Despondence was the usual state for mermineae.
It was the frustrating, terrible, hopeless state of the world they were forced to live that birthed nothing but cynicism. Mermineae feared each day would be their last. Death was so common amongst the race that by the time one was an adult, they would be numb to the pain of loss.
Caavaa had lost so many close to him, and yet he still felt dismay in his chest at the demise of his two most recent partners. He’d known they would die. He thought he would die.
The infiltration amongst the traitors had gone smoother than they could have hoped, but the successful mass-ambush was still not enough to compete with the sheer numbers. They’d successfully assassinated as many traitorous Forvaal as they could, sacrificing thousands for the effort, but once he’d seen the power of the Viisin, he questioned whether those deaths were even necessary.
He’d stayed close to Aana and Muuro, hoping to protect them once the element of surprise was lost, but they had been unlucky. Their kills had been clean, yet they weren’t prepared for the retaliation. Caavaa had arrived only seconds after his own kill. That was still too late.
Everything had devolved to chaos after that. The Viisin joined in a brawl, tearing through more of his kind than the outsiders as they butchered their way forward.
Caavaa had fled. It may not be his proudest moment, but in a battle like that, where even the skies turned against them, nothing short of the Viisin could compete. The Viisin did compete, and now two lay dead. Beaten by the power of an outsider.
It was the first time he’d seen the strength of the Viisin, but it wasn’t a surprising sight. They’d been given their power from god herself. What was downright baffling, was that the outsider not only stood toe to toe with Kalma’s chosen, he actually killed one. It was unthinkable.
With his belly close to the earth, he ran at full-pelt until the Temple came into view. It was not a place any merminea liked to be, but there was no choice for many. The slaughter that would follow should Kalma decide the mermineae were lacking in their dedication would take many years to recover. Caavaa lost eight siblings and his mother in the last culling.
Thankfully, she’d remained appeased for the past few years, so no major disaster had occurred since.
Caavaa knew that if she ever found out about the current issues, the punishment would be far worse than they could imagine.
As much as he didn’t want to be here, he had a job to do. Taanoraa and Saad had tasked him with bringing information to the Viisin Neero. It was vexing that the two of them weren’t doing this themselves. Bad enough that they didn’t contribute to the battle at the tunnel, they had to slide this responsibility onto him?
The two of them had lost both their sight and the gift of decay with excessive use, but they still had far greater strength in their bodies than most Forvaal. Lives as long as theirs were a rarity.
As his seniors, Caavaa couldn’t argue against them, no matter how much he thought they were self-centred pricks.
The Temple was a mighty structure. Built with generations of hard labour by his predecessors. Wide and sloping upward, it was designed to survive the intense winds of the Euroclydon’s regular flights.
A flight of stairs rose on both sides of the pyramid, leading to Kalma’s throne; a room of comforts, where the god spent most her time.
Mermineae didn’t like structures, it went against their very nature. A large blemish on the land like this would leave them exposed for leagues around. But what Kalma orders, she gets.
The most horrible thing about the structure is that if you are on the top half of the pyramid when the Euroclydon spreads its wings, death is assured. Reaching the earth before the blast hits would be impossible, and taking refuge in Kalma’s throne would result in a fate worse than death.
Caavaa made his way past the Field of Discipline, where the pained screams and wheezes of gradually decaying mermineae dug into his ear. As with every time he’d been here, he tried his hardest to keep his eyes locked on the dirt below so that the rotting, living bodies of his kin didn’t disturb him.
As always, it failed.
He swallowed a nervous knot in his throat as the scent of decomposing flesh burnt his snout. He had to hold his breath to push on without retching. It wouldn’t be pleasant to attract attention to himself.
Caavaa crawled his way up the stairs, nearly slipping a few times on the smooth stone. Before he breasted the final steps, he took a deep breath and suppressed any emotion that might show on his face.
As soon as he took a step over the ledge, a wave of pressure crashed into him. He pressed his body close to the ground on instinct, trying to make himself as small as possible.
The presence of the god was suffocating.
He would prefer to keep his head bowed and crawl back down the Temple, but doing so was more likely to drag Kalma’s attention to him. He strained the muscles of his neck against an intense instinctual desire to freeze and hide. Slowly, he brought his head away from the ground, and tried his hardest to glance toward Viisin Neero without observing the god.
He failed.
Kalma lay on a large cushion crafted by an enslaved centzon with a mixture of down and fur that he assumed only a small portion was merminea’s, considering the lack of camouflage.
The god was completely hairless. If Caavaa wasn’t so terrified, he might have considered it ugly. Her small stature and thin, almost emaciated body belied her overwhelming strength.
Caavaa stifled a sigh of relief at the fact she wasn’t looking his way. Her temper was known to explode at the smallest of things. It was best to keep even the smallest of noises stifled.
“Hmm… these are delectable. Where did you find them?”
Every fibre of his being froze, screaming at Caavaa not to move. The voice washed over him without intensity, and yet parts of himself melted away, only to be replaced before he could feel pain. Each word brushed through his being and scraped at everything he was.
Kalma took a bite out of a strange white fruit. Her upper fangs protruding outside the lip of her mouth as she swallowed the last bite. She snatched another out of the hands of a young, trembling Forvaal standing by her side.
“Thank you, Goddess Kalma. My two children died to retrieve these from the wall of the great trench.” The jill let sadness reach her face as she stood there with the bundle of fruits in her arms. “It’s a shame, they—”
“Shut up,” Kalma snapped.
Caavaa tensed, knowing the Forvaal likely wouldn’t live the next few moments.
Surprisingly, nothing happened. The god continued eating in her laid back posture. Nobody died. No one was screaming.
She must be in a good mood.
Kalma’s tails waved gracefully through the air. Both thin limbs just as grey as the rest of her skin. It was the best indicator they had to tell she was exceptionally happy right now. For what reason, Caavaa didn’t know. But it meant she still had absolutely no clue about the traitors’ escape attempt.
Still prone at the entrance to Kalma’s throne, Caavaa finally locked eyes with the Viisin he needed to talk to. In as close proximity as they were to the god, the Viisin appeared rather normal, lacking the cloak of dust that expelled from them everywhere they went. Neero looked like any other merminea, except for the empty eye-sockets in his head.
The Viisin bowed their heads toward Kalma, before lowering their chest to the ground and pacing to Caavaa’s side. One of the god’s large ears resting at the top of her head twitched toward Neero as he brushed by Caavaa and down the Temple’s steps. Caavaa moved to follow, wanting to be as far from Kalma as soon as possible. But just as he’s about to follow down the steps, he risked a glance back.
Kalma’s large eyes dug into his chest. Her curiosity terrifying considering the information he hid. Laying further back on her cushion, she hung her head back and flashed him a sinister grin. The fact she’s relaxed does nothing to calm the sudden panic that gripped him. He couldn’t tear his eyes from hers.
She knew. She knew and was only playing with them.
Caavaa found his breaths coming in shorter and shorter gasps. With each moment her eyes pierced him, his terror rose and hyperventilation intensified. Only when he was tugged out of her sight by a jerk to his tail, was he able to snap out of the onset of panic.
He didn’t move, letting himself be dragged down the steps by the Viisin, expecting the god to come and send him off for punishment amongst the other in the Field of Discipline. But Kalma didn’t come. Like the jill before, he was let off.
She didn’t know.
Relief overwhelmed him so much that it takes a moment to realise the Viisin has dragged him halfway down the Temple. He scurried out of his grasp and joined Neero in his descent.
“You have news, I take it?” Neero didn’t delay.
Caavaa sent a nervous glance back, concerned they were still within hearing range. “Yes.”
Without another word, Neero led him past the decaying mermineae. Kalma’s power able to keep them alive for as long as she liked, tormenting those she despised with never-ending pain.
As the two reached a secluded space, the Viisin turned to Caavaa. “Speak.”
He struggled to collect his thoughts. Usually Caavaa was better than this, but the few moments he’d been the focus of Kalma’s attention had left him unsettled. Neero glared at him expectantly, the lack of eyes doing nothing to diminish the Viisin’s scrutiny.
“The mission was a failure; the path remains open,” he said. “Two Viisin are dead.”
Neero grunts, his voice much harsher than a moment ago. “I know. I killed one of them.” The shroud of ash slowly fell off the Viisin, apparently too far from Kalma to suppress it. “Tell me of the outsiders.”
Caavaa frowned in consideration. Had his two seniors really sent him only to report that the outsiders could no longer close the tunnel? He’d thought the deaths of the Viisin were the most important detail to deliver. It wouldn’t be long before Kalma realised their presence missing.
“They won’t be able to reseal the entrance. Most have returned through the Alps.”
Neero looked strangely unconcerned. They’d have very little hope of stopping the flood now that the path was not only open, but widened.
“Most?” The Viisin asked.
“We’ve had reports of three outsiders that have not returned to their lands. Two of which travel together and aren’t much worth themselves. The other is the lightning elemental that instigated the mess that battle became. Neither, I believe, is capable of resealing the hole.”
Neero hums. The sound growing course as his throat struggles to keep from falling apart under the accelerating decay. “You may leave.”
Caavaa doesn’t need to be told twice. He turns and doesn’t look back.
Neero waited as the coward left his sense range, ignoring the growing agony assaulting every fibre of his being. Paying it any attention was a mistake only the young made. The squirming, screaming, and whimpering forms of the mermineae in punishment blazed in his inner eye.
They hardly had much decay eating through them, but each pleaded for death. He suppressed a snarl as he walked through the Field of Discipline, uncaring where he placed his foot or how many breaks and cuts he caused. They were weak, unable to handle even the slightest pain, and yet they dare annoy him with their incessant whining.
He started back up the stairs of the Temple, idly noting that the stairs had worn away in the Titan’s winds. He would have to have them replaced. Again.
The only senses he’d kept with the ‘gift’ Kalma had given him, was hearing. All else withered away with the constant deconstruction of his body. Though, he’d long lost his sight even prior to the ‘gift’.
In place of his old senses, he’d gained a new one. One reliant entirely on observing decay. It was not something he’d have originally thought would be a good way to see, but apparently, everything was falling apart on its own ever so slowly. His own body shone in his sight, and while the stone steps beneath him were dull, they were still visible.
Only the god herself, he couldn’t see. Kalma was like a void, completely invisible if not for the very air itself being ever so slightly visible. The path left by the Titan as it tore through the Euroclydon’s hunting grounds was the only thing that came close.
The Viisin returned to Kalma’s throne to find she’d already cleared the room of any other merminea. The god, relaxed on her cushion and facing Neero, exerts pressure through his body. Unlike before, where he returned to the state he’d lived before her ‘gift’, he now decayed at an accelerated rate. A mountain of dust flowed down the Temple behind him.
He forced himself not to gasp for air, despite the intense breathlessness that came from his lungs disintegrating in his chest.
“Are you going to tell me? Or do you feel like waiting a bit longer?”
“The outsiders are on their way home,” he choked out. “Only the lightning elemental that killed my partner remains a threat.”
“Wonderful!” she cheers, not letting up on the deconstruction of his body. “Go find the three on foreigner hunting duty and make sure the elemental won’t be a problem.”
He bows and crawls back the way he came. Now he had to find the other Viisin under her direct orders and go hunting.
The mermineae were fools to think Kalma wouldn’t know.
She always knows.
Despondence was the usual state for mermineae.
It was the frustrating, terrible, hopeless state of the world they were forced to live that birthed nothing but cynicism. Mermineae feared each day would be their last. Death was so common amongst the race that by the time one was an adult, they would be numb to the pain of loss.
Caavaa had lost so many close to him, and yet he still felt dismay in his chest at the demise of his two most recent partners. He’d known they would die. He thought he would die.
The infiltration amongst the traitors had gone smoother than they could have hoped, but the successful mass-ambush was still not enough to compete with the sheer numbers. They’d successfully assassinated as many traitorous Forvaal as they could, sacrificing thousands for the effort, but once he’d seen the power of the Viisin, he questioned whether those deaths were even necessary.
He’d stayed close to Aana and Muuro, hoping to protect them once the element of surprise was lost, but they had been unlucky. Their kills had been clean, yet they weren’t prepared for the retaliation. Caavaa had arrived only seconds after his own kill. That was still too late.
Everything had devolved to chaos after that. The Viisin joined in a brawl, tearing through more of his kind than the outsiders as they butchered their way forward.
Caavaa had fled. It may not be his proudest moment, but in a battle like that, where even the skies turned against them, nothing short of the Viisin could compete. The Viisin did compete, and now two lay dead. Beaten by the power of an outsider.
It was the first time he’d seen the strength of the Viisin, but it wasn’t a surprising sight. They’d been given their power from god herself. What was downright baffling, was that the outsider not only stood toe to toe with Kalma’s chosen, he actually killed one. It was unthinkable.
With his belly close to the earth, he ran at full-pelt until the Temple came into view. It was not a place any merminea liked to be, but there was no choice for many. The slaughter that would follow should Kalma decide the mermineae were lacking in their dedication would take many years to recover. Caavaa lost eight siblings and his mother in the last culling.
Thankfully, she’d remained appeased for the past few years, so no major disaster had occurred since.
Caavaa knew that if she ever found out about the current issues, the punishment would be far worse than they could imagine.
As much as he didn’t want to be here, he had a job to do. Taanoraa and Saad had tasked him with bringing information to the Viisin Neero. It was vexing that the two of them weren’t doing this themselves. Bad enough that they didn’t contribute to the battle at the tunnel, they had to slide this responsibility onto him?
The two of them had lost both their sight and the gift of decay with excessive use, but they still had far greater strength in their bodies than most Forvaal. Lives as long as theirs were a rarity.
As his seniors, Caavaa couldn’t argue against them, no matter how much he thought they were self-centred pricks.
The Temple was a mighty structure. Built with generations of hard labour by his predecessors. Wide and sloping upward, it was designed to survive the intense winds of the Euroclydon’s regular flights.
A flight of stairs rose on both sides of the pyramid, leading to Kalma’s throne; a room of comforts, where the god spent most her time.
Mermineae didn’t like structures, it went against their very nature. A large blemish on the land like this would leave them exposed for leagues around. But what Kalma orders, she gets.
The most horrible thing about the structure is that if you are on the top half of the pyramid when the Euroclydon spreads its wings, death is assured. Reaching the earth before the blast hits would be impossible, and taking refuge in Kalma’s throne would result in a fate worse than death.
Caavaa made his way past the Field of Discipline, where the pained screams and wheezes of gradually decaying mermineae dug into his ear. As with every time he’d been here, he tried his hardest to keep his eyes locked on the dirt below so that the rotting, living bodies of his kin didn’t disturb him.
As always, it failed.
He swallowed a nervous knot in his throat as the scent of decomposing flesh burnt his snout. He had to hold his breath to push on without retching. It wouldn’t be pleasant to attract attention to himself.
Caavaa crawled his way up the stairs, nearly slipping a few times on the smooth stone. Before he breasted the final steps, he took a deep breath and suppressed any emotion that might show on his face.
As soon as he took a step over the ledge, a wave of pressure crashed into him. He pressed his body close to the ground on instinct, trying to make himself as small as possible.
The presence of the god was suffocating.
He would prefer to keep his head bowed and crawl back down the Temple, but doing so was more likely to drag Kalma’s attention to him. He strained the muscles of his neck against an intense instinctual desire to freeze and hide. Slowly, he brought his head away from the ground, and tried his hardest to glance toward Viisin Neero without observing the god.
He failed.
Kalma lay on a large cushion crafted by an enslaved centzon with a mixture of down and fur that he assumed only a small portion was merminea’s, considering the lack of camouflage.
The god was completely hairless. If Caavaa wasn’t so terrified, he might have considered it ugly. Her small stature and thin, almost emaciated body belied her overwhelming strength.
Caavaa stifled a sigh of relief at the fact she wasn’t looking his way. Her temper was known to explode at the smallest of things. It was best to keep even the smallest of noises stifled.
“Hmm… these are delectable. Where did you find them?”
Every fibre of his being froze, screaming at Caavaa not to move. The voice washed over him without intensity, and yet parts of himself melted away, only to be replaced before he could feel pain. Each word brushed through his being and scraped at everything he was.
Kalma took a bite out of a strange white fruit. Her upper fangs protruding outside the lip of her mouth as she swallowed the last bite. She snatched another out of the hands of a young, trembling Forvaal standing by her side.
“Thank you, Goddess Kalma. My two children died to retrieve these from the wall of the great trench.” The jill let sadness reach her face as she stood there with the bundle of fruits in her arms. “It’s a shame, they—”
“Shut up,” Kalma snapped.
Caavaa tensed, knowing the Forvaal likely wouldn’t live the next few moments.
Surprisingly, nothing happened. The god continued eating in her laid back posture. Nobody died. No one was screaming.
She must be in a good mood.
Kalma’s tails waved gracefully through the air. Both thin limbs just as grey as the rest of her skin. It was the best indicator they had to tell she was exceptionally happy right now. For what reason, Caavaa didn’t know. But it meant she still had absolutely no clue about the traitors’ escape attempt.
Still prone at the entrance to Kalma’s throne, Caavaa finally locked eyes with the Viisin he needed to talk to. In as close proximity as they were to the god, the Viisin appeared rather normal, lacking the cloak of dust that expelled from them everywhere they went. Neero looked like any other merminea, except for the empty eye-sockets in his head.
The Viisin bowed their heads toward Kalma, before lowering their chest to the ground and pacing to Caavaa’s side. One of the god’s large ears resting at the top of her head twitched toward Neero as he brushed by Caavaa and down the Temple’s steps. Caavaa moved to follow, wanting to be as far from Kalma as soon as possible. But just as he’s about to follow down the steps, he risked a glance back.
Kalma’s large eyes dug into his chest. Her curiosity terrifying considering the information he hid. Laying further back on her cushion, she hung her head back and flashed him a sinister grin. The fact she’s relaxed does nothing to calm the sudden panic that gripped him. He couldn’t tear his eyes from hers.
She knew. She knew and was only playing with them.
Caavaa found his breaths coming in shorter and shorter gasps. With each moment her eyes pierced him, his terror rose and hyperventilation intensified. Only when he was tugged out of her sight by a jerk to his tail, was he able to snap out of the onset of panic.
He didn’t move, letting himself be dragged down the steps by the Viisin, expecting the god to come and send him off for punishment amongst the other in the Field of Discipline. But Kalma didn’t come. Like the jill before, he was let off.
She didn’t know.
Relief overwhelmed him so much that it takes a moment to realise the Viisin has dragged him halfway down the Temple. He scurried out of his grasp and joined Neero in his descent.
“You have news, I take it?” Neero didn’t delay.
Caavaa sent a nervous glance back, concerned they were still within hearing range. “Yes.”
Without another word, Neero led him past the decaying mermineae. Kalma’s power able to keep them alive for as long as she liked, tormenting those she despised with never-ending pain.
As the two reached a secluded space, the Viisin turned to Caavaa. “Speak.”
He struggled to collect his thoughts. Usually Caavaa was better than this, but the few moments he’d been the focus of Kalma’s attention had left him unsettled. Neero glared at him expectantly, the lack of eyes doing nothing to diminish the Viisin’s scrutiny.
“The mission was a failure; the path remains open,” he said. “Two Viisin are dead.”
Neero grunts, his voice much harsher than a moment ago. “I know. I killed one of them.” The shroud of ash slowly fell off the Viisin, apparently too far from Kalma to suppress it. “Tell me of the outsiders.”
Caavaa frowned in consideration. Had his two seniors really sent him only to report that the outsiders could no longer close the tunnel? He’d thought the deaths of the Viisin were the most important detail to deliver. It wouldn’t be long before Kalma realised their presence missing.
“They won’t be able to reseal the entrance. Most have returned through the Alps.”
Neero looked strangely unconcerned. They’d have very little hope of stopping the flood now that the path was not only open, but widened.
“Most?” The Viisin asked.
“We’ve had reports of three outsiders that have not returned to their lands. Two of which travel together and aren’t much worth themselves. The other is the lightning elemental that instigated the mess that battle became. Neither, I believe, is capable of resealing the hole.”
Neero hums. The sound growing course as his throat struggles to keep from falling apart under the accelerating decay. “You may leave.”
Caavaa doesn’t need to be told twice. He turns and doesn’t look back.
Neero waited as the coward left his sense range, ignoring the growing agony assaulting every fibre of his being. Paying it any attention was a mistake only the young made. The squirming, screaming, and whimpering forms of the mermineae in punishment blazed in his inner eye.
They hardly had much decay eating through them, but each pleaded for death. He suppressed a snarl as he walked through the Field of Discipline, uncaring where he placed his foot or how many breaks and cuts he caused. They were weak, unable to handle even the slightest pain, and yet they dare annoy him with their incessant whining.
He started back up the stairs of the Temple, idly noting that the stairs had worn away in the Titan’s winds. He would have to have them replaced. Again.
The only senses he’d kept with the ‘gift’ Kalma had given him, was hearing. All else withered away with the constant deconstruction of his body. Though, he’d long lost his sight even prior to the ‘gift’.
In place of his old senses, he’d gained a new one. One reliant entirely on observing decay. It was not something he’d have originally thought would be a good way to see, but apparently, everything was falling apart on its own ever so slowly. His own body shone in his sight, and while the stone steps beneath him were dull, they were still visible.
Only the god herself, he couldn’t see. Kalma was like a void, completely invisible if not for the very air itself being ever so slightly visible. The path left by the Titan as it tore through the Euroclydon’s hunting grounds was the only thing that came close.
The Viisin returned to Kalma’s throne to find she’d already cleared the room of any other merminea. The god, relaxed on her cushion and facing Neero, exerts pressure through his body. Unlike before, where he returned to the state he’d lived before her ‘gift’, he now decayed at an accelerated rate. A mountain of dust flowed down the Temple behind him.
He forced himself not to gasp for air, despite the intense breathlessness that came from his lungs disintegrating in his chest.
“Are you going to tell me? Or do you feel like waiting a bit longer?”
“The outsiders are on their way home,” he choked out. “Only the lightning elemental that killed my partner remains a threat.”
“Wonderful!” she cheers, not letting up on the deconstruction of his body. “Go find the three on foreigner hunting duty and make sure the elemental won’t be a problem.”
He bows and crawls back the way he came. Now he had to find the other Viisin under her direct orders and go hunting.
The mermineae were fools to think Kalma wouldn’t know.
She always knows.
