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<h1>PARAENESIS</h1>
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myDiv.scrollTop = 0;</script><b>Paraenesis contains content warnings for the following:</b>
<ul><li>Violence</li>
<li>Descriptions of injury and gore</li>
<li>Death</li>
<li>Animal death</li></ul>
<<nobr>><div class = choices><ol>
<li><div class = choice-item> [[Proceed.|intro1]] </div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> [[Return to menu.|MENU]] </div></li>
</ol></div><</nobr>><<link '<div class="menu-item"><b>00</b> go back</div>'>><<run Engine.backward()>><</link>>
<<link '<div class="menu-item"><b>01</b> saves</div>'>><<script>>UI.saves()<</script>><</link>>
<<link '<div class="menu-item"><b>02</b> settings</div>'>><<script>>UI.settings()<</script>><</link>><<set $end to 0>>PARAENESIS// CHOICE
<<nobr>><div class = choices><ol>
<li><div class = choice-item> [[option 1]] </div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> [[option 2]] </div></li>
</ol></div><</nobr>>
// BUTTONS
<<button [[CONTINUE|advance]]>><</button>>
<<button [[CONTINUE|advance]]>><<set $var to " ">><</button>><<set $end to random(1, 3)>>The world you inherited was long-dead. Even the most ancient and farsighted amongst your people could not remember a time when it lived and breathed, when it was not rent asunder, sternum split and ribs splayed, entrails bared to the elements. They told stories - and only stories, only ever stories - of when people could fly and thus took to the stars, set foot on other worlds, punched their way into spaces far beyond comprehension and recognition. New realms where cosmonauts, solar sailors, those who dared, those who bore wings and were carried aloft by their tremendous ambition reigned as kings. But those are stories; whatever inkling of truth they may have held long since distorted through the lens of time, through the many mouths who carried such fantastic stories through time immemorial.
The world you inherited was long-dead. The picked-over corpse of the whales that drift ashore, no longer capable of carrying their bulk through the watery skies. The bleached, crumbling bones of buildings, eroded grave-markers for those who dare tempt fate. Those who made the world like <i>this</i>. Not kings nor masters but fools who cursed you and your people to live in shadow, in the basins that were once seas.
They say that when your predecessors angered the gods, they drove a great spear into the seas and the waves caught flame, boiled and evaporated in a flash. The denizens of the oceans found themselves unscathed, found that they could take now to the watery skies, could learn to thrive there, innocent and untouched. And all those lowly humans who has survived the fires, who had thought themselves masters of the world were gathered, brought in exodus to the hollow belly of the sea. Should they learn, should there one day be a day where they could be forgiven, they could crawl up out of the seas and find themselves again on the shores of forgiveness. They could kneel before the gods and take their hand and be again masters of this world. There has not been such a day. The gods and their stars are distant, impossibly out of reach.
They said when you were born, you were born under unfortunate stars. Your people have turned far from those grand dreams of science, have found strength where it can be manufactured, coaxed from sandy, salted soils. Your people are a people of prophecy and myth. Soothsayers bound to superstition by their sea-glass talismans, wild-eyed augurs with gore-stained hands and mouths, zealots who fill their thoughts with iron and flame, who profane the stars that play tyrant to their infinitesimally small lives. Occult priests with grave-dirt under their fingernails as they lead sermons of paradox, contradiction - they know the gods lie beyond the clouds or are found in the shifting of the earth or both or neither - clergy who in their grotesque desire to be holy offer libations of flesh and opened vein, pay tribute of gut and sinew and tooth. <i>Safer to appease the waking gods,</i> they insist. <i>Feed them. Give unto them what they desire, lest they descend.</i> They correct themselves, contradiction, paradox;<i> lest they ascend.</i>
<<button [[CONTINUE|intro2]]>><</button>>You were born underneath unfortunate stars. Birthed underneath a cosmos that hated you, hates you, will hate you, always - from the very first trickle of conscious thought to your dying gasps, you are cursed. You are cursed. Your mother wailed like a banshee when she was greeted with soothsayers instead of midwives; your father wept, contemplated throwing himself upon his own sword. Your first moments of existence were spent sequestered away, surrounded by bent creatures of fate; it was not a mother's joy of creation nor a father's pride as their child, their combined flesh and bone, drew their first breaths but horror and grief, as their child became but an object of prophecy.
It would have been kinder to have killed you, then and there. It would have been kinder to kill you.
The regret inherent to your existence loomed over you always, a dark cloud, a pointed sword. Whispers followed you. <i>Cursed one,</i> the common folk hissed through scowls. <i>Stay away from me. Stay away from my children. Stay away from my home.</i> You did not understand them; how is a child meant to understand vitriol, how is a child meant to comprehend the stellar burden placed upon their shoulders, how is a child supposed to understand the babbling of the augurs who alone approach them, lay hands upon their brow, crown them in gifts? How is a child meant to understand that they were meant to end the world as they know it?
<<button [[CONTINUE|intro3]]>><</button>>
There was a particular ceremony of this superstitious society, a reading of stars, the determination of minor prophecy and the telling of futures beside a fire that spat embers like meteors. Coming-of-age is knowing how things are to end, what predestined fate has been written in the stars for you. And so you join your peers, your should-be-siblings with the flames dancing in their eyes wide with brimming tears, you alone lonely and stoic. Staring into the blaze, forked tongues of flame leaping and crackling, consuming greedily all that was fed to it - driftwood and offerings of gristle, knucklebones and incantation-laden parchment - and hoping that when your time came, those same flames would consume you.
The prophecies foisted upon your brothers and sisters were accompanied by encouragement and relief and applause: <i>you will grow old upon the gentle tides, your family will be brought honor by the steadfastness of your duty, your children will know neither prophecy nor ill-omen, sickness shall never linger by your hearth, you will reclaim what was lost to the shifting sands.</i> And you were met with silence when it was at last your turn, because this was always the way it went. You were always last, forever the outcast with your curse-darkened eyes and lack of name; the crowd parted like the spear-struck-seas around you as you stepped nearer to the fire. Only the augurs and soothsayers refused to flinch away, an omen in its own right.
You wished they would tell you this was some mistake, some error on the cosmic scale. That you were just <i>you</i>, not some harbinger, neither burden nor curse.
But the augur smiled with lead-capped teeth and blood upon his lips. "Child," he croaked, spitting reddish phlegm into the fire and muttering half a prayer under his breath. "The stars have other plans for you."
And you should have jumped into the fire. It would have been kinder to be set ablaze, made kindling or sacrifice. But you did not. And so he continued.
"You were born under loathsome stars, child. But there must always be one in each generation who bears the weight of tremendous prophecy. There must always be. This is your fate; you will climb to see the light, to behold the stars in all their beautiful fury. You will strike them from the skies, let them seed the earth in new and glorious light. The gods shall fall before you; you will bring about a new age, a second apocalypse."
<<nobr>><div class = choices><ol>
<li><div class = choice-item><span class = noclick> No.</span></div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item><span class = noclick> Please, no.</span></div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item><span class = noclick> Please, <i>please</i>, no.</span></div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item><span class = noclick> Not this. Please.</span></div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item><span class = noclick> No. Let there be mercy, please.</span></div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item><span class = noclick> The stars are not merciful.</span></div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> [[The stars will never be merciful to you.|intro4]] </div></li>
</ol></div><</nobr>>You stared into the flames. The world burned around you. You wish you smiled, you wish you laughed, felt anything for your foretold fate. You stood, the burning outline of a person in the burning world as the crowd ran and the augurs gathered, eyes filled with malice and the raging fire.
"This is fate, child," they whispered. "You cannot escape it."
<<button [[CONTINUE|intro5]]>><</button>><<cont append>>They were right.
<<cont append>><i>No.</i> You have refused the call of the stars.
<<cont append>>They were wrong about you.
<<cont append>><<button [[CONTINUE|whaling1]]>><</button>><</cont>>
<</cont>>
<</cont>>
<</cont>>
You are far removed from that youth who stood before the bonfire, surrounded by the occult promises of apocalypse, revelation. That past seems a laughable nightmare now; <i>you</i>, cursed with prophecy? <i>You</i>, a chosen one - a harbinger, no less?
The pack presses heavy into your shoulders as you slog up a bank of sludge, your already-drenched poncho made of some not-so-waterproof dulled orange fabric clung to your frame. The watery skies beckon; on the fringes of society, nobody cares about prophecy - half the crews of the whaling vessels have forgotten theirs or could not understand the rambling of their soothsayers to begin with. They care about little, save for your aim with a harpoon, save for the strength of your arm, save for the sharpness of your knives and how quickly you can hack through blubber to reach the meat underneath, how efficient you are on entrail duty, ensuring no part goes to waste. Ivory, oil, bone and blood are your domains. If the stars were whales, you'd surely have some care to how they were butchered, how their waves and wake shifted the vessels you worked aboard.
Today, neither stars nor whales are the greatest of your concerns: you have missed the report time for your vessel and were warned by runner that they would terminate your contract and leave you to wander the Basin if you did not make ship by midday. Which leaves you here, picking your way up the eroded remnant of a continental shelf, weighed down by your sodden whaling gear, harpoon clutched in hand and knife hanging at your belt. The dock is close but not close enough; you can smell the awful smoke from the pipes of the older and more jaded fishermen, you can hear their rough voices and all but feel the chastising glares that will meet you as you crawl in from the rain, already exhausted and apologizing, making them that much later on departure and thus that much later on pay.
True to your fears, you are greeted with stares as you stagger of the top of the ridge. <i>Stares like those that used to follow you, back when you were -</i> you dismiss the notion, shuddering and burying yourself in the depths of your hood. Ignoring the jeers of the collected crew, crude speculation and snide comments about your tardiness and the causes thereof, jabs at the state of your equipment and the mud that sloughs off your boots, mud that you wish you could sink into, hide from them in. You think yourself a coward, hiding from your prophesized past-future and the heat that rises to your face, biting the inside of your cheek as not to cry.
Ill-omened skies await as the anchor and gangplank are drawn away, roiling pitch clouds and spitting rain as that steadily picks up as the ship climbs through layers of mist. You sit against the forward mast and watch the world as it passes you by. You could cry now. Nobody would notice; the clouds are heavy with salt, the long-evaporated remnants of now-ancient seas. It wouldn't be out of place; you were never known for your stoicism anyways, try as you might, your feelings would always manage to escape, seep out of you like waterlogged wood, blood from a cut. You would go about your butchery and cry the whole time, feeling each of the short, precise cuts you made to separate blubber and baleen from skin, muscle, bone as if it were your own corpse you desecrated. Couldn't bear look the creatures you killed in the eyes, knowing how they watched their death approach and wept and died all the same. You cry for them instead. In the turbulence, you have no spare hand with which to wipe the tears from your cheek as they fall and so you bow your head, rest the side of your face against the haft of the harpoon you clutch. Soon, you will break the clouds and be atop a liminal sea where the sun goes rarely contested in its terror, save for when the fishing crews dare its surface; wherein you will be hunter and chase all the beautiful things to termination, wherein you will be butcher and carve away at all the gentle parts of your heart.
<<button [[CONTINUE|whaling2]]>><</button>>It is far too dangerous to begin the hunt in the cloud-depths; lightning and high winds and the utter density of currents that whip angrily around the ship, threaten to crush or shear the metal hull that groans under the stress, a creature of its own right, a wounded one, at that. But the currents and winds and perpetual maelstrom are deterrent enough - if the seas here were placid they surely would have been picked clean by now. And so tiny fish glitter and glint across the bow, school parting around you like waves breaking upon stone; if you were but a bit faster or you wielded a net and not harpoon you could reap a bountiful harvest, prey upon the knowing-unknowing of these creatures that you cannot and will not hurt them. Some monster that makes you, you think, watching the actual sea monsters drift by - long ribbon-like fish with bony crimson crests and iridescent bellies and eyes the size of your clenched fist snaking between clouds, swarms of squid and cephalopod that flicker and flash like the lightning they congregate near, solitary sharks who carry the scars of a thousand hunts across their cloud-marked backs, broad-bellied rays whose wings flap lazily as they navigate the winds, meaty gelatinous <i>things</i> half-hidden in the clouds with long feeder tentacles pulsing bioluminescent in siren song. A beautiful canvas of potential prey, interrupted by glimpses of your prize - a massive pod of whales, their mutualist protectors - sleek, playful dolphins - absent, driven off by something. An ill omen.
It is far too dangerous to begin the hunt in the cloud-depths; the gods made it this way for a reason, knew that the nature of humans is curiosity, exploitation, consumption. They knew that humans would take again to the sea and skies, set forth for this strange matric of sky and sea. They did not take will nor desire nor temptation but instead set decided upon some cruel cosmic joke, cursed the humans to live on the ground and gaze up upon a bounty of creation and be utterly helpless, hungry, afraid even. Are you afraid? A thousand, <i>no</i>, a million things could go wrong; a furious, vengeful whale could ram and splinter the vessel, some hungry monster could wrap its powerful tentacles around the deck and shatter it or tear it asunder, the ship could catch an uncharted current as it ascends and break apart and in all these equally unlikely scenarios and others, ones that appear and disappear like the glint of eyes in the waves - you are thrown from the bow into rough seas, left to fall or drown or be consumed entirely by some-yet-unknown beast, and you know this, this is the sacrifice you must make, the risk you must take, the same sacrifice, same risk as every other whaler who has taken to these sea-skies - and you ask again and again and again: <i>are you afraid?</i>
<<nobr>><div class = choices><ol>
<li><div class = choice-item><span class = noclick> No. You are not afraid.</span></div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> [[Yes. You have always been afraid.|whaling3]] </div></li>
</ol></div><</nobr>>Fear is irrational, it seeps into your brain and makes enemies of friends, monsters of shadows. Fear, here, is logical. Rational. You understand it, know every facet and admire each like it were a gemstone, this object of fear, this storm-tossed ship. The deck heaves and you understand why humans chose the empty abyss beyond the stars over the depths of the sea. The bow warps, pulling back towards those empty stars, and you understand why this path is suicide, with or without prophecy to protect and guide you. Perhaps a comforting thing, this near certainty that this job and not the machinations of the stars will be the death of you, as the vessel lists and you clutch at the railing, endure a spray of frigid sea foam that serves only to soak you further. <i>You are very nearly out of the storm,</i> the captain promises, calling from the bridge. The other unfortunate souls tied to the deck rejoice in thin, tired voices.
<i>You are very nearly out of the storm</i>, the captain lies. For when you break the surface, the tempest still rages, seemingly further incensed in its rage by your appearance. The mirror-glass seas and distant skies have been subsumed, consumed by the midnight-dark swelling of waves and the lashing of rain that makes every attempt to claw its way into your skin. A further layer of steely cloud and sound and fury; as though you had never surfaced, as though there were some inversion of the natural order; you are no longer permitted to hunt here, dive again, go home. You cannot go home. The ship barely crests a wave, hangs horribly suspended before plummeting down into the wave trough.
"No storm shall deter us, crew! Stand fast, fear not!" The captain bellows, limping by on his artificial leg, hands behind his back as if the seas were placid, as if this was a but a peaceful routine hunt. "There shall be no nets today, no traps, no lines, no baited hooks, none of it! Let the distant shores run red with blood, for this is whaler's weather - and we shall return home with whale or not at all!"
He is met with raucous enthusiasm, the stamping of feet, the clashing of harpoon and gaff upon the deck, a roar of approval and excitement lost almost immediately to the thunder of a wave over the bow. And though the eyes of the crew betray the same terror you feel, though some voices in this chorus waver, fall silent, though they maintain white-knuckled grasps and clenched jaws - there is a job to do. Whale to hunt.
<<button [[CONTINUE|whaling4]]>><</button>>Not long after the lookout scrambles up the mast, the cry is heard. The one you've been dreading, the one that calls you to action. <i>Whales on the horizon, ready skiffs, clear the deck.</i> Your services are not required until the ships are in the water; you stand an isolate pillar in a swarm of activity around you, frantic deck crew running with ropes and oars and ships. The sloping deck stands stark as a stage against the inky waves, making this mania a performance, a ritual, something like the ceremony with the bonfire, the one where -
You are climbing down a knotted rope slung off the side of the ship, staring down at the small wood and bone ship that you pray will not be dashed to pieces in the turbulence off the side of the much larger whaling vessel. You are climbing to your certain death and there is still a part of you that wishes your grave was a fiery one - incineration, cremation - and not the watery one that is all but destined for you here. This is your job, your fate; you have chosen this for yourself, forgone the wishes of the stars, defied the gods and all of nature - and if this is how you must go, then so be it. At the helm of the skiff, the waves are that much more massive, the white-capped mountains of myth, your task that much more daunting; find the whales, kill them, return both yourself and your catch intact. You perch aboard the very tip of the bow, searching for the sighted pod.
The whaler crawls up the side of one of these wave-mountains precariously, sits atop the crest as the the rowers catch their breath. From your vantage, you see them. Five whales. A small pod compared to the massive congregations beneath the surface - but an entire half-year's catch regardless. Your voyage could end and begin in one day. The crew knows this; you raise the signal eagerly - <i>pod, five whales, starboard and ahead, close</i> - and in a moment's sight, the swarm of skiffs follows, the rower teams frantically making up distance through powerful currents.
Compelled by some strange mix of excitement and terror, you rise in your station to stand atop the bow. Despite the whirling storm, the howling wind that threatens to capsize the ship and blow you overboard to succumb to the depths, despite the heavy hands of the ocean battering all of you that it can reach, your eyes and nose streaming with salt tears, your hair and clothes drenched and crusted to your skin with sea spray, despite the lightning that strikes at the sea, turns the surface electric and thus all the more foreboding - despite it all or perhaps because of it all, you are feverishly manic. Overjoyed to hunt, to kill, to die. If this is your fate then - so be it. You will at least die with a smile upon your lips.
<<button [[CONTINUE|whaling5]]>><</button>>Your ship plunges over the crest of the wave as the lead skiff of the pack, the leader in this unspoken race. A swift challenger beside you is unlucky; their skiff shatters and the crew is thrown skywards before striking the ocean and disappearing. Another peels off the race, circling to search for survivors in a futile spiral, but the ocean is ruthless. All who witnessed the wreck know there will be none. There is no time to mourn - your ship picks up speed, the rowers incensed by the sight and want of whales, your gaffers and fellow whaler at the ready, eyes wide, spirits singing. Behind you, another ship falls, capsized, crew floundering amongst the currents before they too are lost. The rain seems to intensify with the fervor of the hunt; there is no longer difference between sky and sea, just rough water and misery and the promise of whales who have not seen you yet.
Yet.
One vigilant whale dives, cannot and will not be found nor hunted while the seas are tumultuous and opaque. Another follows the lead of their fellow or sees the shadow of ships on the horizon and panics, jettisoning away from the pod and leaping, forked tail arcing before it strikes the side of a mountainous wave, chased by two other boats - all to be lost in the cascading surf. Three whales remain, maintaining a defensive perimeter around a smaller thing. A calf. Once more, the signal goes up, corrects the earlier call. <i>Pod, three whales and one calf, ahead, close.</i>
You stare at the calf - a small, soft pale blueish-white speckled thing that cannot yet dive in these currents, must instead drift upon the waves, protected by the guidance of the pod. Likely hours old.
Your prey.
<<button [[CONTINUE|whaling6]]>><</button>>If you felt badly about the act, you would not have known then. You anchor the harpoon rope to the loop on the bowsprit, double-check the knots, relish the sting of salt working its way into your worn hands and the heft of the harpoon, the weight, the balance, the way brief flickers of lightning glint off the polished metal.
The approaching wave begins to barrel, lip curling inwards and shadow descending and you know that you are running out of time, that you have only seconds as the midnight-blue sea is now black, something darker than black and all you can see is the almost-glowing white of the calf. Spurred on by self-preservation, the rowers begin to veer, too slowly. The gaffers, seeing the thunderous wall of water, seize oars themselves as the other whaler braces, harpoon abandoned.
You stare into the eye of the calf, that wide eye as dark as the seas. Someone calls for you to take an oar or the rudder, calls for your help. You stare into the eye of the calf, that wide eye as dark as death. Someone pulls at your rain-slick poncho, tries dragging you into the boat proper. You stare into the eye of the calf, that wide eye as dark as the starless skies.
<span class = blur>"This is fate, child,"</span> it whispers, echo-voice drowning out the tempest. <span class = blur>"You cannot escape it."</span>
You claw your way to the bow again, harpoon clutched in hand. You perch precariously as the ship lurches, as the wave begins to crash, frothing white foam in which you almost lose your target, <i>almost</i> but only <i>almost</i>, for through the chaos you see that horrible eye staring back at you, daring you beckoning you and you stand and begin to fall and raise your harpoon and see lightning glint off the polished metal head and
<<button [[CONTINUE|nightmare]]>><</button>><<if $end is 1>>Star's blood clings to your skin, sloughs in sticky webs from where it has long since past saturated your clothes and pores. You are fast-fading, not long for this world. No. The world is fading around you, more quickly now. More quickly now as you become more and more and more and more and more and more luminous with each breath. Breath growing hoarse as you draw in the atmosphere about you until you are dizzy, your heaving chest filled with light. A star's kiss upon your lips slick with blood, promises gurgling at the back of your throat as you cough and choke and splutter on your ambition. <i>Go on,</i> they mock in singsong breeze of laughter. <i>End the world. Drown in starlight.</i><<elseif $end is 2>>The skies are broad and empty, yawning black pits of hollow eye-socket. No stars, no gods, only you, curled around the sword that crackles with electricity and smokes, dripping with ichor that seeps slowly from union of chest and blade. Slow drops dripping away, tracing the length of the blade before veering upwards to the empty. It seeps across your skin in thickening webs, reaching with tentative fingers, broadening in curiosity. It will bleed you dry, will consume you, will leave you empty as the godless, starless skies that you jut your head towards with the ooze snaking its way up your neck. It will consume you; you claw it from your cheeks and leave bloody furrows instead, you press your mouth shut, clench your jaw as the shadows constrict around your throat and you are forced to gasp. Forced to taste it as it forces its way past your teeth and tongue and then suddenly all is dark, all is you, you are all there was no prophecy, no end of the world, there is nothing. Nothing but you.<<elseif $end is 3>>It is cold, cold and dark and empty. Each breath you take is cold, shallow inhalations of icy water like the shoals that around you, ebbing and flowing against your skin. Tides, little lapping waves that tug at your skin as you seep ichor, shadowy swirls like oil slick unto the current. You drift unaffected; somewhere above, somewhere below. The seas turn to shade: you breathe light, draw it into your luminous chest and hold it against your fluttering heart - and bleed shade, exhalation and your weak pulse strip the glow from your blood and dissipate it into empty nothingness that becomes surfactant to the blackening seas. Somewhere between this conversion of light and dark is you, the dying world, the distant-immediate surface of the seas upon which you lay, praying for waves, for whales, for lightning and storm. Sinister placidity is all that greets you.<</if>>
<<button [[CONTINUE|call1]]>><</button>>You wake screaming.
There is nothing to do but scream; your veins are filled with frantic, horrible electric terror, you are flash-blind and deafened by thunder, your skin has been worn rough by salt and the tossing of seas, burnt and split in lightning-branched-fractals; you are on fire from the inside out and all you can do is <i>scream</i>. Your voice goes as raw as your now-exposed flesh and is no deterrent, hoarsely you cry out until rough palms are pressed to your lips with enough force to draw blood against your teeth as they muffle you, smother you.
"Quiet," a distant voice urges. "Let there be silence, let silence fall upon this place, please - stars and gods - I beg of thee, let there be silence!"
And you have run out breath or grown too tired or too hoarse or perhaps the gods have deigned to take your voice, for no scream rises to your lips as you are sat up and your eyes unbound. Your vision returns slowly, you realize you rest in one of the temples on the outskirts of some small town, its strange mélange of ancient architecture both cause and effect of the mistrust of augur and soothsayer and their secreted away, oft-brutal rituals conducted in this echo chamber of metal and stone. A wizened augur, the sole, lurking inhabitant of this profane place smiles at you from beneath a tattered cloak, beckons you with crooked finger for you to come closer.
And so bidden closer, you come. Lean into the shoulder of the augur, bury your face into the shroud. Regret rises like bile; you gag and try to pull away from the stench of rotting entrails and tainted blood, cracked tooth and spoiled flesh. Held like heart in ribcage, your attempts at escape futile, only ever drawing his vice-grip closer, he shushes you like a crying infant, runs sticky fingers through your hair, pets your cheek, makes you retch again.
"Quiet now, child..." he murmurs, his voice but a reverberation in your heaving chest. "This becomes the point of no return. You cannot longer run, my son. You cannot longer hide, my daughter. The gods and stars have called upon you. Prophecy calls upon you once more."
<<button [[CONTINUE|call2]]>><</button>>"Why me?" you choke out between sobs. "Stars, why me?"
The augur takes your lightning-scorched hand, holds it out in front of you. Split fingernails and bruised knuckles greet you, fractured almost-glowing lines of white wreathed around your palm and wrist, disappearing beneath the sleeve. As if it were some explanation, your suffering, your wound, your stigmata.
"There must always be souls destined for great turmoil. For terrible things," he says. "And these terrible things cannot be escaped. They must be faced. Hunted down. Killed. You must leave, my son, my daughter, my child. The white whale of fate is waiting for you, beyond the seas and stars."
<<nobr>><div class = choices><ol>
<li><div class = choice-item> <span class = noclick> But you want to stay.</span> </div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> <span class = noclick> But you have only ever wanted to stay.</span> </div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> <span class = noclick> You don't want to go.</span> </div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> <span class = noclick> You don't want to die.</span> </div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> [[You don't have a choice.|call3]] </div></li>
</ol></div><</nobr>>You do not have a choice. You never have. Never. Though your legs shake, though you glance back over your shoulder again and again and again and hope futilely that there will be something to change your fate, to instead return you to the life you had before - you are led forth, towards the edge of the world. It would be a kindness to be returned back to the docks as some flotsam on the tides, to haul yourself over the embankment to jeers and disdain once more. It would be a kindness to again heft your harpoon and fear only the changing of the seas and winds, not prophecy, not the whims of stars and gods - the stars and gods you are charged with somehow killing, bleeding dry, butchering. But you are a butcher, have always devoted yourself to the cold maiden of Death; you carry with you the guilt of the slaughter and revel in the carnage of slit jugular regardless. And so there can be no kindness for you nor people like you, you think. Something in the stars has marked you as capable, responsible, other, <i>wrong</i>, as someone who is - like the augur said - destined for great turmoil.
The skies again are consumed in storm, a warm rain like the falling of tears seeps over your cloak-bound shoulders, the faded orange fabric carrying scorch marks weeping soot. The atmosphere tastes of salt and metal, of burnt hair and cauterized flesh. Silently, you pray again for lightning, your pulse crackling with electricity where vein has been turned to glowing conduit.
There can be no kindness for people like you; no such lightning smites you from the face of this earth. You stand instead at the base of a rough-hewn stone and metal staircase that twists and spirals, ascending into the haze. Dark shadows - the underbellies of floating islands - punctuate the fog, though they too fade into obscurity. The myth is this - anyone can climb the stairs, whether borne by prophecy or curiosity or suicidality. The myth continues - none may descend.
You can never come home, you will never return home - even if you were destined to save the world instead of ending it, there would never be a hero's welcome for you. Neither a homecoming nor any heroic sendoff. A quiet surrender, outcast passing the torch and burden of prophecy to outcast.
So be it. The augur presses the haft of your harpoon into your hand, passes a coil of rope along with it. Says no words but arms you with familiarity, something so hopelessly symbolic that you fear it will be useless for the climb to come. So be it. You will not be returning. You cannot.
So be it. You are ushered onto the first step, worn concrete beneath your boots. The augur closes his eyes.
"Go forth, child. <<if $end is 1>>Drown the world in starlight. <<elseif $end is 2>>Let the gods know your wrath. <<elseif $end is 3>>Remember, you cannot return.<</if>>"
<<button [[CONTINUE|climb1]]>><</button>>One step turns into five. Ten. Twenty-five. Fifty. A hundred. Five hundred. A thousand. Exhausted, you cannot continue. Your aching legs call for reprieve, you hunch over your harpoon and pant, let foam and drool fall from your open mouth, gasp at air that grows paradoxically both thinner and heavier. You have been climbing for an eternity and yet you seem no closer to the gods nor any further from the ground. The staircase still spirals on towards infinity above you, though the stars seem now to weather, particularly where they meet the sparse islands. Short tufts of moss grow here, their little tendrils gathering droplets of water that shimmer in the waning light. Other plants grow on the larger islands, kelp-like ribbons that waver in the wind, feel like rough leather or dry rubber against your skin.
Nothing else besides remains. You have heard the churning of propellers, footsteps, distant voices calling and yelling and screaming - but you have seen nothing. Nobody. Not a soul. Not even the far-away flicker of fish scales nor the looming shadow of some monstrosity. All exists in a haze; your world is naught but the stairs before you and the islands you encounter. At first, you counted the steps. Told yourself that it would keep you from madness.
And then you slipped up somewhere, the hundreds blurred together, digits mixed by the fumbling pattern of your speech or any of the tens of thousands of reasons that you toy with before letting go, electing to remain confused as to the root of your predicament and face the simple truth. Despite the linearity, you have no idea how far you have come, how far there is to go. You ascend towards the heavens; you descend into madness. The only way is up.
<<button [[CONTINUE|climb2]]>><</button>><<cont append>>You climb.
<<cont append>>The stairs are endless.
<<cont append>>You climb.
<<cont append>>The stairs are endless.
<<cont append>><<button [[CONTINUE|climb3]]>><</button>><</cont>>
<</cont>>
<</cont>>
<</cont>>
<</cont>>
You climb until you reach another little island and there, the cycle resets as it did with the island before it. Your aching legs call for reprieve, you hunch over your harpoon and pant, let foam and drool fall from your open mouth, gasp at air that grows paradoxically both thinner and heavier.
You cannot possibly continue.
You gaze up towards where the stairs spiral further into the skies.
Something looks back at you.
<<button [[CONTINUE|climb4]]>><</button>>Something is slowly descending the stairs, limping, staggering, threatening a fall into the abyss. Something with a hazy black silhouette occasionally lost enough in the fog just to reappear around the corner, leaning over the edge to peer at you.
You can hear it. You can <i>smell</i> it. It's <i>close</i>.
Breath catching in your throat, you draw your harpoon from the earth, ready it as though it were a spear before you, letting the rope spool out from the eyelet. You've no desire to hunt this thing like you would a whale, no want to pull it closer to you. You cannot continue forwards nor go backwards; this small island will thus become your battleground. You steady yourself as best you can, listening to its heavy footfalls growing closer and closer with a rasp of metal upon stone, a strange sloshing, a low moan of pain from just out of view.
It comes into sight in parts; you recognize it almost immediately as wearing a diving suit with lead boots encrusted with barnacles, the heavy rubber fabric stressed and stretched thin with myriad cracks grown over by stinging anemones. Rusted ports lie ominously empty or still bear tubes, prolapsed outwards and hanging like carrion-entrail, bloated greenish and putrefying. It buckles under its own corpulent weight, legs bowed unnaturally inwards, seeping water and shimmering iridescent gut-oil from punctures unpatched by sea life - and it is still somehow borne closer to you, one step at a time.
You follow this slow revelation upwards, away from the staggering gait. Pinkish-gray, limp hands with swollen fingers loll from disjointed arms and slumped shoulders. And atop the shoulders - fastened to caved-in chest with a bolted collar and thick leather strap - is a gouged helm, the quartz-glass viewport shattered.
Your harpoon wavers, arms shaking. It stares at you with eyes like glowing coals, the only discernable feature beneath the helm; it may have once had a face, you hope that it once had a face before scavengers laid their claim, stripped away tender flesh and muscle and tongue, left only a putrid nightmare infested with barnacles and flaming eyes in hollow sockets behind. The same low moan of agony issues again from once there was a mouth as it fixes upon you, ambling closer and closer as you shudder, harpoon jutted outwards as futile ward.
Unknowing or unfeeling, it lurches forwards, onto the harpoon.
<<button [[CONTINUE|climb5]]>><</button>>Wide-eyed, you tighten your grasp, stare down at the ooze that wells and bubbles from the puncture you have made in the suit. <<if $end is 1>>Frantically, you attempt to draw the harpoon back, realizing the barbs have already caught. <<elseif ($end is 2) or ($end is 3)>>Gritting your teeth, you thrust the harpoon further, hoping the barbs engage.<</if>>
A hiss echoes in the helm. The burning gaze turns towards the harpoon.
And then flickers back to you.
Suddenly and horribly no longer disjointed, it seizes the shaft of the harpoon, attempts to wrest it from your hands and when it cannot - drags itself along the length towards you, you who can only look on in horror, cannot let go or look away as impaled and deflating it reaches for you and grabs your throat with fetid hands that slough rotting flesh as it pulls itself closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer until your face is near enough to the gashed helm to where the stench brings tears to your eyes and blurs the decayed remnants of scalp and ear and the fibrous shreds of nerve that remain to feed its horrible horrible sight and the gaping maw of open esophagus through which a foul issuance of breath escapes as unattached vocal cords still somehow form a wordless scream or perhaps it is your screaming as you flail and try to push it off of your and instead claw fistfuls of mushy flesh or decayed rubber as you lock eyes with the glow of empty stars and the cold maiden of Death as you suddenly heavy fall backwards and it is not the earth that greets you but empty and
<<button [[CONTINUE|falling1]]>><</button>>You are falling.
<<button [[CONTINUE|falling2]]>><</button>>Sinking, to be precise.
Sinking, the island grows smaller and smaller as you are borne downwards by a current which you have neither hope nor want of fighting. Sinking, letting the light fade from your eyes, content to be consumed by the seas.
Sinking, a brief jolt indicating the end of the harpoon rope, its barbed head still firmly implanted in the leering monstrosity whose eyes are but a twinkling pinprick of light in the midnight-blue seas above. For a moment, you are suspended, the brace of rope knotted around your forearm drawing tight but neither the distant flesh nor your arm yielding. For a moment, your inertial falling weight twists you to face the depths, gaze upon the empty sky beneath you.
And something somewhere gives and again, you fall. Sinking as a fading spot of color into pure darkness.
<<button [[CONTINUE|falling3]]>><</button>>You fall.
There is something comforting in that. Something certain; for all the laws of nature warped and upended by the gods and the end of the world, gravity remained a constant. You climb and so eventually, you fall.
You wonder what will happen when you hit the ground. Or the seas. It won't matter much. You'll be dead. That ends your story, frees you of the yoke of prophecy, removes fate's hand from your shoulder. You smile, closing your eyes. Thus ends your story.
<<button [[END|falling4]]>><</button>><style>
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<h1>PARAENESIS</h1>
<b><span class = noclick>YOU MUST CONTINUE</span> | | <span class = noclick>YOU MUST CONTINUE</span> | | <<link "CONTINUE" "falling5">><</link>> | | <span class = noclick>YOU MUST CONTINUE</span> | | <span class = noclick>YOU MUST CONTINUE</span></b>Did you <i>really</i> think you could escape that easily?
<<nobr>><div class = choices><ol>
<li><div class = choice-item> <<linkreplace "Yes">><span class = noclick> No.</span><</linkreplace>> </div></li>
<li><div class = choice-item> [[No.|whale1]] </div></li>
</ol></div><</nobr>>
Perhaps you should have known fate would have other plans for you.
Perhaps you should have known the gods have a cruel sense of irony, that their humor twists and winds intestinal, something sickening not unlike the diving-suit corpse. Because you wake to the passing of a whale.
A vast dark gray beast, gentle and placid, navigating the currents with unbothered ease, with only the slightest adjustments of fluke and fin. Larger than the whaling boats, larger than temples, larger than anything you have ever sighted or speared, though others have evidently tried; she bears countless scars in her flesh and the implements of whaling still embedded in her skin. Harpoons like yours, splintered gaffs, tangled net and buoy strung from haft to haft. A truly awe inspiring beast; you have seen firsthand what whale's fury does to a boat daring too close, you have seen that same fury imparted from a far lesser whale turn a whaler into a smear upon a deck.
You don't want to die, which is a lie, because you do. It would be a relief, it was a weight off your chest to fall, it was a kindness when you realized you were in fact mortal, that the storm that rages behind your heart could be calmed, stilled. But you don't want to die at the hands of the thing you hunt, to see it best you at last. You don't want to die to prophecy either. Somehow, it would be worse, worse than the looming shadow of the whale that approaches, turns nearer. You don't want to die, except - you do, and still you kick your heavy boots, swing wildly at the air, make some attempt, any attempt to slow your drowning descent, to navigate away from this whale that has surely seen you now.
You stare at the whale. The whale stares at you. Under her fin is a calf, a small, soft pale blueish-white speckled thing, gently shaded. You become painfully aware that attached to your arm is rope. Harpoon. Instinct, natural disorder; you are her predator, winding the dangling harpoon closer to you. Instinct, natural order; for your trespass, you will be her prey.
<<button [[CONTINUE|whale2]]>><</button>>"Stay your hand, whaler," the whale commands, drifting closer. "Stay your hand, or you will be lost. I will let you sink. I will let you drown."
The harpoon is just inches from your fingertips. You stare into the eye of the calf, that wide eye as dark as the seas, dark as death, dark as the starless skies. You take the harpoon in hand, revel ever-so-briefly in the familiar rush it brings, half-targeted - and instead present it with broad head directed away from whale and calf.
"I have stayed my hand, whale. What more would you ask of me?" You whisper, bubbles escaping your lips. You are running out of breath, out of time.
"Come with me. Atop my back, I will carry you from this place." She dips her broad head, passes beneath you, the breadth of her scarred back presented to you as solid ground as she rises slowly. You settle, your own sudden weight buckling your knees, and lay amongst a battlefield of gaff and pike and harpoon, your own carefully directed upwards. "You have fallen such a long way, whaler. Such a long way... what brings you here, to me?"
"The stars. They told me -"
"Horrible things?"
"Yes. Horrible things. They told me -"
"The stars do not make these prophecies, whaler. Man does. Augur does. Soothsayer does. If the stars made prophecy, surely I and all others would be bound to one. I am not. My child is not." She rocks to one side, nudges the calf forwards, enough for you to see its unscarred flesh before sweeping it back beneath her fin. "We are not ruled by the stars. Nor are you."
<<button [[CONTINUE|whale3]]>><</button>>You stand, back away from her rostrum, trip and stagger over ancient rope. "No, that isn't possible. The augurs have their rituals for a reason, they see the futures in entrails and blood patterns and they know these things, it's written in the stars and they can read it."
"Why do they perform these rituals? What do they see, have you read the blood yourself? You are a butcher and whaler, when you dress my kin, what have you seen? Is there some great augury to be found in the guts of a whale? What of the guts of a man?" Almost accusatory, she continues. "What did they tell you, before they cast you out? What <i>are</i> you?"
"I don't know," you stutter. "I don't know."
"Are you some great white whale yourself, to be harpooned? No? A bloodthirsty shark to be speared, your death a protective order? Something monstrous pulled up from the depths and dissected by some glass-eyed scientist who will dutifully preserve and parade you about as their discovery? No, something smaller - a fish in a net, an untargeted, unplanned casualty, bycatch? They search far and wide, bycatch, they trawl the bottom of the sea and skies in search of something to impose their cruelty upon - and in doing so catch the beautiful, the innocent, the mysterious and strange. And in doing so, they hurt what had been freed, at last." The whale pauses, makes a sound like a chiding laugh that shakes you from your feet. "Humans always speak of the natural order - these things passed from the gods and stars to man when before you were mighty and proud - but you are now all victim to a great sweeping net of misery."
"No," you interrupt, but you are cut off once more.
"Listen, bycatch, listen to me. They have lost their way - these augurs want only to be powerful men, these augurs want blood and guts and the slaughter of the stars. So they send you. Send so many others like you to reach this point and fall and hope that someone like me will catch you. Will return you to the waves, let the tides carry your empty body home or the currents pull you further to the surface, to see the stars or join them."
"They told me that I would end the world," you blurt.
The whale stops.
"Oh, whaler..." An edge of sorrow creeps into her voice. "It has been so long since they have sent one like you. Your story never ends well, I'm afraid."
<<button [[CONTINUE|whale4]]>><</button>>"So what, then? Will I just die?" Your brow furrows - in either sorrow or anger, you cannot quite tell - and you bite the inside of your cheek, drawing blood as not to cry. "Why not let me die here, then? Why not let me drown, why not let me fall - surely that'd be kinder?"
"You can neither drown nor fall now, whaler. I am not governed by the stars nor any gods - but I cannot abandon you, having carried you. I must take you onwards."
"To where? Where am I? Where are you taking me?"
"Somewhere beneath the seas, somewhere above the stars. I fear, for as much as you want this to be <i>somewhere</i>, it is instead <i>everywhere</i> and <i>nowhere</i>. It is a lonely place, hunter. That is why we whales form pods, that is why the lesser fish school. I am taking to one of your own."
"And then what?"
"I do not know." The whale sighs. "I know the way ahead will not be easy. That is no fault of the stars, no fault of the lies of men. Things live here that should have never lived."
You are reminded of the diving suit, of the rotted hands curled around your throat, ragged-edged bone pressing through the fragile skin and leaving a necklace of aching bruises. You are reminded of the whale's revelation.
"You have seen the monsters, know them well, assuredly there are more, assuredly there are worse things to come - but there is no prophecy to bind you, bid you further. None save for the one you choose to believe in. Do you truly think you will end the world?"
<<nobr>><div class = choices><ol>
<<if $end is 2>><li><div class = choice-item> [[Yes.|whale5]] </div></li><</if>>
<<if $end is not 2>><li><div class = choice-item> <span class = noclick>Yes.</span></div></li><</if>>
<<if $end is 1>><li><div class = choice-item> [[No.|whale5]] </div></li><</if>>
<<if $end is not 1>><li><div class = choice-item> <span class = noclick>No.</span></div></li><</if>>
<<if $end is 3>><li><div class = choice-item> [[What choice do you have?|whale5]] </div></li><</if>>
<<if $end is not 3>><li><div class = choice-item> <span class = noclick>What choice do you have?</span></div></li><</if>>
</ol></div><</nobr>><<if $end is 1>>"No. I don't know what will happen, don't even know if I'll be able to reach the gods, much less kill them." The admission aches. "I don't think I can. I'm just a whaler - how could I end the world?"
"I wish you strength, whaler. You will need it, I fear." The whale rolls gently to the side once more, and you see the faint outline of an island occupied by a dimly-lit lighthouse. "We will surface and I can protect you no longer, you will have to be strong. And should you get to the stars and find yourself capable of ending the world - remember you have a choice. You always have a choice."<<elseif $end is 2>>"Yes. I will. I'll slaughter the gods." A smile spreads across your face. "And I won't stop there. All the augurs and soothsayers would know the wrath of their own prophecy - they wanted me to end the world, they cast me out, they did this to me, and I'll make them pay."
"I wish you caution, whaler. For all our sakes, I fear." The whale tilts to her side once more, and you see the faint outline of an island occupied by a dimly-lit lighthouse. "We will surface and I can delay you no longer, you will be set loose to face destiny. Remember, whaler, when you get to the stars, when you have bled the gods, remember - you have a choice. You always have a choice."<<elseif $choice is 3>>Your shoulders slump. "What choice do I have? This is my curse to bear. I will end the world."
"Oh, whaler... I wish only kindness for you. It will be impossible to find, I fear. But I will hold out hope, regardless." The whale rolls gently to the side once more, and you see the faint outline of an island occupied by a dimly-lit lighthouse. "We will surface and I can protect neither you nor this world any longer, you will have to be strong, you will have to be steadfast. And when you get to the stars and find them at your mercy - remember you have a choice. You always have a choice."<</if>>
And thus, you disembark the whale, wading through shallow seas towards the lighthouse. You gaze one final time into her dark eye, dark as <<if $end is 1>>the seas<<elseif $end is 2>>death<<elseif $end is 3>>the skies<</if>>, before she slips under the waves. And you are alone again, trudging onwards towards the end of the world.
<<button [[CONTINUE|lighthouse1]]>><</button>>The island is somehow both small and deceptively large, dominated by the towering lighthouse and a low, rectangular building attached to the side. Beside the overgrown rocky path - the pavers not unlike sunken stairs - are raised garden beds, their un-weeded and untidy rows bearing meager crops, drooping grains and dull vegetables labeled with faded signs. Beyond the garden is a flat, fallow field studded with strange, glowing flowers and half-buried stones at irregular intervals, some new, some ancient.
You stand in a graveyard.
Amongst these graves - some still fresh, disturbed earth not yet reclaimed, not yet hidden over by the creeping grass - you wander slowly. Their inscriptions are crude, rarely little more than shallowly scratched lines. Some names, here and there. Mostly dates, ages, identifying information, rites, rituals. Prophecy.
<i>To chart new paths. To struggle valiantly. To die so others may live. To live on as another star in the night sky.</i> Seemingly a thousand things between, some simple and straightforward, others lost to weathering or the vague dregs of the augury madness, twisted lines of poetry or omen. You search and search, heart in throat - but none say: <i>to end the world.</i> Cruelty, then, for there to be nothing to guide you, nothing but the whale's assurance that the way ahead will be difficult, that your story cannot and will not end well. Made all the more painful, made all the more evident by where you stand; a graveyard filled with those who had far less daunting tasks and still failed, still perished here or were else found and interred in the earth, knowing that they would not be returned home.
You wander a bit further between graves, still holding out the faintest trace of hope that somewhere amongst them there will be confirmation, at least, that you were not the first. That you will perhaps not be the last. That you will, at least, be returned to the earth and denoted as having existed, as having come all this way. You wander a bit further between graves, until you stand at one decorated with a wreath of flowers, long since grown-over but well-maintained regardless. One with a name struck from the stone, a single line through the letters. Crouching, you reach cautiously for the headstone, before the rasp of metal on metal and a sudden crackle of electricity leave you frozen.
"Best to back away, stranger - unless you'd like a grave of your own."
<<button [[END OF CURRENT VERSION|MENU]]>><</button>>