The Beast, the Mother of Monsters, and the Deepforge

: “Hmm,” she says, carefully, and then, “you can say no. You can also tell me you don’t know. But these lines are about you.” She closes her eyes, and then recites, in an approximation of the rhythm but not the tune, “Dormant muscles twitch beneath the metal skin. / All see, but only I observe and take note. / I hold the eternal flame in my hand and in my heart. / I’ve told every story this world has to tell, / but there is no word for this truth.” She opens her eyes and looks at her. “Any thoughts on what that might mean?”

nods then. “Forgive me. I’m going to tell you something and it might be a bit lengthy to explain, but I’d rather someone tell you than have you read it in the Tomestone.” She takes a breath. “There are at least five planes, and they have existed for at least 250,000 years, but no more than 280,000. Each seems to correspond to one gnosis type. Wolf and I come from Almachadta, flourishing. Archie from Samudra, pellucid. Aurelius and Luĉja the Beast, burning. Mu is radiant, and no one from our party comes from there. Valaïs, tenebrous, but Awoken does not remember anything about it. We’ve been to Almachadta and Samudra and both of them are dying. I would be shocked if the Beast was not also dying.” ⁂

takes another breath, this one shaky. “I’m called the Sword-Saint on my plane. It is a formal title and it is a very specific role.” She appears the Mask from a satchel that really has no business existing in this outfit. “We keep memories. We tell stories. But we bear a secret, which is that eventually, Almachadta—there is hunger, and there is fire, and then … the world dies and is reborn. It’s happened 216 times so far and the Mask is the only thing that persists knowledge between those cycles.” ⁂

: “The solution seems to be a tripartite weave of gnosis. Almachadta needs burning and pellucid, Samudra burning and flourishing. The Beast almost certainly needs flourishing and pellucid. I don’t know how to accomplish that. We think all five planes were maybe one, once, long ago. But she is suffering.” And she rests a hand on her shoulder, steady and sure and ready to offer a hug if Zaya desires it. “I am sorry you had to bear that truth alone. I am glad Luĉja is here to bear it with you. And I’m glad you’re with us now to figure out how to fucking stop it.”

chuckles a bit. “‘Ever-watchful, she yearns for her own.’ I do not know why she is ever-watchful. Nor what she yearns for. But it is frightening.” They pause a moment. “Did you ever play at cards when you were a child?”

laughs and basks in the warmth and the brightness of it, the warmth, for maybe a bit longer than is strictly necessary. “Well, perhaps. I fear I didn’t quite come prepared for a dance, but it worked out.” She steps back, and looks at them. “When I called that Rite upon you, I heard Glory speak to me. It said that you are Luĉja tou Teratourgeion, firstborn child of the Mother of Monsters. Created in her love and her desperation to communicate with the world she knows she will slaughter; radiant with their own love for the Beast and everyone on it.” ⁂

: “I stand corrected. Perhaps I do, in fact, have a surname.”

: “The Mother of Monsters….I wonder…is the woman in the bottle…she?”

snorts. “At any rate Glory—or is it the Glory, proper-noun?—then gave me your stats at the time: Stress 15/17, Defence 2/10. Then, after that, said—well, this you already knew, but, that Luĉja cannot be unmade outside of the Deepforge in which they were made. And, finally, about the one who walks beside you … And, supervening Luĉja, there is Another, obscuring himself even to my gaze. One like Jorule, the Angel of Darkness, and Melpomene, the Angel of Tragedy. I do not know his name. But he, too, loves you, and wants you to live.. That was all.”