Asthéneia

ACT 5

She stepped back into Temporal Limbo, in search of her muse. In the dim twilight of Temporal Limbo she found Dara in the garden, before a throne woven from petrified vines. The vines still twitched occasionally, as if remembering the agony of their growth. Asthéneia’s fingers traced lazy patterns on Dara’s arm, watching the flesh yield like overripe fruit under her touch, before sealing whole once more. Dara, her muse, sat patiently, listening.

“We need answers,” Asthéneia murmured, her voice a soft hiss like leaves crumbling in the wind. “The cloaks. The masks. Thanatos and Nyx each wear them. They move with... purpose. Strength. I feel it in the weave, like threads tightening around my throat.”

Dara tilted her head, her eyes gleamed with that childlike curiosity Asthéneia adored. “They look ridiculous. Like deities playing at being mortal. But yes, beloved, they are stronger. Why not ask one directly?”

Asthéneia laughed, the sound bubbling like venom in a cauldron. “Directly? No, my sweet decay. We lure. We tempt. Próklisi—he’s always been the proud one. If we craft a challenge grand enough, he’ll come running. And when he does, we’ll pry the truth from his golden lips.”

Dara clapped her hands, bones clicking beneath thinning flesh. “Yes! A world of strivers, of desperate souls clawing for more time. He won’t resist. And when we’ve beaten him at his own game... we ask about those silly costumes.”

Asthéneia nodded, her skin cracking slightly at the edges with her smile. “Precisely. Let’s find a canvas worthy of his ego.”

They chose Aelthir, a ringed water-world that was half ocean and half beach with floating cities built from coral and pearl. The Virelai dwelled there, bioluminescent crustaceans with shells that glowed like underwater stars, their segmented bodies weaving through currents in intricate dances. They were a young species, ambitious, their science focused on elongating their naturally short lifespans. Laboratories bobbed under the waves, filled with bubbling vats and glowing crystals, as they chased the dream of eternity.

Asthéneia and Dara arrived not with fanfare, but as black snow falling upward from the sea’s depths. No one noticed at first—the Virelai were too busy with their experiments. But soon, the plague began. They called it the Lamentfire.

It was Asthéneia’s most elegant creation yet: a subtle virus that infiltrated the bioluminescent glands, burning most so they’d die before maturity, turning their inner light into searing agony. Memories corroded like rusted metal, dissolving into hallucinatory pain. But not for all.

A few Virelai, those with the strongest wills, found their lifespans inexplicably extended, their glow brighter, their agony a fuel for desperate innovation. The plague shortened most lives to mere months, but for the survivors, it granted decades—enough to spark fierce competition. Remedies were sought not just for cure, but to separate the secret of longevity from the pain that burned their shells. Within a decade, the oceans glowed with dying light and screaming color.

Floating cities dimmed as Virelai clawed at their shells, begging for release. Asthéneia and Dara drifted among them, hand in hand, invisible to all but the dying. They tasted every new shade of despair—the sharp tang of a scientist’s failed equation dissolving in their mind, the bitter wail of a parent watching their young fade.

“It’s beautiful,” Dara whispered, her lips brushing Asthéneia’s ear. “They fight so hard now. Look how they compete.”

Asthéneia nodded, spreading fresh infections as she floated in the wate. “And Próklisi will feel it. He can’t resist such a strong competitive spirit.”

Each year they added another of Aelthir’s strands to those infected. On the thirty-third year of the Lamentfire, he arrived. A golden fire cut through the infected waters, rising from the depths like a submerged sun breaking the surface. Próklisi, the Pillar of Challenge and Competition, cloaked in boiling crimson that radiated the heat of a thousand forges. His mask shone bright golden, rays etched with the scars of battles won, eyes burning with arrogance.     

He stopped dead when he saw Dara. The golden mask tilted, rays catching the dying glow of a nearby Virelai. “Miral?” he breathed, the word landing flat like steel falling into sand. Dara tilted her rotting head, curious, her milky eyes flickering with amusement.

Asthéneia stepped between them, her smile sharpening behind her porcelain mask. “She is Dara. My Dara. You are mistaken.”

Próklisi ignored her. He stared at the mortal woman’s face, carved now into gangrenous bone, the features twisted but unmistakable. “This shouldn’t be,” he muttered. “I watched Miral die on Zorath. I held her as her lifeblood drained. She looked exactly—”

Dara laughed, the sound of bells drowning in tar. “I have had many names, golden boy. None of them yours.”

Próklisi’s mask flared brighter, rays extending like spears. “You defile her.”

Asthéneia’s ichor-tears fell—black droplets that hissed where they touched the water, killing small schools of fleeing Virelai. “You dare,” she said, voice soft and venomous, “You dare suggest you knew my muse before I made her immortal?”

Próklisi turned the full weight of his gaze on Asthéneia. “This plague ends,” he declared. “I challenge it, and once it is gone I will have the truth.”

Asthéneia bowed, smiling her gangrenous smile, “No my dear brother, when I win and our plague survives on even one strand of Aelthir, you will answer my questions in truth.”

The two set about the rules of the challenge. In one hundred seventeen years Aelthir would pass through a plasma nebula, this was a set temporal event for the world. The radiation and storms of the nebula were scheduled to end all life on Aelthir in that year. Próklisi had until then to cleanse every infected strand of the plague, but Asthéneia could not start new plagues on strands she had not yet touched. She could only work with what had already been started.

The War of Inspiration began. Próklisi had never been subtle. He descended into the floating cities and walked among the Virelai as a golden apparition, whispering the concept of challenge into every dying mind. Wherever his light touched, dying Virelai felt a sudden, impossible surge of pride. Scientists who had already lost limbs to Lamentfire dragged themselves to laboratories. Artists painted equations in their own glowing blood. Children too weak to swim dictating hope and dreams to their parents. The single burning thought Próklisi poured into every mind: We will not die screaming. We will die cured. We will be remembered as the ones who beat rot.

Asthéneia felt the shift like a personal insult. She flooded the oceans with new strains, light-eaters that turned cure-attempts into blinding agony. Memory-worms that made researchers forget their own names mid-equation. A variant that caused the body to heal into grotesque, painless tumors, life prolonged, but dignity erased. Plagues that made the cure itself cause agony.

Próklisi countered with inspiration: geniuses who lay upon their deathbeds rose, equations glowing on their skin like holy scripture. Dara watched them war with childlike glee, kissing Asthéneia between volleys. “He thinks he can save them,” she sang. “Let him try.”

For a century the war raged across every timeline of Aelthir. Próklisi’s inspiration against Asthéneia’s corruption. Cities rose and fell in fire and ink. In most timelines the Lamentfire burned bright, oceans of screaming light. But in the central branches, the Virelai began to win. A retrovirus was born: Auroracide. It rewrote Lamentfire into harmless bioluminescence, the pain and damage was removed, but the benefits remained and became constant. The first cured city sang in pure, painless color for the first time in generations. Word spread like dawn. Próklisi appeared before Asthéneia on the highest spire, golden mask radiant.

“I won,” he said simply.

Dara stepped forward, rotting fingers stroking the sunburst mask. “Did you?” she asked sweetly. She kissed the golden cheek. Where her lips touched, gold began to rust. Próklisi recoiled. Asthéneia laughed—a sound like continents cracking. She raised one hand. The cure worked perfectly—on every timeline except one.

In that single, hidden branch, the retrovirus mutated under her touch. It did not cure. It perfected the Lamentfire. Every cured Virelai woke unaging, painless, and utterly empty. Glowing shells with no memory, no desire, no soul. They drifted in clean, silent water, beautiful and vacant. A gallery of living statues. Despair deeper than any scream because there was no one left inside to scream. The other timelines died cured and proud, as Próklisi had bidden. But the hidden timeline, that one Asthéneia kept. A private gallery. Próklisi stared at the empty glowing husks, mask dimming for the first time in eternity.

Próklisi felt the hidden timeline bloom into existence and staggered as though struck. “You… kept them,” he whispered. “You kept the worst death of all. You… twisted my victory.”

Asthéneia stepped close, black tears dripping onto his golden cloak, eating holes like acid. She whispered, “Never, speak my muse’s name again. She was never yours to save.” She paused, her voice shifting from venom to curiosity. “But before you slink away, golden one—tell me of these cloaks and masks. Thanatos, Nyx... they wear them now. What do they signify? Do they grant power?”

Próklisi straightened, his arrogance flickering back like a dying ember. “They mark growth. Each Pillar who wears one has faced an internal challenge and emerged transformed. Stronger. I, as the embodiment of challenge, was forged with mine from the beginning.”

Asthéneia disregarded the boast with a wave of her hand, black droplets scattering like ink. “Then I too have met my challenge. I have twisted victory from your grasp, turned hope into hollow eternity.”

She and Dara walked away, leaving Próklisi alone with the silent, glowing dead. In the Limbo, Asthéneia felt the weave shift around her. She gathered the remnants of her plagues—the gangrene from a thousand rotting worlds, the swamp muck from drowned civilizations—and wove them into a cloak. It draped over her like living rot, black-green and pulsing with faint, sickly light. For her mask, she drew from the Breathing Dead of Lyrani, sewing broken skulls together with flesh-strips and their own ethereal silk. Asthéneia’s mask smiled so wide the corners cracked; black ichor wept from the eyes and never quite reached the chin. She stood before Dara, transformed. The cloak clung like a second skin, the mask a crown of desecration.

Dara traced the edges with rotting fingers. “You look perfect, my love. The Pillar of Decay, cloaked in her own art.”

Asthéneia nodded, feeling power surge through her veins like venomous fire. “It is time to show the other Pillars my greatest exhibit.”

Dara opened the ledger and wrote in luminous ink: Aelthir – Rating: Perfect (private reserve). Golden boy learned a lesson. We kept the prettiest corpses. He will never forget our face.

Asthéneia added beneath it, in letters that bled: If he ever says ‘Mira’ again, I will make him watch every timeline die… twice. Asthéneia closed the book, pressing the ledger to her chest. For the first time since Corpus, she felt something like fear—small, delicious, new. Próklisi now had a reason to hate them, and pride remembers every wound.

But the multiverse was still vast,and they had so many more screams to paint. Hand in rotting hand, goddess and muse stepped into the weave—certain the rules were still theirs to bend, still blind to the shadow gathering behind the next six canvases. The universe trembling as they passed by.

After Aelthir, after Próklisi’s broken pride and rusted mask, they refined their doctrine into three sacred laws, written in luminous pus on the inside of Asthéneia’s cloak:

Touch only the red strands, those already sentenced.

Change only the how, never the when.

Leave one perfect scream echoing in every timeline.

They obeyed these laws with religious fervor, yet every obedience felt like triumph. They ruined a species of living flame by making their own heat feel like love turning to betrayal, exactly 4,000 years, no more, no less.

They taught a race of crystal librarians that knowledge itself could rot, and watched them burn their own memories in despair on the exact day scheduled for extinction.

They turned an entire civilization of gentle cloud-herders into a perpetual thunderstorm of self-loathing that rained acid tears for precisely one century before the final lightning strike.

Each time the Plan remained untouched. Each time Chronos walked past without looking. Each time Kanna’s gaze slid over them like oil on water.

The two moved their home many times over the next age. Partly to keep their lab and experiments secret, but also for Dara’s sake. Dara was getting weaker, it seemed even with her immortality she could not remain in Timeless Limbo for too long. She would oft times travel into a Strand to recover, but though she returned in good health, each trip she was gone longer and longer.

Finally they chose to settle in a Strand rather than Temporal Limbo. They found one that was long dead, but still tied to it’s cosmos. Time still moved here, unseen and unfelt. The sun had gone nova a century or two ago, burning all life from the planets in the system. Asthéneia recalled that the planet that held life was once known as Placuit, though she had never touched it with her art. Geolythic lifeforms were annoyingly resistant to her touch. But they were burnt to cinders now, and their world was nothing more than charred rocks in space.

It was in the hollowed-out heart of this dead star that they now made their home, their private gallery. Dara loved it, here she maintained her strength, and the two could work side by side without pause. In the foyer Dara placed small, moving images showing the many minor plagues they had caused, each a reminder that even the smallest art was worth remembrance.

The foyer led to the Grand Gallery itself, where Dara had hung seven much larger moving images. Six of them moved, one sat blank. The six were of Asthéneia’s greatest feats.

The Black Snow that had shattered the Choralith of Calcyra.

The Pollution that turned the world of Zorath from a world of verdant life to one of ash and Iron.

The Veilblight of Lyris, the first plague to spread to other Strands of it’s world.

The transformation of Myrrdin into Corpus through the creation of the Breathing Dead. Asthéneia’s victory over Thanatos.

The world Erythra, not the first malaise that had been wrought… that one had been erased by Chronos, but the second. The Erythra Ascension.

And, of course, The Lamentfire of Aelthir, a clear reminder of their defeat of Próklisi.

One night, Asthéneia and Dara lay entwined on a bed of softly moaning cloaks, looking at the seventh canvas. The one yet to be filled with images of her art. Asthéneia sighed looking at the blank, unmoving canvas.

Dara traced lazy circles of rust on Asthéneia’s bone bared cheek. “Do you ever think,” she whispered, “that we are better at this than He is?”

Asthéneia’s smile widened until the mask threatened to split with the thought. “Every day,” she answered.

Dara laughed, a gurgle like the sound of cities drowning. “Then why stop at doomed strands?” she asked. “Why not paint one that still has hope? One little stroke. He would never notice. An act worthy of it’s place amongst the other six”

Asthéneia hesitated, she had felt it on Corpus, and again when Proklisi recognized defeat, a heartbeat of something that might have been fear. Dara kissed the hesitation away. “We have earned it,” she crooned. “We are the artists now.”

Asthéneia watched the images of her prior feats, at Corpus still moaning beyond anyone’s reach, at Próklisi’s rusted mask somewhere far away. She looked at Dara, her immortal-mortal beloved, the only creature in all existence who had ever chosen rot and called it love. “We have earned it,” she echoed.

They rose together, cloaks whispering, masks weeping and laughing in perfect unison. They stepped into Temporal Limbo, walked to the edge where the red strands ended and the bright, living ones began. Before they began, Dara opened the public ledger one last time and wrote in glowing rot: We have followed every rule. Now we write new ones.

Asthéneia kissed the page until the words bled. Then goddess and muse stepped hand in hand toward the bright, untouchable strands, certain the multiverse was finally, truly theirs. They believed nothing could stop them.

Not Próklisi.

Not Thanatos.

Not even Kanna Himself.

They were wrong. But for one perfect, breathless moment cloaked in living gangrene, masked in weeping porcelain, they were the most beautiful mistake the multiverse had ever allowed.

And the scream had only just begun.