Beyond - Legends Hoth (Post NJO, Vong, Drama, Spiritual) Updated 10/4

Title: Hoth
Author: Art_of_War
Characters: OCs (Vong)
Genre- Drama/Spiritual
Summary- Here on Hoth does this exiled warrior yet pray to dead gods.
Notes: 10 years post NJO; Inspired partly by both T.S. Eliot,Cormac McCarthy and by the OC Database April 2007 Challenge. Odd phrases and the lack of certain grammatical marks completely intended. Updates will occur monthly unless completed ahead of schedule.
Disclaimer: George owns it all.

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Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again.

Ash Wednesday- T. S. Eliot


Twilight Atlas- The World- Encounter with the Judges-Qualities of a Slumber
-Fulfillment- The Ship and the Dead and the Woman- Mending of Flesh

******

Under the twilight of that year, the warrior sat atop the summit of the cordillera like some dark and leprous atlas, gaunt limpid arms outstretched and hands risen up as if to hold some unseen and pillaged altar bereft of its tapestries and its sacristies poured out as of blood, clad in only the nacre scars like popped pustules and the rotting carcass of his armor held to him by its ragged and threadbare nodes. Decrepit amphistaff coiled round his torso in some fathomable need. Gibbets of snow on him and his discarded cloak and knapsack like some long famished moss. And also the wind shrill and decrepit torn flat and harsh by the cliffs and the peaks, striking itself against each exposed limb and organ.

The cold was beyond his adjectives. His descriptors. Set outright in its nature as a challenge. Firmer then the rocks he?d settled and touched. Greater in height and breadth than those mountains. Both transient and corporeal as some three headed cerebrus bounding in the fog with tottering slackjaws. Fine sharpened incisors deep in his marrow and cartilage to masticate in the days. And the nights. To make itself some measurable deity for him to fall down and worship.

Above him there lingered the canopy of clouds like some ceaseless shroud stretched about the world with smoke weaven threads by a seamstress so long at the wheel that her hair was aged into spider?s linen and hands ankyroid and arthritic and dots of free wheeling snow mingled throughout it like dust motes descended from each buried and forgotten mountain torn down in the ages by wind and water and man and war. He searched through its tresses. For what he knew in his dreams and thoughts, but it had none of it. Just figments. His hands caught those snowflakes and against the length of his fingers, they stayed and did not melt.

He took in the valley below. Its tern spectrum of white, gray and black; the flatness of it like the side of some felled sword acting as a fulcrum for what lay beyond the horizon?s curved edge. Crossing it were thumbnail sized bipeds, more than two dozen in number, raising behind clouds and tracts as their tails swept behind them like rudders and the horns atop their heads like rotted crowns and he bade them hello, but they brooked no retort and continued onward as nomads fearing not what would come, but had.

He spoke to himself and each gust of wind lent a differentiation of timber to his voice and gave each sentence a sentience unknown to the warrior before the numbered years and in the two was both murderer and sinner and he said, I cannot feel my hands.

I know.

It does not hurt.

I know.

And without that pain, the gods will not hear my cries.

No.

No?

For I am the last of their children with whom they would be much displeased.

He went to his knees and braced the ground with his forehead, mouth kissing the ice, and he smote himself with his fists as he spoke. As if to consecrate those words with motions to fill their hollow souls and make some memory of which to cling to.

And-

He prayed to dead gods.

****

Past that hour, the warrior went down the slopes, cloak wrappe

 

The first condition of the first day- Navigation by Way of Stars and a Small Hope- A fire- Inner Dialogue and Commentary- Deterred Traveling

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When she woke it was his face that she saw and for that brief moment where she held the blaster in her hand and could feel the warmed and edged contours of it molding into her palm with the fingers traced along the barrel and the forefinger against the capacitor and the thumb stroking the safety, she accounted his face and in a memory from a distant world where she and her brother had huddled together in the ruins as a pyre born of flesh and metal rose up in hellish display as the yuuzhan vong did dance about the pit and its shrill screams, naked save for the blood smeared along their bodies like oil and paint, spouting out tribal chants on battle and death with the etchings of their shadow features engraved large against the buildings did that visage yet coincide.

The ebony eyes and the lipless and nose less gaze smeared with a canine tooth grin and scars lined about underneath the blue sac lids in the forms of mazes were seen and in her instinct she pulled up the blaster and fired a single shot into the mass of his thigh and he cupped the smoking crater in his leg and howled through pursed teeth as she rose up, holding one hand to the bandage, and stepped to him and placed the blaster to his head.

What the kriff did you do me? Poison me? Huh? When he did not answer, she belted him across the cheek with the butt and it thudded against the bone and a small token of spittle and blood was thrown out of his mouth and his face was turned from her and she could not make out his expression. Answer me.

Her voice trembled and all the moisture had leapt from it and the faint beginnings of a shiver wove up her spine as along those corridors came a shrill gust shaved by the angular geometries and debris into some form of damned screams.

I would do no such thing, he said and touched his blood and marveled at in the fashion of a dumb, his voice roughened as if by gravel. Such a cowardly action.

Like hell I believe that.

I could have let you bleed or cut out your heart, he said. But I did not. You still yet stand, your wounds bound and stitched. There is no quarrel between us.

I?ll decide that, she said and leaned against the wall and used it as a crux. And when she looked over the vong once more, she attributed to him what crimes his people had done unto her family and her acquaintances and her own flesh and the lands which they all had dwelt upon and burnt but she had no strength to it though she did wish for it. Could she kill hi- it. This thing. In one such flicking of a finger. She sworn she had such a capacity some days ago.

Then I should take part as well.

I?ve got the gun.

Yes. You do, and he rose up and before she could register the patter of his feet he was to her and holding her blaster in his hands once more and threw it away into the corridor. With its passing went her courage and she was weak-kneed and faint. But that is not such a constant. He grabbed her by the shoulders and took her to the mattress and sat her on it. Now we can discuss these things as befitting us.

Don?t touch me. Don?t.

If that is a precondition, then I will give you one as well. He took her jaw and squeezed it and said, do not shoot me again, and released it. He limped out to the hallway and picked up the gun as she stared wide-eyed and set it on the mattress and leaned against the wall and stared at her. Puss began to leak out of his leg and ran down the length of it and the blackened broken skin stared at her with the pink muscle exposed and the odor wafted. He seemed to have forgotten it and spat out some blood on the floor.

What are you going to do? She said and huddled herself closer with the blaster in her grip. It was cold to her and gave no comfort with the stock pressed to her ribs.

These are the other rules you shall abide by. Do not leave the ship this night or the next. Sustain yourself. Keep warm. Otherwise, do as you will.

And if I don?t?

 

Author's note- Thanks to whoever nominated this for for best short story in beyond the saga. It's most definitely appreciated.

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Retort- His Dream- Risen Together


[hr]



He found her by happenstance as much as his own tracking of her trail and when he drew near, a single judge, and a giant among its peers, stood by her, curious and nonchalant and frightening in the casual glint of its golden eyes as the truest and most embodiment of death and what courage he had stocked within himself by the appearance of the woman evaporated and left him parched and weak. It smelled her, and prodded her; examining her with the maliciousness of a critic.

Leave her be, he croaked, drawing close with his amphistaff stiff and ready. She was promised to me. You can not have her. Be gone. All the years of his training and survival ran from him and down his legs like water.

The judge turned to him and left the woman and drew near. A foul stench, a retched fused evolution of rot and choleric rusted blood. Deep stains in its pelt and the scars of past battles long and pink and warped along its chest and around its eyes. He could not say what this suzerain had seen and known but he feared it nonetheless.

I tell you again, you will not have her. He looked at the woman, still shaking, but something within her made itself known within him. A warmth almost. A hope. I have made an oath. His voice grew. An oracle promised her to me. Stronger still. I was rejected by the Avatar of the true God and I am the last of my race of fools and murderers. And I say to you, you will not have her. You will not. So go from here. Go from here and return anon when she is gone, to judge me and I will accept it.

It sniffed. Deep, deep breaths like the rumblings of the earth in the days of old when all just things were new and boiling and small. When it circled and smelled the pelt about him, it stepped back and with a single grunt of enmity, went down its own ways and paths.

He stood until the white fog encased it entirely and he sunk to his knees and thin layers of water blurred the world to him. Thank you God. Thank you. Though I know naught why mercy is given unto me. He went unto the woman and wrapped her in the cloak and began digging a shelter for the night with his hands yet all the while beseeching the lost and the dead.


[hr]


His brother spoke to him before the day in the belly of the worldship. Bare chest sculpted by the flickering shadows. Those few scars marked for the advancement of his life. The dragons in the fire flickering, fading, burning. The indiscernible features of his brother?s face. Only the glitter of his eyes remained. Solid gold amber, tranquil and relaxed.

[i]Have you found them yet?[/i]

No brother, he said. I have not. I searched amidst the texts; I fasted as the intendants directed. I plied the air with my prayers. There was nothing to be found.
[i]
So your faith is still?[/i]

I cannot say that it is lost for it has never been with me.
[i]
I know this. Do you think that I could not understand my twin?[/i]

No.
[i]
Then let me hear you speak without this condescension. [/i]

I think that my eyes are weak. When I look upon all the god?s work and gifts to us, I do not see something made by those who are infallible. I see mistakes, errors, unneeded accessories. When I hear the prayers during sacrifices, I hear history and clerical changes made for motivation. Where others charge heresy, I see choices. Alternatives of opinion. For all my efforts, I cannot find the gods. And yet?.

[i]Is that what you have named your doubt? Bad eyes? Clogged ears? No. These things you speak of are excuses; aftereffects of what truly drives you.
[/i]
Then tell me, what truth am I trying to speak?

[i]Your heart is not moved by thoughts above yourself. While others breasts? beat for the calling of our masters, yours yearns to be unshackled. Yours is a child that demands freedom from its parents.[/i]

Then there is no cure.

[i]No. T

 

very nice Yuuzhie fic.

 

Silsolo- I'm glad you enjoyed it and, hopefully, you'll like the depth I go into on the Vong in future chapters.

Thanks for reading.

 

wow a rare sight of a Yuuzhan Vong fic here, and so beautifully written, I have just finished the first installment so far and am in love with your way of the description of events. An interesting notion you put across at the beginning, the gods being 'dead' as such.
I will be watching this one with avid interest, could you PM me when you update please?

 

I'm glad the whole dead bit didn't come of as a little too...weird for you and I'll be sure to pm you at the time of the next update.

Thanks for reading.

 

Author's Note- Losing files in the move to school plus writing block does wonders for a posting schedule.

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History of Atlas- her first conversation with dead men- small epistolary- A minute sermon


[hr]



Together they crossed the plains. He, shouldering her belongings without staunch effort and leading her by but two arms lengths, stayed to his oath and though she had none publicly made, she kept to her own and followed. Onward they walked, trudging through and against the pockets of sunken lands filled with snow up to their chests and which clung to their skins with small, hooks of ice and made of them a mosaic of the world?s history- cold, cold, cold and the cold which brought upon the misery of pain unto those paroled into its borders came unto them and also other plagues- and against the hills and ridges which came out from the ground malformed and petulant like half-made giants of stone.

Amidst the horizoned pale fog, the mountains grew in stature and width and the blackness of their monads were salient enough to be distinguished and made separate.

And between them; save for the crunching of their footsteps and the crackling air and her labored breaths, there was silence and it was this that drove him to speak. For all these long years, he had kept his mouth shut to stave off the loneliness, speaking only for prayer or for those debates between himself.. The sickness unto death and the heaving shivers of their skin and the barbed arid throats and the And now, to be in this place without the words while she walked not far off behind was an agony of a sorts he was unacquainted with.

And he said-

Once, there were brothers born the same day of the same year. And when the older came into the world, he looked upon it and wailed at the sight and the caste members there were revolted and reached for their amphistaff to kill it. For when a child was born to the yuuzhan vong, it was judged in its fitness and capacity and if it found itself disgusted at the world- the begotten sacrifice of yun-yuzzhan, the creator who had poured out his own bowels to fill the void- it was cut down and cast aside and used as food for villips and koffees. And this was so even so for twins, whom by their nature were prized for their rarity and whose presence testified for the gods.

Now when the priests came upon the babe, the mother gave out a cry and his brother came to and was held aloft but no sound moved from his lips and when the older?s gaze drifted to his twin he too fell silent. Those gathered there took this as a sign. That these two before them, though not brother and sister, were of relation to the twin gods and deserving of life.

And thusly, they were trained in the ways of the flesh and muscle, he said and spoke of the manners in which they were raised. The rituals of scarring throughout childhood. Along the forearms. Across and around the folds of the neck. Indentations along their spines. How each scar was carved into the skin with a special koffee blessed with the blood of all those proceeding the mark. Each and every forefather who had walked the path before them in glory and battle and death.

The trial of culling an amphistaff to bond with. Walking along the boundary between the grottos and groves through three days and three nights chanting without rest till two amphistaffs took heed and dug into their wrists full of venom and they lessened the beatings of their heart and abated it and did not succumb to the pain and the fevers.

This too he discussed in detail. For if there was but one, defining word of the yuuzhan vong, it was pain. The pain of birth, the pain of life, the pain of death, the pain beyond such. All things were under its jurisdiction and under the gnashings of its whip and most assuredly were the yuuzhan vong, ; the true heirs and children of yun-yuuzhan-; who had following their lord?s dismembering sprung out from the congealed blood fully formed and armed and willing to break their hands upon the world and to mold it into its true and rightful