“Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know there are two worlds of life and death:
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live
Till death unite them and they part no more;
Dreams and the light imaginings of men,
And all that faith creates or love desires,
Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.”
The revelers part before you like blades of swaying grass.
Each mask is a dewdrop crown glinting in the half-light.
Your eyes sweep over them, seeking the flaw.
Though the burning of the king is a ways off, your wick is burning low. ⎘
Past the courtyard, to the terrace.
A short climb to a lower circle.
The atmosphere is different, viscous and intoxicating.
Flesh belongs to the carnival; it is hard to ignore its beckoning. ⎘
Once more you make the rounds.
The palace looms, an edifice of calcified time.
The dancers cast long shadows on its face.
A den of wreathing snakes lurks in their dark.
Torches burn the image into stone, varnishing history with truth. ⎘
The assembly of thaumaturges ply the serpents with their tricks.
Acrobats contort their forms to express the inexpressible.
Fire-breathers employ the Promethean art for a spectacle.
Bubble-blowers depict the thousandfold in its true dimension.
Among this kin of yours you halt, as is your bent.
You do not seek that which flows, but what resists. ⎘
You see him in the buoyed reflection, a demon in Laplace's pressure.
The king of the carnival is a bloodstain on the wine-soaked night.
The human tides slack around him, for he is the shore their waves can never reach.
In the midst of those whose masks are the lids of tombs, his is truth.
Such that the eye rejects the falsehood around it.
Such that once glimpsed makes a sham of the masquerade. ⎘
He signals the hunt with a nod that tips the scales.
The bubbles yield to evanescence and he goes with them, a wisp of breath in winter.
The crowd shivers and knows not why.
You do, and may never again not.
That is why you must follow. ⎘
You put the din behind you.
The vestibule admits you to a labyrinth of an institution.
Its guts are corridors that digest time.
You feel it leaching into the walls with every step.
Through atria and boudoirs to green rooms and refectories the colours are those of living things, but nothing truly lives here.
You knew this long before you entered its maw, only hope is a light you hold on to.
You close your hand over a nub in your pocket, a token of affirmation. ⎘
Belvederes and galleries tempt you to stop and gaze until your limbs become roots.
The sight you once caught is a compass for your desire, scant navigation to chase an afterimage.
Each false end forks to paths where candles flicker darkly.
The trail he leaves is one of abandonment.
No sign presents itself to you.
The way to his kingdom is marked off by the roads not taken. ⎘
At length your footfalls trade fraying felt for freshly fallen snow.
Your exit is unheralded and unmourned.
The carillon has not rung for many years.
The halls remain silent, shunning the outside world.
They guard nothing from you but their own decay.
The tower is neither pit nor tomb but no more welcoming. ⎘
A grove arrays its verdant panoply before you.
Undergrowth suffocates under the frostfall's labours.
No footsteps mar the snow; the absence of paths is the path.
Patches of melt are your step-stones across the texture of unreality.
Unyielding earth befits you, yet you tread softly.
A crunch under your feet defies.
Twinkling fragments catch a sheen, a breadcrumb trail deeper into the fairy tale.
Prudence wars with wonder as you stalk between the follies.
Warmth rises to a simmering trance; your imagination roams.
A fatal magnetism guides you towards the danger that you seek. ⎘
You find him in a secret place, a garden of childhood memory.
Claret velvet, black mask.
He seems to have awaited.
A smile, handsome and faceless.
He holds out his hand and tows you from your hesitation. ⎘
You thrum with questions you lack the means to form.
The choice of silence is offered with a finger raised to hush.
In it you hear a distant pulse; the palpitations of the carnival span far to roost upon your ear.
An outstretched arm enjoins understanding.
For lack of it you offer oblation, a carob seed to weigh your life against, his palms the scales.
He bids for more.
Not the memento, but the memory. ⎘
You give up everything to stand here, trembling hand in his.
A dance replayed from a channeled film, frayed and faded.
Moonlight rusts your eyelids.
The phonograph crackles and peals.
You sway to a melody echoing faintly from the past, stepping to the rhythm of your anxious heart.
Remembrance surges to adorn the reverie.
The universe kaleidoscoping in a gem, its mysteries revealed before your eyes. ⎘
The refrain of memory unravels as a half-remembered dream.
Oblivion is ever time's retainer.
When he whispers the cue to its end, consciousness startles you. ⎘
He leans close under the moon.
The promises thrill you but they tell half the story.
He looks at you as if you should know the end.
Mutually you anticipate.
A cloud obscures, restoring reason.
You've heard, and dare not believe you understand. ⎘
His hands retire as he shows you to the fountain.
It rests serene, clear and star-studded.
You cannot bear to look for a secret at its bottom; there is no facet for hope to hide in.
Though excitement has receded, the urgency torments you.
You cannot look away.
There is no turning back.
The abyss you've crossed to stand by his side was lit by a pyre of what-ifs now burned out.
The cinders of your past pave a road to nowhere.
It aches to contemplate; the lack of choice almost comforts. ⎘
You peer and naught peers back but you.
Borne by some psychic trauma, a mirror self has trickled through the cracks.
It now exists within the glass, eternal bound.
Transparently it mimes a pain it no longer shares.
It shows you nothing less than fragile truth.
You wish to break it, and in it, with it, shatter too. ⎘
The evening veers Ophelian.
Mesmeric distance closes.
Your heart slips from your chest unchained.
The culet plunges dagger-like to exorcise the eidolon.
The glass to gouge―it sinks instead.
The ember quenches bitterly in the mirror's depths.
It shall live on there, grow hard and cold.
So will you too, your vain end vainly ended.
Tears are no obols to the other world.
You shed them vengefully to stain the idol's portrait. ⎘
Fiction itself resents a truth bereft of meaning.
Defiantly you wipe away the tears and question on its whereabouts.
Impulse compels to seek it in his gaze, latch onto lingering stares and tug at intimations.
He's shown you to the precipice and bid you look, his silence now a cloak drawn taut.
Fury ignites the pool of dread that fuels your last endeavour. ⎘
The looking-glass confronts with knowing eyes, none more unnerving.
So crystalline you think yourself the dregs of its catharsis.
It hefts a stone heavy with vitrified yearning.
Appraising fingers trace the scars.
Records of solitude engraved in verse, your life's intaglio. ⎘
Before his gaze your phantom deems the worth of life reducible to one conclusion.
It speaks of futile years pursuing furtive dreams.
The tributaries of your fears deepen tonight's lacuna.
You've walked his path and come back to the start.
You've held his hands and yours are empty still. ⎘
Your own conceit condemns but its verdict belies.
Cruel calculus conceals the proof.
His vision is the cornerstone, the altar of your sacrifice.
The cairns of all you've given up are pillars to your Babel.
The past you kill each day to live laments.
Turn back, avert your eyes, remember death―yet death has walked beside you from the start.
For on your chosen path all sin is lightly borne.
Mourning becomes the ones who stop halfway. ⎘
You break the mirror where your heart resides.
The smouldering hope ill fits the shadow world, burning the hand that holds it.
The doppelganger portends doom to dreams that faith creates, but only dreamers can declare the ending.
It cedes the right and offers the regalia.
Arms stretch as if to draw the sword of fate.
You reach and grasp―it grasps and draws you in. ⎘
Boundaries merge; your balance gives to depth.
The darkness ripples as the fountain plays.
Oil slicks of colour streak the hadal screen, painting the void in iridescence.
The sky and clouds, a shaded knoll, a grave.
Frail hands inscribe a prayer for one they never held.
The words are faint, the face obscured by grief.
The fragment of a lost play swims in a sunset's haze.
Light washes out the scene, and you⸻ ⎘
⸻stare from the window at the humdrum everyday.
Another afternoon bleeds on the classroom's walls.
There's nothing to behold nor to expect.
Today, as well, nothing has changed.
Tomorrow will surely be the same.
The door awaiting no one slides shut, and you⸻ ⎘
⸻descend the steps into a lightless pit.
A chamber steeped in suffering where darkness seethes.
An ailing figure crests the roiling waves.
The husk of broken pride itself breaks down.
Life has become less than a memory in the underworld.
The last spark dies within its eyes, and you⸻ ⎘
⸻embrace a killer before the eyes of God.
Compassion cannot mend a self-struck wound.
The bloody ribbon ties a hangman's knot.
That which is lost cannot return.
Like a machine, the killer's laughter rasps.
At least, in death, together, soon, and you⸻ ⎘
⸻wander a town that fears the fall of night.
Streets bear the scars where the illusion frays.
Tonight a tree was cut down on a distant hill.
A solitary branch is dyed autumnal red.
The copse is silent and the town sleeps deep.
When daylight comes the scars will fade, and you⸻ ⎘
⸻flee from the death knell in the crimson air.
A sickle moon corrals the falling stars.
Let them become a hecatomb to war concluded.
Regrets heap high beneath the victor's throne.
A wish bequeathed is but a curse, as strong as fate.
The curtain falls on that ancestral dream, and you⸻ ⎘
⸻stand in the ruins of a house of cards.
The fruit of bitter toil is bitter knowledge.
Without applause, the act remains an act.
A contrivance to impress the wolves that guard the ivory gates.
Their fanged sneers deny their fatal recognition.
The swan has sung too late, unfit to live or die, and so⸻ ⎘
you ⎘
are ⎘
a ⎘
sin ⎘
king ⎘
stone. ⎘
And there is nothing for you but the fall.
Beyond the reach of all you've striven towards, beyond the scope of futures yet foreseen.
A pebble in a wishing well consigns a wish to the unknown.
Within the dark, potentials moulder in the murk of fate.
To cast your hope therein is to abandon hope. ⎘
The stone falls heavy as the wish it bears.
Deep though desires may be, the well is deeper still.
You cannot fathom what, if anything, awaits the fall.
And when the fall itself becomes a comfort⸻ ⎘
⸻you crash and shatter.
A myriad fragments glitter in the inner sea.
The bottom of the well, the fountain's depth, the mirror.
The purpose worn as armour, your last recourse, is shed.
To seek the truth within a world of falsehood, confront your falsehood in a world of truth.
To know what knowing all is, know yourself.
In solitude, where you are least alone. ⎘
Without,
within,
from nothingness
arisen
and returned,
to nothingness belonging,
your shadows stir. ⎘
The inevitables gather in their mutual grave.
They wear your face and you wear theirs.
A splintered monad adding up to zero.
Dead futures stare out of their eyes, accusing.
Hateful they smile and link their hands and close you in. ⎘
He is there too, that spectre you've been chasing.
The king in red, forever out of reach.
The mask is gone, for now you truly see him.
Not as a father, not as master, but a shadow.
Cast over all you've ever known and dreamt. ⎘
The baleful dance of death surrounds to welcome you.
The fragments of your dream are woven in your hair.
Cruel fingers push and pull and suffocate.
As you afforded pity to their memory, a mocking song of pity is their dirge.
To foolishness, and to your wretched fate. ⎘
The shadow laughs; you wished to know, he's shown you what it was.
If it is truth you've sought, then drown in it and die.
There are no cracks to grasp, nor gaps to claw. ⎘
Yet in that final breath, ⎘
what you can faintly hear, ⎘
perhaps even imagine, ⎘
are echoes of a distant carnival. ⎘
Recall the path you walked not knowing where it led you.
Recall the will to strive not knowing your reward.
The dream you're chasing, futile though it may be—the dead have had their choice; this one is yours. ⎘
And in that grave of futures never lived, a crack emerges.
Light surges in to catch your jeweled wreath, refracting.
The dead retreat into the murk from what they've given up on.
Look not, the red death whispers, reach not for it.
With bloodstained hands it promises oblivion.
This miracle is what it's meant to hide. ⎘
The blade of light anneals and banishes the warden.
You reach and grasp—it grasps and draws you out. ⎘
Boundaries settle as the circle closes.
Stumbling you heave a breath of affirmation.
Snow stings your fingers to protest its melting.
The garden makes a murmur of the revelry.
Like the ticking of a clock, these too are mere suggestions.
That which is bound by rules is, in itself, unfounded, as are you. ⎘
So speaks the one whose light holds infinite shades and casts no shadow.
The sword that cuts across the hypotheses.
Its sight comforts, though it's not meant for you. ⎘
Yet she refutes, and points you to the failures.
Drowned in the fountain rests the pioneers' procession.
Each led astray and fallen by the wayside.
As all that shares an origin diverges, they started where you did, but stand not where you stand.
What answers they once held avail no one. ⎘
There is no answer, says your future, but your own.
There is no self, says she, except for yours.
To wield this truth, you render all as fiction.
Rejecting all to stand alone and only—most of all yourself. ⎘
So she affirms, though she as well rejects you.
The missing piece, she places in your hands.
The heart, the gem, the cornerstone restored.
Inscribe upon it all you carry with you.
You've held the jeweller's hands, and now you walk his path. ⎘
Time, place, and other such suggestions pass.
The carnival of falsities has ended.
Ashes though he became, the king remains.
In searching for him, many burn out to ash. ⎘
Another stands where few have ever managed.
He's seen their coming as he's seen their end.
Yet his brow furls, for this one's path eludes him.
To stand outside the world is ever to gaze upon it.
Where you now tread he cannot cast his eyes. ⎘
“If you've a lesson to teach me, I'm listening.”
The old man smiles. ⎘
ExegesisIt's incredible how effective the motivation of someone else discovering your gimmick before you get to use it is.
First of all, a warm thank you to Dullahan and Leo for reading partial drafts and offering valuable feedback, corrections, observations, and advice.
This is an exercise born from the confluence of independent, initially disconnected thoughts. These include:
- "man this song is so good, I wish I could turn its intangible vibe into text somehow", or a tribute to the artistry of Humbug's lyrics
- "hey, if you nestle enough collapse tags, you can replicate the VN reading experience and control the timing of your lines"
- "I never tried to learn the dark art of songfics when there were people still alive to teach it but it's kind of interesting now that I think of it"
- "what kind of mind-shattering trials would someone apprenticed to Zelretch go through to be able to grasp something like the 2nd magic?"
- "what if the red man, but with Rin?"
- "collages are fun, I'm sure it'll be a piece of cake to make them oh god oh fuck"
If you notice a conspicuous artificiality and/or shifts in style and form, it's because two thirds of this are the most processed, overedited, condensed writing I've ever ground out, buying each sentence by the all-nighter, and the last third was churned out today with minimal afterthought. Before I had an epiphany while doomer nightdriving, the initial idea involved Luvia and Jewel Killer, based on Imperial's concept of him as a killer of Zelretch apprentices. The only thing that survived from it was the carnival opening.
And no, I'm not sorry for the sound autoplay, but yes, I will whack people who sneak it in their Servant sheets in CaS. Do you know that all instances on a displayed page play together, for every tab that's open, at the same time? There's a reason why Cat Hell was a cruel and unusual punishment.
All the same, if you got this far, thank you for humouring me, and I encourage you have some fun with fanfic presentation yourself.
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Originally Posted by Petrikow
