Aboard the Mordant Despair ... Among the hisses and bewitching cries of zombie machine parts echoing through the enclosed hollow sanctuary of serialized serpents, footsteps clanged against the grated metal of the walkway that seemed to go on forever. Lodged in some claustrophobic intestines of some titanic machination of parts, hanging like a shelf above the profusely red lit sea of machinery, with depths unknown even to those repelling down to repair them. One faulty piece of equipment could condemn men to hopefully quick death of becoming a pulpy juice by cascading between the grinding teeth of gears, or worse, a prolonged death lost in the chasm of metal, waiting for yourself to starve, or decompose from infected mutilations one would almost certainly ascertain plummeting on the way down to the infuriating man-fueled labyrinth cacophony of pipes going everywhere and nowhere. This was a hive city to vast mobs of mavericks, criminals, and counterfeit citizens.
Keeping the lagoon mires ready drop their payload of boiling black magnetic adhesive “despair” was a full-time job when the ship was functioning somewhat properly, and just suffering from its age. But today was a shit day to be an indentured crew member or a captured compliant.
The Bridge City: Draden Hurst
A tranquil old Americanized suburb, free from the disturbances of the sweaty frenzy of the of the of water-cooling chamber marketplace, where the commerce clusters around the boiling river. The bridge city however is placid almost, desolate to it's own detriment, rescued only by windless strolls in the park, or socialite brunches between cliques of the pirate governing oligarchs. But the facade of serenity was a thin veil, beautiful, but unnatural. The streets, the walkways, the buildings, the streetlights, and even the two-story family homes evenly spaced around the cul-de-sacs, everything but some trees kept alive by a garish amount of incandescent light were made of a polished twisted dark steel, perhaps entirely by telekinesis. A reminder that even the affluent among pirate lordship did not have access to true paradise, just a synthesized placebo.
But there was one place, one could authentically collect themselves, away from the burdens of fugitive authoritarianism delegations, in what seemed to be the juvenile affairs of the rest of the ship’s “much ado about nothing.” as he called them. To the select few ‘worthye’ who could access them, were the observation spheres, that could also be used as deprivation chambers to truly commune with the cosmos, or to some, “escape the drooling processions of high propriety thralls siphoning life from each other that some sought after or even took pride in.”.
The tall bathing man laying with arms stretching wide, floated just below the surface of the denser water like fluid. His body was muscular and vascular, from nearly non mortal hedonistic abstinenity. His light, long blonde hair had darkened into a dense gold mass fully saturated by fluid. He was surrounded by the tranquil blue fog of a morning day, flying somewhere overlooking a forest of green trees that seemed too ideal to be anywhere near here. The full complexity of his features could be seen in the nearly white, blue light of the 180° current source setting of the spherical room. His face was a soothing and inviting and somewhat sullen. The person who you looked like you could instantly trust to confide in. He was beautiful, even more so than most women of the age, which he could be easily mistaken for, if he wasn't always nude. His eyes were an unnatural mutation, unusual even for those who had the same ocular disease. “Herodragia Permutations” had converted his pupils into two supermassive black holes, he could use to swoon anyone into joining his doom occult and seduce into surrendering their lives to his mission. His Irises were thin stretched bands of jagged gold burned coral, that his most feverish disciples claim were an inherited boon from the moon god’s themselves, or perhaps a consolation prize of consummatory communion with one, if he wasn’t an outright incarnation. The snow color of normal persons sclera, for him was glacial blue, zero Celcius color with darker blue veins that made it look like cracks in actual ice, due to the compound condition of sclerial sclerosis that some people contracted from the peculiar rain, to which a cure was never in sight.
The simulation stops. The entire room becomes a flooded vacant abyss of white light. A woman enters through the once seamless arched doorway slowly stepping forward with her bare feet as a retractable platform slowly extended before her. Her glossy her deep brown skin tone over her sturdy, but curvy frame reflected some essence of her ancient African bloodline, which for the geographic area was a fleeting commodity, and to the world in general, having a population of predominantly golden brown ambiguous ethnicity skin tones. She stood naked on the platform above the half fluid filled sphere where the bathing man continued to stare at the ceiling as if still meditating.
“Yes?” He asked in a deep whisper that would not have been audible from such a distance were it in any other room without pristine acoustics.
“Master Gyze Waque, please forgive my interruption of your solidarity rituals, I am aware that you are a man of highly dedicated schedules.”
“Please, no apologies are necessary, we are of one blood, one family my beautiful sister.” He said in deep but soft wispy voice, as he rolled over in the water to face her, lying on his side at an unusual angle with his face still half submerged, with one of his shoulders being the highest part of his body exposed from the salve of water.
“It is unfortunately, most urgent news my lord. The ship has crashed, and you are demanded at the bridge my lord.”
“Dammit! How?!” He groaned with an intense depth of sorrow in his voice as if someone he knew had been stricken down amidst a battlefield.
“A pair of hostile Writhing Roach Ravens impacted the hull to critical effect; we didn’t pick them up in time to begin overcharging the plasma shields.”
“Uggggh always more to deal with”. He said lifting himself out of the water doing a slow backflip floating in the center of the room as the excess fluid poured off of him. He rotated himself facing the woman. “Citrene? Right?”
“Yes, Citrene, my love.” She answered back before lifting her head from its downward nod, finally locking eyes together. Her eyes were contaminated with the same engorged pupils, surrounded by less uniform arrangement of the same burned gold coral strands of iris, like two volcanoes erupting with ink. Of which one eye contained broken blotches like an archipelago that turned into a dense lunar yellow mountain range, with her other eye carrying much thinner, darkened, almost orange strands that looked more like an amateur calligraphers attempt at making two crescent moons, one slightly smaller, with its opening nested into the other.
“Please, come to me.” He held out his palm inviting her towards him.
Her eyes remained attached to his, not even glancing down to her feet as she walked towards him. With each step she took in the air, he carried her closer to him, as if she was ascending some unseeable staircase. “Please your name again, it’s so much more beautiful when you say it.” Now face to face with each other, with perhaps a narrow body sized space between them. As they both stared longingly into one another’s eyes.
“It’s sister Citrene, Genevieve, taken from my grandmother on mom’s side.” She relied, trying to give him the answer she thought he sought after.
“Yeah, you can tell how sweet they are, your family. To give you such a soothing name, that still really doesn't do your beauty justice. Your true beauty, that genuine heart, that lights me like only the sun can do to the moon in the vacuum of space.” He said as he drew himself slightly closer to her, with his lips inches from her face. “What serendipity have I earned, that has brought you to me? That I might be lucky enough to bear your presence upon me? in this prison of existence without you.”
Her dark toned skin could still carry the bright red blush of color flooding her strong cheeks, down to her narrow chin, making her face glow half as bright as her glossy, highly pronounced sunset pink lips. Her heart raced faster than it had in any combat training exercise she had overcome before, her stomach twisted with anxiety as if a crumb of food could cause an avalanche of nausea. She tried to say something back, but she just gasped for air.
“Please, take me with you! I… can’t handle it here without you anymore. I want to be one with you. Finally at peace.” Said Citrene, once she finally managed to speak, everything came all flooding out at once, with her lower eyelids trying turning to dams against the growing vault of tears. Staring into him as if seeing a home, she had not visited in so long, that she thought was the memory of a dead place she could no longer see again, rather than the person he was before her.
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Gyze leaned in toward her, his lips faintly brushing against hers tempted by a kiss before he pulled himself back as if repulsed by a magnetic force.
“No! I Can’t Please! Don’t make me! I can’t say ‘No’ to you.” He said before turning his head to the side, now suffering from the same breathing ailment as her. The blue part of his eyes had turned a vivid magenta color as more tears than were in his eyes, than hers, began streaming down his cheek all the way to the bottom of his jaw. His tear dams were way weaker and more fragile than Her’s, unable to stop the river from forming his face. He clenched his eyes shut to avoid even the peripheral chance of eye contact.
“If you love me, you’ll do it!” She said, her voice screeching like bad brakes on a car as she tried to shout through her own crying tear ridden gasps for air. And he did, love her. Her eyes bearing down on with the same capitulation inducing ecliptic moon glow as his, as she wrapped her arms around his neck pulling him closer to her. She ran one of her hands up his neck, across his face scooping up some tears with her thumb, before forcibly aligning his face with hers once again. “Do It!” she shouted, louder, closer, and more clearly, as her tears finally released themselves across her face like shooting stars.
“No! Never”. he roared back wrought with a badly improvised impersonation anger; they both knew was fake. If he would not do it, she would. Before he had a chance to make his mouth say anything else, she pulled herself up to him and covered his mouth with hers, both of them almost choking, as the seal between their mouths was broken just briefly enough for them to catch a faint sustaining breath of air. His clenched eyes softened and they embraced each-others mouths, until they slowed and pulled back to just their lips.
He was now leaning into her as her body grew heavier. Her eyes opened revealing them to be white vacant screens, completely devoid of vitality, where even static from an old rustic monitor would have been more a pleasing sight. She slipped through his emotionally weakened grip as she plunged into the water below. He airless corpse no longer able to float, sunk to the bottom. He took a few deep breaths and stared vacantly, as he tried to compose himself floating alone in the middle of the room. A dire side of effect of being able to see into each other's souls and having the unfortunate power of being able to give someone what they want, even if that is an indefinite escape.
“Another one I’ve given in to, the sweet release to those who seek it. Or do I bring the darker side of people to the surface, their most guilty desires? They say ‘He hears me when my feet get weary.’ But why must I be their middleman? What if I too grow weary of being their middleman, their conduit of self-destruction? Who shall save me from myself?” Could he be close to anyone truly? He wondered. “Was this actually what they felt, or had he simply apprehended them in their darkest moments of thought? Regardless, a cursed power to be certain. Not just to see into someone’s mind, but their emotions attached to it, like some pungent musk irradiating from people, but it wasn’t always sour, sometimes it was, nice refreshing clean inviting him in, and that was the problem. The ‘good ones’ was were always harboring the darkness of those around them and a little of their own perhaps.” He thought scrutinizing his own powers. Perhaps they were defective, had he been such a flimsy detective this whole time? But he deeply wanted one, just one to be pure, an inviting soul not cursed by darkness if such a thing could exist, he hadn’t seen one, but some superstitious faith compelled him to believe that it could exist. Something unlike a child’s soul that was scentless, as if time aging and experience somehow molded someone’s soul into what it was. Peculiarly even young adults sometimes barley burned with any scent of the world, as if they only had brief abrasions with the world, but not enough to deeply mold them yet. ‘Dim souls’ he called them, made him feel more comfortable, no deep vault into someone’s mind to explore, just a storage closet. He tried to vet his servants as much a possible, but keeping his circle small was a laborious task, and occasionally someone new wandered in. Someone, this time, who shared his vision curse, and the ability to breathe in the life of someone else and add it, like a drop in the bucket, to one’s own vitality. But with this ritual came not just years but strength, making you multitudes stronger than standard men. Sometimes strong enough to deflect ballistic projectiles, which were never a problem when enhanced regeneration seemed to spit them back out like a splinter in in a time-lapse video. But absorbing another of his kin gave him more unnecessary power, compiling human energy like he was some sort of inhuman battery. By his count, with his inhalation of Citrene’s powers which he approximated to be about 33 souls, he was well over 1,000. A rough number, he himself didn’t even wish to count, but that he could always feel growing over time. But deep at his core he did feel average, an otherwise mundane person. He had not renounced himself as a mortal, maybe not human anymore, but some sort of half human mortal. But if there was a destiny in the world, he would find it, or let it find him whatever happened first. But he detested the brutality force, he found his own power grotesque, like some bestial force he refused to call upon even in dire circumstances, he found it more alluring, and possibly the only way to find the real truth, was slow nurtured observation. He had time that few others would ever possess, to wait and see how things play out. The ecosystems of power like raging seas, but until then the true power of “Ring Watchers” was a strictly enforced oath of secrecy amongst each other. Though he had never met another who he thought powerful enough to silence him, should he want to divulge the growing mass secrets he had funneled into him like a sewer grate. “But for now, a pirate’s life will suffice.” He sometimes hated the dubious weight of his mind, his powers, envious of the naive mundane lives of those around him. “Survivor’s guilt perhaps.” He assumed, not wanting to linger in his mind anymore today. He would attend to his duties. After all they expected him to be captain, so he gave them what they wanted. Before he departed, he lifted up funnel of water that wrapped itself around giving him the appearance of having a more hulking physique surrounding his lengthier frame. He could float even fly, but it was resource demanding tapping into his pool stored life energy.
So he preferred to move around through the means of his fluid shell. Outside of the sphere small dingy locker room, with a settings control panel. further outside was the long, wide, low ceiling maintenance tunnel that with vents sizzling with fumes of steam turning the whole dimly red lit walkway into a slimy, smog filled sauna. Gyze shrank his water body down to height closer to his own to avoid contact with the filth saturated ceiling. He moved down several hallways of similar features before coming to a seemingly niche vacant dead-end hallway with a door-less box room that looked like it could have been an intended space for a maintenance room that never was. Gyze approached this room closely scrying behind him to make sure he was not followed, but he was sure he would have heard some echoes of if someone had accidentally wandered over. Two whip like tentacle spouted from the shoulders of his liquid shell, quickly detaching a vented grate in the ceiling of the box room. With one big flush Gyze swam up into the vent as if it sucked him up through a straw. Another water like tentacle shot out of the back of the now amorphous blob of water and whipped itself back down to the grate laying on the floor, snapping it back into place like a frog tongue placing a finely sniped shot on a fly. The vent, that perhaps continued in some way to a billowing exhaust in the top of the ship, eventually spewed him out through a side panel relief built into the bottom of wall. He was now in a what would have been a nearly in accessible storage chamber for some endlessly churning machine to toil away in, had been converted to a quaint and somewhat cozy dorm room. A hideout where he could only be bothered if he deemed it necessary. A hideout just for himself, where he had even coveted a auxiliary adjacent closet room into a fully functional bathroom.
Because Solitude and prominence do not often go hand in hand, to be a sought-after figure, especially aboard this absurd quarreling mine of clustered humanity. Normally to be anyone of notoriety meant sacrificing some significant portion of one’s precious solitude. His most fleeting asset. Unless however one were to be extraordinarily crafty and inventive. This was his nook in the abyss one of the few places where he could truly be at absolute tranquility, even more so than the actual deprivation chamber at times. Especially opposed to the hogwash and brine pools of the public showering chambers of the distraught vulturous impoverished class. This room was where he preferred to sleep over his overly modernist chateau in the bridge city, which was more reminiscent of a futuristic Japanese style dojo with a square moat around the uniform courtyard. He found some weird novelty in the quirks of a subdued antiquated lifestyle. And he did enjoy sleeping, it made him feel human. even if he knew he could go days or months without sleep without much weariness, going without sleep did seem to noticeably tap into his supernatural vault of inhumane powers, that sent a peculiar clammy sweat on the back of his neck the longer it went on.
Now in his isolated refuge, he floated himself to standing position with push from his mass of water, before conjuring it into a sphere, reverting to his standard human interface form. He hovered the mass of water, the size of a medicine ball, over though a ring with odd jagged sized spears all aligned toward the center, that look like steel branches of a tree.
The dish shaped device sat upon the glass plane, shin high, coffee table in the middle of the room aligned with his bed. The sphere of fluid mingled the device until it locked into place without being under his influence. The object maintained the spherical shape of the water by continuously pulsing waves around its surface by some invisible field, while also sending strands of electricity whipping from side to side at random avoid the sphere of illumination in the middle, turning it into an ever-fascinating light fixture somewhere between a plasma ball and the fluidity of a lava lamp.
But unfortunately, he was here for a short visit, he was here from one of his more guarded relics, his true north compass that only a person of his type of being could have engineered, not something he wished to be tampered with or understood by even smart ordinary men, his “Oculus of Lucid Fidelity”. A device that seemed too alive to be to simply hardware, like how a human would perceive an android imposter. But was simply hardware technically. What made it special was it’s peculiar telekinetic interface synchronization of which few were capable, that allowed it to operate as if attached by an actual nervous system, and “it” referring to a massive eye holstered in the shoulder socket of the mantle that was big enough for Gyze to wear over his water form, and his only article of clothing.