Khartang
One young man, on the top of a low hill, stood in white desert robes against a slate-dark sky. An instrument was slung across his body while he waited for the thunderheads to overtake him. His garments were tied and belted tight against his body. He wore goggles to protect his eyes, and a cloth wrapped around his face. Where any sane Calique would have worn an outer layer, he went without. The hot wind and scourging sands meant nothing to that disciple.
The truly great storms wouldn't come until late fall or early winter, but being caught out in the open wasn't wise. If the strange maul who put Darkmaw into a pit wanted to stand against that sky without protection then that was his business, but everyone else was digging frantically. A fraction of the improvised town bolted for Sand Castle, and no one blamed them. It was fouled by the horror that had lived there, but it was good shelter nonetheless. The rest of them were too intrigued leave, too invested in the end of that monster. She lay there, almost dead and yet invulnerable, in the pit with a hundred Satomen bodies or more. Good riddance, was the consensus. Let them all be buried together.
They dug and dug, to make hollows large enough for appalons and people and whatever goods they had the time and energy to protect. The tents were taken down and used as tarps, weighted down from underneath with all the occupants and their contents. Disciples went from place to place, speeding up their work by shaping the ground. Wherever their efforts freed a pair of hands they were urged to help their neighbors, no matter which garden they were from.
Prepare for a storm. Protect your ears. Not even the disciples seemed to know exactly what would happen, they just passed along the warnings.
The leading edge blew over them as usual, a rusty darkness that pulled at their shelters while slowly diminishing the sun until it was nothing but a faint circle in the sky. The next stage would be the howling and the scourging. Big storms could last for a day or longer, but the hunters said this one was small, and would pass over them with only a short howl.
But, the howling never came. A noise, a growling great noise, hit them from the hilltop, rolled over them, trampled their ears like runaway gurantors. It rose in pitch, rose in volume, until it resolved at the top into notes. The notes turned into scales that came down and down, forever going lower yet never hitting the bottom of their hearing. Just as suddenly, the music changed. Clear arpeggios ran amok, changed scales, and ran amok again. There were no measures in this music, only rapid movement. And during all this time, the volume grew until the sound trembled their shelters.
Then silence. Those who hadn't already covered their ears rushed to get their hands in place, or find material to protect themselves. An instinctive thrill seized them like a battle set to start at any moment, the warriors leaning forward in anticipation.
The song they'd been waiting for crashed into them as rhythmic chords that pulsed at them hard enough to swerve their vision. An impossible, screaming, musical, ground-trembling song rushed down the hill at them, anguished and angry.
Was it the world that made you mad
Or was it all the incense
Of the fires burning 'cross the land
Vomiting the smoke of innocents?
You say sacrifices must be made
But it's always someone else who pays.
The brothers we were meant to be
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Never would have gone to war
For heritage or gnostic dogma
To curse ourselves forever more
To hateful breeding hate
That burns the world until it's all too late.
A few verses in, the music changed again into a pounding rhythm of distorted chords that were more noise than musical notes. The wind had calmed down to a stiff breeze, and heads began poking out from the shelters, unburying themselves from the heaps of dirt that settled on them. The storm hadn't passed them by at all. It was still raging, now stronger than ever because it was contained over Darkmaw's prison. A lone figure was on the rim, moving, stomping, dancing while he coraled the wind, and focused it into a single towering funnel that reached down from the sky to whirl before him, all its brutish forces captured and at his command.
The pounding notes slowed but didn't lessen. They became ominous, a gathering of intent so sharp, so deadly, that most people would have run if they could. But they were caught in his influence now, part of his outrage at the world. They couldn't run from him because they were him. It was their outrage he was singing, their losses turned to fury. And when the last note was played, and his hand rose to the sky …
(Those few who had forgotten, covered their ears in a hurry.)
The first bolt of lightning struck Phillip directly on his upraised hand. The sound of it ripped the sonic world in half, but that was only the beginning. Lightning struck again, this time into the pit, then struck and struck again. He wasn't just pulling down the lightning: he was tuning the sky to play with, and when the music started again he had accompaniment in the world-splitting punctuations of lightning that spoke in notes to his liking.
He danced again, ran back and forth around the pit, brandishing his instrument, and shot deafening music at the crowd that gathered at his feet. They massed together in the cone of tactile sound, and surged with the music bashing their skin, shouting as one, their arms pumping against the sky. When he screamed, they screamed. When he danced, they danced. When he wanted them to sing, they sang the choruses for him.
It was madness. It was oblivion. It was ecstasy.
They knew the end was near when the lightning lost its edge. The thunderhead spent its last in a staccato roll of strikes that burned the air, and sputtered out with a dull pop. When the thunderhead collapsed, all the moisture in it fell. The several kilometers near the prison were drenched for over a minute. They put the cloaks over their head while it pounded at them, and the desert received a rare summer drenching. Sheets of water ran off the hill, over and around their feet, and kept running outward. It gathered in the bunkers and the shelters and sank into the ground until the dirt could hold no more. Water puddled up, the puddles joined each other and expanded into a lake. It was an event often seen in the far distance but rarely experienced.
The cloudburst stopped just as suddenly as it started. Its forces spent and its water spilled, the thunderhead dispersed into remnant shreds of cloud-stuff. Calique from every garden stood together, ankle-deep in a broad lake shimmering in the brightening sun. A distant orb no more, its heat threw off their cloaks. The surface of the desert lake shined the sun's reflection at them.
A new song was gifted to them, high and melodic, loud but sweet, with nothing of the former's fury.
> The hand that fought for love
>
> can be a loving hand
>
> The eye that witnessed war can
>
> see beauty once again
>
> The heart that lost the world
>
> Will never be the same
>
> But put your hand in mine
>
> Dear child
>
> Sweet child
>
> And I swear we'll make it good again
>
>
>
> Rise Sun, Rise
>
> The days, they are still coming
>
> Rise Sun, Rise
>
> As long as we are here
>
> We'll meet you in the morning
>
> Rise Sun, Rise.
>
> Yesterday is yesterday
>
> Tomorrow can be anything
>
> So rise with the sun. Arise
Every time the chorus came around they sang with him, "Rise Sun, Rise," until the final repetition released them from his gravity, casting them adrift in a temporary sea. That was when a few with sharper eyes pointed at the disciple: his arm that was hit by lightning was blackened. He rested it on his instrument and gazed down into the pit. He must have been satisfied with what he saw because he turned and sauntered down the hill. One follower rushed up to meet him, the boy with the black-tipped spikes for hair, to loan him a shoulder to lean on.
They came down the hill in a silence that felt as deafening as the riotous noise they'd just endured. The crowds shuffled backward, drew away from him, and offered him space, so everyone could witness his composure and the injury he took to end Darkmaw's life. Not even a saint could kill a being like her and not pay a price, but he bore it like it was a normal part of a disciple's work. They gave him the reverence he was due, and no one thought to speak to him. Who among them was great enough to approach?
He walked stately through the crowd, entered the largest Nexus bunker (hurriedly drained and cleaned by disciples), and was not seen again for several hours.