“Enlightenment is a fleeting pinnacle for mortals. More, and more you tumble from that great height.” So says the ruffian that perches on a flat rock with his legs crossed over each other.
Playful shadows seek him out to have a game, but find him deep in introspection.
“Each daily disappointment, every pointless detail heavy like iron weights. Only when contemplation cleaves the blackness you accept in place of the star, its radiance so diminished, shall it burn again!” His rousing voice eschews its violence as quickly as the fingers that stroke and pinch furry ears. “Because the ‘blackness’ isn’t another’s limitation.” When that dog he chooses to play with instead arrogantly whines and shakes its head, he rolls his arms while chuckling in a way ill suited for his daring face. “The color’s hue that can’t be recalled is because the rememberer is sleepy. The hue would always be right if the memory is mastered.”
Into a fire beside a crystal blue lake whose depths are obscured by night, like the blackness he speaks of, is where he gazes. “After all…” A campfire lighting the dark depths hints of romance, and he speaks in longing tones that assure it is coming. “It never changes, the ‘color’ of truth. If it has one we can ever grasp. ‘Eternal, every road leading to the Imperial Palace’, we all walk it…”
Again, the white, matted furry mutt out-sized for his lap whines when a strange place is named! It violently shakes its head with its tongue out, moaning despite the angst at how the campfire’s curiously orange-yellow-red, almost sun-like mixing of flames whips along with its head to distort ever further the colors into un-recognizability.
“Aha! Concentration evaporates.” And the flames sputter more with his laugh. “If a distraction so meager keeps us from that star we seek, then what happens in battle when mastery matters?”
A vicious bark, then a series of growls and yelps denies the fire going colder!
“‘Shouldn’t any thinking make it the right color again?’ What a grand mistake~. All lessons before walked the manyfold path TO first discovery. That demands ‘less being more’. But, now? ‘All roads lead to the heavens, but only the stairs bridging them deliver us there.’”
More whines, growls!
“… Proverbs, idioms, and wordplay are a lesson unto themselves.” As the viewer from all around closes on this ragged man sitting upon a stone by the shore and basking in the warmth that a dog stares into, a thought comes to the shadows’ mind that he shares himself immediately. “Our narrow ‘world’ within is struck by the wisdom it rejects at first as a contamination. As if our ignorance is more supreme…” The thought is that this scruffy vagabond waxes on with no known audience but this mutt that he indulgently strokes. Such a lowly scene is criminal for misrepresenting a wise man’s guise like he does.
“What we discover as true means we must change, not the world, lest we reject the promise of the revelation at hand.”
The silent, still lake ripples outward just then without the wind changing! He whispers this, despite it being the most important part of what he teaches!
“Looking inside is so much more beautiful once accepting that we, after all, are the clay, not the shaper. Until we are formed and fired, we must bide our time.” His usual machismo is lacking when saying that, but the fragility he masters of his true, unspoken feelings is unleashed!
And the shadows shift at the sad loss of a chance to add in just now about the world within and without…!
His rich-man-and-poor-man features are beautifully worsened by being a bum clothed in the glory of a soldier’s glorious chlamys cloak that treats it as something to sit upon.
“Isn’t your inner world screaming that ‘here feels best’?” How he reveals a goofy smile with his question cements his duality.
As the deepest shadows draw closer to their sphere of radiance, the dog barks and thrashes at its ears being massaged at their bases!
“Lame? The color is key? Haha, ‘ignoring the forest to focus on the tree’ fits now! Why should mastering anything be as easy as the ‘right color’? All my disciples… stubborn, yet also impatient.”
The shadows flinch at that, then pout without shame at the man who talks to himself about those very shadows…
Grabbing the dog’s snout to close off the ruckus, the man lifts it to stare into the disgusting mutt’s wide pink eyes.
“Let’s ask this, then: ‘what’s the strongest weapon a warrior can prepare for any battle?’”
Without a sound, the joyful darkness all around closes as if on cue. Enjoys how the mutt is silent, then groans, and finally barks happily while wagging its sleek silver tail so insipidly.
“‘What the enemy fears most, and definitely isn’t a sword’? That’s not…?” The cynical traveler shakes his head while smiling.
A chilling effect, how he appears approachably distant even when close.
“Terrible?”
Derisive with his smiles, always making you seem favored, but also dumb! This heroic figure from afar that wandered in, then made a home out of his grandiose offers to save the darkness from boredom.
“For a first try. I’ll agree that spears can be nicer, at least~?” He strokes his own rough stubble chin while musing, then grins at the hissing, spitting dog ready to leap off his lap. “Be happy! It’s not far from close.” The dog obediently melts into annoyed pleasure when he scratches its neck.
A pleasure he hoards is how others always stay with him through the hurtful indifference he feigns while pretending he’s not toying with them.
Only in this moment of indulgent personal contact is he distinct from the attractively callous man she knows him as, though.
So much more boyish than normal. Indulging, rather than goading into being indulged himself by masculine guile.
“Every time I’ve won, I’ve demonstrated this answer.”
Neither good nor bad, the differences rock the shadows that hesitate suddenly around a folk hero whose confident voice is supreme. Questioning what is felt, and why…?
“It’s not a weapon external. It’s honed solely within.”
The time has come, though, and all the doubts blow away with his surety!
The anticipation exceeds restraint when feeling his own rising!
As the dog yelps with surprise upon noticing, the night surrounding them stretches forth its arms to covet the man it seeks to beat to the conclusion.
“After all, the strongest weapon is…!
HNN!?”
Like the mutt, this braggart melts with the shock of pleasureful fingers sweeping over his neck. His talking, even breathing, ceases when he roughly exhales and moans with a rough voice!
“… an imagination that can envision absolute victory~!”
The night answers into his ear while smiling almost like he did. Just a bit more naughtily, and with the satisfaction of always being right in the important ways.
Stuck in the answer together,
her arms draw around his neck ready to hold him like she always tries to, but sees him always escape from to enjoy the pursuit longer.
In response, even if she finally surprised him so well, the sometimes teacher this man is swiftly lifts his own hands up,
Clasps them upon her arms…?
And…?
“Eh?”
She gulps when the stiff man she was grasping goes snake-like.
His head pops down through her tightening embrace, and the entirety of his lower body whips skyward. Like some rope released from too much tension, he drags his only favorite off her feet, too, and throws the dog toward the flat waters of the lake.
An exhilaration the shadow has never experienced has her airborne for only a moment to land on her back, and the excitement stretches on forever when staring up at a lifted foot inches from plunging through her face!
Over, and then standing, an acrobatic feat she’s never seen has made her totally his…!?
“‘Head over heels’… isn’t just a phrase!?” That’s all she can exclaim while failing to appear calm, her words rushed where his breathing isn’t.
With her teacher lifting his soled foot to crush her skull, and left stranded in a public display of total submission that doesn’t feel that horrible, being seductively coy is her last defense and best attack against the man who feels like he’s ready to rip her arms off with such…!?
“… What?” He blinks, tilts his head, then gapes while staring.
Enraptured so suddenly, his foot slowly drops to the side of her head to spare it.
The dog paws up while growling. He, however, can only stare now with wonder.
“The answer.” She smiles to hide the amazing insecurity racing through her! “How ‘close from far’ was it?” Puts him on the spot instead to share the strange pleasure she feels!
He’s gravely silent, blank, and then…
“Completely correct… it is.”
He drops her arms, even though she didn’t hint he should! Then he stumbles back a step, and finally hazards a tight smile.
“A strange, great sight to see you out strolling… ah, yeah, don’t consider it unwelcome! Despite…” He waves his hand swiftly to deny the strange attack he just performed. “I did invite you out. Just, not here…? But, you are up… HERE, now…?
How, ▓▓▓▓▓?”
The night shakes with the word that nobody can understand!
It’s out of place, suddenly, the word, and the man that threw her despite his usual passivity…?
The dog, too,
this LOATHSOME beast that barks at her!
Eligio has… never had a mutt before…!?
Scintillating grass floats around where she lays while clutching her head.
Plowed up by her sudden pull through it, if she could blink at how strange it is to lay within a rainbow, Still would put it to parchment as a dream she’s never had before.
“Still?” Again, he calls her name. Since no undead can sleep, this can’t be a dream.
Sprawling her out on the ground, Adris avoids stepping on the blue, lightly-flowing gossamer cloak that wraps around her breasts and right shoulder. Kol meanwhile tramples upon the similarly flowing, one-side-long dress that wraps around her hips and drapes over her left leg.
So open and free, even her dark burgundy hair curls without constraint now that she changed out of the defensive attire solely made for fencing.
The only similarity between her festive outfit usually worn and this one is the need for something like a long bluish-silver chain to cling to her. It wraps down her body from exposed left arm to exposed right leg… and for dark mesh to clad her everywhere but her head so that the tight links can demonstrate her bodily softness with cute indentations.
“No hat? Also, where did you… hah, find that?”
In one respect it remains a dream, though, because this boy standing over Still has a face so red with shock as he questions the mithril chain.
She traces it with her hand. This curious metal’s hue steals brightness from her figure to accentuate her blackened curves more strongly where bared, for it’s subtly different from the whip they both know.
“Entering the circle… I guess I should expect you to be able to eventually? Subvert this tree’s barrier.” He goads her further while reveling in it, he must be, by pointing out that she’s rising up from the mossy, grassy ground in a circle set in the boughs of a great, foreboding tree. “And it’s nice that you can demonstrate a beauty that finally isn’t so elvish. You… got something interesting you’re working on? That brings you to… well, us?”
Still’s unique vision captures how the redly pulsating tree detests something close that Adris might think is this “interesting plan”. So many vibrations in the pools of shadows surrounding them prove great magic at work even when it’s strictly invisible to Still.
“Puddle wasn’t called for! Boss came in rush to take over. Best part of day after so many elfs failed to teach ‘fire’!” The fieriest red looms over Still now with claws out. “Minion supposed to keep busy.” Anger makes the conjured red-yellow-orange failure mixture of flames behind Kol flare up too. “Boss made play area work again. No sneaky stuff used!” Not a campfire at all, floating flames are where the anger all around them swirls inward to be consumed. The way that Kol glances from Still to behind Still explains the ferocity.
“A meager effort.” Sharing a private smile, the half-masked braggart named Adris fehl Dain gestures toward the floating manifestation. “Anything elves can do with aura…”
The proof of existence swirls with all the colors of creation!
A word spoken lightly means everything, anything, and what should be…!
An enormous flight of rainbow wings covers the sky, blinding everything!
“… with time becomes my own plaything. A site of power as useful as this one should serve us.” Past Still Adris walks to plant a hand on Kol’s shoulder while Still recovers from the sudden flash of intuition. When the kobold continues growling, Adris just raises his upturned hand when peering into the flame.
It responds by stretching upward to follow his gesture while crackling.
“Though, this is the only spot within their ‘play pen’ that their queer fairy world still touches closely enough to draw it over.” Then he feigns boredom to turn back to Still. “Imagine how smug they usually are, yet how easily… grasped…”
When he snaps shut his fist, the flames snuff out.
“… their secrets become.”
“Boss, that was Kol’s lesson!”
“Oh. True. Well, then, your master says you’ll have to start over from the beginning.”
A dog speaks so clearly now, Still realizes with a jolt.
No more strange rollings of vowels.
“Puddle! Coming to something not wanted, already ruining things!” Whether it’s the time, place, or curing of her retardation, Kol easily conveys her words spoken next too. “Complain about Kol’s ‘effort’, but when Kol puts in, coming to tease!? Huh!?”
“Quite interesting isn’t this forest, Still?” Master and student, one hateful, the other teasing when asking questions in a different conversation. “There’s even a city out there, you know? Perhaps the world tree’s ancient core? Can you imagine the possibilities now?”
A devilish smile, the kind that is so wide and rictus that Still recoils within upon witnessing it.
Though, she can’t figure out why his usual unhandsome appearance suddenly disgusts so violently. Like he’s putrid, and vile, and should never betray such an expression if he belongs here!
… That’s what she paradoxically feels as she rises to her knees despite not caring to feel repulsed.
[Adris is Adris].
That simple truth unspoken silences the dissonance. For a moment.
As she rises, Still runs her hands through the grass that vibrates even now with the strange emissions of the hanging lanterns all around.
“For ~WARRIORS OF THE FIRST WINGS~ like Kol and I, there is no greater discovery than a place that can mirror our inner worlds.” Conspiratorially, Adris offers his hand to Still. “Only a witch like you could possibly understand. Right?” Goading an answer even now, begging for a reply…?
Still freezes, though, at the special words Adris uses; for, it’s the first time she’s ever heard himself use that title. Then, she turns prickly cold at being called what he refers to her as.
It feels ancient enough to wipe away the annoyance, though, that title applied to himself and the kobold.
… Mysterious?
Very mythical, and pompous!
While it’s also fanciful to be called conniving by a man who is the epitome of insincere, Still then feels.
So energetic about it, Still lets him take her hand. Upright now, Still basks in how he awaits her answers.
“Proverbs, idioms, and such all share ideas we’ve taken for granted. But, do we really understand them any more than the mere depth of their words without…?” Still does finally speak. Instead of granting Adris this answer, she strides past and addresses the stupid disciple that stares hatefully. “Everything in nature exists as it is, pure until disturbed and encountered… the scholars say.” Still lits her index finger to point at the misted forest surrounding them. “If you discover something out there that you’ve never experienced before, how would anyone know what to make of it?”
“Hah!? Stupid Puddle. If running into it, knowing what it is then!” Kol crosses her arms over her lifted breasts, arrogantly showing her chin! “Don’t need words, ideas! Will know from seeing.”
“Explains why there’s so many examples of what you’ve seen, but can’t make again just right?”
Lazily, Still points at a mess of ‘art pieces’ piled up next to where Adris and Kol once sat.
Malformed glass is blacker than it is red.
A painting on leafy canvas with a huge tear along one side is a melange of ill-fitting sun-like shades much like the flames Kol imagined.
Even the cut out cloth pieces, fluffy and light and begging to blaze up, are stitched together inadequately like a toddler might try to do and fail to make resemble a curling flame.
All Kol’s attempts at art to revive a color she can’t quite remake.
“Maybe, for you, a bit more study is needed?”
“Guh!? Not Kol’s fault! Worked before! Big flame of birds, climb also on poleaxe! But, when Kol tries to use on Puddle, not know why it won’t jump or burn the same. Feels… different. Less?”
“Then, perhaps words can reason out the feeling of ‘red’ you actually need to make that happen. Because… as the scholars say, what we know and understand, our ideas, we learn only from the natural realm the gods made us to play, and toil, within.”
Addressing the half-pint idiot only, Still struts luxuriously around them while glancing upward at the hanging, almost inert fairy lamps as her true interest.
“Natural realm? Hah? What’s more natural than fire? Need big words for it!?”
“Great point you made for me~. ‘Fire is fire’ is reductive to absurdity. Perspectives should widen, then? Consider a myth! If seeing a dragon for the first time, what am I to make of it?”
“Dragon is dragon!”
“Maybe this is why you’re so short? Too tiny, that description.” Still ignores using a similar truism just recently, because hers was suitably elegant! “Ignorance makes it so that we can barely recognize the beast at hand…”
While a shorter boy stays politely in her wake, trailing her while staring with captivated interest and an undisguised grin of admiration, Still lets her own amusement override her slight disappointment in his lack of difficulty in leading on.
“… since, fundamentally, our first impression might dumbly be… a ‘lizard’. Or serpent? Imagining from there comes the build up of its full truths in our mind happening so we can understand what’s before us… even when it’s so daunting!”
Snared so easily, and by what, is Adris?
He hangs on every syllable, especially the last ones that Still enunciates with emotion!
She’s a thousand percent correct with her lesson, and he assures that with each subtle change in the smiles he hides from Kol.
“A lizard, but huge, and it flies like a bird, and it’s a tyrant of fire and danger. That’s the reasoning that starts broadly and narrows to what frightens us. Reasoning is needed, because… just think! It defies our beliefs even if we might witness it, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe for idiot like Puddle. Kol, seen dragon: know well.”
That boast stops Still for a moment… because…?
It should be true, even for Still, if a memory seems right they did run into one in the evil place called a kitchen of hell? Though, it isn’t remembered without prodding.
“Kol, also knows: elfs hate Puddle! So, being here just huger distraction than ears being scratched!”
“Bad analogy, maybe? Practical demonstrations it is!” She shakes off her lacking explanation as she wiggles her bottom slightly. To the edge of the fairy circle she marches with Adris suddenly at her side.
“Still… you being here is quite, well…” Hesitant at first, his voice goes deeper. “Gratifying to me. However, even for a false god like myself, you seem interested in objects that might set off a certain indignant owl if you…?”
“There’s no owl present. And the dog is begging for a lesson just like our elf did. Can I really say no?”
“Elf…?” At his sudden interest, Still chides him.
“Doting, even when she’s not here? Adris, be brave.” He peers around disbelievingly of the owl being gone, even after. “She’s much better for her lesson.”
When opening his mouth after another girl’s name, he closes it when his cheeks go red upon hearing Still’s assurances finally directed at him.
Canny, his gaze is.
So deep now!
It’s comical that the one thing that Still could so easily bind his interest with is simply… her voice that’s now returned to her!
He refuses to even question it.
The fascination of males is like that. Rather than ask, they’d prefer to enjoy, wait for it to be revealed when it costs them nothing to watch!
In a way no one else ever has save for Neesiette, Adris’ red-black eyes glint with a phantom of infinite colors flashing when noting how her voice comes from the flower at her breasts, for his mind is already racing to unravel it…
“Very well, I permit it.” That is all he says in trust, then the pulsating redness of Adris’ figure races with a new arousal building. “Then, a little mischief can’t be helped… can it?” Tearing himself away when she only smirks at his question, Adris whistles when Still leaps a dozen feet upward after bending slightly!
“Nothing’s ever that complicated…!”
Onto a suspended fairy lamp she clings easily, the bulk of it only drifting a bit with her impact. She feels the vibrations as the spectral glow within zigzags wildly.
All about, the shadows ripple with some outward flow from each light, and the meetings of these emissions form a pattern Still cannot even dream of mastering.
“… ‘Wanting to play’ is all that matters for having our cake.”
With her palm flat against the lantern made of materials she’s never felt before, Still hopes that it will change height to allow some fun.
Without creaks, the lantern rises with Still on it.
The ripples in the shadows violently grow!
“Ho!?” Below, Adris hoots with a tremor down his arms. “The feeling… is heavier. And the distance is closer.”
“That’s one.” Still watches Kol’s scowl deepen, though the kobold now also turns left and right looking for something she doesn’t see.
“Do you know which ones need to be shifted?”
To answer Adris’ question, Still leaps to the closest lantern that seems to be resisting something with its emissions.
“Which? Whichever ones want the world quiet~!”
This one plunges instead of rising.
It stops when unwilling to go further, the fairy within shaking violently!
“You… are just guessing?”
To the semi-horrified question, Still leaps to a third after bouncing off two others.
“Educatedly!”
This third one shoots upward despite an impression of woe.
The vibrations in the shadows that seep around the spectral tree become roars of potency. Scintillating grasses below wave with unfelt currents of pelting wind in every which direction.
When the shadows seem like they can bear no more without tearing apart, Still drops to the grassy carpet with a rapturous rush of adrenaline.
“Whatever isn’t quiet is bound to be fun!”
Still claps her hands to the enjoyment of Kol poking at her own twitching ears, and Adris squinting at everything and nothing.
“Elves and restraint can’t meet. Why bother for us?”
“What’s point of another elf game?” Kol’s annoyance is an invitation to their lesson, which Still begins with gusto by marching up to the shorty.
“Before words, ideas were easier. A time of the gods. The sages also made a word for that era’s birth, where everything came from… [aether]?”
“‘Everything from nothing’, is it? Barbarians like their unprovable mysticisms about the origin of existence no matter which world it is.” Grasped in an instant, the false god with an uncanny knack for language grins with comprehension before she can even start.
“Meaningless word. How can nothing be something? Can’t be!” Kol counters them both with her arms crossed, but Still ‘holds’ the aether within her cupping hands for Kol to see.
“If you could smell it, you would believe in it, right?”
“Can show? … Umu, Kol doesn’t deny smelling.” The kobold’s ear twitches, then she relaxes slightly.
“Of course not. We know the world best by how we experience it. Everyone can’t experience it the same way, though…” Letting the aether go, Still taps… her cheek. “Or, can we? What fun we could find if meeting in the middle!”
The finger that tapped her cheek extends toward Kol, who flinches back when Still snaps her fingers.
A violent wake of shadows surrounding them roughly alters direction!
All three are encompassed by what moves them!
“Ghhh!? REEKS!?” The first to shake is Adris, who clutches his nose after the first breath. Still shakes too, though the experience is way less intense with the whole world always somewhat deadened!
“Hah? KOL!? Saying that Kol smells!?”
Particles invisible to the eye form distinctive clouds that snake from everywhere!
Especially from the small white-furred girl that wears a sweat-stained tunic after getting rid of her ridiculous swimsuit and equally infuriating virgin-killing dress.
“Why are you so… raunchy!?”
“Hah!? Insulting Kol more!?”
“It’s not intended as an insult, rather…!” When Adris steps back while heaving, he suddenly realizes that Kol is not the only source. “Everything smells… so… strong!”
“… Ugh, if I’d known this was the ‘fun’, I’d have dunked her first.” Still’s fierce denial is proof that all three have met with Kol as the place of joining.
“The grass… trees, even the haze the elves threw up!? Kol can smell something of them all. And…” Adris refuses to look at either of them now, just turning away to rub his temples after noticing he can’t block out smells even by breathing through his mouth. “How… are you both so…?”
“Needy?” Still’s half-jestful reply shuts Adris up, at least until Kol pulls her loose tunic away to sniff at herself.
“Smell, normal?”
“You’re always so pent up?” Adris questions that when licking Kol’s now-revealing tanned skin with his gaze.
“Ah? Meaning, what!? Boss… getting very push-down-able again!” The irate kobold’s ramrod tail only slackens when Adris sighs, wipes away the sweat on his brow, and makes a faint dismissal of apology with his left hand.
“Smell is one of the ancient senses… which might be better abandoned. Oh, but noble flowers would cry…?” Still manages to say that without sounding too annoyed. “Unique to each of us, scent is, until mingling. Beware them. Smells like… ‘smoky straw’…?”
“‘Fresh iron’ on an empty trail.” Adris adds his own when Still seeks another example. Both stare at each other deeply thinking for the third most dangerous scent, then jab their index fingers at each other.
““‘Flowery’ liquors.””
Spoken in unison, Still and Adris share a slow, long nod at the meaning floral scents hold for ‘poison added to the normal poison’ when you can’t even smell the alcohol anymore.
“Danger.” Adris intones that by himself, then clarifies for Kol when the runt looks for it. “Animals react to scent the quickest. As slow as humans are to it, even they know death’s smell before even consciously recognizing its deliverer.”
“Boss, smell like Kol can? True, if Boss can now, then lots to smell more than tall things do. Black Tide, all kobolds, smells more than danger. Tell us about people before speaking. From far away, even when they’re not there! Important meanings, at least. Even where to go underground, because we leave smells that say to!”
“Ah, that’s what Still did. Somehow, we share your capability. Just like we shared the same delusion while playing Ave’s game. And that is an interesting lesson, Kol.” Grinning again despite looking queasy, Adris pats Kol’s head. “Luckily for you, the keen ability to smell what you should be scared of also makes you a perfect conduit for others’ fears. I see… that’s the method. Your aura seeks scent as a path instead of sight or touch?”
“Method?”
“Kol… your ability to project fear isn’t just a flame. The dread all around you is uniquely an expansion of scent’s primal knowledge. It’s integral to your perspective of the world at hand, and something I must train you in with that in mind.”
“Hoh? Strange… Kol always smells fear, but never think… ‘scent can start burning’.” Stuck in pondering with a face never seen before, like she’s ill but also squinting, Kol muses quietly about the idea while Adris asks Still a question.
“Is smelling something you can do, Still?”
“… Not anymore. I’m just dabbling into yours, I think? Also, let’s be honest if you’ll believe me for once…” Still keeps slapping her head as if it’ll make it stop existing, this horrible smell of a bitch! “I’d rather stay dead forever than suffer this for a day while alive.”
“Aha, haha.” Adris chuckles at how Kol breaks from her trance and growls; but, Adris is already lifting his fingers toward Still before Kol can raise her claws. “Curious, Kol’s bestial prowess, but what about…?”
“Oh!?” Coyly Still shies away with pretend fright when Adris snaps his fingers!
RED
IN
BLACK
Arteries of pulsing potential course through everything, but never stay bound by physical limits.
“Ughhh!? D-D-Disgust… ing!” Kol closes her eyes, but Still enjoys how it doesn’t help!
“A world… only of what lives, and what doesn’t?” Adris is completely fine, however, which makes Still shift her hips with a failed joke to blame. “Beats of life flowing through… darkness? This darkness holds the shapes of everything solid?”
“Pools of forgotten meaning. A world that lives to spite everyone who would wish otherwise, it defies the potential for blood already shed to matter at all. Obscures horrors long past…” Still corrects him gently, then explains the terrifying, for them, normal world that she has inhabited since the very beginning. “… That’s what my patron would explain. But to me, everything, and everyone, has a flow from start to finish that exists within them and connects outward to everything else. When you move within what I perceive, you are simply mixing the same… ocean of currents and serpents stretched through it in a different way. If I follow these serpents, they will always lead me to… the living.”
It’s wonderful how both of them stare at her, with only the unnerved, but completely fascinated Adris, capable of comprehending even a bit. Kol lifts her arm to stare at an artery of pulsing red that snakes and squirms within her. Unlike the other kobolds Still has met, Kol has more of the thick and violent arteries that show potential to grow.
“NGGH!? Hurts.”
At least, one might have imagined growth before Kol bites her arm to try to grab it.
“Why are mine…?”
On the other hand, that Adris won’t finish his question both infuriates and arouses Still’s fun.
The pulsating arteries that overload his frail mortal form are whitish-yellow instead. They blaze within the darkness that envelops around them and gives the environment form through changes in orientation and depth and geometry.
“You’ve always been that distinct.” Still pulls her legs together, changing her posture with a natural aloofness as she cups her own cheek. “It’s really something, isn’t it~?”
“But… the same color is…?” Adris stares back at Still, then shuts his mouth.
A secret.
It annoys her so deeply in an instant!
Still can only wonder at what he sees, because she cannot stare inward. And it must be about herself, because this infuriating man only refuses to speak when he knows he should.
“‘Colors’ are sight, Adris.” It’s a chase, their relationship after all, Still muses without saying it openly; so, Still lets him get ahead again while shifting the topic. “What I am, how I navigate our world, there is so much layered over a sight that no others have… if they’re alive.”
“Lycia sees like this as well?”
“She hardly sees anything but little boys who will become toys.” Still flinches at the improper name coming up when it shouldn’t; but, no one will ever notice save Kol, who grins with her canines showing. “Truth is? I don’t know. I don’t bother other undead. Born of altered perspective or evil mutation…?” Still’s hand moves through a floating shadow between them, cutting it. “I don’t know where my sight comes from, but I know all I need to know through it. It’s enough for me.”
Underplaying the versatility of her sight does much to torment Adris when he squints in deep thought!
“Boring, what Puddle sees!” Tired of the disgusting universe that smells like horny kobold and drifts like a thick blood pudding, Kol shifts toward Adris with a grin.
“Boss time!”
“Ah? Ahhh, wait…!”
Adris’ hands raise too slowly to stop the furry snap!
Then, two people strike the grass head first at the same time.
Wings of rainbow slammed their heads!
“Mmm, that’s why I said to wait.”
“FFFFFAAAHHH!? BBBRIGHT!?” Kol screams her lungs out while clawing at her eyes to shut out what not even Still can hope to flee from!
A world as red as blood and black as shadow explodes into a storm of scintillating brilliance from everything that exists!
Milky halos and liquid cloaks draped over all created objects run rampant in Still’s consciousness. To even glance at a single blade of grass grants so much knowledge of it without any comprehension!
More than blinding, a deafening ringing drones along with the whispers of realization that also try to pinch at every nerve of their skin!
“THIS IS WHAT YOU SEE!?” Still screams this, torn between two extreme feelings!
Adris’ smile turns sheepish, then bold when he closes his eyes and sighs. “Let me try to block out some of it.”
The intruding energies, the very understanding of everything witnessed abates as if an eyelid shuts halfway. Still rises from the ground to find she can sit amidst the surrounding energies without convulsing.
Kol, too, rolls onto her back while her panting eases.
“Sight… is only some of it. My senses are a bit aggressive, just like I am. When I look upon the world, everything I make mine in view begs for me to comprehend it.” An arrogance so innate makes him sound humbly bragging! “What you see are… well, very simply said, spiritual manifestations of true natures. A {WARRIOR OF THE FIRST WINGS} learns to mix sight with touch and sound only after acclimating to the intensity of it, after expanding intellect and nurturing wisdom. Comprehending even a sampling of an aura necessitates… directed uplifting. Which, is odd, now that I think about it? Elves don’t cultivate, yet seem fascinated with vibrations over vision? But, overlaying hearing upon aura sensing is a skill we—or, rather, I have only begun to fully master…?” Adris’ musing is more sickening because he offers to pick Still up like she’s too weak to endure even this milky, overflowing dimension where everything she can perceive begs to be known to her! “I’ve often speculated about how the senses are united, somehow, at some point in the future or past in ou—mortals’ developments?”
“It’s the basis of aether and the elements. All senses are united in their desire to perceive the truth of existence. We all want to comprehend…” Still’s response silences him as he dutifully learns from her instead. She refuses his help, then rises while shaking. “The aetheric cosmos beyond the sky exists to be understood, and feared… so the gods declared this, at least. Perhaps it’s only one real question we all seek together. Searching through us for an answer… or so they’d say, those book-lovers~!”
“Fascinating, your scroll men.” Adris sneers at this comically, the… aura about him becoming wilder as his mood changes. “But I can’t hate that pretty answer! Yes, the universe began as one, and from that unified… ocean of creation, all existence was conceived of to circle the burning torch-like sun. We’re all in this together…”
“We don’t have one of those, though.”
“I did. That’s all that matters.”
Blacker than the underworld snuffed of flames, this man’s aura when he sneers at his own ultimatum.
Flashes of starlight waver within its depths when he’s thrilled by the jolt that runs through his witnesses.
With all three senses gifted to Still by her trickery to study him, Still can finally comprehend why she feels two completely diverging impressions about him: even how Adris sees the world makes his personal aura an affront to it in every way.
Isolated.
That one word strikes her so violently…
One side of her splits into wanting to rant, rave, and scream about how wrong he is for… being like THIS!? The isolation is wrong…!
He is wrong… even if that side can’t fully reject him, and feels drawn in.
The other half, though, doesn’t need to speak.
Moving to brush up against him, Still feels their… auras’ milky strength draw them closer. To see if she can reach him with his own ways, she strikes!
“Huh!? Turned white!”
Kol and Still both jump back from the sudden brilliant white light that bursts from Adris when Still finally touches him with the barest intensity of her aura!
“Ah, don’t draw back like you’re afraid, Still.” Giddy with obvious enjoyment, Adris combs back his spiky black hair and moans at her. “I deign to teach you all the fun you can have with my mighty omniscience.” He grins so desperately, shaking his head when Still blinks at the inversion of a black aura to this blinding, ugly one. “I have so many more secrets to share. And why not?”
Overly aggressive when sliding forward like he’s in a martial advance, and without tact when betraying no feeling with his subtle bodily movements…!
A boy that acts more like a bloodthirsty man smiles a flat, grim grin while offering to cup her cheek with the oppressive white radiance burning off his hand.
“Partners should understand each other… completely.”
That he wants her to want something sends a shiver all through Still.
A dangerous premonition at the undercurrent of mania that feels like it’s rising!
His surety collapses a bit with a sudden doubt flashing across his face.
The white aura dissolves into nothing and he steps back.
“… It’s as black as the cross now, is it?” He stares at his hand that now tortures the crisp air with conquering obsidian instead. Even when he flexes his fingers and the arteries of white-yellow within him circulate potential, the molasses aura won’t change color. “Tch, monotone? Red, blue, yellow, green, elements have colors, but I get to be ‘nothing’? Glad that I’m actually ‘everything’, eh?”
As if it wasn’t real, he just resumes his quiet, overbearing interest in Still.
Awaiting the next move that is frozen in confusion.
“Now,” Only briefly, because he ends it with a clap of his hands. “My mighty self heard you boast that you like ‘practical demonstrations’, Still? If you’re staying for Kol’s lesson, then I’ll gladly add someone useful into it.”
“Not need!” Kol howls that in defiance, but Adris is already stepping back from their little triangle at the center of the tree’s circle.
“We only learn a small part of what we hear because words cannot convey everything… just like Techniques so easily elude even our five senses when united in comprehending. So: let’s let our bodies explore the possibilities instead?”
“‘Bodies’? Kol, need to fetch elfs to mash for materials?”
A chance for pure amusement wipes away the infinite questions Still has.
Because she knows him — so — WELL,
The shadow of death leaps to decide their game!
“FFF-‘FUCKING’ PUDDLE!?” A kobold swings her head wide when off her cheek flows black vigor! “Backstab Kol!? AGAIN!?” Kol lunges forward in rage, only for the source of her frustration to bend backwards like a reed to duck a jumping claw swing aimed at Still’s own face. Just as swiftly, Still leaps sideways to roll upright before Kol can body slam her.
“After saying… will try to get along!?”
“We are getting along!” Still slides to a stop, lifting an extended short blade that drips blackness from its tip and resembles most a curved design that Still remembers only from a dream. “What I just did… can’t be considered worth the slight pinprick that feels like? We’re sharing senses now. I hurt you, you hurt me, we can finally clear the air by feeling it together. Isn’t that fun!?” A genuine shout of amusement balks Kol’s advance.
“HAH!? What stupid reason would Kol have for…?”
“Playing a game? Maybe, not wanting to lose?”
“Game!? How!?” Kol stomps closer now, staring at the blade that came from nowhere.
“If we’re not allowed to hate each other, then we should…”
Still’s free hand grasps the empty air, and from it she draws a duplicate blade from pure nothingness.
“… ‘Spar’, of course~. Between students of the same teacher, surely you’ll have to start calling me ‘big sister’ or something?”
With a wink and a flick of her blade tips, Still brings one disciple around to their next lesson.
“Teacher… is…!”
Without being taught how, Kol’s bulging arms and a full turn of her upper body wrenches a misbegotten poleaxe loose from the rainbow auras rising from the grasses!
“KOL’S! NOT YOURS!”
“Since you can howl so loud, then let me teach you to sing.”
A line like that makes the next leap by the circling Still feel, especially when aiming her blades at an undefended back, so criminal!
The lust for red potency guides hopes for worse offenses. Reeking rage and an expanding heated aura from Kol’s will promises a fight like no other!