Journey

Bella bella dancing there
with cocklecombs done in your hair
the stars are burning burning bright
and all is shining with the light
and Malgomir with blusen eyes
looks skyward with eternal guise
for man is going far and wide
forgetting ever the eternal bride
they had left through ages long
when Man had come to sound the gong
herald cry ringing new
the bell of Antvert sang of blue
when skies were wet and full of life
and forests grew amidst the strife
where ashen cities crumbled down
and Bella blue had sewn her gown
the wedding day was fast upon them
when Malgomir sang and danced in amber glen
the wedding song was chosen, trumpets all and horns and drums
for mans great journey from under the slums
and in a moment bare laid down in time
they wept for Future sake and Time
one kiss and then
in amber glen
Bella dear with ashen finger
pointed near to trumpets linger
on bright red flame they rose on air
noses pointed towards Bellas hair
in one great rush the trumpets roar
bellowed forth and through the door
Bella bright and Malgomir
ran with grace as though in dare

Asmale met death in the MorD'Moth. For a moment the twisted glassen towers of Bal'Horbir filled with the sweet smell of blood, and then the plague-daemon Gilgar, with eyes of a million stars and hide like an



In the sixth milleneum I was borne, or so they tell me. The sun was hot that year, a huge mass of red on the eastern rim. They named me Asmael, after my mother. The vax which brought my fathers body home three years later said that I had not cried during birth, yet had only looked around as though thoughtful, and when my mother had let Azer cleanse me of my birth cloak I had giggled, delightedly. Azer is all I have now that mother was taken. I suspect a beast from the sky had eaten her, a wally or a malbir. I remember seeing her balloon set off at noon, her white hands waving goodbye. She was supposed to have come back by sunset, before the bigger monsters came out, but she didn't. Alec, the server robot, found the balloon in Poison the next day, a grash busy cutting and laying out strips on the ground. Her body was never found, nor was it expected to be. I didn't cry when we burned a tree for her. Death is expected in this world of ours, and to be afraid of it would be foolish. Don't get me wrong. I was sad That was a year ago. Now i'm 10, living

Bella bella are you there?
The nebulii burn dark in midnight hair
the jewel of stars around your neck
are softly softly calling beck
and come to serve in mighty fires
Mans great ships shall hold wide pyres
and regal trails of embers glowing
across the stars with man-a-stowing
knowledge power fear and greed
riding riding on one great steed
a thousand mile trailing wake
stab heavens heart with one great stake
a driveflare here and there and there
oh where oh where o bella dear?
shall man go now that earth is gone
and heavens fools shout Amethon
that cursed world of darkly bellows
churning churning in the mellows
we don't want and have no need
for short men of staturous greed
Bright Mal'Gomir! came the cry
the apple in dear heavens eye
the world who knows no dark
and whose countenance is hardly stark
whose orbit follows drion 3
and four more suns of same degree
the gardens there are quite amazing
but your mind will soon be blazing
no dark soon brings insanity
Fine, the masses cry,
what of warm Kalma Ty?
The world of dark and light is sane
one sun blazes through a window pane
the natives cool and calm and grey
with backs of leather and silicon prey?
Hold hold! I gave a cry,
do you not forget the tale of Meleme Dry?
Who went to Kalma Ty with brightest hopes
and crashed among the moldy slopes?
His ship they cast into the sun
his frame they detoxed till he was done
That planet is too dangerous to bear
i'd rather sleep in a cavecats lair
For a final blow
they suggested fine Amalgamo
The puters ticked and hummed
and my fingers they were drummed
until a paper bright and clean
flashed from the heart of great machine
theres nothing wrong with Amalgamo
said the heart that knew no slow
so venture there and we shall see
it should only take us two weeks three
The fires lit in mighty forges
flames cast down the metal gorges
the C/E drive which we designed
soon cast our dead world far behind
we drifted along perhaps a week
before the helmsman took a peek
out heavens door
and hit the floor
for man is strangely weak
and if you dare to see or speak
of what you glimpse in bella's plight
when traveling faster than quick light
the mind shall twist and turn in knots
and require transferal to many pots.
Lost!, we cried, without a man
to hear or see in Bella's plan
we drifted blindly to and fro
until we happened upon gentle Gwinneflow
the air is fine the sand is warm
all that bothers is a swarm
of pseudo-insects large and small
but gravity is not at all
so float and fly
among the sky
all we have behind us is yet another lullaby

Walrat

I...had a dream, that the nebulii were as forests of trees, and the swift suns rose in countless numbers to greet the dawn of Man, and as the first of the Great White Ships met the ridge the very fabric of space warped and bled and all the colours of Reality sparkled in this new Morning. I...had a dream, that as the Great C/E Ships rose in the clear morning air and drifted over the towering Clouds of mighty Magellan he saw the countless suns of Morning, and saw the shining light of our great future reflect on the hulls of the Ships which had brought us to this Great Shore of stars Man stood in awe of Creation and His design, and as His grand Fleet sped onward over these mighty Cliffs of Creation He stood in awe of our undertaking.
I...had a dream, that the sky of Bal'Harmoth, never before having seen the darkness, was crossed neverending with the Fleets of Man.
I...had a dream, that the green Skies of Hal'Morth and those of wide Bal'Mador and effervescent Mir'Damorth, ever knowing of the Night would be lit with the constant flares of Mens Great C/E Ships, and the Driveflares of Millions more would bloom in the Great Night like the fireflies of lost Earth, and a Spark would light in Mans chest to seek out Knowledge and take his journey to the far reaches of Space.
I...had a dream, of a collosal Construction at the Edge of Space, a great Lighthouse

the light of Bal'Morth shall shine in the night sky evermore, echoing forth from the great Lighthouse of Bar'Darum, at the Shore of the Seas of Elbis and through the entire galaxy shall the Light help Man, who in his quest for Knowledge and Conquest shall become Lost in his dream and seek a Light for a Safe Return.

A Treatise on Infinity

Infinity is not but a word that some such fool of the middle ages whispered into abyss, yet it is an idea, and an idea which can be fleshed out, brought to the light, understood by the laymen who thinketh it is such only a word can be understood by demons and Satan himself, but which can be explained by such a thinker that believes it to be what it truly is, which is not the straight, never ending, always forming line it is thought of today, but an object one must think of as already there, as being a circle-but-not-a-circle, a line which is already there when it is formed, for you see infinite cannot be ever forming for it would not be infinite, it would be almost infinite, and to be infinite it would have to have been formed all at once, so to think of a quark, the smallest of the subatomic particles, three of which comprise a meson, is to think of infinite as compared to the nearly infinite as thought of today, and as such the quark would be represented by infinite, as it is already there and already formed, and the meson, formed by these things which are nearly infinite would be todays variation on infinite, for one cannot travel infinite but can only try and reach it, so to reach it one must only stand still and BE, and thus one can reach infinity and BE infinity by not attempting infinity, and by following that such train of thought we must then say that we are all infinite, but that cannot be, so we must think of all of us as a part of each other and we are all THERE at the same time, as our quarks were THERE forever, so we, each and all of us, are INFINITE.

An army, a thousand strong, camping for the night. The immense floor of the crater crawled with Soldiers, campfires and tents flaring up in the center. The escarpment glittered with dull reflections and echoed the voices of hundreds of men. Mary watched the confusion, wondering why such a force was wandering the wastes. Lost, perhaps? or searching for some front line they may never find? It did not matter. Mary payed them no heed and returned to her Tent and fell into Sleep.



The jurgammersmen whimpered.



Mary awoke to screaming, to blind confusion. The frejn was at the door, beckoning, come quick. "what is it?" she asked. The screeching heightened in pitch, a mad clammering came from the crater. They arrived at the rim. Mary looked out.



Chaos. Soldiers ran screaming, posessed as if madmen held their souls. Above, in the troubled darkness which was Sky, lay a seething mass of Chaos and Nightmare. Half abberant tentacles swept down to carry off running men. The Bell! The Bell which shall Ring at End Time, the seething mass of Chaos which appeareth in the sky above, the RINGING which rends the hearts of Men and drives them wild with fear, the SCREECHING from upon nigh which shall bring an end to sanity. The ringing the ringing! As if from Hell the BELL shall Ring like the thousand
madmen, and, swooping down an omnipresent fist from Satan shall PLUCK the soldiers from the plain and cast them into thew maw of oblivion!
lol. that got carried away. really quickly. yaaaay. but. thats what makes good writing, no? hell yes.

Mary awoke to the frejn standing over her, a bottle of Consciousness in his hand. She blinked once to clear blurry eyes, then stood and thanked it. Outside the wind howled as it always did, the constant rush of dust eternally whipping against the red landscape. Mary heard the mounts whinny, and, noting the absence of a third, wept. The day was young however, and she steeled herself against the loss of her beloved jurgammersman. There was much travelling to be done, and no time to be wasted. Not much to bury anyway.

The tent came down with ease, and once breakfast was had they set off once again into the Red Wastes.

None saw the humanid come snuffling out of the mist. A dead jen hung in its pack. It felt the ground, simple but clear thoughts holding Conjunction.

Followers
one minus
All were here.
missed?
morning.
beans.
shadow.
eateateat
mustmustmust
energy is the soul of all being
go.

The being ate, tearing off large strips of meat and consuming them through its stomache-hole. Then it sifted off into the wastes, following the tracks of Mary and Frejn.

League after league of gray iron dust assailed the travelers, pushing ever onward into the cracks and folds of their beings, lacing their bodies with the rotten remains of long dead civilizations. Great running lights ran every hundred miles, and at these they would stop, cherishing the last vestiges of hope humanity had left on this world. At the second such light they made camp. Frejn dissapeared once more and Mary set up Tent. Throwing the remains of her dinner into the wind, she attempted to sleep. Before she could drink of it, a vibration reached her ears. A dull rumble on the wind, a trembling in the ground. Something large was approaching. Mary stepped out of the tent. Nothing in sight. Of course, that meant nothing in the Maur. Things came and went here with nary a sight, and to see was not to know what was truly there. A clanging joined in, and Mary stepped out of the tent, curious. There. By that crater, that unholy edifice of the old days, therein lay the sound. Ash crumbled beneath her feet as she climbed, the noises growing louder and greater in number. At the rim, She-Who-Searches-For-Her-Husband looked out and beheld the source of the noise.

The Tracker

In the Mor, a Door Opened. Rusty hinges slid back to a weathered iron door. Lights sounded in the Deep, a rumbling welled up. Then only silence, as the wind whistled past and dust rattled against the cold metal. With infinite slowness a head poked up. The Tracker's shelled head faced the wind, thick trunk sniffing the ground. Synapses fired, slow but sharp thought linking the two brains.

Human.
Woman.
something...
Frejn.
shadow
darkness
That Direction
Runner
DANGER
hidehidehide
nonono
runrunrun
eateateat
foodfoodfood
go.

The shuffling semi-human ambled off into the red wind.

Night

Mary looked at the Red Waste, then at the blackened sun slowly descending towards Horizon.
"We'll camp here for Night" she said.
The Frejn dissapeared after dark, which wasn't that surprising. Mary sat alone at the tent opening, watching Poison rise. Sickly green light washed over the landscape, Luna's silvery glow reduced to a pinprick of silver against the obscene form of the mountain in the sky.
When Ring was at half Brightness, Mary drank of Sleep, and as its cool embarce washed over here, her last thoughts were of her Husband and the Frejn.

In the Night, the scent of humanity drifted on the wind. An amorphous blob with moonshine bottled in its insides slid over to the tent, accompanied by a seahorse headed Djarling. Eel formed figures gathered, followed by a glowering abarition. Luna Mor and the Slug Which Shall Be A Mile In Length changed course, and the Million Year Beast began its Thousand Year Blink to catch a sight of the Human curiosity. Drejn tunneled from the Deep, great wyrm-things. Wings sounded in the Night air, causing general uneasyness in the masses below. The night was rent with silent cries and shuffling, as the Creations of Man came to surround the sleeping Mary, standing in silent thought at the sight of She Who Hunts Her Husband.

The Frejn returned at SunUp to find Poison Setting and the luminous population of the Red Wastes slithering back to the Great Deep. It rushed to the shadow of the tent door and found Mary sleeping inside, unharmed.
To a lesser extent had the Jurgammersmen been left alone. Two remained tied to their posts. The third was listing to the side some hundred feet away, a great liquid gash covering the back leg. As the Frejn watched the gash widened and the shrieking animal dissolved. The thirsty ground sucked up the liquid and in seconds nothing remained.
Such were the ways of the Maur.

The Frejn went to administer Consciousness to the sleeping Mary.