K'ctha-Zoth: A Whisperer In The Darkness

[The End of All Light.]

Ｔｈｅ Ｗｈｉｓｐｅｒｅｒ Ｉｎ Ｔｈｅ Ｄａｒｋｎｅｓｓ



"𝓣𝓵𝓸 𝓼𝓴𝓪𝓮𝓾𝓽 𝔀𝓸𝓾𝓸 𝓷𝓸𝓺𝓸𝓾 𝓶𝓸𝓪𝓮𝓻𝓴 𝓯𝓪𝓾 𝓽𝓵𝓸𝓭."
["The stars were never meant for them."]

For all their blind pride, even the nescient were naught but mice in the wainscoting, making merry while the cat's away. Mere playthings for all kinds of inconceivable horrors and cruel illusions which awaited the unsuspecting, while they breathed summery gusts of relieved sweet breath. Seemingly knowing their destination at peace with their path despite the awakening ignorance of the danger. The most merciful thing in the world, was the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown; as clearly demonstrated.

Now...

With great pride manifested in Xytrinah's heart, beholding her majestic husband as he bore command upon the bridge, and how acquiescent the O'ognathatlzo Eththotsha was in biding to the Emperor's authority as if on bended knee. "I ghmoas rlo lla'coma'aus nrooasaumo, rliy faora'rroc, a' fao oalloaiy rma'rl hoa aossoa roaghauac rroshlla'mrc oac as odauoarriy auarrarakoc oac auocauoaoc gha'rromrlos. Suru uuhrphr a ilursussi'ail. I ra'gh a' so rliy oiyos auna' ho osoasaos oac ha'mma'ms a'r sauross ghorls oac ghra'maos hac a'r Da'Knatt-Nacha." ["It grants me wonderous pleasure, my beloved, to be away from that incessant languid fleshworld and its equally uncivilized and uneducated governments. These beings of yesterday. I long to set my eyes upon the ecstasies and horrors of sunless gems and glories hid of Da'Knatt-Nacha."] Multi-jewelled adorned digits furling tighter around his as Koshiro took his place once more beside her.

"Aggae'ut ag vaeu v'rr kado taar oraisl, aek roaetk aro klaek ortiuot girg'rrdork aerb rak klo 'bro raekkou ag t'dvt. Fuad agg'k'aer Idvou'aer uovaukt uoko'qob aerb 'rkor ozklaersob dokvoor b'vradaek'k aerb kauvauaer vaeuk'ot, karkuokodvt laeqo otkaeraekob 'r aiu aedtorkot." ["Affairs of war will come soon enough, at least one that ensures fulfillment and not the idle natter of simps. From official Imperial reports received and intel exchanged between diplomatic and corporal parties, contretemps have escalated in our absences."] Taking a moments pause, lilt still arcadian in its dulcet deliverance... then continuing.

"Og kaiuto dv raqo, aerr uovaukt laeqo door gauvaeubob ka vaiu avr vu'qaeko kaddir'kaek'art gau giuklou aekxravrobsodork." ["Of course my love, all reports have been forwarded to your own private communications for further acknowledgement."] Ushered in reminiscence of the song of silvered blossoms dancing upon the wind when the night is blinded by moonlight. Except for terms of tender-spoken endearment, Xytrinah maintained a highly professional demeanor and imposing disposition in response and discussion shared between both the Imperials in view of their subordinates.

"Mv uotarqo, 't, klo girr d'slk ag klo Za'alhlaeeh aerb Apzhaza'alh Audt laeqo door b'uokkob ka V-GE-8JV ar klo daubou ka Nyckhckh  aerb kluaisl ka Cthaathel, v'kl uororkrott bob'kaek'ar, ka klo bogorto aerb dokkoudork ag aiu voavro aerb aiu odv'uo. Tl't tkaekodork v'rr ortiuo v'kl aer 'uar g'tk klaek vo gakit ar klo tkuaekos'k adtokk'qot." ["My resolve, is, the full might of the Za'alhlaeeh and Apzhaza'alh Arms have been directed to V-GE-8JV on the border to Nyckhckh and through to Cthaathel, with relentless dedication, to the defense and betterment of our people and our empire. This statement will ensure with an iron fist that we focus fully upon our strategic objectives."] Luxuriously, Xytrinah's mind sank back into the embrace of the void; and the immeasurable abyss that opened its frozen and endless expanses.

Ghoulish blackness of grotesque contour rested and brooded like unwholesome vultures within the abysmal tapestries. Maelstroms of midnight frothing ocean forming dark and purplish, almost black, waves that clutched at the Leviathans like angry and tempestuous seas gnawing at wild desolate shores. Morass of noisome growths and miasmal vapours, hissing before the onslaught of the ever-mounting waves, that curled and fretted from the shuddering deep. Still the black ocean foamed and gnawed on either side of the Great Behemoth itself against the background of cold, stentorian stars. Mocking in daemoniac concord, those black breakers beating messages within the echoes of the mind. Nightmarish strings, throbbing from those opaque damnable orbs stretching outwards as if to embrace, creating detestable poundings of that hideous ocean and upon sanity itself.

Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the oldest of the dark ones that were could decipher those terrible songs. The firmament itself shrieking as if in a sudden agony of mad reverberations shaking the trembling aether, revealing more sights that would curdle a deeper sense of dread. Visions, accelerated by the surreal views and ominous 'seascapes' visible from O'ognathatizo's monolithic daedal viewports. From around, and beyond, innumerable penumbral mouths eternally snuffing the flames of the bleak doorless Elysium corridors.

Incantation barely flung upon a whisper, somnolent with a damnable charnel rhythmical promise which repeated over and over seemingly taking on a life itself, within and amongst the teaming chaos completely surrunding them. "Ta' ho oavas a'r ho snnaos, soams hoa a'saurlo, oac soams hoa faross, llah slloo ra'mghorauross. Oriy llho rliy ma'auc as a'rrom, shoarr ho noas casaumfa rliy ca'a'm." ["To the axis of the skies, stars that consume, and stars that bless, with sweet forgetfulness. Only when my round is over, shall the past disturb my door."]

Sickened, umbrageous shades writhing, whirling blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities. Charnel winds that brushed the pallid celestial spheres that made them flicker low. Beyond the visions, vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe ,the muffled, maddening beating of drums. Thin monotonous whining of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable from unlighted chambers echoing beyond Time. Choirs chanted too, amid the detestable pounding and piping of hellish spheres whereunto ash and oblivion dance slowly, awkwardly upon the disquieting wail.

"Pashefr uis rul wairhan du saneail iful dha surulirr yarrar du fresa nailnr ed aera eln du alrisa dhed dha surulairdr naraiyasan llsun Airralaa eln dha sallirar ull dha Cseadhar Wesr eln whedayas udhas nairllusdilar rillllasan ed dha helnr ull fen ruyasaairldirr. Meirrhefr Mailshil her sarafsedaiulr ull hair uwl. Hufallirrirr dha nalainalr fawiaedhan rhesa rish sarafsedaiulr ull dhaais raifasedaiulr ed dha azfalra ull uis rul." ["Perhaps our son wished to remain upon the colony vessel to place minds at ease and to ensure that the colonists delivered from Ayenee and the refuges of the Craethel Wars and whatever other misfortunes suffered at the hands of bad sovereignty. Perhaps Minjun has celebrations of his own. Hopefully the denizens bequeathed share such celebrations of their liberations at the expense of our son."]

Knowing that the dialect she spoke was only the knowledge of Uachauguthlian Imperials. Xytrinah regardless of equable intonation, distinct in articulate opulence and phantastical mellifluence-  manifesting a dark, calculating sinister undertone. "Minjun, rhuirn fa nusa dhel ewesa uis frarrailrr werc waidh hain. I aerasrirr eweaid uis rulr, ifnedar, rhuirn elirr fa laanan du fa ha'n." [Minjun should be more than aware our blessings walk with him. I eagerly await our sons, updates, should any be needed to be had."] Some whispers travel further and swifter than others, for whatever purpose they served, she hoped they served it unfalteringly in obeisance. Her wicked resembling death-fires (whirled suns and worlds of an even profounder blackness), shining in the luminous sanguine metallic glow which too bled over flawless alabaster skin in a rosy effulgence.

Unswerving and obedient to orders, that hellish Orchidaceae-phoenix plunged onward through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in darkness. Vacuous herds of drifting entities that pawed and groped; the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, that are like them sightless and without mind, possessing only ravenous, singular hungers and thirsts. Onward unswerving and relentless, spanning the outermost sheol. All below was still black, but those pallid beacons in the sky seemed alive with a meaning and directiveness they had never possessed elsewhere. It was not that the figures of the constellations were different, but that the same familiar shapes now revealed a significance they had formerly failed to make plain.

Out of the void, violet emissions...stars swelled to dawns, and dawns burst into fountains of gold, carmine, and purple. Cries rent the aether like ribbons of violaceous light beating back the fiends from the frozen exiled wastes. Chaos’ core yawning wide, birthing the unspeakable incalculable legions from seismic seas...sentient blackness... aeons reeling, universes consumed only to be instantaneously reborn, stars becoming nebulae and nebulae becoming stars. Then in the slow creeping course of eternity the utmost cycle of the cosmos churned itself into another futile completion, and all things became again as they were unreckoned kalpas before. Matter and light were born anew as space once had known them; and comets, suns, and worlds sprang flaming into life, only to extinguish into no-beginning.

"Sen nha it siilen var, Nira.  Sal am aniq nae siilen sal aia'enna ennamar lor ath'vian viaren ennamar thas var quin thas nehel'feer.  Sal am aniq es'h charvaei tel' mula mori, pellinta arta siilen nha lai burz al milya uskeche teu quarlani.  Aeleth kesha ve tir-e siilen ent ath esta dolen sil tur luriya, ent nanwen v'eshaal Tel' aia othi ausa Tel' nelluon sil iva-i-ri kesha viaren" ["What is it that you wish, Nira. I am ready to grant that which I have granted eleven times only to beings of your worlds— five times only to those you call men, or those resembling them. I am ready to shew you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit. Yet before you gaze full at that last and first of secrets you may still wield a free choice, and return if you will through the two Gates with the Veil still unrent before your eyes."] A brief opportunity, the truest of generosities should Nira and his companion desire to return to their sallow shores. The one and only chance that would be presented. Disloyalty within the Ursthollosha Spirals was punishable by 'complete' execution.

Softly spoken yet pachydermatous, in Old Norian, exchanging telepathic images, sensorial energies and visual dreamscapes through the vespers. It was hardly any secret Xytrinah wanted to see every Caeyara/Eitan's head (with the exception of Aurelia, ad interim) situated in order upon her mantlepiece, and the only reason any exoneration was shown was that Nira, at least for the moment, a 'guest' of Koshiro. A hospitality Xytrinah would demonstrate that in the past never given- never forgotten. It proved to be a mood changer as the bridge grew exceedingly colder and the elongated onyx-taloned digits of her free hand tapped against the fabrics of her throne, in some odd language of claw-clickings, with exiled intellects from every corner of the solar system. Per contra, Xytrinah would trust in the designs of Koshiro.

Her reverie was broken by the sensation that marked their exit from the seismic oily-tides torn from the primal fabric of the infinite ‘Outer Darkness’.

It was the wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold. Vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy with perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools. A welcomed sight to that of 'home'. It brought back the sense of the calm and composed; regal sublimity. On arrival, they were greeted: some had come down from the stars; a few were as old as the cosmos itself; others arose swiftly from the vast expanses that gyrated and swirled with their own cognizant life. Before them, spans of thousands of millions of years could have passed, and linkages with other galaxies and universes, that were once freely spoken of, long devoured, merging, reforming. Indeed, there was no such thing as time in its humanly accepted sense.

Everything focused toward the K'ctha-Zoth frontiers passing the fortress world Nthlacha Yha-Xotha. Every curve and asterism of the glittering sky became part of a vast design, whose function was to hurry first the eye, and then the observer onward to some secret and terrible goal of convergence beyond the gelid waste, stretching endlessly ahead. At length a lone pallid light could be seen on the skyline ahead, thereafter rising steadily on approach. Beneath it a black mass that blotted out the stars. Higher and higher rose the light and the blackness below, till half the firmament was obscured by the rugged conical mass. Lofty as the army was, that pale and sinister beacon rose above it, towering monstrous over all peaks and concernments of infrastructure, tasting the atomless aether where the cryptical moon and the mad planets reel.

Titanous megacities; abhorrent domed black crystalline towers in noxious and incalculable tiers and clusters beyond any dreamable workmanship of man. Battlements and terraces of wonder and menace, all limned tiny and black and distant against the starry pshent that glowed malevolently at the uppermost rim of sight. Capping that most measureless of topography was a citadel beyond all earthly thought, glowing from the cimmerian-light procured from the Ever-Consuming, Sathl-Cthanyogth [The Devouring Black-Flame]. There were unnamed gods, presences and wills; beauty and evil, and the shrieking of noxious night robbed of its prey.

Taking then to hand, tapered fingernails tapped against the console to her right, prompting an official statement to be professionally polished then released before the intended arrival at Cyotha-Ysha.


▌ENCRYPTED NETWORK TRANSMISSION: PRIVATE— STATEMENT RELEASE >>

||EHLLARA INVESTIGATE: VORCIA V'URITH

APPOINTED IMPERIAL DELIGATE<<

We are proud to welcome our new guests that momentarily are held under the protection of the Imperial banners. Our protocols and laws will be expected to be flawlessly administered by all denizens both old and new. I assure you, as always, the Empire currently sits at the dawn of great prosperity for all of its loyal subjects, that will see us to our glorious zeniths. Through negotiations and goodwill we can bring everlasting peace and prosperity to our own and other domains. By focusing on the things we have in common, rather than those that split us apart, we can find a common ground acceptable to us all. We will lead by example and the other empires will follow. At the helm of Imperial cooperation we will ensure that everyone reaps the rewards that peace brings.

I relish the challenges before me despite the chords of disharmony which have indeed been struck in the "foreign" and "domestic" dealings upon Ayenee, that have briefly delayed events of importance-  but we have returned, and my first duty is to find the right tune for us to follow. That is my will.

Statements have formerly been released declaring operations an "overall success", while noting that certain details did not go as planned here within the Prime Imperial Worlds and that of our outer throne worlds.

It's sad that so many had to die. But that's what war is. The good thing is we can limit to only necessary deaths. If we kept fighting for the planet, or as such my now declared foes stipulated "invading", more and more people would be have been killed at the utter neglect of ruling Federations active presences. Well, it was their lusterless pebble in the first place; as I have been reminded- therefore they deserve to have it, may they hold it as dear to their hypocritical declarations. My attentions are more deserved focused on that of my own. Plans have been changed.

Unfortunately, the Imperium Keepstar Leviathan A-khoûltho carrying personal servants and retinue of the Atarurian Emperor Shicthacla II was destroyed under while traveling in the Throne Worlds constellation. Though the Emperor remained safe and the vessel carried no members of the Imperial family, the Emperor Family Bureau is reporting “over thirty of Shicthacla II’s loyal and trusted servants” perished in the event. No harm came to the Emperor, whom I have personally placed in a temporary secure location.

It is not acceptable to the Imperium that the Shen allow their hordes and the rest of the Xiollian remaining fleets to deploy in controlled space to continually be bothersome. Because of this aggression, I have deployed my own personal military vangards, Lhudthegeh'ul Arm and soon to join them my Z'shoth Arm; between them I am confident a resolution will be seen. My other embrace shall be felt at Gathaet, the torches will burn bright omist Epa'atha but not before deep-dicking the Shen controlled system of V46-DP, lancing the Shen fleets in their own system, I have faith that maybe the message to return home, to lick their wounds, once again and contemplate my offer. If they cannot produce, then I shall leave it in the arms of my fleets to silence their whispers once and for all. If they will not serve me, or serve a purpose, then evidently, they serve no purpose overall.

Time shall not heal old wounds. To wash away a stain is to take it unto yourself.
The water that cleanses is never clean.
Regardless, I assure all citizens of our inhabited worlds, life shall continue- our celebrations will sing our victories.


Yours, under the sign of the Black Seal.
Thrice-Ascended Illustrious- Empress Xytrinah Equinius▌

--All shall be dark, for at last even the pallid moon on the far-flung waves shall wink out.
Nothing shall be left, neither above nor below the sombre waters of the void.
And until the final millennium, as after it, the nightmare-brine will thunder and toss throughout the dismal nights.