#malfeas

Malfeas is a place. Apart from the infinite potential of the Wyld, the definition of Creation, the none-space that is Elsewhere, apart even from the void that tortured Autochthon has subjected himself to, Malfeas is a region that is both prison and the imprisoned. It is a city; a very large city. To those of other worlds, it would seem quite large beyond imagination, but with very real limits. Some say it would be as large as the orbit of the solar system; others estimate smaller. Malfeas is the physical city in which most of the Yozis are part of, largely defining them by where they are not; as Kimbery is the acid sea at its borders and interiors, Cecelyne the liminal space outside it, and Qaf outside it altogether, Malfeas is the realm that most demons regard as the observable reality.

Malfeas is a person.

Not in the conventional sense. The gods are mightier than mortals, containing multitudes of seemingly contradictory elements; Luna is chiefest known among them, but the Unconquered Sun is known too for that he is supremely compassionate, supremely courageous, supremely controlled and enduring all at once (and perhaps this, and his grief at what his Chosen have done in his name, is why he submits himself to the Games of Divinity, for it is a terrible burden to be perfection in all things, forever). The Primordials are even more vast than the gods, a pantheon unto themselves, aspects of an individual thing given their own immense power.

But the city of Malfeas screams. It howls and buckles underneath the pitiless light of his own embittered heart, that is Ligier the Green Sun. And Ligier speaks the fundamental truth of Malfeas, as the once-proud king of all that could be is tormented, defined by pain so much that if Malfeas ever truly stopped hurting, he may no longer be Malfeas at all. He is reforged by his pain, and by his rage he is recast; the pain and rage flow together, feeding on itself as his hate spirals outwards and then inwards.

He hurts so deeply and fundamentally. It is the heat that makes his hatred the awful light that kills so cruelly, the hidden fire that burns far more hideously than even the most imaginative Solar god-king dare implement. The light of the green sun hates Malfeas, more than all, and this is the truth of Malfeas above all else.

His heart tells him, You don’t deserve to be happy.

It is this thought that makes his relief in the beauty of dance and performance so terribly brief; this brief echo of the Universe Emperor all the more painful for its briefness. It is there when his layers crash against each other, futilely trying to harm himself in his own fury. It is there when his light blazes forth and inflicts the most horrific deaths imaginable. It is there in a hundred different ways and shapes.

Malfeas is many more things. Malfeas is many feelings, pain and rage and magnanimous contempt to hide the suffering that defines him. He is shame and grief, for deep inside some part of him that remembers his murdered kinder heart thinks they betrayed me for I had failed them and it is his pain that he does not understand what he did. He is the strange and alien world of Hell, its prison and most infamous prisoner, his heart the iconic light of the Infernal Exalted who rage against the things they hate just as he does.

But perhaps much may be said not in who or what he is, but in the things made of him.

And so the mind’s eye turns to a curious sculpture upon Creation, in a place where memory and thought alike shy away from. None remember it, but they know the horror and sickening dread of it. Nothing happens to them there, but there are worse things than even the horror of Green Sun Wasting sickness. The Great Maker, in his exile, has a replica of this within his garden of tributes to his estranged siblings, and perhaps he crafted the real one in his shame.

It is a many-angled thing, of long spikes and needles. It is a thing of horror, ugliness, and would suffice as a warning. It contains no sculptures of murdered Ruvelia, nor artistic attempts to convey the glory that Malfeas once was before he was bound in hateful flesh and made to know pain. There is nothing there, but it is enough to look at those angled points, those barbs and spears, and see the cracks in the world that were made as the Empyrean Chaos was broken into the agonized misery of Malfeas.

There is writing there. It is not Old Realm; it predates even that ancient language, and much of it is nigh-impossible to translate. It is a feeling. It is grief and horror, shame and rage at a thing that was perhaps thought necessary then, but something that has scarred the world, an act of unspeakable violence and cruelty.

This sculpture, some claim, is the very spot where Ruvelia was murdered. And with her death, the Empyrean Chaos became Malfeas; limitless light and might without sinew burned, becoming green flame and molten black stone and brass, screaming in the agony of her final moments forever. To sleep within a mile of this is ill-advised, for then one feels the awful nightmares of her final moments, just as Malfeas himself always will.

And perhaps, then, one may truly understand the same agony that defines Malfeas, as is written down in this place where he was broken, an acknowledgement of the atrocity done to him. This seems clear enough, in a translation of the first lines of that old script:

This is not a place of honor.

So rereading the broken winged crane, and got to the flavor text, and I have to say that it is a terrible cross to bear.

All of the Yozis are mentally unbalanced and traumatized, but that’s who they are, they may not like it, they may rage against it, but they are who they are.

But Malfeas, he can remember being something more, something greater.  He can BE that thing for an instant, before reality comes crashing down around him, burning that suffering and loss into his mind anew, and that hatred and self loathing is what burns everything and everyone around him.

The circle of Infernals returns to Malfeas for Calibration, and everyone goes to their own homes.  Seren has brought Theron with her (his first time in Hell)!  And as it turns out she has a family of baby Aalu living in her library.

Each of them has been named by her after the first book they ate.

One is named Blue, and has a strange obsession with romance novels.

One is named Treaty, and loves reading up on sorcery.

The eldest is named Ink, and he has a dot in martial arts despite being a bug.

And...one of them is abnormally large and has been spouting out random prophecies whenever touched.  Seren asked Ink what book it had eaten and they pointed out an impossibly long scroll--seemingly endless--that she did not recognize from her library.  Apparently it had appeared out of nowhere.  Hm.