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sparkindarknessI did say I'd post fic days ago, but everything kind of went sideways. First of all the Spark in Darkness fic (still balanced on a cliffhanger) bogged down and I have to rewrite it, Light & Dark would only play for a paragraph at a time, and then they wanted to do the justice discourse instead and then all the poor neglected ones demanded a voice.
Then I had this extremely vivid dream on a kind of epic scale. I can't really describe it. All I know is I got up at 3:00am to type it out furiously.
*groan* gods help me, I've started another fic!
EDIT: after the welcome advice of Home_of_Usher on merely. Oh, ands of course all the spelling mistakes and typos are now throwing themselves off the page into my eyes to mock me.
My name is Haphaestus. Once I was the lord of all I surveyed. once I commanded every living creature with the slightest spark of thought that came to my attention. Once kings cowered in fear at the mere thought of my presence. Once realms rose and fell, armies marched and died and entire nations were rocked by my most capricious whim. Once I was worshipped and held powers beyond measure. Once, I thought I was a god. Once, perhaps I was.
But those times are gone. Gone and beyond even my most hope filled reach. Gone and changed so much that I’m not even sure I want them to return. Gone, and their leaving made all the more bitter by the fault that can only lie at my door. The fault that I share with my brothers.
We ruled together, us four. Not always peacefully, not always contentedly, but always we ruled and lived in balance. No-one could face any one of us, let alone the four of us together. Such is the way it had always been and such was the way we were so sure it would always be. We reigned over our lands as supreme dictators and gods both. Once we were even deserving of that rule.
Once.
But arrogance claimed us as it had so many. Ours was the power beyond measure, ours was the eternal rule, ours was the godhead. And the more divine we thought we were, the more infernal our actions became. For what was the brief, fragile life of a human to our ancient years? What was the puny strength of any being compared to our might? What was the ambition, the will, the intelligence or the freedom of such lesser creatures to the gods? Surely all were worth nothing? And that was how we treated our people. Slaves, animals, mere toys for our pleasure and amusement. I think back now and cringe and weep. I shudder at my memories and know that we fully deserve to have lost all we have, that no suffering we now endure could be considered as anything more than just punishment. I still do not ask for forgiveness. Who is there left to grant it? And what have I done, what could I have done, to deserve such forgiveness?
We reigned as gods, or perhaps devils would be a better term, over our terrified and cowed people who fought desperately every day to appease us just long enough for them to survive another night. Then the strangers came.
We didn’t care, not at first. At that point we didn't care about anything, certainly not something as basic and irrelevant as the arrival of some new humans. Does a man pay attention to the affairs of ants? Perhaps if he knew how powerful those ants could be, he would.
The strangers moved inexorably over the lands, defeating and enslaving our broken people with contemptuous ease and incredible speed. And still we did nothing. And still we did not care. No, worse! We were amused! Amused by our people’s suffering! We saw it as a diversion, a distraction, but certainly never anything to concern us. So uncaring were we that we didn’t even notice most of which transpired. We never saw that the strangers brought a power all of their own to the fight. Never saw that vast numbers of our own people were joining the strangers in their crusade, actually aiding them in the conquest of our lands, so much were we hated. We ignored them as more and more flocked to the stranger’s banner, emboldened buy our inactivity after centuries, nay millennia, of capricious cruelty.
Then the strangers reached our stronghold, the heart of our lands and the closest thing we had to a home. And still we did nothing. Still we were arrogant fools and assumed we were unassailable, assumed that it was nothing more than a scuffle between the irrelevant humans. Still we did nothing as they climbed the mountain. Still we did nothing as the killed or enslaved our holy men. Still we did nothing until they breached the walls. Still we did nothing until the entered the centre of our home where we lay in indolent repose and decadent luxury.
And we were surprised! Surprised after they’d torn a swathe of destruction across our lands! Surprised as they breached every defence the land had thrown against them! Surprised that they could enter our hall! Even now I cannot imagine how I could ever have been so stupidly arrogant. How could my vanoity have reached such proportions?
But even then we did nothing! We raised our noble heads, allowed frowns to grace our arrogant brows and demanded them leave us until we were willing to deal with them. Yes, I can hardly believe my own memory, we asked our invaders, our invaders who numbered in the hundreds of thousands, bolstered still further by the untold thousands of our abused people, to turn around and go home. And we expected them to do it!
We were shocked when they attacked. Horrified when they fell upon us with violence in their arms and death in their eyes.
Then we acted. Then we showed them our power. Then they died, thousands upon thousands fell. Fire consumed them. The Earth rose up to smite them. The Air raged against them. Water engulfed them. So many died that their screams of terror still echo on the battleground today. The carnage was so great that even now those who know whisper fearfully of the four gods who destroyed an army.
And if it were just an army, we would have prevailed. We were arrogant and proud, but we had power enough to justify our pride. We were the elements of the world, we were the avatars of powers beyond the ken of mortal man. We could have slain them all and laid the entire land to waste. But they had their own power.
It was a power the like of which we had never before seen. Our arrogant indifference had hidden it from our scrutiny, had prevented us from making even the most basic discovery or preparation. Such a high price our arrogance has cost us! Even as the power was thrown against us we refused to believe it, our prideful minds couldn’t encompass that another may have a power that matched ours. We denied it, ignored it. Ignored it even as it was wielded as a weapon against us! Had but one of us acknowledged that we faced a true threat then we could have won the day, but no! All four of us stood against an alien power and a strange army and not one of us accepted the possibility of a challenge.
We raised no defence. We considered none necessary. We did not even try to protect ourselves as the power railed against us. Then the impossible happened. Hermes fell.
Our brother fell. The skies screamed in horror. The Air tore itself in agony at the enormity of it. Our brother was dead. The thought was incredible, unbelievable. Our brother was dead. Impossible! We fell in shocked disbelief. Armed enemy, turncoat slave and alien power all dismissed as the very foundations of our world crumbled. One of us had died.
They won the battle with that one loss. Paralysed by shock, none of us raised a hand as the alien power lashed out again. Only when Hades fell to the floor, his body falling across that of Hermes did we realise that another attack had come and another brother had fallen.
I fled. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. My whole reality had been destroyed. The blessed comfort of my arrogance had been so cruelly shattered. I think Poseiden did the same, his own world lying in ruins behind him. I couldn’t believe that something so terrible could happen to us.
But the worst had yet to come. The world broke. The Korhedron ton Gaia lay at the centre of our fortress. A jewel of great power. No, that description is too simplistic - it is the heart of Gaia. It is the embodiment of the world and all it’s power. It is the elements laid out in perfect balance and harmony. It is the world, it’s magic, it’s life, it’s power. It is everything and more besides. And we four, we four above all other beings in the world, were linked to it by bonds beyond imagining. In many ways we were just avatars of aspects of it, mere faces of tiny elements of the whole.
And the strangers broke it.
Even now I cannot remember without weeping. Cannot forget the agonising pain as I plunged from my flight through the skies. Cannot forget the echoes of my scream of pure anguish. Anguish at having my heart and soul torn asunder.
An age passed before I woke, but there was no comfort to be had in the new world. I was less, so much less. The Korhedron ton Gaia was destroyed, and so too was I. No longer did the fires rage within me. No longer did the flames dance to my every thought. No longer could I feel all that was hot and warm in the world. I was a shell, a mere relic of what I once was. I was nothing, as much as all the humans I had once looked down upon so contemptuously.
And since that day I have grieved. Grieved for my past sins. Grieved for all that I have lost, oh how much I have lost! Grieved as I wandered the lands, little more than a vagabond with a few parlour tricks. Me! Who was once a god reduced to a travelling entertainer for those I once considered less than animal! Oh, how finely the wheels of justice turn.
Yet my suffering had not ended. After years, decades? I am no longer sure, just endless days of pain and regret passing sluggishly one after the other. After an eternity of wandering in grief my feet inexorably took me back to the scene of my undoing. Took me back to the Hall where once I was a god, where my brothers fell.
I was not alone. I found him sat on the very spot where the Korhedron ton Gaia had once sat, salty tears running down his cheeks, his once rich, flowing hair falling limp and heavy around him. He raised azure eyes that reflected all the anguish I felt. My brother, Poseiden had also come to the place of our grief.
Together we wept and raged. Together we screamed our pain and loss. Together we lamented all that had been and could have been. And together we discovered there was no surcease from the agony within. I fell into a dark despondence, falling to despair, regret and penitence. This I did alone.
My brother fell to a more insidious path. Hate, rage and vengeance rode him. For those who had laid us low, for those who had destroyed us - and damaged the world by robbing it of the Korhedron ton Gaia. Against the humans who had failed us. Against all that lived for mocking his weakness. I looked into those tear stained eyes and saw the light of madness and the core of hate building within them.
And I grieved, for that day I lost my last brother.
He took the one thing we had left within that hall. A tiny shard of the Korhedron ton Gaia. One miniscule element of the vast power that it had once embodied. He then performed the worst possible blasphemy. He consumed it.
I cried out my protest, my outrage! How could he? He! One of the Heart’s defenders! One of the Korhedron ton Gaia’s avatars! One of Gaia’s chosen? I did the only thing I could, I called my fires against him. Better another of my brother’s died than this violation be allowed.
But it was not enough. He had consumed the Shard. His waters met my fires and doused them, bowling me other with his power. I had no flames hot enough to melt his ice, no fires large enough to stand against his seas. Frozen by the cold, buffeted by waves and near drown by the ever rising waters, I repeated my action of so long ago. I fled. Again I fled from a power I couldn’t face. Again I fled from a loss that I could scarcely endure.
Some months later I learned from a traveller that on the moment of my defeat the great western volcano fell beneath the waves. Fire fell to Water and the balance of the world changed.
I have a task now. A quest to hold onto in this shadow of a life I am now forced to lead. A purpose to give me the strength to find joy in life again.
The power of the world is fouled. With the loss of the Korhedron ton Gaia the power of Gaia has been pulled out of the world, the power that once was available to all has been reduced to a mere shadow that only the sensitive few can touch. Now, with the Shards being claimed by my maddened brother, the very balance of the world is in question. I must find the Shards before he does.
If I fail, the world will become no more than a sterile world of endless, lifeless ocean.
Then I had this extremely vivid dream on a kind of epic scale. I can't really describe it. All I know is I got up at 3:00am to type it out furiously.
*groan* gods help me, I've started another fic!
EDIT: after the welcome advice of Home_of_Usher on merely. Oh, ands of course all the spelling mistakes and typos are now throwing themselves off the page into my eyes to mock me.
My name is Haphaestus. Once I was the lord of all I surveyed. once I commanded every living creature with the slightest spark of thought that came to my attention. Once kings cowered in fear at the mere thought of my presence. Once realms rose and fell, armies marched and died and entire nations were rocked by my most capricious whim. Once I was worshipped and held powers beyond measure. Once, I thought I was a god. Once, perhaps I was.
But those times are gone. Gone and beyond even my most hope filled reach. Gone and changed so much that I’m not even sure I want them to return. Gone, and their leaving made all the more bitter by the fault that can only lie at my door. The fault that I share with my brothers.
We ruled together, us four. Not always peacefully, not always contentedly, but always we ruled and lived in balance. No-one could face any one of us, let alone the four of us together. Such is the way it had always been and such was the way we were so sure it would always be. We reigned over our lands as supreme dictators and gods both. Once we were even deserving of that rule.
Once.
But arrogance claimed us as it had so many. Ours was the power beyond measure, ours was the eternal rule, ours was the godhead. And the more divine we thought we were, the more infernal our actions became. For what was the brief, fragile life of a human to our ancient years? What was the puny strength of any being compared to our might? What was the ambition, the will, the intelligence or the freedom of such lesser creatures to the gods? Surely all were worth nothing? And that was how we treated our people. Slaves, animals, mere toys for our pleasure and amusement. I think back now and cringe and weep. I shudder at my memories and know that we fully deserve to have lost all we have, that no suffering we now endure could be considered as anything more than just punishment. I still do not ask for forgiveness. Who is there left to grant it? And what have I done, what could I have done, to deserve such forgiveness?
We reigned as gods, or perhaps devils would be a better term, over our terrified and cowed people who fought desperately every day to appease us just long enough for them to survive another night. Then the strangers came.
We didn’t care, not at first. At that point we didn't care about anything, certainly not something as basic and irrelevant as the arrival of some new humans. Does a man pay attention to the affairs of ants? Perhaps if he knew how powerful those ants could be, he would.
The strangers moved inexorably over the lands, defeating and enslaving our broken people with contemptuous ease and incredible speed. And still we did nothing. And still we did not care. No, worse! We were amused! Amused by our people’s suffering! We saw it as a diversion, a distraction, but certainly never anything to concern us. So uncaring were we that we didn’t even notice most of which transpired. We never saw that the strangers brought a power all of their own to the fight. Never saw that vast numbers of our own people were joining the strangers in their crusade, actually aiding them in the conquest of our lands, so much were we hated. We ignored them as more and more flocked to the stranger’s banner, emboldened buy our inactivity after centuries, nay millennia, of capricious cruelty.
Then the strangers reached our stronghold, the heart of our lands and the closest thing we had to a home. And still we did nothing. Still we were arrogant fools and assumed we were unassailable, assumed that it was nothing more than a scuffle between the irrelevant humans. Still we did nothing as they climbed the mountain. Still we did nothing as the killed or enslaved our holy men. Still we did nothing until they breached the walls. Still we did nothing until the entered the centre of our home where we lay in indolent repose and decadent luxury.
And we were surprised! Surprised after they’d torn a swathe of destruction across our lands! Surprised as they breached every defence the land had thrown against them! Surprised that they could enter our hall! Even now I cannot imagine how I could ever have been so stupidly arrogant. How could my vanoity have reached such proportions?
But even then we did nothing! We raised our noble heads, allowed frowns to grace our arrogant brows and demanded them leave us until we were willing to deal with them. Yes, I can hardly believe my own memory, we asked our invaders, our invaders who numbered in the hundreds of thousands, bolstered still further by the untold thousands of our abused people, to turn around and go home. And we expected them to do it!
We were shocked when they attacked. Horrified when they fell upon us with violence in their arms and death in their eyes.
Then we acted. Then we showed them our power. Then they died, thousands upon thousands fell. Fire consumed them. The Earth rose up to smite them. The Air raged against them. Water engulfed them. So many died that their screams of terror still echo on the battleground today. The carnage was so great that even now those who know whisper fearfully of the four gods who destroyed an army.
And if it were just an army, we would have prevailed. We were arrogant and proud, but we had power enough to justify our pride. We were the elements of the world, we were the avatars of powers beyond the ken of mortal man. We could have slain them all and laid the entire land to waste. But they had their own power.
It was a power the like of which we had never before seen. Our arrogant indifference had hidden it from our scrutiny, had prevented us from making even the most basic discovery or preparation. Such a high price our arrogance has cost us! Even as the power was thrown against us we refused to believe it, our prideful minds couldn’t encompass that another may have a power that matched ours. We denied it, ignored it. Ignored it even as it was wielded as a weapon against us! Had but one of us acknowledged that we faced a true threat then we could have won the day, but no! All four of us stood against an alien power and a strange army and not one of us accepted the possibility of a challenge.
We raised no defence. We considered none necessary. We did not even try to protect ourselves as the power railed against us. Then the impossible happened. Hermes fell.
Our brother fell. The skies screamed in horror. The Air tore itself in agony at the enormity of it. Our brother was dead. The thought was incredible, unbelievable. Our brother was dead. Impossible! We fell in shocked disbelief. Armed enemy, turncoat slave and alien power all dismissed as the very foundations of our world crumbled. One of us had died.
They won the battle with that one loss. Paralysed by shock, none of us raised a hand as the alien power lashed out again. Only when Hades fell to the floor, his body falling across that of Hermes did we realise that another attack had come and another brother had fallen.
I fled. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. My whole reality had been destroyed. The blessed comfort of my arrogance had been so cruelly shattered. I think Poseiden did the same, his own world lying in ruins behind him. I couldn’t believe that something so terrible could happen to us.
But the worst had yet to come. The world broke. The Korhedron ton Gaia lay at the centre of our fortress. A jewel of great power. No, that description is too simplistic - it is the heart of Gaia. It is the embodiment of the world and all it’s power. It is the elements laid out in perfect balance and harmony. It is the world, it’s magic, it’s life, it’s power. It is everything and more besides. And we four, we four above all other beings in the world, were linked to it by bonds beyond imagining. In many ways we were just avatars of aspects of it, mere faces of tiny elements of the whole.
And the strangers broke it.
Even now I cannot remember without weeping. Cannot forget the agonising pain as I plunged from my flight through the skies. Cannot forget the echoes of my scream of pure anguish. Anguish at having my heart and soul torn asunder.
An age passed before I woke, but there was no comfort to be had in the new world. I was less, so much less. The Korhedron ton Gaia was destroyed, and so too was I. No longer did the fires rage within me. No longer did the flames dance to my every thought. No longer could I feel all that was hot and warm in the world. I was a shell, a mere relic of what I once was. I was nothing, as much as all the humans I had once looked down upon so contemptuously.
And since that day I have grieved. Grieved for my past sins. Grieved for all that I have lost, oh how much I have lost! Grieved as I wandered the lands, little more than a vagabond with a few parlour tricks. Me! Who was once a god reduced to a travelling entertainer for those I once considered less than animal! Oh, how finely the wheels of justice turn.
Yet my suffering had not ended. After years, decades? I am no longer sure, just endless days of pain and regret passing sluggishly one after the other. After an eternity of wandering in grief my feet inexorably took me back to the scene of my undoing. Took me back to the Hall where once I was a god, where my brothers fell.
I was not alone. I found him sat on the very spot where the Korhedron ton Gaia had once sat, salty tears running down his cheeks, his once rich, flowing hair falling limp and heavy around him. He raised azure eyes that reflected all the anguish I felt. My brother, Poseiden had also come to the place of our grief.
Together we wept and raged. Together we screamed our pain and loss. Together we lamented all that had been and could have been. And together we discovered there was no surcease from the agony within. I fell into a dark despondence, falling to despair, regret and penitence. This I did alone.
My brother fell to a more insidious path. Hate, rage and vengeance rode him. For those who had laid us low, for those who had destroyed us - and damaged the world by robbing it of the Korhedron ton Gaia. Against the humans who had failed us. Against all that lived for mocking his weakness. I looked into those tear stained eyes and saw the light of madness and the core of hate building within them.
And I grieved, for that day I lost my last brother.
He took the one thing we had left within that hall. A tiny shard of the Korhedron ton Gaia. One miniscule element of the vast power that it had once embodied. He then performed the worst possible blasphemy. He consumed it.
I cried out my protest, my outrage! How could he? He! One of the Heart’s defenders! One of the Korhedron ton Gaia’s avatars! One of Gaia’s chosen? I did the only thing I could, I called my fires against him. Better another of my brother’s died than this violation be allowed.
But it was not enough. He had consumed the Shard. His waters met my fires and doused them, bowling me other with his power. I had no flames hot enough to melt his ice, no fires large enough to stand against his seas. Frozen by the cold, buffeted by waves and near drown by the ever rising waters, I repeated my action of so long ago. I fled. Again I fled from a power I couldn’t face. Again I fled from a loss that I could scarcely endure.
Some months later I learned from a traveller that on the moment of my defeat the great western volcano fell beneath the waves. Fire fell to Water and the balance of the world changed.
I have a task now. A quest to hold onto in this shadow of a life I am now forced to lead. A purpose to give me the strength to find joy in life again.
The power of the world is fouled. With the loss of the Korhedron ton Gaia the power of Gaia has been pulled out of the world, the power that once was available to all has been reduced to a mere shadow that only the sensitive few can touch. Now, with the Shards being claimed by my maddened brother, the very balance of the world is in question. I must find the Shards before he does.
If I fail, the world will become no more than a sterile world of endless, lifeless ocean.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-16 02:10 pm (UTC)Fantastic stuff. Wonder where you find the inspiration for this stuff. and can you share? hehehe
one small detail. You seem to mention 'merely' or 'mere' quite often in that first paragraph. might wanna do some slight synonym additions. It makes the later mention of the word 'mere' superfluous.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-17 03:56 am (UTC)It blindsided me, to be honest. Most of my inspiration comes from dreams. I just saw this tall figure stood on a wiond swept rock over a storm tossed sea, flame red hair caught in the wind, amber eyes filled with tears but jaw set firmly... and suddenly I had his story.
Aye, you're right, mere has become word of the day, hasn't it? Some synonyms would be better
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-17 11:41 am (UTC)and can't help but think of element combinations. water+earth=Mud. water+air=fog. fire+earth=ash. fire+water+air=steam. etc. heh. Makin my head churn.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-17 03:02 pm (UTC)Element combos (though their aegis' are surprisingly wide) as for interaction - it's strange, I can't quite decide whether natrual events, soilstices and the position of certain constellations affect their moods and interractions or whether their moods and interractions actually effect the world around them. Perhaps both.
I'm not even sure if the element combinations are soruces of contention (that's MY domain!) or areas of co-operation. Perhaps both.
I do know the 'classic' antipathies don't apply (i.e. Hephaestus and Poseiden are not constantly at odds) and their termperments affect their elements (Hephaestus losses his temper quickly but soothes down quickly, Hermes is mercurial and unpredictable, Hades staid and clam, but when his temper finally breaks it REALLY breaks, Poseiden builds up, becoming steadily more moody and angry until he explodes and returns to his previous calm state).
I think I need to write more to leanr more about them.