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sythyryMirrored from Sythyry.
Lights and Daggers
Yerenthax: “Now this place seems more civilized, somehow.”
Jyondre: “In a Gormoror sense!”
The chamber was full of fog, a thick turgid fog issuing from holes in the ground, hideous fungi, cracks in the trunks of dead trees. When Jyondre went to look at some of these, each fog-jet had a dagger in the middle of it, a wicked eight-inch blade, all metal. Removing the dagger stopped that jet of fog, and set a crown of twinkling lights spinning and dancing over Jyondre’s head.
Yerenthax: “In the sense of, this seems quite well set up for a fight.”
Jyondre: “It certainly does that. Or an ambush. I don’t much feel like being ambushed, so let’s go on.”
Phaniet: “What about the room with fog, and daggers, and things like that?”
Elfimel ੩ “Lights and Daggers! In that place we fight and kill each other.”
Phaniet: “Is that heavenly?”
Elfimel ੩ “It is part of Heaven! If a body is too old, starting to get creaky, it is nice to let it go and get another one.”
Este: “So you kill yourselves?“
Elfimel ੩ “Where is the excitement in that? No, no, you challenge people in younger bodies, you tease them, you make them work to kill you.”
Elfimel ੨ “If we want to kill ourselves, we use the Weeping-room.”
Elfimel ੪ “You taunt and torment them! If you have any anger at any Elfimel, you rage at them, you hope the one you rage at is the one who angered you!”
Elfimel ੩ “I do not! When an Elfimel angers me and then leaves, I let the anger go with her. There is no point in keeping an anger that you will never, ever be able to use.”
Elfimel ੪ “You are truly a droplet of the image of Mircannis!”
Elfimel ੩ “As are you! Perhaps more in other ways.”
They started kissing, and from there, other things, such as would seem to indicate the end of a conversation in any reasonable place. Heaven not being reasonable, they tried to continue — when their mouths were free — but the primes gave them privacy anyhow, whether they wanted it or no.
Silver Pyramids
The next chamber of Heaven was Silver Pyramids. Golden Pyramids looked sort of sedate, as these things go. Silver Pyramids was baroque. The pyramids were generally like those of Golden, ranging from six inches to six hundred feet. But they had gargoyles. Buttresses. Scrollworks. Wall medallions. Sconces. Flower boxes. Arabesques. Statuettes. Grottoes. Chimneys. Chimneypots. Grotesques. Sheela-na-Gigs. Bosses. Busts.
Yerenthax: “I am fairly sure that an Orren designed this place.”
Jyondre: “My tongue, he is stuck out at you with a fury! Besides, it looks like a Rassimel’s catalogue of a collection. The pyramid, I mean, not my tongue.”
Yerenthax: “Shush!”
Jyondre: “Hey, what? You can insult Orren, but I can’t insult — not Gormoror — but Rassimel?”
Yerenthax: “Shush, shush! There’s someone here!”
Jyondre: “I hereby shush completely and extensively!”
The two of them crept and snuck, scouted and examined, and soon enough they had cornered three Elfimel in an upper tunnel in one of the bigger silver pyramids.
Now, they weren’t intentionally trying to corner the Elfimel. The Elfimel decided that they were cornered, and they cowered, wailing, behind the gaming table. Pieces from the table lay scattered at their feet, and the spirit of the table calmly said, “I do not know where the pieces should go, for the game you have been playing here is not the true game of this place; you are disobedient to the rules; you are heretics.”
Yerenthax: “Hello, natives of this world! We come in peace, for purposes entirely friendly!” In Common, yet.
Elfimel ⅓: “Oh! Hello!”
Jyondre: “Hi!”
Elfimel ⅔: “What are you doing here?”
Jyondre: “We got sort of kidnapped and brought to Heaven, so we’re looking around and saying hello to people. Our friends met Elfimel in Large Fruit, and said that all of you were there; we weren’t expecting to find you here!”
Elfimel ⅟: “Do you have names?” She sounded quite nervous — the first and most notably nervous one we have seen in Heaven.
Jyondre: “We do, but we don’t need to use them if you prefer we don’t.” (We had long since told Jyondre and Yerenthax about Phaniet’s discoveries.)
Elfimel ⅓: “I am called ‘Gaming’.”
Elfimel ⅔: “And I am called ‘Octagons””
Elfimel ⅟: “I am called ‘Folded’.”
Octagons: “What are your names?”
Jyondre: “I thought Elfimel didn’t have names or use them?”
Folded: “That’s the other Elfimel.”
Jyondre: “I’m Jyondre, and this is Yerenthax. Are there two kinds of Elfimel here?”
Folded: “There are the ones who can’t think for themselves, who just mindlessly follow the rhythms of Heaven, taking its pleasures all the time with no purpose at all. They just accept what the gods say as if it were all true and all that they ever need to know. They don’t want to be people. And then there are us.”
We had found some rebels against the order of Heaven.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 07:21 am (UTC)Yay!
Date: 2010-09-13 07:23 am (UTC)Actually, one of the heavens attached to my main fantasy world has demons break in once a week to make mischief, so that people can chase them out again and enjoy their absence the rest of the time. Your description of this heaven reminds me of that.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 07:30 am (UTC)Did you ever reflect on the improbability of how you can go for half a century without having heard a particular term, and then within a week of finding out what it means, it's just everywhere? Truly a god or gods lurks behind the scenes.
Re: Yay!
Date: 2010-09-13 11:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 12:35 pm (UTC)Also, Lights-and-Daggers comes with a PvP flag!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 12:53 pm (UTC)Also, these three would seem to be the local wrongfolk. Perhaps you could offer them to come with you?
no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 01:00 pm (UTC)I don't think it would be at all a good idea to bring them with us! Aside from the basic issues with pissing off a creator god, there are many practical issues: they are not primes and cannot come into cities; they are wholly unsuited for life on the World Tree; they surely have no skills and no trade. One cannot simply invite any sort of wrongfolk along; one must be prepared to take care for them until they can take care of themselves, which, for the Elfimel, might well be forever.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 01:24 pm (UTC)And they don't have to go into cities, you can just park the Strayaway outside.
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Date: 2010-09-13 01:25 pm (UTC)Re: Yay!
Date: 2010-09-13 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-09-13 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-13 11:58 pm (UTC)