--nonononononononononononononono--
The magma was falling away from her. The hot rock rushed past her, scraping, melting. A crab grasped and then was gone. Someone had opened a door into hell and the mountainblood was falling out.
No. The magma was gone and it was the whole mountain that was falling. It twisted as it fell, spinning like a puzzle box, orbiting her so perfectly that it never touched her. Lanterndark rushed past, flickering corridors, spiraling stairs, and it wrenched at the end and she saw it beneath her, falling away, Lanterndark from above, a handful of modest towers of mixed, rough stone, the tops of the palms, the Tragic Fields, the Teeth of Flame, Luresteamy feeding the Lake of Spikes, four dwarves tracing it to its source at Lanterndark. Roads along the land lay like stray hairs in her eyes, settlements, like flies. It turned as it fell, as if the east were heavier than the west, the south than the north, and she saw villages racing by, cities, Glimmerpleats, Padlip, Gazecastle, where a human merchant peddled a figurine of the winged ogress Obi Duskcaverns in the agate of the Tragic Fields; and she saw Obi Duskcaverns herself, gnawing on a bone, as Squashedcoal fell past. Here, in Veilwaves, two elves admired the craftsmanship of a slate amulet that bore the image of Listenpeaces, the axe that Oddom bore. In Nightmarecurled, two human children fought over a thin silk sock clumsily embroidered "Sakzul." The roads that stretched hesitantly from Lanterndark bore children.
It was all falling from her, the edges faster than the center, receding into a speck. That's when she spotted the roc. It was flying beside her. Only it was flying upside down. In its talons it held a huge beast, crushed and limp, and covered with dust. It released its prey and fell away from Aban, flying upside down the whole time, rising or diving.
The corpse hovered with Aban while the world fell away. It was covered with a thick skin of leather plates. A single curved horn the length of a dwarf's arm sprouted from its snout. Thick feet like pistons. A unicorn, smothered in gypsum. It floated with Aban, then rose, and Aban turned, and the ceiling of the world was falling onto her too, a new world above her, she could see it all, and then it stopped, the world had hit hell, and she was standing on a low wall.
One side of the wall was made of hematite, the other lightning, and between the two, bones, bones and cartilage and hair and skulls, bones as small as mites, bones bigger than the mountain, and the wall low enough to step off of, low enough to reach down from. She looked to the lightning side and it was a dining room, dark and misty, and there were a thousand dwarves, and Etur in the form of a female dwarf, contemplating. There was a feast set out, wine purple with pulp, roasts and stew and biscuits, cave bear liver and merman steak, as many chairs as tables, as many tables as barrels, as many barrels as dwarves.
She looked to the hematite side. The sun lay at noon. Bloodthorns grew, here and there, and all the way to the horizon, white dust, coating the bloodthorns, covering the bright barren earth.
She turned back, ready to step down for the feast, but there was a scratching, and she looked down, and beneath the bones, a unicorn beetle. It was working at the rough blue stone of the wall. The bones spilled out on the hematite side where it had already eaten a rough hole through the ore. It worked relentlessly at the stone, mandibles scraping grout with a chit chit chit.
It's going to eat the food! she screamed. But nobody heard, nobody except Etur. Etur just looked at Aban with a sad smile on her face. The dwarves ate and drank, wrestled, snored.
It's going to eat the goblinfucking food! And then one dwarf rose, rested a pick against his throne and approached, and it took a moment to realize, but it was Vabok, standing straighter than she'd ever before seen, and he walked up to Aban but didn't climb onto the wall, even though he could have.
"I'm sorry."
No, that doesn't matter, it wasn't really even your fault. But the beetle!
"That's not what I meant, Ms. Vontagnak. Although I am sorry for that too. I'm sorry-- I'm sorry that this is not not."
But
And she was falling now, or rather the world was falling because she had been falling before, know it or not, heaven or hell spiraling away from her, merchants carrying the fruit of Lanterndark across the Mythical Dimensions, and in the recess of every embossed coin, inside the piccolos, where no rag could wipe it away, she saw what wasn't there, what wasn't there yet, she saw the shine and the flat, the clean and the dust, even on flat rock or on dry wood, or on steel hammered smooth, on robes of cave silk, so sleek, yet so porous---
No.
But the mountain didn't fall all the way onto her. And she didn't think it would, not again.
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Topic: Project: Most Dragon (Read 14790 times)