter, touches, and encouragement were a source of elation, terror, rage, and much more, no matter their ranks and creeds.
From the jolly rotund, diseased, and rotted carcass of the beloved Great Unclean Ones of Papa Nurgle to the modest and maddened Pink Horrors of Tzeentch and mindlessly rageful Daemon Prince of Khorne cursed from infancy by metallic claws digging deeply into his brain and yet to be artificially born. They all joined and fought as one chaotic, uncoordinated swarm.
The endless tide drowned the four forgotten deities even amid the fiery rains, whose catastrophic damages were nothing more than the last defiant strike of cornered beasts. Or so it should be… the atmosphere of the Dark Planet came to life as lines and circles drew themselves into familiar yet mysterious patterns not even the wisest Lord of Change understood.
Nothing was done and could have been done to stop them from reaching completion, and so they did, and little changed, causing a roar of mockery, displeasure, and relief in the daemonic horde of Chaos.
But they never were the target. The Warp changed where they were not, and the tainted psychic energy was absorbed from there and countless more through the assistance of backdoors in the Labyrinthine Dimension known as the Webway. It was all transported by temporary connections, then processed by the Blackstone Fortresses and freed into its purest form, taking the shape of intertwined white and dark purple threads.
In a show, the only survivor of the last episode of the War in Heaven, the psychic threads tethered themselves to the Aeldari Gods, true or imaginary, and the one at the epicenter stopped crying for the first time in eon.
Her visage, the expression of perfect beauty to any eyes beholding her, a visage that in another time and place would have become the loved toy of one of the three Chaos Gods, shifted minutely. It was small and unnoticeable by many, but it had been the source of emotion among the Silver Tide, a primal fear beings robbed of their souls shouldn't experience—the fault of her youngest brother's imagination and insights.
Voicelesly for they deserve none to be graced by her attention, Isha tapped the butt of her spear on the branch she stood on, and irreality unfolded as her authority was known to the usurpers. Life and Nature were her domain, and so a reminder was needed. Normally, she wouldn't act in such a way, even to creatures as unworthy as Daemons of the Ruinous Powers, but this wasn't a normal time.
A happy and plump young Nurgling freshly born of the festering wound of his bestest and biggest friend, a Great Unclean One, blinked, his humming about dancing in Grandpa's magnificent garden stopping as he stared in uncomprehension at his little clawed hand where a nubby finger had fallen off.
Confusion was short-lived, and pain exploded as his hand necrosed. Soon, it was his short, chubby arm, and his high-pitched squeal of absolute terror ended. A root had penetrated his belly button and proliferated through his chest until it popped out his eyes like morbid flower pots where airborne seeds busted to spread themselves.
Not far away, a Changeling was desperately trying and failing to alter her appearance, to heal herself and cut the cancerous growth from the body gifted to her by her Lord.
Yet all her efforts were for naught as the arm holding her shaft mutated against her will into a delicate feminine hand that harshly grasped her head. And with a deceiving appearance, the dainty hand popped her head like a balloon while her corpse was swiftly devoured by the great flowering tree the nearby Great Unclean One had been killed by through parasitism.
Similarly close by, a squadron of Bloodletters and a Bloodthirster were locked in place by serrated bones piercing their flesh, and their unearthly screeches were silenced by a river of blood snaking itself in their noses, mouths, and ears among other orifices until their skin distended. Their essence was extinguished with their organs crushed within as they exploded into a gory shower of meat.
This scene of biomancy put into effect was repeated by the thousands, each time with a disparate flavor of divine irony.
The Blood God roared in fury, silencing the battlefield as he acted first. His heavily muscled body-clad flaming armor disappeared, illusory afterimage left behind in his blind charge. Everything in his line of sight from his target was annihilated. Daemons or winged puppets were shredded in equal parts as his great cleaver felled on the unmoving Goddess of Love to bisect her cleanly.
Then, a cloven hoof slammed into his head, shattering half of the helmet yet barely affecting the momentum of the Lord of Skulls. The tale rhymed differently for trajectory, and the howling Chaos God was thrown onto the dark shields’ first layer, where his scream took a tune of pain with the ever-rising rage, bloodlust, and excitement.
“Back away! Mindless creature.” The Lord of the Beasts billowed, one of his hooves still in the air, yet he never let his attention wane for one moment. The battle had only begun, one where their victory was assured, yet where they lost for the cost to their foe is negligible. A fact not shared with them.
Comments
Asura
Thanks for the chapter👋
