2/26/2023 0 Comments Wolf eel decapitated![]() Mere has never heard its name, found upon waking when it was first brought online, spoken aloud. “It is civilized,” Mere says with a mocking smile. It could scream and curse, and no one would hear (except its keepers, silent beneath the pool and always watching). None in the Courts of Tranquility will witness a criminal’s last words.īy protocol, Mere is granted the same erasure. “Why do this?” the wolflord grinds out, words blocked by auditory and visual firewalls. The wolflord’s body slackens in synthesized, unwanted calm. Unseen, Mere spools neuron-thin tendrils into the base of the wolflord’s spine and siphons away pain and fear. The other, fingers knife-tipped, rests along the condemned’s throat. It cradles the disgraced wolflord’s head in one splayed hand. Mere unbends its body, muscle and ligament stretched along metal bones, and glides into the pool, water slicing to either side of its midriff. “You are summoned here, dearly condemned. Smoke-cured breath fills ordained words with harmonies and atonal bass-clef chords. The Arbiter of the Suns steps forward and lifts reedy, sulfur-scorched hands. Treason unto the Principality is not suffered lightly. There will be no backup made of the wolflord’s mind, no funerary rites in the Archives of Heaven. the Gold Sun Lord, resplendent armored god, ensconced in a hover-throne that drifts about the Courts, omnipresent and untouchable-Īnd below, in the oblong pool where Mere has spent half of its conscious existence, the last wolflord is bound wrist and ankle, suspended in water as every ancillary world watches the feed. an eleven-souled sorcerer who drinks the breath of his favorite nemesis, their words twined together as they spar with tongue and gaze, neither ever ready to destroy the other (for then the fun would end). nobles in redolent synth armor generals and admirals decked in finest military dress pilots, their faces replaced with the mindscreens of their ships. And those within, oh yes, it has seen these courtiers often: Mere dreads its inevitable sleep.įrom this vantage, it surveys the Courts of Tranquility, the synaptic-like rainfall of light along the membranous domed ceiling, the living heartbeat of the tamed planet carved and grown to a million fine-tuned specifications and indulgences. Once its function is complete, it will be returned to stasis. It displays none of itself, for it has also learned fear: It can be taken apart and erased if it deviates from its scripted role.) A taste for Zhouderrian wines fermented in the aftermath of white dwarf stars the poetry of Li Sin, disfavored master of nanite-barbed words desire stacked like coiled DNA strands, a tower of cards a voice etched from grave-silence and forgotten pauses between peace and war. (In the glued and stapled seams, it has painted its own awareness. It parades to the pool, proud-arched spine and lifted jaw autonomous machine-flesh granted scraps of self and mind. Mere feels nothing at the announcement, as it should. “What awaits this it?” Mere asks the threshold. ![]() The sensory matrix on the threshold purrs against its consciousness in greeting. It pauses at the gates that hang perpetually open on the Courts of Tranquility. Released from its stasis, Mere stretches and glides through the wide atrium wreathed in bionic roses and silk banners. The antiquated title is self-taken from the first deserter, whose name and memory were erased upon execution precise origin unknown. No allegiance to the Principality outlaws. Wolflord (title): nomadic, nameless survivors of destroyed warships those who did not accept ritual immolation during the Decommission. The last wolflord will be executed on the cusp of the new solar year. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!. ![]()
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