talesfromtheasterism

[talesfromtheasterism]

"FOREIGN BULLET" SEIZED IN DCA RAID

THE POISEUITE - Servants of the Pandorae since 3A16 Clarissa Fortune, August 6th 5A29

In a rare public statement today, the Imperial Department of Clandestine Affairs shared details on the seizure of an unprecedented riftsmuggled good - a single firearm cartridge.

DCA special agent Carmen Duff addressed newspaper interest over a raid by Metropolitan Police in Port Poiseuille on July 30th. She said that the target was a hideout in Upper Indigo Wharf, with authorities finding controlled and illegal items including "bladed weapons, banned alchemical compounds, {and} non-transmuted foodstuffs". Seven women were arrested.

Among the items was the bullet - a "meticulously tooled" cartridge filled with gunpowder. While put together recently, it used mineral-based propellant, leaving Imperial officials baffled as to how the round made its way to the Flooding Sands.

The components used "betray it as a foreign bullet, imported to the Sands through highly skilled and organised riftsmugglers". The Imperium claims that it "succeeds in intercepting dozens of {them} every year", but this once-impossible feat casts doubt on their containment of this shadowy threat.

Riftsmugglers are criminals who transport realm-endemic items from one to another via the rifts, such as peddling exotic Void Diffuse plantlife in the Lucid Weave. Since the Awakening, Imperial authorities have struggled to understand this reclusive network of rogues and black-market entrepreneurs.

Realm travel is ordained by the Starweaver, and taking articles on one's person requires force of will depending on their nature. In her divine wisdom, she prohibits the transport of powerful weapons, including bullets, maintaining the balance of the Asteri cultures... until now, it seems.

"We have ascertained {the bullet} was manufactured in the Ash Wastes' outlands," Agent Duff continued. "Our prevailing theory is that it was transported bit by bit, a few grains of powder at a time, then reassembled by an organised and experienced criminal cell."

"The operation will have taken months. I'm sure they're sorely disappointed," she jabbed.

The three other realms of the Asterism regularly field firearms in their militaries, ranging from Whisperer muskets to advanced Bloodstar inferno weaponry. Our fair Sands, however, do not, as almost all of its scarce gunpowder components were depleted in the Disavowed War. Propellant transmuted from the Keeper's Blood is subject to airtight control; only military officers, elite markswomen units, and the venerated Royal Guard may use them, with just a handful of cartridges allotted for their whole careers.

The DCA did not provide details on the organisation responsible. However, speculation among the press and Poiseuite eyewitnesses has made a case for involvement of Suitor cultist elements.

The Suitors, an enigmatic Keeper-sect crime family headquartered in the Umbergnarl, has seen recent incursion into urban areas including Laminara, Woodlots and the capital. No firearms were found in the raid, indicating it was likely intended to be sold on the black market. This would line up with the Suitors' need for quick funding to rapidly expand their influence.

Agent Duff concluded her statement by saying that the DCA had "contained and eliminated the threat", and did not accept questions. But this reporter offers a more sobering interpretation: does this not herald a dark new age of riftsmuggling? If bullets of all things can, however slowly, be imported to the Sands, we stand on the edge of a brave new world of illicit goods. We may well soon see an influx of lethal merchandise that will change the balance of power in the Sands, between law and lawless, forever.

This writer's personal comment: may the love of the Daughter Pandora deliver us from malevolence.

{Transparency notice: this article was authored with oversight from the Department of Clandestine Affairs. Praise Her Imperial Elegance.}

Editor's note: Shit psyop even by Earth standards.

[talesfromtheasterism]

Ghost Trains

Well… if in the spirit of tradition, it would be an honour to give back to Earthly custom. An Asteri ghost story, then. Barring matters of the Void, which feels lke cheating.

Consider the shuttletrains: autonomous constructs of crystal, borne of the Skyloom to ferry its dwelling humans across the dangers of its construction. Always, effortlessly, they know the destinations of all who board, and chart a perfect route between each. Sometimes I wonder if they are living things, in a sense. Maybe then they enjoy aiding fellow Lucidae? Or do they view themselves enslaved, unable to refuse?

Many of the Weave's settlements are at altitude, with views of the star-oceans. In moments of serenity, I sit and watch them coast across on their self-spun tracks of light. As I have for years. For decades. They move perfectly, as clockwork. They never falter.

Except once.

Once, I was the solitary witness to a shuttletrain, miles from my perch, bring itself to an end. Its rail-spinners switched off, and it plummeted into the aethereal matter of the seas. Were there discoveries waiting below the surface, I of any would know. So accept my authority that all awaiting it was death, and dissolution. They do not leave their stations without passengers. Men had died before me. And if the trains indeed hold thoughts and desires, it too.

Some track the trains' movements for sport. I hurried to their ears, with scrawled date and time and position, and they assured me no such path could have been taken. I took seconod opinions, and third. It was a brief obsession. Were there missing persons? No incidents appeared in appeals or obituaries. Where had it set off from? It fell at a crossroads of routes, untraceable. I questioned my senses, whether I had seen anything at all. But I was younger then. My eyes were true and trustworthy.

Years passed. The fallen shuttletrain had all but departed my memory. And then, I happened upon a new, disturbing puzzle piece.

It was night at a station hewn of the Ancient Arm, as I collected and organised my stock beneath the canopy and the platform's lanterns. A train sat dormant. Its lights seemed dimmed. Almost did its shimmering form sigh with resignation. But along came a passenger: a slight and devastated man, whose meagre steps were of an extinguished flame. He stood before a closed door, head bowed, until it slid slowly open to bid him passage. And as he boarded, slowly too was he sealed within.

I approached a nearby door at my end of the station, and it did not open. It was featureless, its reflectance diminished. It had taken the passenger it so wished, and glacially did it accelerate into the dark and quiet of the forest. Headed for the star-seas. Armed with a companion to their personal termini.

The shuttletrains take you where you wish to be. But what if it's nowhere?

⁂

Editor's Note: Happy Halloween.

[talesfromtheasterism]

Order of the Outstretched

…Fine. I will answer this query, but none more on the topic henceforth.

The machinations of the Celestial Skyloom are those of divinity, and by definition, beyond us. But while the Weaver's masterpiece cannot be understood, we benefit from its presence by the blossoming of the Lucid Weave - and more rarely, the harnessing of individual components.

Upon one of the Skyloom's isolated crystal towers, surrounded by the star-sea, the Order of the Outstretched make their encampment. Its crisscrossed walkways and sapphire balconies are lavished with burgandy banners, gilded ornaments, runes and sigils of an undisclosed tongue. Its members wear matching robes concealing their identities, and they protect their isolated home in the heavens with their lives.

The tower's internal machinery has been… modified to allow mortal life reliable travel between creations. Not merely that which houses Earth, as do the natural rifts connect, but others. Strange and far-afield worlds, ones that seem like mere fantasy from the descriptions I have had forced upon me. The Order facilitate passage between, to both Asteri and the residents of these cryptic places, for but one price in exchange: their tale. Through arduous and repeated interview, all their lives are recorded, catalogued and analysed within the Outstretched's inassailable archives, never to be read by outsiders. None know their motives, least of all myself.

They will not speak to me. I have been turned away from the tower base's shuttletrain station countless times, some forcefully. I have never been given a reason for my banishment from such a temple to discovery, and I have given up trying. They'll have their wish; I will die without memory of their sanctum.

Pass this account to your networks, by all means. But please, do not ask answers on the Order from me again.

⁂

[talesfromtheasterism]

The Diamond Arm

I hail from the Lucida mountains myself. One of the hamlets tucked away between the shuttletrain tracks and the snow-smoothened valleys. It was geographically isolated, but very well connected by rail, so there was little danger venturing afield as I found my way in life. I always enjoyed heading to the far plateaus, where the yellow lamps and flurries of snow made for a wonderful locale - warmth blossoms all the better with cold to compare. I obtained a regular customer discount at a number of cafes. People in the Diamond Arm look after each other. The sparsest of the sky-island spirals, so much rock and snow and distance between us, but we still feel like family.

I admit to being quite partial to the rugged beauty of the inner fjords. I linger there for longer when I deliver to the larger towns - especially if they're at high altitude, or just off the shuttleline. It gives me a perfect view of the trains skating between the cliffs and leaping off the islands, coasting into the star-seas of the Weave. But more so: one of the Skyloom's vast outer towers stands isolated in the valleys, crackling with golden lightning through village-sized gemstone coils beneath the sapphire shell. It paints its sunny tint upon the snowflakes, which spiral around and always fall in strange geometric patterns upon the ground nearby. To know that my home bloomed upon this structure's edges from the star-sea… to view it seemed to peer into the clockwork of the world. We may not grasp the full function of this celestial machine we make our homes upon, but I am thankful for the worlds the Starweaver provides.

⁂

[talesfromtheasterism]

Profile: Lucidae Fracture

Fracture is an involuntary, self-sacrificial process of reproduction by Lucida humans that creates personality-deviant mirror images of the source.

Fracturing outnumbers conventional childbirth in the Lucid Weave, and it is neither a cooperative act nor a willing choice. Starting in middle age, Ludica humans frequently develop a gradually intensifying plurality - multiple personalities in the same body. These "shards" emerge in response to powerful emotions of self-reflection on one's lifetime. They may be catalysed by lust, rage, fear, guilt, regret, fulfilment, incarnations of oneself from the past, or idealised selves for the future, and they overall embody this notion in the host. Fracture usually occurs within a few months of shard appearance, they being permanent and irremovable, and attempts to delay the process are generally futile.

A few hours before fracture, the source enters terminal fragmentation, in which the shards begin cannibalising the source consciousness to form complete memory and personality instances. At this stage, the shards inherit shared control of the body analogous to split-brain hemispheres, cooperating as one meta-entity for a short time. Once this process is almost complete, the physical body performs a poorly understood "interlay of spectral forms" upon itself, until in a final explosive instant, the source's personality is annihilated and the shards fragment into their own, unique human bodies. The "parent" - the fragment most similar to the source - instead commandeers the original vessel.

The bodies of the "child" fragments are of similar phenotype to the source, but have decreased physical senescence by several years; the parent experiences the opposite and rapidly ages. The extent of these age shifts depend (alongside other complex factors) on how deviant the fragment personality is from the source. If the fragments intend to lead radically different lives, or are motivated by a feeling the source considered overwhelming or intrusive, then the children can be rejuvenated into their 20's or even teenage years, while the parent can be propelled past the centenary. Extremely discordant fragment families may see the parent's weakened body die immediately, and cause amnesia or other mental complications in the children. No fragment obtains a full roster of the source's memories, and a vast majority recognise them as belonging to a different person.

The Lucidae have a unique culture around fracture that is alien to other Asteri life milestones; the event is essentially death and rebirth at once. Loved ones may be informed of shards' intensification as though a terminal illness, and families usually gather to accompany a fragmenting Lucida's last moments, and welcome their progeny. Fragments must not only choose their own names and vocations, but their familial connection to their peers; they may regard them as siblings, parents, children, or in more bitter cases, estrange or disown them. Some reach the fracturing state extremely fast due to sudden mental anguish or existential stress; according to legend, Letting-era warriors of the Ancient Arm akin to berserkers purposefully fractured on the battlefield to multiply their forces.

Fracture adds to a peculiar feeling by visitors that they see the same people multiple times around the various arms of the Weave. Devotees of the Starweaver believe it is an imperfect attempt to spare the Lucidae from death, and myths persist of arcane rituals that allow whole-psyche regeneration without fracture. As far as we know though, the Lucida humans remain as mortal as us, merely passing skills and knowledge to their descendants in a stranger way than most.

[talesfromtheasterism]

Profile: The Rite of Stars

The Rite of Stars (or the Festival of Stars, the Festival of Lights, or simply the Lights) is an Asteri winter festival where all four realms illuminate the dark months with string lights, candles and lanterns to bring the revered starlight of the night sky to their home on the ground. While the Asteri realms' years are enigmatically synchronised with each other, the festivities were developed independently by the isolated human cultures prior to the Awakening. Each has additional, complex observances to the Rite, but lighting candles in public spaces after dark is universal.

In the Lucid Weave, it becomes customary in winter to carry a lantern of loomstone, a chrysolite-like crystal that glows the same bright yellow as the Skyloom's radiance that replaces sunlight in the realm. Some of this radiance accumulates as loomstone deposits on the edges of the islands during its transit through the star-ocean, and it is perilously mined for use in the Rite and other cultural practices. The lightweight material is encased in a lantern (or simply threaded with a handle, for the budget-conscious Lucida) and worn, carried, or displayed on homes after loomdusk as a corporeal homage of the Starweaver's powers of creation. At the conclusion of winter, the gradually dimming loomstones are symbolically thrown back into the star-seas (or the River of Lights, for many within the Mirror Capital), where they quickly dissolve and resume their circuit as part of the grand architecture of the celestial superstructure.

Perhaps the most unusual celebration of the Rite is in the Flooding Sands, where it is regimented around the Eclipse Months. During the winter of the Sands' 'planet', which is a moon of a low-density gas giant, its path through the sky begins regularly overlapping with the sun's, creating regular midday eclipses of up to an hour's totality near the solstice. To combat this darkness, the entirety of the Floodlands is lavishly decked in warm, phosphoric alchemical string lights, turning both the long nights and dark intervals into a cozy luminescence. The eclipses are a Pandora-sanctified rest period, a sort of anti-siesta, where Floodlanders often retreat into homes or restaurants to eat, nap, or keep warm during the temperature drop. The Rite of Stars lasts through the Eclipse Months and the following Feast of the Night Monsoon.

The Commune of Whispers makes no official observance of the Rite of Stars, due to their abject terror towards provoking the inscrutible forces of the Void Diffuse. But this is a far cry from practices in the outland city of Journey, where it is a grand fiesta of defiant vibrance. Despite having no conventional year cycle (or sun), when 'winter' arrives as tracked by chronometers, the sections of the Void's pale grey sand surrounding Journey are brushed with elaborate patterns of glowing, technicolour paint and pigment. The luminous collective mural spreads outwards from the city borders and in sporadic pockets beyond, as though to challenge the forces of the Void against irrepressible human spirit. Its strange machinations oblige; within a few days of each mural's painting, they have faded and vanished, only to be repainted in short order. The Rite lasts as long as the Journeyers can be bothered to repeatedly laugh in the Mourning Ones' faces. Mural patches sometimes crop up in the Commune, and are rarely reported by outlands scouts, though they quickly vanish - one by the irate hands of man, and the other by parties unknown.

During the harsh, smoke-dimmed winters of the Ash Wastes, the Ashen have repurposed the Rite of Stars as a sombre display of hope. Even without human intervention, the normally dark and blackened Wastes are brightened in winter by a layer of ice and snow, though it appears a gloomy grey in the low light. Throughout all the principal cities and settlements, commonly-treaded regions of the Outer Wastes, and even a few encampments in the Ring of Fire, immense light rigs and floodlights are erected, pointed at the ground to illuminate as much snow as possible for as long as it lies. Its high reflectance, and the rare unification of the warring factions in the floodlights' placement, means the whole of the populated Ash Wastes seems to glow a bright white against the ravaged world beyond, as a symbol of life and endurance; that human civilisation in the Wastes marches on, and always shall. The floodlights are expensive to power, but the Ashen place great value on morale as they rage against the bleakness of the world.

All attempts to bring Christmas to the Asterism have failed. They just love their lights over there.

[talesfromtheasterism]

Journey

Ah, the true city of the Void. Its ensconced world of stained glass lamps and audacious scouting guilds are mere legend to many. But yes, I am proud to say I have Journeyed a handful of times, as they insist on referring to the arduous trek; some of my most profitable expeditions, in fact. Visitors are rare, but interrealm smugglers are almost unheard of.

There are an endless array of horror stories on what lurks in the Deep Void, but mine is peculiar. For my first visit, I traipsed for two and a half hours, perhaps, from a wide berth around the Commune to Journey, onwards as the trains coast. And through all that time, into parts shunned and feared, I saw nothing. I heard nothing, as the echoes of the outlands were strangely quiet and unthreatening. I saw no other travellers, which is little shock, and I ran into no tangible issue with my travel. Before me, nothing happened.

By a keenness of perception deeper parts of us hold while our conscious minds do not. The way the light struck me. The way that, once or twice, I almost saw it bend around a cliff or a rise to ensure I was illuminated. The way it felt on my skin and in my eyes. It was watching me. I was being studied - intently.

I believe the silence to be its doing. Withholding its terrors until some criterion was met. Perhaps it was regarding my adherence to some unknown rule of law. Was this land of fear, the outlanders, and the witnesses… were they governed by something? And if they are, is it a living consciousness, or simply a lifeless set of rules? If the Moonlight was somehow angered by what I showed it, would it have brought judgement upon me like in so many frightening tales?

I arrived in the cozy kaleidoscope of Journey, shaken and paranoid. They are, as it turns out, a wonderfully accommodating people who could not be more unlike the dead world around them. I spoke of my worry over tea, and they reciprocated with their own fragmented wisdom of the Void.

"We don't know what it is," one said, "but you will be safe as long as you fear it."

⁂

[talesfromtheasterism]

Fear in the Realm of Fire

Entrance to Bloodstar is just the challenging feat as one would imagine. I readily admit that my first smuggling run there was mostly chance, having slipped in during a small commotion at the blast walls caused by some particularly audacious scavengers. I've since learned to shadow a certain type of crowd to the borders, ones who will occupy the soldiers without provoking them into a full sweep. If no such groups are available, I simply conduct business in the Outer Wastes until an opportunity arises.

Step inside Praedis with clandestine intent, and the mindset of occupation falls into place. A city built above itself, with metal roads held between skyscraper pincers, and verdant boulevards with three stacked layers under false sunlight. All of it joined as though one great scaffold, with a thousand corners to hide in and six directions to reach them by. The solution: no inch out of sight from the Republic's military. Ramped accessways for civilian traffic, and cargo lift priority for the APCs. Gently followed wherever you walk by the curious eye of a gun nest's IMG barrel. Hardfire walls that shutter entire districts, and flash orders to lie on the ground in searing neon letters. Once, a nervous driver noticed the projectors fizzle and made to outrun them. A moment slower, and they too would've been cut in half along with their car.

You hear countless tales up and down there. Patriotic boasts, rebellious rallies, disillusioned longing for the lifestyle of the stateless wanderers. The latest atrocities of the Old Order and the Sulphurous. Occasionally, a forbidden love story between the warring factions. Very rarely, an eccentric theory on the fate of the Forgemasters. And then, there's a story you never hear. The one you can feel in everyone's mind when the topic drifts too close to state experiments, or the astonishing leap in inferno technology. People's words lurch mid-sentence, like an arm pulled away from a flame. Instinctive fear. To the Ashen, technology is almost religion, and this queer faith has its demon, its antagonist. My curiosity was too powerful. I made a transaction. For knowledge.

What is it about the human mind that gives it such capacity for violence? An indecipherable network of feelings and impulses, so they spun the tale. The animal instinct to destroy dangers and opponents, suppressed and funnelled by a tangled web of personhood. What if, through diligent study, you could remove the person from its path? What if that mental shutter to hatred could be replaced with a synthetic, ever-open gateway? Conjoin the power of mortal rage with the surgical precision of a computer… where would the equilibrium fall, between the incensed and the unfeeling? I paid to know. And I almost regret it.

They called it Project Amalgam. They told me it was out there, in any of a thousand corners in six directions. And they told me a machine can hate.

I quickly took my leave.

⁂

[talesfromtheasterism]

Oh, of course, now he's shut right up. Probably on one of his repeat-customer loops, where he runs himself ragged importing New Salvation building debris or something. I shouldn't be surprised he got talked into another, given his dealings with me are the same premise. My inbox is dry.

Backlog it is, I guess. Maybe I'll write some more of my own informational posts.

[talesfromtheasterism]

WITNESS (VIII/VIII)

Read from the beginning here.

Ripples. Raindrops. Calm water and thick mist, sunlight peeking through. Luna’s eyes opened on her own lap, cradling an iridescent oar in a crystalline canoe. Shining blue and yellow, brittle and impossibly lightweight. Her arms ached along with her back, now. The oar was wet. She had been here longer than she had seen.

Drizzle dropped quietly through the mist into the surface of the sea. Both waters were warm. Her mind was fogged as the world was, but it receded as she woke from the dreaming passage. Had the last few hours been real at all? She retraced her steps from the brand, a certain reality – no mere nightmare could create such trauma. Return to the Commune. Altercation with her parents, clearing the house of her few worthy belongings, a single bag holding most. Marching Moon-aft into the opposite outlands, sweeping the cloak from her back without stopping, hearing the guards’ feet recoil and their hands drag the doors open in panic. Thinking on her options for exile as she neared the rift. An unwaking passage. Glimpses of the woman in sapphire, shepherding all those crossing between the Asterism’s realms. This was real. A force beyond her assured it.

Rowing forward, she couldn’t see far ahead through the fog, but it seemed to be dissipating slowly. Even as her senses returned, she struggled to remember her thought process. Where had she decided on? The weather here was mild and comfortable, even for a Whisperer used to the cold. Were her outerwear not in shreds, she might even be sweating, but she refused to remove the adventuring gear until she had a bed to lay in. Not that this place posed a trial. It took so little strength to row. No stories she recalled of the other three realms began in an ocean. Was this even a sea? There were calling gulls and the smell of brine, but the water was so still and peaceful. The smooth, meagre waves caressed the boat as a parent would a rocking chair. In even such a brief period, the solace of this place put any stuffy room of the Commune to shame.

Solace!

That was it! This was the Sea of Solace! So her will had drawn her to the Flooding Sands, of all places. An unusual choice for a Whisperer (or so she imagined). She had gleaned so little knowledge on this world. She knew that beyond this sea, the realm was a vast desert, with an oasis of water and resources that humanity made their home on. She had heard of a great, sparkling lake with no tributaries, whose warm waters bubbled up from unseen depths below. Her mind wandered immediately to what might lie beneath the mud and waters of the Empress’s nation. Perhaps this destination was chosen because of her ignorance, rather than in spite of it.

The fog cleared enough to see the sky, and a mile or so forward. Sunshine was warmer than she had imagined. Just below the high sun (Blinding!), a great cliff of light stone and verdance loomed, carpeted with lush greenery on every available ledge. Tropical trees and exotic bushes. Such a deep, vital green. At its base, over salt marsh and pristine beach, a rustic village of intertwined wooden docks and walkways stretched near and onto the water. Even from such a distance, she could feel its sleepy atmosphere. A worry furrowed her brow. Had she exchanged one dull prison for another?

A bright-haired woman waved cheerily to her on the nearest dock. Floodlander business casual: a pair of high olive waders over a green tweed suit, onto which the straps had seeped muddy water. She manoeuvred the crystal boat near enough, before another set of hands tied it down on her behalf. She took her heavy holdall and her camera bag, concealed the sword under her cloak as she alighted, and stepped up the pier. Her legs’ strength had returned.

“Welcome to the Floodlands!” the greeter patriotically announced, producing a pencil and clipboard. Even the wood it was cut from was glossy and smooth, with a droplet symbol embossed on its back. On closer inspection, the woman’s curious attire featured an equally odd plate-metal shoulder guard on her right flank, its side bearing the same icon – a red droplet. Another clue for the lantern’s blood, perhaps. She smiled under her mask. A small adventure already.

“This is our annex upon the Sea. The Sands lie just through the canyon pass beyond. May I take your name and nationality, please?” Luna’s wonder was caught off guard. It had been weeks since she was actually spoken to with an expectation to respond. Her ultimatum to her father was a rarity in having exchanged with him at all. She couldn’t remember the last time she had willingly conversed.

The woman beamed at her, patiently waiting. She cleared her throat.

“Luna Azur. Whisperer.” She paused before the latter word. Was it true anymore?

“And what brings you to the Empress’s fair lands?”

A place to stay. A job to work. Vital medical attention. She was here for everything the Void had starved her of. She was here for a world willing to be explored. She was here to dive under turbulent waters and seek out wonders unimaginable. She was here to sit outside in Port Poiseuille during true daytime, drink a cup of tea under a blue sky, watch a real sunset over the shimmering lake and feel like a human being who belonged where they sat. No worthless walls and lying lamps. No scorching curse of a Moon that hated mankind. She was here for a life worth living.

She ran her hand over the messenger bag.

“I’m here to have some photos developed.”

Part 8 of 8. Previous.

[talesfromtheasterism]

WITNESS (VII/VIII)

cw: horror, violence, abuse. Read from the beginning here.

Six hours. Her shivering legs barely held her above the cave floor. The light and the shadows blurred together. Kneeling and panting, trying to regain her bearings in a passage with only one way forward. The pain of the brand numbed her thoughts. Every time she reached one of its pits to the abyss, she had stood for a minute, the compulsion washing over her. Walking past each time took everything she had. Maybe it was coming back for her. Maybe it was boiling up the cavern to burn more of her away. She dared not look back. Six hours.

The lamp’s reserve of blood was almost dry by the time she had shambled back to the mouth. After the lantern had flashed, the guard had heard the altercation from miles away. The battlements were deserted. None were to fight a Witness. None were to see one, or hear one, or know one exists. The walls were a symbolic comfort.

Stumbling to the opening. She wearily knelt down to take the cloak and don it over her cursed flesh. Back through the divide. Onto the dim street. Quieter than the outlands. The same pain. No need to feign a submissive gait this time. Nobody looked close enough at the cloak to see her clothing in tatters underneath. None of them would dare imagine what marked her, for their own good.

It was early evening, for lack of a better description. With no sun to rise or set, the Whisperers aligned their schedules with streetlamps lit by imagined hours, burning down their fuel to a moody, simulated night. Enough working men walked hastily back to their homes to almost resemble bustle. But the Commune’s drab gardens and greyscale brickwork were as subdued as ever. Now, with the burning on her back, all Luna could feel was disgust. There was no day or night here. Faking the transit of a sun only deepened their terror of the moonlit world around them. Denial. Reclusion. This whole city was a perverse lie to run from a painful truth. A small, flickering part of her wished that monster to sear its way past the walls and blow it all away.

The Azur household was a modest but stately abode on the crossroads edge of a long row of tenements, where the stone had weathered from a drab light to melancholy dark. But the lamplight over the door was warm. Finding it locked, she fumbled a stolen key. Father must still be at work.

Back into the soft, restraining quiet. The most timeless and least alien wood panel décor the Void’s tumorous trees could provide. Faint emerald drapes, well-maintained floorboards that hardly creaked. Candleholders of a bronze-like metal, pulled from the ground-like rock. With father’s job, they lived well enough. Before retreating to the lounge, she took some bread, and set a kettle to boil on the stovetop. Tea. What else was there to do? No doctor would tend her wounds. She left the kitchen while it steeped, lest the brand poison the leaves.

Retrieving the mug, she sat down in the plush guest’s chair, facing away from the frosted window. A slender table held father’s expensive brew in mother’s favourite cup. It was bigger than the others. She had never been allowed to drink from it. She kept the cloak on, and leaning back in the chair pressed it onto the smoothened brand, but it could hardly make the pain worse. It had settled into a fierce, homogenous ache now. The mask was a strange comfort. She pulled it down and sipped deep, ignoring her tongue burning. The quiet let her hear blood pulsing in her ears. Time to wait.

They were back before she had finished the mug. As usual, they had met outside father’s work, so that any groceries his wife had selected could be irately taken back to the seller if they weren’t up to standard. They hung their coats quietly. Father peaked from the short hall into the expansive lounge.

The family froze. Luna’s eyes didn’t have the strength left to be defiant, but she managed disinterest. The cup slowly raised, and her mask slowly lowered.

His berating ticked along its clockwork procession, jumping between derisions and disappointments with what thin relevance he cared to tie them with. His tone was low and dangerous, waiting for a protest so he could propel it to a thunderous high. Mother waited behind, casting as many concerned looks at each of them. Their taciturn daughter remained wordless, denying him an excuse. The cloak hid her deeds for now.

Nevertheless, he undid his belt, lecturing as he removed it. A little of Luna’s energy returned seeing it. When father took a fast step forward, a lot more returned. She rushed to her tired feet quicker than she thought capable. Father’s face widened when he heard the blade slide loudly from its sheath. A tirade on a proper lady exploded into a bellow, calling her bluff. Wrongly.

The leather belt, and a pinky. She misplaced the cut on purpose. As both parents screamed, their daughter was silent. Delusionally incensed, the unwounded hand lurched for the mantelpiece, but above it, the mounting was blank. The wife fainted to the floor as the man turned again to his daughter, but the daughter had turned as well. A cloak lay on the carpet, and her back was silhouetted against the window. A charge and a yell were paralysed.

Whiplashed and struggling to comprehend, he staggered back, and Luna darted forward to take his place, with years of secretly honed finesse. The acid had singed a blackened patina into the blade, but it was still sharp as she held it against the man’s jugular. This? From his own child?

Luna read his mind through his gaping eyes. A lifetime of disgust escaped her mouth. Each word a slow, twisting dagger.

“I trust you will agree, that I am no daughter of yours anymore.”

Silence.

Part 7 of 8. Next. Previous.

[talesfromtheasterism]

WITNESS (VI/VIII)

cw: horror, violence, abuse. Read from the beginning here.

Her first gasp was pushed into the sand, and she inhaled as much dust as air. Fighting the coughing for her life, breathing between hacks, she propped herself up on her forearms from the ground she had sprawled across, face-down. Exhaling debris and toxic gas as a waking nightmare slipped away. She only had time to look up for a moment – glimpse the Moon, distant and intact on the horizon – before she was crushed down into the dirt.

An immense corrosive talon slammed into her back and scorched through her jacket and harness. Only a second of pressure before her clothes melted. She heard the Witness’s claw burn the leather into dissolving skin. Acid spread across her back in hissing streams. She screamed her lungs hoarse, and the beast did not relent.

Her arms flailed, pleading for purchase on the sand. Beating it with mindless fists for holding her. In moments, her muscles were severed from her liquidating back, paralysing her limbs. The Witness pressed down even harder. She felt it drill to bone, and keep pushing. Her ribs were ready to crack against the ground. Only the claw remained solid, as the creature swirled and hissed in the air, pulsing with inhuman chirps and whines over Luna’s short, desperate gasps. If the being breathed, it was not with lungs.

The talon’s grip shifted. Acid began to freeze and solidify, turning from transparent green to a dead onyx black. But it was alive, and it stitched itself into the valley of gore it had carved. The appendage shuddered, catalysing. The pitch substance stuck to its edges, creating swirling runes and incantations in burning emerald glyphs. Luna’s fingers twitched again. Her arms convulsed. She blinked tears from her blurred eyes. Amongst the agony, something had transformed. She realised. She knew this torture.

Before she could contemplate it, the claw was torn from her back with inhuman strength and speed, dragging her limp body a few inches with it before crumpling back down. The Witness lingered on the broken woman. Hovering, staring without eyes. Its vocalisations were gone, and the air was deathly quiet. She hardly noticed the rush of wind as it sped away. Back to the Deep Void. Back to the unknowable. For a few endless minutes, all her world was infrequent echoes and twitches of shock.

Was it even worth trying to move? What life worth living was there to escape to? Her arms creaked into glacial motion. She rolled onto her knees. All she could do was drag herself, inch by inch. Panting with exertion from the most pitiful movement. Her delirious mind told her to stay down and rest. But she fought still. All that was nearby was a cloudy pool. Water, or something that mimicked it. She shuffled to its edge. Disoriented and drained, but she fought.

Sparing the gash in her head, there wasn’t any blood. She could feel her arms and legs pulling tendons to move – and if slowly, so they did – but when the line of muscles reached her back: nothing. A blank space. Only pain. Pulsing, ebb and flow. Like it breathed her strength like air.

Next to the pool. She wasn’t thirsty. She let herself keel over to a fetal position, back facing the surface. Leaning over the water, turning her head as far as she could. Only the edge of the reflection was visible. She recognised the language, bright green and luminescent, with sharp edges and letters melded into each other. Ancestral. They followed the imprint of the many-fingered talon – across the lightless mass replacing her flesh. She had learned a few words, but this was foreign, an unreadable dialect. Beyond her. Beyond anyone.

The brand of the Witness. The Acid Moon had chosen.

She rose sluggishly to her knees by the pool. The Moon bounced off it to her, and hesitantly, she brought her sight upwards to gaze. It was the least of her worries now. It really was beaten. She saw smaller cracks she had never noticed before. The Void Diffuse, and the life it begrudgingly harboured, survived only as long as its neighbour did. But they all held together. For now.

A weak hand ran along her thigh towards the messenger bag. Undoing the strap took half a minute with her shock-addled fingers. Searching the box for the flap in the back, with the flip-up lock. Inside were exposed wires, gears and crystal. Faint imprints shone in the white gemstones’ hearts. Of a pair of legs, and a pale green moon, and a creature never before immortalised. She stared at it, transfixed. She kneeled by the pool for a long time, and stared at it.

Luna dragged her first foot to the ground.

Part 6 of 8. Next. Previous.

[talesfromtheasterism]

WITNESS (V/VIII)

cw: horror, violence, abuse. Read from the beginning here.

Space shattered. Stones and grains were sucked into a translucent maelstrom. Ghostly mass grew and split into limbs and tendrils, shuddering and solidifying. Every state of matter at once compressed itself into hissing flesh, molten skin and contracting bones. The horror surrounded her as the world shimmered away in a haze of pale, sickening green. The ringing and the pulse were gone. The only sound in every direction was the garbled, quivering scream of the Witness.

Luna struck the camera button, literally. She couldn’t hear the components click. The box was thrown aside as primal self-preservation took control. She missed her first grasp towards the hilt of her sword. A shuddering arm tore it from the curved sheath, and all her body threw into a back-hand slash. Against the formless Witness, it was like cutting smoke. No resistance. No effect. Its screech distorted and deepened.

She pivoted lurched for the camera in the vibrating sand. Movement was sickening. Everything was blurred and shaking, most of all her terror-stricken body. It felt like the ground would shear open and cast her to the vacuum. Sharp, transparent appendages shot across the ground like vipers, towards both her and the device, but she beat them by a fraction of a second. She pushed it to her stomach, turned back towards the ravine, and ran.

It took all her remaining energy to sprint across the uneven ground without falling, but fear just barely delivered. She could feel it in pursuit. Her ears popped as it spread back across the air behind her, rolling around her flanks, surrounding. Its dense smoke body rushed like a hurricane. She shoved the camera into its bag, freeing her arm. Run.

The adrenaline was already wearing off. Her leg muscles felt ready to snap, and her eyes were burning. All… of her skin was burning. Her hair began to curl at the ends. Inhalation was suddenly agonising. This was worse than poison; the caustic being tore closer. Faster.

The loose grit and downward slope threatened to throw her to the ground at any moment. The unending scream widened, as she felt rippling growths stretching out; a maw full of fangs. The cove was only seconds away. She could only pray to the Starweaver her pursuer would find narrow spaces harder than open plains.

But as she hoped beyond hope, something else hit her. Another wave of something powerful. Luna went from shocked alert to exhausted in a moment. Her hearing numbed and the edges of her vision went dark. Her sprint veered to one side, and she barely registered her feet tripping over each other. But her mind was where it hit hardest.

She was thrown from the ashen ground into a sick kaleidoscope of recollection. Her life flashed before her eyes in a new, disgusting light. Mistakes, failures, lashings. The last tears of an executed friend. Her mother’s worries and struggles when she was young, even over simple things – but all of them, balled together at once.

Everywhere she turned to flee only threw her into another reverie. Some of the circling memories weren’t hers. Men falling below the plane. Travel mates disappearing. Death before a ritual circle of leaves and bloods, in a pulsating space never meant for man. Symbols and sigils searing into her eyes, dragging them upwards. Towards something.

She felt the moonlight as she wrestled her head away. Her limbs were immovably heavy. The glow punched the air out of her lungs as it ever strengthened. Ever closer, and louder. What did it sound like? She could barely see or hear. Like a thousand Voids worth of echoes and whispers, from uncountable deeds. It was bearing down on her, filling a whole hemisphere of the cacophonous meld of dreams around her. She felt she would cry, but nothing came from her eyes. She made to close them, but they already were.

A dream.

The Moon fought. It dragged her whole being before it. Her neck was wrenched forward, vertebra by vertebra. Blinding light and echoing deafens, sapping her dry. She had will enough to resist, or to wake herself. Not even in unwaking would she relent.

She let her head whip forward. The Moon’s fissures exploded open, and its insides screamed. The people in the dreams clawed against imagined glass as they melted away, skin before sinew. Luna bowed before the apocalypse in her mind, before pushing away from the Whisperers’ darkest fear and throwing herself back to lucidity. To what would she awaken?

Part 5 of 8. Next. Previous.

[talesfromtheasterism]

WITNESS (IV/VIII)

cw: horror, violence, abuse. Read from the beginning here.

Completely open. There was no way closer undetected. This spot would have to do. She readied the camera, balancing dials and unfurling lenses. It almost looked like a mirage from this distance, roiling out over swathes of the surface. Denser, darker shapes flickered from one side to the other, like it was trying to take a more solid form. The whole mass shifted as a cloud of smoke, one direction at a time. Was this really what they looked like? She wormed over the loose dust for a better angle.

Her foot slipped. The ground gave beneath, and dragged her back from the crest. The camera knocked against the ground with a loud crackle of sand. Her blood ran cold.

The whole gaseous mass flared, agitated. A wave of density radiated out from its midpoint, and as it hit the edges, it rebounded, carrying all the smoke with it, picking up speed. Faster and faster, until it fully compressed at the centre. An utterly silent shockwave of vapour exploded from the point, lightning fast. It careened over the landscape. Loose rocks levitated, sand rose like rain falling upwards. Luna’s black hair lifted from her back. A wall of gas and debris sped towards her like a tidal wave.

Even if she had time to react, the silence left her guard lowered. Her head only ducked a few inches below the hill crest before a deafening boom collided with it. When it already felt like her head could be torn from her neck, a fist-sized chunk of the crumbling rock crashed into the side of her head, throwing her back and down the hill. The world went muted and fuzzy as she tumbled upside down. Her ears rung. Drops of red flew into the grey sand.

She landed on her back, winded and skidding down the slope to a halt. There wasn’t time for pain or rest. She didn’t check her wound or try to blink the distortion from her sight. Her right hand clutched the camera impossibly tight. Flailing her legs, desperately digging her elbows into the shifting ground, facing the crest and trying not to slide any further down. She sat the box on her stomach and pointed the aperture through the cloud of dust and still-falling pebbles. The ringing explosion fought in her ears with her pounding heart. Not now.

Panting through furiously gritted teeth. Eyes locked on the crest. The longest seconds of her life. Her whole life. She had spent all of it running and hiding for the crime of wanderlust. Not now, and not again. This horror would not stop her.

It will not.

The air cracked like a whip, and congealed.

Part 4 of 8. Next. Previous.

[talesfromtheasterism]

WITNESS (III/VIII)

cw: horror, violence, abuse. Read from the beginning here.

It felt like an hour had passed in the dark, but it was hard to gauge time in a realm without sunlight. The passage had veered upwards enough to leave the black sky exposed within clambering distance. The adventurer heaved herself onto the surface above, and the scenery startled her. Rolling hills of weathered rock and dust, shattered by vast cracks to the same abyss below. A jigsaw of interlocking plates. In the centre of some, stagnant pools of strange, cloudy water, surrounded by saturated sand and alien flora that seemed a tad greener than the rest. The echoes were almost absent here, but every few seconds, another called unnervingly across the landscape. They were different. Almost like breathing, or shouting. This was the place. But it felt… wrong.

She was exposed, and isolated. It was hundreds of metres to the nearest hill for a vantage. She glanced back at the ravine. Maybe she could find another entrance to the area? No. The sighting happened around here. Disjointed plains an hour’s Moon-fore passage from the Commune. Her walk began quickly. The hill had some sharper outcrops around the edges. It would be some cover, at least. A little faster. As fast as she could move without clattering the metal of her equipment. Fast and silent, that was the way. That was the way… the ground. Why was the ground lit?

The lantern!

Wrenched from her belt with a gasp. The blood still burned! Extinguished almost violently. How long had she been walking? A minute or two? Best efforts to collect herself. Without realising, she had been slowing her breathing to quiet herself, leaving her suddenly short of breath. But they were drawn to light even more than sound. That was over now. Further on. Maybe two hundred metres left.

The sighting had to be genuine. She had seen many vagabonds and smugglers from the other realms trying to pass themselves as Voidwalkers, but even a native her age knew one when they saw one; compulsively fluid motions, leather and metal everything, and they never boasted about what they had seen or where they had gone. The Deep Void humbled all. One hundred metres. She stepped over a crevice with great care, regarding the starless absence below.

Moving without sound was slow, and exhausting, but she had time to check her messenger bag, flipping the strap with utmost care. Within, a wooden box with brass braces and copper dials. She didn’t need smugglers for a camera. Fifty metres. She had built it over months, piece by piece, acid-treating metal sheets and aligning light-stealing crystals. What better way to record her jaunts than with photographic images? But there was only so much to see in the Commune. She wanted something worthy of capture.

Her hand touched the porous cliff. But it was wrong as well. It was… shimmering. Just barely, like a gentle heat haze. She had never seen the outlands for herself, but it felt wrong. Wrong meant she was close. Creeping along the boundary of the outcrop, nearing the hill’s crest. Now, the lightest of the ground’s dust was raising slightly in the air. Her head felt heavy. She was exposed. But she would not be deterred from her only shot. The camera was risen slowly out of the bag. Even with the weight in her hands to anchor her, her arms trembled. There wasn’t time for fear.

Her masked face and camera lens peeked over at once. The landscape here was yet more broken, with less ground and more space between it. The Moon was hard to avert her gaze from, but she had no time to let it take hold. Even out of the corner of her eye, though – it was shifting and blurring. The downward slope into a shallow basin was violently distorted, like the air was superheated. But the air above the basin’s floor was truly wrong. It flowed. It crashed. It whined and it boiled and it cried and it melted.

The Witness was here.

This is it, Luna.

Part 3 of 8. Next. Previous.

[talesfromtheasterism]

WITNESS (II/VIII)

cw: horror, violence, abuse. Read from the beginning here.

Out of sight, she threw the cloak back, revealing her kit. She had scoured black marketeers throughout the settlement for suitable attire to cross the Void, but it was a makeshift affair. A worn charcoal jacket hung over daintily patterned streetclothes through a broken zipper. A messenger bag with rushed seamwork to keep the strap from snapping under its hefty contents. Odds and ends from every corner of the Asterism; Floodlander mud boots; a Bloodstar military belt buckle, three-star insignia and all; an unlit oil lamp dangled from her hip, its reservoir shimmering with a deep crimson fuel. Gardening gloves stuffed with warm cotton. A covering of ornate white silk over her face. Everything felt foreign and pre-owned, like it wasn’t hers. Except the sword. The sword was hers.

Now.

No time to waste. Moving in hastened silence, the ground seemed to crumble beneath her boots, like thin snow with no footprints. In and out of cover, low to the ground, running along blindspots. Between outcrops, pausing, trying to guess where in the movement schedule the sentries were. Every time she passed back into the open, her heart leapt. Had she forgotten a step in their patrol? Already, she was a quarter mile from the walls, at least. The flats around the Commune grew heaved and jagged. More and more to block sight from the men on the wall. Doubtful their roughened muskets could strike her from this distance at all.

Now, a larger cliff stood before her, eclipsing the Moon. Lightless maws carved into its surface with uneven shapes and edges. She readied the lamp, lighting the reservoir. Keeper’s Blood, painstakingly imported from the Floodlands, and decidedly brighter than marginal Commune fuel. Its burn began with a flash, blinding her for a moment, and she stepped forward in disorientation. The cavern was painted with a warm glow of sunset, but it clung to its pitch shadows wherever it could. Far behind her, a musket shot snapped the crisp silence, hitting nothing. The flash had been noticed, but they would not follow. As commotion spread across the walls, she ventured inwards.

The echoes in the still air stopped at the cave mouth. It was a long, meandering passageway, with smooth weathered walls but no water to shape them, morphing almost organically as they cut through the landscape above. Sometimes, an enclosed cavern lit only by the lantern’s flickerless, unnaturally constant flame, casting strange amber reflections on the polished surfaces. Sometimes, the roof opened into a ravine, just barely touched by moonlight. Sometimes, the floor opened, through to the underside of the plane. To an abyss with no stars, and no echoes but from the walls. Just careful footsteps, deep breathing, and silence inbetween.

Silence was different here. The woman had sat in a hundred of the Commune’s quiet foyers, lounges and smoking rooms. Lined with stucco, carpeted with carpets. They sucked the sound out of you – a dampened, echoless silence broken only by ticking clocks and soft footsteps from behind walls. Whisperers spent most of their time indoors, shutting out any skulking echoes or shafts of moonlight that snuck by the outer walls. Every peer she spoke to gushed about the calm, and the quiet, and the respite from the alien world around them. She had always hated it. It was oppressive, suffocating. Your every move was crushed into a barely noticeable hush. Places like this lightless cave were what she had scrambled to escape to since childhood. Exploring every street and alley of the Commune, cataloguing every tiny adventure. Hiding journals and drawings from father’s scrutiny. Now, it was time to graduate into true, trailblazing ambition. This was a different silence – ready to be broken. Her covered face smiled, and she laid a hand on the sword’s hilt.

Part 2 of 8. Next. Previous.

[talesfromtheasterism]

WITNESS (I/VIII)

cw: horror, violence, abuse.

Stars. Echoes. Dry rock and ashen dust, grinding and tumbling. There was so little sound in the Void Diffuse, but the slightest perturbations carried fathoms above the fractured belt – sailing quietly across empty air for what seemed like eternity. Perhaps it was, but the Whisperers weren’t to know. This realm was not theirs to study.

The ramshackle outer walls of the Commune of Whispers blocked outland sound from entering the paltry city, giving some peace from the echoes of the Deep Void. They would never hold against an attack, but they were more of a symbolic comfort, and a vantage point for the watch. Their truer purpose was to keep inhabitants in; very few would ever have reason to exit, and fewer still the desire. But a handful of Voidwalkers could draw attention they couldn’t afford.

She had studied the perimeter from within for months. There were dozens of cracks to slip through the iron, stone and peculiar pale lumber. But only a select few were off main streets, away from watch patrols. Of them, only one had the necessary blind spots to skulk past the watching sentries, if only for a few moments. But she knew how often they looked in a direction, and when they turned to examine the next. She had studied them. She was ready now.

A wrought-iron streetlight flickered half-heartedly overhead. Well-dressed Whisperers with a free 'afternoon' pondered along the poorly lit cobbles. A young woman walked timidly along, cautious not to draw attention with an unusual drive. The drab cloak would only hide her equipment from a distance. Two watchmen vanished around a corner. Footsteps from the wall; cracked leather on rotting wood. The sentries had turned. The time was right. She adjusted a strap on her shoulder and dashed forward.

Into a narrow opening of stone and rust. The whole structure creaked as men walked its battlements overhead, no lantern’s glow through the floorboards – the walls were dark, to hide the Commune’s light. She held herself inches from the edges, so as not to catch a nail and add to the shifts. Light feet crossed from worn brickwork to powdery bare rock. Ghostly moonshafts hurried in from the exit.

The other side was a world beyond hers. Bare, dead, shining grey-white rock as far as the eye could see, crushed and distorted from a once smooth plane. Where in the other realms there might’ve been grass and soil, there was dust and sand, a thick upper layer upon the plane. In sporadic patches, pale moss and otherworldly shrubs clung desperately to the ground and short cliffs – looped leaves, meandering stalks, tumorous flowers with jet black holes for spores. Chalk-like boulders crumbling before your sight, but they never seemed to crumble away entirely. The echoes of the Deep Void snaked through the air, overlapping and intersecting into a hushed, indecipherable drone.

No longer did brick and mortar shield her from the ghostly mint-green light; in black sunless space between scant stars, the great Acid Moon hung low and imposing over the horizon. A hurried glance showed it beaten, wracked with great trenches and ravines. Barely held together. She pulled her eyes off it while she still could, and it protested. Its influence washed over and away, shuddering her. How many glances would it steal from her today, she wondered. She had much work to do under its light. What a namesake to have.

Part 1 of 8. Next.