Revelations Cycle Intermission: The Triumph of Time
This is short, but important. Both the the title and the lines of poetry come from Algernon Charles Swineburne's poem "The Triumph of Time".
<==
~~~
What are you doing here, anyway?
just killing time serket
that was a joke obviously
seeing as im already dead and all
---
Here is the room: large and white, the sky a milky dome. There are no exits, no entrances, no windows, only one unbroken seam of smooth pale walls. This is the cell she holds you in, because it amuses her, as the three of them are seated at the pentagonal oaken table, long fingers flashing over checkered squares. One is cloaked, one hooded, the third garbed in torn and tattered red suits, embroidered in gold and black thread and dyed in his own blood. They pay you no mind as you sit up, holding your head, and struggle to your feet, leaning heavily against the curved wall.
The cloaked man extends a hand as you watch, his breath a death rattle, the clack of his joints the creak of gravestones, and carefully picks up a piece, drops it in place, picks up another. Your vision now unobstructed, you are free to view the game board sprawled out before them, checkered like an aerial view of farmland, decorated in the traditional ivory white and bone black. The pieces are raw, edges sharp, looking hand-carved and hewn from stone-or, if not stone, then something sickly organic that you care not to think about.
come on we dont have all day
You sure a8out that, Strider?
let me just check my watch
yep looks like its on about half past i dont give a fuck so lets get this show on the road
Taking a cautious step forward, you disengage yourself from the wall, watching the man’s dark and threadbare robes shift around a thin arm as fingers devoid of skin and blood and cartilage peek out again from the edge of his hollow sleeve, the tips of phalanges coming together on either side of a tiny, carved skull.
Somehow, you are unsurprised to find that Death only plays black.
White was once a color of his element too, though, you think, or maybe remember, or possibly absorb through osmosis of the current surroundings. White, and red, and black, and all three are represented here, in part by the boy who is still leaking rapidly congealing ichor as a pool of ferrous fluid gathers around the lion’s feet of his ridiculously ornate chair, reflecting the wooden jackals that serve as his arm rests, and the Dragon’s Eye.
Do you have somewhere to 8e? Is our company not good enough for you?
youre just pissed that i get classier swag than you
That has nothing to do with it!!!!!!!!
Though no one ever seems to remem8er that I was a god, too. ::::(
thats because you did kind of a cock up job of it
this isnt rocket science spider troll
Still, no one pays attention to you. Of the two who are actively playing, only one has made a move that you have seen, even if a few pieces already rest off to the side-one from death’s side, three from the hooded girl’s, though of those one is in contention. They appear to have settled the matter by taking both corresponding pieces off the board, one with fangs and nubby horns from Death’s side, the other unassuming, with wild hair and eyes that glower, even carved in wood. You feel as though you have seen him before, in some other life, though surely that cannot be.
8ut no seriously, though. Why are you here?
im waiting what does it look like
W8. Was that irony?
ironically
no
Carefully, in the manner of a mouse afraid to trip the trap, you move forward towards the metaphorical cheese of understanding, hoping that the bar of holy wrath will not fall down upon you-though where else you could go, is not quite clear. It seems obvious that you are dead, from the sudden conspicuous absence of thudding pain in your breast to the taste of copper in your mouth; coughing, you realize that someone has slipped a coin beneath your tongue. It is brass, and carries letters in what appears to be ancient Greek.
Still, they pay you no mind.
look are you going to take your turn sometime this century or what
the suspense is killing me here
Can’t you just skip forward like five minutes and see? I’m thinking!
i told you i cant right now
im stuck here with you for the moment so you might as well have the decency to be the slightest fraction entertaining
You sound like Kanaya’s human. So frustr8ing!
its hard to keep a hold of yourself sometimes
fuck i can admit that much
youve been here too long you cant remember
Huffing, the girl in the golden hood finally makes her move, with a piece that you cannot identify. You know chess, know it well, were on your high school’s chess team for a time before it became clear that they were only dragging you down, and there is no piece that looks like a disgruntled hipster wrapped in a woolen scarf and clutching an axe in one hand. Some of the other pieces you can identify-a knight on his horse, scythe raised, the crowned white king resting off the board (and wouldn’t that mean that Death had won, then? But no, this game appeared played for much higher stakes, all or nothing) -but the rest are new and interesting, and you wonder what their function is.
And that, to a man, they all appear to be but pawns.
Yeah, well, whose fault is that?
his
And now they do turn to look at you, the two with eyes, and you can feel nothing but cold fear as the two of them watch you, blankly. You think of cowering, but, prideful if wounded, you stand your ground, and they turn back to the board after what feels like alternately the briefest of seconds and the longest of years. An uncounted and unknowable number of grains of sand slip through the bell of time as you wait with painfully held breath, and then both of them have forgotten about you again, the horned girl clacking her claws against the edge of the table.
8utcher to… whatever that square was.
jegus serket you don’t even know
how many games have you done this for now
half of them
who the hell let you be godtier in the first place
The girl makes a nasty face at him, but the boy reclines, sprawled over the chair enough to lewdly display the hole in his torso; it looks as though someone attempted to hack right through him, as though taking a dull axe to a particularly old and stubborn tree. The flesh is ragged and torn, dark and almost black where blood has clotted too little too late, threads of organ meat and viscera hanging out. No attempt to tastefully drape his clothing over the carnage is helped, because every time he moves the stench of rotting flesh suffuses the still air, a miasma of death and decay. Someone obviously tried to terminate him with extreme prejudice, someone obviously wanted him dead.
Someone succeeded.
And you have the uncomfortable feeling that you know intimately who it was.
8etter question would 8e, who let you?
if we knew that for sure do you honestly think it would be taking this long
Well, no.
okay so shut your facegash and concentrate on learning this game okay
i think weve already been over how this is our last chance
if you fuck it up i swear to rose’s tanglehorror eldritch blackmoon gods that i will end you
Yeah, yeah, I know. You won’t even have to.
right
so
work on that
The world seems to expand and contract around you, and you know that it isn’t an illusion of your breathing, because you aren’t doing that much anymore. Your hands feel stiff even as they shake, rigor mortis settling into your tendons and making them hard, ossified, the wrinkled and browning hands of a mummy. Your drying eyes can only see the table and chairs (two ornate, one plain) and their occupants, watch every small movement that stirs the air in this crypt.
Below, something rumbles; the floor pitches and the room sways, like a bird’s nest precariously placed in the branch of a windblown tree. Through this, unbothered, the boy stands, tucking a silver pocket watch into the blood soaked pockets of his dress pants, not so much as wincing as the skin is pulled taut over the wound, stretched to the breaking point and torn further.
The room tips again, but the chess board remains in place, and Death calmly and collectedly makes his move, to quickly for you to see. Everything is a blur of light and muted color and distant, echoing sound.
its your ass on the line here too serket
remember that
With that, the Lord of Time, newly minted, dissolves, glasses glinting in the half light, and the hooded woman blinks, frowning slightly, turning back to you at last.
Finally!!!!!!!! I thought he’d never leave.
Then she grins, all teeth and amiable malice, and there is the howl of the Coyote ringing in her voice, the spark of a spider in her heart.
Want to play a game, tr8tor?
---
Far away, in another place, the tide ebbs as a man with cheeks flushed blue stands at the shore and sings a song that time forgot, the heart of another land, and is content.
But none shall triumph a whole life through:
For death is one, and the fates are three.
At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death;
Death could not sever my soul and you,
As these have severed your soul from me
Things, as they so often do, begin again.
<==
~~~
What are you doing here, anyway?
just killing time serket
that was a joke obviously
seeing as im already dead and all
---
Here is the room: large and white, the sky a milky dome. There are no exits, no entrances, no windows, only one unbroken seam of smooth pale walls. This is the cell she holds you in, because it amuses her, as the three of them are seated at the pentagonal oaken table, long fingers flashing over checkered squares. One is cloaked, one hooded, the third garbed in torn and tattered red suits, embroidered in gold and black thread and dyed in his own blood. They pay you no mind as you sit up, holding your head, and struggle to your feet, leaning heavily against the curved wall.
The cloaked man extends a hand as you watch, his breath a death rattle, the clack of his joints the creak of gravestones, and carefully picks up a piece, drops it in place, picks up another. Your vision now unobstructed, you are free to view the game board sprawled out before them, checkered like an aerial view of farmland, decorated in the traditional ivory white and bone black. The pieces are raw, edges sharp, looking hand-carved and hewn from stone-or, if not stone, then something sickly organic that you care not to think about.
come on we dont have all day
You sure a8out that, Strider?
let me just check my watch
yep looks like its on about half past i dont give a fuck so lets get this show on the road
Taking a cautious step forward, you disengage yourself from the wall, watching the man’s dark and threadbare robes shift around a thin arm as fingers devoid of skin and blood and cartilage peek out again from the edge of his hollow sleeve, the tips of phalanges coming together on either side of a tiny, carved skull.
Somehow, you are unsurprised to find that Death only plays black.
White was once a color of his element too, though, you think, or maybe remember, or possibly absorb through osmosis of the current surroundings. White, and red, and black, and all three are represented here, in part by the boy who is still leaking rapidly congealing ichor as a pool of ferrous fluid gathers around the lion’s feet of his ridiculously ornate chair, reflecting the wooden jackals that serve as his arm rests, and the Dragon’s Eye.
Do you have somewhere to 8e? Is our company not good enough for you?
youre just pissed that i get classier swag than you
That has nothing to do with it!!!!!!!!
Though no one ever seems to remem8er that I was a god, too. ::::(
thats because you did kind of a cock up job of it
this isnt rocket science spider troll
Still, no one pays attention to you. Of the two who are actively playing, only one has made a move that you have seen, even if a few pieces already rest off to the side-one from death’s side, three from the hooded girl’s, though of those one is in contention. They appear to have settled the matter by taking both corresponding pieces off the board, one with fangs and nubby horns from Death’s side, the other unassuming, with wild hair and eyes that glower, even carved in wood. You feel as though you have seen him before, in some other life, though surely that cannot be.
8ut no seriously, though. Why are you here?
im waiting what does it look like
W8. Was that irony?
ironically
no
Carefully, in the manner of a mouse afraid to trip the trap, you move forward towards the metaphorical cheese of understanding, hoping that the bar of holy wrath will not fall down upon you-though where else you could go, is not quite clear. It seems obvious that you are dead, from the sudden conspicuous absence of thudding pain in your breast to the taste of copper in your mouth; coughing, you realize that someone has slipped a coin beneath your tongue. It is brass, and carries letters in what appears to be ancient Greek.
Still, they pay you no mind.
look are you going to take your turn sometime this century or what
the suspense is killing me here
Can’t you just skip forward like five minutes and see? I’m thinking!
i told you i cant right now
im stuck here with you for the moment so you might as well have the decency to be the slightest fraction entertaining
You sound like Kanaya’s human. So frustr8ing!
its hard to keep a hold of yourself sometimes
fuck i can admit that much
youve been here too long you cant remember
Huffing, the girl in the golden hood finally makes her move, with a piece that you cannot identify. You know chess, know it well, were on your high school’s chess team for a time before it became clear that they were only dragging you down, and there is no piece that looks like a disgruntled hipster wrapped in a woolen scarf and clutching an axe in one hand. Some of the other pieces you can identify-a knight on his horse, scythe raised, the crowned white king resting off the board (and wouldn’t that mean that Death had won, then? But no, this game appeared played for much higher stakes, all or nothing) -but the rest are new and interesting, and you wonder what their function is.
And that, to a man, they all appear to be but pawns.
Yeah, well, whose fault is that?
his
And now they do turn to look at you, the two with eyes, and you can feel nothing but cold fear as the two of them watch you, blankly. You think of cowering, but, prideful if wounded, you stand your ground, and they turn back to the board after what feels like alternately the briefest of seconds and the longest of years. An uncounted and unknowable number of grains of sand slip through the bell of time as you wait with painfully held breath, and then both of them have forgotten about you again, the horned girl clacking her claws against the edge of the table.
8utcher to… whatever that square was.
jegus serket you don’t even know
how many games have you done this for now
half of them
who the hell let you be godtier in the first place
The girl makes a nasty face at him, but the boy reclines, sprawled over the chair enough to lewdly display the hole in his torso; it looks as though someone attempted to hack right through him, as though taking a dull axe to a particularly old and stubborn tree. The flesh is ragged and torn, dark and almost black where blood has clotted too little too late, threads of organ meat and viscera hanging out. No attempt to tastefully drape his clothing over the carnage is helped, because every time he moves the stench of rotting flesh suffuses the still air, a miasma of death and decay. Someone obviously tried to terminate him with extreme prejudice, someone obviously wanted him dead.
Someone succeeded.
And you have the uncomfortable feeling that you know intimately who it was.
8etter question would 8e, who let you?
if we knew that for sure do you honestly think it would be taking this long
Well, no.
okay so shut your facegash and concentrate on learning this game okay
i think weve already been over how this is our last chance
if you fuck it up i swear to rose’s tanglehorror eldritch blackmoon gods that i will end you
Yeah, yeah, I know. You won’t even have to.
right
so
work on that
The world seems to expand and contract around you, and you know that it isn’t an illusion of your breathing, because you aren’t doing that much anymore. Your hands feel stiff even as they shake, rigor mortis settling into your tendons and making them hard, ossified, the wrinkled and browning hands of a mummy. Your drying eyes can only see the table and chairs (two ornate, one plain) and their occupants, watch every small movement that stirs the air in this crypt.
Below, something rumbles; the floor pitches and the room sways, like a bird’s nest precariously placed in the branch of a windblown tree. Through this, unbothered, the boy stands, tucking a silver pocket watch into the blood soaked pockets of his dress pants, not so much as wincing as the skin is pulled taut over the wound, stretched to the breaking point and torn further.
The room tips again, but the chess board remains in place, and Death calmly and collectedly makes his move, to quickly for you to see. Everything is a blur of light and muted color and distant, echoing sound.
its your ass on the line here too serket
remember that
With that, the Lord of Time, newly minted, dissolves, glasses glinting in the half light, and the hooded woman blinks, frowning slightly, turning back to you at last.
Finally!!!!!!!! I thought he’d never leave.
Then she grins, all teeth and amiable malice, and there is the howl of the Coyote ringing in her voice, the spark of a spider in her heart.
Want to play a game, tr8tor?
---
Far away, in another place, the tide ebbs as a man with cheeks flushed blue stands at the shore and sings a song that time forgot, the heart of another land, and is content.
But none shall triumph a whole life through:
For death is one, and the fates are three.
At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death;
Death could not sever my soul and you,
As these have severed your soul from me
Things, as they so often do, begin again.