PartridgeKing
Sybarite
Posts : 253
Join date : 2011-11-08
 |  Subject: 'Conclave of Biel-Tan' & 'The Blade'  Mon Jul 06 2015, 18:43 | |
| I wrote the following as alternatives when I couldn't decide which story I wanted to tell for the Hidden Library this year. My actual submission is here: Debt Collection But I couldn't not post these too, so I give you: Conclave of Biel-Tan- Spoiler:
“Great ones of Biel-Tan I call upon the council for the floor. There is a matter on which I may hold silent no longer.
I thank you and stand before you; Autarch Saef Lul’thanish of the 3rd host, slayer of the green tide, defender of the sleeping worlds W’ultny, Arrab’ch, Tis’tay and the peoples of P’thain.
Our thirsty cousins are those I would speak of and call for conclave regarding. We know of the Commorrites and of their thirst, their predations that do nothing to benefit our kind and yet we do nothing. And by the millennial span their thirst has only grown.
I can feel the concern hanging around you lord seers. Why do I use that word, that specific word? Thirst.
Hunger can be sated. It can be filled. Thirst can only be quenched. Drowned in liquid like the fire it is.
And that is what I say we do. We drown that thirst in its own blood. We drown that canker city, that rotting fruit that was the jewel of our empire and now sits as the mouth of a great and bottomless well to our great enemy herself. For what are they? Not kin. No surely not.
Look into their hearts. See with witch-sight if you must. But see that they are not Eldar!
They are merely the puppet mouths of She Who Thirsts latched deep in this realm. A parasite for the dark god that is our ancient enemy!
How would you stand and say my war is not just? Is not right. You claim that they are counted amongst our number, an equal part of the return of our rightful Empire and ones who would hold our galaxy once more? Would you do the mon’keigh disservice enough to call a tick their kin, and think it more than insult? Would you call a number engine kin to Yngir?
Though both are enemy to us, we at least hold to them honestly. Yet we afflict ourselves and our memory doubly with belief that the Commorrites are not only our equals but our cousins. I say this to you all now, and to all who would hear me.
I am kin to no daemon! Are you?”
Excerpt from the address of Autarch Saef Lul’thanish to the Council of Biel-Tan.
and The Blade- Spoiler:
The edge is chipped. This is not significant, merely obvious. The bronze shimmers coldly in the dawnlight, not with power or arcane purpose, just reflected photons. A hand, gloved, gauntleted in viridian rests close by, but not for use. Grav-engines cause a hum to vibrate the metal, barely audible even to the delicate senses of its owner. Wind steals the slight star-heat from the metal, faster now, whipping around the blade. Moisture beads forming and immediately streaking, reaching the boundary between razor sharpness and air, and flying free, cast once more aside. This liquid does nothing for the weapon. Tasteless through pollutants, empty of any worth. It thirsts still.
It plummets downwards, still not in use. It spirals outward, slightly away from the body it is tied to. Centrifugal motion tugging, its own desire pulling, desperate to land in hand. Or to slash at misguided fingers.
The angle changes sharply and chips of lambent green fly from where brazen metal catches lacquered paint. Still nothing, chemical tang, but empty still.
The stink of ozone and a wash of chill energy, a flash of half-frost crawls across the metal, gone as quick, nothing stays but the tremulous resonance from the nearby cannons firing. Close now. When the weapon fires, it means they are close. First the cannon, then the rifle, last the leap and the blade. Oh the blade knows this dance well, anticipation wells within it. So very soon now.
Jinking motion thrown back and forth, the ritual steps move on. Almost leaping in eagerness, the knife sings as it raps a beat against curved plates again and again, the tempo a clattering premonition of what it will feel soon.
Momentum slips from it as the snap-crack of rifles begins; whispered poisoned slivers set the screams going and the air goes sharp with pain, tangible threads of agony waft over it. Nothing to it, no worth in that. Not for the blade. But oh now how soon, the moment a slashing instant of stolen time away.
The leap. There it is. That lift and drop and sudden stillness. Solidity beneath now not speeding craft.
The air hints at it, the scent cloying, sweet, oh so sweet, so close. It aches, so close.
Envy flares at the sound of meat being parted, bayonet; haft deep in warm bubbling wetness, glutting on it. The knife impatient now, fearing to be forgotten, to return still thirsty.
Fingertips brush it. It screams the silence of metal and is not drawn. Spattering falls close by, but not close enough. Others all around are drinking deep but still not it. The odour heavy, thick and all around, but not enough. Then grasped, pulled up and sharply out, the edge singing its joyful shriek, a deathknell for the life it cuts. In the moment of passage the blade drinks, bronze stained red, warming with the heat of hearts, of throats-blood fresh. But freed from flesh, in air once more, still so very thirsty.
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