Chapter Text
It begins with form.
Rolling, curling, spreading, compounding.
Contrary to popular assumption, the Sages did not invent life; they merely rediscovered its hylem. From the soft remnant of times long forgotten they shaped as they saw fit, crafting edifices from phyllosilicates and polyliths from smectites. Many homunculi resembled creatures who walked centuries before, albeit with less complicated flesh that was more reusable when their time was over. Others, particularly those of the Spark, bore crescents. The rarest ascended from material pleasures into Enlightenment.
Around them all rose smaller kingdoms in tribute to their power: Ginbharham, Yiithorn, Plessibthae, Amulom. The world was defined by the populate who needed it—or was left alone if not. Broadcast towers grazed the bottom of the clouds, channeling waves of power through monitors all over the world. Unsurpassed technology flourished.
Disthlarn Moon soared across the skies, and the people were happy and prosperous.
Sharpening, animating, modeling, revising.
Then the Accretion befell the world, plunging their Empire into darkness, and waters swelled until only a few large islands interspersed the surface. The spires which once spread the Sages’ power called the seabed their new home, while the crown jewels of the Sages were buried under meters of soil and, very soon, almost entirely lost.
Taking advantage of their crippled power, he emerged, lordly, without warning, his gestures incomprehensible, his vocables senseless except for one important declaration: “This world is mine now.”
Lord Gibbulus rose into the sky with a new Moon to loom over all, a mockery of the Sages’ efforts formed from the dust of the Accretion that he called the Hylemxylem. And some welcomed it.
Sculpting, extricating, destroying, being.
The Sages, though immortal, retreated into separate domains rather than submit to his will. Most other kingdoms sloughed away into the waters, leaving ruins to become the domicile of bugs. Amulom was one of few lucky enough to retain its name in spite of its Crisping; Yiithorn showed the Sages best of all that Gibby could not be overcome so easily when its magnificence was ground into dust, its proud dread knights reduced to a lonely mass grave.
Most of the populate that remained on the surface were oblivious to all of this, however. Content in vacuity, just as their tyrant wanted them to be, they went about their lives meandering in circles, refused from having a thought in the world, while others only felt the vaguest sentiment in the midst of their meaty forms. Unable to comprehend anything different, ignoring those who tried.
The Hylics.
I passed through the gates of the city,
The streets were strange and still,
Through the doors of the open churches
The organs were moaning shrill.
Soft muted colors meet a deep pink tide, which caresses the beach with gentle laps of its salty waves.
Scuttling restlessly, the lone Wayne Larva seeks minerals hiding about the wide field of granular material. At least once every minute, he buries his entire crescent-shaped head into a pile of sand to suck a mouthful of the grains into his throat, pushing globs through an expanding meaty cavity into a very young, rarely sated stomach. The sun is hot and desiccating—perfect for his still-hardening carapace. The beach is overflowing with nutrients. There is no such thing as time.
A dark form wriggling nearby disrupts his task. Curiously he draws near, expecting another beached latidae that might make sounds at him. Instead there is an overpowering smell he has no vocabulary to describe; indeed, there has been nothing like it at all in his brief moments of life. It twitches and gasps much like a latidae, but the shape is wrong, the colors too red and ochre. If the Larva knew what his own face looked like, he might have recognized the familiar crescent but larger in width; alas, he is ignorant.
And hungry.
It stops making noise after a few bites of its soft, torn, juicy minerals that taste nothing like sand and yet far better than sand, and also easier to mince with still-developing tonsil stones. Eventually there is something hard that he cannot ingest, and he looks up to see that the strange form has transformed into smooth, white rocks. Nevertheless his Flesh feels stronger, however brief the strange meal was. With nothing left for him here, disappointingly he returns to the sand.
But something wraps around his abdomen and lifts him from the ground in spite of his protesting legs wriggling to escape. A soft hand, a sense of comfort, touches his temple and rubs with four long cylindrical appendages, encouraging him to cease his struggle. It is a tall white form holding him, six blank eyes meeting his own two. It makes sounds like the latidae but its voice is deeper.
He feels warm.
Kind of like...enveloping sunset.
Through the doors and the great high windows
I heard the murmur of prayer,
And the sound of their solemn singing
Streamed out on the sunlit air.
When the Larva withdraws into his cocoon, time is gone again. Temporarily useless legs curl up into tightly coiled loops that meet at the tarsal claws, forming a thoracic cage that hugs his soft Flesh underneath a thin, malleable layer of xanthic. The longest two pairs, one on the shoulders and one on the waist, grow even longer and stronger, their claws extending into toes and fingers—five for each ending.
The matured Wayne bursts from a moist shell, stumbles to newly formed feet, and takes a gasp of fresh air. The oxygen dampens his lungs and refreshes his Will.
There is someone trotting beside him when he looks around with strengthened oculars: a sort of tall being with curled horns and jointed limbs gyrating to a stereo’s song. They do not seem the least bit impressed by his metamorphosis, but they do have something to utter to him.
“Behold, this gland is like many false starts, only fatal cataclysms joyously before circular eclipses.”
Just like usual, the words fail to make a damn bit of sense.
The moon stares down from the clouds.
A sound of some great burden
That lay on the world's dark breast,
Of the old, and the sick, and the lonely,
And the weary that cried for rest.
The Sages, in their splendorous Empire, had almost everything right.
Chaos, where picture flies uncontested across beaches of domiciles and bouquets of cuticles. Grasping still beats, yet engines beckon not for stories, but indeterminate products of song. Books align the wide, utterly strange cord of hope, and who is to blame them? Verily, they sing.
Meanwhile Gibby, King of the Moon, thrums from his silver perch. Dracula recites another synchronization to him from bended knee and his orange anterior tilts at the bard. Insects pulsate among feeling, and the years of city permeate the falsities. He knows what Dracula does not think he does.
In the following scene, he bestows a departing incursion to the helpless body on the floor before marching back to his den, leaving Dracula gasping and writhing and then forgetting about him forthwith. Gibby occupies the throne once more, crosses his legs, and waits for the crescent. Wrath. Moments of congestion, they never halt citadels. Only rivers. Only homunculus...
There is no meaning, and there never was.
I strayed through the midst of the city
Like one distracted or mad.
'Oh, Life! Oh, Life!' I kept saying,
And the very word seemed sad.
“O fate, casting shadow upon stilted edifices and hallucinations, whispering with chemical lurid nails in this abysmal room! And wherefore art pillows of starry pupae?”
Occasionally lapsing into sense, mostly imperceptibly deep into chemical lunacy, he observed the formation of the individual he knew would dominate in comprehensiveness but not in tyranny as Gibby did. Wayne refuted the empty with sedition; the Sages were so clearly within his soul that Dracula could vividly recall the heroic plight of the Sage of Satellites every time he tore cultists and demons apart with mesmerizing gestures. Soon a few more followed him, for that promontory must have been a kind of hope for sapient desires.
“Or perhaps, the spirit cries for context.”
Set in motion by the Spark, they rehydrated from wounded putrescence over and over, growing stronger and stronger with a solid feeling. Gibby palpitated within the walls of his mighty palace. The people considered with a spirit.
“Two products fighting over instruments in a wide sandbox, psychic vent wet with brightness expansively, and afterward the brew of eternity is stirred with utmost desire!!
“Batter tyranny, batter tyranny, batter tyranny: thy passion saith.”
They did, until one final swing tore the crown from the vertebra prominens and scattered pink across the decorated halls of the Moon.
“And so ends the tale of the wandering apparels, who sought to avenge, but sort of expansively shun’d our doom.”
The bard’s flesh disintegrates into ashes with the ‘xylem, spreading across the exosphere, and he returns to the surface of the world as a shadow. Finally, Dracula experiences clarity he has not known since the Empire that glittered among countless spires. He greets the four after their spaceship crashes (on someone not very important, at least) and nods at Wayne in particular. Gibby would return someday, he knew, but for now...
“Let’s just chill out here for a while,” he says in his true voice at last.
Wayne nods back and smiles.
“Yeah man.”
I passed through the gates of the city,
And I heard the small birds sing,
I laid me down in the meadows
Afar from the bell-ringing.
The yellow crescent commences ocular communication with the King again.
This one was formed to resemble an innocent anatidae, merely intended to float in the terrestrial Juice alongside his still-molding flesh. Apparently, such avian idols were sacred additions to pools of bathing long ago according to Smuldunde, one of the leading researchers into the Empire and its relics. The purpose? Irrelevant. The Sages used them; that is enough to emphasize their grandeur.
Another crescent forms his mighty crown. Odozeir and his followers had used the head of a Wayne Larva with the face permanently contorted in anguish; it was but one of many experiments upon the species known for excessive meddling and rampant cerebration. Perhaps it is supposed to be a power play. Nevertheless, Gibby finds himself growing a bit fond of it the longer it remains attached to his brow. It reminds him of a similar expression Wayne had shown for only a moment before his flesh had melted from his bones—a nice result of the gift of exodus Gibby had received precisely so he could protect his newly-emerged chassis from outside mangling. If only he possessed more explosives of such caliber, he wishes fleetingly, but alas. Once this bath is complete, the power of the Afterlife will make such items trivial.
...Some of the acolytes look a little like him, too. The Wayne Larva usage is clear in their skulls although absent in their bulbous red bodies that ooze across his new palace floors. The wicked sorcerer had much fun with them, he can tell. Gibby does not mind it. They fit in nicely with the gray configurations manifesting as dancing shapes across the world he will soon rebuild. Besides, one of him is enough; years of identical members spawning in the mighty king’s absence is revolting just to think about, much less face it as a reality.
Speaking of which. The Wayne he remembers along with his three disciples land in the King’s bathing pool, disrupting his well-crafted anatidae with their waves. But again, he is not incensed at that crescent shape and does not think of why—nor does he think about how much he has thought these past days. There is calm in his voice.
“I forgive you for destroying my satellite. From this world’s matter I’ll produce a better one, and perhaps even allow you a space there.”
Gibby acknowledges him with sincerity. However, Wayne is unmoved, as are his crew. Even Pongorma, the only one who should know better.
“Very well.” Then it will be a new exercise in futility for them. “Witness my omnipotence.”
The thoughts, he would soon realize, are not enough to overcome theirs.
In the depth and the bloom of the meadows
I lay on the earth's quiet breast,
The poplar fanned me with shadows,
And the veery sang me to rest.
Shops, once selling battle axes and pistols during the reign of Lord Gibby, find their profits nonexistent until they add well-lathed gloves to their inventory. Insect growers and other idlers realize their time is better sunk elsewhere and turn to more meaningful industry. There are still dissenters, but there are more crescents in the world than ever before. And everyone marvels at Disthlarn Moon, again gracing the skies with its presence, soon joined by less thrilling but still technologically sound airships that bridge the islands together.
Collectively, the people think independently.
“Do we need to bother with this training anymore? Gibby’s subsistence was eradicated.”
The Waynes in training bring this question to their wise mentor in short time after the tyrant’s demise. Old Wayne answers thusly: “There is always a chance that a new power will rise, and with it, the need for action.” His many eyes then turn to Wayne expectantly. Knowing the subtext, he palpitates but attempts to hide it.
The stars that Old Wayne watch studiously give his predictions accuracy once more. A year later comes the Conflict of Muldul in which Odozeir, reconstituted, leads comrades Marzdt and Reduuvosm to a new chaotic world order in the name of Larthuvool, ambushing Blerol and his city with violence. No one realizes it is a distraction to destroy the Waynehouse until it is too late. Days of war end in a zone of pink and bones that fill the vision of the four heroes, who stand wordlessly in the wreckage that remains.
Wayne recalls the first time he had met Old Wayne on one of his worldly explorations, locked away in a subterrain vault for defying Gibby. He had never before seen another of his species and so had felt surprised, humbled even by this perspicacious presence he had encountered almost entirely by chance. Old Wayne offered his teachings and wisdom and watched over the Waynehouse with a calm, wise way. Now he is nothing more than scraps of meat being rolled into a wrapping by his few surviving pupils, left to incubate in the basement with the other eggs. It is all they have left.
In the interim, as a wounded Blerol works to rebuild his city, the survivors of the Waynehouse look to their new leader without question. Wayne looks back, uneasy but understanding. Somsnosa, Dedusmuln, and Pongorma give their blessings in respectful body language and a couple of jokes; it helps him relax.
Collectively, the people grow wiser together, and the years pass.
One day, Wayne curls into another cocoon and begins a final metamorphosis. The Waynes of mature form gather excitedly around him and watch; the Larva have no idea what they are witnessing and continue to graze instead. What is expected, however, is not revealed to them.
A new form emerges instead.
Kind of like...breaching sun rays.
Blue, blue was the heaven above me,
And the earth green at my feet;
'Oh, Life! Oh, Life!' I kept saying,
And the very word seemed sweet.
Soft muted colors paint a picture of beginnings. Heat hardens the carapaces dotting the sandy shore—once scarce, now plentiful. A spiky figure of pale orange watches over them from the shelter of a leaning cliffside, awaiting their fully hardened state and ensuring they do not stray too far into the waters with comforting, guiding hands.
The immortal congener is visiting again briefly; most do not spend time in the Afterlife unless they are in the process of moving on, in one form or another, but he is an exception. He strokes a couple of the Wayne Larvae’s foreheads, anticipating training them some day soon. They wag their tails at him and he smiles back. Maybe they, too, will evolve into something new. Only time will tell.
With another long look across the endless sea of pink, the Sage of Purpose traverses the portal to rejoin his three fellows in their wonderful, full world.
The Pneumatics.