The Poet and the Muse
Rating: M
Author's Note:
Think of the links to the music as the place holder music for a soundtrack.
Chapter 2:
All has not gone "according to plan".
I'm engulfed by the nightmarish gaseous flames of the Warp. Pulsating flashes of red fill the void as I'm tossed about like a leaf in a storm. I'm hurled forward toward nothing…but the shinning eyes and toothy silhouettes of demons draw nearer and nearer. I am a greater demon of the chaos god of magic, a ludicrously potent psyker. The thing about being a psyker in the warp is that you are a beacon of light in the darkest night. My presence is anything but hidden. The first wave of gibbering, slobbering masses of immaterial flesh bound towards me.
Time to "Ender" some fools. This little "habit" of mine is named after the titular Ender Wiggins of "Ender's Game". Early in the book Ender gets into a fight with a bully and savagely maims him. Why? Because if you win the first encounter with enough spectacle you'll never have to fight another battle and thus win every war at minimal cost.
I raised my right hand, pointing my index and middle finger straight at one of the demons. A small ball of light manifested and fired forward. It hit its mark inside the demon's mouth along its gumline. I turned my palm upward and slowly drew my fingers back. As I did, the demon's flesh folded inward on itself as though it were being sucked into a pin sized hole in the hull of a spacecraft. It slowly vanished out of existence with muffled, pained gurgling. The second one isn't so lucky.
Inside the Warp my own demonic powers are at their zenith. I can do things here that would far exceed my limits within the materium. I pointed my staff at it and cast "the gate": a spell that draws a sigil of a hexagram with three concentric circles. The concentric circles of the hexagram swirl into the spires of an oscillating nonagram, pulsating with the colors of Tzeentch's neon rainbow.
Usually the gate opens one portal to one place…but not this time. The hexagram opened portals to six different places across space and time. The subsequent nonogram sent what's left of the demon's body to another nine. By this time the third has closed the distance and lunged. Chattering daggers line its gaping maw as its haggard, failing flesh hangs from its bones. Calmly I closed my hand and hold the chaos spawn suspended in my grasp. Then I gently tapped the space on it forehead where its third-eye chakra rests with my staff. I have given it the "gift" of human sanity and released it from my grasp. The poor soul howled in anguish as its mind was torn to shreds by the utter impossibility of the Warp. It dug its claws into its own skull as it succumbed to the aneurism. Blood poured out of its eyes and sputtering mouth. As it fell over dead, the winds of the Warp rend its body to dust.
Many eyes watched but none dare attack me again. Though in the Warp I sense powers equal to and greater than mine watching from afar. The problem with "Endering" is the same as its virtue, people take notice of you. Let's see how this'll bit me in the ass later.
The luminous rainbow door at the end of my journey approached. I sailed through it at high speed into a perfect void of white. Reality shattered into an infinite array of shards that morph, twist, climb, and warp within one another till all is but a crystalline labyrinth of walls that stretch upward into infinity. Flashes of blue, pink, purple, and green dance as the light reflects off them. I have returned to the realm of Tzeentch.
Every step takes hours but I am able to traverse leagues in seconds. You soar as you fall and levitate as you stumble. No matter how obtuse, obscure, or impossible the road; all that matters is that you hold in your thoughts the unwavering belief you shall reach your end and your progress will never cease.
Moments of my life play out in within the refractions of the crystalline walls. A man I am most familiar with does thunderous battle with hulking black werewolf as the void in a lightless city of sin. Meanwhile, a me I scarcely recognize sloshes about in the water underneath a small town's pier playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with a minute werewolf white as bone. A woman I was certain I hated, someone destined for power and glory, prophesizes that I, "shall die alone." A jabbering, twitching fiend lashes out at me with its claws. A fell beast stalks me along the shores of a frozen lake. The ghosts of my ancestors come to me in a shopping mall as it rains blood and wolves outside. I'm awoken by the cries of my unconceived daughter terrified by a beast in her room. The hulking black werewolf shrivels into a gangly teen boy with tears of rage cascading down his cheeks and I cast him into cold oblivion with maniacal, cackling laughter.
The walls of the fortress shift and contort into other worlds. I strut down the corridors of vampire's castle dressed head to toe in leather with a billowing cape and comically oversized wide-brim hat singing a tune about a girl named Billy and how she better not lose my number.
watch?v=CpU-PzKfw2Y&ab_channel=SongLyricsHD
That corridor becomes the algorithm that feeds into someone's video recommendations. That assemblage of cascading green 1's and 0's melds into a faintly greenish cityscape where rebels in leather are kung fu fighting, with fists fast as lightning, men in shades and business suits.
watch?v=QspjKVTMlL8&ab_channel=CeeLoGreen-Topic
I walk over to a phone booth and pick up the ringing phone to have my body digitize. My consciousness awakens in the body of a naked female cyborg free falling from the top of a skyscraper.
watch?v=62wTjLi0-lo&ab_channel=IwannalickMenatsFeet
I/she hurdle towards the pavement of the neon lit, gringey metropolis below. Her/my body shatters upon impact but her compatriots quickly arrive to jab a cord into the base of our neck. Then I awaken as a sassy little droid beep booping as he's plugged into a security console that opens to runway to a ship and my friends rush onboard as enemy soldiers fire their badly aimed weapons at us. As I wheel up the ramp I become a student in a castle in the English country side. I'm on a rotating staircase with three other students. One is a pretty young woman with curly brown hair.
"I want her," Tzzentch whispered to me through a disembodied Cheshire grin.
The stairs swirl into an escalator in a different school that's a gothic Escher painting in the sky.
watch?v=KBN0X-wD_Dw&ab_channel=UtenaxAnthy
The escalator leads me to a field of red roses where a woman in a red ballgown awaits me. There we dance together until the roses fly away, morphing into song birds, leaving us waltzing through the starry expanse of the cosmos. Fire and wind engulf us and we merge into a screeching phoenix spreading its wings across the stars that fades into a shining spark within the soul of a little boy fleeing from a deranged man with an axe in a snowy maze.
Through it all I press ever-forward with the hope and knowledge that whatever my path lays before me, it will lead where it will and that's just fine.
"Just keep swimming," I cheerfully hummed to myself.
I pass through the door of the great library and am greeted by Lucien, a raven of rainbow feathers and the librarian.
"Well, well, well…look who it is," he chirped at me.
"Good to see you too, Lucien," I replied.
He fluttered over and perched himself on my shoulder. Seemingly endless rows of bookshelves stretch beyond the limit of the mind's conception; ages and eras oscillating between the seconds between steps. Books manifested and fell into place over the shelves dedicated to the completed works. Dust rained down on the shelves of the "trunked" works. Then there were those obscured in a dark, hazy fog: the lost works. The shelves slid and shifted as I walked down the aisle, till I found myself surrounded on three sides. One was a pitifully empty shelf of my completed works. Another was a painfully full shelf of my unfinished works. The last were the shadows of my lost works.
I picked up my most recent novel from the completed shelf.
"Hey, I'm in this one!" Lucien cried out with delight.
I thumbed through it, proud of the work as ever. Then I cast my attention on it's four sequels sitting on the "unfinished shelf."
"When you going to get back to it?" Lucien asked.
I sighed heavily, "When I wrote this conversation between us several days ago I had resolved to pick it up with the new year. As of last night, I realized that it should be finished…but not by me."
"Then who should finish it?"
"I don't know. I haven't met them yet."
"Alright! That's enough meditative babbling," Tzeentch shouted from within his innermost sanctum as the heart of the library, "O'ynn, get in here."
"Coming boss," I answered, "Good to see you 'Raimbow'."
"See you sooner than later," Lucien replied back.
At that he flew off into the rafters. I looked to the portal from whence the voice emanated and took a deep breath. I strode forward through the veil of infinity into a place of all and nothing. There, levitating upon a nonexistent throne, sat a being with skeletal frame, sinewy musculature, an eyeless face, and a mouth for his face and crotch alike. Jagged teeth align to form a crude smile. This is the Changer of Ways, the Architect of Fate, the Weaver of Hope, God of Knowledge and Magic: Tzeentch.
"Good you're here," Tzeentch said, "Now let's get everyone up to speed."
He turns towards you and smiles.
"Fair enough," I replied, "You know the love-sick idiot?"
"Yeah, the one on the Imperium garden world, head over heels for the rich Sororitas bitch," Tzeentch said.
"The one who took the deal, become one of ours, and successfully iced a few of Nurgle's Death Guard when they attacked the world," I continued, "Well he found his way to an Imperium hive world called Mordian in the Stygius sector."
"What the fuck was he doing there?" Tzeentch asked.
Stared at the great Chaos god with incredulity.
"Aren't you supposed to be the 'god of knowledge'?" I asked him.
"Look, wise ass," Tzeentch said as he stretched his arms out to crack his hands, "this exposition dump is going to be a hell of a lot easier to both read and write if we got a little back and forth going. Now shut up and keep talking."
"Yes sir. So he founded his little cult there."
"Yeah yeah yeah. The Hymns of the Piano Man. Why does that matter?"
"I got there about two centuries after he died. Good news item one: they're still going."
"No shit!" Tzeentch exclaimed with glee.
"And uh…yeah. They carved out a niche in the underhive and proved to be a resilient bunch of roaches. Got them up to speed to the new ways of the verse and we got ourselves the newest viral cell. There were nine of them I sent to nine different worlds to train nine of their own…"
"Good choice of number by-the-way," Tzeentch interjected.
"…and they're all doing their thing by spreading the good word of hope and change through beat and verse. Just the sort of thing that corrupts the mind without the world even noticing."
"Good work Odie. We're not Khorne. We win with words not wars. Well…more accurately said, when the battles start we've already won the war. A thousand tiny cracks will shatter the foundation and ruin the home better than any wrecking ball ever could. So you were saying about a 'good news item one'. That leads me to assume there is a 'good news item two'."
"Indeed there is sir."
"Well don't keep us in suspense, show it!" Tzeentch barked.
With a wry smile upon my smile, I reached into my robes and pulled out a cassette tape.
"Behold! The MacGuffin Mixtape," I said as I danced the device up and down my fingers, "The magical device that will play any song I wish."
Tzeentch clapped his hands together and snapped his fingers. Then a piano appeared next to me.
"Well Piano Man…(the song begins to play itself on the piano, watch?v=A_g7fPjVxvg&ab_channel=BillyJoellyricsvideo%27s) …you could always do it the old-fashioned way."
"It's a little hard to keep a tune when you're fighting a Space Marine or a Sororitas," I answered.
"Speaking of…how'd the date go?"
Fuck me! That was easily one of the worst yet best ideas I've ever had.
"Now now now, say it aloud so we can all be on the same page," Tzeentch chided me.
"Fine," I snipped, "So St. Celestine the Living, patron battle saint of the Adepta Sororitas, favorite daughter of the Emperor ain't exactly an easy woman to find."
'Right. She doesn't usually exist in the materium until she needs to. So you had to provoke her existence."
"E'yup."
"How'd you do that?"
"I went after the 'Good Son', Lord commander of the Imperium, our dear sweet Bobbie Boy Blue."
"Going after Guilliman. Bold play. I like it. How's his Asperger's?"
"Even after being dead for ten-thousand years, not that bad. Very mild. You wouldn't even notice if you weren't clued in to it…"
Tzeentch and I both look at you.
"…so I went to Macgragge."
Tzeentch started to laugh hysterically, "Oh, my boy! I know you and I know Macgragge . Do regale me with your suffering."
"It's the dumbest fucking planet in the dumbest fucking system in the dumbest fucking sector in the dumbest fucking segmentum I've ever been to in my many lives!" I roared.
Tzeentch spun wildly above his throne as he cackled maniacally.
"The Primarch of the Ultramarines Space Marines, calls his domain mother fucking Ultramar! Every goddamn thing is built into goddamn mountains for no goddamn reason! It's a fucking nightmare to go anywhere there!"
Tzeentch just kept on cackling.
"It's capital city is called Magna Macgragge Civitas," my rage continued, "which is just stupid-ass Latin for 'Big Macgragge City!' By sweet fucking Chaos; there's a statue to the Emperor called, 'Magna Pater Petras', which just means, 'Big Dad Rock'…why do they let him name things? He's the GOAT of logistics, no argument, but fuck me that man is bereft of artistry!"
"Heeeehhahahahah hehehehe hahaahahawaawaaawa," Tzeentch begun to compose himself, "Worth it already. Please continue."
"So after an utterly agonizing process of scheming, timing, scamming, bribing, hiding, and lying, that I'm so grateful I don't have to explain…I got in the right position at the right place at the right time."
"Don't stop now. Keep it going," Tzeentch prodded.
"I get myself detained as heretic in front of Guilliman…"
Tzeentch cocked his head to the side, "Interrrresting play…"
I can't help but smile, "…but more specifically as heretic who's saying that Emperor doesn't want to be worshipped as a god."
"My boy!" Tzeentch cried out as clapped hands, bumped fists, and snapped fingers together.
Damn right you should be proud of me. They call us deceivers and liars. What if I told you that the greatest lie ever told was that the devil is a liar? What if he just tells you the full unvarnished truth and lets you find your own way to hell with it? Our Bobby Boy Blue has been "mostly dead" for the better part of ten-thousand years. That means when he was last awake the Ecclesiarchy, the Imperial Church, had not assumed control of the Emperor's glorious atheist empire yet.
Needless to say there's some broiling tension between the Ecclesiarchy of the Empire and its Lord Commander. They've choked it back by ignoring the blatantly obvious but upon hearing me speak a truth he knew all too well; our dear Bobby, being one of the very few good men who happen to be primarchs, stayed my execution. That just so happened to put the Lord Commander with his guard down within striking distance of a greater demon of Chaos.
"And that's when the angel saved the day," Tzeentch put together the rest.
The favorite daughter of the emperor "stopped" my evil plan by popping into existence precisely where I wanted her to. With her golden armor, white wings, sublime back hair, gorgeous face, and murderous gaze; she clenched her fists about my throat to squeeze the life from me. That's when the son drew their father's sword and the two "siblings" or a sort did battle with one another.
"I thought about them letting kill each other," I said.
"Why didn't you?" Tzeentch pressed.
"Because they're both more valuable to us alive than dead."
The contradictions between the opposing sides they represent cannot last. With another push or two, the son and the daughter will war on each other and obliterate their father's kingdom from within. So I spared them that cruelty…for now…by growing my own pair of neon rainbow wings, cackling mad, and allowing sorcerous lightning to wash over me.
"So you did get your precious duel with the angel. How'd it go?" Tzeentch asked.
With a Cheshire grin across my face, I snapped my fingers, waved my hand and a boombox appeared. I placed the MacGuffin Mixtape into it and played the song.
watch?v=ozBeqD5wuPQ&ab_channel=LePhantome
So me and Celestine went "straight on" for one another. There was no way she was sitting this one out. She had the feeling of fortune filling her in. Her pride demanded that she defeat me alone or not at all. So we fought like dueling eagles above the city. Now I know how to play my hand and "what the winner don't know the gambler understands". She didn't stand a chance because she was coming straight on for me…and missing the real fight.
"The whole time her blade is crossing with my staff-,"
Tzeentch started to giggle like a teenage fool, "Slaanesh would be proud."
"-with our faces mere inches from one another, I'm whispering all sort of horrible truths in her ears…"
I tell her how her worship of the Emperor is not that different from my devotion to Tzeentch. How her devotion is feeding his presence in the Warp, essentially turning him into a fifth Chaos god, and that would make her his "greater demon"… "the same as me." Naturally she called me "liar" at every turn but something about the last one stuck. I know because it made her pause and stammer. In that moment of weakness I disarmed her.
"Then what did you do?" Tzeentch asked, gleefully proud.
"I held her close and we danced to a one last song," I answered.
I pull out the tape, flip it to the other side, and press play. (Seriously, play the song and imagine the scene. This one is crucially important narratively.)
watch?v=Crif5E67ar0&ab_channel=billyjoelVEVO
I sung my heart out to it, and by the end of the song she too was mumbling the words.
"The angel has had her wings clipped. As her doubt grows her power will decrease. When I stab her through the heart, St. Celestine the Living is going to stay dead," I proclaimed with an insidious smile.
"Brilliant work, my boy!" Tzeentch shouted with delight, "What's next?"
"We wait. We let our work run its course through their minds and when the time is right, we give them the push they need to tumble."
When I told you earlier that, "all has not gone according to plan", I wasn't lying. The problem with my masterstroke is that it hinges on me being able to stab Celestine in the heart. When I was holding her in my arms high above the surface of Macgragge, I couldn't help but notice how she reminded me of a very particular type of woman I have spent my life chasing. The fault in my own plan is my heart. She reminds of a woman I was certain I hated until I didn't.
"Hmmmm…," Tzeentch stared through me as he contemplated something, "towards that endgame, yes but we have other pieces on other boards that need to be put into motion. Odie, I know you don't much care for Fenris or the fursona Space Marines who occupy it…something something, frightful symmetry…"
Yes Tzeentch, as Odin I do fear Fenris. I know how that story ends. But the wolves I fear are not the Space Wolves. The beast that has always haunted my dreams breathed against my neck. I felt his cold claws dancing up my spine. I'm struck with a vision of one black and one white shadowy mass of fur, fury, muscle, and carnage walking out of a pale green miasmic cloud. I thought I had slayed these demons long ago but the funny thing is they never stay dead. Fenris would be a poetic place for me to encounter them again.
"It's dangerous to go alone…," Tzeentch said with a knowing grin. A rope pulley tumbled out of nothing before him. He pulled the chord and a young woman with twin floor length braided ponytails, a black halter top, pinkish purple pants, untied boots, and blazing pink eyes fell into my lap. "…take this."
Jinx!? What the fuck is Jinx doing h- stop. What the fuck is Tzeentch up to?
Jinx nervously giggled, "Uh…hi," as she reached her hand out to shake mine.
I strained to keep my eyes modest. Goddamn it! She's so fucking gorgeous. What the shit are you up to Tzeentch?
As if in reply to my thoughts, he chuckled menacingly under his breath, "Oooohhhhhh! You'll see."