So, the first thing to get out of the way. This post concerns two stories:
- There Lies Already the Shadow of Hope (henceforth, TSoH)
- Black Nerve: Silk & Ember (henceforth, S&E)
Importantly, TSoH was conceived and started before most of black nerve as a setting really existed, meaning little of it will cohere with its canon, other the vaguest generalities like ‘mantids and evil bats and magic’.
Black Nerve: Silk & Ember was a revision of TSoH, reimagining its events within the more modern canon of black nerve.
It will be noted where there’s an interesting diverges in the conception of either story, although I will generally focused on BN:S&E, as it’s the more idealized, and recently-worked-out of the two.
Overview
TSoH had seven sections. A two-chapter prologue, five parts, and a three-chapter conclusion. The prologue was a framing device for the five parts, and the epilogue a return to that frame.
The protagonist of it was Tlakida, wingless orphan, and the antagonist Yufemia, well-off and winged. Each of the five parts would have covered a violent conflict between the two of them, all of them escalating in scale until the final battle.
The prologue, which was written to my satisfaction, establishes that Yufemia is something of a dark empress controlling much of the heartlands, stamping out a resistance of which our narrators are a part. Tlakida is a revered champion of this resistance. The first chapter, presented as a “transcriber’s note”, shows high ranking members of the rebellion infiltrating the empress’s citadel to rescue Tlakida. They find her already dead. But by her bedside, there are pages — in her dying moments, she wrote a memoir. The narrators transcribe this memoir, and present it as part of their report to their leader. They emphasize that the final passages of the memoir are very strange, but do not disclose why.
The next chapter is a foreword written by Tlaki herself, and serves to characterize her as defiant, yet succumbing to despair. She lays out her motivation for writing — to inspire other champions of rebellion, who might be stronger than her.
After this, we get to the main story, split into five parts, the core of each one the five fights between Tlakida and Yufemia.
Battle the First
The first fight takes place in her home town, Udgrov, deep in the ambrosia woods. Tlakida is a young nymph determined to become a vesperbane.
In S&E, additionally, it is established that Udgrov was once protected by a vesperbane ranger, now called the lost ranger of Udgrov. The ranger was present during Tlakida’s life, and in fact she met them, receiving a a shawl she still wears for comfort. Being wingless, poor, and orphaned, many in Udgrov disparage her. She aims to become the next ranger of Udgrov, to protect her home and make everyone respect her. Privately, she hopes she may learn what happened to the lost ranger.
Where the story begins differs between the two versions. S&E starts earlier, with Tlakida outside the town training before a upcoming test. There, she is attacked by a strange roach. She defeats the roach, and carries the corpses back to the town. In the town, she would go to the court of the common to get an audience with the syndics of Udgrov. She would be positioned to overhear an argument. Someone is essentially threatening the syndics, noting how Udgrov lacks a vesperbane to defend it. One of their bargaining chips is Yufemia, an up and coming genius under their guardianship — everyone thinks Yufemia will become the next ranger, but the speaker suggests they could persuade her not to, if the syndics don’t cooperate. Their speech also suggests that they know about the strangely aggressive roaches before Tlakida ever informs the town.
Hearing this hardens her resolve: she will become Udgrov’s ranger with no conditionals, no scheming.
When she arrives to warn the syndics about the roaches, this catches the attention of the earlier speaker, named Lady Ooghesta. Between a menacing look she gives Tlakida and the vaguely-threatening words she has for her, Tlakida is frightened off. She flees to her empty home. There is something that was left to her in case of an emergency, and she’s scared enough to feel it necessary. Tlakida herself doesn’t know, but it is the means to become a vesperbane.
She has strange dreams that night.
S&E then rejoins with TSoH, which begins the next day. It opens in the schoolroom, where it is established that Tlakida is dilligent in her training and studies, ranking highest in this class despite being quite disadvantaged. She is picked on by other students, who hurl such insults as calling her (in TSoH only) a ‘wingless termite’. She has a single friend, named Liizabet, who only wishes to become a medical magic-user. She isn’t as ambitious as Tlakida, and playfully prods at her friend’s accomplishments.
After the big test, Tlakida is outside and reunites with Liizabet, who complains about the test’s difficulty. They are interrupted by a scream. Despite her lesser commitment, Liizabet does not hesitate to join Tlakida in investigating, intending to render aid.
Yufemia, along with some other students, are picking on a male nymph, tormenting him for perceived slights.
Tlakida comes to his defense, challenging Yufemia to a duel, and she haughtily accepts.
They fight. Yufemia is arrogant and demeaning, and this affects Tlakida. Yufemia has more skill, and it becomes clear Tlakida will lose, which affects her further. In TSoH, it is implied that her emotional state awakens her magical powers, and gives her a sort of second wind. Still flaming with all this indignation, Tlakida retaliates outside the bounds of what is acceptable in a duel. She overpowers Yufemia, and doesn’t stop when she’s down. Tlaki is lucid enough to realize killing her would be too far, but considers inflicting extreme injury, such as breaking her legs.
Liizabet has to step in to step in to stop her. Yufemia’s allies step in to pick her up and carry her off, and impugn Tlakida’s honor as they leave.
Even as they leave — even as Liizabet leaves — Tlakida insists that she won.
At this point in TSoH, I already depart from my intended format by spending a long time on events outside the fights themselves. This section served as a sort of intermission between the first fight and the second.
As a consequence of the schoolyard fight (via Yufemia using her influence), Tlakida is expelled. The story flashbacks here, to underscore how devastating this is.
Tlakida was not always an orphan; her mother was there when she hatched, and reared her for years. Tlakida always wanted to be a magic-user, but her mother denied her. In TSoH, she says that ‘it’s not for us’, viewing magic as a matter of the winged. In S&E, her reasons are different, for reasons that will later be clear.
It’s implied that there would come a point when Tlakida would be too old to enroll in the school, and as that point approached closer and closer, she would bring up the matter with her mother more and more, and the arguments became more and more heated. Until at last, a breaking point was reached, and Tlakida runs away, her last words to her mother being, “I hate you.”
Some day after this, Tlakida notices some mantids town growing agitated, and a crowd gathering. She’s learned how to hide since running away, and she hides while watching what happens. The target of the crowd’s agitation is Tlakida’s mother, and they kill her and string her up.
Tlakida never learns why, fearing it might have somehow been her fault, and she tries not to think about this day. She uses the money her mother has left to pay for her to enroll in the magic school. Part of what motivates her to work so hard is her belief that, if she is successful, it would justify her mother’s money going towards this, but if she failed, it would be disrespecting her memory.
Thus, when she is expelled, the meaning of all her struggles is unraveled. She goes to the tree — still standing, albeit wilted and deteriorating, all these years after her mother’s corpse was hung up and later removed — she goes to the tree, and kicks it, demolishes it until it is no longer standing.
Expulsion was not the only consequence of her actions; what she did to Yufemia is now a topic of daily gossip. Villagers begin to view her as something violent and beastly. She decides to leave Udgrov, and go to Wentalel, where she can be forgotten in a mass of mantids, and where she can dream of being apart of its magical university.
Battle the Second
In Wentalel, Tlakida is travelling the nighttime streets. She arrives at a religious building associated with the Monastacy of Flowering Oak. She is coming here to meet with Gywere, her partner. The text then flashes back three times to establish Gywere as a character.
First, though chronologically last, Gywere and Tlakida are exploring the hills outside Wentalel. They come across a trap designed to catch woolrabbits, and holding them alive, in pain. Woolrabbits make terrible shrieks when distressed, and the the shrieks would alert the trap-layer when there is quarry to retrieve. Gywere examines it for a moment, then uses lightning magic to destroy the trap. He tells her that he despises traps and restraints.
Second, it is raining in Wentalel, and the two of them take refuge under the eaves of an abandoned building. Between the beauty of the falling rain and the intimacy of being alone together in this secluded place, the moment feels romantic, and Tlakida is aware how situations like these are supposed to play out, how it tends to go in stories. She has noticed that Gywere is what most would consider attractive. She tries to kiss Gywere, more out of feeling it’s appropriate than desiring to. Gywere immediately, violently lashes out, and seriously injuries her. He tells her that he does not like being touched.
Third, through chronologically first, Tlakida saunters through the streets of Wentalel, alone. She has a coinpurse heavy with stolen coins, because petty theft is how she gets by in Wentalel. When she walks through an alley, she notices an armed mantis at the other end, and turns to walk out. At the other end is another armed mantis. They are guards. They ask once for her to come peacefully — not entirely explaining who they were or what they want, assuming the criminal would bee already familiar — and then they attack, aiming to subdue her. They do, and then brutalize her further while she is restrained. In TSoH, caused by her distress, Tlakida unconsciously forms a connection to another magic-user in the city, who comes to her aid. Gywere appears, and defeats the guards. Tlakida asks her who he is, what he wants. He tells her they share a common interest, and could work together.
(It’s never made explicit, but the idea is that they begin a campaign to unravel the more hateful establishments in the city.)
Back in the present, Tlakida and Gywere meet up with another character, Besihir, who does not get three flashbacks.
They arrive at a brothel-tavern which has mantis on the menu. Unbeknownst to the party, it’s owned by Yufemia’s god-mother, Ooghesta. After a tense argument with the owner, Yufemia herself arrives with allies. At this point, Yufe has a clear villainous association. (In TSoH, it’s the Kult of Kaos. In S&E, it’s a sorority among the aspirant wardens with Kult connections at the highest level.)
Tlaki stares at Yefemia, then confronts her. This time, Yufe challenges her; if they (Tlaki et al.) win, she’ll arrange to give them the deed to the building, but if she wins, they have to leave immediately and never return. They fight, and Tlaki doesn’t manage to land a single hit on Yufemia. She’s able to try a seemingly suicidal gambit — jumping through the tavern’s massive blazing flame to surprise her — thus revealing a magical affinity Tlaki has for fire. This is enough to down Yufe, and she feels triumph. But it was a ploy, a way for Yufe to stamp out her last hope; she laughs, rising unaffected, and for the first time this fight, attacks Tlakida. She quickly defeats her.
This part ends with Tlakida realizing she must become stronger, and deciding to find out where Gywere learned magic
(This ends what was written of TLAtSoH.)
Part the third
Gywere learned magic from the Monastacy of Flowering Oak, which consists entirely of male mantids. He is able to get them to teach Tlakida. (When they see her, the elders remark at seeing a certain resemblance in her.)
However, Tlaki is wholly dissatisfied with their teaching style, being far too slow and cryptic, and fails to understand many of their lessons, such as those that require understanding prey instead of just eating them. Gywere, in turn, is frustrated by her attitude, claiming she should be happy they are teaching her at all, that isn’t entitled to any more.
One day, they find investigators sleuthing around near the location of the Wentalel monastery, which is secret, and this worries the elders. It also sees Gywere finally cave, and attempt to teach Tlaki himself. This goes better, owing to his closer connection to and respect of Tlakida, as well as his practical mindset. (in B&E, at this point, the true nature of vespers is partially revealed).
One night, Tlakida hears a commotion and finds a member of the villainous organization Yufe was a part infiltrated the monastery, sabotaging their magical supplies. Tlakida fights them off, but is injured. With their supplies sabotaged, she must travel to a distant association of theirs to receive healing. There, she is not only healed, but empowered. (In B&E, Tlakida gets into another fight at this location, and during this she manifests a blood secret inherited from her mother: the ability to create and control spectral projections made of enervate).
When they return to the monastery, it’s under siege by the villainous organization. The arrival of an empowered Tlakida, and Gywere and Besihir, turns the tide of the fight. The latter two eventually split off to handle other threats, meaning Tlakida alone goes to face Yufemia. Tlaki isn’t the only whose learned blood secrets; by now Yufemia begins to wield abilities of the shadow-crown clan. I believe at this point she also has a therid companion.
Tlakida fights her to a draw. This impresses Yufemia enough that she offers to use her influence to let Tlakida resume her magical study, on the condition that she not stop training to become more powerful. This is so that Yufemia might have a worthy foe to stand against her in the arch-fiend selection exams.
Battle the Fourth
In addition to just training and learning, they also go on missions. Tlakida and Yufemia get assigned to the same team, forcing them to work together often. (At one point, Yufemia is promoted while Tlakida isn’t, and she becomes her commanding superior). The government they work for goes to war with an outside threat, which slowly gets more dire as the two progress. This would result in a sort of Tlakida Does War Crimes arc.
During this time, they take undertake two significant personal quests which parallel each other.
With Yufemia’s help, Tlakida finally tracks down the lost ranger of Udgrov. You see, there’s a mystery to Udgrov — why is there mantis village allowed to stand so deep within the ambrosia woods, domain of the jealously protective weevils?
The lost ranger is the last scion of the Thimithi clan. In the era of warring clans, the Thimithi were driven out of the heartlands, and found a refuge in the ambrosia woods. This refuge was conditional. The weevils are excluded to the southern pensula of the heartlands by the ambrosia pact. The weevils wish to be free of this, and this promise was ratified by night-prophets, woven into the magic of the vespers. Now the weevils await one who will be prophecy-in-the-flesh, and bring this to fruition. So long as they and their kin reside in Udgrov, they must endeavor to produce this prophetic one.
The lost ranger abandoned his duties — the task of liberating the weevils too vast, the weight of prophecy crushing. But, he reasons, if he no longer receives the weevil’s half of the deal, then he need not attend his half.
Tlakida tells him she will do it, then.
There are a few reasons for what happens next.
- The idea that Tlakida could succeed where he had fail is a offense to his honor.
- If Tlakida succeeds where he abandoned his duties, how would the prophecy judge him? Would he be smited? If Tlakida fully inherits the rights the weevils afford, he would lose the boons that linger with him.
- He abandoned his responsibilities as a warden. He is a defect, a deserter, and a traitor. A renegade.
Like this, Yufemia is by Tlakida’s side as she kills the idol of her childhood ambition. Tlaki intends to learn more of how to achieve the Thimithi mission, walk the path of the night-prophet without astraying as the lost ranger had.
(What is the relation between Tlakida and the lost ranger? It’s left ambiguous. Take your pick: a) he is her father, plain and simple. b) no relation. but he arranged for her to have means of becoming a vesperbane, and her vespers have a connection to his. c) weevil magic.)
Of course, before Tlakida can investigate the rarest art of vesperbanes, there’s a more immediate question.
What happened to the Thimithi?
Yufemia tells the story. She learned that the Thimithi were responsible for wiping out all but one of the shadow-crown, and that scion hid away and vowed vengence. She takes Tlakida and shows her the ruins of the shadow-crown clan compound, the burned remains.
But exploring the compound, they find a secret chamber furnished with significant images that limning the clans’ history. And this chamber house tablets that tell of a lost ancient city where waits the greatest secret of an exalted shadow-crown matriach.
Tlakida offers to go there with Yufemia, as protection and assistance. She accepts. They venture into a vast ruins. And at its heart, they discover this had been the seat of power for an ancient shadow-crown empress. After several symbolic trials, Yufemia alone enters the terminus, and there she would become the heir of henosis, and wield the forbidden technique of the shadow-crowns. Except someone came here before them. There’s another shadow-crown surviving in the heartlands. She returns and tells Tlaki.
Tracking them down reveals a hidden, conspiratorial organization which studies the advanced properties of enervate — and this organization has connections to the one Yufemia herself is apart of. They learn that this other shadow-crown has been applying the clan’s techniques in a radical direction, and has greatly augmented her intellect.
(This next part is going to sound really contrived, because I’ve forgotten the details that make it work. I take it on faith that my past self had good reasons for things going this way.)
During the raid on the heart of this shadowy organization’s power, Yufemia employs some 5head galaxybrain strategy (being a genius is an integral part of her characterization, for all that it hasn’t come up until now). Anyway, Yufe’s strategy results in the other shadow-crown dying — as well as herself.
I will now bring up two facts, and hope you believe me when I say my past self could have made this make sense:
- Tlakida’s blood secret, as mentioned exactly once before now, involves creating enervate projections connected to her.
- This shadowy organization was studying exotic properties of enervate, and they’ve had time to pick through their findings. Moreover, it’s lead by someone with a) access to shadow-crown blood secrets b) magically augmented intelligence.
Somehow, this all comes together, and through her gambit, Yufemia turns herself into a pickle enervate projection inside Tlakida’s soul. This is particularly notable in-setting, because doing this requires an intimate understanding of Tlakida’s abilities — blood secrets are infamously inscrutable. (“Do you trust me, Tlaki?” she may have asked.)
Anyway, upshot of this is that Tlakida can summon a spectral version of Yufemia. But Tlakida is unsure if it’s really her, or if she’s gone insane.
Nonetheless Tlakida has to continue doing missions, with the higher ups concluding Yufemia is dead. Tlakida had grown close to Yufemia, and struggles to copes with the loss. She does not consciously realize this is what she’s feeling.
The finals of the arch-fiend selection exams loom closer. The selection exams are essentially a big tournament to determine the most powerful vesperbane fiend.
The tournament had started before the raid, which means that before Yufemia’s death, she had only one fight left — with Tlakida.
Tlakida doesn’t call on spectral Yufemia much, still believing it some kind of psychosis of hers. Yufemia herself appears on her own less and less, seeming more distant, and Tlakida assumes she is mentally recovering.
The final set of fights begin. Yufemia’s fate on the records is not made a secret; indeed, the tragedy that befell one of the most promising geniuses of a generation is a story of considerable interest.
However, Yufemia’s god-mother uses her considerable political influence to prevent the proctors from using her god-daughter being, you know, dead from letting them reorganize the slated fights.
The finale comes. Tlakida is called to the field. Yufemia is called to the field. Having been killed, she doesn’t arrive.
The crowd waits in growing confusion, Tlakida waits in frustration and anguish, and the god-mother waits.
Yufemia appears.
It turns out, she’s so much of a genius that even while stuck as a enervate construct, Yufemia was able to complete a technique to bring herself back to life
(If I had gotten this far in actually writing, I may or may not have been ballsy enough to call it the ‘impure realm reincarnation’ or some bullshit like that.)
(Without getting too deep into it, part of why Yufemia is able to accomplish this is due to the Kult of Kaos already having been researching means of revival or immortality — after all, Oosifea’s promise, as symbolized in the welkinmark, is just that: end of the end. Life eternal. That said, Yufemia just, doing the technique is actually a bit of problem, because carelessly using powerful techniques like that is how you get transgression crepuscles.)
Anyway Yufemia, as if nothing had happened, challenges Tlakida to a duel. After all, the agreement they had made so long ago required that she fight her at in the exams.
In desbelief, she readies herself, and they fight.
And, in true tournament arc fashion, the battle is interrupted by an outside threat. The force they’d been at war with chooses now to launch a surprises attack on the site of the arena. Then two things happen.
- Yufemia uses her heir of henosis abilties to ez clap the invaders
- her god-mother, Lady Ooghesta, lauchs a coup to take over the heartlands government.
Yufemia gives this coup legitimacy; for returning from the dead is a feat reminiscent of Oosifea or her angels. Being that Yufemia is still young, Ooghesta will rule regent for her.
And like that, evil overtakes the land, and Tlakida once again realizes she must become much, much stronger.
Battle the Fifth
There’s a resistance to Ooghesta’s rule. Tlakida allies herself with them, alongside her old friends Gywere and Besihir. They decide that they’ll need more than just mantis power to defeat the evil empire, and seek the cooperation of other races. Tlakida redoubles her commitment to the weevils. She swears to bring freedom and defeat Yufemia.
Every day now, Yufemia waxes in power, and Tlakida fears they will need something even greater. She seeks the ultimate technique to stand against henosis. She delves into the Thimithi clan’s past. She seeks the lore of the ancient bats.
(It’s unclear, in this version of the heartlands, whether Dlann, the archtitan, ever existed, or if the story went differently there.)
Anyway, a few things come of her quest
- Tlakida discovers a surviving fragment of White Dragon Inspiration, and restores its power a millionfold to match its ancient significance.
- Tlakida enters the obliteration fields, mends the crepuscule, and masters annihilation magic. It is as if she is freeing matter itself of the bond of being corporeal.
- Tlakida reads ancient texts telling of two metaphysical aspects of the world, the traveller and the emperor, the essence of freedom and the essence of subjugation. The text tells of how these aspects reincarnate throughout time to struggle against each other. Tlakida considers herself the next in a series of travellers, from Karkel to Aromethia, each opposed to an emperor. She realizes Yufemia must be her emperor.
The resistance doesn’t feel prepared when Yufemia’s armies begin to march on the locus of their forces, but they must fight. (It would be cute, if the resistance was based in Udgrov.)
Yufemia herself stands at the head of the advancing legion, and Tlakida returns from her distant travels just in time. The two of them, at this point, are so powerful that even with thousands of other mantids engaged in the conflict, that part of the battle is more of a sideshow.
(Yufemia used a recovered technique — the wings of the first king — which darkens the entire sky with enervate, as if the battle took place in the blackest night. Tlakida wields the compounding power of the obliteration loop — but Yufemia can match that energy, drawing power through a binding she’s created, like a net encompassing every mantis in her empire.)
Then, after a truly epic fight scene, believe you me, the story would reveal that Yufemia has, simultaneous to this, killed all of Tlakida’s friends. And Yufe says she will bring them back — just as she was brought back — but only if Tlakida willingly comes with her to her citadel.
(Said friends have no memory of ever being killed, only chaotic-but-unbroken memories of the rout after Tlakida is subdued by the empress — but perhaps the revival process altered their memories?)
The text would skip a bit of time to after her arrival, describing how Tlakida has been thrown into the dungeons. Then guards inform her that the empress wishes to see her, and she expects some manner of execution.
Instead, Yufemia just wants to talk. She reveals that she is not a villain, and actually wants what’s best for the heartlands. Her god-mother was the architect of the coup, and used Yufemia like a pawn. She was groomed to become a figurehead of her hateful regime. But Yufemia out-schemed her, and killed her. Now she alone rules.
She’s aware of the pteryism and sexism of mantis society. And she has a solution: with the biological magic of the vespers, she can give everyone wings. Furthermore, any mantis can naturally become gravid via parthenogensis, and thus males are unnecessary. With biological magic, they need not even worry about the genetic problems that might arise with the abolition of reproductive sex. By making everyone winged and female, she will erase the divisions that plague their society.
Additionally, under the power of henosis, they had unity. Finally, everyone was working together. With her control, they could build a utopia, succeeding where every attempt to wrought it with fickle mantid free will produced atrocity.
And think, with a powerful night-prophet like Tlakida at her side, imagine what she could accomplish — every crepuscule that blights the land, the myriad exclusions holding back progress — all of it could be restored to order.
But, her final appeal?
Yufemia confesses her love for Tlakida.
And she points out — Tlaki’s distraught at Yufe’s apparent death? All the times they’d saved each others’ lives on missions? That feeling whenever Tlaki thinks of her — was it just rivalry, just anger, just lachesism?
Tlaki cannot rebuke this argument.
You know what’s coming next. Yufemia asks Tlakida to join her.
And, the story goes, Tlakida refuses, and Yufe sighs, and they fight one last time, like a continuation of their interrupted fight in the exams.
Yufemia wins, and Tlakida is brought to a guests’ room, and given food. Servants are sent to attend to her needs and heal her wounds, though it’s described how aggressively she pushes them away.
Secluded in this room, Tlaki is overtaken by tremors, feelings of weakness. She wonders if her food was poisoned. She fears she’ll die.
Thus, with what paper she can find in her room, and her blood as ink, she writes a memoir.
And she dies, the end.
Epilogue
Of course, what most probably remember of S&E is the framing device. It returns, after that long narrative (too long, I fear, to convincingly be written as one dies).
The conclusion has three chapters. An afterword written by Tlakida, a chapter called “Battle the Last”, and the Coordinator’s reply.
I actually wrote these chapters long ago, shortly after stalling out with the first draft of Battle the Second completed. In the case of ‘Battle the Last’, do keep in mind it was written as part of TSoH, where e.g. Tlakida became vesperbane by getting real mad in a fight, vesperbanes were described as emit magical elemental auras, and never once were vespers mentioned.
Because I’m not entirely dissatisfied with how these chapters were written, I’ll include them if you’d like to read them in their original form. I don’t think they are especially great, but they are short.
Afterword
I never thought that I would reach this afterword. Telling my story was like a battle of its own, and it one I can confidently say I have won.
I… my mind is foggy, I dont have long for this world. I would love to give you some insightful interpretation of the preceeding events, tell you the secret to defeating the empress. But though I knew her more closely than any, though I was, perhaps, the only one she ever cared for, I cannot tell you of some secret weakness which can fell her.
I defeated Yufemia twice. It is possible, it can be done, you must believe me. In the end, I failed because I was forced to stand before her majestic presence alone. But I remember what it was like on the final battlefield. I remember the infectious purpose, the utter harmony of all of the resistance standing before an army a hundred times our size.
We can win. You must believe. You must hope…
My mind is fading, and my spirit — always longing for escape — seems especially antsy to show me the afterlife. Traveller! It makes so much sense. Though I die now, my friends, my comrades, my children, imagine me walking forever among the questing winds, the bouncing light rays, the clouds that drift forever.
I can feel like my spirit rising up out of my body even as my vision darkens, and I leave this prison of flesh forever more. But it is getting so dark, like the shadows are reaching for me… pulling me. Why can I project? Why can’t I wander? Why can’t I travel? My soul isn’t responding to my commands… Even Yufemia could not control me like this…
I am fading away, and it is not to walk forever the meadows of eternal freedom. I am going down, down, down. But… but I… but I refuse!
I refuse to dissolve into the abyss without a fight.
[The next page was drenched in blood, and it seems to have darkened far faster than even the inital words of the manuscript.]
Battle the Last
[This last passage is… quite queer. The manner of writing has changed utterly, instead of the tremorous scrawl, it is a perfectly straight and exceeding neat, like the words of a press. And the contents… it is best if you see for thyself, thy majesty.]
Now that the liar Tlaki hath vomited forth her screed and bled away her life, let us speak a verse
Bow down, mere reader, for we are are the gods and spirits of dream and prophecy. Crowned with the errant hail of myriad thoughts, throned on the mounting tide of knowledge, we attend the whole universe through vision and divination, and nothing is withheld from us.
Just as the body shall die if ever the spirit fails, O Tlakida, with her traveller’s spirit of freedom, atrophied utterly when she accepted the chain and love and embrace of the one who could offer naught but one of all. No secret poison ails her, only a soul forsaking flesh as it was first forsaken.
Tlaki hath slipped to the river that runs from weft of all things to pure oblivion, and stakes a battle against the current. She of all has the strength to resist that entropy that rots all days and darks, but not forever.
And as she finds way to a shore that escapes the flow of the entropic current, she is a assaulted by vision of her own conjuring. A phantom Yufemia dogs her now, and with all her fury and being she fights.
Be it a fight, or a dance, or a mating? In this spectral world, categories run like inked words in a rain, and the three notions find unity in this act.
And she is still fighting, traveler against emperor, the one who binds against the one who can never be bound, freedom against enslavement. She refuses to dissolve into the abyss without a fight she knows not how to lose, without seeing her enemy bend before herself. And there is something deep within Yufemia which breaks before ever it shall bend. She is fighting, fighting. The dance goes on and on, and now in the halftime and now the mating act reaches its climax.
Tlaki is the spirit of freedom, who longs to roam ever onward knowing nor borne nor bar. But in writing these words, and in seeing them, O reader, a cage she cannot even know is upon her. These words are welded in place with all the certitude of the inescapable past. All stories, and this one of course, have their start and their conclusion, bars which Tlaki could do nothing about if even she knew. For hers is the chimerical desire for the story which never ends, and all must.
On she fights, and dances, and fucks Yufemia.
The abyssal river runs despite all of this, and the entropy always increases. One day the world shall be gone, and long before that, this battle of hers will know an end.
Listen not to what Tlaki wrote with such urgency. She surrendered, as all must before the iron might of the emperor. She has written this tale with such chimerical scheming, as a last blow thrown. She wishes, pines, longs, desires, and in truth needs for this tale to continue and continue and continue forever and ever and ever, and failing that she throws forth a feint to baffle all. It is like the styled painting with indecipherable figures, or the magnificent song which ends on a single, all ambiguous note. To keep the flame alive, to inspire, and thereby walk forever in the mind and in the heart of you, mere reader.
But the candle burns down its wick, and the fire rears up, like distant light at the end of the aeonian tunnel of life, like a huge white eyeless face without empathy or recognition, with lips of flame that open to speak forth a shattering word even we, the gods and spirits of dream and prophecy, cannot descry.
It is the light of defeat, the light of universal heat death looming ever larger. But that black hole, that mouth which shall speak a single word —
The last, lonely light that is life shies and dies, but yet, in its midst, cast by doubt, there lies already the shadow of hope.
The Coordinator’s Reply
I blame you not for Tlaki’s death, and there will be no punishment for what has happened. It was no failure on your part, but the terrible working of fate. With Tlaki gone, we have lost so much of our advantage… but the rebellion does not depend on a single mantis. We will persist.
Yet I shall miss her most dearly. You understand my pain perfectly, I imagine. I have read the manuscript you sent me, and I have no conception of what to say. Tlaki never told me everything, I knew that but… I suppose it is true you never know the true depths of anyone.
I place no stock at all in the testimony of these ‘gods’ however. If the gods truly existed, they would do a better job of managing the world than treating it as some game. No, I think I know exactly what happened. Tlaki did lie, and she did accept the empress’s offer. But it wracked her so with guilt that the paroxysms of emotion seemed the workings of some poison, even as she was entirely well. Yet slicing her chitin, and writing a hundred pages with your own blood, it would lighten anyone’s head. At the brink of unconsciousness, it is so hard to imagine hallucinations? The voice of the gods themselves proclaiming your guilt, sentencing you to an eternity of agony and suffing for your crimes?
I am afraid this was a suicide, Gwyere.
I wish Tlaki has spoken sooner about her feelings for Yufemia. She’s had years for these contradictions to tangle into complexes and neuroses in her minds. An entire shame.
…
Am I to blame for this? Should I have seen her neurosis sooner, should I have been there for her? Did there lie already the seeds of this betrayal?
I…
I am stepping down as coordinator of the resistancce. We must find another leader.
Or perhaps there’s no defeating Yufemia at all.
But to summarize:
Afterword: Tlakida is triumphant after finishing her memoir, liking the writing to a battle won. She’s eagerly anticipating a happy afterlife, but feels her soul instead pulled downward…
Battle the Last: the narrator identifies themselves as a collective of ‘gods’, and declares Tlakida a liar. They say she did not, in fact, refuse the the emperor — instead, she gave in, accepting her love, allowing herself to be bound. In doing this, she violated her nature as the reincarnation of the traveller, and her soul forsook her — this kills the mantis. The metaphysics (emphasis on meta) of TLAtSoH is hinted at.
Coordinator’s Reply: the coordinator dismisses the contents of the last chapter. She concludes it was a delusion. Greatly affected by the loss of Tlaki, the coordinator steps down as the leader of the resistance. (WoG: the leader of the resistance is Liizabet.)
(Were I’d writing this today, I’d not have her step down, and instead conclude the resistance’s flaw was placing all their hopes on a single individual. Unlike in stories, real rebellions are not carried on the back of a single chosen one.)
So, things get quite confusing in the end. Were this a finished product, it would be written so as to support multiple readings. As summary, I must instead give them to you myself.
1) Divine reading. ‘Battle the last’ can be taken on its own terms. Tlakida lied about refusing Yufemia, and she is now being punished metaphysically.
2) Delusive reading. The coordinator’s reply can be taken on its own terms. Tlakida lied about refusing Yufemia, and imagines herself being punished by gods for her transgressions. She kills herself.
3) Keikaku reading. Neither of the above. Tlakida did refuse Yufemia, and she did kill her. ‘Battle the last’ is an invention of Yufemia to cast doubt on Tlakida’s integrity. The entire memoir may be an invention of hers, planted there, or to some extent compromised — perhaps she’s not sympathetic at all, and Tlakida never had feelings for her, and suggetions of such in the text are fabricated.
4) Vespers reading. Remember how Tlakida swore to provide freedom and defeat Yufemia? Whether she lied or didn’t lie about refusing, she failed in her oath. She’s a crepuscule now.
5) Meta reading. Tlakida realized she was in a fictional story, and as a last bid at escape, she deliberately made her story confusing, inviting speculation, so that she could live forever in readers’ speculation.
Snuggly Serials 