The Wayward Bull remained in Sandslout. There wasn’t any important jobs that he needed to attend, nor was he asked to guard any different areas. Being a Warden wasn’t quite difficult, being a Soldier held a bigger meaning. But, no matter how hard he tried, Abdullah had failed on multiple occasion. Disappointing none other then himself, eventhough he had met the King and engaged in combat. None of it truly satisified the bull, job after job yet no true success. Abdullah remained still as if he were a statue, choosing not to move from his position. Standing outside of the gate and safely guarding it, watching each individual that went through that gate.
”Nothing, I‘ve done all of this and boasted about change. Yet, I remain the same. What duties must i fulfill, how many times must I falter before I can succeed.” The Bull spoke in his head. Frustrated yet angered at each and every hurdle that had been thrown towards him, yet he hadn’t jumped over a single one.
But the one thing that tore away at his mind, was how he managed to track down that caramel-skinned gypsy and still manage to fail. Would he ever meet her again? Did she hate the Bull for toying with her emotions? Sure, he was mentally drained these past days, but Abdullah cared more for her and how she was holding up than his own mental health. Outside of these flood of thoughts, Abdullah remained still. Those eyes although staring at the people who entered the gate, were empty. There was no sun, but a black hole eating him away from the inside out.
Was that gratitude saturating her every word? How becoming of the moth. Akna had lapped at the nectar of greatness, yet her thirst was far from slaked. The crimson jezebel smirked, her eyes of gold studying this insectoid as the highbrow couldn't withstand the need to gabble off. Talk was cheap, the sort of investment even the most tightfisted fiend had no qualms with distributing. Yet, laced amidst that flood of locutions remained the sort of libation that led the bovine to give pause. Samara's time within this escape conferred with it much-needed insight. And after fetching the very essence that motivated her actions, the queen encountered a conundrum.
What should she do with that tendrilled beast sprawled out on the floor? Executing the last living Timanti was an option, yet the enchantress found herself compelled to extend forgiveness. After all, if it weren't for this travesty of life, her rise to power might have been delayed. Or worse, Samara might have risked breaking a sweat. The heifer soughed, probing the inert woman of the sea as she pressed her heels against the creature's back. The dancer tested to see if this was an act or had the miserable worm genuinely passed out. While a despicable thing, there was no rebutting that this "Green Diamond" still had some use.
On top of the tower of her design, the devilish autocrat had conspired quite the narrative. Niazmina, a former agent, hungered for power. The jackal aspires to become royalty and lord over her lesser cousins. The baderkerkhan were deviant, and their fondness for the dead effectively eclipsed their affection for the living. Those reclusive necromancers often boasted of their ties to "mirage," and what a better gift than to toss Zelena as a token to further rate their allegiance? Perfect, Samara would keep this octopus alive and wed her off to the aspiring inquisitor. Who knows, maybe this lascivious ploy might yet produce the preferred outcome?
The queen returned her sights to the moth, smiling as she had not neglected to hearken to the fearful bug's wordiness.
"You will be my prized convert. Your existence is a walking testament regarding my forgiveness and that even those beyond our desert are capable of being saved."
She paused, her eyes examining that chitinous shell as the queen felt hollow—Anzhela, her love, what a sin it was to have this temple deprived of young. The thought of a minute without brooding was an inhumane and unusual sentence. Motherhood was a blessing, the act of childbearing the sort of joy not all appreciated. Instinctively, her hand drifted and cupped her abs, pressing against them while she huffed.
"Let us be on our way. I will take you to my hive to meet my wife and find you a suitable place within the temple. Your goddess demands to fulfill her role as the begetter of life. To repopulate the sands with a new race as I did with the bovine those many decades ago. However, this time, my children will be perfect. Who knows, you might prove instrumental in their tutoring."
Samara bent down and grabbed one of the feelers before dragging the sleeping beauty across the rocks. Ahead of her, a swirling mirror of gold materialized. Its light dazzled as she waited for the Mothkela to compose herself.
"Lady Akna, it is time..."
The monarch declared, only to step beyond that gate and back into the sanctuary that was her breeding chamber. But to the ill-informed might appear as a cathedra. If her wife wanted to experiment, toy with, or use Zelena, she wouldn't protest. So as long as she was gifted that one act that brightened her day. A drug that she had wholly become addicted to...
It hurt. To find that that beautiful foliage she had decorated and devoted herself to were all lies, lies squandering her self for their own gluttonous collective. And yet, despite the sinister nature of it, there still existed parts of her that desperately wanted to delve into the the muddy waters, and clutch the corpse close. Her gaze set itself firmly on the floor as she contemplated. If this was the path to apotheosis, then why did it feel so difficult to embrace? Then again, when was the virtuous path ever renown for its ease. She was strong though, she knew this. And she would be damned to an abyss deeper than any chasm she had braved before should she turn her back.
But this being may give purpose to the priestess to a pretender. She said she had use for her. Lifting her chitinous arms, she took the offered hand tightly with one of her own delicately, almost as though hesitant to make contact, but desperate not to let go. The other hand on that side then gently gripped just above that red wrist. She scared her, deeply. To fly too close to the sun was dangerous, but this was no astral monument. This one would protect her, and guide her to awakening greatness. The covetous claws of the dynasty that had stripped her of her status in the first place had no paw in this place. She was her own master now, and that freedom lent her the ability to place her faith in something tangible. A true goddess.
“I understand. It wasn’t divinity. It was a tool, used reap the fruits of our trees for those undeserving. A false idol for what? Obedience, docility, servitude? I suppose it doesn’t matter now.” She said dejectedly, her eyes seeming to delve into a different world for a moment, before refocusing and meeting Samara’s face, her own visage shedding that sadness in exchange for resilience, “I am enlightened, awakened, and freed. It only makes sense to dress the lie in the clothes of truth. If you are the model from which that simulacrum was drawn, then you understand I will be placing my faith in you.
This means much to me. Thank you, for sparing me. I know all too well how easy it would have been to cast me aside amidst a sea of dull embers. I understand you say you have use of me - I will eagerly accept. It is beneath the least I should do, for what invaluable truths you have gifted me. I am eternally grateful. Where do we start, what would you have of me?”
Like a roach Akna sought to do what? Coward in the dirt? Did inanity so burden her that she believed the revelation would leave her unscathed? Resist all she'd like. In the end, the scholar would find herself being hurled about within that tempest. The lunar mother was a fabrication—a diety constructed by ignorance to pardon away the duality between enlightenment and ignorance. The luster she bequeathed was an illusion, a mechanism to depreciate the value inherent within her people's exertions. Their knowledge was not inspired, nor did it belong to a single entity.
No, it was theirs alone to take pride in—the quintessence of their triumphs and failures. And while they may have glimpsed but a distant twinkling of the light, it was no small feat given their lesser compulsions. That groveling didn't compliment the moth; it only further highlighted the fallacy intertwined with that formerly smug demeanor. The demure was palpable. Its tangibility draped throughout the tower while Samara saw through it all. Akna wasn't shriveling out of fear, nor would she unwisely veer her gaze from the truth. What was transpiring was the internalized wrangle of an academic on the verge of realization. A timeless fray, one the jezebel had observed metamorphizing many times.
The incoherent ramblings, her drastic alteration in posture were all heralding the emergence of an inescapable outcome. One way or another, the insectoid would discover herself pulverized by the evidence staring down at her with a highfalutin aura. Those sols were oscillating within their prisons, blazing brightly through the veil: a lighthouse, one endeavoring to tug that wayward vessel back to port lest she crashes against the rocks. There was no shame in this due process. The studious voyager needn't saturate herself with mortification. Ultimately, the fierce swells and the bobbing of her ship conferred only resolve. A lesser captain would have given up, only to find their boat flipped upside down.
Amidst the chaotic concoction of fear and doubt, a single utterance diverged from Akna's lips. A row of expressions many might cull little worth. Nonetheless, they expressed volumes to Samara and underscored the most scarce of attributes. One's willingness to challenge their programming. Pleased, the bovine removed her hand from the winged insect's shells. That palm faced heavenward while those claws fidgeted to command Akna to seize it.
"A lie? No. Merely the manifestation of defective intellects trying to compartmentalize concepts transcending their astigmatic scope. Buried within that crude idol, specks of truth exist. While I'm not your Lunar goddess, you could say facets of me she embodied within her. And while some might deem such imitation as flattering, I find it abhorrent, for my magnificence was hijacked to exert control. Domination that I do not sanction nor benefit from on any level. In short, they employ a lesser figure to shape malleable minds to their fickled whims. Take my hand, and I'll not offer you the crumbs that fall from my table like your former masters. But, a seat within the banquet itself..."
The jezebel purred, keeping that paw extended while the lioness suffered to see would Akna accept this offering or chuck it to the wayside like a nit?
As the shrike’s nest slowly calmed, she waited with baited breath. She was unsure whether this was an act of mercy, or a toying moment before her impalement as decor for a macabre domain, and so she wouldn’t presume reprieve just yet. At least the room seemed as tranquil as one could hope for when ones accompaniment laid dying. And more so, it seeded more credence within her conclusion; from the way her armour had beat with the room, to the connection betwixt her and the behaviour of those howling vents and curling branches of smoke, she understood that this being was the space she found herself within. It would explain how she was able to initiate Bull’s endless fall, akin to how one might let a spider walk from one hand to the next in a never ending loop. This wasn’t under her control, it was an extension of her being. A living antithesis to the moth’s divinity. The ego fell from the tree.
Though as her first eye understood the great oak before her, and the minds eye conjured the little acorn it grew from, the secret kept beneath thick bark and deep roots remained concealed from both - the third slumbered. But the relief of truth ascertained only allowed the return to reality to sending an ever more chilling wind through the vibrant leaves that had blossomed from her skull. Such manifested in a whistling exhalation escaping her mouth, her pale forest of scales standing on end. Waiting in silence, she could only stare at the red queen with uncertainty as quivering antennae seemed to curl away, like dead leaves in autumn, they fell flat against her head.
The decay of an ego stung. Pulling away a brambled mass, thorns rending chitin, it was doomed to leave marks, but superficial ones. ‘Sacrificed mediocrity’. To call her previous calling - everything she had worked for - mediocre hurt. To deem those sacrifices for nothing - to have condemned those willing to give everything to a fading deity to lurk in the dark. But the moth understood the sentiment, to remove the mistletoe from a budding branch may be unkind when viewed shallowly, but the nature of such a parasite was anything but benign. It must be cast asunder to allow the great oak to flourish to its greatest heights. It splashed into the marsh.
As the unexplainable strutted forwards and placed the talons that had fell her friend to a pile of thrashing limbs, the scholar swallowed instinctively. Her heart beat like the wings of a hummingbird in the presence of the predator sizing her up. Her words resonated, but the dissonance of impending death did its best to squander the harmony. Those claws pressed harder, causing the scholar to move one foot backwards, lest she topple like a sapling under sky-searing lightning - at any moment, a twitch away from combustion. Each sentence felt like its own barbed limb curling around her self, thorns digging into a faltering ideology. The weather was an enigma that had no right to be so, and yet before deciphering its nature, they had sought to understand the cosmos. Was she truly so foolish to not see she was toying with powers beyond her comprehension? Her knowledge of the sky suddenly rung with uncertainty. The murk’s limbs grasped it.
As those claws ran down her chest, seemingly leaving her unmolested, her antennae nervously lifted from her head, as though new life was imbued into them. Hope?, or perhaps the fertility of a vacuum. The latter seemed more likely as the final, towering limb arose from the mire. The tangled did its best to conjure forth a shield. Perhaps she was lying, maybe none of this is real at all - maybe you’ll wake up back in the Lunar Veil, and this will all have been a bad dream. If not, surely this is just a manifestation of the lunar mother, something sent to test her faith maybe, to weigh her on the scales. Something- anything?
“You, you… You’re endless due to… It’s… The lunar mother granted you… You- I… Can’t…” The moth trailed off meekly as the puzzle piece failed to fit. Painting the red fruit green didn’t make it not an apple tree, it only painted a fool.
The barrier fizzled out quickly as that thorny limb came crashing down, dragging an anguished thing into the depths of muddy waters, kicking and screeching with unholy vigour all the way, until finally, the marsh went still. The sparkle of the stars grew dull in Akna’s eyes, as though the magic had died. She stared dejectedly into the mid-distance for a while. Her typical elegant, straight posture had been exchanged for slumped shoulders, and a chin that tilted the other way. A hollowness had formed within her, and it ached desperately to not have that midnight glow within. But deep within the newfound darkness, a spark lingered. Her very own acorn, should she find it in her shadow.
Drawing that chipped knife of bone from her person, she held it delicately in all four hands for a moment, staring at it. The face of the one who gifted her it was faded, a blur of colours that melded with the rest of them. What was it she held? A knife, or an implement stained with needless bloodshed, and iconic of a false theology. She released it, letting it tumble from her grasp, to fall wherever it may land. Looking up, her voice lacked the nervous fear from before, instead replaced by something weak and uncertain of the future. She met the eyes of the menace. Taking a moment to wet dry mouthparts, she spoke up.
“Was it truly all a lie?”
This foreigner needn't tremble before the enigma. Samara had witnessed the glimmer of potential, one that might swell into a blazing star if aligned with her vision and grace. Nonetheless, that confusion mixed with fear would be pardoned. After all, it wasn't every day someone had their world flipped upside down. Curiously, the bovine examined this entity closely. Like a cartographer, the jezebel yearned to map out this new element in its entirety. Admittedly, she had done so half anticipating yet another wasted investment. While unfair, the queen had learned that few under the firmament warranted her respect.
There, 'neath that stalagmite sky of blistering rock, she waited. The menace hearkened to Akna's rejoinder as that spiraling cloud of heated film sequentially dissipated. That once problematic manifestation of her ire dissolved, giving way to silence and tranquility. Across this expanse of stone, the flickering of magma glows rendered a glare across its heartless reach. Like stars, their light was enough to thwart utter twilight, yet not nearly as lustrous as the sun. The vibrations of the foundations desisted their quiverings while the bluster of whistling from ventilations quelled into a distant drone. Even that downpour of volcanic droplets vanished, formulating quite the jarring contrast.
If Akna was perceptive and juxtaposed this with the entity before her, the mothkela might soon cull a reassuring observation. That this pocket realm mirrored the monarch and, by proxy, was Samara. That firm disposition of apathy thawed underneath its once uncompromising veneer, something emerged. This metamorphosis was muted, easy to overlook, but exhibited in how her hands stray from behind her voluptuous backside. The center lunar marker fell hushed as the blinding light of this world and its radiation became considerably more bearable. Samara's topaz globes dissected the nonnative, which she couldn't have been troubled to conceal.
A hushed atmosphere dominated aloft the insectoid. Its crushing ambiance is omnipresent, further stoking the perceived crisis. The jezebel desired to see her writhe and fester under the doubt's yoke. The climax was just a heartbeat away while Samara scoffed and ridiculed her challenge.
"You've sacrificed mediocrity for piddling gains. No longer."
She huffed, only to strut forward and reach out her hand. Those painted claws pressed where the moth's heart should have resided.
"Gamble? No, the house always wins. Such are the cards we will deal unto others."
The temptress smirked, that devilish tongue sketching across her succulent lips. Her talon pressed with a bit more force against the scholar's exterior, only to feel the fluctuations of the heart against its tip.
"You know nothing of the cosmos and its inner mechanisms. I will not end death; I'll end the great extinction: an eternal house and universe. Your belief in such an outcome is immaterial. The truth isn't indebted to your erroneous preconceptions regarding the macrocosm and how it must operate—such arrogance. You sit on a tiny pebble within a vast sea of gravel—a speck on top of a speck. And yet, you can't even forecast the weather with any certitude. Now, allow me to reprise. If you can't comprehend the day-to-day observable functions of this tiny flake. How can you hope to fathom the entirety of something hundreds of thousands of times more enormous and complex in scope? It may seem outlandish to you because you're an ant. And just like an ant can't understand why you bustle about, neither can you dream of absorbing the truth of truths."
Samara sniggered, running those nails down Akna's shell before spanking the earth with her tail.
"The most straightforward objection I could offer with a visual proof to waver your disbelief is standing before you. Me. "All things must end," and yet I haven't. How do you reconcile this alongside the breadcrumbs I've left before your path?"
Akna kept her gaze fixated on the ground, ignoring the irritating flakes of ash that gathered on her form to the best of her ability. Though occasionally, one of her antennae would twitch, shaking free those colourless particles. But the itch of caustic dust was the least of her concerns, with the sound of a twitching body a few steps away turning silent. She refused to look, her curiosity finally quenched by fear. The silence only seemed to grow, its ethereal, spindly limbs squeezing at her heart, as if trying to strangle the rapid organ. Those inky black eyes continued to stare at the shadow eclipsing her knelt form, waiting anxiously for either mercy or wrath.
Her head tilted upwards a fraction to see that outstretched hand. Nodding at the command, she lifted herself to her feet upon shaky legs, trying her best to maintain an iota of elegance in spite of her fear as she held her hands together. Was the scholar to be spared? She must be, she’d already be lost if the intention was to leave no witnesses to this horror. She fixated her gaze on the menace’s eyes, but her intentions were written in a scripture beyond her comprehension. The moth lowered that gaze quickly thereafter, not wanting to imply a challenge.
Keeping her head bowed, she listened intently to the menace’s words. What was she getting at? Was this some queer recruitment process? But for a position under her strings, or for a way of thinking? Not to mention the daylight-clear threat of an unfortunately familiar fate. She was unsure, analysis was hard while under duress and stress, and the moth lacked even a fraction of the aplomb to cope nonchalantly with those deific powers and that senseless geometry. Her mandibles rubbed together for a few moments as she formulated a response, doing her best to maintain a semblance of normalcy despite the circumstances.
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