Hyperpunk Virgo 1: Dreams of Oblivion

The Gealt kept running for as long as they could. Until their hearts thumped in their chest, their lungs burned with each breath and their shins feeling more like splinters of glass; and time being what it was in such a place- they didn’t try to mark passing time. They needed that mental energy to evade the roaming Angels and Devoted.

Eventually they reached the edge of the Holt, where the hydroponic pools flowed into canals spaced between wharfs of marble and bronze; all leading towards small tunnels- drainage sluices leading to somewhere else.

There wasn’t any elegance in their escape. The Gealt jumped into the water and swam through the mass of leaves until the flow had caught them, carrying them sliding down into darkened tunnels lit only by the rays of light.

First the viridian of Vihralaza-Icyadar and then in time the cerulean of Nilōrangzil. It was by colour alone the Gealt could orientate themselves, unable to see much besides the silhouettes of floating islands, and upon them the sky-piercing towers of vast cathedrals and temples all primarily for the veneration of the High-Father; and secondarily for anything else that would benefit his Halidom.

Exhaustion once more hijacked their focus and somehow they had managed to doze off, roused back into awareness by the iron smell of blood in the air, and the roar of churning water.

Below they could see the base of the slope and in bracing themselves for impact they were taken by surprise when their feet did not land on truly solid ground, but instead something uneven. Not like sand, more like small aggregate rocks.

While still under the grabbed a handful of whatever they tread upon before standing upright, finding themselves waist deep in water and in their hands small coins. Some made of some alloy of bronze and silver, others of gold and accented with pearlstone, all bearing on one side a symbol denoting a number and on the other the image of an 8 winged being with eyes dotting every feather, encircling a larger eye in the center.

An eye that carried some kind of psionic presence, as the Gealt’s vision blurred and what felt like a match had lit itself in the front of their mind. At once they felt the force of a migraine before casting aside the coins, letting their spirit combat psychic contamination like an immune system fighting infection.

Wadding on through the increasingly murky waters of the tunnel following the smell of blood, leaves and coins, the Gealt deduced they had made it to the Plutian Temples. The Empyreal Mint of the High-Heavens. The place where they forged the Blessed Lira. The currency of the High-Father’s Halidom, the realm that stretched from the White-Gold void of the Emphyrean to the peaks of Udruk-Avarokta, to the depths of Purgatory and the growing expanse of the Halidom in the real.

It was by all regards an Imperium. But to the God-King. To his trillions upon trillions of zealots. It was merely reclamation. Taking back what already belonged to Zóuělróu.

A sense of unease renewed itself within the Gealt as they marched on, the echoes of a vocalising choir reaching their ears as the tunnel opened up into a far larger chamber, welcoming them with a grim sight. An vast stadium -like structure, with rows upon rows of countless steps going down what looked like miles, and spaced between them thousands of tilted podiums.

Upon them, corpses.

Corpses of every species the Gealt knew of and a great many more they did not. All of them crucified upside down with their throats, wrists and jugulars slit wide open; their faces, at least the faces of the bodies that still had heads, were frozen in expressions of weakness and pain. Their blood, regardless of colour and consistency, poured down the podiums and funnelled into the waters that surrounded them.

Crucifixion… out of all the ways to die the Gealt couldn’t imagine a more humiliating way to go.

It was what the Worshipers of the High-Father considered the highest form of Redemption. Being sacrificed in the name of the High-Father in the hope that in a penitent death they may be cleansed of their sins and forgiven.

Of what sins, the Gealt didn’t know. With how zealous and casuitristic the people of the Emphyreal Cult were? With how ruled by fear, ignorance and arrogance they were? It could have been anything as simple as merely daring to live.

“Guide our hands, our blades and our righteous fury, oh Merciful God of Light and Love…”

In their horror their awareness had slipped. As below, so above, standing still tempted fate, promised pain and solicited death for a discrete dangerous lesion in the moonlight.

Before they knew it Angels had emerged, before them rising up the steps, to their flanks emerging to view from behind the rows of podiums, to their read, following them from the Holt.

All of them robes, carrying staffs, spears and swords. Hood lowered, praying in Angelic tongue as a lone Angelic Knight stepped forth. A long-sword of golden steel in their hands, raised against their head.

“We offer you a battle so we may seek your forgiveness for allowing an interloper, this… disgusting Viper, into our midst... and in our vigilance, grant us your gift of the Viper’s head, so we may offer it to you in sacrament to your grace”

The Gealt stood tall, finding firm footing among the Gealts. Only to lose it again as the familiar weakness before a heartbeat surged through them.

“And may you, Unholy Viper, diabolic spawn of the promised Satan. The Satan we were denied!”; snarled the Angelic Knight, more emboldened than his cohorts and readying to strike down the Gealt, “May you find the redemption all Heretic’s seek in denying their devotion to the High-Father, through your penitent death!”.

Thu-

The Gealt closed their eyes and let themselves fall backwards.

-THUNK

They never felt their back hit the water. Instead only the violent spins of displacement as they were pulled across dimensions.

And when it stopped, they opened their eyes to find themselves in a nebular void. An endless, surreal expanse of churning abstract dust clouds glistening against the light of steller bodies, from which meteoric islands floated as vapidly here as they did in the void of the real.

They had faded back into the Saobhadh. The misty vale between spiritual poles, between the real and the beyond. They would have sighed in relief had something like gravity not grabbed hold of them, pulling them into free-fall downward.

So instead, they gave the nebular void of the Saobhadh the only thing they had left. Their numb indifference.