A Most Artful Singularity

Jilted. Abandoned. Deserted. Dumped.

These words, and others, washed through the mind of Gnossos Nyxiad as she walked away from the altar her husband never met her at. Her veil of woven spiderwebs, never lifted. Her crown of peace lillies and magically treated frost, never touched. Her dress,reminiscent of an old ballgown, sewn with pearls and diamonds, never saw a dance.

She knew not where she was running, only that her legs began to pick up speed. Her gorgeously done eye makeup running down her face, the streaks of tears now a branding of loss as she ran through Covena’s Northern Sector, and exited into the pavilion, where the drinks were being poured.

It was at this moment where Gnossos Nyxiad had her magic awakened. Looking somberly at the silverware she selected for the wedding, she saw that her typically amber eyes have gone wicked violet, spats of magenta and drones of indigo turning her iris’s into swirling nebulas of amethyst. She screamed, and fell over, quickly being helped up by a Staff, its emotionless mask of a smile offering no judgement. Or solace. The wedding party was outside the door, but something about Gnossos made them stop there.

She began to laugh, taking one of the bottles of Frost, an abyssal-black liquor made from fermented licorice, and just began to pour it on the dress, that costed roughly thirty million dollars and was woven by the Dianamead’s, who dominated the fashion industry.

But instead of being stained, the dress seemed to feed into the feelings of Gnossos. Confusion about being abandoned. Fear of not being loved. Hatred at the man she thought she loved. Sadness over everything like a bow on top of the worst present. The dress was stained an ugly black, and the diamonds turned into Onyx, the pearls Obsidian. Gnossos shattered a wine glass and began to shred the dress. Tearing off the restrictive sleeves, jumping up and down so the fragile cage and corset shattered. Anyone who tried to stop this grand display of letting go, was promptly threatened with a wild violet glare and a sharp shattered wine glass.

If Arachne, the seamstress of the dress, saw this, which she would in many years, she’d be quite proud. For now she wasn’t bride-to-be Gnossos Nyxiad, she was The Banshee of Nightmares, she was Noxia, she was the scream of fury and sadness and fear that made banshees cower. She was the Deity of Rage for forty years, taking down crime syndicates and gambling rinks and becoming a vigilante.

Her eyes never turned back to amber. And the words in her head were new. Exciting.

Holly Day Tula came home, and cried in her father’s arms for twenty minutes. She knew she had to journey to the afterlife today. And it hurt. It hurt so much. But, she knew that everyone she loved would be seen again...eventually.

For Holly, this all started with the dream of her high school prom as it ended, the gymnasium dark and empty, the decorum beginning to falter and fall: Balloons on the floor, banners only hanging on one side. The spotlights performed for an audience of one. And then, a woman a few years older than herself introduced herself as Iilea Dianamead. The two women talked, and Holly was enraptured. Tales of soaring utopias, war being not a thought in a mind, an afterlife where magic was real is what sold her. But it was all a dream.

That began to repeat. Consistently. Always that prom. Always Iilea, in a different dress of black and white inkblots that looked like an inverted champagne glass, with her glasses that her covered her missing eyes. So one day, she asked Iilea, “Why are you talking to me? I’m sure your dreamworld paradise has far cooler people to converse with.” Iilea laughed and stood to her full height of seven feet and ten inches, ruffling Holly’s chestnut hair,

“Because you are the most important person this afterlife is going to see.” She replied in a voice that was melodious like ice and cold like sub-zero flames.

“But this is a dream! This doesn’t make sense! I-I can’t just enter a dream forever!” Holly began to shake, but Iilea sat back down and hugged the weeping girl, who was only a twelfth year at the time.

“I will prove that this dream has more reality than you think. Watch.” Iilea placed a gorgeous crimson pen in Holly’s hand and winked. “Now. Wake up.” Iilea snapped her fingers and Holly jolted awake, feeling a weight in her hand. She turned on the reading light, and paled visibly, her mouth open and eyes wide in shock. There was the pen. It was all real. And it meant she had to take Iilea’s advice and go to the afterlife the night of her high school prom as then she will plummet to the afterlife at the exact right moment to be everything Iilea said her destiny was

And so she wrote. Twenty seven different letters detailing everything. And at that point, prom came.

And so she went and bought a beautiful corsage on the steps of her high school gym and went home.

She picked up the corsage of poppies, its seeds loaded with opium.

And ate the bushel, the petals staining her teeth.

She went to bed that night, and dreamt of the prom again, Iilea absent.

Ursula Ovion, very pointedly, wanted to be the first person to die. With the people of Anaz tucked away in their Arks and crashed to their Earths that Allode gave them, immortality slipped from their grasp like loose sand. So, when the people of Anaz were beginning to feel the sluggishness of age- which usually signified the beginning of reincarnation- Ursula Ovion very  quickly hurled herself off of the highest point of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, making her the first ever person to die.

When the Blade of Diae fell from the sky and erased all of the fingerprints of humanity, it also flooded the now-abandoned reality by several feet, the whole planet a massive ocean. Ursula found this out by crashing into the sea at several hundred miles per hour from dying, the first shooting star to cross Anaz in almost ninety years. The sky had been dark for a long time.

Treading water she called to the familiar home that stood still beneath waves, and like magic, a small isle of rock rose to establish surface. She smiled, her hands on the earth, tears streaming down her face; magic had been absent from her life for eighty-six years,and she hated every last one of them. It’s why she named her outpost Sumer, it meant ‘Steaming Dump’ in her old tongue.

She got to work. Creating islands and palaces, castles and coves, establishing hundreds of different places she liked to call ‘Nesta Mine’. Happily Home. The spaces defined physics and logic, an endless plane of clouds and gold, which she called ‘Hai Vahn’ or Winged Cloud, occupied the physical space of an observatory. Another one she was proud of was ‘Elli Saium’, or Opulent Field, and was an endless field of luxury hiding amongst golden fields of grain.

 She also decided to create places where those who, after a trial, would face judgement, called ‘Monte Mine’, or Vile Home. A cavernous labyrinth of fire and acid was simply labeled ‘Heyel’, an abstract term that reflected a scream of anguish.

Allode is elusive. Secretive. And very, very, powerful. With that knowledge, and a mysterious advertising campaign of epic proportions, the seats of Stardrop’s newest theatre, Aisolde. The Aisolde Theatre, with its main floor and four mezzanines, boasted its full capacity of twenty thousand, and at once, the curtain rose.

Allode was seated upon a modest cedar stool, he wore his typical black cloak, and his mask. The mask is Allode’s defining feature, the calling card of one of the biggest sensations that’s swept across Anaz; after all, it’s quite difficult to ignore the man who caused a city to grow upside down in the largest body of water in the whole planet, a massive ocean. The mask is crystal; ametrine and sapphire, blessed in the shape of a great stag’s face, it’s pointed eyes seeming to sagely know every fault of the en masse audience.

He cleared his throat, and read:

Eden, my sweet and smiling paradise, breeze-kissed radiance to my poor eyes.

Mirror, Terror. How the reflection who smiles cries in the bitter moonlight.

Reflection, sun-wreathed rose, your briar pricks blood from which life flows.

Waves beneath the sun-soaked sea, call and scream to the magician me.

Gold, and Blue, the dichotomy of truth and otherwise. Spawn forth a new pair of

Eyes, shimmered and teal, to which to view this new world filled with

Birds, a rainbow of feathers, a choir of creation made from the stag’s

Hands, calloused and weary, tired he may be he trudges along with this

Song, sweet and light, for this song will not end tonight and it will be

Lovely, delightful and joyous, an army of harbors from which we will call

Ours, together and alone, we shall be never remembered but for that we shan’t

Weep, bitter and dejected, for our children will gaze upon our legacy in our new

Paradise, anew, blessed with the powers of our bringing, and it will be our

Home, anew. Disparate, yet uncannily similar, and this first one will be called

Anazine. Shall be its name, and it shall be perfect, all the same.

The lights crashed to Blackout.

In a house by the sea lived a woman who talked to birds that enjoyed her song.

In a cave by the sea lived an old hermit who carved bird sculptures and brought them to life with his breath.

The birds always seemed smooth to the touch, and one day they began sending her letters.

The hermit loved the woman, he heard her singing from his cave. 

So he decided to send her a letter.

The woman learned the man’s name, and asked him to visit one day.

The man adamantly refused, he was an outcast! A pariah! He shouldn’t.

But the woman insisted.

And the man relented.

And the two fell in love like those tossed from a ship

Every waking moment was spent together.

And the two lived a perfectly happy life

In the little house by the sea.

One day the woman noticed the man getting ill.

One day the man felt ill.

He died One year later.

The woman wept and wept.

But she heard, one day, a piano lightly playing within the cave.

She went down and saw that the wood of all the birds were put into the piano.

Put to life with the man’s breath. The piano played that familiar birdsong.

And the woman sang along with it.

It rose and fell and slowed and sped with her, a perfect unity.

The woman now sang from the cave till this very day.

And she was always so talented.

People often told stories of the woman and the birds, and how their song lured sailors into the sea where they drowned.

The whole business of death wasn’t the woman’s fault. 

Dear Aspen,

I saw you for the first time in a decade. Since, well, the wedding. It’s because I am the new Deity of Light within the afterlife; I know all ahaha. Hm.

I miss you Aspen. I saw that you still haven’t remarried, to which I say why?

I’m not gonna kick your door down and say ‘how dare you!’

You’ve made me laugh quite a lot as of late. How you absolutely dusted it at graduation; how the dog took off running and sent you flying along with.

This...this is going to be my final letter to you. It’s not that I want to! I’m just so busy now and...and I just can’t do this anymore!

I’m sorry. I’ll still wait for you,

Anya

Dear Jane,

I just made it to Golden Key! I’m a Seer’s Apprentice now! I can paint the future! And Jasmin is teaching me so much.

I miss you so much Janie! You would love it here...but like don’t rush it...

...like I did.

Listen, Janie. There’s so much I want to tell you.

But Jasmin says that we will see each other soon. They’re very adamant about it.

And they’ve never been wrong.

Tell Mum and Dad I said hello, as per usual.

And be safe. Promise.

Wherever you are, I hope your sky is blue,

Holly

Anya looks at Holly’s dropped letter, “You too?” Holly raised an eyebrow, then nodded, embarrassed.

“No no. Look.” Anya pulled a letter out of her robes and Holly read it, her eyes misting with tears.

“Who’s your’s to?” They said at both. They paused. Both grew a sad smile and said in unison, 

Diana Leigh looked at the dress. Its torn edges. Its ragged and threadbare bottom. Its utter lack of a hem. It was perfect. Years of being the Deity of Cloth in the Afterlife and she will exit the same way she entered. The same black dress. The same old clay sphere of room, smothered with drawings. Lakoris entered the room with a tray containing a glass of the one thing Diana swore she’d only have on this occasion: A wine glass filled with strawberry soda. Smelling like chemicals, Lakoris smiled sadly as Diane took it,

“So many of you oldies are leaving! I’m gonna miss all of your talks of The War!” Lakoris said lightheartedly as her deep teal eyes became misty. “And, yknow, I’ll miss you.” Diana laughed and placed an old hand on Lakoris’s shoulder, using her powers as a Seer of Cloth to see the future of the clothes she was wearing,

“You’ll be just fine, dear. Now, ready?” Diana asked with a smile, looking at the future Lakoris could look forward to; reuniting with an old flame, sailing the seven seas as she did before, living her best life. Lakoris smiled as Diana set the strawberry soda on a stool beside the dress, who donned it quickly and had Lakoris zip it up. The dress did as it was supposed to, and began to leech away Diana’s life. Quickly, she grabbed the strawberry soda and slammed it,

“Whoa! Wow! That’s so sweet!” She said in a shock as her skin began to visibly pale, making Lakoris grimace, “No no, it’s really good. I’m glad I got to try it.” She smiled with the warmth of the sun before collapsing, her soul on its way to being reincarnated as someone else somewhere else, maybe even somewhen else. Lakoris went over and checked the pulse, marvelling at the bizzarity of the action.

“Who would have thought I have to check someone’s pulse in the afterlife, what?” She laughed in disbelief, which gave way to a melancholy sigh. Diana was dead, and now Lakoris was the Deity of Cloth.

The coronation passed in a blur, with Iilea congratulating the awkwardly smiling and waving Lakoris, who wore the ceremonial robes of Cloth which weighed forty to forty-five pounds when dry, and so bore a slight hunch and pained expression on her face

The piece was made by the late Jasmin Kashmiri, and bore the name Warbling Songbird. The portrait was of the woman currently looking at the work, famous opera singer Delilah Faer. With a clean, walnut complexion, the portrait of Delilah showed the singer performing to an audience of the stars. A glowing robe of light poured around her as she sang into the microphone, the small white dots on the painting seeming to glow as a result.

Delilah smiled to herself, muttering quietly “It never really felt like that.” to the darkened and empty halls of the gallery. Despite being a performer of a long abandoned artform in the progress-obsessed Anazine, Delilah was still a star. Never the best at magic, her abilities came far later than most folks, she had a voice that any SongBorn would envy.

She hummed to herself the first piece she ever performed, at age 16 on a random open mic stage. It was always her favorite, how her alto-soprano voice danced and became one with the robust piano.

Delilah rose, adjusted her shining pearl headdress, and moved her feet in a slow waltz to the rises and falls of the quiet aria. After the accident, walking was always hard for her but as of late her feet felt lighter and more free. It was as if her soul was brought back to life. She touched the painting, feeling the textures and bumps that come with oil paint, smiling as none of the alarms went off.

It was a good day, and she hated the thought that it would be ruined by something as petty as an alarm. She always thought that the painting was odd, being that it was painted before Delilah was born, Jasmin Kashmiri being found dead in her studio within the Ursine Manor; the residence of Anazine’s government, Covena, of which Jasmin was a Seer of Dream, meaning they painted the future. The title was vague enough, Warbling Songbird, but in Old Anazinian so its real title was actually Poiul Qhera. But the singer looked nearly identical to Delilah, even down to the scar she got at Age Six for falling wrist first on a nail.