Interlude XX – The Grapes Are Dying

Beneath a painted patchwork of brilliant starlight twin mountains towered and loomed, the valley betwixt them all painted by the light of every sun but one. Each mountain was overgrown—with nature, civilization, agriculture, and a mix of both and none. Full of life and empty of souls, a world of worthless sovereignty sprawled endlessly and egregiously between the ever-distant horizons.

The mountains burned, churning with the constant movement of molten rock and burning wildfire. Upon some was a smokeless flame, while others were so choked with ash that beyond the occasional burst of heat nothing but grey and black could be seen beyond the ceaseless smog. High above flickers of red and white and blue seared between the bruised black of a broken sky, countless lights above to parody the lights below. And looming behind it all was something deep and dark and desperate.

Beneath the smoke and the stars one valley stood untouched, a vineyard carefully maintained between the walls of death which surrounded it. It was beautiful. It was ugly. It was not a vineyard but a forest; an ocean; a cathedral; a fortress. It was a place to be cultivated; a place to be forgotten. It did not exist; it was the only thing that was real.

It was enough, and that was all it needed to be.

An old man hobbled slowly down the overgrown rows which sprawled endlessly around the vinyard's villa. Trellises packed to the brim with ruby grapes loomed to either side, like bloody pustules painted across the green foliage of a fervent dream. Beautiful but inedible, a garden grown for but one person alone.

The old man stopped suddenly, leaning heavily against a staff which barely held his weight. With shaky legs he kneeled before a wilting vine, frowning as he took in the damage which had crept along it. Brown to near orange, sickly yellow sap dripped from its leaves, and the vines seemed to almost steam as they putrefied before his eyes. With a gentle hand he grasped the bundle of grapes and lifted them up so as to find what was wrong.

He blinked at the grapes.

The grapes blinked back, putrid and rotting. The sickly eyes of a failed god stared into his own, twitching and undulating between his fingers. A sharp pain ran through his veins as they dug their roots beneath his nails, as though they might corrupt him as they had the rest of the vineyard.

The old man scoffed, and with a clench of his fist he crushed the bundle whole. Sickly-smelling juices ran down his wrist, and from on high the stars fell from the sky at his command. Like will-o'-wisps they swarmed his hand, cosmic stardust burning away corruption with the deaths of uncountable atoms and a heat not even the most powerful fire mage in the world could survive.

When they were done they returned to the sky, full and heavy as they digested their meal. The old man himself waved them goodbye, the stump where his flesh had once been still smoldering with their parting gift.

Then he shook the stump out like a hand which had been writing for too long, tendons falling into fingers which dragged with them a palm, and in the next moment his hand had returned to him as wrinkled as ever.

"What a mess," the old man groused, slamming his staff into the ground for good measure. "And I can't even blame the other guy for this—I should have been the one to notice myself. But no~ I just had to get complacent. Feh."

Then he frowned as he felt a shadow fall overhead. Tilting his skull back he stared up at the sky, watching as the wisps he had just sent off were snatched from his grasp by a Darkness beyond. Something deep and fathomless which plucked the stars from the sky like grapes off a vine.

Stardust drizzled down his cheeks, and his face twisted into something which combined both hatred and regret.

"Do you think yourself powerful, gorging yourself on my failures like this?" he demanded of the heavens, which did not respond. The hells did though, as the Shadow slunk beneath his feet. "I think not—look at yourself, once so great, fleeing from my gaze like a rat in a granary. A pest only able to feast while the cat goes to sleep."

Kneeling down once more he dug his fingers into the rich soil, which bubbled and smoldered beneath his fingers. Like clay he pulled a great glob of molten earth that he then hardened and twisted into an obsidian spear. A blackness which burned with inner fire, sharp enough to slice steel even as it was fragile enough to shatter at a touch.

And with a burst of movement he seemed previously incapable of performing the old man spun and launched the black spear across the valley, where it pierced the Darkness with a boiling hatred of which he had nurtured for decades.

The Shadow screamed as it was struck low. Not dead—never dead, no matter how much he might wish it so—but craven that it was it fled, sulking beyond the burning smog of forgotten mountains and skittering in the depths of canyons carved beyond the creases of thought.

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He sneered at its back. Purple skin peeled back to reveal sparkling white fangs, and eye sockets which broiled with blue starlight chased away even the faintest remnants of the previously encroaching Darkness.

The Daeman watched until it was gone, and only then did he allow himself to fall against his staff. Its brilliant white skull seemed to almost shine beneath the night sky, as it held the old man up.

"I truly am getting too old for this," he grumbled to himself, sighing as he rose back to his feet. "This isn't even a real body, why the hell do my joints ache so much?"

Nothing answered him, of course. But sometimes you just needed to complain, you know?

With his work done the old man turned back to the vineyard. He took one step, then two, and then on the fourth his foot landed on a porch of polished obsidian. The warm embrace of the villa called, grand and great and sprawling endlessly across the mountainside like the most beautiful of mansions.

Yet when he opened the door, there was only a single room within. Small and unassuming, a bed of magma sat at its center, while the flickering memories of childhood knickknacks laid across its edges.

A girl slept on the magma, curled in on herself as though in pain. She gasped and she twitched, a deep grimace drawn across her lips and every muscle pulled taut and tense. For beneath her skin a poison ran rampant, peeling her apart even as it kept her alive.

It was quite the despicable thing. Were he a younger man he might have raged against the one who would do such a thing, but now desperation tempered directionless wrath.

The old man stepped inside, and with a sigh of relief he plopped himself down on the broiling floor. His pants began to smoke, though he didn't mind. He was a liar, and therefore his pants were naturally on fire, but his undergarments were safe enough for him to ignore it.

"…What, nothing?" he asked, as though expecting an answer from the girl. "Come one, you've gotta admit you're curious, no?"

The silence remained, as it had since he'd first come to care for this place.

The old man sighed, dropping his head. The smoke puttered out as his pants ceased to burn.

"…I suppose you never were one for crude humor, were you, Palmira?"

The girl did not respond, not even shuffling in her slumber. It was to be expected, after so much time. He'd long since run out of ideas, and could now do nothing more than sit beside her as though it might do something to soothe her suffering.

"Please, Palmira," he murmured softly, reaching out to touch her. Yet the molten earth swelled at his approach, and the heat burned away his fingers like thin tissue paper. He pulled his hands back even as the ashes fell into a pile on his knee, clenching his skeletal hand in frustration. It was impossible to reach her as he was.

How ironic, that the day she learned to protect herself was the day she needed him the most.

The old man sighed again, leaning back on his heels.

Ever since he'd realized the effect he had on her soul he'd gone out of his way to protect her. To slake the thirst of that which preyed on her dreams and to shield her soul from the suffering that caused. To protect her until she was strong enough to protect herself.

And he had failed.

He'd grown complacent. After the Dragon had been appeased he'd thought that the worst of what might assail them in Firozzi. The Harrah kept to their ancient tunnels below the City of Fire, the Goddess remained on her moldering throne, and the Darkness lurked ever beyond the edges of good sense. One and all they had been, if not safe, at least managed.

They were all great dangers, especially for a girl so young. And that was precisely the problem—they were great dangers. He'd spent so long searching for the next white whale he'd forgotten to check for the barnacles beneath his hull.

Now a child was suffering because of his own negligence. And he could do nothing.

The old man groaned, before glancing down at his staff. The empty eye-sockets of the skull peered back at him in silent judgement. "Well," he grumped at it. "Do you have any ideas, you useless stick?"

"I think you should stop moping and get back to work, you worthless sack of metaphorical flesh," he made the staff respond, talking for it in a high-pitched nasally voice while moving it up and down like a hand-puppet. "Some great wizard you are. The most powerful Cosmologist in a generation and you can't even divine the stars for an answer? How pathetic."

"What do you mean pathetic!? Those stars are fake! They're metaphorical dream concepts! This isn't even my dream! How the hell would I divine anything from those!?"

"Damn you really are a dumbass. Can't even divine fake stars? Hey everyone, this guy can't even divine fake stars! What a loser!"

"Thank you, other me," he scoffed as he realized this wasn't getting him anywhere, slamming the skull against the molten magma and watching it char. It was fairly painful, but sometimes you needed a bit of pain to remind you you're human. "You truly know how to motivate a man."

He was losing it again, he was aware. Not being able to talk to someone for so long, even just a couple… he wanted to say days? Even for just a couple days and he was already backsliding. Or perhaps it would be better to call it panicking.

For decades he had been trapped. In darkness, in silence. Now he prayed to the Goddess for the first time since his death that he would never be so alone again.

Even if he knew it was pointless. It's not like it saved him the first time, after all.

With a sigh the old man stood back up, grimacing as joints he wished he didn't have ached. It was time for him to get back to work—the girl's soul wouldn't maintain itself, and the damned Demon Lord had already stolen a march on him in that regard.

Opening the door to return to the vineyard of metaphor and memory, he stopped to take one last look back at his apprentice. She almost looked peaceful, as though she were not barely hanging on to her sense of self beneath her quietly burning flesh.

"Please, Palmira," he begged one last time. "You must wake up. I don't know how much longer we have."

The child did not wake.

And so the old man sighed and returned to wander through the vineyard. Pruning the rot. Purging the darkness. Praying for a salvation he already knew would never come again.

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