| Ficbit Challenge 6
Nine-
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| To be the tool of the Occuria's will requires either an extraordinary
bloodline or an extraordinary sacrifice.
When the Occuria Teamena was forced to impose its will upon the dancer Mullenkamp in order to set history straight, it did so by binding its own soul to hers by means of a complicated magical knot, the Rood Inverse; from that point forward Teamena and the prophets of Mullenkamp were as one, and when one of these extraordinary souls was killed (a difficult prospect indeed) they were absorbed into the Rood, to power it and maintain Teamena's grip on this mortal world. Teamena's sacrifice is honored amongst its peers. ===== He knew well enough what to expect. Still, the implacable call was unsettling, pulling him thin, pulling him back... time seemed to slow as he streamed towards the ruins of the Gran Grimoire. It could not have been more than seconds but it seemed hours, days, months. Lea Monde was a ruin beneath him, a massive bowl full of water and stone. The call altered and dragged him down, and he answered, a burst of light exploding over the water's uneasy surface before being absorbed. Through stone and water and cursed earth, what was left of him traveled, down, down, ever down, seeking to answer the call; far beneath the lake's surface he burst out into a void, as empty of water as it was of light and air. His advent brought light, if nothing else. What was left of the Crimson Blade lay here, tumbled among the stones like a child's broken doll. What was left of the Rood still burned against his blackness. The light hesitated--his goal less than an arm's length from him now--and against all odds drew back, balked. No closer, he was warned. I'll suffer you not. Suffer me you must, he responded, in the same fashion. You know it to be true. He waited, then, but the other did not speak again. After an eternity, he let himself cross the last few inches, the glow of him settling onto that blackened skin and sinking in, vanishing. The darkness was absolute. In a way, it was a gift. In the darkness, then, a while passed. The blackened skin on the corpse's chest began to bubble and seethe. The Rood discards what it has no use for, after all. The first ball of light burst from the corpse's chest an eternity later. Others followed shortly, until every corner of the sealed chamber glowed a virulent purple. For a moment they hovered there, taking stock of each other, perhaps communicating; then one by one the newly-birthed leamonde entites winked out of existence and went their respective ways. ===== It is a little-known fact that the elemental beings known as 'entites' exist largely out of time. In their slow and meandering search for the ideal existence, they ignore the laws of space and time that bind more fleshly creatures, traveling both forwards and backwards in time as blithely as they might step sideways across the dimensions. Some conjecture that their demonstrated hatred of magic stems from a fear that they might be bound to a single time and place. But, as we know not even where they come from or when they first appeared, we may never know. |
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