I’m Kess and this is a side project The story of six corrupt gods and the three humans that hunt them down. Check out the about page for more information! About
The light is snuffed out. The world grows cold. All things end.
The frost will take everything from you.
-
The sky was black and snow piled high across the land. The king had been away on a long and harsh military campaign, only now trudging through the deep and bitter winter to return home. Though the days were short and the night was long, he had obtained victory, and no obstacle would be able to stop him from joining with his wife.
He marched his army across frozen rivers, over perilous mountains, and through frostbitten forests. Ice began to freeze over their equipment and even their flesh. The blood in their bodies froze over and their eyes started to freeze over with ice. They lost a great many soldiers on that march.
The king, unrelenting, issued a stern command: Hold firm and keep marching.
There are many great men, many rulers and warriors, who would fight for those they love, but no one would ever go as far as the king would for his queen.
She was his everything. She was the sun, she was the spring.
Without her he had nothing.
And with that drive he marched on.
The forest grew black.
The world was only darkness. Cold, empty, and isolating.
But the king marched on.
As he approached his castle he looked it over with a warm fondness. This was his home. These were his people. This is what it was all for.
As he made his way to his throne he felt something wrong. He pushed open the great big doors and there in front of him he saw what was missing. His wife, the queen, was not there.
The hall was strewn with corpses and many of his men and women were lost trying to save her.
He flew into a fury.
“Where is she?!” his voice demanded. It was so cold, so harsh, it sent shivers down the spine of his court. This was not the king they have always known. This is not the proud ruler, this was the war general, the man who would do whatever it took to win the war and keep the kingdom safe. This was a side of him very few ever saw.
Finally a court messenger spoke up. He said they tried to protect her, that they tried to fight, but they just weren’t strong enough.
The anger in the king’s eyes froze over. There was no longer boiling, scathing rage. His eyes grew dim and his scowl turned to a frown. Something inside of him was gone.
He turned towards the castle doors as bitter winter winds lashed against him like whips. The snow, piled high, tried to stop him like a barricade. His people tried to plead for him to stop, but their pitiful cries fell on deaf ears.
The king didn’t care.
The king couldn’t care.
He marched through the deep winter, alone. A man with nothing to lose and everything to gain. He trudged through the snow covered hills and battled his way against the roaring winds.
As it turns out, that frostbitten march was the last thing he ever did. He layed exhausted on the mountain peak, looking over the land only lit by moonlight. He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see anything. He sat down for only a moment to rest, to catch his breath and determine his next action.
-
They say he was never the same after that night.
That that night became him. It consumed him. It chewed him up and spat him out.
His heart and mind were frozen, broken and shattered beyond all reclaiming. This was who he was. A man that had lost his light, that lost the tenderness of love in his heart. All that remained was cold and darkness.
He marched back to his castle, a lone figure of black in the endless sea of white snow. As he walked past the castle doors his people looked upon him and his darkened visage. His eyes were cold and stern. His skin was frostbitten. His veins were sheer black.
He was not the kind king the once knew. Not the gentle father figure, not the guiding hand.
How to help your artists - The circle of influence.
So over the past 10-15 years, as I’ve been trying to branch out, grow a following and sell commissions, there’s one phrase I’ve heard more than any other.
“I’d love to support you, but I have no money.”
And you know, I get that. I understand. I don’t have any either. But here’s the secret. The most powerful and useful thing you can do to support an artist? It doesn’t cost a penny. Reblog their posts, signal boost their commissions, advertise their patreon./
If you have commissioned them, or do support their patreon? Write a review, tell your friends, share their links. Keep circulating the tapes.
Every post is an artist laying themselves bare before you. You have the power to make them into somebody. You can make them into a big name, you can help bring them an income. All you have to do is share.
Here’s a handy infographic.
If artists get only likes, they never get any exposure. They find no followers, they make no money, and feel worthless.
But with reblogs, who knows how far they could reach? New people could see their work and follow them, and maybe one person will spot that commissions post or patreon promo, and maybe offer to help support them. And it didn’t even cost those followers a penny to reblog the post.
So please, anyone out there. If you enjoy an artist’s work and can’t afford to give any monetary support, you can give them something more powerful. A voice.
A rival pantheon has a God who gets the bright idea to try and get the members to desert the pantheon by appealing to their base fears and desires on separate occasions.
Ko: "You aren't scarier than my friends and I would prefer to keep them as such."
Arlana: "This is the most fun I've had in centuries and you know you can't compare."
Sha: "I've yet to meet anyone else worthy of sharing some of my pedestal. It'd be terrible lonely at the top without them wouldn't you agree?"
Inet: "No no keep going. I want to see if what you say will be as stupid as I think it will be."
Kaetal: "I wen't through too much trouble to even get here, how much of a fucking idiot do you think I am?"
Vel: "Did you just ask me to leave the pantheon I fucking built from the ground up?"
There exists a town on the far off shore of Israthel and in that town lies a very, very wealthy family, one that had the most beautiful children. And it is this family, the Blackstone Monarchy, that took the island of Israthel from the shining beacon of heavenly fire to the smoldering ruins it is now. From their perfection sprang a terrible flame that would refuse to be snuffed out.
You see, the island of Israthel was home to the high arts. It was an island brimming with artisans and craftsman of all sorts. It was home to many art galleries, studios, theaters, and had vineyards that stretched on for miles and miles.
It was a lynchpin of trade and layed between some of the largest and most powerful kingdoms. Everyone clambered for a place to dock and trade, somewhere to wait out the great storms of the sea, relax, and enjoy the splendors of civilized life while out on the ocean.
Israthel was a wondrous place. It had food and customs that stretched across kingdoms and held many famous festivals. The most notable festival was the festival of fire, the Lantern Festival. The many great artists and craftsman would come together and send their wishes up into the air, taking their passion and love and letting it light up the sky. It was a festival of joy, one of love and prosperity, and it was held by the wealthiest family on the island.
The family that held the festival was the Blackstones. They were merchants and the wealthiest patrons on the island. They believed, foolishly, that they were perfect.
They had a beautiful, expansive estate.
They had many works of art, ranging from paintings to sculptures.
And they had beautiful, talented children.
The children of the Blackstone family possed a number of desirable traits. They were healthy, brilliant, quick witted, and skilled in the arts.
The youngest daughter was skilled in the art of apiculture, the keeping of bees. The bees were vibrant and full of life. They had received only the best care and the youngest daughter would ensure that herself. After all, the Blackstone bees were instrumental in the maintenance of their vast gardens, which was the grandest feature to the estate.
The gardens were, to put it how so many had phrased it, perfect.
There were beautiful trimmed hedges, a wide open courtyard, and a sickly rainbow tapestry of pale, muted flowers, like their lifeforce was frozen before they could reach their full radiance.
Every inch was sculpted to perfection and not a single blade of grass was out of place.
For being a garden, a place to celebrate the beauty of nature, it was a deathly, artificial place. It was cold, empty, and hollow.
The gardens had no soul. And the youngest daughter hated it.
How could her poor bees, these beautiful perfect creatures, have their worked sulled by the grim upkeep of the gardens? Their life giving work, their work that can produce the most splendid of things, was being squandered to maintain the unnatural, irreverent, and disgusting gardens.
The perfect daughter hated the perfect landscape, so clearly one of those things was not as perfect as the Blackstones had thought. They decided that it was their daughter who was imperfect, a crass assertion that would not be entirely without merit. She was imperfect, but so are all living things.
The youngest daughter held within her a flame, a sort of passion that grew well past the outline she was supposed to live within. She had a passion about her, a spark of life that lived within her, one that was vastly dissimilar from her family and was very much like all the artisans and craftsman of the island.
And yet, rather than nurture her spirit, her family demanded her to change.
They took her from her bees and forbade her from ever stepping foot near the gardens, lest she tear it apart like the devil child she is.
They trapped her in every possible sense.
When she spoke out they scolded her.
When she pleaded to seek the arts they denied her.
When she snuck out to be with her bees they punished her.
She was stifled, choking, and longing to be free.
And then the Lantern Festival began. The day where the great artists of the island take their passion and set it free. The most beautiful, joyous, happy, splendid festival that made the twisted, unnatural gardens breathe a breath of life.
It was on that day that everything went to hell.
The Lantern Festival was held in the gardens, the place where the imperfect daughter was forbidden to enter.
But forbiddance could never stop the spark of life that dwelled within artists.
A painter needs their canvas.
A sculpture needs their clay.
And the imperfect daughter needed her bees.
And there was no better time to acquire those things than when everyone was up in arms and having a good time. So the imperfect daughter planned to sneak out to be with her bees once more.
When sunset came and it was time to release the lanterns up into the air and the festival would be in full swing. She would steal a lantern and take it to the hive, hiding her bees inside. By opening and closing the seal on the top she could safely and stealthily move them and so she could set them free, all without a single soul knowing.
She snuck her way to her bees and carefully lead them into her lantern. She could only fit a few without anyone noticing, but it was enough to know some could be free. As she finished and began to sneak away to the town, she was stopped by her family. Deciding that, clearly, she just wanted to participate in the festival, they excused her actions. Much to her dismay this meant going to the gardens, the last place she wanted to be.
As they marched her to the gardens she protested, struggling to get away. This did not please her father, who thought she was finally making a turn around. It was only made worse when he forced her to participate in the lightning of the lanterns.
The imperfect daughter fought and tried to resist, but adults can easily over power a child, especially when they do not care for their emotions.
Her father ripped the lantern from her hands and her mother kept her at bay.
“Now dear, we are going to have a fun time. You don’t want to ruin the festival, do you?” her mother cooed as her father struck a match.
“It’s time you participated in the festival! Whether you like it or not, you can’t hate these gardens forever” her father said, gesturing to the dreadful gardens that his daughter could certainly hate forever.
The father held the match to the seal, setting it ablaze.
As the lantern rose up through the air there was a great whirring sound, a noise that echoed through the vast estate.
The daughter looked up in terror as she saw the only thing she truly loved go up in smoke. Her heart stopped.
The lantern floated up as her bees, now on fire, rained down over and around her, but never once harming her. They glowed like embers, brilliantly red and orange and yellow as they swirled around her, dancing across her body and surrounding her in beautiful, gleaming light.
And then something peculiar happened. Something more horrific than watching the only things you love burn before your eyes and something more surprising than discovering they were miraculously ok. The bees, rather than swarm and fly about wildly as one might expect, began to attack the garden, igniting it almost instantaneously. The bees seemed to multiply, flooding through the vast gardens with ease, burning the dreadful bushes and wretched flowers alike.
The Blackstones had tried to smother the ember inside their daughter and in doing so awakened an inferno.
The imperfect daughter was no longer afraid of her father or was forced to be ashamed of who she was. The world was burning down and she no longer felt afraid of anything. Everything she hated, along with all that she loved, was burning around her.
And she loved it. Oh, she loved it.
She could feel all of it. She sensed the flames just as she had for her bees. They were one and the same. It was kind, playful, and inviting to the young girl. And much worse than that, it was obedient.
She held an outstretched hand towards her mother and father. The embers glistening in the black smoke swarmed towards her command, like a thousand blazing darts. The swarm washed over them like a wave of pure fire, lapping against the cliffs. They were utterly consumed, engulfed in the heat and chaos.
And the destruction did not stop there.
The swarm would continue to raze every single inch of the island until there was nothing left, only ashes and soot and dust.
The island burned.
And it was no more.
No towns, no gardens
No artists, no festivals
The desolate, charred landscape only features were mounds of ash.
But within those ashes lied an ember, a faint, glistening spark in the gloom.
The ember grew and grew, sputtering intensely as it struggled to keep itself alive.
From the ashes, something was born. Something dreadful rose up. A single hand reached up from the weak flame, pulling out of it a body as intense and as scorching as the sun. It’s hair was long and flowing, bellowing with smoke and it’s skin was red hot metal.
Arlana, the goddess of fire, was born, forged from the ashes of her former life.
As she surveyed her landscape and her new life, she felt a familiar presence. Lingering embers began to rise from the ashes as small bees, covered in soot, flew up to greet her.
Her old life was gone, nothing more than bad memories and cinders.
As she looked out over the wastes a single desire burned in her mind, seering itself into her heart, and igniting her very soul.
She would purge the world of its perfections, of its lies too good to be true.
She would burn as bright as the setting sun and engulf the world in flame.
There it stood, behind the World hidden from the Eyes far from the Light what Life was bathing in. But it did exist. The Ancient ones were not just a fairy-tale. It was at the first blink scary and shocking - the knowledge that there were Gods even before Time.
How long it was there? What purpose it served once when it was whole and not dying slowly with every breath of mankind … rotting away just like the World was collapsing around the Gods mankind knew now.
It seen human born, grow and evolve. It seen when the first God, Hunger raised from the spark of humankind to come to Life and demand more and more from those who created It, falsely name Itself their true and only God.
That was the moment the Ancient ones stood aside. They were not meant to rule over the Life what was born from the World which was their creation. They watched with Joy and then stood aside in their peace, dying slowly as the newborn Gods were feasting on their flesh and bones accepting their Fate as they simply Loved the miracle of Life; the mankind more then wanting to enslave and rule them.
