"Monarch Wings & Other Broken Things"
From: @inkhorn-art
To: @chrysopeony
Note: I wrote this half out of my mind from covid, so I hope it's semi-enjoyable :,) I'm also writing a second part to fulfill the rest of your request!! I'll put it on my ao3 (ink_horn) soon in case you were interested :) Merry Christmas!!!!!!
Written work under readmore
(Drive version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7HnOV-lM-4zZ6j9NJY9gsK9TuB-RfOtaj99hwzFSIY/edit )
"Monarch Wings & Other Broken Things"
On the threshold of the Abyss, they are alone, and the only voice is the howling wind from somewhere above.
A long, thin arm wakes the vessel from sleep, dry black fingers dragging softly against the length of their shell and tickling their face, making them shiver. With a sudden dawning fear, they bolt upright, startling at the appendage of a very large creature looming above.
(Surely it means to eat them, reaching down with its arm in such a way..!)
However, as the vessel peers closely, the arm is no more than a black root, moved by the wind's will.
Still sitting, they sleepily reach up and the root. It doesn’t respond. Perhaps dead.
Their breath slows in their chest as they fold their arms back into their cloak. Dust, which covers the ground, has managed to get stuck in the sockets of their face. It is barely felt.
There are many more of such hanging roots, gently swaying, none quite reaching the barren ground where tufts of black grass struggled to grow. Despite the rock all around, still life grew wherever a crack could be found. In the ceiling above, the cracks were everywhere.
(In the faintest of light, the vessel can see outlines of things within the rock walls that are not quite rock, yet not quite something else, things that may have once been alive.)
Within the cavern all around, the faintest of faint, weakly fending off the heavy darkness in every corner. Light and wind, both hailing from places above this one.
Above.
So the world isn’t just that place after all. There was more, somewhere, unseen. But what?
The vessel can feel it, stronger than before, the wind. It hides inside of their shell with raking, scraping claws.
In the pit below, the voices are endless. Still, they are fading. Soon, the only voice will be the howling wind from somewhere else.
This the vessel observes, lying unmoving on the hardened basin ground, as if dead.
They attempt to sleep once more, curling into their cloak. There are scratches on their hands, bruises on their arms and legs from climbing and falling and getting up and climbing again. Time is passing, and the pain is beginning to pass also, slowly but surely.
The vessel was born in that place below. They almost died leaving it. They are tired still. So, so tired.
They sleep, and dream of a thousand white faces of others far, far below in the darkness, looking up.
◎
Something different wakes them the second time. Something alive.
The vessel hears it on the path behind, a scraping, a breathing. They hurry to stand, kicking small rocks and pulling up grass.
They have no weapon, but as they search the ground, something silver glints in the dust. A long, silver pole with a pronged end, four sharp points carved to resemble a lethal crown. A broken piece lies next to it, a dirty sign filled with marks they cannot read.
A kingstaff, once standing, now fallen. The vessel picks it up and almost loses their balance; the pole is heavy, and almost twice their height.
A dark cloth is tied to the top, and dances in the wind. The metal stings with chill as the staff sways in their hands, back and forth. It is poorly balanced, but it should suffice.
A dark figure approaches.
From the path comes a small, twitching mass, closer and closer, crawling on all fours instead of just two.
(There is no voice, but there is almost a weeping that is not entirely the wind's.)
The vessel hefts their pale staff. Despite its unbalance, holding it feels not unnatural.
From the shadows, a pale face emerges.
The figure regards them with no sound, no emotion, no fear. Four horns on its head, as opposed to the vessel’s own three. Besides this, the two are identical. The vessel lowers their silver staff, pointing the crown at the ground.
Like the rock around them, the other’s face is marred by deep fissures and cracks, and dust leaks from the holes as well as a darker liquid. Pieces of its mask are gone entirely, revealing an inky blackness beneath.
It is that emptiness that the vessel can hear, that marks the other as Kin.
The damaged other tremblingly regards the vessel, and something besides words pass between them, two who survived the ascent out of Darkness itself.
Another vessel.
Then it, too, lays down to rest with a violent collapsing thud, raising a cloud of dust from the ground as its body moves up and down with silent breath.
Gripped with wariness, the vessel does not approach. Their sibling. Their kin. These are words they knew before all others, before they knew of such a thing as words. But out of the Abyss, nothing could be the same as it was.
Moments pass. The body of their siblings falls still, the soft tendrils of its cloak curling and uncurling, teased by the wind. Eventually, their sibling stops breathing. The wind howls, and the walls weep with the most ancient of dust.
Its broken mask, almost entirely stained with black, rests sideways on the ground, and seems to watch the vessel. The caverns around them groan; the rock beneath is already beginning to feed, another husk to strengthen the ancient basin.
Layers of heavy shadows twist, alive. Above the body rises a crown of four black horns, and pale, pale eyes stare at the vessel from the dark, or perhaps it is the dark, and the dark howls—
They run.
Towards the wind, who pushes back at them with whistling shrieks, cold teeth and claws. Towards the dim light, which grows stronger with every step, as if beckoning.
They run.
Soon, the vessel slows to a walk, but keeps a swift pace. To stop now could mean death.
They watched carefully the walls as if they had teeth and gaping mouths. Every shadow seemed to leap at them, every pocket of wind a howl from a dead, empty throat.
Mouthless, they choke on dust. They turn their head to look at the behind path, and nothing is following. Nothing with eyes, at least.
There is no turning back now.
The paths wind endless, roots and cracks and jagged walls. For a time, the vessel walks, and though they are tired, they fear the fate of their left-behind sibling, and do not stop.
The basin shifts, slowly, slowly, becoming something entirely else.
Silvery archways begin to appear on the ceilings, carved out of the basin in deliberate patterns with pillars to hold them, and rows of gray spikes resembling lustrous teeth emerge from the ground. The path grows less uneven, the roots reaching down bigger than before, and fences of black, pointed spears are everywhere.
They pass more silver kingstaffs, planted firmly in the rock instead of abandoned in the dust. Some have signs with marks they don’t understand, and some have signs with arrows pointing in various directions. They, at least, understand the purpose of these, and follow the directed paths.
The wind blows. It doesn’t stop.
A pale and blinding light, unlike any other the vessel has yet seen, is waiting in the distance.
Another lighthouse? Could it be?
Looking into the light brings unexpected pain, but not a moment is wasted before they’re taking a step, walking, running, towards the light. As they grow closer, shadows begin to die one by one, and there is no untouched corner.
A cacophony of scratching and clicking fills the caves as the vessel approaches. Strange creatures begin to emerge from all sides, one, then two, then ten, on the ceiling, on the walls, small dust-colored bugs with layers of pointed shells that shifted and scraped as unseeable legs carried them.
The eyes of these creatures, dark and empty, seemed not to notice the vessel’s passing presence. Perhaps they were blind. All take similar heed of the light in the distance, as if it wasn’t there at all.
The vessel enters a cavern that is lavished in silvery arches and armored walls, the black root arms of the basin curling around massive shells of creatures in the walls, turned to stone. Below the blinding light, the vessel can see dark smoke rising from the dusty ground, as well as black specks of nothingness, rising and rising.
The pale and blinding light reveals itself to be only a very tall ornate lamp of some kind.
(The vessel strikes the ground at this, rolls their head at this, kicks up dust at this.)
The lamp is another of the silver staffs with crowns of deadly sharp claws, and atop this one, a glass sphere filled with flies, the source of the light. The flies' wings are white, blinking and flashing like ten eyes. Never once do they cease, imprisoned in eternal flight.
(Similar flies had dwelled in the lighthouse, a thousand of them within a much bigger glass sphere. Similar was the fate of the tens of thousands of wingless, lightless creatures who dwelled outside.
So it was; a smaller lighthouse with no water in sight.)
Beneath the lamp is a bench. The vessel sits. Rests. The wind is quiet, here, barely a whisper. Perhaps they now sat in the maw of an enormous creature that had been blowing air out of its great mouth for this entire time.
Forebodingly, the vessel notices the nearby ground, how it descends into a pit that is filled with rows and rows of the gray, teeth-like spikes.
Next to the vessel, one of the small dust-colored creatures has climbed onto the bench, and it sits, making quiet clicking sounds. The two rest in unison.
The vessel readjusts their grip on their pale staff, for it had slipped out of unsteady hands. In the places untouched by light, impenetrable shadows live where gentle dusk might once have. The vessel can no longer see outside of the range of the lamplight.
The wind is silent, now. In its place, a roaring is growing louder.
The vessel stands, quicker than a shadow.
In the next moment, a raw shriek sounds from outside the cavern, echoing inside anything it could reach.
HUNGER, HUNGER, the echoes seem to wail.
Claws violently rake and scrape the basin floor as a creature flings itself out of a tunnel, roaring its ravenousness. The vessel sees only a glimpse of a dark, round body covered in eyes and teeth and black flailing limbs before the creature leaps, slamming into them with immense force and sending them flying. The staff is knocked out of their hands by the impact.
On the ringing ground, they lie there with their face in the dust and black grass, unable to move from the shock of the blow.
The roars of the beast are reduced to a dull noise as the vessel catches only a single glimpse of an expanding black abyss of teeth and a glistening throat as the beast—
—scurries right past. Past the prone, shaking vessel.
With another shriek, the flailing beast descends upon… something on the ground. One of the small dust-colored creatures that had been sitting on the bench. The beast had flipped it onto its back, rendering it decidedly helpless as it wiggled rows of short legs to reveal a white underbelly.
The top of the beast's head is lined with a circle of large claw-like teeth, and a clear, glistening liquid leaks from its mouth as it burbles with excitement. Its body moves, hiding the smaller creature from view as it raises a thin claw to pierce its belly.
The vessel looks away. Now, a black oily liquid is leaking over their eye socket. They put their hand on their face, feeling the thin outline of a crack. Pieces and pieces. Emptiness within reach.
Though there is no pain, the vessel begins to tremble. They think only of their four-horned sibling, who had been covered in many cracks, who had been eaten by darkness that had escaped from the inside.
The vessel crawls back towards the bench as the beast murmurs with wild glee, sitting on the border where the light abruptly ended. Beneath its teeth is a row of dark, pupiless eyes. The ones on the back of its head seem to watch the vessel.
They rise, staggering to their feet, to pick up their silver staff. The beast is bigger than they, though not by much. Its teeth were busy feeding, its claws distracted. To pierce its flesh with the prongs of their staff, to kill, it would be easy.
The eyes on the back of the beast’s head watch the vessel, and blink.
"HUNGER?" it suddenly says.
The vessel does not move.
The beast undulates its sharp spider-like legs, fluttering its teeth as it rises from its sitting place. On the ground, the small creeper is now little more than dark pieces of shell. Living creepers move slowly along the walls nearby, ignorant—or perhaps uncaring—of the death of their kin.
The beast appears to regard the vessel’s pale staff, its deadly spiked crown, how it glows luminous in the light of the lamp. The vessel, in turn, watches the beast’s sharp legs carefully.
“PAIN…” the beast rumbles deeply. “YOU HUNGER… FOR NO PAIN?”
Again, the vessel stares.
The beast huffs hoarsely, teeth flexing at the ceiling.
“PAIN… AWAY,” the beast insists. “HUNGER, AWAY. MAWLEK GIVES FLESH? TO PALE ONE?”
Oh. The beast was offering an exchange. For food, of some kind, if their weapon is cast aside. The vessel wavers at this.
They have never known hunger, have never needed it. And perhaps this creature is not the only one of its kind lurking in this shadowy place.
The Mawlek moves restlessly, agitated as it turns in slow circles, every eye watching the vessel's pale staff. Perhaps it has felt the sting of one before, or one similar. The Mawlek’s dark body is marked with silver lines, the color of metal.
(Thus, the vessel learns the meaning of the word fear.)
Their hand reaches for the crack in their mask, the split reaching their eye. The Mawlek doesn’t seem to notice, too fixated on the weapon they held in their hand. Perhaps it doesn’t even know what it has done. After all, it seems as though it had a different target all along.
To kill, it would not be easy. Not when the Mawlek is on its guard like this. But it could be done.
The vessel looks away from the lamp above the bench. Brightly it blazed even when they turned away. It was beginning to burn their mind away in the looking.
The beast grunts loudly when the vessel drops the staff on the bench. The vessel tenses, preparing to flee when suddenly, the Mawlek’s entire body begins to… pulse, and stretch.
Gurgling deep in its throat, the Mawlek chokes, a wretched noise that fills the cavern. Then, bowing its head towards the feet of the vessel, it noisily spits out a sizable chunk of… something, covered in thick, opaque saliva.
The vessel regards the steaming glob at their feet, before looking back at the Mawlek.
The beast shivers its dripping crown of teeth with enthusiasm, as though pleased.
A dark mass is within the spit. A piece of the small creeper it had consumed moments prior. It is clear that the beast is waiting for them to reach down and take it. To eat.
The vessel hesitantly reaches into the glob, closing their hand around the chunk, then immediately rears back. Their hand suddenly erupts with a dull, stinging pain, as if little invisible teeth were closing around their hand. The Mawlek bellows, rubbing its front legs together.
“NO HURT, PAIN,” it insists. Then it whispers, “...AWAY. AWAY…”
The vessel holds up their hand, and flecks of saliva fall to the ground.
The Mawlek’s saliva… burned.
However, even now, the pain was already beginning to fade.
The Mawlek makes clicking noises with its mouth, its impatience obvious.
“EAT, EAT,” it croons. “THEN, WE HIDE. LOST ONE. FOUND ONE.”
The vessel looks at the wet chunk of dead flesh in their hand. It resembles nothing, in this state. They are uncertain what exactly to do with it.
They look again at the Mawlek, its jaws pointing upwards with teeth spread like a deadly flower.
Perhaps the vessel, too, has teeth above the eyes, and a mouth on top of their head.
Without hesitation, the vessel shoves the chunk of flesh directly into their eye socket, a drop of hot saliva running down their face, and drops the chunk when it passes through. They have no difficulty in doing this. The meat had been thoroughly soused beforehand, after all.
The chunk disappears, presumably eaten (?).
At this, the Mawlek shrieks in delight, eyes rolling. The beast turns in the direction it had come, and starts limping away into the dark.
However, before it goes, it lurches to a stop. Its rear eyes regard the vessel, who is standing in the blazing light of the lamp.
“DANGER… FOLLOW, FOLLOW,” the Mawlurk beckons with a groan. “THIS WAY… AWAY FROM LIGHT.”
The vessel feels a pull in their chest. It weighs like flesh, turned to stone.
From light. Away.
The radiant ornate lamp with its crown of light. The vessel has somewhat grown to fear the dark, in their moments spent shielded under its glow. They could sleep here on the bench. They could be safe from the dark with eyes, and the eyeless dark.
Faintly, the wind picks up again, howling from somewhere else; to somebody, or nobody. The vessel had almost forgotten its voice.
The light burns their gaze, almost more than the acid of the Mawlek. The crack in their mask is set, and bleeds no longer. It was time to return to the forward path.
The vessel trembles the tendrils of their cloak, and dust falls in a slow descent towards the ground, black smoke rising to meet it. They step forward to follow the Mawlek, who burbles and clicks its teeth, a delighted look in its many eyes (truly, it was difficult to fear this monstrous bug).
The vessel looks back at the lamp, mouthless, swallowing uncertainty. Certainly, they will be back here. When they make their return to the Abyss, to where their siblings wait.
The vessel forgets to pick up their silver staff from the bench, and thinks of it no more.
◎
It is here, within the great nest of the Mawleks, does the vessel truly realize how young their friend actually was, how small in size compared to the adults of the brood, and how friendly.
Which is to say, the moment the vessel enters the nest, a Mawlek five times their size immediately eats them.
They are between the jaws of a full-grown adult Mawlek—limbs flailing as boiling breath engulfs their head and wet teeth closes around their body—when they hear their friend hissing and spitting with great ferocity. Soon after, the elder spits them out with a growl.
Body burning and cloak dripping with acid saliva, the vessel lays wetly on the ground, warily observing their friend attempt to jump on top of the much bigger Mawlek and pierce its body with pointed legs.
Gurgling in annoyance, the adult Mawlek bites at the younger as it retreats, heavy legs scraping against stone. However, the elder beast did not seem particularly afraid, as if it was just appeasing the child.
“PALE THING, YOU TASTE OF DUST,” the disgruntled Mawlek hisses at the vessel from the retreating dark, rasping and drooling; the ground seethes wherever saliva touches it. “YOU TASTE OF DEATH. LIGHT, DANGER…”
The vessel hears the echo of its groaning long after the brooding Mawlek is gone.
With a satisfied grunt, the lesser Mawlek burbles its satisfaction.
In dim light made dimmer by the tight, confined caverns and tunnels, they can faintly see other Mawleks, rings of them huddled together in groups. Most appeared only to slumber, the noises they made as they slept creating a great, low drone that shook the very ground itself.
Empty shells of shadow creepers were everywhere. If there are discarded masks, they are strange, unfamiliar.
“THIS WAY,” the juvenile Mawlek hisses to them. “...FRIEND. SHOW YOU… SOMETHING.”
The vessel follows, the tunnel winding deeper. There is almost no light, save for the glint of the Mawlek’s eyes, the well do they know how to walk within dark places.
It isn’t certain, the reason why they are following a Mawlek deep into a nest filled with other, larger, hungrier Mawleks. They don’t know where they are going. They don’t know when they will leave.
If they'll leave.
But…
The beast had called them earlier. Friend.
What this means, the vessel does not know. But they will walk into darkness away from light, if this beast called them to.
The tunnel gets tighter and tighter, as if swallowing them. The vessel is forced to crawl on their knees, cloak dragging in the walls of dirt, dirtying it further.
The Mawlek seemed to be faring much better, having folded its body into a somewhat flat disc as its legs carried it forward, obviously much more suited to being underground. Never once does the Mawlek stop humming and murmuring, words that the vessel can’t quite make out.
And then…
“BROOD, BROOD.”
The tunnel opens.
They find themself in a small, dense cave surrounded by jagged rock, and the ground is covered in layers and layers of dust and black grass piled all over the ground. The shells of small dead creatures sit in piles in odd corners, deliberately gathered. The heat of the cave was close to boiling.
Within the darkness, one hundred eyes open and shift to look at the pair as several dozen Mawleks notice the two's presence. These Mawleks share the same small size as the one beside the vessel.
In the center of the low-ceilinged cave sat a beast much, much larger from the rest, enormous and round with rows of quivering teeth, each bigger than the vessel’s own body. It did not appear to have legs. The smaller Mawleks were swarmed around it, gathered close.
A mother.
Sensing the foreign presence of something other, the Mawlurk shifted her pale eyes to meet their gaze, though not directly. She seemed to nearly be blind.
“BROOD… SIBLINGS,” their Mawlek friend proudly gurgles. “MOTHER, MOTHER…”
The vessel watches as the Mawlek scurries towards its kin, and the hushed, quiet voices all at once became a dry roar of noise, hissing and buzzing and clicking.
The vessel takes a step back. Unsure.
They watch as the beasts socialize, jumping on top of one another and wrestling with noisy ferocity, slashing legs and growling jaws. Their friend disappears quickly in the dust-filled turmoil, as every Mawlek sibling looked the same.
Meanwhile, a single Mawlek goes before its mother, bowing its head as it spasms and spits out the slimy remains of some dead creature. The Mawlurk croons low and deep in her throat, and the vessel can feel the rumbling of it within their shell.
They were born here. They belonged here, sitting in the dark. It was very nearly the same thing as dying.
Suddenly, it was though the very ceilings of the cave were on the verge of collapse, as if they were about to crumble and fall and crush every living thing beneath.
So many eyes in the dark, all the same.
Into the tunnel, the vessel returns to a brighter darkness once again.
◎
On the forward path, the wind howls. It always does.
The vessel walks, and walks. They always do.
Where they are wandering, they do not know. There is no light to follow, and no Mawleks to guide them. They are alone once more.
The basin is truly barren and desolate. Only the most primitive, light-fearing creatures live in this most ancient of places, shadow creepers and those that eat them.
There is nothing here for the vessel. And only darkness waits behind.
The vessel walks, and walks. Nothing more follows, hungry or not.
The cavern that the vessel enters next is the largest they have seen yet. The ceiling itself is so high that it is almost hidden in the gloom, and light is everywhere.
Then, the path ends, and the road begins.
Something new under their feet. The vessel looks down, cloak billowing in the wind. The ground looks as though it had been removed, and in place of shells and rock, polished stones laid out in shining patterns. Silvery gilded fences topped with pointed spikes firmly line the path. As they walk, they see kingstaffs in many places, proud pale rods with crowns of spikes.
There is no want of light here. Little lanterns, with glass spheres and flies, are every few paces.
At their feet, a bridge.
In the distance, a pale light that the vessel has not beheld even in a dream, nor even, a nightmare.
The vessel takes a step forward onto the bridge, then stops, voices sounding from the behind path.
They are frozen in plain view at the foot of the bridge as two creatures approach. White bodies and white clothes, with white horns, short and very wide. Both are adorned in blue stones unlike any found in these caverns. So pale are these creatures that the two appear almost to glow.
"In this dark place, there are no echoes of life anywhere," one says. "Still, a breathing in my ears, a not-quite heartbeat. Could it be that the very walls are alive?"
"T-the echo of something gone weighs heavier than the touch of something found," the other replies. "When one is b-born in darkness, even pale light would seem… an enemy."
The pair's words fall short with an abrupt pause as they stare at the small vessel in front of them, each with dawning expressions of great shock. The vessel watches the two strangely clothed creatures as they become flustered and agitated respectively.
"O-oh. How… how pale you are, wanderer," one stammers, clutching their silken robes; their head lowers, hiding their eyes as if afraid to look at the vessel. "Y-you are not a retainer. What is your purpose here, at the threshold of our King's radiant dwelling? Few know t-the location of this place, after all. Are you kin, perh—"
"Shh! Pale!?" the other seethes, fumbling with the smooth blue stone attached to their throat. "Gilded! False! Pale of shell it may seem, but none more than a mere reflection of the true light before us!"
"Furthermore, it is filthy," the same creature adds with a spiteful tone, glaring down at the vessel with contempt. "Kin. Pfah! Blasphemy!"
"O-oh. I suppose, you are correct," the other replies, and the two continue forward once more, walking past the vessel and down the bridge. "The King does not tarnish. The King does not break. And it is broken. D-did you see? That ghastly mark on its head?"
"Precisely. And please, dirty wanderer," one calls from ahead. "Do not stay for long, and do not cross this bridge! Your very presence is tarnishing the threshold of our radiant King. Return to the mindless wilds from whence you came!"
With that, the creatures walk away, their words never ceasing all the while, until both fade from sight.
The vessel stands at the threshold. And then, the vessel follows, crossing the bridge towards the light, which calls them by name, though the vessel had not one.
In the distance, a palace of white, the very monument to light itself. It is the dream upon which dreams are built. It is from here that the howling wind was blowing from. Laughing, crying, weeping, dying. How similar it all sounded.
More white-robed creatures are moving along the road. Most congregate in groups before walking inside the palace itself.
(The vessel is careful to walk low, and behind the silver spiked fences.)
At the gate of the palace, a figure taller than the rest is standing perfectly still. Watching. Waiting.
Armored in white, a tall spiked crown hides its face from view. Within its four hands, a large, hooked blade with serrated teeth is ominously held, poised for combat.
As if sensing a foreign gaze, the armored figure slowly turns its head to look at the vessel in the far distance. Their eyes meet.
Suddenly, the creature is still no longer. Its long legs deftly carry it away from the palace, past the gates and the white robed creatures, only stopping at the foot of the bridge where the vessel stood.
From within a cold shadow, the vessel looks up at the white crowned creature standing in front of them.
It is much, much bigger up close.
Slowly, its neck bends until its head is looking down at them. Underneath its helmet, a sliver of white eyes were watching, and they were empty.
The creature slightly bends at one knee, as if to bow. Then, it raises its large, curved blade high above the vessel's head.
The road goes on, and on, and on.
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