"Aether" - May 6, 2007
This is an excerpt from a story I was writing way back when. It was never finished, as I came across another idea and moved on; parts of it getting cannibalized into this other story.
Kali's mind was awash with colors and maddened thoughts as she frantically gasped for air, jerking upright violently from the mossy stone floor. Stuttering, she breathed in the dense, clammy air, coughing out volumes of sand and dust from her throat, the sharp grains tearing her insides. Panicked, she tried to stand. Her head swirling with unimaginable gravity, she couldn't focus, couldn't react to anything. Nearly fainting from the dizziness, she slumped back down into the floor.
Rolling over onto her side, she laid her head on the moldy rock beneath her, taking in the smell of the dank mildew. With a shaking hand, she wiped the tears from her eyes and gazed out into the space. Nothing. Not even the slightest shadow or shape could see. Slowly rolling over in the other direction, the view was the same. Like being at the far end of a windy tunnel, only for your lamp to burn out.
"Six elements, Miss Rothem." Said a sharp, agitated voice from some indistinguishable space in the black.
Kali gasped as she deliriously searched the space for the source of the disconcerted words, only to find the room just as dormant as before.
"Six pieces of an unrealized paragon." The voice continued. "That has been my quarry for a good portion of my lifetime. And here we are, in a place we needn't be. A place I hate above all others. A place at the end of all things."
"And where is that?" Kali sputtered out, her throat shredding like sandpaper.
The space remained quiet for a few moments and then tore ablaze with blinding light as a match was struck. Kali shielded her eyes from the fiery timber and then, as her eyes adjusted, she gazed out at the flickering glow. A gray-gloved hand was holding the matchstick, lighting the end of a cigarette.
The figure stood still for a second and then, dropping the match on the floor, stepped back into the darkness.
"You have been here before, and yet you seem as if you have never seen it." He began to circle distantly around Kali in the dark, the soft red glow of the cigarette flowing around the room like a firefly. "Even with waking eyes you cannot, or perhaps will not, remember."
Never taking her eyes off the bits of smoldering ash that faded as they fell to the floor, Kali recalled what he first said to her. "What of the six elements?"
The stranger exhaled a deep breathe, smoke dancing around the cigarette tip. "Four have came, and four have left. Four plus one makes five, Miss Rothem."
Her mind beginning to settle, Kali sat up on the cold floor. "And I am five?"
"No!" Yelled the man in a fit of rage as he tore off around the room, the burning cigarette drawing lines in the air. "No! No! No! You are one, not five!! No one is five!!"
Cursing, the man continued to rant to himself as he paced around the room.
Alarmed, Kali rephrased. "What I meant was....am I the fifth?"
The fuming man quelled his madness and quickly turned back to the girl, the cigarette glowing off his wide eyes.
"One of five, you are, but five of one you are not." He softly hissed.
He stood there, heaving in the dark for a few seconds, and then hurriedly scampered right up to Kali's face, his rancid breath enveloping her senses and the end of the cigarette nearly burning her cheek.
"You are not!!" He screamed, flecking bits of ash and spittle onto her face.
Kali grimaced and turned away, nearly gagging from the putrid smell emanating from the stranger. "Please...." She uttered out lightly as she pulled up her hands for protection.
"Fool." The man scoffed at her as he pulled back and returned to the rear of the room, facing away. "I know the truth." He struck another match, lighting another cigarette. "After all that wasted time, I have learned of it"
He turned back to face her, his shaggy black hair drooping over his face. "And after it is done.....it will be mine."
Kali pulled her knees up to her chin and hesitantly asked. "And what is it, that needs to be done?"
The man slowly tilted his head to a side, quietly breathing out puffs of smoke. He placed his sheathed hands into his pockets, making a noise of jingling metal, like a handful of loose change. "If I told you the plan, the work, the ssssseeeecrets.......they would no longer be mine, now would they?"
He again began to circle his prisoner in the darkness. "I will humor you and tell you of the others. The four, the foul, the feeble, the frigid, the fallacies......." He stopped circling and hunched down over a large rock. "The flesh of fallen fiends."
Kali remained quiet as her captor began to recite his deeds, slightly giggling as he went. "One tore by winds, one scorched by flames, another engulfed by water, and the other.....earthly games." The man righted himself from the rock and continued. "And then we have five, sweet silent five...not like the others, quite....mad they were. No, no, no, not like you. My lovely, lavish, lady of lore. My goddess of the sand."
That last line struck Kali; almost familiar it felt. She wondered it for a moment, and then asked the man, her throat still dry and grating. "Have I met you, I mean, before you brought me here? Strange you are, and yet, I can feel you somewhere, deep inside my memory."
The stranger walked off a few paces, again dimming Kali's vision to just a wandering red eye in the blackness. "In a world without sun's set, wandering we go until we reach Kismet."
Kismet! Kali's mind screamed and her heart quickened. The city of the damned.
"Nyx." She uttered under her breath.
The man, hearing the slight echo of Kali's voice, wheeled back to the center. "That name, that creature, is a lie. I am not a lie! But....the lie and the lord find themselves quite friendly in times of need. In times of sorrow. In times of enders, Miss Rothem."
Silent they both waited for something, but something never came as the light from Nyx's cigarette went out.
"Now, my fifth element, my goddess of the sand, our time is spent and quartered." Nyx reached into his pockets, pulled out a handful of metal rings, and scattered them across the room. Like a million fairies escaping into a wood, the rings produced a high-pitched echo that filled the space. "One of five you are, but five of one you are not. And when it is done, I.....no longer Nyx.....will become six."