Ieva Sandbox

Item #: SCP-XXXX-N

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: Due to a cessation of anomalous properties, SCP-XXXX may be stored indefinitely in a standard locker.

Denying the existence and history of SCP-XXXX-1 has been deemed unnecessary.

Description: SCP-XXXX refers to a collection of documents and photographs left behind by SCP-XXXX-1.

Addendum: [Optional additional paragraphs]

‡ Licensing / Citation

"They send me to war again." A statement, not a question. Sarya did not bother to answer with words.

The touch of her fingers stilled the turmoil in Halyna's heart but for a moment, and the warmonger found peace, at least a little.

"Each cycle, we have less and less time together," Halyna continued. "I know not what sorcery the Ozi̮rmok uses to drag me out of my grave early, but those angels demand harvest in exchange. I hear it in my blood."

Sarya tilted her head in curiosity.

"I hear unease in your voice, my love. It is unlike you."

The karcist laid a hand on her lover's. Her young, reborn skin seemed almost insulting compared to Sarya's, whose skin, blemished with liver spots, seemed almost pure in comparison - a stark reminder to her that age would soon claim their bond.

"Their demands cause my blood to steam and my skin to melt," said Halyna. "I do not mind that. But every cycle, they demand sooner and sooner, and look at us now. A mere two days, and they want me to kill again."

"But…" In spite of her words, Sarya already knew what Halyna would say.

"The angels can descend from their lofty heavens themselves if they want me to leave now. I've earned the right to spend one more night with you, my queen."

The karcist did not receive so much as a smile from her lover in response, but she did not mind.

"I watched cities rise and fall in your name, Halyna. You are perhaps the most shameless woman I have had the pleasure of meeting. Your ego is beyond redemption. I love you."

The first night that Halyna truly slept with Sarya was a cold one.

Two inexperienced women, uncertain in a future tied to war, did not understand what it meant to love. They knew what it meant to cherish, to hold dear what they wanted more than anything else. But love?

For Sarya, she wanted the leader, someone who did not have to take to the frontlines, someone who she could rely on to stay alive. For Halyna, she wanted a home, something distant from the gods she both worshipped and hated, a key to her past before she became a puppet.

Every wish has its price.

Halyna would never die, yes, and Sarya would always be waiting for her with a warm meal, but it did not take even half a brain for someone to recognize how little time they had left, how every time they looked at one another they were forced to acknowledge that one day, one of them would die permanently.

And they both knew who it was.

Halyna was an empress of viscera, but that did little to translate to bedding her wife - what good was a force of nature in caressing a fragile person? No, it was Sarya who took lead, who taught Halyna how to touch and hold, how to rub, how to kiss, how to bite.

She alone reigned in the warmonger of the gods.

"I always loved stars, did you know that? Bright against the night sky, yet no matter how far you reach, they remain as distant as they always will be. You're a star, Halyna, to people like me. Your magicks, your power, your gifts, your curse - few can claim to come as close as you have to obtaining godhood, would consider you anything but an impossible dream. And yet, my impossible dream, you stand before me.

How many stars had she snuffed out?

Halyna once heard of a religion which believed that among the heavens and its limitless stars, each one was tied to the life of an individual; that the world was infinitely more vast than she could imagine, that there were cultures and customs she had never experienced before. With each dead star, a new one was born to take its place.

(Sarya never dared to proselytize to her, but Halyna had spent too many nights with her to not hear her thoughts).

She never bothered to entertain it, though. Halyna did not consider herself particularly religious, even after she became an Adytite. She did not need the Ozi̮rmok's teachings: she never did have love for gods that failed to protect her. She was all too happy when she learned they would kill those wicked angels and their creator.

Becoming a god was never an interest of hers. To become more than human was pointless - her humanity was what kept her apart from the Deva that took her childhood away. Godliness was the goal of lesser men, regardless of how noble their intentions were.

(Of course, she would never reveal that to any of the five leaders. Even the Cyclops would not forgive that arrogance.)

Her first resurrection by the wicked angels happened on her fourth march for the Ozi̮rmok. Through terrible magicks, flying blades sliced through the vanguard of Adytum, and she was one of the fallen.

Was.

She later heard from another woman that while they were moving the bodies to honor them, a heartbeat was discovered in her headless corpse. They reported it to Saarn, the closest leader they could reach at the time.

Saarn had found Halyna's head quickly amid a sea of bodies. She had witnessed it degrade in her hands, and a new head reform on the corpse. After all limbs reformed, it took mere minutes for Halyna's eyes to open again.

Grimly, the Klavigar informed Halyna that she had been gifted a new life.

The two did not speak with one another after that. Both were not fools - this was no work of the Ozi̮rmok. He provided with his followers a new life, true, but there was no reason for him to bring back Halyna of all people, a woman who barely listened to his tenets. She had even resigned herself to being a stepping stone for Adytum if it meant she could die fighting the Deva.

No, she was tainted by some higher power.

Halyna had been denied the chance to die by her fellow slaves, elevated to near-godhood against her will. It sickened her.

She paid more attention to Ion's teachings from that day onward. No longer were the gods some infinitely distant prey they needed to work toward killing. No, they were truly malevolent, willing to take away her final relief.

One, two, three, four, five. And five more after that, and many more to come. She watched as countless people she once called brothers and sisters withered away through the passage of time.

Sarya's death wounded her above all others. Sarya had shown her that life could be beautiful. Though she was a pacifist, and Halyna undying war, Halyna could always rely on Sarya to be waiting at the front of their home, greeting her return.

Every cycle, Halyna would be damned to be reborn at the same age as her first reincarnation. All those years she had spent together with Sarya, slow as her ageing already was, would be wiped from her skin with each rebirth. When her fingers laced with Sarya's, she was painfully aware of how smooth her skin was and how gnarled her lover's would become.

Yet those memories laid etched on Sarya's face, who patiently waited the weeks, months, years, for the Karcist's return, each wrinkle added onto her face a grim reminder; one day, Sarya would die, and that doorway would be empty.

And one day, it was.

The Ozi̮rmok himself had told her the news. Sarya had passed away ten moons ago, waiting at the door. Waiting to welcome Halyna home. He said nothing more, waiting for her to lash out or to cry, eyes alert and finger at the ready should the Warmonger need to be restrained.

All she did was ask to be placed on the front lines again.

Eventually, Adytum would cease to exist. It had made too many enemies, afraid that Ion and his mobs would cast them from their thrones like they did the Deva. Flesh they wielded, but the enemies wielded nasty armaments. Undying Men of Iron, fires unquenchable by the elements, fumes that left even the breathless beasts felled. Weapons so terrible that the alliance vowed never to use some of them again.

(Perhaps it was for the best, she noted. Better that the Nälkä play their role as scapegoats and ensure such disgusting weapons wouldn't hound people for centuries to come. Orok did say they were a people of peace.)

Her number of rebirths neared two score when she learned Orok, her mentor, no longer lived. None of the Klavigar did, nor the Ozi̮rmok. She was the last of Adytum.

It was the first life where she did not fight. She walked, retraced her footsteps and those of her people, collected their bleached bones and rusted tools. She found the cratered land that was once her house, which had been burned down while she slumbered. Nothing remained. The bed she shared with Sarya, the hearth that neither woman dared touch, patches of flowers whose names were taught by her lover and where Sarya would count the stars with her.

And Halyna wept.

She wept, thinking of the other forty-nine daughters and fifty sons, her generation, who all died before the Ozi̮rmok could free them. She wept, thinking of Sarya, her first and last love, who showed her happiness when others could not. She wept, thinking of Orok, her last friend, who showed her how to turn hate into power.

She wept, staring at the sky, searching for those missing stars.

Ieva offered the Hooded Man a drink. The man looked at it warily, causing her to sigh.

"At ease, mortal. It is not poisoned."

She watched patiently as the Hooded Man slowly took a sip. Once the man was refreshed, she asked a question that made him blink.

"How many times have I killed you by now?"

He turned to look at her. She rolled her eyes. "You are not the first time manipulator I have had the displeasure of running into."

The Hooded Man cocked his head to the side. "I think you have me mistaken for someone else, madam."

Ieva shook her head. "Keep your secrets." Before the Hooded Man could react, a tentacle punched a hole through his chest.

"I suppose the Men of Iron sent you," she said. "How much did you ask for?"

The Hooded Man put a bullet through a fleshbeast's head. "Client confidentiality, ma'am. Afraid I can't answer that."

Ieva crossed her arms over her chest. "How much would you say a target like me is worth?"

"You'd be the fourth carnomancer I put down today," he responded, another bullet downing a winged monster. "I like to give repeat clients discounts on bulk commissions."

Ieva waved her left hand, and all the fleshbeasts dissolved, bullets and shrapnel embedded into huge frames clattering against the floor in unison.

"I'll not waste further time then, chronomancer," Ieva declared to the Hooded Man's surprise. He parried a swing of her scythe but found that he was unable to move back. Looking down, his right leg had become enmeshed in a slurry of bone and flesh. He fired at Ieva's advancing body, but she pressed on, and eventually, her weapon met its mark against his neck.

The Hooded Man fired.

He took a safe distance of Ieva, wary of his client's information. He wasn't sure how she'd known he was a chronomancer, nor when - it seemed that she could tell regardless of when he attempted to kill her.

But he didn't plan on giving up so soon - it had only been twenty-six attempts so far. As far as anyone was concerned, he always succeeded on his first try, and he had a reputation to uphold.

"Orok," she once asked. "What am I?"

The Klavigar said nothing, but the faintest tilt of his head gestured for her to continue.

"I hear their whispers, Orok. They say I am not unlike the Deva that enslaved our people. I myself am not blind to my own actions. I slaughter and kill and I hate. Every damned mystic refuses to go near me for it, and my hate grows yet. Am I still human?"

Orok said nothing, and for a moment Halyna felt her temper stir. She would not strike her leader - she had learned far too many times the limits of the Klavigar's patience - but even she was prone to irrational actions in the heat of the moment.

"You are my follower," replied the Klavigar. "The Path of Strength guides you, but it cannot define you. Your war protects our people. Is that not enough to satisfy you?"

"No." There were many words she wished to tack onto that answer, but all eluded her. Instead, she raised her right fist, her thumb angled slightly upward. She trusted that Orok would understand.

And he did.

Orok reciprocated the gesture. The Klavigar then raised his fist and struck her, causing her form to explode into bloody mist. He watched silently as the blood slowly gathered again, reforming back into the being known as Halyna Ieva within minutes.

"Your… gift," said Orok. "Of the Six."

"My curse," she corrected. "Legions of my brothers and sisters die while I live on. I am from a bygone era. Like you."

"Like me." He nodded and closed his eye. "And yet, you too will outlive us all."

The Klavigar stood up and gestured toward the horizon. Halyna's gaze followed his arm. In the distance, she watched as others toiled in the fields.

"We are a peaceful people, Halyna," said Orok. "Many of us fight, but the peaceful outnumber us still. Children must be protected. Crops must be tended to. Not everyone has the resolve to kill like you."

"They fight to live. And I…"

Orok nodded. "You fight because you want to. You fight out of vengeance when he took your innocence away. As generations pass, Halyna, our people will forget the resentment and oppression that brought us to the Ozi̮rmok in the first place. We will grow complacent. But you, one of our first-"

"Will never forget."

Her first memory of meeting Orok was seared into her memory. Having killed Subandhu, she left with nothing. She joined the vagrants that made up Ion's revolution in rags, still stained in the blood of that night. She watched as slaves died around her, yet Ion's brilliance shone, rallying the people to push on against the Deva. And by his side was the Cyclops.

Where Halyna struck down one man, Orok slew a thousand. She was a murderer, but he - he was a weapon.

She needed to become like him.

"At times," said Orok, interrupting her thoughts. "I believed that you should not have joined the Path of Strength."

She said nothing.

"Its members believe in honor, in loyalty. But you, Halyna, are selfish. You fight neither for the Ozi̮rmok nor for your colleagues. You call them comrades, but you never truly believed in his words of unity, have you?"

Halyna did not need to respond. She had confessed these to Orok before, the only one she felt would be willing to hear her out. The only one who understood her goals.

"Saarn would have understood," he continued. "Her origins are not unlike yours, Halyna. More than anyone else, she would understand necessity. Of the role you play for our culture."

"I've no longer the wits for deception and poison Orok," said Halyna. "I kill, but from those fields alone, you can pick a score of children who would be more suited for subterfuge than me. I am a weapon."

Orok nodded. "You are that, and more."

Halyna tilted her head.

"You are our warmonger, our reaper. The Six did not curse you with immortality out of capriciousness. They did so because they are cruel gods, incapable of understanding what you truly hate. They see your war as an opportunity for sacrifice, to feast on your kills."

She nodded. She had felt the oceans of emotions and temptations hit her no matter how much she jeered and mocked those wicked angels. Visions of gifts and waves of euphoria would hit her time and again as she conversed with them, insults and ridicule met with more promises of power. If the Archons could understand her, or her hatred of control, they never showed it.

All they knew were false promises and bargains of power.

"I have heard your theories and even I find them absurd," confessed the Klavigar. "'Bloat the angels with corpses until they fall from the heavens.' Killing in the name of the gods until they grow indolent."

"Yet, you never censured me for them, unlike the Ozi̮rmok."

Orok shrugged. "His censures mean nothing to you, and he knows it. We four do. It is why he is comfortable admonishing you, Halyna. As for me, it is not my place to do so."

"'Men of action,'" recited Halyna. "'There is no judgment but for the still.'"

"I think your goals, however reckless, are attainable. The Ozi̮rmok was able to pass the trials of the Six. I have no right to tell you what is and is not possible."

He closed his eyes. "But for now, I have one final task for you, Halyna, before I send you to the West."

Halyna's jaw clenched and she tensed up a little.

"I need you to continue living. To remember."

She blinked.

"You, who hate. You, who remember what it was like under the chains of the Deva, what it was like to be at their whims. You, who remember our shameful history and burns with undying vengeance. Our people may prosper under our crusade, but Adytum will not last. No movement lives forever. Even I will die someday. We will grow complacent. Their leaders will not inherit our will. You, who have been cursed with immortality, can remember what our people refuse to record. Without you, the complete legacy of Adytum would be forgotten. I need you to remember the fires of the first Nälkä, of the first stones thrown, the first chains broken. Continue your crusade against the gods who have shackled you until even they cannot threaten our people again. Will you accept?"

For the first time in decades, a smile graced Halyna's face.

"By your will, Klavigar."

Halyna did not know how many awakenings she had had since her first death. Sometimes returns took mere minutes. Sometimes she found herself alone, buried in the rubble of an ambush of decades past. Sometimes she would stir to the screams of madmen who found her disfigured form, whatever beauty she once had offset by her grotesque lower body.

Sometimes her fellow Nälkä would be by her side, expecting the Scourge to fight for them. It disgusted her to see what had become of the Ozi̮rmok's followers, their lack of drive. Orok's warning had come true: their people had forgotten their fangs.

They chained others, they fattened themselves on spoils, they became the oppressors, and she struggled to see a difference between them and the Deva her people once overthrew. Instead of looking at her actions with fear, tactics she stole from her oppressors, they revered her.

The honeyed words of sycophants disgusted more far more than the wary looks her former companions once gave her did.

She wished Orok was there to scold her, or any of the four. They grounded her, reminded her of the true meaning of her war, that she fought to kill gods. Here… she fought for the pleasures of rich men, using long-forgotten magicks to lay carnage as entertainment for the ruling.

And her hate grew yet.

She hated the Nälkä for how low they had forgotten, terrorizing the weak that she had once belonged to. She hated the Ozi̮rmok for his absence, allowing his followers to become as wicked as they were now. She hated Orok for his acumen, for understanding how pathetic their people would be.

Above all, she hated herself, for allowing herself to be used time and time again, the faintest spark of hope still alive in her heart as she accepted the offerings, believing that her new allegiances would remember what it meant to be a follower of Ion. They all failed her.

In the end, she lost her patience when she stirred in a tube, suspended in an indeterminate liquid, while men and women clad in white observed her and took notes. They spoke in a tongue she was not familiar with, but one word stuck out to her.

Sarkic. An insult from the Men of Iron, the delusional who viewed their crusade as the time of ending. It annoyed her that even in this modern era those nuisances would continue to pester.

She would have moved had she not noticed one slight thing - she was bound. The chains were fragile, a single tentacle could have snapped them all.

Yet that was the breaking point for her.

The chains showed how weak she had become, that mortals believed that a cage as pathetic as that could restrain her. Once she commanded fear and adoration, her very gaze reducing even the mightiest warrior into a ball of flesh and blood.

Now, she was but a curiosity to be studied.

Alarms screamed around her and the Men in White panicked as she burst from her imprisonment with less effort than a jerk. She imaged they thought her dead, not needing but the lightest chains so that she would not crack the glass they kept her in. She wondered how many moons she slept while the inquisitive prodded her body, studying how her tentacles formed. She felt hollow, and an emptiness within her noted that she was missing organs that no amount of hunger-provoked cannibalism could explain.

It mattered not to her. The wicked Six has ensured that even if she were to have her entire head crushed, inevitably she would return. She was their insult to the Nälkä, a recurring nightmare that reminded them their presence still lingered. That every kill she made would be sacrificed to the very gods they were meant to slay.

The Men in White resisted fiercely. She did not know what weapons they used that could hurl chunks of metal at blinding speed, but they did little to impede her advance. Tentacles lashed out from under her, grabbing those who had yet to flee and forcing their bodies to bloat, becoming shields that blocked the projectiles.

She held out her hand and the spilled blood, both her own and her foes', surged to its palm. It wrought itself into a scythe, a gift imparted by Orok on the last day she saw the Old Nälkä. Perhaps he foresaw that her next awakening would not be for decades, long after Adytum was fractured by the world's empires. Perhaps he knew how lonely she would be, the last warrior from the first days of the crusade, that every Nälkä she would ever meet would never understand their origins.

She honored it with the title that Orok gave her, Warmonger.

She hacked away at the Men in White and their black-clad fighters, hate blending with catharsis as Warmonger tore through cloth and armor alike. A savage glee bubbled inside her, bloodlust singing as she moved from corridor to corridor. The lucky died quickly as the cursed scythe cleaved them and sent them to the wicked angels in an instant. The less fortunate had to fight against ever-growing tentacles of blood and bone - piercing them, crushing them, turning their weapons against them.

And the less said of those she wrought her magic on, the better.

The Men in White and Men in Black resisted heavily, she had to admit. Biological weapons caused her to heave even as she flung her diseased limbs at her attackers. Acids melted through her fleshcraft, and she would return the favor by sending her own assortment of dissolving liquid at them.

This was what she lived for. This was how she would fulfill the Ozi̮rmok's dream.

Of her opposers, one stood out. He was a Man in White, of a smaller stature than his peers, yet he stood before her without a weapon.

"Scourge of Iron," he said. Halyna could not resist the widening of her eyes, for the man spoke her tongue. "I have studied your myths. Last warrior of Adytum."

She narrowed her eyes but did not respond.

"I studied the Nälkä," said the Man in White. "The Old Nälkä, those of Ion's time. Yet, you are a mystery to me. Why does Halyna Ieva, a name that even the Grand Karcist would personally admonish, show up across history when the Klavigar do not? Why are you still alive?"

Halyna felt a tightening in her chest. The man confirmed to her everything she had suspected up til that point - that nothing remained of the people she once belonged to.

"Answer me this, Man in White," she said, dispelling Warmonger. "Why should I care, when all my peers and customs have been forgotten?"

The Man in White did not have a verbal response. Instead, he raised his right fist, his thumb angled slightly upward.

Halyna blinked.

She moved toward the man, her tentacles receding into her body. Legs, something she had not used in centuries, carried her before him.

To him, she would have looked like a normal woman.

"Do you understand what you are doing?" she demanded. "You. Challenge me?"

A firm nod.

Halyna stared in disbelief. Slowly a grin graced her face, a genuine one. "So be it." She stretched out her arms to indicate she had no hidden weapons or schemes. She raised her own fist before setting it down.

Then threw a punch in the Man in White's face.

It was not a powerful punch. Her strength had wasted away, as always as she slumbered in recuperation. Centuries had passed since the last time she had fought with only her hands, not since the days of Adytum.

Yet, the man himself was not very strong. Neither was his response, but for her part, she had dispelled all the usual protections she applied to herself.

A raw, unrestricted strike, reckless with abandon and sloppy with strength. It hit Halyna square in the face, and though she regained her bearings soon, she felt blood trickle down from her nose.

Her blood.

They spoke no words to one another. Such was the Path of Strength's duel of honor. All enhanced strength removed. No magic, no diplomacy. The only language that needed to be conveyed was the determination to fight on.

Perhaps the only thing she recognized that still endured into the present.

One blow after another was delivered by both parties, one at a time. Neither tried to block or evade, for that would have sullied the sanctity of the duel. A hook to the left temple dazed Halyna for a few seconds before she reciprocated with an uppercut so terrible that she swore broke both her fingerbones and the Man in White's teeth.

Halyna imagined herself as a freed slave, fighting in Ion's army. During those early days, they could barely be considered carnomancers, having just been freed. She fought with fists and rocks, her only fuel the fervor that the Ozi̮rmok inspired in his followers. A single Deva guard could slaughter a score of her people but they would clamor over their dead bodies, with her using the numbers advantage they had, desperate to strike down her foes with her bruised fists. That was all she could offer to Ion.

Slowly, the Man in White's blows slowed and became weaker. Yet Halyna's grew faster and stronger, bloodlust surging through her veins as memories of fighting in Ion's army clouded her vision. The last time she was truly happy, unburdened with the powers of fleshcraft or immortality. When she could die at any moment, yet fought on carelessly, wholeheartedly devoted to Ion's teachings, the beliefs that together, they could uproot the Deva oppressors and take back their destinies.

Halyna did not know when the man stopped punching or which one of her strikes had finally killed him. Perhaps it was when she grasped his temples and headbutted him. Perhaps one of her strikes had missed his chin and struck his neck. She was unsure of when she stopped punching.

As she heaved, her knuckles bruised and drenched in the man's blood, her hand screaming in pain from all the bones she had dislocated or fractured, she sat down. In her time, a healer would have come forward, or Orok himself, who would save the lives of the fighters. It was an honor battle, and though deaths were not forbidden, it would do little to further the Ozi̮rmok's cause to lose followers before a fight took place.

But Orok was not here. She had killed the man.

She felt the whispers return, the gnawing feeling of the Archons encroaching on her head, demanding the man as a sacrifice.

She picked up Warmonger, and slowly pointed it at the man. She was barely able to hold the weapon, and though she could have used her powers to heal herself of all the superficial wounds, she decided not to.

She swung the scythe, and for the first time in centuries, she claimed the man's soul not as Halyna Ieva, traitor-servant of the Archons.

She was Halyna Ieva, Warmonger of Adytum.

"The Faithful One. You speak of her, yes? She is insane. She sculpts not for life, but for war. When you mention mountains she builds a mound of bodies. I can see the beauty in death, but she sees neither. She desires neither — she only kills. The Path of Strength cannot be rid of her. She will not leave. She cannot leave, chained to the will of the six. Death has banished her, and so…"

Stars fall. They must. I am no star. I am the star's guiding servant. Forgive me, Orok, but I must feed that which must die.

"Aye, I remember Layla. Terrifying employer. Got crippled on me first day 'cause of the bloody bitch. Me tootsies are gone, see? Did it to all of us. She does it personally. Gave us all these weird slithers and nobs instead. Said it made us stronger, united us in our weakness. Always thought it was a load of horseshit. Only thing she united us in was hating her scaly ass. Was glad when you suits arrested us, honestly. Yeah, nah, keep an eye open. She'll be back. First thing we learned under her. Don't matter what color your science boys make your fire…"

I remember a river of blood. My blood. Subandhu robbed me of that river. I was a fool of a girl. I believed that I would save women like myself. I believed I was different.

"We know of the Subversion. We remember her. Our bane. We fight empires. We fight that which can be toppled. She cannot. She will not allow it. She believes in power. She has turn that belief into reality. We fight that which cares for their siblings. We fight that which cares for its citizens. She is neither. She is a plague. Our apologies, seeker. We cannot accept an impossible task. We cannot succeed so long as…"

They curse me. I feel it. Please, curse me. Show me what I have become. Prove to me that my path is wrong.

"So many teeth. So many limbs. So many whispers. You call that thing a "she?" It's as much of a woman as my cock's the Freedom Tower. That thing has no mind of its own anymore. It devours, it wants more to add to itself. Fucking tentacle head-ass, fucking… toe freak. Why the fuck does it have to be toes? How the fuck do I explain to my therapist that some wizard came back from the dead and tried to cut off my feet? You want me to calm down? I'll calm the fuck down when I'm sure I'll never again hear the words…"

One by one they fall. A star that burns brightly dies first. I have not forgotten your dream, Ozi̮rmok. Kill so that they may be sated. I fatten the beast so that it may slaughter itself. Glut for glut.

"The Scourge returns. She walks, she harvests. Her halkost marches, stirring up nightmares long thought sealed. Every time we set her back, she returns, faster. We need to reevaluate how we approach her, sir. She is no witless beast; like us, she learns. Your Foundation is clever, but you treat her like she is an item. She is a wave. Bound by laws we don't understand, she must return. We were wrong, I'm afraid. I'm not quite sure she can even die, unless you can explain how despite everything…"

He despises me. I know it. All of them do. Let them. It will serve them well when the time comes. The road of nettles lies before us. Vengeance, not forgiveness. Conquest, not love. You taught me power. I will teach you hate.

"Whore of the gods. Mother-merchant of pride. You ask of her? Your security is too lax to be seeking such knowledge, gentlemen. Even the strong have ears. What mewling peasant irates their mother? How do you barter with a goddess that executes even the customs of her people? Call off your investigation and return to your bottles. She may have many bodies to go through, but she will succeed so long as…"

I wished to snuff out the stars. I cavort with that which I wish to kill. They say I am a perversion of his ideals. Build your nations. When you mold the first brick from the dead clay, When you no longer dread the shepherds, use my blood. Let my spilt blood to be the glue that allowed civilization to continue. I ask for nothing more.

"…Ieva breathes."

naepic

page revision: 134, last edited: 20 Jul 2025 00:14

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The Topiary

yes the bees >:)