#totsm

once we start writing

Pls read this book. For the time being it only has the characters introductions and a small piece of lore :,3

The light of ever distant stars glittering drifted into the observation deck of the Megalomoth sky-vessel, the Uronzin-Hal, luminance faintly penetrating and scattering within the opalescent chitin. Thyraida shielded her eyes with her drooping wide-brimmed hat and sunk into the stiff cushioned seat, cracking tan leather gently grating her exposed skin. She fidgeted with her shiny gold Magi Synod belt-buckle, hidden beneath the enormous star-saturated breasts pulling down heavily on her shoulders. Her fingers glided over the cold edges of the octagram sign and starstone inlays, tracing geometric patterns new to her hands, sighing in boredom. The whole outfit was new and freshly iron pressed. A crisp edged set of indigo dye robes draped over a trifolded sleeveless tunic with deep plunging and roomy v-neck leading into an ankle length loin skirt cinched in with a decorated belt, standard issue for acolyte Synodites. The tunic was designed for a tailor's ease in letting out the chest panels, a necessity for wearers regularly working star-light. Thyraida already was starting to exceed the tunic’s current chest allotment. The strained seams of the blue fabric dug into the fleshy signifiers of the mage’s over-achievement which rested across her lap and wobbled gently in response to every small course correction. Once on Mehne, she thought to herself, she will have to requisition a tailor’s alteration before the Synod entrance ceremony.

The transport ship had left the atmodome of Spire Althwy two hours ago, arcing through vacuum of Nyx towards Spire Dargotha, where Thyraida would eventually be joined to the Synod. The newly incorporate mage had been impatient to start decades ago. Unless you were willing to join a moldering Hevket convent, there were few remaining resources for the scholarly back on Selene. Thyraida, who had blazed through the cutting-edge secular institutes while still barely out her cocoon, was thoroughly uninterested in outmoded theosophies.

The anticipation bit like swarming ants at the bottom of her mind, a thousand study-daydreams crawling up her spine. Thyraida had worked hard to afford entry, selling her services and even fencing a forbidden Precursor artifact or two. Anything to crawl out of the Under-Spires. It was poetically frustrating that her last labor before her true breakthrough was that anathema of the desperate and hungry, patience in a waiting room.

Thyraida squirmed slightly in her seat, fighting a combination of boredom and overstimulation. The deck reeked of stale tobacco and the sourness of old hemolymph leaks. The faint hum of energy emitted from the mage-lights anchored in reflective cones that lit the deck haunted the soundscape, punctuated by the creaks and growling sounds as the mothship’s alchemed-worked shell flexed and scraped against itself in flight. On the bulkheads, red tatters with several times too many exclamation points still legible defaced the mandatory High-Spire posters. Flyers of the old Communist League had been scraped off the wall and papered over, only to be replaced and scraped off again a dozen times over in an eternal propaganda dance between dissidents and custodians loyal to the Spire.

Towards the observation deck’s center, several crewwomen had been attempting to remount a fallen stag’s head above the central pillar’s mantle, but dropped it. The creature’s bust crashed to the floor and rested there, glass-eyed and unfazed, with a newly broken left-side antler. The attendants stood in place, dazed. One of them sobbed. Then, like waking as from sleep, they blinked and looked around at each other before one by one disappearing down lonesome service passages. The crying one calmed, mood turning like low tide. She squinted once at the floor before also leaving to attend to duties elsewhere.

Thyraida was relieved to see the attendant go as the ordeal disappeared beneath perceptual static and the lingering memory of smoke. She pulled out a long curving pipe from her satchel and packed it with dried lygg leaves and lit it with a spark alchemed from her finger. A bright orange sign next to the port side Nyx window read “NO SMOKING” in bold Spire-Standard. She blew relaxing wispy smoke rings at it to pass the time, lazily trying to hit the “O” in “SMOKING”.

There was no longer a working elf around the acolyte mage to be bothered by her bad habits and intervene. Some six meters further down the deck a novitiate priestess from one or another corner, still diminutive-chested, knelt praying before the view-barrier on bruised purple knees, draped in silver beads and layered gauzy alabaster hoods, lost in reverie. Far over on the starboard side, a vagabond wrapped in midnight blue and cloaked in shifting layers slouched in her chair under the shadow of her hoods, trying to avoid notice from anyone. The only other stranger here was an adorned House-Knight of an order Thyraida did not recognize who had stood by the aft hatch for the entire trip, never sat. She was gold-armored and transverse-crested; her facemask loured with serene command and her flowing edged mantle stalwart on broad muscled shoulders, decorated with trailing honors ribbons and long prayer scrolls worn as a cloak of glories. A full-chested spell-sword in an overbosomed auric bodice and winged tilt shield. She might have cared about Thyraida’s flagrant transgression if standing and brooding hotly weren’t her apparent priority.

For a moment, Thyraida was able to smoke in peace. Then, with a clam or and rush like a tsunami crash, an Adamant marshal burst onto the deck, her bone-metal boots thudding and rasping on chitin mosaic. Her flowing black cape was embroidered with golden ancestral characters floated behind her and her wide-crested helm weaved back and forth like the head of a hammerhead shark. This Temple champion was far more star-infused then Thyraida, but she was built for it, looming twice the height and multitudes the brawn to carry her copious endowment. She thundered swiftly down the deck, passing by like a mountain moving, shoulders rolling to counter the inertia of her massive breasts. The House-Knight snapped to attention and gave the sign of the martial trigon to the passing titan. The Adamant did not respond, surging past the knight and heading towards the control chamber.

Startle gave way to concern among the inhabitants of the observation deck. The priestess rose to her feet, the war-form practitioner brooding by the hatch scanned the deck, the sneak tensed in her seat but stayed put, and Thyraida quickly tapped out and crushed pipe embers under her boot. Within the moment, the dancing mage-light pseudo-stars illuminating the moth’s cabin died. Only the desaturated amber light of Cithaeon’s ever-burning core remained, giving everything in the milky moth-shell chamber an eerie pale outline.

[Sunder and split world ocean ways.]

Against the vast night backdrop of the port window, red-orange fire split the open air. A crackling and popping ring of weird flame quickly spread out and hovered in the empty space of the deck, burning with the intensity of an oil-doused house. Then, a boom like thunder rolled as a portal opened and sloshed out dark ichor, and the hands and hands of Nyx things reached out. Pandemonium followed in their wake. Chittering azlith, ever drawn to sites of rupture or death, crawled out into the pale planet-star light, all claws and hunger.

The lesser-knight, framed in baleful fire, moved into her sword stance with the swiftness of a released tension spring. Sharp curved blade rolled with aethereal ruby red ancestral prayer scripts of flame and fury and reflected coral color gleams in the dark. Centipedite spirit creatures ushered out from the fissure. They slithered through the conditioned air like eels in the ocean, fanning out across the observation deck in dazzling iridescent ribbons. The rogue finally stood from her chair, clutching a head-sized metal sphere to her breast dimly pulsing with ancient jade glow. Her hood slipped down in the portal’s gale, revealing smuged black eyeshadow and a face curdled with anxiety. Her right hand haltingly rose to form the sign of a splayed palm, and with shaking lips she mouthed the words before forcing them out with a breaking voice: “Hail? Hail Tykhenir-nira!” Having choked out her Golden Path god-speak the rouge’s eyes searched for a sign not following.

[A sign of wind changes.]

The sister shrieked in psychic pain and clutched her head, unwarded from Nyx exposure. Thyraida fared marginally better; the static in her brain started to creep into her vision but she was holding. The knight slashed at one of the disincarnates to no avail, the sickle-hooked sword flashing off the creature’s side. These were stronger azlith then whatever enchantment the blade came with. Penetrating their spirit-hide required far more alchemed power. Dread creeped into Thyraida’s back-mind as she stood frozen, watching the flaming ring. Despite their power, she knew, this sort of azlith did not normally make incursions. They were opportunistic feeders, scavengers, which lurked in the shadow of worse things.

“Hail Tykhenira! Liberation, extinguishment!” the midnight blue shrouded cultist desperately repeated slogans to static air. In better circumstances, the lesser-knight might have cared about such heretics, but her attention was square on the azlith. “Are you going to help me sometime today, magi-varla?!” The knight’s call snapped the synodite mage back to the here and now. Thyraida ran through her mental list of strengthening signs as the house-knight’s fine sword-dance sparked white flashes, each graceful blow rebuffed by intangible armored hide. The incorporate mage surmised from the letters dancing on the sword it was fire enchanted. Pulling star-light from her aestaristones, Thyraida started tracing a flame blessing to overbalance the knight’s weapon. With enough elemental force, they had a chance to penetrate the creatures’ defense.

[I come unto as I go out from the twilight of times.]

Before the vista of constellations glimmering in dark space, the fissure stilled and darkened. The rip stopped growing. From the true-black of the hole lightning crackled and flashed as a greater-azlith floated forth out of the split in the world: elf-like, lithe and tall and feminine formed. She–it, Thyraida reminded herself–was smooth as pale moon-glow and haloed with golden star-radiance. It was crowned by eight wings which folded over and concealed its face, except for its open mouth, which burned with diamond platinum fire that left after-images in Thyraida’s vision.

It spoke with a voice of burning electric flutes at the threshold of the here and there – [I, herald of changing tides, call out between two worlds! Hear me, you who art the Will of History! Lotus-Eaters sup bone rot marrow! The world cries harrow unheard! The shadow-sun moves in time’s turn to contradict the Cresting Dawn. Come, Moon-Child! Come, Scion of Storms! Come, East-Wind Dream of Peace in War! Come unto me as I go unto you!] Lighting struck, strikes, will strike [6 × 2 + 1 = 1] times, celestial wind howled, howls, will howl, the force nearly capsized, [will capsize?] Thyraida. She remembered, saw, anticipated the force wrenching several loosely bolted benches and throwing them across the deck, along with a fleeting impression of a decapitated head with living eyes and a broken horn. White lightning light strobed, strobes the deck. Each woman crumbled, crumbles upon themselves, the unincarnate’s static-song voice sundering their ego-barriers and casting their dust to hurricane winds.

Gray sandalwood boards creak lightly as Arvwna traverses her saturnine bakery. The bakery lies in a low-rung commercial canton of Spire Althwy, on the outer border between the cracked chitin low-house apartment blocks which ring the Spire and Selene’s unending pale expanse. She carries an assortment of fresh morning baked goods to display on the shiny lacquered tables engraved with little flowers along the legs. On the counter, a pile of croissants and a hearty blister crust loaf sit steaming lightly, fog spreading across display case window glass. Early sunlight flickers between distant lunar crags, the reflection of endless white glow sands blooms in the shop’s front window and shines off of the inward winding walls of the insectine Spire which enclose the street. Smooth rhythm jazz sways in the air, ribboned with radio static.

The baker flips the open sign and returns to the oven-warmed back of the shop. An empty bowl sits on the kitchen table beside the crackle tune radio box. The shop’s window item remained to be made.

The tea bread cools on the rack, dry with an unappealing crack spreading a ravine along the loaf’s meridian. Arvwna grabs a dense sweet roll dripping with glaze from the counter and sets it in the window for the day, consigning the loaf to the day-olds table near the register.

Few come in that day, fewer still buy anything. The sun sets as Cithaeon’s exposed core rises, the Spire’s atmodome dimming itself to a middle-dark dusk. Arvwna slumps forward in her office chair, backlit by the radio’s ivory light gently glowing. The elf’s sleep-starved face half rests in one of her many-burns scarred hands, ink smudging her brow. She pores over a disordered pile of scrolls trying to find profit in leaves, failing.

[And sunrise and sunset.]

Dew gathers on the windows of the bake shop. The scent of old wood musk now starts to overpower roasting spice. Much of the furniture has been sold to placate creditors. New-day pastries are sparse on the few remaining tables. Outside, worker-form drones repair an alabaster outer wall that a drunk swoop-biker had crashed into the night prior, the bronzen wreck lodged in jagged scorched chitin.

Arvwna’s bones pop and her limbs ache marrow-deep with every step of her half-wakeful shuffle. The elf’s strawberry blond twin-tails are messily bound around her glisterless shadow-eyed face, and inside her hollow chest there only barely glimmers swirling star-light. She walks around where finer metal used to be and peers out the window wondering how the disruptions outside would affect store traffic.

The baker flips the open sign and returns to the oven-warmed back. An empty bowl sits on the kitchen table beside the crackle tune radio box. The shop’s window item remained to be made.

Arvwna wakes coughing from acrid smoke flowing in roiling waves from the oven. She spends the last bit of the week’s star-light reserve calling cold winds to extinguish the flames and dispel the smoke.

Eventually one full-bodied mid-houser wearing a fine turkey-feather boa comes in. She buys the sweet roll in the window and a dozen more. Talks for cycle about a very important party happening this very night. Arvwna doesn’t mind much as she is able to upsell the customer on extra icing drizzle. When the customer is gone, the baker wraps herself in a many-patterned quilt and leans back in her tilting office chair listening to the sweet night jazz croon.

A sharp electronic beep sounds from the radio, cutting off the music, followed by the metallic haze synthesizer rendition of the high-house’s chime. Matron Psysephona’s prerecorded blessing ends prematurely as someone fumbles with the microphone and the off-kilter lilt of the Matron’s broadcast voice is replaced by her manic shout: “I have come to make an announceme - !” Arvwna reaches over to the volume dial and firmly turns it counter-clockwise until the radio is silent. If the Spire Guard has any surprise inspections planned for this street, she will simply tell them the radio is broken.

[At penumbra’s passing umbra’s own orbit.]

The baker flips the open sign and returns to the oven warmed back. An empty bowl sits on the kitchen table beside the crackle tune radio box. The shop’s window item remained to be made.

The tea loaf comes out the oven sunken in the middle with a glossy bourbon brown ragged crust, wetly shriveled like the tea-drowned fruit. It is soft on all edges and smells of warmer summer-soaked days. It is not beautiful but it is baked, and despite its condition, Arvwna thinks, it should go to the street display. She brings it out to the front of the shop and sets it in the window with pride.

Outside the glass there is a silence uncharacteristic of the busy streets of Althwy Spire. A haunting emptiness, a gravid unease. A lone elf half-dressed in Mid-House robes dashes down the sideline, limbs flailing, her face wracked with frenzied fear, eerily quiet in her desperate mad escape. The wind picks up with hushed anxious whispers and the atmodome’s pearlescent hues flicker.

A shadow falls over the street, a mindless animal terror descending with it. A spot darker than the rest of the Nyx swells in the heavens. A featureless true-black sphere, hateful and utterly dispassionate, passes through the sky, skies, many skies, wreathed in abominable dark flame. A primal dread crawls within Arvwna, chilling her bones. Head splitting and frozen stiff, she is struck with a thought something like [ANTI-STAR] or [Anathema] at witnessing the hideous shape.

The land cracks and wails flood the wind, spiraling vortexes of pale lighting and bale fire. The stars hide themselves amid the churning Nyx, kaleidoscoping onyx on onyx, as that dreadful thing eclipses the sun, its darkness darker, all-encompassing. The shade becomes like chaos oceans whirlpooling, filled with yet more horrible shapes and writhing spectral pseudopods sprawling and turning itself in nuclear tumult. Nightmare floods the Spire, rent and screaming in agonizing ten-millions and one fold.

In the hypocenter of mad tapestry fraying and burning in cacophony, [Anathema] turns in all directions with a loathsome, terrible glare. Pandemonium flows forth from it and annihilates all light and the Cosmos unravels.